The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- OfferPal Sues Former Customer Kickflip For Starting Competitive Service
- Facebook Nabs The Man Who Engineered Google AdSense For Many Years
- Facebook Vanity Landrush Tonight At 9 pm PST: Here’s What You Need To Do
- Twitpocalypse Not Now: Crisis Averted. Mostly.
- TechCrunch’s Most Frequently Used iPhone Apps
- Holocaust Museum Death Won’t Change Facebook’s Mind On Hate - But Advertisers May Be Able To
- Dotcom Hangover: Amazon Pays $51 Million To End Long-Standing Battle With Toys “R” Us
- Why Europe Won’t Go Browserless This Fall
- Review: Kindle DX
- Gliider Makes Makes Trip Planning A Breeze
- Twitter Moves Up The Twitpocalypse. All Hell May Break Loose Today.
- Help CrunchGear Raise Money For the Child’s Play Charity
- Interview: Ben Heckendorn, Console Modder
- This Is Getting Ridiculous: Startups Already Trying To “Assetize” Facebook Vanity URLs
- YouTube and Yahoo Logos Offer One Last Reminder About The TV Broadcast Transition
- Shutterfly Finally Adds Video Sharing
- Flickr Tests Twitter Integration With Email Uploads
| OfferPal Sues Former Customer Kickflip For Starting Competitive Service Posted: 12 Jun 2009 08:33 PM PDT
As first reported in GigaOm, the suit alleges that Kickflip temporarily used Offerpal’s services for the purpose of stealing knowledge of how the service worked, which it then used to start a competitor. From the suit:
Kickflip responds that the suit has “absolutely no merit”. The company originally started off as a game developer in 2007 (you can see a list of their old games here). The company says that during that time it has tried to use OfferPal and SuperRewards (an OfferPal competitor) to monetize their games but that both were unable to meet their needs, so they built their own service. The company’s ‘about’ page offers a similar background:
Kickflip has issued the following statement regarding the suit:
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Facebook Nabs The Man Who Engineered Google AdSense For Many Years Posted: 12 Jun 2009 07:25 PM PDT
At Google, Badros was in charge of the AdSense engineering team from its formative years in 2004, through when it exploded in popularity with billions of dollars in revenues. He has also led the Google Calendar, Google Reader and Gmail teams. Since March 2009, he has led the Application Platform group. But it’s the AdSense experience that is particularly interesting here, as Facebook is attempting to better monetize its service. Badros will report to Mike Schroepfer, who Facebook hired from Mozilla in July of last year. Schroepfer is the VP of engineering. Before Google, Badros worked at Go2Net which was later acquired by InfoSpace. He served as the Chief Technical Architect at both companies. His Google profile doesn’t reveal much about him, other than the schools he attended, and his blog — which he infrequently posts on. Update: Here's Facebook’s official statement statement:
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| Facebook Vanity Landrush Tonight At 9 pm PST: Here’s What You Need To Do Posted: 12 Jun 2009 07:23 PM PDT
At 9 pm PST you’ll be able to log in and claim your new name. Go to facebook.com/username and log into Facebook. You’ll see a tool like the one below to pick a permanent Facebook URL:
Usernames much be in basic text, at least 5 characters long, and include only alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9), or a period or full stop (”.”). When you get your name, the next step is to leave a comment below with your new URL (yep, we want to see it) and then become a Fan of the TechCrunch Facebook page. Ok, to be honest, that last step is optional and probably has very little impact on you getting the vanity URL you really want. But it won’t hurt, either. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Twitpocalypse Not Now: Crisis Averted. Mostly. Posted: 12 Jun 2009 05:38 PM PDT
“As planned, we averted the twitpocalypse with a deploy this afternoon,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone tells us. Excellent news. But there is one small temporary casualty of the problem, Twitter Search has been paused for about an hour, I’m told. But it should be caught up and back to normal soon, says Stone. So, everyone can calm down, for now. Just like the Y2K bug that much of the world freaked out about a decade ago, the Twitpocalypse came and went with nary a problem. Update: As a few commenters have noted, and I’ve just confirmed, the popular Twitter app, Twitterrific, is completely broken right now due to API errors — at least the iPhone version. Some reports have said TweetDeck is facing similar problems. . Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| TechCrunch’s Most Frequently Used iPhone Apps Posted: 12 Jun 2009 03:38 PM PDT
Most TechCrunch writers are iPhone users. And while we're still debating The following list is by no means all of the apps we have on our iPhones. There are plenty of apps we only use a couple times a month (e.g. Shazam), but when we need them, they’re great. We’ve also linked to any TechCrunch/CrunchGear/MobileCrunch reviews of the apps. Let us know which apps you use in the comments below.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Holocaust Museum Death Won’t Change Facebook’s Mind On Hate - But Advertisers May Be Able To Posted: 12 Jun 2009 03:16 PM PDT
