Wednesday, September 30, 2009

The Latest from TechCrunch

The Latest from TechCrunch

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Weebly Launches New Managed Site Builder For Educators And Students

Posted: 30 Sep 2009 09:00 AM PDT

School’s back in session, and Weebly, a startup that makes it super easy to build websites using a drag-and-drop interface, is looking to capitalize on it. Today Weebly is launching a new product geared directly at educators and their students, allowing schoolchildren who may not familiar with the basics of HTML or CSS to craft their own multimedia online blogs and reports with a minimal amount of effort.

The new product is similar to the normal Weebly editor, but with a few key differences. For one, Weebly has stripped out all of its monetization and retail features that wouldn’t be applicable to students. And more importantly, the site is letting teachers manage the accounts of all of their students. Because schools obviously wouldn’t want some of this content to be avilable to the public, teachers can elect to keep their entire class’s accounts set to Private, which means only the student and their teacher can see it.

There are countless potential uses for this, but the obvious ones are for personal blogs and for reports (you can see an example of what a Weebly report might look like here). Teachers can also create their own publicly available class websites, allowing students to easily upload assignments and giving parents a place to look to see what their children are up to at school.

At this point most of these features are pretty basic, but I see quite a bit of potential here. Imagine letting teachers build out individual student profile pages, where students would be greeted with photos, their recent grades, and maybe a personal note from their teacher (I imagine that would be more popular with younger kids). There are obviously some education products already out there, like Blackboard, but most of these are pretty spartan and data driven — Weebly would give teachers a new degree of customization and it’s more user friendly to boot. That said, schools are notoriously political, so Weebly may have some trouble getting its foot in the door.

Weebly is offering the product for free for teachers with up to 40 students,

As part of today’s news, Weebly has also announced that it has partnered with National History Day, a program held in schools across the country where over 500,000 students create a research project describing or reenacting a historical event. One option students have is to build a web site for their project, and this year Weebly will be the only officially sanctioned way to do that.




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

Chumby Reborn As Chumby One, Now Less Beanbaggy

Posted: 30 Sep 2009 08:44 AM PDT

The original Chumby was soft, cuddly, and cute. The new Chumby One is uptight, all-business, and commercial. I hate it. The draw to the original Chumby was that there was nothing like it on the market two years ago. You could load it up with all sorts of pre-made widgets like YouTube, weather, news, or one you made thanks to the open source hardware and software. Sure, the upcoming Chumby One still has the original capabilities if not more thanks to the upgraded 454MHz CPU, but it doesn't have the same crazy beanbag form factor. It's missing the "cute."
TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Zynga Is On A Tear; Claims Nearly 130 Million Social Gamers.

Posted: 30 Sep 2009 08:24 AM PDT

Social gaming startup Zynga is seeing some impressive traction. It now boats 129 million monthly active users across its portfolio of more than 30 games, according to both Inside Facebook’s AppData(see chart) and Developer Analytics. That’s up from about 50 million three months ago, and 30 million in April.

Zynga’s most popular games are FarmVille (the most popular game on Facebook with 50 million cumulative players), Mafia Wars (the second most popular game on Facebook with 25 million), Zynga Poker, and YoVille. The majority of Zynga’s users play its games on Facebook, but it also has games Bebo, Hi5, MySapce, and Friendster.

Heere are some fun stats about each of its top games:

FarmVille—sort of like a Sim Farm, where you grow your own crops and manage a farm, FarmVille users have built more than 40 million virtual farms (which is 20 times more than actually exist in the U.S.). Players buy 500,000 virtual tractors a day in the game.

Mafia Wars —Every month, 140 million “jobs” are done by aspiring cappos in this game.

Zynga Poker—This used to be calledd Texas Hold'Em. Every day about 150 million hands are dealt (more than ten times as many as are dealt on an averag day in Las Vegas), and on there are usually 250,000 concurrent players, so you can always find a game.

YoVille—A game where you furnish a virtual apartment, buy pets, and eat funnel cakes. The 17 million residnents of YoVille have bought 10,000 pets and 40,000 funnel cakes since August alone.

As Zynga continues to grow, so does the IPO talk (and the litigation). Its revenues, which is well above nine figures now, comes largely from its virtual currency, as well as ads.

