Friday, June 12, 2009

The Latest from TechCrunch

The Latest from TechCrunch

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Browser Wars Continue: Apple Claims 11 Million Downloads For New Safari In 3 Days

Posted: 12 Jun 2009 06:02 AM PDT

Opera may be reinventing the web next week, but in the meantime the browser wars continue to rage on. Apple has come out with a news release claiming its latest browser, Safari 4, has topped 11 million downloads in the first three days of its release. Surprisingly, it also claims over half of those (or 6 million to be specific) were the Windows version of the program.

Apple continues to tout the speed of its browser, claiming that it loads HTML pages 3 times faster than both Firefox 3 and IE8, and that the new Nitro JavaScript engine executes JavaScript nearly 8 times faster than IE 8 and more than four times faster than Mozilla’s latest browser version. On a related note, Apple also says in the upcoming Mac OS X Snow Leopard release, Safari will run as a 64-bit application, boosting the performance of the Nitro JavaScript engine by up to 50 %.

As Erick has stated before, the discussion regarding which company now markets the fastest browser - I’m sticking to Google Chrome - is irrelevant as long as all of them speed up.

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Next Week, Opera Claims It Will “Reinvent The Web”

Posted: 12 Jun 2009 05:40 AM PDT

We’ve heard the phrase ‘reinventing the web’ too many times already, so we’re wary of Opera’s claims, but this made us curious anyhow. The browser maker has just unveiled Opera 10 in beta, so it could be taking the wraps off the product and taking it public rather quickly. Or it could be something entirely different.

Opera users don’t seem to know what’s going on either.

We’ve asked the company for clarity, although we don’t expect a clarifying response at all. We’ll just have to wait until June 16th; everyone can stop doing whatever it is they are doing on the current Web for now until Opera is ready with the new version. :)

In the meantime, anyone care to venture a guess?

And no, it’s likely not the Internet on a stick.

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A Recipe Site Goes IPO, In Japan (Cookpad)

Posted: 12 Jun 2009 04:50 AM PDT

cookpad_logoIt seems that even in this downturn, there is still room for tech IPOs, at least in Japan. Cookpad [JP], the nation’s biggest site for sharing recipes, today announced it will be listed in the “Mothers” section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange on July 17.

Cookpad was launched as early as 1997 by the Tokyo-based company of the same name. The Japanese-only site now offers nearly 560,000 different recipes (submitted by users) and saw a whopping 351 million page views last month, generated by 6.8 million unique visitors. By way of comparison, one of America’s leading recipe sites, Allrecipes.com, claims it has almost double that number, but Google Trends shows there isn’t too much of difference.

cookpad_allrecipes_google_trends

Targeting mostly Japanese women in their 20s and 30s, Cookpad makes a decent amount of money. The site expects $18.5 million in revenues and $3.6 million net profit for the current fiscal year (that ends April 2010). Basic membership is free, but users can opt-in for a premium version ($3 monthly) to get access to more functions. Additional money comes in via display ads.

More information (in English) about the site can be found here.

The “Mothers” section for high-growth startup companies is the same in which Japanese site GREE, a mobile-only social gaming service that went IPO in December last year, achieved a market cap of $1.3 billion on its first day. GREE and Cookpad going IPO is good news for the Japanese web industry, which targets the third biggest Internet population in the world.

cookpad_screengrab

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Online Furniture Outlet MyFab Raises An Extra €5 Million

Posted: 12 Jun 2009 04:29 AM PDT

Paris-based MyFab has just raised €5 million ($7 million) in a second round, which was led by previous investor Alven Capital and joined by BV Capital. The total amount invested in the company is now €7 million ($8.9 million). MyFab - which is currently available only in French and German - is an interesting e-commerce play in that its mission consists of cutting out all middlemen in the process of consumers buying furniture. According to the company big furniture brands - particularly those wearing the 'design' hat - often outsource the whole manufacturing process of sofas, lamps, etc. to factories in foreign countries and charge ridiculous prices for the end-product compared to the total cost of production.


WizeHive Shaping Up To Become A Powerful Collaboration Tool

Posted: 12 Jun 2009 03:56 AM PDT

At the end of last year, we talked about and gave away some beta invites for newcomer WizeHive, a group messaging and task management app that rivals the likes of Yammer, Present.ly, Producteev and to some degree even more full-fledged collaboration services like BaseCamp and Central Desktop.

Since then, founders Mike Carson and Michael Levinson - the latter is also founder of DreamIt Ventures - have been bootstrapping their way to a pretty powerful business tool boasting a lot of useful features.

One recently added feature is push/pull integration with Twitter, which enables users to perform certain actions like creating tasks and notes from individual Twitter accounts, with the additional ability to retrieve and modify certain information from Twitter. Also, WizeHive now comes with what Levinson refers to as "3D task management", or the ability to pick which data to display in rows, columns and which data you want color coded at intersecting cells, creating a nice visual overview of your current ‘workspace’. You can get an overview of all new features in separate demo videos on Levinson’s Vimeo channel.

The core task management functionality has also been revamped and now sports a nifty AJAX front-end that allows people to easily drag and drop tasks, assign tasks to other people, etc. Last but not least, WizeHive now also comes with an Adobe AIR-powered desktop client that features a tab with Twitter-style activity feeds as well as a list of tasks much like you would if you were using the web app.