Earlier this week a Holocaust denier shot and killed a guard at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. Facebook didn’t change its policy on allowing Holocaus denial groups, even though one group quickly put up a cartoon mocking the event. If attacks on Jews by Holocaust deniers won’t be enough to sway Facebook that this is all hate speech, perhaps angry advertisers will do the trick. Brian Cuban has been tracking advertisers who have insisted their ads don’t show up anywhere near Holocaust denial pages on Facebook, and at least one who doesn’t want ads to be placed on profiles of people who are members of such groups. Vodafone, Tesco, American Airlines and Domino’s Pizza have pulled advertising, says Cuban. Domino’s Pizza’s Social Media Specialist Phil Lozen wrote to Cuban saying that “initially, Facebook was pushing back on their ability to block ads” from some of the pages. But as of today even pages showing search results for hate groups won’t have Dominoes ads. He also says that Dominoes would not have purchased ads at all if they knew of the possibility of their ads appearing near Holocaust denial pages. What we really need are a set of large advertisers to boycott Facebook entirely until these groups are banned. There’s a reason why eBay and other private companies won’t let this kind of hate speech on their sites. It’s bad for business. And as soon as Facebook realizes that, they’ll change their policy. Then look for lots of talk from Facebook employees about how proud they are that their company did the right thing - [insert current policy here]. And for those of you who will argue that the best way to handle hate is to shine a light on it, debate these people openly, and generally assume that reason will prevail: you’re wrong. Read this USA Today opinion piece that is talking about the steady rise of hate groups in the U.S. - “the Internet gives formerly isolated racists, whether individuals or small groups, a means to stoke one another’s smoldering anger. With the ready availability of weapons, even a single person can do enormous harm.” Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Dotcom Hangover: Amazon Pays $51 Million To End Long-Standing Battle With Toys “R” Us Posted: 12 Jun 2009 02:51 PM PDT
Back at the height of the dotcom bubble, Amazon was signing lucrative deals with traditional retailers to be their online store. One of the biggest such deals was with Toys “R” Us. It was announced with much fanfare in 2000 and was supposed to last a decade. Toys “R” US would handle the toy buying and inventory management, Amazon would handle the Website. It made sense until, oh, about 2004, when Toys “R” us filed a lawsuit for breach of contract. While Amazon was perfectly happy to be the exclusive online presence for Toys “R” Us, it didn’t feel that it had agreed to make Toys “R” Us the exclusive of provider of toys on Amazon. A New Jersey court ruled in favor of Toys “R” Us back in 2006. But only yesterday did Amazon finally settle with Toys “R” Us, agreeing to pay $51 million. In an SEC filing Amazon states:
Nine years after the initial agreement, that particular dotcom hangover is finally over. It lasted almost as long as the original deal was supposed to be. The lesson here: don’t hand a key part of your business to someone else, especially if it is where your growth is going to be coming from. That is the same as handing control over your destiny to someone else. (Photo credit: Flickr/Daniel Chan). Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Why Europe Won’t Go Browserless This Fall Posted: 12 Jun 2009 01:45 PM PDT
The way some people are portraying it, it’s as if millions of computer users are suddenly going to be left Internet-less, isolated on their home PCs without any hope of ever reaching the web beyond. But an important statistic that some major news outlets are failing to highlight (though most others are pointing out) is that the vast majority of people won’t notice the change at all. That’s because PC makers — your Dells, HPs, etc. — will be able to install IE8 before their computers ever reach the consumer. And you can be sure that for nearly all of computers they sell, they’re going to do just that. But what about that 5% of users that are buying the the OS in a retail store? For one, consider the fact that many of the people taking the initiative to actually go out and buy Windows 7 are perfectly capable of finding a way to install Firefox or IE on their computers. But what about everyone else? Microsoft has made it clear that it’s going to offer IE on an “easy-to-install basis“, which includes distribution via “via CD, FTP, and retail channels”. In other words, every single computer store you walk into is going to have giant displays inviting you to grab your Internet Explorer pack. At checkout, your friendly clerk is going to remind you to make sure you grab one. If you find yourself walking out of the store without an IE CD, it’s almost certainly because you made the decision not to. In the incredible event that you do install the OS and can’t figure out where your browser went, there will likely be a hotline at Microsoft dedicated to answering this exact question. No, it’s not going to be especially user-friendly (at least compared to having the application pre-installed). But this is hardly going to be a crisis. Now, it’s easy to decry Microsoft for this move, but it’s also pretty easy to understand why they’re doing it. The company is eager to launch Windows 7 on time, and it isn’t too keen to hand over another 1.7 billion euros in fines. It also doesn’t want to resort to the so-called “ballot screen which would present a list of alternative browsers during the OS’s first boot, which is one of the solutions being proposed. Microsoft may work out (or be forced to use) an alternative solution, but in the mean time this should help the company avoid any further fines. It’s also a way for Microsoft to effectively tell the European Commission to piss off. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Posted: 12 Jun 2009 01:30 PM PDT  Another month, another version of the Kindle. I've been using a Kindle since it was shaped like a very thin doorstop and I'm delighted each time I see a new version. The latest version is the DX, a monstrous 9-inch version of the smaller Kindle 2 that supports direct PDF reading without conversion. Why am I interested in the Kindle? Well, I already have a first-gen Kindle so I'm not too keen on upgrading immediately. But I've been waiting for Amazon to solve something with the Kindle DX that has been nagging me for quite a while. You see, I have a problem. I don't want to read the New York Times on paper anymore but paper seems like the only logical way to read it. Reading the newspaper on a gadget is rude and dangerous - especially with toddlers around the house. It's a tough sell to have a gadget at the breakfast table. But then I know that I'll never read it on the desktop whether through the Times Reader or any other source. So the DX sounded great. It has all of the features of the current Kindle plus rotational sensing and a beautiful, huge screen that might just fit the entire NYT front page and not just one article. So that's why I wanted to see the DX.
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| Gliider Makes Makes Trip Planning A Breeze Posted: 12 Jun 2009 12:58 PM PDT
At Launch Silicon Valley this past week, I saw a demo of Gliider, a Firefox plug-in and tool that allows you to drag and drop travel information you collect from around the web. The video explains the concept behind Gliider, which is still in private beta, fairly well. While the travel 2.0 space is nearly saturated with a plethora of competitive products, Gliider’s tool is incredibly useful and its focus is narrow (Gliider only wants to help users with planning), which could make it standout in the crowd. After you download the plug-in, you can pop-out the Gliider trip planner box from your browser when you need it. Within the planner box, you can create a trip, specify where you are traveling to (Gliider’s search box offers auto suggestions), and when you plan to go. Gliider will automatically create folders for each type of information, including flights, hotels, shopping, transport and food. You can also create customized folders. When you come across useful travel info, like hotel, restaurant, or flight listings, you can highlight the text and images and simply drag and drop the info into the box. Once the item is in the organizer, you can make insert comments to each item. It replaces bookmarking for travel and automatically organizes links, sites, and listings for you. Once you’ve finished the planning process of a trip, Gliider will email you all your details in a PDF file. The startup will also be rolling out a iPhone app that will let you view your planned trips.   Gliider’s proprietary technology will read where and when you will be traveling and provide customized hotel deals for you. And Gliider will also track hotel deals, letting you know when a price goes up or down. The tool doesn’t yet do the same for flights, which would also be a useful item to track. Gliider will soon have a “ask around” feature, which via Facebook Connect, will let you solicit advice on a trip or listing from your Facebook friends. Gliider mainly makes money from affiliate fees—when they suggest deals (they have a partnership with Expedia) and a user clicks to the deal and books, Gliider will get a cut from the purchase. The startup’s CEO and co-founder Jordan Stopler, declined to say how much they receive in these deals but also added that the startup will be offering deals on flights as well in the future. Gliider will also be adding functionality for IE8 soon. The most obvious and serious competitor to Gliider in this space is TripIt, a popular travel site (and one that Mike can’t live without) that lets you generate an itinerary by simply forwarding the service your email confirmations from hotels and airlines. NileGuide also is similar in function. But the beauty of Gliider is that it’s solely focused on planning a trip and not on creating a step by step itinerary for travelers. And the fact that Gliider is a plug-in makes it easy to access and integrate with the browser experience. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Twitter Moves Up The Twitpocalypse. All Hell May Break Loose Today. Posted: 12 Jun 2009 12:15 PM PDT
