The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Bing! Microsoft Prepares For War With A Revamped Search Engine (Screenshots)
- The Palm Pre Will Fail
- Microsoft Sells 30 Millionth Xbox 360, Grows LIVE Community To 20 Million
- D7 Buzz: Bartz And Ballmer Meeting This Morning
- Mark Cuban Finalizes Investment In NAKEDPizza, Orders A Slice Of Expansion
- Is It Better With Windows?
- Spotify Releases Taster Of Android App, With iPhone To Come
- When In Doubt, Change Your Name: Meet Fuse Capital
- Tweetbucks Brings Affiliate Fees To Twitter Users. Is That A Good Thing?
- Sneak Peak: First Video Demo Of Siri Virtual Assistant
- Thank You TechCrunch Sponsors
- Video Interview: Biz Talks Twitter Business Models
- Look At It This Way, Yelp. At Least You Didn’t Delete All Your User Accounts
- Expecting Google Chrome For Mac Tomorrow? Don’t Hold Your Breath
- Want An HTC Magic From Google I/O? Try eBay.
- Microsoft, Tell Sergey About Bing And He’ll Give You A Better Name
- Heyzap Closes Seed Funding Round For Its Flash Gaming Widget
- Imindi: “We Accidentally Deleted All The User Accounts”
- Skyfire Burns Through The Beta Tag, Coming Soon For BlackBerry
- Google Kicks Off Android Developer Challenge Part Deux
- Bartz Wants To Buy Social And Video Startups; Would Sell Yahoo For “Boatloads Of Money”
- Free As In Android
- Virtual Chat Room TinyChat Adds Video Conferencing And Screen Sharing
- Pics: Google Latitude On The iPhone — But It’s Not A Native App
- Widgets Everywhere! Embed Your Favorite Chunks Of Google With Web Elements
| Bing! Microsoft Prepares For War With A Revamped Search Engine (Screenshots) Posted: 28 May 2009 08:25 AM PDT
Today, Microsoft publicly unveiled its soon-to-launch search engine Bing. It will become available over the next few days, and be fully launched by June 3. On the surface, Bing has a distinct gloss. The home page features a rotation of stunning photography, for instance, which can be clicked on to produce related image search results. But the most significant changes are under the covers. “We have taken the algorithmic programming up an order of magnitude,” says Microsoft senior vice president Yusuf Mehdi. Each search result page is customized according to what type of search you do (health, travel, shopping, news, sports). The algorithms determine not only the order of results on the page, but the layout of the page itself, concluding what sections appear. These sections can include anything from guided refinements and a list of related searches in the left-hand pane to images, videos, and local results. I’ve been playing around with a preview version of Bing for about a week. It is designed to be “more of a decision engine,” says Mehdi. Bing helps people make decisions through guided search and a focus on task completion. In a time when a new Website is created every 4.5 seconds, information overload is becoming a real problem. ” People are getting hundreds of thousands of links but not getting what they want,” says Mehdi. Bing tries to alleviate problem by offering up different experiences depending on the search. The internal codename for Bing is Kumo (which is what you see in the screenshots), and the current release is called Kiev. Rather than a spare, blank screen, Bing’s homepage surrounds the search box with a single beautiful image, such as the one of the tribesmen above or a kinkajou. You can hover over parts of the image to get factoids about the image or click through to an image search result page to explore more. The left-hand pane offers the option to narrow your search on images, videos, shopping, news, maps, or travel. Each of these has a different look and feel. A travel search will turn up a page based on Microsoft’s Farecast technology asking you where you want to go, with flights, hotels, and destination information. A news search offers up headlines, photos, videos, and local news in a column on the right. A shopping search will bring up products and is tied into Microsoft’s Cashback program. Every search also generates a guide on the left to help you refine your search. A search for “kinkajou,” for example, lets you refine by images, facts, sale, breeders, care, diseases, and videos. A search for “Samsung LCD TVs” brings up an entirely different set of guided results: shopping, review, manual, repair, buy, stand, images, and videos. Each guided option is dynamically generated, just like the different sections of the search results page. “Google, tried to preempt this,” says Mehdi, referring to Google’s new search refinement options it launched last week, which is also in the left pane. Those Google options, which include the ability to search across different time periods or for related keywords, are “completely static,” criticizes Mehdi. “There is nothing new about it. It is a very minor rev, not as sophisticated as what we are doing. For us ever query is special.” Bing also takes advantage of Microsoft’s acquisition of Powerset to provide better previews and snippets of text when you hover over a result. Also, whenever a search brings up a “reference” tab in the guided exploration pane, clicking on that will bring up an enhanced Wikipedia article with semantic tags. Onstage at the D7 conference, Steve Ballmer acknowledges: “There is no way to change the whole game in one step.” But search “deserves a good feature war.” And Bing will be rolling out new features as it goes forward. But is it enough to get people to switch? Bing is certainly not a game-changer, but it does cut out a lot of the back and forth that happens with so many searches today. If Bing can help people find what they are looking for faster, it will put pressure on Google to keep advancing the ball as well.
