Wednesday, June 10, 2009

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Are You Rich Enough To Buy Wealth.com?

Posted: 10 Jun 2009 08:04 AM PDT

Considering the economic crisis and the associated losses of wealth experienced by many of the richest individuals on the planet, it may not be the best of times to auction off a domain name like Wealth.com. On the other hand, that might be exactly the reason why TheInternetCompany suddenly felt the need to do so, and I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that many people are now re-evaluating their approach to wealth management and searching for alternative ways for financing online.

The generic six-letter domain name has been under the company’s ownership since 1996 and will be auctioned off privately at the end of this month in collaboration with secondary domain marketplace Sedo. The auction will be held on June 25, although bidders must be pre-qualified by June 15.

Don Cook, vice president of TheInternetCompany states in a press release:

“Although we have had several attractive offers for the name over the years, we believe that now is the right time to monetize this asset and that an auction, rather than a traditional sale, is the best strategy.”

Funny enough, I did a simple search and found out that this is not exactly the first time TheInternetCompany has put the domain name up for auction, something that was not mentioned in the news release: Wealth.com was up for sale at least once before, back in July 2007. I wonder if this time the private auction will result in an actual sale and how much it will be valued at.

Update: as a commenter and this WSJ blog post points out, the starting bid is $2.9 million. Seems to me that this is a bit high as a starting point, but I can imagine a lot of financial organization and media companies would still be interested in owning it at that price.

For the sake of comparison, recent domain name sales we’ve written about include Toys.com ($5.1 million), YP.com ($3.85 million), Fly.com ($1.8 million) and Vibrators.com ($1 million).

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Scripps Networks Interactive Seeking Buyer For Comparison Service uSwitch

Posted: 10 Jun 2009 06:48 AM PDT

Scripps Networks Interactive is actively shopping around uSwitch, a UK-focused online price comparison and switching service for home services and personal finance products, which it acquired back in 2006 for a lofty $366 million in net cash. Scripps Networks Interactive, itself spun out off E.W. Scripps back in October 2007, has engaged investment banking firm Allen & Company to assist in its search for a "qualified buyer" for uSwitch without establishing a timetable for completion of a transaction.


Aurora Feint To Roll Out OpenFeint 2.0, A Social Gaming Platform For The iPhone

Posted: 10 Jun 2009 05:34 AM PDT

Aurora Feint started out as a puzzle game developer for the iPhone platform but has since evolved into the maker of a comprehensive social gaming platform dubbed OpenFeint that continues to attract independent iPhone game developers to join its rapidly growing community. Tomorrow, the startup is set to announce the roll-out of the second iteration of the platform, conveniently baptized OpenFeint 2.0, at a San Francisco meetup scheduled in the aftermath of Apple’s WWDC event.

We got an early look at the completely revamped OpenFeint 2.0 and learned that over 100 games available on the App Store already make use of the social features baked into the system, including several familiar titles like MyBrute, Stick Wars, Knights On Rush, iDracula, Epic Pet Wars and Ankagua 3D. In total, that translates to about 3 million individual iPhone users, according to Aurora Feint, who can be brought into a “social discovery network” that connects the device, Facebook, and Twitter with the ability to ask the one question that the whole system builds upon: “What are your friends playing?”.

This question can be asked inside a game, in an OpenFeint Game Lobby (a kind of virtual chat room / message board tied to a game or shared globally across multiple games), or on Facebook by clicking on a newsfeed item and launching the OpenFeint 2.0: Social Discovery application on the social networking service. OpenFeint 2.0 expands upon the social foundations that already existing in the previous version, with additional support for importing friend lists from Facebook and Twitter, sending actionable notifications to both networks, 100 XBox Live style achievements per game, social player profiles, friend leaderboards, social One Touch iPromote pages including a list of all a player’s friends who are already playing the game and so on.

Peter Relan, investor in Aurora Feint who doubles as the company’s Chairman, says the second iteration of OpenFeint takes it “one step closer to the de facto social gaming platform for the iPhone.” He added: “I believe what distinguishes the iPhone is the ability for developers to succeed without having to sign up with large publishers. OpenFeint 2.0: Social Discovery is an essential ingredient in the success of indie games.”

On another note: Netanel Jacobsson, until recently an executive at Facebook, has recently joined the startup’s advisory board.

Screenshots of the OpenFeint 2.0 platform, which should go live tomorrow evening:

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Juniper Research: Cheap Phones Are Big Business

Posted: 10 Jun 2009 03:17 AM PDT

A new report from Juniper Research forecasts that by 2014, annual sales of low-budget mobile devices will rise to north of 700 million units, up 22% from this year. The report goes into the various schemes that have been implemented to help ‘connect the unconnected’, or the estimated 3 billion people on the planet that do not own mobile phones.

That number include people who live in areas where wireless networks offer coverage, something that is not always the case because operators tend to shy away from underdeveloped markets because of limited chances of financial return on investments. Apparently, the key to be able to tap into this vast pool of potential customers in these so-called ‘emerging markets’ lies in drastically reducing the cost of handsets that can be used by low-income users.

Mobile handset juggernaut Nokia is a big believer in this, as we’ve talked about in the past when the company released a series of devices and services specifically targeting these emerging markets and the debut of its Mail on Ovi service on some 35 different Series 40 handsets.

