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- Greystripe Ups The Ante In The iPhone Ad Network Wars, Launches Guaranteed CPM Program
- Censorship 2.0: China Blocks Google Search, Apps, Gmail, And More
- Top CEOs Leave Social Media To The Plebs
- Ad Optimizer AdMeld Raises $8 Million, Opens UK Operations
- Ouch! German Court Slams Rapidshare With $34 Million Fine
- Flash Hits Android - When Will Apple Play Catch-up?
- Twitter Users Buy More Music Online Than Average Surfers, Study Says
- Live @ the HTC Sense Launch
- HTC Introduces Sense, the First Customized Android Installation On Its New Hero Smartphone
- Flash Comes to Android
- Microsoft, Outlook Is Broken, Says 6,000 Tweets (And Growing). Fix It.
- EU Advisory Group Proposes Tighter Privacy Regulation On Social Networks
- MySpace Loses Its CyberSecurity Superman. Who’s Left To Fight The Bad Guys?
- Vizio Releasing Twitter-, Flickr-, Netflix-enabled TV
- The Great iPhone 3.0 Problem Of Aught-Nine: Sporadic Wi-Fi
- Posterous Acquires Fellow Y Combinator Alum Slinkset
- Pictures: Boxee Beta, Coming This September
- Boxee Swings For The Fences: Windows Support, MLB, Digg, Tumblr And Current All Launch Tonight
- Engineers Are The Best Deal - So Stock Up On Them
- Wiimbledon 2009: Sponsors, Donations, Prizes, and other News
- Kyte’s iPhone 3GS App Doesn’t Live-Stream, But It’s Fast With Nice Quality Video
- Interview: Reuben Langdon, Motion Capture Artist For James Cameron’s Avatar
- Google Shares Its Need For Speed
- MySpace Layoffs Coming To Countries Where It Is Getting Trounced By Facebook
- Zugara’s Augmented Reality Dressing Room Is Great If You Don’t Care How Your Clothes Fit
| Greystripe Ups The Ante In The iPhone Ad Network Wars, Launches Guaranteed CPM Program Posted: 24 Jun 2009 08:00 AM PDT
There have been questions as to whether iPhone developers can make significant revenue from ads on the iPhone, mainly because the supply of advertisers can’t keep up with the demand for iPhone apps. Others say that developers actually can make quite a bit from ads on free apps. Mobile game advertising network Greystripe is in that camp and it is launching a new CPM Protection Program designed to guarantee ad revenue to iPhone app developers. Greystripe says that the various mobile ad networks, including competitor AdMob, are undercutting each others’ CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) when competing for advertising dollars, thus leaving iPhone app developers with lower CPMs overall. Greystripe’s CPM Protection Program offers to beat any other ad networks' eCPM by at least 25% for 60 days. Greystripe claims that their rates are higher because of their rich media ad formats that use a Flash ad format, giving advertisers more creative options when it comes to developing interactive ads. Another explanation for Greystripe’s higher CPMs is that they are trying to buy market share. Greystripe’s CPMs come in at around $1.50 to $2.00, which the company says is higher than the average CPM delivered by other networks. In a guest post written by an iPhone developer on TechCrunch, the developer reported CPMs of $0.23 with ads powered by AdMob. But this data is anecdotal and based on one developer’s circumstance. I find it hard to imagine that the CPM of $0.23 is an average for AdMob. It’s definitely interesting to see Greystripe’s approach to competing against mobile ad platforms like AdMob, Videoegg and others. Widely popular and well-funded AdMob is a formidable competitor in the space. Photo credit/Flickr/WilliamHook Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Censorship 2.0: China Blocks Google Search, Apps, Gmail, And More Posted: 24 Jun 2009 07:17 AM PDT
Can anyone actually in China confirm this in comments? As far as we can tell from using tools such as WebsitePulse, a lot of Google services are effectively blocked at this point. We’ve also cross-tested other popular US services like Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook and Bing, which appear to remain accessible for the moment. The block of the services appears to have become apparent to users around 10 AM Eastern Time. We’ve contacted Google for comment. Update: A person seemingly located in Xiamen, China, says Google Books, Google Talk and Image Search have also been blocked in the comment section of this post. Other services like Blog Search, Translate, Maps and Analytics are reportedly borked as well. YouTube has been blocked in the country for quite some time already. We should note this is reminiscent of the recent blocking of Twitter and Bing in the lead-up to the anniversary of Tienanmen. CrunchGear has noted in the past that China’s censorship practices are gradually becoming more sophisticated in general. Earlier this week, FastCompany reported that Google clashed with China over pornographic material that could possibly turn up in search results on Google’s Chinese language site. The search giant then agreed to “take all necessary steps” to ensure that this issue was resolved in due time. Perhaps they did not move quickly enough for country officials and they got shut down over this dispute? Either way, this is a draconian measure any way you look at it. Update 2: 11:05 AM Eastern time - reports are coming in saying that access to some Google services have been restored
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| Top CEOs Leave Social Media To The Plebs Posted: 24 Jun 2009 06:52 AM PDT
- Only two CEOs have Twitter accounts. Quite frankly, I think this is actually a good thing. Top execs of Fortune 100 companies in my view can do much more harm to themselves and the organizations they represent using social media the wrong way, and I haven’t seen that many CEOs of any size and type of company do it the right way. It’s what social media gurus and other experts are there for! Thank God, I’ve never had to work for a Fortune 100 company, but if ever do I’ll be damned if I’m going to befriend and send Zombie bites to the head honcho on Facebook or send him or her direct messages over Twitter if I’m looking for a raise.