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| Posted: 28 May 2009 06:54 AM PDT  An "also-ran" is, literally, "a horse that does not win, place, or show in a race." The world loves an underdog but it never loves an also-ran. It forgets about an also-ran. And so we reach nearly the end of Palm Pre madness and I'm afraid to report that after all the magic, all the tears, all the joy the Palm Pre will be just another phone. It won't save Palm, it won't change paradigms, and it won't send the iPhone hegemony crashing to its knees. The Palm Pre will launch with a whisper, not a bang.
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| Microsoft Sells 30 Millionth Xbox 360, Grows LIVE Community To 20 Million Posted: 28 May 2009 06:40 AM PDT  Microsoft just announced sales of Xbox 360 consoles have passed the 30 million mark globally, up 28 percent over last year, which it claims is the highest percentage growth in hardware sales of any console so far in 2009. In addition, the Xbox LIVE community has grown to over 20 million users, coming from 26 countries. And these users spend money, too. In a press release touting the sales numbers, Microsoft claims U.S. consumers alone have spent $14.5 billion across all categories on Xbox 360 at retail, and consumers worldwide have downloaded close to 1 billion pieces of gaming and entertainment content from Xbox LIVE Marketplace to date.
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| D7 Buzz: Bartz And Ballmer Meeting This Morning Posted: 28 May 2009 05:51 AM PDT
When Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz suggested yesterday at the D7 conference that she would consider doing a deal with Microsoft for “boatloads of money,” she might have been doing more than just answering a hypothetical question. It could have been an opening salvo. If the late-night buzz I heard at the conference is correct, Bartz is meeting this morning with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who is also at the conference and is due to be onstage today. The two started talking in April about renewing negotiations between Yahoo and Microsoft over a search and advertising deal. Last summer, Yahoo rejected Microsoft’s offer to buy its search business after earlier talks to buy the entire company also fell apart. But that was before Bartz became Yahoo’s new CEO in January. By March, Ballmer was publicly begging Bartz to come back to the negotiating table. When Bartz was asked yesterday if the two were talking, she said, “Yeah, a little bit.” If Ballmer wants to get anywhere with her this morning, he had better bring more than just a boatload of money. Bartz also made it clear yesterday that the data produced by Yahoo’s search engine is crucial to Yahoo’s overall advertising business and to improve its consumer properties. But she also signaled that she is more open to a search deal than she was when she first took the job:
When it comes to winning in search, money is no object for Microsoft. Ballmer is expected to unveil a brand new version of Microsoft’s own search engine this morning, internally dubbed project Kumo (possibly to be branded Bing). Microsoft is reportedly planning on spending $80 million to $100 million on just the marketing campaign for Kumo/Bing. It is the data-sharing discussion which might be the stickler. So don’t expect any announcements today. But at least the two sides are talking again. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Mark Cuban Finalizes Investment In NAKEDPizza, Orders A Slice Of Expansion Posted: 28 May 2009 05:47 AM PDT
NAKEDpizza is an all-natural pizza delivery shop that has famously done most of its marketing efforts on and centered around its Twitter profile and Facebook presence. Two months ago, the healthy pizza store even erected a Twitter billboard above its first - and for now - only store. The franchise’s got big plans for expansion, though. NAKEDpizza awarded Cuban with the Area Developer rights for the entire State of Texas, and while they haven’t disclosed how many stores the company plans to open in the state, NAKEDpizza co-founder Randy Crochet has indicated that “the market will support between 50 and 75 units.” The company is also actively seeking a group of Area Developers in the U.S. to open initial units as part of “founding cluster” of partners by year’s end. Apart from the interesting concept behind NAKEDpizza and its bold expansion plans, the way the company got Cuban to back them is interesting. It’s the first company to attract funding from the man after his self-proclaimed Mark Cuban Stimulus Plan, which he refers to as an open source funding environment (click the link for the full explanation). Here’s what convinced him to invest in NAKEDpizza:
