Saturday, September 12, 2009

The Latest from TechCrunch

The Latest from TechCrunch

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Study: Mobile (And Particularly iPhone) Users Not Keen On Clicking Ads

Posted: 12 Sep 2009 07:41 AM PDT

New research performed by online search advertising company Chitika suggests mobile users are far less likely to click on ads than non-mobile Internet users. In fact, they’re about half as likely, the study shows based on a sample of 92 million impressions.

Could that be true? Wasn’t it the other way around?

First, we should note right off the bat that Chitika is an Internet advertising company that’s decidedly not into mobile advertising according to its own website, so that brings along a large truck carrying bags filled with grains of salt. That said, it’s worth taking a look at how they got to the conclusion, so we can reach our own.

Chitika claims to power advertising for over 55,000 sites, serving ads based on 2 billion monthly impressions. Of the 92 million impressions cited in the study, approximately 1.3 million or 1.5% of the lot came from mobile browsing. The ads that were shown on mobile devices were exactly the same as the ones displayed to non-mobile users, rather than comparing standard online advertising with mobile-oriented ads.

Ad click-through of mobile as a whole pulled only 0.48% according to analysis of the sample, with non-mobile holding steady with a 0.83% clickthrough rate. That would mean mobile commanded just over half of the average.

Of the five major smartphone operating systems – Android, iPhone OS, Windows Mobile, Palm OS and BlackBerry OS – Apple’s iPhone ranked worst for ad click-throughs representing a mere 0.30% rate. The “Other” group, comprised mainly of BlackBerry users and a handful of other operating systems (including Symbian, Nokia, and HTC) saw the highest ad click-through rate.

Personally, I’m a bit hesitant to believe the outcome of the study – much like Chitika’s earlier one about Bing ads’ click-through rate being twice as big as Google ads – considering the self-serving aspect and the apparent desire to come to controversial conclusions in order to draw attention.

On the flip side, there hasn’t been that much independent research for mobile ad click-through rates yet, and I’m equally keen not to blatantly believe studies that show mobile advertising commands spectacularly high click-through rates compared to web advertising. In my opinion it’s conceivable that click-through rates would be rather similar and largely dependent on context, type of advertising, how well the message fits the medium etc.

In short: more neutral research wanted.

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TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Yeah, But Did You Steal The Zynga Playbook, Playdom?

Posted: 11 Sep 2009 07:39 PM PDT

It’s a day late, but social game site (and Zynga-antagonizer) Playdom has finally responded to our request for comment on the lawsuit and temporary restraining order they got hit with earlier this week (all the legal documents are here).

The statement, emailed to us earlier today, is short and sweet and contains very little information at all:

This lawsuit comes as no surprise given Zynga's penchant for litigation. We do not believe in using unnecessary litigation as a business strategy, and we are troubled to see an industry as bright and promising as ours weighed down by such tactics.

We have no interest in Zynga's "Playbook" or "secret sauce." Our strength comes from our 111 talented people, and we will defend ourselves vigorously against this distraction.

The lawsuit stems from seven former-Zynga, now-Playdom employees who may or may not have taken a few proprietary documents with them to their new jobs. Among the documents Playdom is accused of stealing is the fast-becoming-legendary/mythical “Zynga Playbook”: “The Zynga Playbook is literally the recipe book that contains Zynga's "secret sauce," and its contents would be invaluable to a competitor like Playdom,” says Zynga in the lawsuit.

Did Playdom steal it? All they say is they have “no interest” in the document. It seems to me that the only way they could know that for sure is if they’ve read it. I mean, if the New York Times had a playbook, I sure would be interested in it. Unless I’d read it and found it uninteresting, that is. So I’ll ask again, Playdom. Did you steal the Zynga Playbook?

And if you did, can I have a copy?

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TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

More Mad Money For TechCrunch50 Startups. Partners Now Giving Away $1.3 Million In Free Advertising.

