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| European Web Video Network Intruders TV Relaunches Posted: 03 Apr 2009 08:39 AM PDT
Today, the web TV company is relaunching and will soon be expanding its coverage to more countries and other fields like music, movies, cleantech and fashion. The biggest change for today's release of the new Intruders TV is that the company has finally stopped focussing on delivering country-specific content but has instead regrouped all the English-language content in one channel only (the same goes for the French and Italian counterparts). The site and video player have been revamped as well and are well worth a look.
Intruders TV produces high-quality profiles of the continent’s most exciting startups and industry events, and regularly publishes interviews with European entrepreneurs and other industry pundits. The company can often be spotted at events across the globe, looking for interesting people to interview. (disclosure: they were also a media partner for my own conference, Plugg) According to Vincent Camara, Head of Content and Co-Founder of Intruders TV, the company so far has streamed over 10 million video plays, conducted 600+ interviews and currently has a library of over 300 hours of HD content available (see example video on the site - the embed code doesn’t like WordPress). Note that all this was done without a dime in funding: the startup has to date been completely bootstrapped by Camara and his business associate Thierry Bezier. So how does the company make money? Camara tells me there are four business models in place, but only two of them are currently bringing in the monthly revenue used to pay its 10 to 15 part-time video reporters: placement of videos via syndication agreements with other video sites based on revenue sharing, and sponsorship of channels (verticals and sub-verticals) by related businesses. The other two revenue streams the company is looking at are 1) the distribution of exclusive content with large video sites in return for licenses and revenue share from advertising and 2) closed circuit VOD agreements with institutions, groups and organised communities where revenue is secured by licenses and sponsorship. In other news, Intruders TV has partnered with technology news site THEINQUIRER to bring to life INQ TV, adding a video presence for the snarky news and reviews site. Check out the site and let us know what you think. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
| Sources: Google In Talks To Acquire Twitter (Updated) Posted: 02 Apr 2009 08:49 PM PDT
Twitter turned down an offer to be bought by Facebook just a few months ago for half a billion dollars, although that was based partially on overvalued Facebook stock. Google would be paying in cash and/or publicly valued stock, which is equivalent to cash. So whatever the final acquisition value might be, it can’t be compared apples-to-apples with the Facebook deal. Why would Google want Twitter? We’ve been arguing for some time that Twitter’s real value is in search. It holds the keys to the best real time database and search engine on the Internet, and Google doesn’t even have a horse in the game. In a post last month called It's Time To Start Thinking Of Twitter As A Search Engine, I wrote:
If this is accurate, it’s a brilliant deal for Google - the value of Twitter is only going to go up over time. And it will be Twitter founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone’s second sale to Google - they sold Blogger to them just five years ago. But there’s one big question - where’s Microsoft in all this? Letting Twitter go to Google only hurts them, badly, in the long term search game. This is an asset they need to be competing for aggressively. Of course, it’ll be sad to see Twitter become just another subsidiary of Google, if this happens. I would have liked to have seen the company spread its wings a little longer to see what it could do. Updated: Yet another source says the acquisition discussions are still fairly early stage, and the two companies are also considering working together on a Google real time search engine. But discussions between the companies are confirmed. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Legends of Zork Browser-Based RPG: Not the Zork You’re Looking For Posted: 02 Apr 2009 08:45 PM PDT  Remember Zork? Sure you do. It was great. The grues, that scary white house, the keys, the puzzles... it was the ur-game, the game that defined many of our childhoods and the game we've been trying to find ever since. I can't tell you how many times I've wished that the latest 3D RPG for XBox 360 or PC was more like Zork. There is only so many Hobbit knock-offs you can take before you yearn for the gnome of Zurich. Sadly - or maybe luckily - Activision decided to regurgitate the old game in on-line form, sell "turns" to addicts, and generally destroy Zork for an entire generation. Oh well. Things change and kids these days don't care about good text-based adventures what with their Nintenders and PlayStations 3. Lengends of Zork is clearly aimed at folks who haven't played an online game in decades. It's quite simple - you wander around, fight other characters, and generally recreate most of the boredom inherent in poorly-made online games and none of the beauty of Infocom's original work. |
| DiggBar Keeps All Digg Homepage Traffic On Digg Posted: 02 Apr 2009 08:10 PM PDT
