The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Analyst Believes iPhone Will Become Non-AT&T Exclusive In A Year
- Informal TC/CG Meet-up In Israel on September 8
- Disney To Acquire Marvel Entertainment For $4 Billion
- FlyScreen Makes The Lock Screen Of Your Android Phone Useful (1,000 Invites)
- Fox Livens Up Re-runs With Twitter Commentaries
- Adobe Buys Business Catalyst / GoodBarry
- Platogo To Open Its Private Beta, And We Have Invites
- Netvibes Re-sells Tech To Germany’s T-Online In Its Race To Make A Buck
- SevenSnap Is Bringing Controversial “Entertainment Shopping” To An iPhone Near You
- A Look Behind The Curtain At Facebook’s Optimization Efforts
- TechCrunch Japan’s Tokyo Camp: 12 Startups Demo Their Wares
- Is the Tyranny of the Mac Fan Boy Waning?
- Free the H-1Bs, Free the Economy
| Analyst Believes iPhone Will Become Non-AT&T Exclusive In A Year Posted: 31 Aug 2009 08:07 AM PDT
Munster of Piper Jaffray “predicts” that AT&T will lose its iPhone exclusivity by the end of 2010, thereby rendering the company impotent and insolvent. Some contenders for the iPhone throne include Verizon. This ignores the fact that AT&T is fighting like a champ to keep the iPhone until 2011 but it seems the popular perception of AT&T as a pile of fail may put a damper on Apple’s wish to stay put. Is Munster right? Well there has been a little discussion of a non-GSM iPhone on the Internets. Look at the logistics: Sprint isn’t going to take the phone - they’re wrapped up in Palm right now - and T-Mobile is busy with Android. That leaves behemoth Verizon. Quoth Munster:
I think a CDMA iPhone is in the cards, certainly, and I suspect they’ll try something like Blackberry and add a SIM card slot for international roaming. iPhone users are a nomadic lot and I can only imagine the outrage when a bunch of study abroad students turn on their Verizon iPhones and find they don’t work in Florence. As for the CDMA model coming “within the year?” Eh. Don’t hold your breath. The iPhone is selling pretty briskly right now and ramping up production of a CDMA model would be difficult at best. Take all this with a grain of salt, though. Analysts are notoriously, well, wrong. Rob at BBG said it best when commenting on the AppleTVTV:
Yes, friends, we work for the lulz. Image from this funny dude Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Informal TC/CG Meet-up In Israel on September 8 Posted: 31 Aug 2009 07:28 AM PDT  Hey, all: I, John Biggs, will be in Israel from the Sept 5 through the 10th. I'd love to meet up with some great start-ups in the Jerusalem/Tel Aviv area. I'm most interested in the great gadgets coming out of there but I'm happy to sit down with local folks to talk web services. Here's what I'm thinking: I'd like to have an informal event on Tuesday, September 8. I don't know where it will be - suggestions are welcome - and if you'd like to sponsor an hour of drinks, please let me know. Either way, RSVP to john@crunchgear.com with the subject line "RSVP ISRAEL." I'll keep a mailing list and let you know where/when we'll hold the even on Monday morning.TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Disney To Acquire Marvel Entertainment For $4 Billion Posted: 31 Aug 2009 06:34 AM PDT
Based on the closing price of Disney stock on Friday, August 28, the total transaction value is $50 per Marvel share or approximately $4 billion. Under the deal, which has been approved by the boards of both companies, Disney will acquire ownership of Marvel including its portfolio of over 5,000 Marvel characters. That portfolio includes many familiar names like Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Thor. Says Disney CEO Robert A. Iger in a statement: "We believe that adding Marvel to Disney's unique portfolio of brands provides significant opportunities for long-term growth and value creation." Ike Perlmutter, Marvel's CEO, added: "Disney is the perfect home for Marvel's fantastic library of characters given its proven ability to expand content creation and licensing businesses. This is an unparalleled opportunity for Marvel to build upon its vibrant brand and character properties by accessing Disney's tremendous global organization and infrastructure around the world." Mr. Perlmutter will oversee the Marvel properties, and will work directly with Disney's global lines of business to build and further integrate Marvel's properties. Marvel stock is surging following the news, up 10+ points at the time of writing (+27%), while Disney’s is down a little (-0,5%). Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| FlyScreen Makes The Lock Screen Of Your Android Phone Useful (1,000 Invites) Posted: 31 Aug 2009 06:26 AM PDT  Israeli startup Cellogic, makers of the fine FlyScreen software, have spent the last 8 months or so developing a custom version for the Android platform to complement their currently Symbian-exclusive version. Today, the company is debuting the private alpha version of the Android-compatible program, and we have 1,000 invites to offer for those carrying around HTC phones running Android 1.5 (it works on the Samsung Galaxy too but is less optimized for that particular device). So what's FlyScreen? Essentially, a collection of expandable widgets that comprise syndicated content (such as TechCrunch) and small apps that hook into Twitter, Facebook etc. You can use it to fetch the RSS feed of your favorite blogs, and thus be able to quickly access previews of published content, tag articles for later reading or share posts on Twitter and/or Facebook in just one click.TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Fox Livens Up Re-runs With Twitter Commentaries Posted: 31 Aug 2009 03:10 AM PDT
