The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Google Eases The Switch From Lotus Notes To Google Apps
- Quick.tv exits private beta with clickable video platform
- Blockbuster OnDemand Coming to Samsung HDTVs, Blu-ray Players, and Home Theater Systems
- YouTube Will Be Next To Kiss IE6 Support Goodbye
- Windows Mobile Will Open Up Its App Store To Developers Soon. Will They Bite?
- Microsoft’s Azure Gets A Business Model And An Official Release Date
- Crank That Soulja Boy Remix On The iPhone
- SEC Greenlights Prosper; P2P Lending Resumes In 14 States, More Coming
- Index Puts $17 million Into… Fast Food?
- Financial Times Tweets That It Now Has An iPhone App. Yup, It’s Pink.
- TuneWiki: From #1 App On Cydia To Legit Apps For iPhone, Android And BlackBerry
- Google Loses Engineering Director Who Once Caused Steve Ballmer To Melt Down
- Twitter Back on Track In June With 20 Million U.S. Visitors
- A Workaround For The Gmail Push Workaround
- Fonera+ Gets Upgraded to 2.0, Adds Built-in Download and Upload Services, Other Goodies
- Cougars, Yuppies, And Sugar Daddies, Oh My! Ex-Googlers Working On Local Startup TownMe
- USA Today Launches Headline Aggregator Newsdeck
- NYTimes Tech Editor Reads TechCrunch Every Morning For Story Ideas
- Google Finance Gets A Little More Fancy
- Guinness World Records Reaches New Levels Of Fail
- FriendFeed Adds A Mob Tear Gas Option With “Disable Comments”
- The Gap Grows Wider: MySpace Eats Facebook’s Dust In The U.S.
- Interview: Pandora CTO Tom Conrad On Streaming Royalty Rates And New Funding
- Mark Can Have Chris’ Leftovers. Randi Gets Michael.
- Why Teens Aren’t Using Twitter: It Doesn’t Feel Safe
| Google Eases The Switch From Lotus Notes To Google Apps Posted: 14 Jul 2009 08:56 AM PDT
A few weeks ago, Google announced a new plug-in that will sync Google Apps—the enterprise versions of Gmail, contacts, and calendar—with Microsoft's Outlook, letting customers use Outlook on their desktops if that is what they are comfortable with, and Google Apps will run on the backend. Of course, the plug-in ended up running into a few problems. But the takeaway of the news is that Google is trying to make it simple and cost-effective for enterprise customers to make the switch from more commonly used enterprise applications, such as Microsoft’s Outlook, to Google Apps. Today, Google is adding the ability to migrate from another popular enterprise app, IBM’s Lotus Notes. The new tool lets customers migrate mail, calendar and contacts from Notes to Google Apps. The syncing tool, which Google says is a native Notes application, can be installed and configured in less than 30 minutes, for multiple users at once. The tool has already been tested with 40 of Google’s enterprise clients, including JohnsonDiversey (10K users) and Valeo (32K users). The tool is free for Google Apps Premier and Edu customers. Google says that the migration is easy to deploy, requires no downtime (users can continue to use Notes even during the migration process), gives customers the ability to migrate multiple offices simultaneously or separately, and allows for centralized event logging to manage and monitor migration across any number of Domino servers and sites. Currently there are 145 million licenses for Lotus Notes. Google pitches that the 17 percent of the business email market that’s on Lotus Notes will save a considerable amount of money by switching to Google Apps. How much? Google says that the enterprise version of Gmail is a third of the cost of on-premise email solutions like Notes and Outlook/Exchange. One of the clients who has used the tool, Hamilton Beach, claims a projected savings of 60 percent over the next five years. As a whole, Google says that Google Apps is three to four times less expensive than traditional on-premise systems. There’s no doubt that Google is making a big push to become a player in the enterprise space. Google currently has nearly two million businesses using Google Apps, which first launched in 2006, and hopes to grow that number. Google has been making a strong case for businesses to switch to Google Apps, especially focusing on convincing Microsoft enterprise customers. Google recently took the beta label off Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and GTalk, which is also part of its strategy to entice enterprise customers to switch to Google Apps.
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| Quick.tv exits private beta with clickable video platform Posted: 14 Jul 2009 08:06 AM PDT  Earlier this month Joost set down its arms in the race to beat YouTube, Hulu and others to become the predominant consumer online video giant. It fixed its sights instead on providing white label video platforms for companies. However, there is of course already plenty of competition. Brightcove is a long, well known player and Magnify is growing its white label service. Ooyala recently signed more than 40 mid to large publishers on 12-24 month agreements and they also have a growing self-serve products. Others in that space include Videobloom and Worldtv. But it's this self-serve end of the market which is now being targeted by a new entrant: Quick.tv They are now launching out of a private beta with an application which allows video makers to skin their content with clickable feature like ads and polls, and also pull out metrics from the responses.