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

Huddle Launches iPhone App, Microsoft Office Plug-In And Web Conferencing Tool

Posted: 30 Sep 2009 07:55 AM PDT

Collaboration applications are becoming increasingly popular in the enterprise space. Startup Huddle.net has been steadily accumulating innovative features to its business-friendly collaboration platform and quickly adding big name companies, including Samsung and Panasonic, as clients. Huddle is a network of secure online workspaces where you can share files, collaborate on ideas, manage projects and organize virtual meetings. Today, Huddle is adding several more useful features to its platform—web conferencing, integration with Microsoft Office, and a much-awaited iPhone app.

Huddle's web conferencing feature, which is similar to web-ex, lets users set up meetings, schedule recurring events, and share their desktop and content with other members of their workspace. Huddle has also sent up a partnership with InterCall, one of the world’s largest conference call providers, to handle phone conferencing. Huddle’s web conferencing tool is integrated with Outlook or Google calendar and users receive free conferencing minutes as a part of their monthly package and can also access low-cost international service plans.

Huddle is also letting Microsoft office users seamlessly move between the productivity suite and the collaboration platform by launching a Microsoft Office plug-in that lets you save desktop files to Huddle save their desktop files directly into Huddle’s cloud-based storage, view and edit files, add new versions, request approvals and send notifications without opening a browser window. You’ll be able to access any edited Word documents that you’ve tweaked in the desktop app directly from Huddle. And this feature is enhanced by Huddle’s previous ability to use a Zoho-powered editor to work on Word and Excel files together directly in the browser. As a Microsoft BizSpark partner (we just announced Yammer’s BizSpark news a few weeks ago), Huddle is going to be developing a plug-in for SharePoint and and other Microsoft products in the near future. Currently, the MS Office plug-in works for the 2007 version but will be retrofitted to work with Microsoft Office 2010 next year.

There was some speculation earlier this month about the fact that Huddle doesn’t have a mobile presence. But Huddle’s new iPhone app lets users have full access to document sharing, project tasks, discussions and whiteboards, as well as a complete view of the user’s personalized dashboard. Huddle can be also accessed on other cell phones by using third party applications such as Clustr.

Huddle has also developed partnerships and integrations with LinkedIn and Ning to be included as apps on both social network. And the startup has a similar deal with Facebook, which allows you full access to all of Huddle's tools within the social network.

And Huddle is affordable—there’s a free, ad-supported version available from the Huddle web site (which includes 1 workspace and 1GB of storage); three premium levels (which have increased workspace and storage) and an enterprise version with multiple managers, customization, advanced security, training, and increased support services. And Huddle allows for unlimited numbers of users for each account.

Andy McLoughlin, Huddle’s co-founder and director of strategic development, tells methat while 55 percent of Huddle’s users (McLoughlin says total users amount in the “Hundreds of thousands”) are based in the U.S., Huddle is making a big play for the U.S. in the coming year, opening up offices in San Francisco and other areas. Considering that many of Huddle’s big-name clients are based in the U.S. such as Edelman and Disney, this is a smart move. Because of the startup’s multiple services, Huddle faces competition from a variety of startups and tech giants including, Lotus, Box.net, and WebEx. And of course, Huddle faces competition from Google Apps and the launch of Google Wave. But despite the competition in the “Enterprise 2.0″ space, Huddle has been steadily gaining traction and should be able to give even Google a run for its money.

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

Cliqset’s Social Identity Platform Gets A Real-Time Makeover

Posted: 30 Sep 2009 06:55 AM PDT

Cliqset, a Friend-Feed-like online identity platform has gone through several iterations but perhaps third time is a charm. Cliqset’s most recent platform tried to stitch together the social web by allowing users and developers build, organize and share social information across a wide variety of services. Similar to Friend-Feed and other social media aggregators, users could merge and share status updates, location, photos, and more into one platform. Today, Cliqset is jumping into the stream by launching interactive real-time functionality and redesigning the overall interface of the platform. Because the startup will be going into private beta for the next few weeks, we have 200 invites here.

Cliqset’s primary aim is capture the pulse of conversations happening on the web from and on the platform. You can now pull in content from close to 70 social networks and services, including MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed and more. Plus, users can update their status, and share photos, bookmarks, reviews on Cliqset and push them out to wherever they choose. Users can respond and comment on any type of post in your real-time stream as well.

And Cliqset has added other bells and whistles to its platform, including the ability to filter your stream, thumbnails for photo files or location details (via a map) within the stream, and a heightened set of privacy options that let you control who can and can’t see your streams.