The television network will be airing old episodes for two of its shows, Fringe and Glee, with Twitter commentary along the bottom of the screen. But no, sadly, not just anyone can tweet anything and have it be on national television, these will be moderated streams. And most of the it will be taken up by the tweets of the two shows’ casts and producers, apparently. During the episodes, the cast members and producers will be watching and tweeting live. Fans be able to see their tweets on the bottom portion of their television screens or can follow along on Twitter itself by checking out the FRINGEonFOX and GLEEonFOX Twitter accounts. Select tweets from fans following along will be put on air. Of course, CNN and some of the other television news networks have been using Twitter commentary for months now, and often put tweets on air. But doing the same on one of the major TV networks during prime time is another level of mainstream adoption for Twitter. It’s an extension of what we wrote about back in May, Twitter expanding beyond a simple web service. So many Twitter users are already using the service to talk about their favorite television shows — as I’m writing this, three of the top ten trending topics are: Mad Men, Entourage, and True Blood — so integrating the two would seem to make sense. Now, if this were during a shows first run, the tweets might be distracting, but during a re-run, they add value. It’s not clear if there is any financial deal in place for this, but this is clearly not the Twitter television show that got all the buzz a few months back. Money or no money, this is a great deal for Twitter. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Adobe Buys Business Catalyst / GoodBarry Posted: 31 Aug 2009 02:59 AM PDT
Details are scarce since there’s no press release or official word from Adobe yet, but Business Catalyst has published a couple of Q&A on its website that shed a minimal amount of light on the agreement. From what we can gather at this point despite the vague wording used for the announcement, there won’t be too many changes at Business Catalyst as the products, partner agreements, team, pricing, etc. should remain largely unchanged. GoodBarry, on the other hand, being merely a Business Catalyst brand set up for their retail operations, will be gradually phased out and morphed into the Business Catalyst offering:
As a result, the GoodBarry brand as such will cease to exist as of the 1st of October 2009, although the company says changes for customer will be mostly cosmetical (the billing and branding will be all Business Catalyst as of the aforementioned date). The most important question however is why Adobe bought Business Catalyst in the first place and what its intentions are with the company in the near future. We’ve contacted the company for more clarity on that but in the meantime here’s what we know. Business Catalyst / GoodBarry provides tools that help web designers set up online businesses for their clients with minimal cost and effort and no programming skills required, combining website content management, e-commerce features, e-mail marketing, business analytics and basic CRM tools into one system. Adobe evidently offers a wide range of tools for web professionals, but in the near future does not plan to integrate Business Catalyst’s products into its own offering, although they are clearly looking to hosted services to deliver websites and online businesses more and more. There will be an initial transit period, but with regards to what will happen after that both companies remain mum and mention only that they are currently in ‘planning stages’ and will provide more information in the following weeks. We’ll update if and when we hear more. On a sidenote, this isn’t the first time Business Catalyst CEO and Founder Bardia Housman sold a company. In 1997, he co-founded Start (start.com.au), Australia's first free e-mail service provider, which in two years became the largest trafficked website in Australia as measured by Hitwise. In December 1999, Looksmart was acquired Start. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Platogo To Open Its Private Beta, And We Have Invites Posted: 31 Aug 2009 02:57 AM PDT
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Netvibes Re-sells Tech To Germany’s T-Online In Its Race To Make A Buck Posted: 31 Aug 2009 02:37 AM PDT
In other words, Netvibes is trying to monetize itself as fast as possible. To that end it’s also now re-selling its architecture to portals and ISPs. Germany’s largest portal and ISP, T-Online, has thus now launched launched Meine Seite, a user-personalized, widget-based version of their site powered by Netvibes. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| SevenSnap Is Bringing Controversial “Entertainment Shopping” To An iPhone Near You Posted: 30 Aug 2009 09:11 PM PDT