Fortune 100 CEOs and Social Media View more Microsoft Word documents from Sharon Barclay. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Ad Optimizer AdMeld Raises $8 Million, Opens UK Operations Posted: 24 Jun 2009 06:00 AM PDT
Fast forward a year and things look pretty good for Barrett. His former boss is long gone from Fox Interactive and shuffled to a new job at News Corp. MySpace is on the ropes. Meanwhile Barrett, landing solidly on his feet, is running one of the hottest online advertising startups in New York: AdMeld. The company already raised $7 million in funding late last year. Today they’ll announce a new $8 million round, bringing the total to $15 million. Existing investors Spark Capital and Foundry Group led the round. The AdMeld platform optimizes and manages multiple ad networks and exchanges for publishers. Customers, which include Discovery, FOX News, Huffington Post, IAC, Thomson Reuters and WWE, use Admeld to manage those various networks and maximize revenues. AdMeld does things like locate undervalued ad inventory and replace it with higher performing stuff. Publishers like this kind of thing, and the ROI is easy to prove out. AdMeld also offers publishers centralized reporting and other features. The company is also opening a London, UK office and data center, they say, to expand European operations. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Ouch! German Court Slams Rapidshare With $34 Million Fine Posted: 24 Jun 2009 05:24 AM PDT
Following a request made by the organization, the Hamburg court ruled that Rapidshare is forbidden from making any of 5,000 music tracks from GEMA's collection available on the Internet. To comply, the company needs to make sure all of those tracks are removed from its servers and also ensure that they are not uploaded again by users. How the company is expected to do the latter, especially since many users upload files in ZIP format and password-protect them, is a mystery to me. Rapidshare is wildly popular, with an Alexa rank of 14 and millions of unique visitors per month (Compete).
Late April, Ars Technica reported that the company had begun handing over user information to record labels looking to pursue illegal file-sharers. It’s also not the first time Rapidshare finds itself in court because of GEMA’s persistent attacks: it had already lost a similar case back in January 2008. For this case, Rapidshare will appeal to higher courts and most likely restrict the scope of the decisions made by the Regional Court in Hamburg. Rapishare COO Bobby Chang, according to TorrentFreak, said “it would make more sense to offer music fans the right products and services at the right price to open up a new source of income for music-markets on the Internet." Hear, hear. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Flash Hits Android - When Will Apple Play Catch-up? Posted: 24 Jun 2009 05:05 AM PDT
With the new Flash Player 10 just around the corner and HTC officially joining the Open Screen Project, Android, Symbian OS, Windows Mobile, and Palm WebOS will be among the first platforms to support full web browsing and access to virtually all Flash-based Web content. The HTC Hero phone will come with Flash Lite 3.1, which means it’ll be able to cope with anything written with ActionScript 2.0 and thus be very well equipped for interactive content as well as streaming online video and audio. Adobe says about 80% of all online videos are delivered in Flash today and Adobe Flash Player content reaches over 98% of Internet-enabled desktops worldwide. See Flash in action on the HTC Hero in this non-embeddable demo video. Now, when is Apple finally going to play ball and get serious about Flash support? Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Twitter Users Buy More Music Online Than Average Surfers, Study Says Posted: 24 Jun 2009 04:24 AM PDT
The firm bases these conclusions on less than 4,000 completed surveys for its quarterly music-acquisition study. First, the engagement: according to the report, one-third of surveyed Twitter users listened to music on a social networking site, 41% listened to online radio (compared to 22% among all Web users) and 39% watched a music video online (versus 25% among all Web users) during the first quarter. Twitter users are also said to be twice to visit services like MySpace Music and Pandora than average Web users. Music buyers’ awareness of Twitter was 67% in the first quarter, compared with 52% of general Web users; 12% of music buyers said they used Twitter in the past three months, versus 8% overall. Some 33% of Twitter users purchased a CD recently, compared with 23% of Web users. Twitter users also seem to be more keen on purchasing music online, according to NDP: 34% bought a digital download, compared with 16% of general Web users. Apparently, they buy more on average too, 77% more so than users who are not on Twitter (yet). Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for NPD, commented:
We recently wrote about artist duo TRV$DJAM offering a download of their new mixtape free of charge in exchange of a tweet, and how Twitter helped Universal Motown Republic put one of its new artists, Asher Roth, on the map. You can find a lot of music-related applications tied to Twitter in this post. (Via @gleonhard and DMW) Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Posted: 24 Jun 2009 04:17 AM PDT  Live from the HTC press event.