Posted: 11 Sep 2009 06:12 PM PDT

Every startup needs exposure. So as part of TechCrunch50, we’ve signed up some major partners to give $1.3 million worth of advertising to the startups launching at the conference next week. We’ve already announced the first $1 million of this advertising from Facebook, Google (Youtube), Microsoft (Bing) and MySpace.

They are being joined in their generosity by Break Media, Glam Media, AIM, and Amazon Web Services. All of them will be giving advertising in kind to the TechCrunch50 finalists. Amazon will be giving credits for Amazon Web Services, something every startup can use. And Perkins Cole, as previously announced, will be providing free legal advice.

With a total war chest of $1.3 million in advertising, you can expect to be reminded about these startups well beyond their launch.

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TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

What Steve Jobs Actually Said About eBooks

Posted: 11 Sep 2009 05:12 PM PDT

Screen shot 2009-09-11 at 5.05.57 PMThere’s been a big brouhaha over comments Steve Jobs made to NYT’s David Pogue in an interview following Apple’s event on Wednesday. Basically, most people are interpreting what Jobs said about eBook readers to mean that Apple plans to completely stay away from the market. But that’s not actually what Jobs said at all.

How do we know? Because before Pogue re-wrote his interview, he posted the transcription of the Q&A, which still resides in Google’s cache. Here’s the relevant part:

Q: Has your opinion of e-readers changed?

A: I'm sure there will always be dedicated devices, and they may have a few advantages in doing just one thing. But I think the general-purpose devices will win the day because I think people just probably aren't willing to pay for a dedicated device. You notice Amazon never says how much they sell; usually if they sell a lot of something, you want to tell everybody.

We don't see that it's a really big market at this point. And in the future, the more general-purpose devices will tend to win the day.

I'm not sure that Amazon, as an example, really cares that much about being in the hardware business. If I were Amazon, I'd love selling stuff where I didn't have to have a warehouse, didn't need UPS.

Translation: We’re making a tablet, and eBooks will be a part of those.

Jobs isn’t saying Apple isn’t interested in eBooks, he’s saying that Apple isn’t interested in making a stand-alone eBook reader. And they shouldn’t be. While the devices will exist for a while, eventually the thought that this won’t be a functionality wrapped into other devices is silly. Why carry around multiple devices when you can carry around one? That’s kind of Apple’s thing, isn’t it?

Basically, a lot of people are wrongly translating Jobs’ thoughts about eBook readers as eBooks themselves. eBooks are a huge portion of the App Store, why wouldn’t Apple want to expand their support of them? They do, and they are. It’s just going to be on their tablet device or their other devices, not some stand-alone reader.

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TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Five Startups Present At Capital Factory’s Demo Day In Austin

Posted: 11 Sep 2009 05:10 PM PDT

The startup incubator model pioneered by Y Combinator is quickly spreading across the country, with programs popping up in places well outside the Silicon Valley bubble, including Colorado and South Carolina. Earlier this week Capital Factory, an incubator based out of Austin, held its first demo day where the program’s five startups presented themselves to a number of potential investors and press. The demo day also included a discussion panel with six venture capitalists, who discussed some of the things involves in building a strong startup. We’ve embedded a video of the event below, along with a description of each startup.

Cubit Planning — Cubit Planning is a service that allows agencies to automate some of the more tedious and time consuming parts of writing NEPA documents — the documents that summarize how a project will impact the environment as part of the National Environmental Policy Act. The startup says that you can get “cut and paste ready” data for these reports in as little as five minutes.


Famigo is a gaming company that focuses on helping bring parents and their kids together. The company will soon be releasing an iPhone version of the game ‘hot potato’, which it plans to launch in the next few weeks. In the long run, the company plans to be a platform that other developers can leverage to help make family-oriented games. For more, you can see a video interview with the company here.

Hourville is a marketplace for local service providers, who can offer anything from private tutoring to haircuts and more. The site lets these service professionals create a sharable calendar so potential customers can see when they’re available, and allows customers to book online (service professionals will get Email alerts and phone calls when someone books a timeslot).