The Twitter crowd already loves this based on all the chatter I saw on the site today. This will also expose a lot of new people to Digg since anyone that clicks on the link will see the toolbar wrapper with the view count, Digg comments and other information on the top. And it will also increase Digg’s overall traffic substantially - unlike other short URL services, Digg doesn’t simply redirect to the longer URL. It keeps you on Digg and shows the site being pointed to in an iframe wrapper. You can get to the underlying URL by clicking on the X button on the top right. But Digg didn’t stop there. They’re also using DiggBar for all stories on Digg as well. So all those home page stories that send massive amounts of traffic around the web are now redirecting right back to Digg, too. That keeps all that traffic in the Digg ecosystem, to the detriment of the sites being linked to. For most purposes those sites won’t care. The page is still rendered and includes the advertising. The way most internal analytics software works means that page views will still be counted. But some services, like Comscore, won’t necessarily see the visit to the site, and will penalize the domain name. I’d expect Digg to add text advertising to the DiggBar over time, sooner rather than later. It should be a material revenue source for them. Overall it’s a brilliant move by Digg. I’m surprised no one has complained yet though about Digg home page traffic no longer going to the sites being listed. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| PhoneBook Arranges Your iPhone Contacts For You Posted: 02 Apr 2009 06:25 PM PDT
PhoneBook (iTunes Link) is a new iPhone application looking to make it as easy as possible to call your most important contacts. The application plugs into your AT&T account, allowing it to dynamically rearrange your list of contacts depending on how often you call them. After entering your carrier account information, PhoneBook can suck in your call data, which it can then use to update your list of friends so that the ones you call most are always the easiest to dial. Using Facebook Connect, users can import and automatically assign photos to their friends’ phone numers. The app also allows users to monitor their phone usage (so they don’t get charged for extra minutes). Maybe I’m just paranoid, but I doubt many people are going to jump through the hoop of entering their phone carrier’s account information primarily so that the photos of their friends are arranged in the proper order. Most people simply don’t call that many friends, and there are plenty of similar apps that allow users to rearrange their contacts without having to let the app access potentially sensitive data. Granted, there are some services like BillShrink that ask for the same information, but that site has a more practical use that may be a little more enticing: it saves users money. That said, there are certainly some cool things that can be done with this kind of data - PhoneBook just needs to figure out some innovative features that will tantilize users enough to sign up for the app. The PhoneBook developers say that more features are on the way, and that they may eventually offer premium features to generate revenue (it may also serve up advertising for free users). Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Digg To Finally Fix Search - See The Screenshot Posted: 02 Apr 2009 04:45 PM PDT
Digg may have 19 million unique visitors and nearly 85 million pageviews (Comscore worldwide, Feb ‘09), but one thing it’s never had is a decent search engine. There’s no rhyme or reason to the ordering of results. A lot of stuff just seems to disappear. And the filters are overly complicated. That’ll change in the near future, the company noted in a blog post today. And since we’re so curious about what the new Digg search will look like, we hammered them until they gave up a screenshot. The new search appears to have much more relevant results, taking into account the popularity of the story as well as the newness for “best match.” Other simple filters include “most dugg” and “newest first.” Compare that to the very old, not very relevant results you get now. The new search also has a left sidebar with key stats, such as aging, how many stories with a certain number of Diggs, stories broken out by media type (news, video, images), and by topic. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
| Betaworks Launches Chartbeat To Track Who Is Paying Attention To Your Website Right Now Posted: 02 Apr 2009 04:22 PM PDT
The default mode for Google Analytics and other Website tracking software often makes you wait an entire day to find out what is happening on your site. There is a 24-hour delay (although this can often be changed in settings). Speed up the feedback loop, and Websites in theory could become even more responsive to traffic and attention peaks or to unexpected sluggishness. Betaworks, John Borthwick’s startup holding company which has stakes in Twitter and Tweetdeck, and spun off bit.ly, has just launched Chartbeat. Keeping with Betaworks’ focus on real-time data services, Chartbeat offers a dashboard for Website owners that monitors how many people are on their site at any given second, where they are coming from, which pages visitors are looking at the most, as well as conversations and links from Twitter. It also shows average load times, what percentage of current visitors are returning, how many are reading, how many are actively writing in comments or engaging with the site in some other way, and how many are simply idle. Webmasters can set up alerts for traffic peaks and site slowdowns. All it requires is one line of Javascript to be inserted on a site and then it pings Chartbeat every 10 seconds. The dashboard also offers a historical view, and even lets you play the dashboard through time like a movie so that you can see for instance what was going on during a particular peak—where was traffic coming from and what were visitors looking at. If you choose, you can also share your dashboard and make it public. Venture capitalist Fred Wilson has done so for his blog A VC. Click through to his blog, and then you can see the results on his Chartbeat here. The video below also shows what it looks like. Chartbeat is offering a free 30-day trial and then wants to charge $10 a month for the service. Competing real-time Web analytics services include Get Clicky and Woopra (which we covered here).