According to Juniper’s report, of which you’ll find a summary in this free whitepaper, entry-level devices (Nokia’s definition for phones that sell for less than $60) accounted for 45% of total global shipments in 2008, which translates to 535 million units. However, Juniper also says ULC devices (ultra low-cost or devices selling for $5 on average) were only a fraction of those but growing in importance quickly. By 2014, Juniper forecasts low-cost devices to account for over 50% of all devices sold worldwide each year. Of the 700 million low-cost handsets expected to be sold in 2014, Juniper Research believes around 24% will be sold in Africa and the Middle East.

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Kiva Brings Microlending Home To U.S. Entrepreneurs In Need

Posted: 10 Jun 2009 02:20 AM PDT

The financial crisis has made a lasting impact on small businesses around the world and here at home in the United States. With the credit crunch creating a virtual standstill of lending, small businesses in the U.S. are facing an uphill battle to find funds, especially if their financial history isn’t stellar. Kiva.org, one of the web’s most interesting innovators in the micro-lending space, is hoping to come to the aid of U.S. entrepreneurs and small businesses by launching a pilot expansion that would allow individuals anywhere to make small loans to low-income U.S. entrepreneurs through Kiva’s platform.

Kiva is a peer-to-peer lending site that facilitates micropayment loans between citizen lenders and extremely low-income entrepreneurs in developing countries. Through Kiva's platform, anyone can loan $25 or more to support an entrepreneur and the specific progress of the loan can be tracked from initial funding to repayment. Upon receiving repayment, lenders can withdraw their funds from Kiva or lend again to another entrepreneur, thereby continuing the lending cycle.

In April alone, Kiva members loaned $4.5 million to entrepreneurs, a 56 percent year-over-year increase and a record month for Kiva. Since the microfinance platform’s birth in 2005, over $75 million has been loaned through Kiva.org to support more than 180,000 individuals from 44 developing countries. Kiva’s president, Premal Shah, says this new initiative to include U.S. businesses increasingly made sense as the financial markets deteriorated and traditional lending began to dry up even in the U.S.

According to Kiva, small businesses represent more than 87 percent of all businesses in the United States, and, on average, these micro-enterprises are responsible for 900,000 new jobs created per year according to the Association for Enterprise Opportunity. This number seems small to me but the impact of small businesses on job creation is clear. To make matters worse, Kiva says more than 10 million business owners faced difficulty obtaining capital—even before the credit crisis and economic slowdown.

Kiva will launch today with the ability to for anyone to make loans to 45 small businesses and entrepreneurs seeking funding from the areas of New York, San Francisco, Boston, Atlanta and Miami. The businesses range in purpose and services, from salons to landscaping to day care facilities. For example, a Queens, NY-based entrepreneur delivers baked goods to bodegas in New York. He is looking to raise $6000 to fund insulation technology for his trucks.

Shah tells us that the idea was first introduced by California’s first lady and journalist, Maria Shriver, when she visited Kiva’s office last year. She asked if Kiva's model could be replicated domestically to support low-income entrepreneurs in the United States. Shah said that initially he wasn’t sure if lending within the U.S. fit into Kiva’s model of international development. But following the recession, the organization realized the opportunity and need to provide community driven, low-cost capital for the everyday small business owner in the U.S.

Traditionally, Kiva uses partner microfinance programs, called a “Field Partners,” to evaluate whether businesses and entrepreneurs are eligible for Kiva’s platform. Field partners looks at a variety of factors in businesses, including past loan history, village or group reputation, and feasibility of business idea and then facilitates the loan transactions between Kiva and the microenterprise. In the US, Kiva will be partnering with ACCION USA, microfinance institution that lends to 48 states across the U.S., and Opportunity Fund, a community development financial institution based in San Jose, CA.

But P2P lending to U.S. businesses has proven to be controversial in the past. Prosper, a US peer-to-peer lender stopped all new lending on its site because of scrutiny by the SEC. Prosper, which is currently back online, agreed to register under the Securities Act, a process which took months. Since Prosper is a seller of investment, the organization had to be registered with the SEC, according to securities laws in the U.S. Loanio and Lending Club also faced similar problems in P2P lending initiatives.

Shah says that Kiva differs from P2P lending sites like with Kiva, you can’t earn a rate of return. The best you can do is get your money back at 0% interest - like lending to a friend. Shah maintains that a key factor for the SEC to determine is whether the organization is offering a ’security’ — where there is an opportunity to earn a rate of return. Since Kiva’s loans to the working poor at 0% interest are clearly charitable in nature, Shah says that registration with the SEC is not required.

One of the compelling parts of the new program is the ability for lenders in other countries to lend entrepreneurs in the U.S., making Kiva the enabler of economic development throughout in both developed and underdeveloped countries. Kiva has also signed up celebs to take part in the new initiative. Apparently, actor Tom Hanks will be lending to a U.S micro business and investor Warren Buffet has been asked to contribute to the new project as well.

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Live Video From Berlin: TechCrunch Berlin Meetup

Posted: 10 Jun 2009 02:15 AM PDT

TechCrunch Europe is holding an afternoon of presentations, panels and pitches exploring the German tech scene today, from 3pm (Berlin time) onwards. Here you’ll find the live video stream provided by Sevenload and we’re holding it at the office of Zanox. Thanks also to Gründerszene, Dwight Cribb Personalberatung and Seedcamp for their support. See below for our schedule. Update: Due to the popularity of the event (which sold out a week ago) we’ve now arranged an after-party from 9pm at the offices of Soundcloud. Details are here. In addition, I will be hanging at Caras Gourmet Coffee at Neue Schönhauser Str. 9 on Thursday afternoon. Feel to get in touch.