Curious to see if that will prove enough to make it a success nation-wide, but gotta admire the passion on both sides of the table here. Although I think NAKEDpizza’s logo was clearly inspired by the TechCrunch brand. We’re considering a lawsuit, although we might settle for a free pizza coupon. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Posted: 28 May 2009 05:40 AM PDT  Hot on the heels of their successful advertising campaign to make consumers see a PC running Windows as a better value than a Macintosh, Microsoft is now declaring "It's Better With Windows"! The new website, aimed at Asus Eee PC users, reminds us that "Windows helps you quickly and easily get online and connect to your devices and services -- without dealing with an unfamiliar environment or major compatibility issues"! Oooh, burn! Watchoo gonna do, Linux?
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| Spotify Releases Taster Of Android App, With iPhone To Come Posted: 28 May 2009 01:59 AM PDT
The Android app is still very much a work in progress and subject to minor changes, but it gives a pretty good overview of their thinking. The demo highlights a number of features including playback, playlists, offline synch and music search. For those of you who haven’t seen it yet - the service has yet to launch in North America, although I’m about to send some lucky TechCrunch writers some preview codes we’ve gotten hold of - Spotify is a lightweight iTunes-like application for Windows and Mac that lets you search, browse and stream a deep collection of music. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| When In Doubt, Change Your Name: Meet Fuse Capital Posted: 27 May 2009 10:06 PM PDT
Fuse Capital was rocked in March when partner Jonathan Miller left to head up News Corp.’s newly formed Digital Media group. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Tweetbucks Brings Affiliate Fees To Twitter Users. Is That A Good Thing? Posted: 27 May 2009 08:20 PM PDT Talk of how to monetize Twitter, both from its founders perspective and a third-party point of view, is dominating conversation on the web these days. Tweetbucks, a startup founded by entrepreneur Chris Sukornyk, is hoping to make money for users of Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed through leveraging affiliate fees and CPCs from ads. Here’s how it works. Tweetbucks has a database with thousands of online merchants that offer referral fees (or money you get from merchants when your advertisements of a product result in a purchase ), including Amazon, BestBuy, Barnes & Noble and Shoes.com. All you need to do is find a product on a retail site, enter it on Tweetbuck’s site, and the startup will automatically shorten (via Bit.ly) and convert it to an affiliate enabled link, referencing the site’s data base of online merchants that pay out affiliate fees. You can then add the link to in a Tweet, Facebook status update or FriendFeed message. Every time people click your link and your recommendation results in a purchase, the online merchant pays a commission to you. For example, referral fees for Amazon’s Associates program hover around 6%, BestBuy pays out 3-4%, and CompUSA pays around 6%. Tweetbucks will take 30% of the money you earn through each referral leaving you with 70%. So if you send out a link via a Tweet to a Kindle being sold on Amazon for $359.00 and someone purchases the Kindle from the link, you will receive $15.12 and Tweetbucks will take $6.46. On the other hand, if your affiliate fee comes from a book on Barnes & Noble (which also pays out 6%) that totals $16.76, you will receive $0.70 cents and Tweetbucks will get $0.30 cents. Tweetbucks also lets you earn money off of any non-retail site, by allowing you to enable a “custom ad-frame,” on a site you Tweet the link to. Tweetbucks displays an ad at the top of your destination page and you earn a variable rate (CPC) on every click. You can also customize this ad frame to include a hyperlinked logo of your choice. The compensation from this doesn’t seem to have as much potential as the affiliate fees; Sukornyk says returns are around $1 to $2 per thousand clicks.  