Darren Bounds, president of Cliqset, tells me that the platform aims to be a less clunky version of FriendFeed, with a target audience of users who aren’t as technologically savvy. The platform has a fairly sleek interface and is fairly intuitive, which might help its popularity amongst users. But the real-time social media stream is fast becoming a crowded space with Threadsy, Streamy and others launching compelling platforms. And who knows what Facebook will do with FriendFeed.

Cliqset closed a second seed round, $1.5 million coming from angel investor Derek Mercer, founder and former chairman and CEO of Vurv Technology, a provider of talent management software that was acquired in 2008 by Taleo for about $128.8 million. This comes in addition to an earlier early-stage capital injection of $500,000 by the man, bringing the total invested in the startup to $2 million.

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

Pre Faltering, Palm Laying Off Employees? – UPDATE

Posted: 30 Sep 2009 06:11 AM PDT

When your smartphone drops from $249 to $79 over a summer, you have to wonder what's going on. Two rumors are circulating this AM, one that Palm is laying off folks, perhaps in the Windows Mobile team. The estimated sales for the Pre topped out at 375,000 somewhere in the 810,000 range (Palm sold 810K units last quarter and states most of those where Pres) at the end of August and they went from $299 $199 with contract to about $79 in about eleven weeks. While this might be normal for a feature phone - the subsidy kicks in once they're sure that the early adopters who simply must have the LG Chocolate have had their fix - this isn't good for a smartphone that was supposed to be the lead invasion force for a new WebOS smartphone renaissance. UPDATED with word from Palm.
TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Aha Mobile Launches New Version Of Traffic And Road Entertainment iPhone App

Posted: 30 Sep 2009 06:00 AM PDT

Mobile apps that help drivers determine traffic patterns aren’t necessarily new but apps that combine crowdsourcing, voice-based traffic reports and entertainment are definitely worth a second look. Aha Mobile is launching a new version of its iPhone app, which takes a voiced-based, non-map-centric approach to real time traffic reports. In August Aha officially launched its free app in a few select cities but today is launching national traffic coverage and is adding a few entertainment and social media features to the app as well.

Aha’s app was designed with driver safety in mind and is fairly simple. You can record and share your own personal traffic reports to help those around you, or listen to a customized traffic channels and reports (Imported from INRIX and Clear Channel) on the roads you travel. The app itself only has four buttons and is safe to use at speeds of 65 miles per hour or less. You can preset the roads into your app before you get on the road, so you can automatically access them without taking your eyes off the road to input the information.

Aha also alerts you to nearby food and drinks; pulling in information from Yelp. But if you want to find a coffee place while you are on the road, Aha will simple pull in the four, top-rated coffee shops nearest to your locations, instead of making you scroll through listings. Aha also pulls in bathroom locations from SitOrSquat and info about the locations of red light or speed cameras from Photoenforced.com.

Crowdsourcing traffic information is another compelling part of the app. With the Aha App, drivers simply tap their iPhone, speak for up to 15 seconds and, without taking their eyes off the road, safely broadcast voice messages, known as Aha Shouts, to drivers nearby. For example, if you witnessed an accident on the 101 highway, you could tape a shout and Aha would store this Shout so that another users could access this information when he or she is driving along the same route.

In fact, the Aha App allows and encourages drivers to Shout about all types of things – from reporting on traffic bottlenecks and speed traps to venting about a crazy driver in the next lane. Or, if drivers just want to listen in and benefit from the information others are sharing, they can do that too.

Drivers can now post Aha Shouts automatically to Twitter and Facebook for others to hear. With Aha's new Facebook and Twitter integration, drivers can customize which types of Shouts go to each of their social networks. Posts are automatically populated with the type of Shout, the user's current location and speed (for Traffic Shouts), any text added by the user during set-up, and most importantly a link to play the Shout. One humorous feature of Aha’s app is the “Caraoke” room that lets Aha users record 15 seconds of singing along to any song in the car. Fellow Aha users can see other users’ recordings and you can also publish your “Caraoke” to Twitter or Facebook.

To date, Aha has raised $3 million in Series A funding from Venrock. The startup plans to offer mobile apps for the Android and Blackberry in the Spring of 2010.

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

Shooting for the Moon: How Universities Can Turn Innovation into Companies

Posted: 30 Sep 2009 05:48 AM PDT

moon11-19-02bEditor's note: 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.