WizeHive, which is still in beta mode, now boasts about 1000 active users who have entered or e-mailed in over 26000 notes and over 6700 tasks. When it’s finally ready for the public, WizeHive will have to compete for attention with a boatload of online collaboration and task management application providers, but if it ultimately turns out it can’t, it most certainly won’t be because the product doesn’t stack up to the rest.

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Palm Pixie Is Real, But May Never Come To Market

Posted: 12 Jun 2009 01:55 AM PDT

Lots of excitement today over a second Palm WebOS device now that the Pre has launched. The only problem is that none of this is news. We broke the story about the device, code named Pixie, on April 29. A day later we had the Pixie name and additional details.

As far as I can tell there are no additional details coming out now. So I’ll supply additional information that we’ve gathered. Our sources in Asia tell us that Palm continues to push development of the device but is far from making a launch decision. “Palm has decided to put the Pixie on hold until they have better visibility into how its current models are selling in the market.”

Our guess is that low Pre sales rates make it less likely for the Pixie to hit the market this year. Palm’s WebOS is the best mobile operating system in existence, in our humble opinion. But the hardware is, at best, a B.

We’ve also heard from multiple sources that Palm initially ordered 500,000 units of the Palm Pre from Foxconn for delivery by the end of May. Instead, they got 150,000 units in June. The reason? “the device’s complicated mechanical design caused low yield rates.” The result was a delayed launch and poor supply.

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Twitter User Spamming Himself Crazy

Posted: 12 Jun 2009 01:27 AM PDT

A Twitter user who has effectively spammed himself senseless reaches out to us for help. And we’re going to oblige. The only trouble is, he’s making yet another error in judgment, because my guess is this is going to make things worse.

Ryan Barr started a petition on Twitter to ask AT&T to “offer reasonable iPhone 3GS upgrade prices.” And even though it’s unlikely that AT&T cares even a little bit about this or any other petition, it’s getting some traction. Nearly 10,000 people have “signed” it.

The problem is that every time someone signs the petition it autotweets the message “Petition: AT&T to offer reasonable iPhone 3GS upgrade prices http://twitition.com/f96aq @ryanbarr,” which sends a message back to Barr and absolutely pollutes the reply stream (the only really useful way to interact with Twitter).

Anyway, here’s Barr’s message. I just signed the petition myself and I’m guessing a lot of you will, too. But don’t worry Ryan. It’ll slow down eventually, probably.

Dear TechCrunch,

My name is Ryan Barr, known on Twitter as @ryanbarr . If you may have noticed, I started a petition (or twitition) found here: http://twitition.com/f96aq .

I want out.

When I first started the petition, it was due to a rant I was having about the price of the phone. It didn’t take long for me to truly not care about the prices as much as I had. And it didn’t take much longer for the petition I started to go out of control.

At the time of this e-mail the petition just passed 9200 signatures. For each signature, a message is tweeted as follows:

“Petition: AT&T to offer reasonable iPhone 3GS upgrade prices http://twitition.com/f96aq @ryanbarr”

That’s right, 9200 @ryanbarr’s over the span of two (going on three) days. This does not include the unnecessary retweets people also make. I can no longer stand not being able to see real replies in my timeline. I have AT&T employees following me and saying stuff behind my back when I was just ranting on a site that seemed to have little activity.

I completely, COMPLETELY regret pressing the submit button. As the petition nears the 10000 mark I fear even more. As at that mark, TweetMeme will show me as a TM_10000 (@http://twitter.com/TM_10000) … the first, ever.

TechCrunch — you have the power to make businesses grow. You have the power to make or break the reputation of a new device. Please, help me find a way out of this petition. The attention I am receiving is unwanted — I just want to be able to come clear to all the signers and say, “I don’t want in this anymore. I didn’t mean for it to last this long.”

Thanks for anything and for the great reads over the longhaul.

Best Regards,
Ryan Barr

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Flowgram Was Cool. Now It’s Dead

Posted: 12 Jun 2009 12:01 AM PDT

Well, this is a bummer. Flowgram, a promising startup that launched last July, is a goner.

The service let users create screencasts with live websites, and the early beta users really liked it:

What you see above is not a video or a slide show, it is a Flowgram. If you click on it, you will be taken to a full-screen player with what appears to be a screencast with a voiceover. Except that you can control the pages by scrolling up and down, watching any videos that might be on the page, or clicking on the live links (which takes you out of the Flowgram to that Website, but if you hit the back button it picks up where it left off). You can also add comments and share the Flowgram via a widget like the one above, which is muted and requires you to click through for the full experience.

But this evening founder Abhay Parekh sent an email out to users letting them know that the service would be closed by the end of June (in fact it’s dead now):

Dear Flowgram user:

Today is a sad day for us. We have decided to terminate the Flowgram service as of the end of the month (June 30th, 2009). The service received excellent reviews and had an enthusiastic core user base. However, we were not able to demonstrate (especially in these economic times) that Flowgrams would ever be prevalent enough for us to adequately monetize the business, either though ads or subscriptions. This is obviously very disappointing, but building the Flowgram platform was a lot of fun, and it was wonderful to see how many of you used our tool to express yourselves in a deep and meaningful way.