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| Blockbuster OnDemand Coming to Samsung HDTVs, Blu-ray Players, and Home Theater Systems Posted: 14 Jul 2009 07:06 AM PDT  What did I say when the Blockbuster OnDemand service launched last year? I said something about not discounting the service because the company has a lot riding on it, that's what. This partnership between Blockbuster and Samsung which will place the service on the majority of Samsung's new video gear implies that the service broke through to the mainstream and is here to stay. New Samsung HDTVs, Blu-ray players, and home theater systems should come with the service this coming Fall. The presser didn't lay out exactly what models will be equipped with the service, but a gigantic logo will probably be somewhere on the retail box promoting the service. Don't worry about delaying your HDTV purchase just for this feature though. Samsung LED HDTV 7000 series and above, along with LCD/plasma 650 series, and some 2009 Blu-ray players will also be able to run the service with just a firmware update soon.
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| YouTube Will Be Next To Kiss IE6 Support Goodbye Posted: 14 Jul 2009 06:55 AM PDT
Judging by this screenshot taken by an IE6 user who was watching some videos on YouTube, it appears the Google company will be phasing out support for the browser shortly. I don’t have Internet Explorer 6 installed on my computer, so I can’t verify this first hand, but illogical it seems not and a simple Twitter search shows multiple people confirming the news. Heck, some are even downright ecstatic over the news. The online video behemoth is pointing to ‘modern’ browsers like Google Chrome (twice on the same page even, unsurprisingly), Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.5 as alternatives. With the impending move, YouTube follows in the footsteps of that other Web 2.0 poster child, Digg, which recently hinted at wanting to cut support for the browser too. Digg’s User Experience Architect Mark Trammell at the time wrote that the site is strongly considering removing essential features like digging and commenting for IE6 users. He explained that while IE6 users make up around 5% of site traffic, it only accounts for 1% of diggs, buries, and comments. YouTube so far hasn’t officially communicated about the desire to drop support for IE6, but it’s conceivable that like Digg it would rather have its developers spend time optimizing the service for newer, better browsers than wasting man hours on the oft-despised Microsoft browser. We recently reported that Internet Explorer is losing market share to Firefox and Safari at a rapid pace. (Thanks to Valieriy Slysarenko for the tip) Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Windows Mobile Will Open Up Its App Store To Developers Soon. Will They Bite? Posted: 14 Jul 2009 06:20 AM PDT
So how does Microsoft intend to convince developers to flock to the program? Well according to Todd Brix, Senior Director of Mobile Platform Services at Microsoft, the company’s reach should already be enough to pique developer interest, especially now that it turns out Marketplace for Mobile will support any phone powered by Windows Mobile 6.x. WinMo’s reach comes from the existing ecosystem of partners and ISVs (independent software vendors) that developers can tap into, as well as the not-to-be-underestimated market share of Windows Mobile phones. Whether you think Microsoft’s operating system for handheld devices is a dog compared to the iPhone, Palm WebOS or Android platform—I know I do after years of camp fights with a Windows Mobile 6-powered HTC S710—over 30 million phones equipped with the software have been sold to date. Microsoft is today announcing a number of other things also. The company is touting a new category in the store that it hopes will become a strong unique selling proposition: Business apps. The enterprise market has long been Redmond’s bread and butter, so it makes sense for them to put a lot of focus on that category. Other than that, the company is launching a developer contest and has detailed pricing for certification of applications. In short: there will be an annual application fee of $99 per app, but the first five ones (per developer) that find their way to the store are free of charge if submitted before the end of 2009. Microsoft will take a 30% cut of revenues generated by paid applications, which is the same that Apple charges for paid iPhone apps. Microsoft is stepping into this game ridiculously late. While there are already an estimated 20,000 applications for the Windows Mobile platform out there, the application store isn’t launching until the end of this year (likely in December, I’m told). Microsoft is essentially acknowledging Apple got it right with its App Store years ago and is only now trying to follow in its footsteps. Earlier, Microsoft had said that it expects to launch this Fall with an estimated 600 certified applications. In the meantime, Google has already gone live with the Android Market, while RIM has its App World for BlackBerry, Palm has introduced its App Catalog store and Nokia recently took the wraps off its Ovi Store. Heck, even handset maker LG beat Microsoft by launching its own application store with about 1,400 apps for Windows Mobile-powered phones just yesterday. I wonder if by the time Microsoft finally gets around to pushing Marketplace for Mobile live, people are going to have a problem looking at it as a differentiating product rather than as a late catch-up play by Redmond. What do you think?