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| HTC Introduces Sense, the First Customized Android Installation On Its New Hero Smartphone Posted: 24 Jun 2009 03:55 AM PDT  The era of true Android customization has begun with HTC's Sense UI, a customized overlay for Android that adds HTC's stunning graphical interface to the sturdy Android OS. The UI will run on the new Hero, a 3.2-inch touchscreen phone running at 528MHz with MicroSD slot. More specs on the phone: With its 3.2-inch HVGA display, the HTC Hero is optimized for Web, multimedia and other content, while maintaining a small size and weight that fits comfortably in your hand. It also boasts a broad variety of hardware features including AGPS, digital compass, gravity-sensor, 3.5mm stereo headset jack, a five mega-pixel autofocus camera and expandable MicroSD memory. HTC Hero also includes a dedicated Search button that goes beyond basic search, providing you with a more natural, contextual search experience that enables you to search through Twitter, locate people in your contact list, find emails in your inbox or search in any other area in Hero.The new Android UI will have something called "Perspectives," a new method for connecting email, contacts, and social media automatically. This version will also be the first to support Flash natively. Watch this post for live info as we get it.
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| Posted: 24 Jun 2009 03:53 AM PDT  Adobe and HTC are bringing Flash to Android on its new Hero smartphone. The implementation will support video and audio codecs familiar to users of Flash on the desktop. Check this post for more info as we get it. The HTC Hero delivers powerful, compatible video playback performance using Flash technology, and interactive content enabled by ActionScript® 2.0. Users can enjoy and navigate through Web videos using intuitive video controls. With progressive streaming of large MP3 audio files from a Web server and the local file storage, the HTC Hero provides a seamless audio experience. Support for Sorenson and On2 VP6 codecs enables higher quality video and playback of existing Web content. A demo of the user experience enabled by the Flash Platform on the HTC Hero and the Android operating system can be viewed at www.adobe.com/go/htchero.
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| Microsoft, Outlook Is Broken, Says 6,000 Tweets (And Growing). Fix It. Posted: 24 Jun 2009 02:11 AM PDT
While it is pretty much the standard email client, Microsoft Outlook has long had problems rendering HTML correctly in emails. And the latest version, Outlook 2010, due sometime in the next several months, doesn’t look like it’s going to be any better — and it actually may be worse. And a lot of users aren’t happy about it at all. A group of people apparently felt strongly enough to create a site called Outlook’s broken — Let’s fix it. The site is simple, it’s a constantly updating stream of users tweeting out their desire for Microsoft to fix this problem with Outlook. Right now, it’s just about 6,000 tweets, but it’s growing about a tweet every second (even at this hour of the night here in the U.S.). When a new tweet comes in, that user’s icon appears on the screen next to hundreds of other icons that had previously tweeted about it. And as the stream updates, random tweets about fixing Outlook are flashed on the screen. Here’s the text from the site:
Again, to have your voice heard in this cause, simply include the http://fixoutlook.org/ URL somewhere in your tweet. Here’s the comparison image of what HTML rendering looks like in Outlook 2000 versus what it will look like in Outlook 2010.