Although you won’t be able to play your Flowgrams after the end of the month, you can export them to video by clicking “share” from the website or “more sharing options” from the Flowgram player and scrolling down to the export to video section. It is very important, if you wish to keep your content, that you export to video and download the video by the end of the month. Please let us know at support@flowgram.com if you have any difficulties doing this.

Again, I would like to thank you for your support, for your Flowgrams and for your good wishes.

Best Regards
Abhay Parekh (Founder) and the rest of the Flowgram Team

Flowgram enters the DeadPool after raising $1.3 million from prominent angel investors Reid Hoffman, Josh Kopelman, Caterina Fake, Stewart Butterfield, Bud Colligan, Kevin Lynch, Joi Ito and Rajeev Motwani. Just goes to show that even the smartest and richest people in Silicon Valley can still make a whopper of a bad investment decision.

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Thing Labs: We Had Plinky, Now We Have The Brain — And It Uses Twitter

Posted: 11 Jun 2009 08:25 PM PDT

picture-95Back in January, Jason Shellen, a former Googler known for his work on Blogger and Google Reader, launched Plinky, a new approach to blogging that wanted to give users a way to be more engaged in the process. The service got off to a fast start, but talk about it has dwindled in recent months. So now Shellen is ready to start something new. Something that utilizes yes, Twitter.

While Plinky will continue on as a product, Shellen is changing the name of the company to Thing Labs. The catalyst of this change was Plinky acquiring the technology Google Reader co-founder Chris Wetherell has been working on since he left Google. Wetherell is joining the company as the VP of Technology. The rest of the Plinky team will be joining in this new endeavor, and Shellen also tells me that they’ve made a new high-profile hire on the engineering end, that they’re not ready to announce yet.

So what is Thing Labs? Apparently, it soon will offer a new user-facing social media application that makes use of existing social networks. Shellen wouldn’t go beyond saying that it will involve the hot social network of choice, Twitter. It should be out at the end of June, we hear.

The company is also moving its headquarters from the east bay of San Francisco, into the city.

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Twitter Starts Verifying Accounts Without Actually Verifying Them

Posted: 11 Jun 2009 07:45 PM PDT

It looks like Twitter has just rolled out its verified accounts. As you can seeing on Michael’s personal account, there’s a “Verified Account” logo right above his name. Twitter has previously announced that it was going to do this, but did so tonight without warning.

What’s odd is that Michael never actually verified his account with anyone at Twitter. Granted, it’s obvious that it is his actual account, but it’s still a bit odd that they would verify it without, you know, verifying it. Expect to see this rolling out over more accounts over the next several days.

What else is a bit odd — okay, odd in a self-serving way — is that a guy with more followers than Michael (yours truly) would not have a verified account while his boss does. Sigh. Even TechCrunch’s regular account with over 700,000 followers isn’t verified. I guess it’s only those select “celebrities” or high profile people that are getting verified, following the Facebook model for vanity URLs.

picture-73

Update: Here’s Twitter’s explanation for who gets the verified accounts right now:

We’re starting with well-known accounts that have had problems with impersonation or identity confusion. (For example, well-known artists, athletes, actors, public officials, and public agencies). We may verify more accounts in the future, but because of the cost and time required, we’re only testing this feature with a small set of folks for the time being. As the test progresses we may be able to expand this test to more accounts over the next several months.

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Scoble’s Building 43 Launching Tonight With Practical Tips For Businesses Stuck In The 90’s

Posted: 11 Jun 2009 03:58 PM PDT

Tonight sees the launch of Robert Scoble’s newest project, Building43, an online community that he’s building in partnership with web-hosting provider Rackspace (we’re having them over to celebrate with us at our birthday party). When we first heard about the new site, Scoble described it as a “community that's for people who are fanatical about the Internet”. He’s still sticking with that vague tagline, but now it’s becoming a bit clearer as to what he actually means by that.

The site’s goal is to help businesses use modern technology and social sites to increase their exposure and the money they’re making. But rather than focus on the latest in breaking news, it’s looking to offer more practical advice, like how to “Pimp Out Your Facebook Page” (see the video below), or The new economics of entrepreneurship, a blog post by Guy Kawasaki.



Scoble says the big difference between the content he’s previously offered and Building43 will be a new emphasis on practical tips, though there will still be more general interviews. He says that we can intially expect to see two new videos a week, but that soon it will have new video features on a daily basis as the site ramps up (there will also be regular blog posts). And he’s kicking things off with an impressive roster of interviewees, including Fred Wilson, Mark Zuckerberg, and Marissa Mayer.

Building 43 has five people working on the site full time, but it’s also looking to accept content from the community. Users will be able to upload video and blog posts after agreeing to a Creative Commons 3 license, and the site will also feature a FriendFeed room that monitors for mentions of the term Building43 across the web. The hope is that any time you have a tech tip that could be applicable to businesses, you can share it with the Building43 community by mentioning it in your post or tweet.