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| Microsoft’s Azure Gets A Business Model And An Official Release Date Posted: 14 Jul 2009 06:00 AM PDT
This is a big week for Microsoft when it comes to the cloud. First, the company debuted Office 2010, which made a move towards the browser with cloud-based versions of Word, PowerPoint and Excel. Today, Microsoft is announcing the business model and launch timing for Azure, the company’s much hyped cloud operating system. The platform also includes a Web-based relational database in Microsoft SQL Azure, and connectivity and interoperability with .NET Services. Microsoft says that Azure will be offered for purchase through a consumption-based pricing model and will try to continue to offer promotional discounts to enterprise customers. Pricing for Azure’s OS is $0.12 cents an hour for computing and $0.15 cents per Gigabyte per month for storage. SQL Azure will offer a basic $9.99 per month plan and a $99.99 business edition, which has a database capacity of up to ten gigabytes. Microsoft also announced that Azure will begin to be commercially available at its Professional Developers Conference, which takes place in mid-November. Azure was announced last fall, and developers have already been testing the cloud based OS via Microsoft’s Community Technology Preview. Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie has been saying that Azure will establish Microsoft’s place in the cloud, especially given the dual strength of Microsoft's platforms and applications and because of its lengthy experience serving both the consumer and enterprise spaces. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Crank That Soulja Boy Remix On The iPhone Posted: 14 Jul 2009 05:45 AM PDT
It’s launching a new app platform called Romplr in conjunction with digital entertainment studio, Moderati. The first app built on the platform, released today, allows you to remix songs by hip hop artist Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em. Basically, you pick one of Soulja Boy’s tracks, and controls pop up that allow you to decide the various aspects of the song that you hear. And you can tweak things pretty easily. Then, when you’re done, you can share the recording you just made via email, on the Romplr site or on Facebook with one click. Right now, you can only edit three tracks “Crank That", "Hey You There" and "Turn My Swag On,” but you will be able to download more. The UI is nothing to write home about, but for those millions of people who inexplicably download ringtones, apps like this should be right up their alley. And apps like this should be a good test of the in-app purchasing system that was implemented with the iPhone 3.0 software update. It’s not clear if you buy a song in the app, if you can also access it through iTunes, but I would assume not. Regardless, apps that use real music tracks, such as Tap Tap Revenge, are proving to be hugely popular. Moderati has a history of success in the App Store as it was behind the popular Zippo app, which was downloaded over 4 million times, we’re told. But the plan for this project extends beyond just the iPhone, as Android, BlackBerry and Ovi are all being targeted as well. You can find the Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em Romplr app in the App Store now for $4.99 [iTunes Link].
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| SEC Greenlights Prosper; P2P Lending Resumes In 14 States, More Coming Posted: 14 Jul 2009 04:56 AM PDT
The Securities and Exchange Commission is now greenlighting Prosper to facilitate peer-to-peer lending in 14 states with more on the way, borrowing nearly nationwide. Prosper is now the first and thus only Internet auction-based P2P loans platform to have its registration statement declared effective by the SEC, which is evidently good news for other players in the P2P lending industry, such as Lending Club. SEC’s approval of Prosper’s secondary marketplace, which enables people to loan money directly to other individual and institutional investors, comes a couple of months after the startup had already reignited its lending platform in the State of California (update: and apparently had to suspend it again a few days after). Chris Larsen, CEO and co-founder of Prosper, is happy the dry period is over:
Starting today, Prosper is available to lenders in California, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New York, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Borrowing is permitted in the District of Columbia and all states except Iowa, Kansas, Maine, and North Dakota. Prosper has raised approx. $40 million in capital to date from Accel Partners, DAG Ventures, Fidelity Ventures and Benchmark Capital, among other investors. The company was the first to introduce the concept of people-to-people lending in the U.S. when it launched in 2006. From the time the startup officially launched up until the time it entered an SEC registration quiet period in October 2008, Prosper claims to have grown to more than 800,000 members, facilitating approximately $180 million in personal loans. Prosper has now enhanced its auction model to include a so-called hard bid floor for each listing, which helps lenders appropriately price for risk while investing online. The bid floor for each listing is calculated by adding the national average certificate of deposit rate that matches the term of the borrower loan to the minimum estimated loss rate assigned to each listing. In addition, Prosper has lowered its minimum bid requirement to $25 (previously $50), which should make it easier for lenders to diversify, particularly smaller ones. More details are available on the Prosper blog. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Index Puts $17 million Into… Fast Food? Posted: 14 Jul 2009 02:38 AM PDT
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| Financial Times Tweets That It Now Has An iPhone App. Yup, It’s Pink. Posted: 14 Jul 2009 02:16 AM PDT International business newspaper and website Financial Times, founded in 1888, is now part of the iPhone app club with the release of a free application on the iTunes App Store (iTunes link). The move comes after most of its competitors released applications for the platform back in 1891 (ok not really, but long ago anyway). Remarkably, FT announced the release of the application using its Twitter and TwitPic accounts, which means we have screenshots too. As you can tell from the pictures, Financial Times’ iPhone app comes with a world map view of the global markets, in-depth looks at stocks with interactive charts and detailed tearsheets so you can track performance for individual companies. It’s good to know there are still certainties in life: the app comes in trademark FT Update: while the app is free, there are restrictions to which users can access content free of charge:
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| TuneWiki: From #1 App On Cydia To Legit Apps For iPhone, Android And BlackBerry Posted: 14 Jul 2009 01:35 AM PDT
Up until now, the most downloaded application for jailbroken iPhones on Cydia was also a music-related one: TuneWiki, an app that brings music streaming, a lyrics database and music videos from YouTube to one social, customizable media player (iTunes link). In total, the application was downloaded an estimated 2 million times through the Cydia Store. As of yesterday, venture capital-backed TuneWiki went ‘legit’ by releasing an official application for the iPhone platform, and the app is already making its way to the list of most popular apps on the App Store. It brings lots of goodness, especially for a free app. When you use TuneWiki to stream radio station broadcasts, the software lets you purchase songs you’re listening to directly from iTunes with just one click. It automatically streams lyrics from its database of over 2.7 million licensed lyrics files for both audio and video, and includes the option to translate them into 40+ languages. TuneWiki also plugs into third-party social networks so you can share music you’re listening to on Facebook and Twitter, and features interactive music maps that show what users are listening to across the globe. Finally, you can ’skin’ the player to personalize your experience. TuneWiki is not only available on the iPhone / iPod Touch, as it also boasts applications for the Android platform (since May 2008) and BlackBerry. A must-have for music lovers.