PetsMD is a new resource for pet-related health information. There are plenty of sites on the web that offer guidance for taking care of your dogs and cats, but these can be inconsistent and poorly organized. PetsMD looks to offer a comprehensive and accurate database of this data, and includes reports that have been approved by the site’s “Veterinary Review Board”. There’s also a Symptom Checker where you enter in the behavior your pet is displaying to see what the problem might be (the site recommends that you still visit a vet if there appears to be something wrong).

Sparefoot is a site that lets you rent out any extra storage you might have around your house — be it a shed in the backyard or a room in your house — and also gives more traditional storage facilities another marketplace to present their available space on. The site also features a site that lets users who are looking for storage to browser through the available offerings.

Over the course of the last ten weeks, each startup was given “up to $20,000″, along with mentorship, PR support, server usage, and legal help, while the incubator took a 5% stake in each company.

Other incubators we’ve seen recently include Y Combinator (demo day coverage here) , fbFund (coverage here), and DreamIT Ventures (coverage here).



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TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Glam Media Goes Mobile

Posted: 11 Sep 2009 05:00 PM PDT

What do you do when you're sitting on a nearly endless torrent of finely-focused content and a few million bucks in venture capital? You go mobile. That's exactly what Glam Media, the distributed media network behind the womens lifestyle site Glam.com and its male-oriented counterpart Brash.com, is about to do. As one of the fastest growing sites on the web, its taken a bit longer for them to take on the mobile front than we would have guessed - but their quest to conquer portables begins tomorrow.
TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Oyster Scores $4 Million For In-Depth Hotel Reviews Site

Posted: 11 Sep 2009 04:45 PM PDT

Oyster Hotel Reviews, a site that launched a few months ago, has raised $4 million in an extended Series A round of funding from Bain Capital Ventures and Accelerator Ventures. To date, the startup has raised $10.4 million in funding.

The site provides consumers with qualified professional reviews of hotels around the world, hoping to compete with the likes of Frommers, Fodors, Conde Nast Traveler and others. Oyster aims to differentiate itself from the plethora of other travel review sites by offering longer, more magazine-like reviews that are written by a staff of full-time journalists who actually travel to each hotel reviewed.

The online travel industry is a competitive landscape, with TripAdvisor, Fodors, Frommers and TripKick all vying for traffic. But Oyster has received a good amount of positive press since its launch and has raised a fair amount of funding in a tumultuous economic environment, so it may be able to survive in the space. The advantage that Oyster has in terms of content is a team of experienced travel journalists who write detailed and informative reviews that seem to be unbiased. And as the site adds more locations and perhaps more verticals, it should gain a loyal following.

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TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Wrong Way, Skype

Posted: 11 Sep 2009 04:06 PM PDT

Skype is terminating its Extras developer program, they announced earlier today, because “not enough people were using [the tools] to justify” it. No new projects will be certified, and existing ones will expire over time. This is exactly the wrong thing for Skype to be doing.

Om Malik goes on a justifiable rant, arguing that Skype doesn’t understand developers, never understood developers, and shouldn’t be trusted by developers. For the record, I agree. Skype has not been much of a team player when it comes to community over the years.

And they’re right, the Extras program was a dud. But only because developers didn’t have any real ability to do deep integrations. For all the pomp, third party developers have never been able to do much more than skim the surface of Skype functionality. No wonder the program never took off.

What developers need to really integrate with Skype is the ability to treat the call function as a service, and build it directly into other applications. Today, almost without exception, to make a Skype call requires the Skype client to be opened.

Skype has made a very few exceptions to this rule. iSkoot for example, runs the heavy part of Skype on a server so that mobile users could get the functionality on their devices. But these were one-off deals, not via an API or developer program.

What developers need is the ability to build the core Skype functionality directly into applications. Like Outlook. Or Facebook. And give those developers a revenue share from paid Skype-out calls, supposedly Skype’s biggest and fast growing revenue source.