Building 43 has a good idea on its hands — it’s no secret that there are countless businesses with websites stuck in the 90’s and absolutely no idea how to tap into social media. But it’s still going to have to find a way to make these businesses aware of Building 43, which isn’t going to be an easy task (if they don’t know how to use Facebook, there’s a good chance they don’t know who Robert Scoble is or that Building 43 exists).

To hear Scoble talk about Building 43 a bit in his own words and his thoughts on clown computing, check out this Qik video taken at the TechCrunch offices yesterday.

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Happy 4th Birthday, TechCrunch

Posted: 11 Jun 2009 03:50 PM PDT

On June 11, 2005 I wrote a post titled Technorati Beta Profile, and TechCrunch was born. Today we turn four years old.

Over the years I’ve written long posts marking the day with lots of stats. I’m not going to do that today though. All I’m going to do is say Thank You to the awesome people who I get to work with, and the awesome people who come here to read this blog. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.

We’re having a small party at our office today to celebrate. I know everyone can’t make it, but you can watch along on the CrunchCam if you like. The fun starts at 4 pm PST. And you can’t miss me, I’m the one wearing the yellow Captain Kirk tshirt (thanks @orli!).

ps - ok just a few stats. This is the 12,896th post on TechCrunch (and lots more across our blog network). Readers have taken the time to leave 607,031 comments to those posts (after we’ve deleted around 20 million spam comments). That’s an average of nearly 50 comments per post. 5.5 million of you come to visit us each month, making us by far the largest media company in the world that starts with “T” and ends with “Crunch.” I love each and every one of you. Except for the crazy psychos. I don’t love you so much.

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Someecards Have Ads I Actually Pay Attention To. And They’re About To Do Video.

Posted: 11 Jun 2009 03:44 PM PDT

cuervo_1Most online advertising is lame. Yes, the idea of a click-through ad is great, but let’s be honest, a lot of time that involves tricking people into clicking on your ad. Whatever happened to building brand awareness through compelling advertising? I think someecards is pretty damn good at that — and they’re going to get better.

You probably know someecards as the startup that makes those hilarious online greeting cards with the oddly black and white, and usually outdated pictures. If you don’t know what I mean, just look around at any of the examples I’ve included in this post, I’m sure you’ve seen them before. But what you might not know is that the company is also doing branded advertising on some of its cards. For example, they offer cards branded by the hit Showtime show Weeds, the show Bridezillas, the shoemaker Puma and Jose Cuervo.

And the branded campaigns are genius because they include the same witty text as regular cards, but tie it into the campaign in some way. They popped onto my radar a couple weeks ago when I saw a few circulating around the web for the show Weeds, and I immediately saw the appeal of advertising this way, because I actually recalled the Weeds promotional part of the card. Most people, when they look at something online now, simply are trained to not even look at the ads. But when the ads are a part of the content, you have to look.

weeds_4Obviously, this approach won’t work for all types of content, but for these cards it does. “You’re getting a lot better affinity for the brand if you’re doing things this way,” someecards co-founder Duncan Mitchell tells us.

And while someecards also wraps more traditional online ads around the cards on their main pages, the company realizes that a lot of times those ads that surround content or appear as interstitials in videos, violate the content in some regards. So why not work the ad into the content someway because, “what’s funny is funny,” says co-founder Brook Lundy.

While most advertisers are still obsessed with the idea of click-throughs in online ads, they’re “reluctantly moving” beyond that a bit, according to Mitchell. One thing someecards offers for its cards is the immediate share numbers, through the URL shortening service bit.ly. Mitchell says that advertisers like to see when a card is virally spreading on services like Twitter and Facebook. And they’re starting to acknowledge that this kind of word-of-mouth spreading on the web by way of the share is a powerful tool.

The next step in the branded movement for someecards is to get into video. In the next few weeks, the company will launch its first video campaigns, promoting a new show made by Comedy Central. The clips, like the someecards, will be brief (around 15 seconds) and will feature the actors of the show performing some dialogue outlined by someecards writers.

Someecards has a bunch of other branded campaigns in the pipeline, including some in the pharma area and PSAs, which should be fun. Embedded below find some great branded someecard examples.

lift_1smooth_1

bride_2dc_8

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YouTube Enters The Stream

Posted: 11 Jun 2009 01:53 PM PDT

YouTube has just enabled a new feature that allows users to directly share their recently uploaded videos to Facebook, Twitter, and Google Reader. This means you’ll be able to syndicate your newly uploaded content directly into your friends’ feeds. You can link your accounts on YouTube’s ‘Upload’ page.

This isn’t exactly a novel feature — many web services have already tied into Facebook, Twitter, and to a lesser extent, Google Reader. But it is notable given the rivalry between Facebook and Google, which which have previously sparred over “openness” and their abilities to tap into the social graph.

The new functionality is limited to new video uploads for now, but I won’t be surprised if YouTube builds on it by allowing users to immediately share all videos that they add to ‘favorites’. Of course, there is already a sharing button located beneath each YouTube video that lets you post videos you like to a variety of services, but this would help automate the process. YouTube is clearly looking to expand its sharing functionality (see YouTube Real-Time, which is currently in private beta testing), and increased sharing to these other services seems like a logical extension.