The app isn’t out on the App Store yet, but the company recently released a video (embedded below) that shows it off. Here’s how it works: every 60 minutes, SevenSnap puts a new item up for grabs (the example in the video is a Macbook Pro). If you want to have a shot at purchasing the item, you need to purchase “time credits”, which run a dollar per minute. Once you’ve done that, you can jump into the sale room, where you’ll get to watch as the item’s price drops every second (depending on how many people are in the room, it can drop by as much as $100 per minute). At this point it’s a game of chicken — the longer you wait the lower the price goes, but if someone pulls the trigger and purchases it then the price jumps up to its starting amount for everyone else. Remember, you’re paying a dollar per minute in the room, so whenever it resets you lose out on a few bucks. SevenSnap Sneak-Preview (EN) from Tobias Hieb on Vimeo. SevenSnap could be fun if you have cash to burn, but it’s not hard to see why people have issues with this kind of shopping site — If SevenSnap were to arbitrarily reset the prices of its items without actually selling them, it could effectively collect money for nothing. The startup may well turn out to be perfectly honest, but until the company has built up a reputation or there is some regulation involved, caveat emptor. Other startups in this space have met with similar concerns regarding fraud, and are taking steps to make the process more consumer friendly. One of these is iBidCondo, which uses a somewhat similar model to auction off housing. We looked at the site July, when I (and a number of readers) pointed out some potential problems. In light of these concerns the site postponed an upcoming auction so that it can revamp its system to introduce more transparency. The biggest name in this space is Swoopo, which uses the ‘falling prices’ model but has a much greater variety of products that are on sale simultaneously. The site recently introduced a new feature that negates some of the risk involved — even if you lose out on an auction, you can apply the money you’ve used to bid on it towards purchasing the product at its normal retail price. If you were only going to buy the product because of its incredibly low advertised price then you’re out of luck, but it’s definitely better than the old system where you would always walk away empty handed when you lost an auction. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| A Look Behind The Curtain At Facebook’s Optimization Efforts Posted: 30 Aug 2009 03:21 PM PDT
The first experiment examined how Facebook users would respond to a general slowdown. Yang found that regardless of site speed, users spend around the same amount of time on Facebook. That might sound like good news (at least they don’t get frustrated and leave immediately), but it means that if the site is running slowly users are going to be seeing fewer pages in the same amount of time, which Facebook obviously doesn’t want. So — no surprise here — Facebook is striving to make the site as fast as possible. The second experiment involved the order in which items on the page should load. Yang writes that Facebook has been internally debating whether the page should display everything as quickly as possible, even before some necessary scripts to actually interact with the site have loaded, or to show a white page until everything is good to go and then render it all at once. Yang writes, “In all groups of users, keeping the page blank resulted in lower usage statistics. Thus the debate was resolved.” So if you’re ever on Facebook and you find that a certain button isn’t working for the first second or two after a page loads, this would explain it. The third experiment involved loading stories in the News Feed. Regular Facebook users have likely noticed that the site will automatically fetch more News Feed stories as you scroll down the page. This feels like a nifty new feature, but it was actually designed by Facebook to cut back on load times — News Feed used to show 30 stories at once; now it loads 15 at first and only shows the next 15 if you scroll down the page. What Yang found, however, is that when people do scroll beyond the initial 15 stories they’re shown, they’re happy to wait the extra second or two for 30 new stories to load, which results in a signifiant boost in engagement. This makes perfect sense — if I’m actively reading through the News Feed (as opposed to just seeing it because it’s Facebook’s home page) it’s because I’m killing time or trying to catch up on my friends’ past posts. The more stories shown during this ‘catch-up’ time, the better. Also interesting to note is that Facebook seems keen to put its internship program in the public eye — just last week the site’s blog included a post from an intern who build the Facebook Pages to Twitter syndicator, and now we’re seeing the fruit’s of another intern’s summer experiments. This may well be part of the company’s plan to attract new talent during its recent hiring spree. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| TechCrunch Japan’s Tokyo Camp: 12 Startups Demo Their Wares Posted: 30 Aug 2009 11:05 AM PDT
The occasion: The blog, which is one of Japan’s biggest and mainly translates articles from TechCrunch into Japanese, is under new management (by DESIGN IT!, LLC., a Sociomedia (Japan's anwer to Adaptive Path) group company). Here are my thumbnail sketches of all of the twelve demos I saw at Tokyo Camp.