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| Google Loses Engineering Director Who Once Caused Steve Ballmer To Melt Down Posted: 13 Jul 2009 10:44 PM PDT
Before Google, Lucovsky worked at DEC and then Microsoft for 16 years, eventually gaining the title of “Distinguished Engineer.” He had been the principle architect on Windows NT, which would eventually evolve into Windows XP. “I wrote most of the kernel executive, kernel32, and the Windows API,” he told StoneTemple Consulting in an interview two years ago. Lucovsky was also the architect of Microsoft’s Hailstorm project to port older Microsoft products into .NET. It’s a project that’s been named as a precursor to the current open web movement. But Lucovsky may be best known for the role he played in a complete and utter meltdown that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer once had. As the NT architect, Lucovsky was clearly pretty vital to Microsoft, so when he went in for a meeting with Ballmer in 2004 to let him know he was leaving, you can be sure the CEO was a bit on edge. “Just tell me it’s not Google,” Ballmer reportedly said according to court documents (for a case surrounding another Google ex-Microsoft hire). When Lucovsky said it was Google, Ballmer allegedly picked up a chair and threw it across the room. What he apparently said next, will live on forever in Internet history. "Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google." Schmidt, is of course, Google’s CEO. When Lucovsky still wasn’t convinced, Ballmer alledgedly went on to say, “Google’s not a real company. It’s a house of cards.” A house of cards that still stands. And one that will presumably keep standing after Lucovsky’s departure. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Twitter Back on Track In June With 20 Million U.S. Visitors Posted: 13 Jul 2009 10:31 PM PDT
Twitter may not be for teens, but plenty of other people are flocking to the service. After taking a breather in May, when U.S. unique visitor growth almost screeched to a halt, Twitter picked up the pace again in June. According to comScore, in June Twitter.com attracted 20.1 million unique visitors in the U.S., up 14 percent from May. The resumption of growth isn’t of the sky-pointing variety Twitter experienced earlier this year, but it is a healthy month-over-month rate. Page views hit 628 million, a 21 percent increase over the month before. And these estimates are just for the Twitter Website. As much as half of Twitter’s usage occurs offsite (via desktop and mobile clients). The 20 million U.S. visitors amounts to about half of the 37 million global visitors the site attracted in May Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| A Workaround For The Gmail Push Workaround Posted: 13 Jul 2009 09:47 PM PDT
After reading our post, Developer Harry Finocchiaro created a simple application called “Gmailpush” and uploaded it to Google Code for all to use. What is does is checks your Gmail account for new messages and then sends you a text message alert when a new one comes in. Is this ideal? No. But depending on how fast it works (I haven’t tried it out yet), it is a potential workaround for those who really want push Gmail on the iPhone. But there are a couple of downsides to this. First: The program is Windows-only right now. Second: You’re probably going to want to have unlimited text messages on your plan, or this could get very expensive, very quick. In fact, that was part of the reason why Finocchiaro made the app, “The thought process was that since I’m being charged an insane amount of money for unlimited text messages, I might as well take advantage of it. That being said, SMS messages are push notifications if used correctly.” It’s fairly pathetic that a workaround for a workaround has to be instituted just to get push Gmail on the iPhone. After all, it is on iPhone competitors like the Palm Pre. I don’t know why Apple and Google won’t just get together and offer it natively. At the very least, Apple could accept GPush and let others in on the fun. There are other workarounds, such as piping Gmail through Exchange or MobileMe, but those have limits, and not everyone can do that. As I said, I haven’t tried this out yet (since it’s Windows-only), but feel free to give it a shot. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Fonera+ Gets Upgraded to 2.0, Adds Built-in Download and Upload Services, Other Goodies Posted: 13 Jul 2009 09:25 PM PDT  As you recall Fon makes wireless routers for sharing. You install the Fon node in your house, share it with others, and then are given access to other Fonera routers around the world. It's sort of a viral Wi-Fi community. Now, however, the Fonera is incredibly more interesting. The device can now access web services without the aid of a computer, allowing you to download torrents and "content" as well as upload to multiple services just by plugging in a USB key. The router also can be used as a webcam or print server and can connect to a 3G or HSDPA node and share the connection over Wi-Fi. It also supports 802.11n and acts as a wireless NAS with remote browsing capabilities. In short, the router just got much smarter.