It’s not clear Skype is going to go in that direction, although the new buyers have said quietly that they’re going to look hard at skype-as-a-service. and some Skype employees I’ve spoken with have said much the same – at some point, expect developers to be able to do deep integrations with the Skype service, not just launch the Skype client.

We’re all waiting for that day. And when it comes Skype will win, too. Skype-out calls will absolutely skyrocket, and the revenue will pour in. But for now, Skype, you’re going in the wrong direction. Instead of killing your limited APIs and tools, you should be expanding them dramatically.

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TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

A Nice Big FriendFeed Bug: Impersonate Anyone!

Posted: 11 Sep 2009 03:51 PM PDT

Screen shot 2009-09-11 at 3.48.15 PM

There’s quite a big vulnerability with FriendFeed right now. Using the FriendFeed By Email function, apparently anyone can post a message as anyone else on FriendFeed. For example, someone posted this pretending to be FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor.

Obviously, this is a huge security problem. When it was spotted just about an hour ago, FriendFeed jumped on it quickly, and has shut down email posting while they look into the issue. (Good to know they can still hop on these problems with FriendFeed even though they are now technically Facebook employees.) Still, you have to wonder if this bug has existed for months, or however long this feature has existed?

We’ve reached out to FriendFeed to see if there have been any serious compromises because of this bug.

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TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Preview: Foursquare’s New iPhone App Ups The Social Ante

Posted: 11 Sep 2009 02:07 PM PDT

IMG_0472While Foursquare’s apps on other platforms (Android, BlackBerry, and WinMo) have been garnering most of the buzz recently, the company remains firmly committed to the only app it developed entirely in-house: It’s iPhone app. In fact, it recently submitted a new version, 1.4, to the App Store for approval. I’ve had a chance to play with an ad-hoc build for the past couple of weeks, and it’s great. It significantly improves two key areas: Usability and its social layer.

See Who Else Is Here

The most important new feature of Foursquare 1.4 is that it now allows you to see who is checked into any venue at any given time. While previously, you had to rely on your main “Friends” tab to see a stream of where people were checked in, now you can click on any venue, click on the new “People” tab, and see who is there. If you see someone you are not currently friends with, you can click on their name, and you will load up their profile where you can add them as a friend.

On that profile page, you can also see their Twitter stream (if they have hooked up their Foursquare account to their Twitter account) and their Facebook profile (if they’ve hooked that up). What’s great is that the tweet stream loads up right in the app, while clicking on the Facebook profile loads the Facebook iPhone app (assuming you have it). Both of these features should allow you to determine if you want to friend that person or not.

OIMG_0466bviously, not everyone is going to love this ability to see everyone who is checked in at a place. Some will think this is an invasion of privacy, of sorts. But really, it’s a very nice extension of the social capabilities of the Foursquare app. For any social application to work, there needs to be a way to navigate its social graph. Previously, you could only add new friends by either entering their phone number, or looking up account by way of your Twitter friends. Neither of these methods are really ideal, and the idea of friending people that you actually see at places you frequent seems like a good one.

Respect The Mayor

Alongside being able to see who else is at a particular venue, you can also now see who the mayor is at any given time. A “mayor” of a venue is the person who has checked in there the most amount of times in the past 60 days. Battling for mayorships is a particularly fun element of Foursquare.

On your main friend stream you can also now see when your friends are checked in places that they’re the mayor of. With the new app, you’ll see a crown next to a person’s name if they’re currently the mayor of the place they are at.

Better Maps

One of the nice features of both the Android and the upcoming WinMo versions of Foursquare is that they have much nicer map integration than the current version for the iPhone. Version 1.4 changes that, as you can now click on the map in a venue’s “Details” section, and it will load a larger Google Map which you can manipulate just as you would the regular iPhone Maps application.

IMG_0468However, you still cannot get directions to a venue from your current location within the app (but you can do this by clicking through and going to the Maps application on the iPhone). More importantly, you still cannot see where your other friends are on the map. Such a Latitude and Loopt-like feature would be a very nice addition to Foursquare. The Windows Mobile version of the app should have this, I’m told.