Update: Here’s some info on who created the site:
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| EU Advisory Group Proposes Tighter Privacy Regulation On Social Networks Posted: 24 Jun 2009 01:47 AM PDT
This isn’t exactly news, since the FT wrote about the report last week when it was still unpublished. It is now, and I’ve embedded it below. In it, the advisory group mainly addresses issues with the fact that social networking services as well as third-party developers have access to personal data of users, including minors. It basically deems SNS providers to be ‘data controllers’ (rather than merely ‘data processors’), bringing along corresponding responsibilities and legal obligations with regards to these users. Topics like the processing of sensitive data and images, advertising and direct marketing on social networks and data retention issues are also addressed. Essentially, the group says users of social networking sites have no legal obligations as data controllers as long as the use is purely personal (the so-called ‘household exemption’), but that they carry the same responsibility as the operators of the social networks in case they act on behalf of a company, association or in pursuit of commercial, political or charitable goals. Also worth noting: the opinion states sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter should clearly inform users of their identity, and provide comprehensive information about the purposes and different ways in which they intend to process personal data. They should also offer privacy-friendly settings by default and provide easy and visible access to a complaints process on their home page. We’re awaiting comment from Facebook, MySpace and Twitter representatives and will update accordingly. Update: Hemanshu Nigam, Chief Security Officer of News Corporation and MySpace, sends us this statement:
As an aside, the Article 29 Working Party is the same group that recently called for Google to set a time limit for how long it retains pictures of people in its Street View application. In the past, they’ve also called for Google to reduce the time it retains users’ cookies - Google ultimately volunteered to anonymize information held after 18 months following earlier EC concerns. ARTICLE 29 DATA PROTECTION WORKING PARTY - Opinion 5/2009 on online social networking Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| MySpace Loses Its CyberSecurity Superman. Who’s Left To Fight The Bad Guys? Posted: 23 Jun 2009 11:10 PM PDT
Our understanding is that he resigned, and was not part of the mass layoffs last week. Either way, it was a real loss for MySpace. His name was brought up repeatedly by MySpace staffers over the years with a sort of awe - he was the defender of the castle, their FBI agent in the back room watching over everyone. And right now, with Hilbert gone, the MySpace castle is in desperate need of a defender. Hilbert never claimed to be able to get rid of all the spam on MySpace - but his team was able to cut 98% of it. Spam king Scott Richter/Media Breakaway was one of his favorite targets and the subject of a MySpace lawsuit in 2007/2008 ($ 4.8 million in damages and $ 1.2 million in attorney’s fees was awarded to MySpace). His team also fought phishing experts Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines, and MySpace won a $230 million judgement in that case (I don’t believe that was ever paid though). The rumor around MySpace is that the real value of Hilbert and his team was fighting the even darker stuff that a site of MySpace’s size had to deal with. Little of that ever made it to a press release. Hilbert has started a new yet-to-launch company called Online Intelligence to help clean up the online advertising world (which desperately needs it). If I were Facebook, I’d just make Hilbert an offer he couldn’t refuse. Spam, phishing and advertising fraud are all common on the site. My guess is Hilbert could tackle those problems better than anyone else in the world. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Vizio Releasing Twitter-, Flickr-, Netflix-enabled TV Posted: 23 Jun 2009 11:10 PM PDT  Widgets and gadgets are the latest trend to hit HDTVs. Vizio is upping the game by equipping its soon-to-be-released HDTVs with an impressive suite of Internet applications and support for video streaming sites. So much so, that this portfolio will place them on top of many wish lists as these TVs will be better equipped than a TiVo or even Windows Media Server. Forget about Vizio being a mid-tier, Wal-mart brand. These features might make some people question why they pay a monthly fee for a TiVo. Owners will be able to stream content from Revision3, Showtime and Pandora for free, while also able to subscribe to Vudu, Netflix, Blockbuster OnDemand, Amazon Video On Demand and Rhapsody. Plus, the sets are able to work with Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and the Yahoo Widgets Engine.
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| The Great iPhone 3.0 Problem Of Aught-Nine: Sporadic Wi-Fi Posted: 23 Jun 2009 11:00 PM PDT  There's a long thread at Apple's discussion board about sporadic Wi-Fi failures under iPhone 3.0. It seems that the Wi-Fi eventually poops out, resulting in no Wi-Fi connectivity even inches from the router. The only fix seems to be turning off push email. Essentially, WiFi works fine after the phone has been freshly booted (i.e. right after a restart) - however, once it has put itself into standby mode it will no longer download data over a WiFi connection after the phone is turned on again. It remains able to find the WiFi network, but simply refuses to download data over it.