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Google Translator Kit: Automated Translation Meets Crowdsourcing

Posted: 10 Jun 2009 02:09 AM PDT

Only a handful of blogs picked up on Google’s fresh Translator Toolkit, which the company launched yesterday by means of a blog post, but this new service really deserves a second look, if only because Wikimedia apparently sees the tool as something that could “change the way Wikipedia grows in other languages”.

You can read an extensive review of the product over at Google Blogoscoped, but here’s the gist:

Google Translator Kit enables anyone to upload documents for a variety of formats (HTML, Microsoft Word, Rich Text, OpenDocument Text and Plain Text), enter the URL for a file on the web or input a direct link to a Wikipedia article or Knol entry. After submission, the text that requires translation is automatically translated in the back-end and subsequently featured in a so-called ‘Workbench’, neatly placing the resulting text in the target language next to the original.

Google will search their translation memory for previous, human translations of the uploaded segment and show the translations in the Search Results tab. Color-coded segments will depict ‘exact’ matches and ‘partial’ matches, so you can edit the text based on the memory as well as previous, human translations. In addition, you can use the computer-generated translation in the Computer Translation tab to jump-start the translation of your current segment. When available, the toolkit will also search Google’s multilingual glossaries to help you translate specific terminology for your language, or you could use the Dictionary tab to do custom searches on Google’s multilingual dictionaries.

Besides the self-learning ability of the toolkit, the service also makes it incredibly easy for people to collaborate on translations, bringing a human, crowd-sourced touch to the automated process of Google’s Translate service.

(Thanks for the heads up, ArabCrunch)

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GeeksOnAPlane: Learnings From Tokyo

Posted: 10 Jun 2009 01:33 AM PDT

Over the last two and a half days - the short window of time within which the GeeksOnAPlane group has been staying in Tokyo - I’ve attended two industry events (Tokyo 2.0 and Startonomics Japan) and talked with those who live or do business here about how web technology in Japan differs from that in the US. And while this is enough time to gain only a superficial amount of insight into the Japanese tech scene, I’ve gotten the impression that things aren’t fundamentally that different from the way things are back home; there are just idiosyncrasies (albeit important ones) within the Japanese tech landscape.

Take mobile, for example. Before coming here, I had the impression that Japan was light years ahead of the US when it came to mobile technology. I’ve found that this reputation, while supported by indisputable advantages, belies a more complicated reality. Mobile devices certainly play a far greater role in everyday life here, with something like 90% of the Japanese owning 3G-capable handsets and 85% of all phone subscribers accessing online services while on the go regularly. The Japanese also use their phones for purposes simply not available to Americans such as watching live TV, scanning QR codes, and paying for goods with the proximity readers that are located in stores and subway stations.

However, we’ve also seen demos of several Japanese mobile applications, and the technological sophistication and design of these apps are surprisingly primitive. The general quality appears more in line with the WAP apps from yesteryear than the powerful iPhone and Android apps that have come upon the scene over the past year or so. And from what I’ve been told, they operate in a very closed environment akin to Compuserve that gets reinforced by strong carrier lock-ins and family plans.

Speaking of the iPhone, the reaction to it appears to be mixed here. While the iPhone is (generally speaking) more advanced than any other handset on the Japanese market, it poses a number of problems for Japanese consumers. Namely, it doesn’t play nicely with the closed suite of online services that Japanese have become accustomed to using on their phones. It doesn’t do TV streaming without a $100 hardware add-on. The touch keyboard isn’t great for entering Japanese characters. It has a hard time enticing people away from the strong contract lockins they have with other mobile providers. It doesn’t contain a proximity chip for mobile payments. And the iPhone service contract is expensive, despite the fact that carriers have begun giving the device itself out for free in exchange for contracts.

Social networking is another area in which familiar trends can be spotted alongside peculiarities. Whereas we in the US track the ongoing struggle between Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, the Japanese witness a mindshare grab between the social networks Mixi, Gree (which had an IPO last year) and DeNA (which operates mobile social network Mobage-town). These networks are very Japan-specific, despite attempts among them to branch out to surrounding geographical areas such as China. Mixi, for example, requires a Japanese phone number and an invitation to join. While Japan doesn’t appear to breed the same sort of clones that we see come out of China, Japanese firms don’t hesitate to borrow ideas from Western companies. Mixi has forged an open strategy modeled after Facebook with platforms that are designed, and even named, quite similarly (e.g. “Mixi Connect”).

Two differences between Japanese and American social networking are particularly conspicuous. The Japanese are much less inclined to put their real identities online, preferring instead to use usernames and avatars that obfuscate their individuality. This is perhaps one reason why Facebook hasn’t taken greater hold here, although I’ve heard from several people that its translations have been rather poor (Twitter, on the other hand, has experienced a modest level of success already). Not surprisingly, Japanese social networkers also tend to spend a lot more time on their mobile devices compared to their American counterparts, with mobile pageviews greatly exceeding desktop pageviews on the predominate social networks.