dango-Play aims at creating an integrated ecosystem for online games by matching users, linking to other games based on the framework, providing SMS services, managing user ID data, freeing developers from tracking user behavior etc. etc.
One of the first games that’s been released based on the dango system is Facebook app “meromero park”, an ultra-cute mix between a social network, a virtual world and a pet-rearing game (the web version has already gained massive popularity in Japan and Taiwan). The Facebook app is available in English and French. Jin-Magic TCP Traffic Optimization Technology by Akira Jinzaki The software can sit anywhere in the network between the two end-points. WiMAX was used for the demo. Reception in the demo room was 2 to 4 bars out of 6 and TCP transfer rates were at best 1Mbps (with standard set-up). Turn on the Jin-magic on the server side configured to maximize TCP flow, the rates climbed up in the 4Mbps to 7Mbps range. The technology allows providers to maximize service for their investments. It may enable mobile data providers to serve 2 to 3 times more customers with uninterrupted video bandwidth with the existing infrastructure. Jin-Magic can be ported to smartphones, too.
PeKay’s Little Author is the brainchild of a well-known Japanese artist. The video below shows how the app works:
IxEdit can be downloaded for free. View sample elements here.
The prediction tool analyzes what’s being written in Japan’s blogosphere about political topics dynamically (it updates its projected results daily). Uchiyama said internal tests with previous elections proved to be very promising. We’ll know if the prediction model really works on Monday morning Japanese time after the election results are official (I will deliver an update here later).
AR3Bros episode-i | twitter & AR from ar3bros on Vimeo.
Manetron Many thanks to all attendees and demo companies who helped making Tokyo Camp a blast. And sorry to everyone who didn’t make it on the guest list this time (just like last time, we were overwhelmed by the response), but another event like this might happen again in the near future. Arigatou gozaimasu! More pictures from the event were made by alpha blogger Masaki Ishitani and TechCrunch Japan’s translator Umihiko Namekawa. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Is the Tyranny of the Mac Fan Boy Waning? Posted: 30 Aug 2009 10:41 AM PDT
But some reporters– long harassed by Mac fan boys when they’ve dared to criticize the company (read: do their jobs) — are saying a sea change is occurring in Apple fan boy nation. Witness Jon Fortt of Fortune’s recent blog post where he says the Valley owes Microsoft an apology and compares Apple to Napoleon the pig in Animal Farm. He writes:
Now, look at the comments. You have to scroll pretty far down to get the usual how-dare-you-criticize-our-iPhone-lord-and-savior comments. Most of the comments disagreeing with Fortt are pretty well-reasoned arguments that raise good points. Of course, it’s likely that Fortune moderates its blog comments, so maybe we’re not seeing the whole debate. But on the Sunday morning tech show that both Fortt and I appear on, he argued that indeed the fan boys just weren’t out in the same way they’ve been in the past. Host Scott McGrew argued he too had witnessed a fan boy sea change. [Video below; whole episode is here.] I remain dubious, as much as I’d love to believe that sub-human behavior like the anti-Semitic attacks and death threats that Barrons writer Eric Savitz had to endure in March 2008 would never happen again. Savitz had the gall to report Wall Street was worried that iPod and iPhone sales might sag. It was hardly controversial considering the stock was down 35% for the year at the time he wrote it. So, fan boys: Here’s your chance to agree with me for once. Is Jobs nation still alive and well? For the record, I hope I’m wrong. My husband and I own half a dozen iPods, a Mac desktop and four Mac laptops. We’re clearly fans of Mr. Jobs work. But placing a company above scrutiny is bad for business, bad for the Valley and bad for tech. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Free the H-1Bs, Free the Economy Posted: 30 Aug 2009 09:00 AM PDT