This is also going to have a major impact on existing video sharing services on Twitter, like TwitVid. These smaller Twitter-specific services do have one advantage over YouTube for the time being, though: unlike TwitPic, YouTube doesn’t allow you to enter a message to share alongside your video link, which means you won’t be able to share any context with it.

It’s also worth noting that I uploaded a video to YouTube to test out the new feature, and while it finished processing over 10 minutes ago, it has yet to get auto-Tweeted.

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Crunchboard: Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers…

Posted: 11 Jun 2009 01:52 PM PDT

For job hunters in Europe, check out our Europe CrunchBoard.

Don’t forget we’re looking for a few good hackers here at TechCrunch.

Here’s a few Crunchboard jobs:

Click here to see all the jobs on CrunchBoard

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Daily Show Rips The New York Times

Posted: 11 Jun 2009 01:51 PM PDT

The Daily Show does a much better job than I did ripping the New York Times. “What’s that? A landline phone? Ha! Look at me. I’m like a reporter from the 80’s.” (Here’s the video on Comedy Central, for our international friends).

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Yahoo Gets A New CFO

Posted: 11 Jun 2009 01:50 PM PDT

Yahoo announced today that the company will be bringing on Tim Morse to replace outgoing CFO Blake Jorgensen. Morse, who is the CFO of Altera, a semiconductor firm, also previously served as the CFO and general manager of business development for General Electric Plastics.

Bartz seems to be bringing in a seasoned executive with series management chops who has both gone through GE’s rigorous training program and experienced the wild ride of being at a tech company.

Yahoo made waves recently with CEO Carol Bartz hinting at a possible search deal, for potential “boatloads of money” with Microsoft a few weeks ago.

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Everyone Calm Down, You Won’t Have To Pay To Re-Download Apps On The iPhone

Posted: 11 Jun 2009 01:22 PM PDT

re-downloadfree-200x300The web threw a hissy fit a couple weeks ago after some screenshots of the iPhone 3.0 beta software indicated that you would have to re-purchase apps that you had removed from your iPhone or iPod touch. But it looks like everyone can calm down now. In the latest iPhone 3.0 GM build, which went live shortly after the WWDC keynote on Monday, the ability to re-download an app you’ve already purchased, looks to be have been restored.

The blog AppAdvice did some digging and found that the new iTunes 8.2 software apparently includes some logic which allows it to tell exactly which iTunes account is authorized for app purchases made. This is to prevent users from sharing apps by signing out of one iTunes account and into another one on the iPhone itself.

As was previously reported, with the iPhone 3.0 beta builds you could re-download apps for free on iTunes on the computer, but if you tried to do it on the device, you were prompted to buy it again. With the 3.0 GM software, after you sync it with you iTunes account, you will see the previous “You have already purchased this item. To download it again for free, select OK.” dialog.

It makes sense, Apple doesn’t want people swapping apps back and forth without paying for them, so it’s requiring that you tie your iPhone or iPod touch to the iTunes account on your computer that you bought the app with. The previous versions of iTunes simply didn’t have that pairing ability fully intact, but the 8.2 version does. And it works with the 3.0 GM. So, end of controversy.

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Mozilla’s Jetpack .2 Gets A Boost From The Future

Posted: 11 Jun 2009 01:09 PM PDT

Last month Mozilla introduced us to Jetpack, a new project from its Labs team that could well change the way browser extensions are installed over the next few years. The project is still in early stages — its blog describes it as primarily a technology preview — but some very cool things are already starting to emerge. Today Mozilla is releasing Jetpack .2, which introduces us to a handful of new features: the sidebar, persistent data storage, and the future.

Sidebars are meant to serve as light and quick side panels in your browser. This kind of feature has existed for years as traditional browser plugins and Firefox extensions, but Jetpack sidebars come with one major advantage: users don’t have to restart their browser to install them. The Mozilla team has put together a sample called the “Video Slide”, which allows you to tuck any video you’re currently watching into the left slidebar, so you can browse the web while the clip keeps playing in view (be sure to check out the video below to see it in action).

Jetpack: Slidebar from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Included with this release the Mozilla team is also introducing a jetpack.future function, which allows developers to make use of APIs that aren’t yet stable (sidebars are included as part of these future-looking APIs). From the Mozilla blog:

Jetpack is two things at once: it is a platform for experimentation and it is also a solid set of APIs that anyone to easily build new Firefox features. To enable Jetpack to be both stable and — at the same time — to experiment with not-quite-yet-ready features we've added the ability to import new features from the "future".

Finally, the new version adds support for persistent data storage between browser restarts, which will be key for creating advanced extensions.

Jetpack is still in early stages and for the time being is probably more interesting for developers than your average Firefox user. But it’s a very compelling project because it could make life much easier for some startups, depending on how robust the technology eventually becomes. We’ve covered plenty of companies building very impressive browser plugins that have fizzled out largely because they couldn’t get users to actually install their plugin — easy as it may seem, that browser reboot can be a real turn-off, especially when you’ve got multiple windows open. By removing this barrier to entry, Jetpack could become a boon for developers.

If you’d like to check out some of the other 40+ available Jetpacks, check out the list here, which includes an instant dictionary lookup and a Gmail notifier.