Tweetbucks give you a complimentary $5 in your account to start with and pays you via PayPal each month. You can also earn a 10% commission on all revenue earned by people you refer to Tweetbucks for 6 months after their approval date. It’s a little shady to be sending out links to friends and followers with out them knowing they you will be making a cut off of their sale. Sukornyk encourages Tweetbucks users to add the hashtag #tweetbucks at the end of any link so that people who click on your link will know whats in it for you. This has a few similarities to Microsoft’s controversial CashBack program, which gives users monetary incentives to click through and buy products from the ads they're shown. But Tweetbucks gives users the power to make money from others (and forbids the user to click and buy from the links themselves). There seems to be the whole double edged sword issue with Tweetbucks. The more affiliate links you send out, the more people will probably purchase from that link and the more money you will make. But the more links you send out, whether it be via Twitter, Facebook or FriendFeed, the more you hover on that line of being a pseudo-spammer of links to retail sites. And you could come across as opportunistic if you send out a ton of links that make you money every day, regardless of whether you disclose or not. I guess it was inevitable that services would eventually leverage the power of links with Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook for monetary purposes. For some reason, it just doesn’t sit right with me. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Sneak Peak: First Video Demo Of Siri Virtual Assistant Posted: 27 May 2009 06:07 PM PDT Earlier today, a startup called Siri that wants to bring virtual assistants to the iPhone came out of stealth. Siri brings a very advanced collection of technologies (speech recognition, natural language processing, semantic data processing, and geo-location) to create a virtual assistant that helps you perform tasks through a conversational, question-and-answer interface. You can read all about it in this lengthy guest post by Nova Spivack. But sometimes it is easier to just see the product for yourself. Below is the first public demo video of Siri, which I got on video today from CEO Dag Kittlaus at the AllThingsD conference in San Diego. Siri won’t be available on the iPhone until later this summer. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Posted: 27 May 2009 06:05 PM PDT
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| Video Interview: Biz Talks Twitter Business Models Posted: 27 May 2009 04:37 PM PDT I caught up with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone today on video at the AllThingsD conference to ask him what business models might emerge for the company. In the video above, he talks about different things Twitter can do to help marketers connect with consumers, such as selling verified accounts (something he mentioned onstage last night). But there is is a broader approach which he also hinted at last night:
Making introductions is one way to put it. Selling followers is another. But how could Twitter sell followers in a socially acceptable way? Here is one idea: Twitter already has a spot where it is testing what amounts to house ads for third-party Twitter apps and services. What if it started using those spots instead to promote corporate accounts? It could get paid for every user who decides to follow a certain company’s Twitter account on a cost-per-action (CPA) basis. The action, in this case, would be following the account. Twitter would get paid for each follower it delivers. I put this suggestion to Stone towards the end of the video. Stone doesn’t dismiss it offhand. He says that it is an “interesting” idea and that the company is leaving the door open to approaches like that. The key would be to present sponsored accounts that a person has a greater chance of actually being interested in, perhaps based on an analysis of topics a person tweets about, links they retweet, or the interest of the people they follow. In the second part of the interview (below) we talk about how to manage the endless stream of information that Twitter throws at its users. He says that real-time might be over-rated and that new ways of filtering Twitter are needed. I also ask him about the growth of microsyntax and how Twitter decides to incorporate things like @replies as features. He says that retweets and hashtags might be the next conventions to become baked into Twitter proper somehow. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Look At It This Way, Yelp. At Least You Didn’t Delete All Your User Accounts Posted: 27 May 2009 04:35 PM PDT