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| Posterous Acquires Fellow Y Combinator Alum Slinkset Posted: 23 Jun 2009 09:55 PM PDT
Both Slinkset and Posterous launched last summer as part of the same Y Combinator class. Slinkset is a white-label service for building your own custom social news site in a matter of seconds (think Digg, but with your own logos and a customized design). Slinkset isn’t the only company in this space — when it launched last July I noted its similarities to a handful of other services, including Reddit, which had recently gone open-source and allowed for custom sites. But while it may not be terribly unique, it’s easy to see why the Posterous team is interested in Slinkset. Posterous cofounder Garry Tan says that the company is going to build “massively engaging sites for both content discovery (via social news) and content posting (via blog streams)”. Beyond that details are scant, but it’s not difficult to imagine the kind of features Posterous may begin to implement. Up until this point the site has been heavily focused on helping you share content, but there hasn’t been much in the way of social interaction. Slinkset’s technology will definitely help with that — my guess is that there will soon be an option to allow users to upvote posts on your Posterous account, causing the most popular media and blog posts to float to the top.  Aside from the acquisition, Posterous is pushing forward on other fronts. The site has released optimized support for the new iPhone 3GS, allowing users to Email videos directly from the phone which are then automatically rotated properly and posted to your Posterous blog (as well as any other services you have linked to it, like Facebook). The service also now supports importing blogs from major platforms including Blogger, Wordpress, and Tumblr (the site will automatically import both text and media files into your Posterous page). Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Pictures: Boxee Beta, Coming This September Posted: 23 Jun 2009 08:48 PM PDT Tonight at its event in San Francisco, Boxee showed off the first shots of what it’s working on for the beta release of its software. CEO Avner Ronen says Boxee users should expect this in September, though it could be pushed to October. Forgive the slightly blurry shots, consider this a test of the iPhone 3GS camera at live events. (There are some slightly better ones at the bottom.)
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Boxee Swings For The Fences: Windows Support, MLB, Digg, Tumblr And Current All Launch Tonight Posted: 23 Jun 2009 07:26 PM PDT
While many developers go the other way, Boxee started as a Mac and Linux product first. But obviously, Windows PCs are the vast majority of the machines out there. “This is huge being able to serve the rest of the computer market,” Boxee CEO Avner Ronen tells us. And that’s undoubtedly an understatement, given the success Boxee has already had minus all those Windows users. While this is just an alpha version of the product for Windows, it will be open for the public to use. And perhaps more importantly, it will work on machines with Windows Media Center, many of which are hooked up to televisions in living rooms. While Boxee is great on the computer, it’s arguably even better on a big screen television, many of which typically feature awful user interfaces. Boxee’s interface, on the other hand, is very nice. And that’s being revamped a bit as well tonight to make room for the other new features being launched. The biggest of those is support for MLB.tv. This will mark the first time that Boxee users will have access to live content through the software. MLB.tv is a premium service that requires either a monthly or one-time fee, but it’s already very popular, and all those users can now access it through Boxee. Ronen notes that he hopes this is the first of many live experiences Boxee is able to offer, stating that other sporting deals are being talked about, as well as the possibility that live news could come someday. Another addition is Digg video content. Everyday, tons of videos become popular through the social voting site, and now Boxee is giving users a way to see those through its software as well. In the future, you’ll be able to Digg items right from Boxee as well, we’re told. Tumblr is another service Boxee is adding support for tonight. You’ll be able to stream music shared by people you follow on the blogging platform, as well as play picture slideshows. And finally, Boxee is announcing a partnership with Current, to offer its news and entertainment programming.
All told, there are now well over 100 applications available for Boxee (something around 120, we’re told), so that’s why it needed to make some interface changes to accommodate all this new stuff. And the developer challenge apparently yielded a lot of interesting apps as well. Over 40 were submitted for the competition, including quite a few using the all-important Twitter. I asked Ronen about the possibility of seeing Boxee create its own set-top box in the future, but he downplayed that. He feels Boxee’s strength lies in its open approach to developing for other pieces of hardware. And he hinted that by early next year, we should start to see some interesting partnerships involving Boxee and some living-room bound hardware devices. As for Hulu, which Boxee has famously been battling with after it blocked its content from appearing on Boxee several months ago, Ronen says there are no new updates. But he hopes that the fact that Hulu has made its own desktop software, Hulu Desktop, signals that they are open to the idea of moving their content outside of the traditional browser and onto other services, like Boxee. Ronen also defiantly notes that while Hulu isn’t playing ball, yet, plenty of other media providers are. Finally, on the subject of mobile development, Ronen says that while they aren’t actively working on anything beyond its remote control iPhone app (which works with the Boxee software), a lot of people are asking about an actual iPhone app that will play Boxee content. “If we keep getting asked we just may do it,” Ronen notes. With the Windows version now out there, Boxee plans to update all versions at the same time, with new content and features, we’re told. It’s getting to be a very robust media player.