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| Cougars, Yuppies, And Sugar Daddies, Oh My! Ex-Googlers Working On Local Startup TownMe Posted: 13 Jul 2009 07:15 PM PDT
Co-founder Elad Gil says that TownMe is still in “very, very early stages”, so there are still many features to come, but the core of the site seems to be in place, with local reviews and guides available for plenty of restaurants and events like San Francisco’s street fairs. The variety of topics covered is fairly broad, though at there are still a modest number of reviews. While Gil ackowledges that there are other major sites like Yelp in this space, he points out some key differences. The site aggregates data from across the web, and also accepts user-submitted content. But instead of presenting a list of reviews submitted by individual users, the site is using a group-edited Wiki system, with a lengthy overview describing a certain establishment (there are still shorter, Yelp-style reviews with a star rating and comments beneath the Wiki). Gil says that the site also has a broader focus, and looks to offer entries that are more detailed than a Yelp review. For example, he points out that if you were to look up “Golden Gate Bridge” on Yelp, you’d be hard pressed to find a listing of the best locations to shoot a photo from or which landmarks to look out for.
The site also leverages an array of publicly available information like census data and hospital ratings. For example, there are options to see a map with an overlay of the highest concentration of ‘Yuppies’ (young professionals who make $100,000 or more) or ‘Cougars’ (defined by the site as women aged 35-50 who are single or divorced). Obviously some of these are mostly for fun, but they can definitely come in handy, especially when you’re trying to price out different neighborhoods. The Wiki system is working pretty well so far, but I’m worried about some of the problems that will arise as more people use the site. For one, most people don’t always agree on which restaurants or events are really ‘must-see’, which means that entries might skew towards being overly vague instead of singling out spots to eat. And if TownMe does begin to start gaining substantial traction, it would be trivial for restaurant owners to simply add their establishments to the page, which sort of defeats the point. That said, the site is still in early stages, and has plenty of time to fine tune its moderation systems. All in all, TownMe is off to a great start, but it’s going to have a long road ahead of it: there are already some big players in the space, namely Yelp, which has become an excellent resource for getting reviews on local restaraurants and activities. Aside from Yelp, TownMe is going to see competition from a number of other sites, including Diddit, WikiTravel, and even MySpace, which launched MySpace Local in April. TownMe was founded by Elad Gil, a former PM at Google who worked on AdSense and Google Mobile; and Othman Laraki, a Google PM who ran Google Toolbar and Gears.  Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| USA Today Launches Headline Aggregator Newsdeck Posted: 13 Jul 2009 06:57 PM PDT  USA Today has launched Newsdeck, a site that aggregates the top news stories from the paper’s site. Each topic of news has an individual widget on the site with links to news stories. Currently the site features stories on 8 different topics, including “News,” “Money,” “Life,” and more. Each widget allows you to auto scroll down with your mouse for more headlines. You can also flip the widget and navigate between USA Today’s top stories and most popular stories. USA Today says they are looking to test products like this on the web to see what users really need from a news site when it comes to finding headlines and top stories. Newsdeck does present headlines in a easy to use interface but I’m not sure if people will use it in the browser. USAToday’s site also features top headlines, although in a different interface. The site is similar to the New York Times’ Skimmer product, which lets you skim the online headlines of the paper. USA Today also recently launched an iPhone app and Android App and has seen a total of 1.88 million downloads of its mobile apps. Currently, USA Today’s iPhone app is the second most popular free news app, behind the New York Times’ app. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| NYTimes Tech Editor Reads TechCrunch Every Morning For Story Ideas Posted: 13 Jul 2009 06:56 PM PDT Wow. I am so glad I flew down to Seattle last Thursday on the eve of our all day Real Time event and August Capital party. I got a great story on Redfin turning profitable and saw some unlaunched Animoto video products.
He was surprisingly affable in person. And I’ll love him forever for saying that he begins every morning by reading TechCrunch and assigning reporters to follow up on interesting stories:
All is forgiven, Darlin. And unlike the A.P., we won’t make any fuss over the idea of Hot News. Just keep linking to us, and we’ll stay happy. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Google Finance Gets A Little More Fancy Posted: 13 Jul 2009 03:37 PM PDT
It’s been more than a month since Google Finance shed its beta label, and finally today it is rolling out some design tweaks it has been testing out for the past few months. In the screen shot above you can see most of the changes. There is now a persistent navigation bar on the left with links to news, portfolios, historical prices, and financials. In the left column, you also now see streaming live quotes for the most recent stock tickers you’ve entered. It is a sparer version of the left-hand column on Yahoo Finance, with more dynamic and personalized content. The charting is also a little more sophisticated, with various technical charting capabilities available as an option via a drop down menu below each chart. Finally, the company comparison table is now more customizable, allowing you to choose which financial metrics you want to add or remove. It doesn’t go as far as Wikinvest’s recent redesign, which highlights much more insightful industry metrics for many stocks. All in all, the tweaks to Google Finance are a step in teh right direction, but nothing too radical. (Hat tip to reader Michael Konen). Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Guinness World Records Reaches New Levels Of Fail Posted: 13 Jul 2009 03:20 PM PDT