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| Palm Demonstrates a Plethora of Pre Apps at CTIA 2009 Posted: 02 Apr 2009 04:19 PM PDT
In a tucked away room in the CTIA 2009 North Hall, Sprint and Palm are demonstrating a number of Pre applications for the first time. Earlier this afternoon we got a bit of footage of Classic, a PalmOS emulator by MotionApps‘ primarily intended for running any legacy applications you may have laying around. Since then, we’ve also had the opportunity to check out the Pandora, Fandango, Sprint TV, FlightView, and Nascar applications, and we’ve brought back a boatload of video for you to check out. For all videos below, I’d recommend hitting the HQ button for the sake of visibility. These applications are all pretty dang gorgeous, so the extra click is worth it. Pandora: They were one of the first to be disclosed as being in the know when it came to the webOS SDK, and now they’re one of the first with something to show. Pandora brings all the streaming radio functionality you’d expect of an app to bear the name, but leverages the Pre’s notifications bar to serve as a media controller from outside the app. Fandango: Like all of the apps Palm had on display, the Fandango application is reaaally smooth. The UI is gorgeous, it localizes theater times and ticket availability via GPS. A bit of a neat trick: it can automatically add the movie to your calendar, making sure you don’t miss your flick when you lose track of time whilst grabbing a pre-show drink, and allowing you to invite others. Sprint TV: The fact that the Pre is launching exclusively on Sprint is a bit of a big deal. Unlike AT&T with their iPhone deal, Sprint is making sure to get some of their services onto the device right out of the box. Sprint TV is one of Sprint’s popular offerings, allowing you to pull live video feeds from CNN, Fox Sports, Disney, ABC, the Speed channel, and others. FlightView: Gotta pick up grams at the airport? Want to check if her flight is on schedule? FlightView is a fairly basic application, but it serves a purpose. Punch in the flight info, and you’ll get notifications of any changes along with access to a live flight tracker once it’s in the air. Recently searched flights are automatically stored for later viewing. Nascar: Not to unfairly generalize here - but is there all that much overlap between the Palm Pre’s audience and devout Nascar fans? Whether it sees much use, the Nascar application seemed well designed. The demonstrator had a bit of trouble getting it to connect to video streams while we were recording, but we’d seen cars successfully tearing around the screen just minutes before. I’ve gotta ask: Any Nascar fans out there dying for the Pre? Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| Skype iPhone App Downloaded One Million Times In First Two Days Posted: 02 Apr 2009 03:50 PM PDT
In the blog post announcing the milestone, Skype blogger Peter Parkes says he’s “confident that it's one of the fastest-downloaded iPhone apps ever”, which means he’s not really sure. And since we don’t know either, we’re reaching out to you, dear readers. Does Skype now hold the record for reaching the million download mark fastest for a free app, or not? (Hat tip to Pat Phelan). Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Search Suggestions Come To Gmail Posted: 02 Apr 2009 03:24 PM PDT  Google just rolled out a search autocomplete feature for Gmail; If you turn on “Search Autocomplete” from the Labs tab under Gmail Settings, you’ll get suggestions in your search box while you are typing like you do in Google’s search box. The search feature is pretty easy to use and definitely helpful. If you are looking for a contact, you can just type a couple letters of the person’s first or last name and the feature will provide a list that matches the search query. Google has added some advanced features like the ability to search in specific places (e.g. in chats or sent items), or search for messages with attachments by certain type (e.g. docs or photos). But finding that email from six months ago among the tens of thousands in your archive just got easier. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
| Yelp Focuses On Mobile, New And Improved iPhone App Coming Soon Posted: 02 Apr 2009 02:31 PM PDT
Local review sites like Yelp have irrevocably changed the way consumers find businesses in a particular area, and truly given power to the consumer in finding the best place to eat a meal, grab a drink, etc. And the potential of putting local reviews and listings on mobile devices is immense. Yelp’s existing iPhone app is less than a year old and it already accounts for 5% of Yelp's overall traffic, which adds up to be around roughly 1 million monthly visitors. In the next few days, Yelp will be launching a new version of its popular iPhone app which we’ve reviewed. The new app gives consumers even more ease in automatically reviewing businesses via their iPhone and enhances its exiting GPS capabilities. The updated version of the app now lets Yelpers write review directly from their iPhone through a Twitter-like “Quick Tips” feature that allows users to create 140 character tips. This was sorely lacking in the original version. The tips will be accessible on the iPhone app and the site itself (if popular) and will also be shown in a feed using GPS capabilities when users search businesses. Like before, the app leverages GPS in the iPhone to list reviews, tips, and photos written and taken around a users