Entrepreneurialism in Japan is inauspicious despite how good the infrastructure is here. In addition to enjoying an extraordinarily high level of mobile connectivity, many Japanese have access to very cheap and fast broadband in their homes. But for a country that also has a large enough population (~127 million) to form a self-contained market for internet services, Japan isn’t home to a large entrepreneurial community. Much of this results from the culture, which discourages people to undertake risky ventures. The government could also be friendlier to small businesses, as it tends to defend incumbent corporations against the encroachments of young upstarts (although luckily web ventures don’t butt heads with them as much as others). The country’s business laws were also not designed to foster new companies until changes were made recently in 2006. As a consequence, the entrepreneurial community is small enough for people to notice when even individual members leave.

Tonight we’re off to Beijing in China to see how things operate in the world’s most populous country. Follow our travels - and the media we produce - on Flickr, YouTube, Slideshare, Twitter and our blog.

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Seeqpod Starts Shopping Domain Name, Acquisition Talks Nearing Close

Posted: 09 Jun 2009 09:14 PM PDT

It’s been a tumultous few months for Seeqpod, the powerful music search engine that skimmed the web for music files hosted on other servers. In March the site finally cracked under the weight of multiple lawsuits brought on by the major record companies and filed for bankruptcy protection. Then came word that it may-or-may-not have been acquired by Microsoft, though the deal still has yet to be confirmed.

Today we’re hearing that Seeqpod has started looking to sell off its seeqpod.com domain name, pending an acquisition deal that is about to close. We got in touch with CEO Kasian Franks, who refused to confirm the rumors, saying that a deal has “not officially closed” and that a decision to unload the domain is still “up in the air”. It may not be official yet, but given that the company has apparently begun prodding for buyers for the domain, it sounds like it’s nearly finalized.

Franks was willing to talk vaguely about the pending deal, saying that multiple major suitors are involved. He also noted that any acquisition would be about the company’s technology, and not necessarily the Seeqpod brand. While Franks still won’t name the companies involved, he says that they have no issues with acquiring more traffic, which is why the company may wind up selling Seeqpod.com.

Update: As commentor Spencer Schoeben points out below, visiting Seeqpod.com and clicking the site’s logo will take you to Microsoft’s new Bing search engine. So, yeah — it’ll be very surprising if Microsoft isn’t ultimately named as one of the companies involved with the acquisition.

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The New ShopSavvy: Faster, Bigger, Stronger

Posted: 09 Jun 2009 06:10 PM PDT

picture-111The development house Big In Japan has just rolled out its 3.5 update to its ShopSavvy Android app. ShopSavvy is the useful app that allows you to use an Android phone’s camera to scan barcodes and get pricing information. More importantly, it allows you to compare prices of that item to prices on the web, where you’ll many times find a better deal. This new update which the team calls “Rodan” offers 1,000 new retailers and 750,000 new products, is better optimized for battery life and is much faster, I’m told.

ShopSavvy, which was one of the original Google Android Challenge winners when it was still known as GoCart, launched with the Android platform last October and has been one of the most popular applications on the device since then. The company claims it now can compare over 20 million products at over 22,000 retailers.

Here are the full list of enhancements the company is claiming with this release:

* More than 1,000 additional participating retailers
* More than 750,000 additional scannable products
* Faster barcode scanning
* Faster, more accurate product search
* Faster load times
* Faster animations
* WiFi and GPS setting retention
* Notification of whether or not an item is in stock or out of stock
* Improved battery life
* Optional registration
* Option to search by title if product is not found
* Google Product Search integration
* Ability to visit retailer Web sites inside or outside ShopSavvy
* Additional polish to user interface

The company has yet to launch an iPhone version of ShopSavvy, a lot of that had to do with the iPhone’s current junky camera that can’t do things like auto-focus. But as we all learned yesterday, that’s about to change. And Big In Japan has been working on an iPhone version for some time.

The concept of using a mobile device to scan barcodes is an interesting one. Others apps in this space have since risen up, and pretty much anyone make their own simple barcode scanner using the Android Scripting Environment. The other day we covered Googler Matt Cutts using a barcode scanner to scan books into the Google Book Search database, but a couple days later, he and some fellow Googlers actually came up with a way to do the same thing with the Android phone.

You can find the new version of ShopSavvy in the Android Market, or download it directly here.

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Demo: FireFox 3.5 Treats Videos Like Web Pages. Why Can’t Flash Do That?

Posted: 09 Jun 2009 05:54 PM PDT

Mike Beltzner, the director of Firefox, was in New York City today and dropped by my office to talk about Firefox 3.5, which is now officially being rolled out as a “preview” version (a very stable beta) to everyone using the current 3.5 beta. Firefox 3.5 is supposedly much faster than earlier versions, which is always a good thing. Honestly, the nanosecond speed differences between most of today’s latest browsers is becoming hard to detect. Three features of Firefox 3.5 which stand out for me are: 1) its embrace of open-source video standards, 2) its geo-location capabilities, and 3) support for downloadable fonts and other graphic tricks.

In the video above, Beltzner demos some of the new video and graphics capabilities of Firefox 3.5. Built into the browser is a video player based on the open-source video formats Ogg Vorbis and Theora. The video player supports HTML5, which means that links and other interactive elements can easily be placed inside videos. The demo page Beltzner shows in the video can be found here (but the effects only work if you are looking at it in Firefox 3.5). Being able to treat the content inside videos like Web pages opens up a whole new world of possibilities for Web video. Already, DailyMotion offers all of its videos in the Ogg Theora format. If this takes off, Flash video could be come history.