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| Engineers Are The Best Deal - So Stock Up On Them Posted: 23 Jun 2009 06:39 PM PDT
This guest post is written by Auren Hoffman, the CEO of Rapleaf and an active angel investor. Auren argues that productivity gains among software engineers far outstrips pay increases. His advice? Stock up on engineers, it’s a competitive advantage. His advice reminds me of Joe Kraus‘ famous 2005 post that compared the cost of launching a startup in the nineties ($3 million) to one this decade ($100,000). Productivity gains in software engineering are powering innovation. Everyone is more productive these days. This has been a consistent trend for at least the past decade, where productivity gains have been particularly strong within the business sector. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, today's business industry workers are on average 30% more productive than their 1998 counterparts (productivity growth of roughly 2.6% per year). Within the technology industry, productivity has increased more. Thanks to smartphones, improved search engines, better CRM software, and ever-increasing bandwidth, salesmen and marketers can find, receive and process information faster than ever. The most dramatic gains, however, have occurred within software development.
Software engineers today are about 200-400% more productive than software engineers were 10 years ago because of open source software, better programming tools, common libraries, easier access to information, better education, and other factors. This means that one engineer today can do what 3-5 people did in 1999! The advent of open source software makes engineers particularly efficient. One VP Engineering that I talked to gave me an anecdote about one module where they used open source files with about 500,000 lines of code and then wrote 7,000 lines of code to stitch it all together. Open source software is also free. In the company I was running in 1999, "software" was a huge budget line item – we had to buy databases, testing suites, libraries, and more. Today all that stuff is free … a start-up might spend more money on sodas for the office than it does on software. We're all familiar with Moore's Law – that the power of computers doubles every 18 months. In my 15 years of software development, I've seen 5x-10x productivity gains in engineers. Which could mean that the productivity of a well-trained engineer doubles every five years. (note that this Law is much harder to prove than Moore's Law – but potentially just as profound). That would mean that the productivity of an engineer is growing at roughly 14.9% per year! That's fast … really fast … much faster than the 2.6% yearly gains than the population as a whole is making.
This means that today's companies are able to do more software engineering and build more stuff with fewer people. But should they do more with less? It could be much more prudent for a company, especially for a small company, to do the opposite … and to double-down on engineering. You can use the productivity gains in software development as a strategic advantage and invest aggressively in engineers. First, doing so contributes the most to progress and also increases the chance for breakthroughs in innovation. Second, engineers – as opposed to salesmen and marketers – can often hit the ground running (assuming you have a good on-boarding system) and have a positive impact within a few weeks. Alternatively, many large traditional companies might be able to get by with FEWER but DIFFERENT engineers. These companies might need to change their approach to engineering to take advantage of the new tools. The companies that can benefit from fewer engineers are likely ones that haven't changed their technology platforms radically in the last ten years. Although engineers contribute more to an organization than ever before, their pay – relative to other functions in a company – hasn't followed suit. I've polled a few dozen companies and have found that over the last ten years, an engineer's pay has held the same relative salary to marketing and sales. This is odd behavior … usually when something outputs more, its cost goes up. So why have engineers' wages in the U.S. stayed constant relative to salespeople and marketers? Here are two contributing factors that lower demand:
Both the off-shoring and the decreased need for engineers has led to a lowering of the demand which has likely put a check on wages. One problem, of course, is that measuring "output" of an engineer is a really hard thing to do (as opposed to the output of a salesperson) … so it is really hard to quantify the productivity gains. And even if you can measure output in engineering, it is sometimes hard to tie that to an increase in profitability. And, like sales, the quality of engineers varies wildly. A great engineer is potentially 2-4 times more productive than a good engineer. Ben Ling from Google pointed out to me that some great engineers are massively compensated – because they tend to be the early hires at a company and get lots of stock (most of Google's first 50 employees were engineers). Let's recap: The productivity of a software engineer has increased 2-3 times that of a marketing person in the last ten years. Yet their relative compensation has remained about the same. That means if you are a savvy company, you should stock up on engineers. In fact, you would want as many great engineers as you can get a hold of. This engineering productivity boom will only increase and continue to create dislocation and creative destruction. While the extent of growth and industry makeover are hard to gauge, what is certain is that corporations relying on technology and engineering paradigms from the 1990s or before will find themselves hard-pressed to compete with the new and nimble movers. (special thanks to Jonathan Hoffman, Michael Hsu, Ben Ling, Jeremy Lizt, Naghi Prasad, and Dave Selinger for their feedback and edits). Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Wiimbledon 2009: Sponsors, Donations, Prizes, and other News Posted: 23 Jun 2009 06:25 PM PDT  This year's Wiimbledon is fast approaching (Saturday the 27th), but it's not too late to sign up for the tournament. Jump on over to the EventBrite page and register for the tournament. Wiimbledon is free to all, but you'll have to pay to play. Barcade is once again hosting the event and they've committed to matching our donations to Child's Play.