location. The app will also feature a Friend Feed feature that will pull in your friends activities. Users can also draft a full review of a restaurant, bar or business from their iPhone and then post it later to Yelp.com. Yelp is also upgrading the app to become more compatible in Canada and the UK. Since its launch in 2004, Yelp caught on pretty quickly and has seen consistent growth. Yelp currently has over 5.5 million reviews in the site. Google Analytics says Yelp has had 20.5 million unique visits in the past 30 days. Comscore’s estimate for February was a little more conservative, at around 7 million unique visits for Yelp.com. But Yelp’s monthly unique visits more than doubled from the same month, last year. Along the way, Yelp has decimated most of its competitors. Insider Pages laid off 2/3 of their staff and sold quickly to CitySearch in February 2007, Intuit said "goodbye" to Zipingo in August 2007, and Judy's Book closed their doors in October 2007. CitySearch remains as Yelp’s lone competitor in the local reviews space. To date, Yelp has raised 31 million in capital. The combination of local reviews and mobile is so compelling because Yelp now allows consumers to post reviews as they are eating, drinking or visiting a business. Think about the review of a restaurant that had bad service. Likely, the consumer will be emotionally charged about the poor service. Before the iPhone app, the consumer would write the review after the restaurant visit, when he or she had cooled off a bit. Now, the angry consumer can enter a particularly distasteful, and emotionally charged review directly from the restaurant’s table. Additionally, the combination of using GPS to see reviews of businesses directly where you are in an area is fascinating. Yelp is making it incredibly easy for consumers to quickly access listings, reviews and ratings of businesses without having to input there location. Of course, the transparency and potential negative backlash businesses can suffer from sites like Yelp or CitySearch, has ignited businesses to fight back. Businesses have started anti-Yelp websites and even sued Yelp users for negative or unfair reviews. Yelp lets businesses fight back with a suite of tools to take part in the conversations consumers are having about their businesses. Yelp’s next move should be incorporating Facebook Connect with its site and iPhone app. Currently, you can add Yelp friends on the site and get personalized feeds of reviews from people who are your friends and random people who share your local restaurant or bar tastes. But it would be really cool to be able to see your Facebook friend’s reviews of local businesses, similar to MySpace Local, a partnership between MySpace and CitySearch to combine CitySearch business listings in the MySpace community. Here’s a video detailing the new version of Yelp’s iPhone App: And screenshots below:   Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Technorati Lays Off Another 10 Percent Of Employees Posted: 02 Apr 2009 02:21 PM PDT
Blog search engine Technorati has laid off close to 10 percent of its staff, or 4 employees in its PR, engineering and general admin areas. The company’s CEO, Richard Jalichandra confirmed the layoffs. He says they were necessary for the company to continue on the path towards profitability. The reduction will leave the company with 37 employees. Technorati suffered an earlier round of layoffs last September, letting go 6 people and also implemented pay cuts for remaining staff. We’ve added this to the layoff tracker. Jalichandra maintains that the blog search engine is growing and layoffs were necessary to “fine tune” its business model to eventually become profitable. Last fall, Technorati acquired AdEngage to join the company’s newly formed blog advertising network, Technorati Media. Jalichandra says that while the timing of launching an ad network a few months before the market crashed wasn’t optimal, quarterly ad revenue has grown by 6.5 times since the launch of Technorati Media last June, when presumably its revenues were negligible. Jalichandra also says that Twitter and Facebook are changing the blogosphere—but in a good way. He says that Twitter and Facebook are just other platforms on which blogs can gain visibility, and Technorati is beginning to track activity on those platforms as well. For instance, here’s a link to Jalichandra’s Twitter page on Technorati. Nevertheless, traffic to Technorati itself over the past several months has flattened at about 5 million unique visitors worldwide, and is declining in the U.S., according to comScore. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Five Startups Take Flight At Web 2.0 Launchpad Posted: 02 Apr 2009 02:16 PM PDT
I’m at today’s Web2.0 LaunchPad, where five startups have been selected to present pitches in the keynote room of the Moscone Center. At this point the name ‘LaunchPad’ is a bit of a misnomer - companies don’t actually have to launch here to get accepted. Rather, it’s more of a place for companies to showthemselves in the public eye, in front of a crowd of VCs, members of the press, and a panel of judges. This year’s judges include VentureBeat’s Matt Marshall, Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb, and Anand Iyer of Microsoft BizSpark. Federated Media’s John Battelle is acting as the MC. Summaries and selected questions from the panelists are below for each company. After the presentations, a real-time audience poll awarded PhoneGap with the top prize.