Twitpocalypse is the name given to a bug that’s about to be exposed. Apparently, it’s similar to the Y2K bug in its nature, and stems from the fact that every tweet sent out has a unique numeric identifier. This identifier is about to hit 2,147,483,647. This number is the signed integer limit and apparently when some third-party Twitter clients start hitting it, the identifiers will start turning negative, and those apps are likely to crash as a result. This crash was supposed to happen sometime tomorrow, according to the countdown, but it looks like Twitter has just moved up the Twitpocalypse time to 21:00 GMT, which is 2 PM Pacific/5PM Eastern time today. Yes, in a couple hours. They’re forcing the failure now so that all hands are on deck working on the issue, rather than having it go down in the middle of the night. This Google Group thread run by some developers working at Twitter explains more. Engineer Matt Sanford originally explained:
But now is saying:
So yeah, be prepared for some Twitter apps to fail in about 2 hours. Hopefully Twitter will be able to resolve this quickly. Update: It’s possibly a coincidence, but Twitter has just welcomed two new members to its API team today. Is Twitter manning up for the battle? Update 2: It’s now past 2 PM and no reports of massive failures yet. Perhaps this really is just like Y2K. Update 3: Here’s an update from Twitter developer Doug Williams:
Update 4: The crisis looks mostly averted. More here.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Help CrunchGear Raise Money For the Child’s Play Charity Posted: 12 Jun 2009 12:13 PM PDT  Here's a quick update on this year's Wiimbledon, folks. If you're unable to make the event in Brooklyn on June 27th and you still want to help CrunchGear raise money for Child's Play then donate your used gadgets to Gazelle. We've set up a "Gazelle for Goods" page and we're hoping to raise $2500 for Penny Arcade's charity, Child's Play. Go dig into your desk drawers and find some old gadgets to donate! Don't forget to sign up at Eventbrite if you want to play in the tournament and remember, it doesn't cost anything to attend. Wiimbledon Gazelle
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| Interview: Ben Heckendorn, Console Modder Posted: 12 Jun 2009 11:14 AM PDT  I recently sat down with the king of gadget modders, Benjamin J. Heckendorn. Ben recently spoke at the Games for Health conference here in Boston, where he talked a bit about his Access Controller, which was born from a request for a controller that could be used with one hand by a soldier who had lost his arm in combat. Heckendorn also brought up the idea that Microsoft ought to make a "Brain Box" available for the Xbox 360, which would enable people to make their own controllers without having to deal with licensing issues. Microsoft would still make money by licensing and selling the Brain Box, while hackers and modders would be free to create unique controllers like the Access Controller without having to go through the expense and legal trouble of getting the controllers approved for retail sale. Sort of a standardized peripheral concept, if you will.
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| This Is Getting Ridiculous: Startups Already Trying To “Assetize” Facebook Vanity URLs Posted: 12 Jun 2009 11:01 AM PDT
Assetize, for one, is readying its account username marketplace for the highly-anticipated-in-some-circles unique addresses. Coinciding with the impending introduction of unique Facebook URLs for the masses (at 12:01 AM Eastern Time tonight), Assetize will enable users to buy and sell them much like you can with regular website addresses on so-called domain name after-markets. The startup already provides the same service for a variety of other accounts, such as Twitter, Gmail and Ning, and will now be adding Facebook to its roster. As Facebook noted in its blog post announcing the upcoming availability of the unique addresses, it’s not possible to change or transfer vanity URLs. This doesn’t pose a problem, says Assetize, because you’re still able to buy and sell ‘access’ to the account, i.e. your login credentials. In related news, SocialToo is jumping on the Facebook vanity URL bandwagon too, by offering its users a way to get a bunch of analytics on their Facebook profiles, like which browsers visitors to the account are using, where they’re located, and where they’re clicking from (if available). All a user would need to do is register for the service, click on the link to get a special code from Facebook, provide the code along with a SocialToo username and password (the username will be what their vanity URLs will be based on), and click submit. Next time they log in, they’ll see a new “SocialStats” tab with statistics for their URL. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| YouTube and Yahoo Logos Offer One Last Reminder About The TV Broadcast Transition Posted: 12 Jun 2009 10:54 AM PDT