Earlier this week FailBlog posted a screen-grab (see below) of one of the entries on Guinness detailing the “Most Individuals Killed In A Terrorist Act”, which included a link inviting viewers to “Break this record”. It was a classic case of Fail, likely caused by either a side-wide template that included the link or an editor who fell asleep at the wheel. But rather than just simply fixing the issue, apologizing, and moving on, Guinness has decided to dig a nice, big hole for itself by threatening FailBlog with a lawsuit for featuring the Guinness World Records logo without authorization. This morning FailBlog posted a note to its site (appropriately titled ‘OMG U FAIL SO HARD’) with a screenshot of the threat, along with the site’s response. From the post:
The letter concludes by inviting Guinness to read the site’s full legal response here: http://icanhaz.com/legalresponse. And yes, FailBlog just Rick Roll’d the Guinness Book of World Records.  Thanks to super-dev TC alum Henry Work for the tip. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| FriendFeed Adds A Mob Tear Gas Option With “Disable Comments” Posted: 13 Jul 2009 02:42 PM PDT
This move is in response to ours and others’ concerns that while FriendFeed’s real-time commenting component is great for conversation, it also can fuel the mob mentality, and quickly get out of control. Previously, you could only go through and delete individual comments, which in huge threads was simply not workable. With this change, we’re more than happy to reinstate our official TechCrunch FriendFeed account that we pulled several weeks ago, following an incident. Michael talked with FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor and Robert Scoble about the situation at our CrunchUp event on Friday (video below). There, Taylor also revealed that FriendFeed was thinking about other solutions, such as making it so only contacts of yours can leave comments. Says Taylor about this feature, “You can use the feature to stop conversations that are getting out of hand, or to post entries for which you don’t want any discussion. Likes will continue to be allowed when comments are disabled.” FriendFeed’s Kevin Fox is not as pleased (with our headline at least): “Seriously, dude. Arrington insists that a feature is essential and *must* be put in, and when we do TechCrunch writes a headline likening it to tear-gassing people? *sigh*.”
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| The Gap Grows Wider: MySpace Eats Facebook’s Dust In The U.S. Posted: 13 Jul 2009 02:37 PM PDT  The gap between Facebook and MySpace is growing wider in the U.S. In May, Facebook finally caught up to MySpace in unique U.S. visitors and surpassed its rival social network by a smidgeon. Last month, Facebook left MySpace in the dust, according to June data from comScore. Facebook reached 77 million unique visitors for the month of June, rising from 70.28 million unique visitors in May. MySpace had 68.4 million unique visitors in June, dropping from 70.25 million unique visitors in May. Facebook is steadily growing in the U.S.; the network gained just under 7 million unique visitors in June compared to a gain of 2.8 million U.S. unique visitors in May. In comparison, MySpace lost nearly 4 million unique visitors in June, compared to 700,000 unique visitors lost in May. While Facebook is growing both in the U.S. and internationally, MySpace appears to be stagnating. The widening of the gap between the rival social networks network comes at a time when MySpace is under new management and recently terminated two-thirds of its international staff, laying off staff in countries where MySpace is being trounced by Facebook. MySpace’s international numbers were startling. For example, in India, where social networking is growing fast, Facebook had 6.4 million unique visitors in May, compared to 848,000 unique visitors to MySpace. In our most recent model of the true value of social networks, MySpace fell below Facebook, dropping from the top spot last year. MySpace still generates more page views than Facebook. In June, MySpace had 32.4 billion page views in the U.S., but that number dropped 10 percent in a single month, from May (gulp). Facebook is catching up there as well, with 21.3 billion page views in June, a 12 percent increase from May. And worldwide, Facebook is already ahead. As we reported a few months ago, 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." A decline in user numbers isn’t the only predicament that MySpace is in—there is speculation that the social network could lose one of its major revenue streams in the near future. In 2010, MySpace will be receiving its last "welfare payment" from Google (stemming from an advertising deal between News Corp. and Google struck in 2006), after which it looks like it will be cut off. Under the terms of the agreement, MySpace will receive $300 million over the next year if the network hits certain search pageview requirements, which considering the recent data on page views, may not happen. Meanwhile, Facebook shows no signs of slowing down. The network successfully launched its "vanity URLs," in June, with millions of users signing up for the new feature within days. The network also got some notice around its use during the Iran elections and protests, and around the new privacy settings surrounding its “Everyone” button. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Interview: Pandora CTO Tom Conrad On Streaming Royalty Rates And New Funding Posted: 13 Jul 2009 01:58 PM PDT MG Siegler and I ran into Pandora CTO Tom Conrad on Saturday evening at dinner gathering in San Francisco. He was still glowing from all the good news at his once troubled startup: a reasonable settlement around online streaming royalty rates quickly followed by a healthy round of funding that should take the company to profitability sometime next year.