Look closely at what Beltzner is showing off in the video, because you can’t do any of that with Flash.

Update: There is a lot of great debate in the comments about whether or not you can do this stuff in Flash. Technically, you can, but the only examples I’ve seen are where the entire page is done in Flash or a proprietary overlay is being used. The videos in the demo all sit within regular Web pages and are written in HTML5. What is interesting in my mind about the Ogg Vorbis format is that it makes videos programmable. Videos today are still for the most part siloed off from the rest of the Web in their Flash players as a separate experience. It is time to break down those walls.

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Google Releases A Search App That You Can Tweet From, But Can’t Search Twitter From

Posted: 09 Jun 2009 03:17 PM PDT

picture-92A hot area of development right now is in the field of desktop Twitter clients. Some like Tweetie, are Twitter-only, while others like Seesmic Desktop, handle a few different services with a focus on Twitter. The area is apparently so hot that Google is now even getting involved.

While technically, its Google Quick Search Box (QSB) is a Mac desktop application meant to make searching the web and your desktop a breeze, you’ll notice that it comes with exactly one additional account type (beyond Google) built in: Twitter. Yes, aside from typing queries into the QSB and getting results, you can also use it as a Twitter status updater.

Google isn’t the first of the big boys to get involved with Twitter on the desktop side of things, Yahoo recently launched Sideline, which is a much more full-fledged client. Unfortunately, QSB doesn’t allow you to see your Twitter follower stream, it just allows you to update your status right now.

There is a Quick Search Box built-in to the Windows version of Google Desktop as well, but to the best of my knowledge, it doesn’t promote this Twitter functionality in the same way, if it offers it at all.

Actually tweeting from QSB it is a bit tricky at first, so I’ll copy Google’s directions below:

  1. The secret of creating a “text” item: Text items are queries that start with a space (e.g. hit the space bar and then start typing). To tweet, activate the QSB, hit the space bar (creating a text item), and type in the text you want to tweet - remember Twitter has a 140 character limit! The selected result should be a “text” item. Hit the tab key to show the available actions on the item. Select the “Send Twitter Status” action for the account you wish to tweet with and hit the return key.
  2. Pivoting on the search result: If the text item thing confuses you, just pull up the QSB, type your query, and pivot (hit tab) on the search result. Select the “Send Twitter Status” action for the account you wish to tweet with and hit the return key.

It’s a pretty quick way to tweet something, actually. And it does a very nice job for searches as well, obviously. But one thing it doesn’t do that would make perfect sense, is search Twitter. Come on Google, get on that. What I want to know is, does anyone still really believe that Google has no interest in Twitter?

As many commenters are noting, this can basically replace Quicksilver for the Mac, and shares one of the same developers.

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picture-10

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When It Comes To Getting Local Content On Your Phone, The Mobile Browser Is Still King

Posted: 09 Jun 2009 03:06 PM PDT

Despite the avalanche of mobile apps that let people access local information, the mobile browser is still the king when it comes to finding out what’s going on in your city or neighborhood. People across the board are using their mobile phones to look up local info. ComScore reported today that the number of people in the U.S. who sought local content on mobile devices grew 51 percent from March 2008 to March 2009. The report also shows that the mobile browser is the most popular way consumers find local information, with 20.7 million browser users in March 2009, up 34 percent versus a year ago. Only about half as many people (11.3 million) use downloaded apps to find local data.

But downloaded apps did exhibit the strongest growth, up 83 percent versus a year ago. I’m sure the growth of the iPhone had something to do with that. What’s interesting is that despite the popularity of local content apps like those from Yelp and CitySearch, apps still remain the least popular method for mobile access of local information, with 11.3 million users in March. ComScore says that slightly more consumers use SMS for obtaining local information (11.7 million users) than apps, but the browser is still by far the most popular way for consumers to find info on local restaurants, bars, businesses and more.

Drilling down into the local content categories, the number of people accessing online directories has seen the greatest increase during the past year (73 %), followed by restaurants (70 %), maps (63 %) and movies (60%).

(Photo credit: Flickr/kballard).

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Stealth Startup Udorse Raises $500k From Founders Fund

Posted: 09 Jun 2009 02:01 PM PDT

Udorse, a New York-based startup currently in stealth, has raised a $500,000 round of seed funding from Founders Fund. Founders Fund’s Peter Thiel will be serving on the company’s board of directors.

At this point we know very little about the startup. It was founded by Trevor Austin and Geoffrey Lewis (pictured below), both of whom were previously employed at Thiel’s hedge fund Clarium Capital. The company plans to launch its service in private beta some time this summer. As for what it actually plans to do, Lewis provided us with the following (admittedly vague) description:

“We believe that recent trends are more than fads, and that they demand a
fundamentally new way for users to connect with brands across platforms.”

That’s not much to go on, but it sounds like Udorse will somehow play on the growing interaction between users and brands on Twitter and Facebook (given the name, users will probably be somehow endorsing their favorite brands). Whether or not Udorse is an entirely new service or one that builds on these existing platforms remains to be seen. We’ll be keeping an eye out for these guys over the next few months.



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You Have Three Days To Pick Your Facebook Vanity URL. Choose Wisely, Or You’re Screwed.