Kirkpatrick: I like it. I was wondering if you could speak to what people were saying when the Pre came out, about not being able to create heavy-duty apps.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| DiggBar Is Here. Go Shorten Those URLs Posted: 02 Apr 2009 12:44 PM PDT
Last month we wrote about the new Digg toolbar product called DiggBar. It launched today. If you want to try it out immediately, just add “digg.com/” before any URL at all (the image above is using the techcrunch domain). The toolbar is made for the new Twitter generation, which has a desperate need for very short URLs to fit in the tiny space allotted per message. Digg is going to be a popular player in this space because of the easy way to create the URLs (just pop digg.com in front of anything), as well as the stats that they provide in the toolbar wrapper: number of views, comments on the story, and related stories. StumbleUpon has their own product called su.pr coming shortly as well. Here’s the official post from Digg on the product, and a demo video:
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Gary Vay•ner•chuk Turns His Internet Celebrity Into A Seven-Figure Book Deal Posted: 02 Apr 2009 12:33 PM PDT
Garyvee (aka Gary Vay•ner•chuk) is crushing it. The wine retailer-turned-video-blogger is cashing in his Internet fame for a seven-figure, 10-book deal with HarperStudio. That comes to at least $100,000 per book, which is decent for One thing Vay•ner•chuck has going for him is a built-in audience he cultivated one e-mail at a time, starting with his his popular video wine blog, Wine Library TV. Then he started branching out beyond wine into marketing, motivational speaking, other Web video shows, wine-review site Corkd, and even T-shirt search (because everyone is always looking for a good T-shirt). So can Garyvee turn his 80,000 daily videoblog fans and 160,000 Twitter followers into actual paying customers for his book series? Do those people even read books anymore? If only 10 percent end up buying each book, HarperStudio will be happy. Update: Vay•ner•chuk responds in a few places via video in comments below. In this comment, he points out that what attracted him to HarperStudio is a 50/50 revenue share (presumably once each book hits profitability) which gives him a bigger upside should the books do well. That is a much more entrepreneurial model than most book publishers are comfortable with, and hopefully we’ll be seeing more like them. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| Opera Browser Chosen For “Mobile Office” Computer In Ford Pickup Trucks Posted: 02 Apr 2009 11:33 AM PDT
Can the Web save the Big 3 automobile companies? Probably not, but making Web-friendly vehicles could help to sell a few more cars. Tech companies have increasingly been showcasing web applications for automobiles. Microsoft was working with Hyundai on making an in-car computing system and OnStar may be incorporating Twitter into its vehicle systems. Now Ford will be allowing owners of the Ford F-150, Super Duty, E-Series and Transit Connect trucks and vans to access the web from their vehicles through the Opera mobile browser. Opera will be the featured browser on Ford’s first broadband-capable, in-dash computer. Ford is purposely installing these computers in trucks and vans to appeal to contractors, farmers, and construction workers to turn these cars into “mobile offices.” Truck owners will be able to use the in-dash browser to access sales information, contact databases, job-site plans, inventory lists, calendars, e-mail, or even the weather. The Ford Work Solutions in-dash computer is integrated into the vehicle's center stack, filling the same space normally occupied by the standard radio. It is equipped with a 6.5-inch, high-resolution touch screen, four gigabytes of memory, a secure digital slot for added memory, a USB port, a wireless keyboard, a mouse, and a bluetooth-enabled, battery-powered inkjet printer. The concept of a “mobile office” that incorporates Web 2.0 capabilities is definitely compelling. If Ford rolls this feature out to other cars besides SUVs and trucks, the idea could really take off. For instance, it would be a great option for cars in rental fleets that are commonly used by business people who are on the go. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
| Virgance Looks To Turn Green Options Media Network Into A Blogging Empire Posted: 02 Apr 2009 10:38 AM PDT