Mayor Deals

Mayor deals, which we’ve previously covered, are also now much more visible in this new version. When you’re at a place that has a deal nearby, you’ll see a green ribbon alerting you about it. Clicking on that will tell you what the deal is, and where it is. They continue to extend these deals in new venues in various cities.

Location, Location, Location

A subtle, but potentially huge addition to the Foursquare app is the ability to see tweets nearby. Right now, this feature is a bit crippled, as it pulls them in based on location set in Twitter users’ profiles (what you say you location is in your profile, some people use exact coordinates provided by some Twitter apps). But when the Twitter Geolocation API goes live, this could be an awesome feature. And that’s why Foursquare included it, I’m told.

IMG_0469Basically, on a venue’s Details page, underneath the map there is a button to “View tweets nearby.” Clicking on this will show you a stream of tweets around that venue. When the Geolocation API is working, it should show what people are saying that are currently in and around that venue, which is another potentially powerful layer of social discovery.

Foursquare.com Finally

Foursquare formally announced its $1.35 million seed round earlier this week. Right now, the company only has 3 employees, but they hope to add a fourth soon. They also used some of their money to buy the important foursquare.com domain. Previously, they only owned playfoursquare.com, which obviously would confuse new users.

Interestingly enough, Foursquare is the name co-founder Dennis Crowley originally had wanted to use for his previous startup, Dodgeball (which was acquired by Google). Since he wasn’t able to obtain the foursquare.com domain at the time, he went with Dodgeball instead. He’s been trying for over 11 years to get the domain, so now that he has it, he’s obviously quite pleased.

Soon

Foursquare is still limited to a select group of cities that they’ve rolled the product out in (most recently, Vancouver), but soon they hope to start crowdsourcing cities, meaning opening them up for users to start populating venues. Right now, Foursquare mainly uses third party data for city population before they roll a new city out.

Foursquare submitted version 1.4 of the app for approval several days ago, so assuming there are no problems, it should be available soon. As usual, it will be free. Watch for it to appear here.

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TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Welcome To Silicon Valley, FairCompanies. Thanks For Not Breaking Into My House

Posted: 11 Sep 2009 01:54 PM PDT

How polite! A husband and wife team, the founders of Barcelona-based FairCompanies, visits Silicon Valley. And unlike a certain group of Dutch entrepreneurs, they don’t decide to break into my house as a publicity stunt.

Instead they visit our office in the wee hours of the morning and leave a very nice note on our window:

TechCrunch – We are visiting from Barcelona and are readers of your blog. We don’t want to go into Michael’s house like the random Dutch guys, but we wanted to let you know about our site. We are a husband and wife team (he: ex-tech writer for Spanish Playboy & she: shooter/producer for MTV) with a site with tools on sustainability. Well, check it out @ faircompainies.com

Best, Kirsten & Nico

They add “Please don’t print this unless necessary” (it was, plus they didn’t write “off record” on the note) and apparently taped a Spanish Focaccia to the note that never actually made it to my desk.

Good luck with your startup, Kirsten and Nico. And next time, email ahead and we’ll meet you in person!

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TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Kijubi Launches Booking Engine For Local Outdoor Activities

Posted: 11 Sep 2009 01:35 PM PDT

The online travel booking market is saturated with both large companies and startups which want a share of an $847 billion dollar industry. But in this type of competitive environment, niche sites that offer personalized services that the big guys like Kayak and Expedia can’t do because of scale, can be successful. One such service is Kijubi, a booking engine for local outdoor activities and travel and a TechCrunch50 DemoPit startup. The startup aims to help people book surfing trips, indoor skydiving and other niche outdoor activities on its centralized platform. You can see a live demo of Kijubi and meet the startup’s founders at the DemoPit at next week’s conference. Please note that Kijubi’s site will not be launching until Monday, September 14, but you can email beta@kijubi.com to test out the site beforehand.