Posted: 09 Jun 2009 12:44 PM PDT

lastcrusade-knightWhat are you doing this Friday night? Going to a bar with friends? Going to a movie? Wrong.

If you’re a real web addict you’ll be sitting at your computer waiting for the clock to strike 12:01 AM Eastern Time. That’s when Facebook’s new vanity URLs are going to go live, and the landrush to get one will begin.

And it’s going to be a landrush because it’s a first-come, first-serve basis, as Facebook writes today. It looks like Facebook will give you a bunch of options based on your real name, but you can also pick your own vanity name.

But there are some rules:

Facebook usernames will be available in basic text forms, and you can only choose a single username for your profile and for each of the Pages that you administer. Your username must be at least five characters in length and only include alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9), or a period or full stop (”.”). While usernames are currently available only for Romanized text, we’re looking at how we might support non-Romanized characters in the future.

picture-42We first talked about Facebook getting serious about vanity URLs back in March. It’s been clear for a while that people prefer them rather than having the current profile.php?id=500065899 nonsense. But up until now, only famous public profiles have been able to get one.

Come 12:01 AM on Saturday, they’ll be open to all. So choose wisely when you pick a name — or it could well end up like that tattoo you regret later in your life if you pick something like “mileycyrusfanforever.” Facebook notes this in their own way:

Think carefully about the username you choose. Once it’s been selected, you won’t be able to change or transfer it. If you signed up for a Facebook Page after May 31 or a user profile after today at 3 p.m. EDT, you may not be able to sign up for a username immediately because of steps we’ve taken to prevent abuse or “squatting” on names.

While Facebook had been playing around with the idea of charging users to get these vanity URLs, they will offer them for free. Facebook is also asking people with a trademarked or protected name to email them here to avoid the obvious issues. You can watch the countdown to the feature live here.

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Pure Digital: Thanks For The $1.3 Million Check! How Do I Cash It?

Posted: 09 Jun 2009 12:40 PM PDT

So here I am this morning opening a pile of mail - schwag from companies, bills, checks for Heather, payroll stuff, the usual. I rip all the envelopes open and then dig in. And I look down and see this check for $1.3 million and change. Trust me, there’s nothing quite like opening up a letter addressed to you and finding a check inside for $1,334,261.05.

First thought: woohoo! Second thought: why? Third thought: oh, it’s not made out to me. Of course. Fourth thought: oh crap, it’s addressed to me but the wrong name, did I just commit a felony by opening it without even paying attention (my lawyer is getting back to me on that, meanwhile, I’m taking a quick vacation in Mexico)?

The check is from Pure Digital Technologies, the company that Cisco recently acquired for $590 million (Pure Digital makes the Flip camera). A letter accompanying the check says that the money represents “net proceeds from the cash out of your stock options.”

So what happened? Pure Digital says the person it was supposed to be sent to used to live in my house a long time ago. They also asked if I could send it back, and assured me they put a stop payment on it. It’s now safely in the mail to them, I promise.

But it does provide a nice bookend to the story. And frankly, I think I deserve at least a finder’s fee for returning this so promptly. Pure Digital wasn’t amused by that request.

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Mac Chrome Lead Rationalizes Early Release, Needs Your Help

Posted: 09 Jun 2009 12:05 PM PDT

picture-221For the past several months, everyone has been bitching about the lack of availability of Chrome on the Mac. So Google did something about it, and formally released a developer build to the public, making sure to note that it wasn’t really ready for prime-time. Nevertheless, a ton of people downloaded it and then started bitching that it wasn’t ready for prime-time. So today, the lead engineer on Chrome for the Mac took some time to respond to the critics.

“What was the point of releasing at this stage, you might ask? It’s clearly not finished. Clearly. It’s missing a large number of features, some half implemented, others not at all. Why even bother? Doesn’t it just make us look bad?,” Mike Pinkerton (also the man who leads the Camino browser development team for Mozilla) writes today. His answer is basically that they don’t care how it makes them look to release an unfinished product. Part of the development cycle of open source software is to get it in the hands of outside developers and have them help in completing the product.

Makes sense to me.

But Pinkerton goes on to further quote the famous essay “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” by Eric Raymond:

“When you start community-building, what you need to be able to present is a plausible promise. Your program doesn’t have to work particularly well. It can be crude, buggy, incomplete, and poorly documented. What it must not fail to do is (a) run, and (b) convince potential co-developers that it can be evolved into something really neat in the foreseeable future.”

And he then follows that with another three paragraphs of justifications.

But the post probably could have been two paragraphs — if not shorter. Don’t listen to the haters Mac Chrome team, you’re doing a good job. Yes, it’s taking you a long time, but at least we know when it’s done, it should be a solid product. Hopefully more solid than Safari 4, which Apple officially released yesterday and has been giving myself and quite a few others, fits.

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The Man With The Golden iPhone: Spymaster Going Mobile

Posted: 09 Jun 2009 11:28 AM PDT

tmwtggBy now you either are addicted to Spymaster, or absolutely can’t stand it. The viral Twitter-based game in which you do spy-like things such as “assassinate” your followers is a great time-waster. But it’s also drawn some criticism as being “spammy.” That isn’t stopping the team from pushing the game forward — first, by finally opening it up to everyone today, and second with an upcoming iPhone app.