Yelp’s having a bad day. It may not be as bad as the day iMindi is having, who managed to delete all their user accounts, but it’s still a doozy. Yelp managed to pair a normally non-offensive headline in a newsletter article about biking (“Put the Fun Between Your Legs”) with a noble sponsor (SF Women Against Rape) to create one heck of an offensive and awkward situation. Apart, those words are fine. Put them together and people go nuts. The title has been changed to “Corrected: A Bicycle Built For Yelp!” along with a message “Due to an editorial oversight, an earlier version of the Weekly Yelp contained a headline that was inappropriate for the context. We apologize for the mistake.” They’re also apologizing on Twitter, where the newsletter became quite the topic of conversation. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Expecting Google Chrome For Mac Tomorrow? Don’t Hold Your Breath Posted: 27 May 2009 04:25 PM PDT
Today’s keynote was a swing and a miss - we learned about Google’s web elements, new application features using HTML 5, and everyone in the audience got a shiny new GTC phone. But Chrome for Mac was nowhere to be soon. Should we expect more tomorrow? TechCrunch IT Editor Steve Gillmor caught up with Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and asked when we could expect Google Chrome for the Mac. Brin’s response? “I ask about that every other day.” Brin says that Chrome for Mac is definitely coming along. The team measures its progress by how long it can get Chrome to run stably on their computers, and they’ve moved from a few minutes at a time up to a number of hours. But it doesn’t sound like it’s close to being finished. Brin could be playing coy, but it sounds like he wants this as badly as the rest of us. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can always try out the in-development (and buggy) versions, though these obviously aren’t ready for public release. Be sure to watch the rest of the video for more on Google’s experimentation with HTML 5 and YouTube. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Want An HTC Magic From Google I/O? Try eBay. Posted: 27 May 2009 04:14 PM PDT After learning that everyone who attended the Google I/O conference was getting a free Android phone, were you upset that you weren’t here? Well I have good news. But it will cost you. The Google Ion (aka the HTC Magic or the “G2″) that was given to everyone who attended the Google I/O conference today is already available on eBay. Quite frankly, I’m shocked that it seemed to take an hour for this to happen. In the short amount of time since the listing went up, the item already has 8 bids, pushing the price past $200. Considering this thing is unlocked and comes with a month’s free of T-Mobile service (which Google also gave to all conference goers), you can probably expect it to go much higher. The pictures listed for the device on eBay were clearly taken at Moscone West (where Google I/O is taking place), so you know it’s the real deal. Also, the device has a spiffy I/O logo on the back, so that’s worth an extra $50 right there, no? Update: Just a few minutes after our post, the bids and price have almost doubled have more than doubled.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Microsoft, Tell Sergey About Bing And He’ll Give You A Better Name Posted: 27 May 2009 02:40 PM PDT During a Q&A session in the press room following the Google I/O keynote today, Googler co-founder Sergey Brin made a surprise appearance and fielded some questions. One of them was about his thoughts on the name Bing, the supposed name of Microsoft’s new search engine. Brin said he didn’t know enough about it to give a suggestion, but that Google is “pretty happy” with the name it chose, which drew laughs. He then goes a bit more into the name. Watch the video below. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Heyzap Closes Seed Funding Round For Its Flash Gaming Widget Posted: 27 May 2009 01:58 PM PDT
Rather than focus on building a portal, Heyzap offers a widget that includes a catalog of 12,000 games that site owners can quickly integrate into their sites. A major part of the company’s strategy lies in partnering with major online publishers to embed the widget, and it sounds like they’re seeing some success - Current features it in the site’s gaming section, and Cooliris is a partner as well. Heyzap generates revenue through advertising embedded in the widgets (most of which is served by Mochi Media). Heyzap also recently launched an API that allows other sites to present games outside of the widget. At this point the company is operating with a very small team, with founders Jude Gomila and Immad Akhund remaining the sole employees. Akhund says that Heyzap plans to use the funding to expand. For a taste of the kind of games HeyZap offers, check out the widget below.