Virgance, the unique ‘Activism 2.0′ startup that is looking to improve the world while making money in the process, has announced the latest addition to its portfolio of campaigns. The company has revealed that beginning six months ago it began quietly acquiring a number of blogs, namely the Green Options Media Network - a collection of 15 blogs, each of which is focused on a different portion of the environmental space. Since the acquisition the blog network has managed to become profitable despite the floundering economy, and has seen its writing staff grow significantly. But according to Virgance, they’re just getting started. Green Options was founded back in 2007, and has grown to around 2.5 million monthly unique visitors. The network’s most popular blogs include Gas 2.0 (a blog focused on alternative fuels) and CleanTechnica, a blog that examines the latest trends in clean tech. The network sees around 30-40 new blog posts a day, though some of the niche blogs are updated less frequently than the others. Since acquiring Green Options, Virgance has largely been concentrating on revamping the network’s backend, which had previously been unable to cope was huge rushes of traffic (the blog network is regularly seen on Digg and even the Yahoo homepage, and has previously had issues with downtime). Virgance was able to tap into its resources to sovle these issues, and Green Options articles have been recently featured on the Yahoo homepage without a hitch. Now that the blogs can keep up with traffic, Virgance CEO Steve Newcomb says it’s time for ‘Phase Two’. Virgance is looking to turn Green Options Media into something of a media empire akin to the Huffington Post, featuring frequent submissions from notable politicians, executives, and celebrities. At the moment most of the site’s content is written by a handful of staff writers and a over 100 citizen journalists and reporters. And it already has some impressive contributors, including San Francisco Mayor Gavin Gavin Newsom, who writes an article every two weeks. Newcomb says that we probably won’t start seeing too many more well known authors sign on until the summer, but the blog is already seeing steady traffic regardless. Beyond that, Newcomb says that he’s looking to extend the company’s blogging properties beyond ‘Green’ and into other fields. Of course, this is all easier said than done - it probably won’t be easy to recruit all of these politicians and executives, and even if Green Options can create a sizable audience, it’s going to be difficult to convert them into readers of unrelated news (building the next Huffington Post isn’t going to be easy). Aside from Green Options, Newcomb says that Virgance has more campaigns on the way, some of which will be unveiled at the company’s next Equinox Event on Tuesday. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Stanford Course On How To Build iPhone Apps Will Soon Be Available On The iPhone Posted: 02 Apr 2009 10:36 AM PDT
Want to learn how to create an iPhone app? Later this week, aspiring app creators will be able to start watching a popular Stanford computer science course on developing iPhone apps right on their iPhones. Stanford will start distributing the course for free as a video podcast throughiTunes U. (The podcasts can also be watched on iPods and computers, obviously). With more than 25,000 apps out there, which have been downloaded more than 800 million times, the competition is fierce for making the best apps. Apple itself provides a wealth of information for developers about its SDK, but for those who need a little more guidance or a refresher in the basics, watching these videos is like continuing education. The videos are not on iTunes yet, but the first one should appear within the next few days. Why pay to go to Stanford when you can get the lecture on iTunes for free? Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Why Did Hollywood Leak the New X-Men Movie? Posted: 02 Apr 2009 09:00 AM PDT  I was perusing the Internet yesterday and found something unusual: a movie that was to be released on May 1 instead appeared, in very high quality yet with glaring pre-production problems. The movie was X-Men Origins: Wolverine and it featured a certain very hirsute Australian actor playing a guy with claws. That's all I'll say. Not to be hyperbolic, we are witnessing the rise of media terrorism. This workprint, essentially a version of the movie released to the various parties who have a stake in the film - either in testing, special effects, or editing - was not released by a happy person. The fact that you rarely see workprints of any value online - the last one of any interest was probably Star Wars Episode 3 - is a testament to the value the parties involved put on secrecy and trust. People who like their jobs don't leak workprints like X-Men. Sure, Paul Blart Mall Cop got a workprint release, but who cares about that? I suspect the people working on X-Men proud of their work - heck, they're making cool sci-fi movies! - and they don't want people to steal it. So who leaked it and why? |
About two years ago, web video startup 
Here’s a heck of a rumor that we’ve sourced from two separate people close to the negotiations: Google is in late stage negotiations to acquire Twitter. We don’t know the price but can assume its well, well north of the 
We knew it’d be a hit, but not that much of a hit. The official 
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