While YouTube’s is purely cosmetic, Yahoo was nice enough to link its to a site that gives users more details about the switch. But again, I’m not sure that at this point if you’ve missed the notice after notice that the transition was happening, that’s you’re surfing Yahoo either — or own a computer, or even watch TV. The U.S. government started a $1.2 billion campaign in 2007 to let people know about the switch. But somehow all that time and money still wasn’t enough as Congress had to delay the transition in February (when it was supposed to occur) and give the program more money. Now that the transition is finally happening, the companies that bid on that spectrum last year can finally start actually using it. The auction of those airwaves by the FCC raised nearly $20 billion, with Verizon taking a large chunk of the coveted C-block. You probably remember hearing about the auction on a lot of tech sites because Google threw down the gauntlet early on and promised to pledge at least $4.6 billion towards a part of the spectrum. It didn’t end up winning any part, but by raising the stakes, Google no doubt helped ensure that the minimum bid was met — because the thought of Google winning a huge chunk of wireless airspace that it could use for a number of things, including mobile communication, likely scared the hell out of the giant telcos. And Google also pushed hard to make sure that no matter who won the bidding, that the spectrum was “open,” meaning any company’s products and services could be used on it. Products and services like the ones Google provides. While Google of course owns YouTube, it’s own logo doesn’t reflect the transition today. Perhaps it realizes that the vast majority of its users probably haven’t been in danger of being effected by it since the 80s. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Shutterfly Finally Adds Video Sharing Posted: 12 Jun 2009 10:53 AM PDT
Shutterfly, an online photo sharing and printing site, is adding video capability to its photo sharing sites. Shutterfly is using video hosting site Motionbox to power its video sharing service. So when you upload a video to your Shutterfly Share site, it will also be stored in your Motionbox account. If you upload to Motionbox directly, you will be given the option to post your video to your Shutterfly Share site. Users can also share videos to social networking sites including Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Blogger can upgrade for unlimited video storage and HD-quality playback. The free account is a little limiting for storage—you can only upload ten video clips. For $30 per year, you can have a premium subscription which allows higher file size limits, unlimited video downloads and HD-quality playback. I’m assuming that Shutterfly will monetize the addition of videos by offering customized DVDs of clips. Currently, the company offers users a variety or printing services where users can not only print their photos, but also create cards, mugs, invitations, apparel and more with photos emblazoned on each item. But I’m not sure how else Shutterfly can make money off of the video component. Shutterfly, which IPO’d in 2006, is playing catch up to other more popular photo sharing sites, like Flickr and Photobucket, which both host video as well as photos. Even Facebook is becoming the go-to destination to share photos and videos. But Shutterfly, a vestige of the dot-com boom and bust, has managed to survive, despite being in an ultra competitive space that’s chock full of similar offerings and products. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Flickr Tests Twitter Integration With Email Uploads Posted: 12 Jun 2009 09:02 AM PDT
Watch out TwitPic, Flickr is finally waking up to the power of letting users share links to their photos over Twitter. Flickr members can now sign up for the Flickr Twitter Beta, which allows them to link their Flickr and Twitter accounts (using Oauth) to their send out a Tweet whenever they upload a new photo via email. Here is an example from a Twitter employee (see screenshot), which then links to this photo on Flickr. This only works for email uploads right now. Flickr gives you a special @photos.flickr.com email address which allows you to email photos directly into your Flickr stream from your mobile phone or desktop email. If you want to Tweet out a photo, you simply add “2twitter” at the end of your special email address before the @ sign. It is a bit kludgy. (Why not just add it as a feature to a mobile Flickr app instead?) But once you set it up, it is pretty easy. I just tried it myself. There is nothing like Tweeting out a photo to get an instant response. This is just a taste of where Flickr might be going. Right now, you can’t choose to Tweet out photos you upload directly to the Website (yet). But the beta test points in that direction. Flickr is using its own shortened URL (http://flic.kr). And it is letting users choose which photos to share via Twitter instead of automatically sharing all uploaded photos, which is the right way to do it. (Hat tip to Ouriel, who has a more complicated way to do the same thing via Twitterfeed). Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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Facebook has just hired 
We were the 
So, as just about everyone on Twitter was 
The web is currently 
Twitter users, the Twitpocalypse is upon us.
Facebook vanity URLs may not be here just yet, but that isn’t preventing startups from readying offerings that aim to complement them (or you could say piggy-back on them). 
If you’re reading this, chances are you haven’t been using an over-the-air antenna to get analog television service for quite some time. I’m not even sure I’ve seen the “rabbit ears” since the 80s. But just in case you are one of the rumored 
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