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Overview Of The Japanese Web And An Interview With the CEO Of Japan’s Biggest Social Network Mixi (GeeksOnAPlane In Tokyo)

Posted: 11 Jun 2009 01:07 PM PDT

startonomicsThe second day of the Geeks on a Plane geeky spree in Japan was completely filled with (mostly) insightful presentations, panels and pitches from newly launched Japanese start-ups (here is an overview of day one). The Startonomics Tokyo event was held Tuesday at the offices of KDDI Web Communications (one of Japan’s biggest hosting providers) in downtown Tokyo.

What follows is a brief overview of what you missed during that day, followed by a quick summary (and full video) of an on-stage interview with Kenji Kasahara. Kasahara is CEO of Mixi, Japan’s biggest social network, and openly spoke about his success story (the interview was done on the third and final day of GoaP’s Tokyo leg).

But first, here is a summary of all the presentations and panels that the GeeksOnAPlane witnessed during Startonomics Tokyo. (Note: The following summaries are edited. In addition, the statements listed in the panel summaries don’t necessarily reflect the opinions of all the panelists involved.)

Presentation: Overview of the Japanese online Market: Web, by Tsuruaki Yukawa from Jiji Press

Background and key points:

  • Generally speaking, Japan is a huge online market, even by global standards.
  • With 94 million users, the country’s web population is the third largest in the world (just trailing China and the US).
  • Japanese broadband is about 50% fiber (making it the world’s No. 1 nation in that area according to the OECD).

Slides of the presentation (partly Japanese):


Presentation: Overview of the Japanese online Market: Mobile, by Gen Miyazawa from Cirius Technologies

Background and key points:

  • Japan boasts 100 million 3G users (size of the population: 127 million).
  • 3G penetration rate: 96% (3.5G penetration rate: 35%).
  • iPhone is doing relatively well in Japan, but it’s not killing.
  • Japan’s mobile web traffic still grows faster than the PC traffic.
  • Size of the mobile e-commerce market: around $1.2 billion (data from July 2008).
  • Biggest players in the mobile web only-field: Mobagetown (13 million members) and GREE (10 million members).

Slides of the presentation:

Japanese Mobile Market Overview

Presentation: Overview of the Japanese online Market: Gaming, by Shuji Utsumi from Q Entertainment

Background and key points:

  • Japan’s game industry was born in the 1970s.
  • The sector grew quickly and internationalized heavily, starting in the 1980s.
  • Japan used to be the world’s leading gaming nation but loses influence rapidly.
  • Microsoft’s XBOX360, for example, is managing to beat Sony’s PS3.
  • Japan loves RPGs and family games, while Americans rather play FPS and music games.
  • The gaming industry is now bigger than ever as non-geeks nowadays play, too.
  • Developers from China, Korea and Eastern Europe start entering the gaming market.

Slides of the presentation:

Japanese Game Business Overview (Shuji Utsumi, Startonomics Tokyo, June 2009)

Presentation: Success Story - DeNA, by Shin Ikeji

Background and key points:

Presentation: Kris Tate - American entrepreneur living in Tokyo

Key points:

  • Tate started photo sharing site Zooomr as a teenager four years ago (in Silicon Valley).
  • Tate’s new company is called BlueBridge (in Tokyo).
  • BlueBridge successfully launched AM6 (a Japanese email news delivery service) and just started Keireki (a Japanese-only community “for grown-ups”).
  • Foreign entrepreneurs have better chances regarding PR in Japan because they stand out.

Presentation: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

Key points:

  • The majority of start-ups fails miserably.
  • Those that survive are often completely different in nature when compared to the initial vision of the entrepreneur.
  • The key difference between success and failure is the number of iterations (agile (lean) product development).
  • Ries’ former company IMVU pushed to production up to 50 times daily.
  • Instead of doing PR work, companies should focus on customer feedback before they launch services (customer development).
  • Start-ups building something no one wants will fail.
  • Instead of multiple departments, start-ups should have a problem and a solution team.

Slides (highly recommended to get the whole picture of Ries’ approach):

2009_06_08 The Lean Startup Tokyo edition


Panel: Japan investment overview

Panelists: Shinichiro Fukushige from Mitsubishi UFJ Capital (moderator), Masashi Kobayashi from Infinity Ventures, Brian Nelson from Value Commerce and Yozo Kaneko from ngi group

Background and key points:

  • Similar to the US, the investment climate in Japan is currently “difficult”, with valuations dropping drastically.
  • 49 IPOs in Japan last year, after about 100 in 2007.
  • Majority of Japanese VCs are structured like corporations/banks.
  • Compared to the US, competition among Japanese VCs is weaker, leading to lower valuations.
  • Before going public in Japan, the PE ratio should be higher than 60.
  • Japanese VCs end up owning about 10% of their portfolio companies (US: 20-40%).
  • Two attractive business fields in the future: mobile gaming and “graphical content”.