I have a suggestion for our President on how to boost economic growth without spending a penny: Free the H-1B’s. More than a million doctors, engineers, scientists, researchers, and other skilled workers and their families in the U.S. are stuck in "immigration limbo.” They entered the country legally and have contributed disproportionately to our nation's competitiveness. They paid our high taxes and have been model citizens. All they want to do is to share the American dream and help us grow our economy. They could be starting companies, buying houses, building community centers, and splurging like Americans. But because we don't have enough permanent-resident visas (green cards) for them, they're stuck in the same old jobs they had maybe a decade ago when they entered this country. They are getting really frustrated and many are returning to their home countries to become unwilling competitors. And they are taking our economic recovery with them. Xenophobes will claim that immigrants take jobs away and blame them for everything that is wrong in their lives and in America. But as TechCrunch wrote last week, skilled immigrants create more jobs than they take away. That is a fact. My research team documented that one quarter of all technology and engineering startups nationwide from 1995 to 2005 were started by immigrants. In Boston, it was 31%, in New York, 44%, and in Silicon Valley an astonishing 52%. In 2005, these immigrant founded companies employed 450,000 workers. Add it up. That's far more than all the tech workers we gave green cards to in that period. It's not only jobs that they’ve created. In 2006, more than 25% of U.S. global patents had authors who were born abroad — and this doesn't even count people like me, who came here, became citizens, and then filed multiple patents. Of Qualcomm's global patents, 72% had foreign-born authors, as did 65% of Merck's, 64% of GE's, and 60% of Cisco's. I'm not talking about silly patents filed with the U.S. Patent Office here, I'm talking about WIPO PCT applications — the patents that help our companies compete globally. Why does Silicon Valley need a foreign-born workforce? Because these immigrants are able come to a foreign land where they face hardship and discrimination and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the world's best technical minds and most successful entrepreneurs. They are able motivate Silicon Valley's top guns to work even harder and think smarter. They add a global perspective and enrich America. The largest immigrant founding groups are Indian, British, and Chinese. Indian-born immigrants, for example, founded 6.7% of America's tech companies and 15.5% of those in Silicon Valley — but, according to the U.S. census, constitute way less than 1% of the U.S. population. So do the Chinese, but they contribute to 16.8% of our global patents. It doesn't take a statistician to figure that these are pretty impressive numbers. Yes, I know that H-1B's don't start companies. And that is the problem. We don’t let them. Hundreds of thousands of mostly very smart and highly educated workers who could be starting companies are not. While they wait for their green cards, they can't even change jobs or accept a promotion, for fear of losing their turn in line. If they lose their job, they have to find another job within 30 days — or get booted out of the country. Their employers know that these workers aren't going anywhere, so they can go easy on the salary increases and bonuses. Some unscrupulous employers do take advantage of them. And their spouses usually can't work, and in some states can't even get drivers licenses, because they don't have social-security numbers. Does this sound like America? Unlike the daunting economic problems facing the country, this problem is easy to fix. Just increase the number of green cards for skilled workers. Maybe let them cut the line if they buy a house or start a company that employs a bunch of Americans. My guess is that we'll get tens of thousands of startups and a couple of hundred thousand houses sold. That is a bigger economic boost than the clunkers program we’ve just thrown $2 billion dollars at. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
Everyone hates re-runs. They’re episodes you’ve likely already seen, being run out of order because there is no new content to run. But Fox may have just figured out a way to make them more interesting: Twitter.
We suspect 
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Facebook is big. 
in-app purchase management ASP created for iPhone devs. The system handles the payment records for companies offering apps in the App Store for a fee. More information on dodaii can be found in 
Here at TechCrunch there’s a 
This is a guest post by Vivek Wadhwa, an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Executive in Residence at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa. | 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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