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| Kyte’s iPhone 3GS App Doesn’t Live-Stream, But It’s Fast With Nice Quality Video Posted: 23 Jun 2009 05:06 PM PDT
The app, which is $4.99, is very simple. You boot it up, log in (or create a new account), and you’re taken to a screen where you put in a title for your “show” (what you’re about to broadcast). Below that are links to add video, a photo, and/or a link. If you choose to add a video you can easily take a new video, or use one you’ve already shot with your iPhone 3GS. The video capture functionality is fast and works just as well as the iPhone’s own video capturing app. But the real killer features of the Kyte app are its upload speed and even more so, the quality of its videos. While I’ve already gone in depth about why I think video is the killer feature for the iPhone 3GS, based mainly on how well the videos shot on the device look, and how easily they are uploaded to YouTube. But in testing this app out today, I’d say that Kyte’s offering is at least as compelling from an ease-of-use perspective. The video upload was about as speedy as it was to YouTube, but it didn’t feature the annoying rendering time of the YouTube videos I’ve uploaded. And the video quality is noticeably better on Kyte than on YouTube when uploaded from the iPhone 3GS (see below). One downside to recording the videos in the Kyte app is that they don’t save to your video library on the phone. The other downside is the price: As I mentioned, $4.99. But that’s to make it clear that Kyte is intending this app for its commercial publishers, we’re told. But any Kyte users is able to use it and really, $4.99 isn’t a bad price for a video app that works this well. This offering is the latest in Kyte’s mobile strategy with regards to the iPhone. Last month, it rolled out a series of branded iPhone apps. Of course, as a live-streaming service, Kyte would love to be able to live-stream from the iPhone 3GS, but that’s still not allowed yet. Hopefully that will change one day.
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| Interview: Reuben Langdon, Motion Capture Artist For James Cameron’s Avatar Posted: 23 Jun 2009 04:40 PM PDT  Reuben Langdon is a motion capture artist in motion pictures and games — you've probably directed his actions without knowing it in such games as Resident Evil 5 and Dead Rising. Most recently he's been working on James Cameron's epic CG film, Avatar. He took some time out of his busy backflipping schedule to talk to us about motion capture, having his own studio, and working with Cameron on the biggest and most ambitious CG movie of all time.
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| Google Shares Its Need For Speed Posted: 23 Jun 2009 04:09 PM PDT
In a video posted to the company’s official blog, a number top Google engineers and evangelists outline Google’s goal: to make surfing the web as instantaneous as “flipping through the pages of a glossy magazine”. It’s a lofty goal to be sure, but given the accomplishments we’ve seen in the last 15 years, it certainly seems attainable. Now for the matter of actually getting there. To help achieve that goal, Google has unveiled a new Speed section of Google Code. The site includes a variety of tutorials and tech talks aimed to help developers optimize their code, with articles including “How gzip compression works” and “Optimizing JavaScript code. There’s also a selection of Tools from both Google and many third parties. So what are the biggest problems remaining? In the site’s FAQ, Google outlines a few of the biggest issues:
Google makes it clear that this isn’t a problem it can solve on its own. In the video below, Google Senior VP Engineering Bill Coughran describes the movement as “a series of difficult advocacy steps, over a long period of time”. But it’s worth it. As Performance Evangelist Steve Souders says as he closes out the video, “what we should also hold out as a goal, as an aspiration for what we can achieve by making the Internet a faster place, is raising the quality of life around the world.” Photo by michaelmcd Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| MySpace Layoffs Coming To Countries Where It Is Getting Trounced By Facebook Posted: 23 Jun 2009 03:31 PM PDT
This morning, when MySpace announced the decimation of its international staff (300 out of 450 non-US staff will be let go), CEO Owen Van Natta pinpointed the global offices he considers dispensable. He released a statement saying that while the London, Berlin and Sydney offices will be preserved, MySpace will look to “restructure” the offices in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, and Spain and plans to close four offices all together. Considering Facebook’s massive growth both internationally and now in the U.S., we thought it would be instructive to compare the number of unique visitors to Facebook and MySpace in each of the countries which MySpace has identified for layoffs and restructuring. All together, the countries account for only about 15 percent of MySpace’s global unique visitors (see chart at right). But more tellingly, in practically every single country where layoffs are coming, Facebook has already won. The graphs below speak for themselves but here are a few numbers as well (all from comScore). In India, Facebook had 6.4 million unique visitors in May, compared to 848,000 unique visitors to MySpace. In Argentina, Facebook had 5.5 million unique visitors in May, compared to 611,000 unique visitors to MySpace. In Spain, 7.2 million for Facebook, versus 