Clearly Conrad was still too sober to tell us all the juicy details. But he did once again confirm the funding and he gave some updated Pandora user stats - 30 million registered users, 12 million monthly uniques and 7-8 million iPhone app installations (plus 2 million more on Blackberry). Toasts all around. Pandora is still standing, and making music lovers everywhere happy. Full transcript is below, care of SimulScribe: INTERVIEWER: I’m here with Tom Conrad, the CTO of Pandora. Mr. TOM CONRAD (CTO, Pandora): Hey, Mike. How are you? INTERVIEWER: We’re just all having dinner inside. Actually, MG(ph) is here as well. So, we dragged you out here to the middle of the street to get some information from you… Mr. CONRAD: You’re going to need a waiver from that guy. INTERVIEWER: We need some information on this funding… Mr. CONRAD: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: Because you’re not saying much. You gave us confirmation last night but it is really not much. So, we want a little bit more from you now. So, tell us like - first of all, the south exchange settlement, like, what happened there exactly… Mr. CONRAD: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: Because at this time last year, everyone thought you guys were done. Mr. CONRAD: Yeah. So, we’ve been - I guess, two years and four months ago, not that we were counting, this royalty rates decision came down from the Copyright Royalty Board that adjusted the statutory licensing rates for internet radio up by basically a factor of three to the point that everybody on the webcasters side and frankly a bunch of the more enlightened people on the rights holders side agreed like internet radio couldn’t survive these kinds of rates. And so, for the last, you know, almost two and a half years, we’ve been kind of… INTERVIEWER: Waging a PR and legal battle. Mr. CONRAD: Yeah. Kind of constant negotiation with the rights holders and finally… INTERVIEWER: Including threatening to shut down your business last year. Mr. CONRAD: Yeah. I mean… INTERVIEWER: That got some price(ph). Mr. CONRAD: Without question… INTERVIEWER: Yeah. Mr. CONRAD: Pandora could not have continued with the old rates. INTERVIEWER: Right. Mr. CONRAD: And so, happily last week, SoundExchange announced that a new license - they call it the Pureplay license, that’s the license that’s being offered exclusively to companies who basically, their exclusive business is internet radio. And the deal basically - you can think about it this way. We traded off a guaranteed minimum 25 percent of our revenues in exchange for a lower per track rate. So we’ve made the greater 25 percent of revenue or this newly adjusted lower per track rate. The rate that we had been sort of fighting about was adjusted per track rate. INTERVIEWER: What’s a per track rate? Mr. CONRAD: The - it kind of ramps over the years. One of the great things about this particular settlement is it’s through 2015… INTERVIEWER: Yeah. Mr. CONRAD: So, we won’t be dealing with this again next year. And the way I usually think about it is in the number of cents per hour that we pay, and so it’s about - it starts at about 1.2 cents and it ramps to just over 2 cents over the period versus, I think, the old rate in 2010 would have been almost 3 cents. INTERVIEWER: And you can live with 2 cents? Mr. CONRAD: We can. Unidentified Man: Yeah. In 2015, it’s going to be basically what they wanted it to be. Is that right? By the time it gets up to there? Mr. CONRAD: It’s - by 2015, it’s getting pretty close. I think it’s still - my math says it’s still that there is only 2.2 cents and 2.7 cents, so there’s still some difference. INTERVIEWER: So, you - that happened and then you immediately close this funding around, so obviously, that was - those were tied and tied together, right? Mr. CONRAD: You know, they weren’t so much tied together, but I do think it is… INTERVIEWER: Did you close the funding after the settlement? Mr. CONRAD: You know, we’re not really talking about the specifics of the funding. INTERVIEWER: So, they weren’t really tied together except for the fact that you closed the funding five minutes after the settlement was signed. Mr. CONRAD: Well, yeah. You know, we don’t really, we have this long history of not talking about the funding that’s going in to Pandora. INTERVIEWER: Right. So, let’s talk about the funding. So, what are you saying? Rumors – it’s 35 million. What are you saying? Mr. CONRAD: I can’t talk about how much we’ve raised. INTERVIEWER: Are you saying, it’s not 35 million? Or are you just saying, I’m not commenting in anything? Mr. CONRAD: No comment at all. INTERVIEWER: How much did you raise before that round? Mr. CONRAD: We’ve never talked about that. INTERVIEWER: Oh, because it all leaked out, at least, I thought it had. We have something in our data base on it. Mr. CONRAD: You know something, it’s not clear to me that it’s accurate. INTERVIEWER: No, you’d be in a position to know. Mr. CONRAD: I would. INTERVIEWER: And David Sze from Greylock is joining you at work. Mr. CONRAD: David Sze is from Greylock. That we’re really excited about happening. David’s great, Greylock is a fantastic investor, you know. We’re really, really happy to have David. INTERVIEWER: So, what’s it like to have someone you really wanted and then you had David as a back-up and took him, because that’s what you said of David. Mr. CONRAD: David was the guy all along. (Soundbite of laughter) INTERVIEWER: And what’s the evaluation on this 35 million dollar round? Mr. CONRAD: Yeah, I’m also not talking about that. What started talks about that? Come on. INTERVIEWER: How much stock do you have personally in the company? OK, I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding. You get it, the no comment route. How many users? Mr. CONRAD: We’ve got about just over 30 million registered users, then we had about 12 million users listed last month. It’s seven or eight million iPhone installs, two million BlackBerry. INTERVIEWER: How do you measure plays? Do you like, count number of play hours per day or song stream per day? How do you – what do those steps look like that you wanted to talk about? Mr. CONRAD: You know, we don’t really talk about the hours dimension so much probably. I can say this though, we are easily the largest in – INTERVIEWER: Are you willing to admit that you are an internet radio start-up? Mr. CONRAD: Yes, we are. We are, wow! INTERVIEWER: Will you say how many songs - Mr. CONRAD: When we lose the light, is this over? INTERVIEWER: It’s pretty early, yeah. Unidentified Man: Then we get the spotlight out, right on you. INTERVIEWER: Any other questions? Unidentified Man: And you guys are still planning on turning a profit next year? Mr. CONRAD: Yeah, yeah. That’s the really exciting thing about that, that’s happening is to have this royalty dispute resolved, you know. It really sets us up to have our first profitable year next year and… INTERVIEWER: I think if we go stand right here, the light will get a little better for the very end. So, just tell me, come on. Just tell us how much you raised. I mean, the least that is, it gets the data base right on that. Mr. CONRAD: Let’s go have a drink Mike. INTERVIEWER: It’s enough to get you profitable? You never have to raise again? Do you think that? Mr. CONRAD: Yeah, I think that’s true, I think that’s true. That’s the hope. INTERVIEWER: All right. Remember, like I was there when you guys launched back in - INTERVIEWER: Bar Camp ‘05? TechCrunch is about a day old when you guys launched. Mr. CONRAD: It was, yeah. INTERVIEWER: And look how far you’ve come. Mr. CONRAD: I may have been the last entrepreneur that you chased for a story. INTERVIEWER: I did, yeah. Mr. CONRAD: You did. INTERVIEWER: Oh, no. We’d still chase people for stories, yeah. Thanks, man. Thanks very much. Mr. CONRAD: Thank you, Michael. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Mark Can Have Chris’ Leftovers. Randi Gets Michael. Posted: 13 Jul 2009 01:40 PM PDT Readers are always asking us for more TMZ-style posts, so here’s one for you. The New York Post did yet another review of Ben Mezrich’s upcoming Facebook narrative, The Accidental Billionaires. That itself is not that interesting, but the Photoshopped picture the NYPost uses is fairly hilarious in its similarity to a picture from the August Capital party on Friday night after our CrunchUp event. As you can see, NYPost wants to paint Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as the kind of guy who wants to date socialite Paris Hilton. We’re not so sure. In the social networking circle, she’s old news. She’s practically Friendster. Does Mark really want to Poke former MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe’s Top Friend? Regardless, Mark can have Paris, because in the similar picture from our event, his sister Randi gets the real prize: Michael.
Okay, yes, we just wanted another excuse to post the picture of Randi and Michael. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Why Teens Aren’t Using Twitter: It Doesn’t Feel Safe Posted: 13 Jul 2009 01:12 PM PDT
If you look at technologies trending with teens right now, it’s Apple devices (iPhone, iPod), smart phones (Blackberry, Palm), and then social networks (Facebook and MySpace). At least that’s what I see from hanging out with 1,500 other teenagers in high school every day (I am 16 years old). But why not Twitter? Well, because Twitter is a different type of social network than Facebook. Facebook is about connecting people, and sharing information with each other. The way my friends and I see it, Facebook is a closed network. It’s a network of people and friends that you trust to be connected to, and to share information like your email address, AIM screen name, and phone number. You know who’s getting your status messages, because you either approved or added each person to your network. With Twitter, it’s the exact opposite. Anyone can follow your status updates. It’s a completely open network that makes teenagers feel “unsafe” about posting their content there, because who knows who will read it. Sure, you get emails notifying you when you have new followers, but that doesn’t compare to the level of detail you get when someone on Facebook adds you, and you get their information. According to June, 2009 comScore numbers, 11.3% of visitors to Twitter.com in the U.S. are ages 12-17. Internationally, in May, 2009, only 4.4% of visitors were younger then 18. Twitter is also seen as more expensive to keep up with than Facebook. Most of my friends spend their time playing video games, watching TV, surfing online, and text messaging to actual friends who you know will reply back. In an economy like this, most parents don’t want to spend the extra money on unlimited texting to total strangers. So why spend money on sending SMS updates to Twitter, when you can send updates to someone you know will read it and reply? Facebook has a more dedicated community than Twitter, which is why teenagers want to use it. Maybe the reason Twitter still isn’t considered mainstream quite yet is because Gen Y isn’t the early adopter this time around. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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Today at the 2009 Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans, 
A few artists have released iPhone apps now that give fans access to their music. Some of the more advanced ones even allow you to edit tracks. But now Universal Music Group (specifically, Interscope Geffen A&M) is apparently going to start launching these for its artists on a regular basis.
Who needs web apps and crazy things like Twitter when you can invest in an online ordering system for fast food outlets? That’s what’s just happened to 
There are loads of music applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which is hardly surprising considering the history of the iPod device and the deep integration of the portable devices with iTunes. 
After nearly 5 years with the company, Engineering Director 
Since we wrote 
But by far the sweetest moment was a brief comment by the New York Times’ Technology Editor Damon Darlin, who sat on the panel with me. Darlin and I exchanged blows last month, some of you may remember, over the 
Browsing through the hilarious pages of 
Just to follow up on 
Twitter seems to be the hottest thing in tech recently — if you look at TechCrunch, it averages at least 3 | You are subscribed to email updates from TechCrunch To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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