Panel: US Platforms & Social Networking


Panelists: Dave McClure from Founders Fund, Bradley Horowitz from Google and Dan Gould from Fox Interactive

Key points:

  • Monetization and distribution are more important than features.
  • Facebook is making a mistake in its attempt to copy Twitter, which is a less “personal” service.
  • The US must try and take over Japan’s social payment infrastructure.
  • America’s leading payment gateways are e-commerce sites like Ebay or Amazon (not social networks) because they offer “shit people want to buy”, meaning they don’t need social networking functionalities.
  • Japan’s stored-value cards are very effective in linking the offline and online worlds.
  • McClure sees huge opportunities in building a social network focused on families/moms/children in the US.
  • Mobile: Horowitz views Android as work in progress and in an early stage in the product life cycle, that’s one of the reasons it currently has trouble following the success the iPhone currently sees.


Panel slides:

Overview of US Platforms & Social Networking (Startonomics Tokyo, June 2009)

Panel: US investment overview

Panelists: Dave McClure from Founders Fund, Joyce Kim from Soompi, Ryan Pipkin from Angelsoft and David Troy from Popvox

Key points:

  • The recession has hit the American VC scene harder than the start-ups, meaning VCs have a tougher time raising money now relative to the start-ups that have to live with lower valuations (minus 33-50%).
  • It takes VCs 50% more time currently to close deals.
  • Main focus is now on revenue and getting to break even, less on user acquisition.
  • From an ROI point of view, the downturn means better news for seed funds, incubators and angels than for VCs.
  • Start-ups can now get to proof of concept stage with less than $50,000.
  • Micro-seeds ($100,000 max.) will gain ground in the near future.
  • Only the good VC companies will survive over the next years.


Panel slides:

US Startup Investment Market (Startonomics Tokyo, June 2009)


Lightning talks:
Lightning talks were held by a total of five Japanese start-ups. These were J-Magic (a mobile service provider image focusing on image recognition technology/more info here), AdLocal (a mobile advertising platform whose heat map geographically shows advertisers where they get impressions), Scigineer (recommendation engine provider/more info here) and Cerevo (an innovative photo sharing system/more info here). Jon “Yongfook” Cockle resisted the urge to pitch his social media ROI tracker Peashoot but delivered a presentation of the usage of mascots in Japanese web services instead.

On-stage interview with the CEO of Mixi (on Wednesday):
mixi_logoOn their last day in Tokyo, the GeeksOnAPlane were given the chance to meet someone who can perhaps be described as Japan’s answer to Mark Zuckerberg, Kenji Kasahara. Kasahara became an instant billionaire at 30 when his company, Mixi (Japan’s No. 1 social network), went IPO in 2006.

Kasahara revealed what inspired him to launch Mixi (Friendster’s success), how he got the first users to join his site (Amazon gift certificates), how Mixi grew from 0 to 17 million members in a few years (hardly any ads) and how he values his personal wealth (it’s stocks, not real cash).

I myself wanted to know from him if the severe competition Mixi faces (particularly from domestic players) lets him sleep at night (listen to what he responds at 35:05 min.). This insolent question I put to Kasahara was easily topped by visiting geek Larry Chiang (at 42:15 min.) who asked how a billionaire like him usually scores chicks (”Do girls want to meet your money or you? Do people pretend they are you to get chicks?”).

View the complete on-stage interview with Kasahara in the video below (in English and Japanese, 51:37 min). He was interviewed by Ejovi Nuwere, CEO of Tokyo-based digital media company Land Rush Group.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Nobody Recognizes The Chrome Icon, So Google Wants You To Make A Video About It

Posted: 11 Jun 2009 11:48 AM PDT

Quick, draw the icon for Google’s Chrome browser. It’s got a bunch of primary colors, but that’s all I can remember about it without looking at it. Most people have never seen it, or even know what Chrome is. (It is Google’s browser). Google wants to change all that with a viral marketing campaign.

It is asking people to submit videos showing creative ways to build the Chrome icon. It will pull the best one together into a final reel presumably. Here is where you can submit your videos until July 22 and see what else has been submitted.

But just getting the early Chrome to lend a hand with marketing by spreading videos around the Web is indicative of Google’s marketing philosophy overall. This is not a Bing-style marketing blitz on TV and everywhere else. Although, Google is not above running ads on TV anymore. Browsers are a new market for Google where it still has practically zero mindshare. And it will try to get that mindshare any way it can, both on TV and on the Web.

I wonder which set of ads will be more effective.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

AOL Buys Local Startups Going And Patch (And CEO Tim Armstrong Brings an Investment In-House)

Posted: 11 Jun 2009 10:18 AM PDT

When your main seed investor becomes the CEO of AOL, it does have its fringe benefits. Today, AOL announced its acquisition of two local startups: Patch and Going. AOL’s new CEO Tim Armstrong is a seed investor in Patch, which offers hyperlocal news for small towns and communities. In a note he sent out today to employees, which we’ve obtained from AOL, he notes that he recused himself from the acquisition negotiations and that instead of profiting from the deal he asked to get his initial seed investment back in AOL stock when it goes public. Going is a local event and entertainment listing site based in Boston which raised a $5 million Series A in 2007. Both acquisitions were in the single-digit millions.


Below is Armstrong’s email to employees, discussing the reason for the acquisitions, which is to ramp up AOL’s local presence (one of five main strategies he is pursuing:

AOLers –

Our strategy to win in the five areas we've discussed starts with innovation and passion. Of the five areas, Local remains the largest white space and offers us an ability to improve the lives of many consumers. It's a space that's prime for innovation and an area where we already have strength with a local network that reaches more than 54 million UVs a month and a valuable brand in mapping services, MapQuest.