The iPhone app, which we’ve obtained some mock-ups of, should be out “in the next few weeks,” co-founder Eston Bond tells us. Those familiar with the game should feel right at home based on these pictures. The “Strategy” and “Tactics” menu options along the bottom are just ways to better organize features, we’re told. The creators are also working fast to get a bunch of new features in the game. The iPhone version will be available for free.

The rapid growth of Spymaster on Twitter — it was a top trending topic for several days after it launched — has already spawned a series of similar viral games. As many have been quick to point out, this is similar to what happened early in the life of Facebook’s Platform as well. But Spymaster was able to do this based on an invite-only system (something which also caused some controversy), now with it open to the public and going mobile, we could be in for a second wave of Spymaster fury.

Just as with the aforementioned Facebook Platform, Twitter is going to sooner or later own up to the fact that it is now a platform and must take measures to allay concerns that viral applications will take over the network. Plenty of people have told me that they don’t want to see Spymaster messages in their tweet stream, but would rather not unfollow people who they still consider to be friends. If there was just a way to filter out those message — and yes, some third party Twitter apps have a way, but this needs to be built into Twitter eventually — then everyone can continue to go about their business.

I realize filters may slightly muck-up the “keep it simple” mentality, but Twitter is getting too big, we need it. Games like Spymaster that are fun for some but a burden for others shouldn’t suffer because Twitter has never been good at the whole “new feature” thing.

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Google Takes Another Swipe At Microsoft. Enterprise Apps Now Sync With Outlook.

Posted: 09 Jun 2009 11:14 AM PDT

Google’s small but growing enterprise app business is now going for Microsoft’s jugular. At a press conference today (see Mike’s real-time notes), Google announced a new plug-in that will sync Google’s enterprise versions of Gmail, contacts, and calendar with Microsoft’s Outlook. In the enterprise, Outlook is still king and not everyone is ready to switch just yet to browser-based email, calendars and contact management.

So employees can continue to use Outlook if that is what they are comfortable with, and Google Apps will run on the backend. Google is claiming that its enterprise apps cost less than half of Microsoft Exchange (the server software that is paired with Outlook, where all the money is). The new syncing tool, Google App Sync, works only on Windows at this point and is only available for (paying) enterprise customers.

Steve Ballmer is not going to be happy about this.

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Google Apps Press Event: The Riveting Real Time Notes (Use Google Apps With Outlook!)

Posted: 09 Jun 2009 09:58 AM PDT

Google has gathered tech press at the Clift hotel for a press event around Google Apps. At the ridiculous time of 9:30 in the morning. Meaning (1) I had to get up at 7 to get ready and battle traffic, and (2) I’m therefore not in a very good mood. Nothing like talking enterprise stuff at the crack of dawn. With that in mind, here are my real time notes. There are definitely some new customer and product announcements. One thing Google isn’t announcing yet is any removal of the beta logos from Google Apps services.

Background: Google Apps, a suite of productivity services first launched in 2006, and has evolved from there. Today more than 1 million businesses use Google apps and “hundreds of millions of dollars” is generated in revenue.

Real Time Notes:

Dave Girouard, President Google Enterprise, says that we’re in an economic downturn, but that great companies thrive in downturns.

He’s talking about the history of Google Apps, which launched in 2004 with Gmail (see image below). Premier Edition launched in 2007 and Postini was acquired later that year. 500,000 businesses were announced in 2008 and Genentech deployed on Google Apps. The chart also shows the headcount dedicated to enterprise efforts at Google, rising from zero in 2004 to over 1,000 today.

New stats Dave is announcing today: Google has more than 1.75 million businesses and 15 million users. More than 4,000 TB of mail is managed for Google Apps customers.

Dave says companies move to Google for three reasons: lower cost, constant innovation, happy end users. Google Apps costs companies $8.47 per user per month (Forrester). Microsoft Exchange online is $20.32. He’s also talking about reliability and uptime and the recently launched Google Dashboard. He says that Google is focused on transparency on any issues. And that Google is getting better at managing enterprise customers so that they have less downtime.

New Product: Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook - “Let users choose their interface: a plug-in that syncs Outlook with Apps just like Outlook natively syncs with Exchange.” See image below.

Product Manager Chris Vander Mey, Senior Product Manager for enterprise, is talking about the new sync product. Users need to move from Exchange to Google seemelessly, he says. Calendar, contacts, etc. The product will launch this afternoon.

This effectively lets Google Apps users use Outlook as the interface to Google Apps. For users who don’t want to only use the browser to access email, calendar, contacts, etc., this is an awesome feature.

Google Apps Sync works only with Windows machines for now. No Entourage on the Mac.

Dave fielded a question about Google Wave and how it might integrate with Google Apps. Dave says “it’s gonna get into Enterprise’s hands as fast as we can.” He says traditionally products are baked on the user side and then moved to enterprise, but, Dave says, he wants to move things along more quickly.

If you are an individual user who wants to use this syncing product, you have to sign up for Google Apps Premier. You can then sync Gmail, Google Calendar and Contacts with Outlook. This is only Google Apps premier, so the free product won’t work.

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Meebo Community IM Tears Down Walls, Goes Web-Wide

Posted: 09 Jun 2009 09:58 AM PDT

Over the last year or so, having online chat integrated into a website has quickly moved from “nifty” to “the norm”. The feature first caught on with Facebook, and has since made its way to a variety of other sites, including MySpace and Orkut. But most publishers and social networks don’t really have the resources to build their own chat clients, which can frustrate users that have become accustomed to the feature.