Kijubi allows you to research, plan and book a myriad of outdoor activities in a variety of locations around the United States, including California, Nevada, Maryland, and Florida. Kijubi’s co-founder and CEO Billy Fried started the company after finding that it was tough for consumers to book niche outdoor activities, like indoor skydiving or surfing lessons, on the internet because many of these independent operations are mom and pop type of businesses that don’t have an online presence.

That’s where Kijubi comes in. The startup aggregates all of these activity operators and will facilitate the booking of these activities for you. Plus, you can book all of your other travel, including flights, cars, and lodging on the site.

From sea kayaking to skydiving to discount theme park passes, Kijubi offers over 70 categories of outdoor activities that you can easily find by theme (i.e. kids, romance, luxury), location, and type (i.e. air, water, land). The beauty of Kijubi is that it’s comprehensive; you can book everything, including air, car, hotels, and activities, on one site. Another notable feature of the site is the ability to gift activities to friends or family.

Similar to other travel sites, Kijubi monetizes through commissions. Each time a user books a flight, activity, hotel etc., Kijubi takes a cut. Kijubi is also providing many activity vendors with the technology for e-commerce platforms, in which the startup is able to take a percentage of credit card processing fees. And of course, Kijubi will be advertising on its site.

As of now, Kijubi only covers four states in the U.S., but plans to expand within the U.S. as well as internationally. Even from personal experience, Kijubi seems like it adds value to the online travel industry. I know that when I’ve traveled, I often leave the planning of the activity portion of the trip until I get to the hotel, which leads to late-bookings and not always being able to participate in a desired activity. Next time, I’ll look too Kijubi to book my hot air balloon ride over Napa Valley or flying lesson in San Diego.

At TechCrunch50’s DemoPit next Monday and Tuesday, Kijubi will be giving away a bunch of cool outdoor activities from indoor skydiving to biking tours through Napa Valley via a Twitter contest. Follow Kijubi and Tweet following message “RT #Kijubi #TechCrunch50 and tell Kijubi why you should win an free pass to try out an outdoor activity like sailing lessons or a bike tour in Napa Valley. The most creative tweets will win activities. You can also enter by dropping a business card at Kijubi’s booth at the DemoPit.

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TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Yahoo Expands Quality Based Pricing. Translation: Publishers Get Less

Posted: 11 Sep 2009 11:42 AM PDT

Earlier this week Yahoo sent out an email to Yahoo Publisher partners (third party sites that display Yahoo cost per click ads). The email says they should expect new pricing adjustments “based on our assessment of the quality of traffic coming” from their sites.

Yahoo (and its competitors) make adjustments to CPC payments out to publishers based on the perceived “quality of traffic.” Supposedly these payments are credited to advertisers, but there is really no way to know. The changes Yahoo implemented appear to make more dramatic adjustments to outbound payments.

The result of the change, say two publishers we spoke to, is a drop in already-low revenue payments.

“I’d describe the drop as annoying, but not devastating,” said one publisher. But he added that “The way they do it is in a total black box and leaves us helpless to improve things. Yahoo gives you ZERO insight into what bad traffic is or looks like so you can do NOTHING to improve the quality of the traffic you bring to Yahoo.”

Yahoo is also saying that in some cases they will increase payments to publishers with higher-quality traffic. The publishers we spoke to about this are skeptical.

More reports from publishers should get to us over the next few days, and we’ll update this post with new information.

The email is below:

Quality-based pricing is an important component of our goal to deliver high-value traffic to our advertisers, a high-quality experience for users, and long-term success for our distribution partners.

On September 9, 2009, Yahoo! upgraded the quality-based pricing system which adjusts advertiser click charges based on our assessment of the quality of traffic coming from sources within our distribution network. The new version of quality-based pricing may result in discounts being applied across more keywords, and/or deeper discounts for lower-quality traffic. Additionally, for the first time, it may also result in a pricing premium for higher-quality traffic. This enhancement will affect our Sponsored Search and Domain Match traffic only.

If you have any questions regarding this upcoming change, please contact your account representative.