1.5 million for MySpace. MySpace’s growth has been stagnating for quite some time now. Worldwide monthly page views for MySpace declined from 47.4 billion a year ago to 38 billion in April, a 20% drop. In that same period Facebook grew from 44 billion to 87 billion, a roughly 100% increase. MySpace’s user number growth has stalled out also, and developers are reporting that activity on MySpace is decreasing at a dramatic rate, as high as "half a percent a week." And in our most recent model of the true value of social networks, MySpace fell below Facebook, dropping from the top spot last year. Things aren’t going to get prettier for MySpace anytime soon. As Michael Arrington wrote in May, MySpace will receive its last “welfare payment” from Google (thanks to an advertising deal between News Corp. and Google struck in 2006), in 2010 and then it will be cut off. Under the terms of the agreement, MySpace will receive $300 million over the next year if the network makes certain search page view requirements. When the deal is over, MySpace will have a social network that costs half a billion dollars a year to run. But as shown above, page views are decreasing and with Google’s yearly infusions of money gone there is a strong likelihood that the News Corp. subsidiary will be unprofitable a year from now, even with all of these cuts. It appears that Van Natta is using the layoffs to trim expenses but we estimate 720 total worldwide layoffs would only amount to about $7 to 8 million in monthly expenses (assuming $11K per head, including payroll, benefits and overhead). MySpace could lay off its entire staff and still not be profitable. INDIA
ARGENTINA
SPAIN
CANADA
FRANCE
SWEDEN
ITALY
MEXICO
RUSSIA
BRAZIL
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Zugara’s Augmented Reality Dressing Room Is Great If You Don’t Care How Your Clothes Fit Posted: 23 Jun 2009 02:34 PM PDT
Zugara, an interactive marketing agency, has built something a bit more practical for the time being. It’s put together the Webcam Social Shopper, offering a way to help you try on clothes online from the comfort of your bedroom. At least, it lets you overlay a static image on top of your body and pretend you’re wearing it. Which is sort of a start. From a technological standpoint, the application is pretty cool. While other similar clothing applications require you to upload a static image of yourself, the Zugara app uses your web cam, detecting where you’re standing in a room and adjusting the position of the overlain clothing appropriately. Even better: instead of having to return to your keyboard and mouse to try on a new outfit, you can simply move your arms above your head to navigate through the various clothing options (be sure to watch the video to see how it works). Now, it’s pretty obvious that this isn’t going to be particularly useful for figuring out how any item of clothing is actually going to look on you. The clothes are basically just images being pasted on top of your body, without any attention being paid to your proportions (it would be much more useful if the app could generate a 3D model of your body and adjust the clothing fit accordingly). On the other hand, it could be handy for figuring out which clothes might look good together. Clashing colors and patterns may be incredibly obvious to the well-trained eye of a veteran shopper, but for some people (read: me), a virtual fitting room could prove useful. Zugara is also trying to weave a social element into the application, offering examples of sharing outfit choices over Facebook or allowing friends to help choose outfits in real time, which could turn out to be the app’s real strength.  At this point Zugara is describing this as an Alpha app — it hasn’t yet been integrated with any stores or brand sites, so you can’t try it out for yourself. But it won’t be surprising if we start seeing similar technology popping up at online stores soon. Even if it doesn’t work all that well for actually trying on clothes, the social component and novelty factor could make it appealing to stores anyway. Update: Zugara’s Jack Benoff comments below on the sizing issues and the goal of the project:
You can find more information on the project here.
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The People’s Republic of China has apparently barred its citizens from visiting a host of Google properties, including the main search engine, Google Apps, Google Reader and Gmail. A 
It’s ‘official’; big shot CEOs are social media slackers. The hot news comes straight from 
Just a little over a year ago 
The Regional Court in Hamburg, Germany, has fined file-hosting service 
So we just got word that 
Market research firm 
The influential Article 29 Working Party, an independent European advisory body on data protection and privacy to the EC, has argued that social networks like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace need more regulation to ensure that personal data of their respective users is not put at risk. Even though the majority of sites that the report mentions are based in the United States, the group states their large presence in Europe means that they should be subject to European Union privacy and data protection legislation.
Boxee
Google has always been about speed. From its highly streamlined homepage to vast server farms, the company goes to extreme lengths to ensure that all of your search queries are returned in a fraction of a second. Now, it wants the whole web to be that fast.
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