Our vision isn't just about optimizing what we have – it's about overhauling how we approach this space, drawing on our legacy of connecting communities and our long history of organization through DMOZ. It's about taking one of the most disaggregated experiences on the Web today and making it truly quick and easy for consumers to find the local information they need.

Today, we're announcing two acquisitions that will enable us to better serve audiences by providing experiences that are highly focused on users' own neighborhoods – Patch and Going.

Patch.com was built to provide local towns with a robust and interactive platform to publish news and information, with full-time journalists for each town covering government affairs, education issues, and community events. One of the AOLers in our All Hands meeting on May 29 asked what our plan is to help towns, like his, where the local newspaper has gone out of business. Patch is an acquisition that may eventually help that town. Under the leadership of co-founder and CEO Jon Brod, Patch has been able to launch five initial town sites since February and has just announced four additional communities. Moreover, Patch has already received over 230 user requests for "Patches" spanning 39 states and 12 countries.

The second acquisition is a small company located in Boston – Going. Going has developed a local events platform to discover and share information about things to do in a number of leading cities across the country. Under the leadership of CEO Evan Schumacher, Going has launched sites in 30 cities – including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami – and provides users with RSVP tools and advertisers with self-service event advertising.

On a personal note, I was an early investor in Patch and committed significant dollars to the vision of improving local communities with deeper online information, accountability through journalism, and a platform for communicating. In discussing our local strategy, AOL and Time Warner looked at Patch as a possible acquisition and I recused myself from that process. At the Time Warner negotiated acquisition price, I was in a position to earn a return on my investment in Patch. However, I have decided to forgo any profit from my seed investment in Patch and I have asked to receive just my seed capital in AOL shares once we separate from Time Warner.

Overall, I believe both Patch and Going will add strength and talent to our local efforts and give us an ability to have a unique and defendable local offering that helps people improve their lives. I'm excited that we've reached the stage where we can begin implementing in our five key strategy areas, and with today's announcements we're off to a great start in Local.

Please join me in welcoming the employees of Patch and Going to AOL and the future of AOL Local. –TA

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Tesla Co-Founder Sues CEO Elon Musk For Slander And Breach Of Contract

Posted: 11 Jun 2009 09:41 AM PDT

Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard is suing CEO Elon Musk, citing allegations of slander, libel and breach of contract. Eberhard's lawsuit, which is 22-pages long, was filed on May 26 in San Mateo County, Calif. Superior Court and seeks unspecified damages.

The suit surrounds Musk’s treatment of Eberhard as well as the CEO’s handling of Tesla, alleging that Musk “compromised Tesla Motors' financial health." Eberhard says that Musk began a smear campaign against Eberhard on media outlets, attaching pages of news articles where Musk made negative comments about Eberhard. Eberhard says Musk essentially pushed him out of the company that he founded and consequently took full credit for developing the first electric car the company produced, the Roadster.

Eberhard also claims that Musk not only falsely said that he was the founder of the company, but has also misrepresented his past roles, including the extent of his involvement with the company he founded, PayPal. The suit also says that Tesla didn’t pay him severance or issue stock options, which was part of his contract upon his separation from the company in November of 2007. Some of the accusations border on hilarity, with Eberhard accusing Tesla of destroying his customized Roadster before the car was given to him.

The lawsuit is embedded below.According to Wired’s report, Tesla calls the suit a “fictionalized account of Tesla's early years.” Tesla has also said that they plan to counter sure Eberhard. While some of the suit seems like sour grapes, the breach of contract accusations take on a more serious tone. It’s unclear how much Eberhard is seeking in damages.

Daimler recently took a 10% (or $50 million) stake in Tesla, putting the company’s valuation at $500 million. You can see our full coverage of Tesla and Elon Musk here.


Tesla lawsuit -

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Interview: Jack Conte, Internet Musician

Posted: 11 Jun 2009 09:30 AM PDT

Jack Conte is an Internet musician who makes his living from selling MP3s online and generally running around like a madman making great music. I was introduced to him through Electro-Harmonix but I was amazed when I found the rest of his great music online. I met with him at a cafe in San Francisco where we drank huge bowls of coffee and talked music, technology, and hardware. He makes videosongs of himself recording his songs and sells his music online. Oddly enough, he also Tweets. CG: So from a hardware perspective, and I know you use a lot of gear, it's interesting how far things have come from your Dad's old amp in the basement to a box that does everything for you. How have things changed in your experience so far and in terms of being a musician trying to get an authentic sound? Jack: I think my ear is pretty good, but I don't have formal training so my ear isn't that good. I know when I like a sound. I'm pretty confident knowing when I like something... sometimes it's the "wrong thing" but in terms of gear I always like the old stuff. My philosophy is that if it's still around, it's stuff people couldn't bear to throw away. The thing that's cool about Electro-Harmonix is that they still make all those old pedals and old tubes. It's tempting to get those electronic guitar boxes that does everything - I've had those before - but instead of opening doors they kind of close doors. The limitations imposed by that gear, using certain analog pedals, adds creative stimulation.


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