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TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

With iTunes 9, Apple Brings Back A Classic: The Slow iPhone Sync

Posted: 11 Sep 2009 11:23 AM PDT

Screen shot 2009-09-11 at 11.19.47 AMPeople who bought the original iPhone will remember perhaps the most annoying original feature: The long sync. That is, when you plugged the iPhone into iTunes it took forever for it to complete its syncing process. The main holdup was the backup process, that would take a ridiculous amount of time to complete, each time. Luckily, Apple fixed the issue with subsequent updates to the iPhone, and sped up the backing up process to mere seconds. But with iTunes 9, things are starting to look grim again.

One main culprit is what should be a nice, new feature in iTunes 9 called “Automatically fill free space with songs.” It does exactly what it says, finds songs to put on your iPhone to fill it up. This is great for people like me with too large of a music library to sync it all with the iPhone, and who don’t really use playlists (the main way to sync music to the iPhone). Unfortunately, if you click this “Automatically fill free space” option, it seems that sometimes it wants to remove and replace much of the random music. If you have a 32 GB iPhone, that is going to take a while.

Screen shot 2009-09-11 at 11.20.50 AMIt doesn’t do it every time, it only seems to when you have made a change such as installing new apps, which obviously changes the amount of storage available on your iPhone. That’s somewhat understandable, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that it still takes a long time to complete. And I don’t know why it has to remove 10+ GB of music to install one new app.

So easy enough fix, right? Just don’t check that box. Well yes, except that regular syncing itself seems to take significantly longer with iTunes 9 as well. Previously, it would take me about a minute to sync my iPhone with iTunes 8. With iTunes 9, I’m seeing wait times of about 5 to 10 minutes. And sometimes the system just hangs, and you have to manually stop it.

This doesn’t appear to be the backing up process, which is still being done in just seconds, but is some other process involved in the syncing. The status indicator simply reads “Syncing iPhone” as the progress bar spins for minutes.

Hopefully, this is just a matter of another firmware update from Apple for the iPhone. You would have thought they would have checked the syncing speed on the just released iPhone 3.1 firmware, but apparently not. So now, if I want to sync just a couple of songs before leaving my desk, I have to wait 5 to 10 minutes. It’s like the original iPhone all over again.

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TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

TechCrunch50 Sells Out: See You All On Monday

Posted: 11 Sep 2009 11:15 AM PDT

The TechCrunch Office is buzzing! TechCrunch50, which starts Monday in San Francisco, will sell out sometime later today. There are approximately 50 tickets left, so we should be sold out and into a waiting list situation some time this afternoon. 1,750 people should be rolling through the event next week, matching last year’s sell-out crowd. All the press you could ever want will be there, too.

The 50 launching startups are in round three rehearsals at Sequoia Capital’s offices. The panel of experts are preparing their quippy remarks for launching companies, and a swarm of hungry demopit companies are preparing their presentations. As always there will be surprises, and not just Penn & Teller showing up to launch a new product.

Lots more info will be coming over the next three days on the TechCrunch50 blog. See you all on Monday!

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TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Skype Axes Developer Program Extras

Posted: 11 Sep 2009 10:52 AM PDT

Skype, which was recently sold by eBay to VC firms Silver Lake Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures, has announced that it is killing its Developer Program. The program, called “Extras,” allows third-party developers to build applications, both hardware and software, on top of Skype.

The company, which was valued at $2.75 billion during the deal, says that the program wasn’t gaining much traction amongst the developer community to maintain the “Extras” platform, which was launched in June of 2007. According to a blog post on the company’s site, Skype will no longer certify new applications but existing applications will be able to work until their expiration dates.

Skype also said that it will continue to support accessories via its public API, and the Skype shop will feature existing “Extras.” It’s always a sad day when a tech company as large as Skype cuts out the developer ecosystem. Third-party developers are a crucial part of any product, and it’s a shame that Skype couldn’t figure out a efficient way to engage developers. However, there is a small light at the end of the tunnel. Skype ended the announcement with this line: “We still believe there are opportunities for third-party developers to enhance the Skype experience. We’ll keep you posted.”

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