heyzap.com - embed games Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Imindi: “We Accidentally Deleted All The User Accounts” Posted: 27 May 2009 01:53 PM PDT
On Monday we wrote about iMindi, a new startup that first showed its stuff at TechCrunch50 in 2008. In the post on Monday we gave out 1,000 private beta invites, which were apparently snatched up quickly. Then, disaster. The email iMindi sent out, which contains the dreaded phrase “we accidentally deleted all the user accounts” sort of says it all. Brave souls can start all over again here. I know there are at least a few of you out there that are quite willing to forgive and forget. Here’s the email. Credit to iMindi CEO Adam Lindemann for standing up and taking a beating.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Skyfire Burns Through The Beta Tag, Coming Soon For BlackBerry Posted: 27 May 2009 01:10 PM PDT  After 473 days of beta testing and many, many preliminary releases, the rich multimedia mobile browser Skyfire has just hit version 1.0. Though Skyfire's biggest features (namely, its ability to handle formats like Flash and Silverlight) have been in since its early days, there's enough polish and primp in this release to justify branding it with a whole number.
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| Google Kicks Off Android Developer Challenge Part Deux Posted: 27 May 2009 12:13 PM PDT
Google will begin accepting submissions from developers in August. In an interesting twist, Google is going to let anyone with an Android handset participate in the process, allowing them to vote using a special application available on the Android Marketplace. The voting application will randomly download applications from the pool of competitors, and users will be asked to rate them. These votes will determine the top 20 apps in 10 different categories (for a total of 200 apps), which will then move on to the next round. Users will be able to vote in the second round as well, but votes from Google judges will make up 55% of the final score. So what are the developers competing for? Here’s how Google is breaking down the awards this time around:
All together, it sounds like Google is setting aside around $2 million for the winners. For more details, check out the official guidelines here. Google’s last challenge kicked off in November 2007, with the final winners announced the following August. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Bartz Wants To Buy Social And Video Startups; Would Sell Yahoo For “Boatloads Of Money” Posted: 27 May 2009 12:04 PM PDT
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz reiterated today that Yahoo is still talking with Microsoft “a little bit” about a possible search deal, but said that it would require a “boatload of money” along with the right data-sharing arrangement (because the search data is key to Yahoo revenues, ad relevance, and user experience). Pressed onstage at the AllThingsD conference whether she would reconsider selling the entire company to Microsoft, she replied: ” Oh, they'd have to have big boatloads of money.” While she still seems resistant to the idea,the fact that she would now consider it at the right price is a softening of her public stance. This doesn’t mean an outright sale is back on the table (that original $45 billion boatload of money left port a long time ago), but at least she is open to the possibility. A search deal with Microsoft remains a more likely transaction. She explained: “There are two parties in all of this. The other party has all the money, we have the data.” Both are valuable. More immediate deals might come from Yahoo doing some acquiring itself. “We are very interested in social, and in video technology,” said Bartz. She was particularly bullish on Web video: “This is just the beginning. The whole video area is so exciting. Video advertising growing four times by 2011.” In terms of what she needs to do to get Yahoo back on track, her main focus remains streamlining management and decision-making at the company. Bartz related the following story of Jerry Yang inviting her over to his house when he was trying to recruit her for the CEO job, which she didn’t want initially:
So what does she think needs to do fix Yahoo? She didn’t get into specifics, but acknowledged that Yahoo needs to be updated and do a better job of what it already does well:
Bartz distanced her strategy from chasing any particular hot trend, whether it is search or social networking. “Everybody doesn't just go to Facebook,” she noted. “People visit 85 sites a month, but spend most of their time on one or two. They can start on Facebook, but it doesn’t give them their news, their stock quotes, it doesn’t give them a of of things.” Them’s fightin’ words. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Posted: 27 May 2009 12:03 PM PDT  Not since Apple stunned a developer/media crowd by giving away free iSight video cameras has a company gone to the heart of what Jonathan Schwartz calls the tendency of not just software but hardware to trend to free. Google's giveaway of 4,000 Android phones and 30 days of 3G answers the musical question: is that an Android phone in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? Google's HTML 5 pitch got a whole lot more interesting when developers realized the company was moving into the kind of viral marketing Apple seemed to own until recently. The App Store has created an always-on version of the developer evangelism connection, and we'll see how effective Google is in building on the momentum created by the phone toolkit. The iPhone 3.0 release continues to keep Apple ahead in lining developer pockets with money through increased monetization scenarios. Now the differentiator will come on the media side of the equation.