Meebo, the popular chat startup, has come a long way in helping solve this problem. The company has spent the last year building up Community IM, a product that allows sites to quickly integrate a full-featured browser-based chat client in a matter of days. Meebo has signed 75 partner sites and is currently live on 32 of them, with deployment quickly ramping up. Today, Community IM is getting a major upgrade, and it’s one that represents a major shift in the way the service can be used, beginning to transition Community IM from a pure chat product to a powerful sharing service.

Before now, users on a site with Community IM were restricted to chatting with friends on that site’s social graph — if I was on myYearbook, I could only chat with my myYearbook buddies. Starting today, users on some partner sites will be prompted by a small message alongside the chat bar that invites them to connect with their other friends using their Meebo account.

This means that users will be able to chat with friends on any chat network Meebo supports, which includes AIM, Facebook, and Gtalk. They’ll also be able to tap into the social graphs of other Community IM partner sites that they’re a part of — if I was on cafemom, I could log in with my Meebo account and see if any of my friends from my myYearbook account were online.



The other major new addition to Community IM is a very intuitive sharing feature. Aftering hit the new ‘Share’ button at the bottom left hand corner of the chat bar, the browser will dim slightly, save for your chat buddy list and icons for Facebook, Twitter, and Email at the top of the screen. Clicking on any of your buddies will immediately send them a link to the site you’re currently on (no copy/paste required). Likewise, clicking on the Facebook, Twitter, or Email icons will let you share the page via any of these services in a matter of seconds. Sharing isn’t exactly a unique feature, but it’s executed very well here — you can send a link to a friend in only two mouse clicks.

Combined with the inter-network chat also launching today, this new sharing feature is going to be driving quite a bit of traffic for Meebo’s partner sites, though it comes with a bit of a tradeoff. Users will now be swapping links to partner sites other than the one their friends are currently looking at (I might send a link for Cafemom to one of my friends currently browsing Flixster), which could occasionally drive traffic away from a partner site. That said, Meebo believes that this will generally boost traffic for all partners involved, and says that all of its partners knew this was coming and are eager for it.

The upgraded Community IM is being deployed to CafeMom and SparkPeople today, and the new chat bar will soon begin rolling it out to existing partners as well (Meebo says that all partners will eventually make the switch).



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Can Su.pr Short Links Save StumbleUpon? (250 Private Beta Invites)

Posted: 09 Jun 2009 09:49 AM PDT

Any self-respecting Website these days has its own URL shortening service for easy syndication of links across Twitter, Facebook and other status streams. There are services such as bit.ly and TinyURL. Digg has its controversial Diggbar (which helped lift unique visitors by 20 percent). Hell, even we use our own custom short URL domain (tcrn.ch) via Awe.sm.

Now, StumbleUpon, which was recently freed from eBay’s clutches, is rolling out its own URL shortening service, Su.pr. It is in closed beta, but we have 250 invites for the first TechCrunch readers to enter the promotional code: suprtc

We first caught wind of Su.pr back in March when StumbleUpon CEO Garrett Camp appropriately enough Tweeted about it. Su.pr lets you shorten a URL and share it across Twitter, Facebook, and StumbleUpon. What’s more, it gives you a dashboard to help you keep track of how many times your su.pr links have been shared, across which services. You can see how many times each link has been clicked on and retweeted (along with the number of followers for each retweeter). It also lets you schedule shared links across those services for any time you want.

The analytics are key. They are similar to what you’d find using bit.ly, except that Su.pr is plugged into Stumbleupon, which gives each link an extra distribution push. Each link can then be voted upon by the StumbleUpon community, and if it becomes popular, it can take on a new life. For StumbleUpon, it is a way to seed the service with links people are already pushing out to their real-time streams. StumbleUpon links take longer to gain momentum, so one benefit is that it could extend the life of good links.

Camp calls them “Su.pr links” because they take wrap the pages with a toolbar up top that entices people to vote the page up or down and Stumble to another page. “We are trying to give people a stumble experience through syndicating links,” he explains. Right now, however, Su.pr is using frames like the Diggbar, instead of redirecting straight to the underlying page. However, Camp says by the time Su.pr launches in public, websites will have the option to register with the service and host the toolbar themselves on their own URL (using a line of Javascript). His team is also developing custom short URLs for large sites which can tap into the same analytics backend (and further help push more content into StumbleUpon).

There is definitely a need for tools like these because Website publishers want to know not just what is happening on their sites, but what is happening to their links across the Web. But will it be enough to reignite interest in Stumbleupon, which languished under eBay’s ownership?

supr_techcrunch


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Round-up: Every iPhone 3G S Compatible Accessory Ever.

Posted: 09 Jun 2009 09:16 AM PDT

When Apple announced the iPhone 3G S yesterday, some folks were shocked — or disappointed, even — that the new one was a spitting image of the last one. Width, height, depth - besides being 2 whole grams heavier, the physical specs were a perfect match. We've been reminded of this fact roughly 300 times this morning, as every case manufacturer and battery-pack maker from here to Hong Kong writes in to "announce compatibility with the iPhone 3G S". We get it, guys. Nothing changed, so your case still fits. That said, it got us to thinking: what other accessories from the last generation iPhone will still work with this upcoming one? So, we compiled a list. It's not exhaustive, of course - but it covers all of the ones you're most likely worried about.


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