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| Virtual Chat Room TinyChat Adds Video Conferencing And Screen Sharing Posted: 27 May 2009 11:57 AM PDT
TinyChat, the simple, free web-based chat room we wrote about here, is now adding video conferencing and screen sharing to its list of features. Once you create a chat room on TinyChat’s site, TinyChat will generate a unique URL that you can share with whoever you choose to invite to the virtual chat room. When users click on the link, they will enter the interface and will be able to input messages, change their usernames and enable video and audio conferencing. Powered by Adobe Flash, the video conferencing feature allows up to 12 different users in the chat room. TinyChat also lets you share any type of file with other members of a chat room. Similar to the site’s previous version, you can embed a badge on other sites and forums to spread the link to the chatroom. The video conferencing feature is very easy to use and the quality of the video isn’t terrible.  The startup has also rolled out a premium account, which is $20 per month, where you will be able to add screen sharing to members of the group. Once you enable screen sharing, you will be given a picture window, which can be dragged to the tab or screen where you want the webcast to take place. Additionally, the premium service lets you record and save video conferences as an flv file. The pro account also lets you create passwords for room privacy and offers higher quality video than the free account. Of course video streaming and web conferencing is old news and there are significant amount of services that do the same thing including Cisco’s WebEx, Stickam, Ustream and a host of others. Entrepreneur Daniel Blake, who created TinyChat, TinyPaste and ControlC, says that TinyChat is aimed towards individuals and small businesses who don’t normally use these services but want an easy (and cheap) way to connect with others over the web. Blake also says that he’s hoping to sell the service to social networks like Facebook, to enable video chatting from the site. The interface of the new and improved TinyChat is still very spartan, but for a company or user who is looking for a free service and doesn’t need a whole bunch of bells and whistles, it could be an easy option for video conferencing. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Pics: Google Latitude On The iPhone — But It’s Not A Native App Posted: 27 May 2009 11:50 AM PDT Today during its keynote address during Google I/O, Google showed off its Latitude location-based service running on the iPhone. This is notable because so far, Latitude hasn’t been available on the huge popular smartphone. Instead, not surprisingly, Google opted to focus on getting it running on Android. But it’s coming, soon, with the launch of the iPhone 3.0 software this summer. But also interesting is that the reason Google has been waiting for the 3.0 software is because it’s not actually creating a native iPhone app for Latitude — as all other location-based services on the iPhone are — instead it’s using the Safari web browser to run Latitude. Thanks to HTML 5, Safari will be able to access a user’s location information and Latitude will be able to access that as well (provided the user gives permission). This will put it on par with what Google is doing in its browser for Android. Of course, you still mostly likely won’t be able to run Latitude in the background with it being on Safari. That’s the thing that is really holding back these location-based services on the iPhone. Hopefully Apple is getting closer to allowing background apps — at least in a limited form.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Widgets Everywhere! Embed Your Favorite Chunks Of Google With Web Elements Posted: 27 May 2009 10:57 AM PDT
Perhaps the most interesting widget is the ‘Conversation’ Element, which allows visitors to your site to post comments and videos, similar to the way they could using a FriendFeed embed. Site owners have the option of restricting these conversations to their sites, or to share them as global conversations through Google Friend Connect. You can check out a sample embed below. Other widgets include ‘Presentations’, which allow you to embed presentations from Google Docs into your site, and ‘Spreadsheets’, which allow you to do the same with Google Docs spreadsheets. This is not going to be welcome news to sites like SlideShare, Scribd, and DocStoc, which let you do this with other documents.
The new Custom Search Element makes adding a Google search to your site very easy - just embed the provided snippet of code into your site, and Google will automatically index it. The rest of the widgets are fairly self explanatory. Calendar lets you point out some important dates for you and your visitors, maps let you flag a location, and News shows the latest stories from Google News. Google also says that more widgets are on the way. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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