In my last post, I explained the motherlode of innovation hidden in the huge stacks of patents and discoveries backlogged at our universities and research labs. While entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley trip over each other to create the next iPhone app, they ignore the early-stage discoveries which could lead to the next Internet,  a revolutionary memory device, or a cure for infectious diseases. Researchers in university labs find vast numbers of breakthroughs which can better the world. Most of their work never sees the light of day. Hardly 0.1% of all funded basic science research results in a commercial venture.

To boost our economy, we need to bridge this gap and improve the university research commercialization system. Many are working on solutions. Unfortunately, things change slowly in academia and those solutions are years off, at best. In the meantime, there are opportunities for ambitious entrepreneurs to do what some smart VC's do — tap into this goldmine.

To create a guide for you, I did some brainstorming with Barry Myers, a colleague at Duke University who plays the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde roles of university professor and venture capitalist. A disclaimer on his behalf:  Barry would never tell you (unless under the influence of alcohol) to go around the university system but here is our roadmap for finding treasure.

First, pick a field which you are really interested in and spend the time to learn what the science really means. This will be like going back to school. Except you know the importance of what you are studying.

Now let's be clear about what you are looking for. You will find many ideas in academia, but you want the "propriety ideas" – the ones which VC put in the "proprietary deal flow" category. These are inventions which no one else is aware of (and no one else is bidding on). You need to use your judgment to figure out whether you have one of these nuggets. Ask yourself: If the technology works, will its technical abilities be sufficiently better than anything in the market to make a big impact? If the answer is yes, bet on the technology and run with it. But make sure you have the exclusive. That usually means a materials or biological patent or a process patent that relates to an actual process.

Now let's go mining. Start by knocking on the front door. All research universities have technology transfer offices which are assigned the task of commercializing research. They manage all of the patents and negotiate licensing deals. Some of these offices are really competent and will help you analyze their portfolio of discoveries. They'll take the time to explain the value and help you shape your thinking. They will connect you with the inventors and may even team you up with other entrepreneurs and potential investors.

But that's Fantasy Land. Unfortunately, very few tech transfer offices are like this. Most are staffed by lawyers and bureaucrats whose purpose in life is to squeeze every dime out of a potential licensor while protecting their butts just in case they asked too little and the technology makes it big.

So, you may need to get in through the back door. Universities have departments called "centers" which focus on specific areas of research including entrepreneurship and research commercialization (which are trying to fix the system). For example, at Duke, we have the Center for Research Commercialization and Entrepreneurship (which Barry runs and I am a part of), at Berkeley, Iklaq Sidhu runs the Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, and at Stanford, Tom Byers runs the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. These centers hold regular events and maintain mailing lists – which are open to anyone. Sign up and attend a few of these meetings. The meetings which feature academics talking about their research can be extremely boring (that's how researchers are), but just by being there, you will get to meet key faculty and learn what's going on at the schools. And in most cases, you'll be the only ones of your kind there (few like you have the time or intellect to sit through these).

If you do hear of some great ideas, ask the faculty if you can learn more over a cup of coffee. Most hard-core academics don't get to tell their stories to regular human beings and are happy to talk. Go prepared – read all the articles the faculty has written and seem smart. As you start meeting university staff, start asking to find the person(s) who knows everyone at the university and can make things happen for you. You'll find that every university has two or three people like this. Frequently they hold non-”line” administrative positions (vice dean, associate provost of research, etc.). Find them, buy them coffee and all doors are open.

Students at universities also have entrepreneurship clubs and host events like business plan competitions. The competitions are a total waste – I can't name one real company which has ever been a winner at one of these. (Everyone cites Akamai, but they actually lost the MIT contest.) But students, particularly PhD researchers, are usually in the know about what's happening at campus. For example, I met Eli Chait soon after I came to UC-Berkeley and he has been introducing me to faculty and other student groups who are wired into the universities research system. Eli is a senior at the school,  works part time at Alsop Louie Partners and heads the entrepreneurship group Startup @ Berkeley (startup.berkeley.edu).

When you do strike gold, then the hard part starts. Negotiating a deal with the tech transfer offices can be painful. They will ask for the world, but be aware that almost everything is negotiable. They will ask for milestone payments, royalties, upfront, patent costs. All of these are negotiable except patent costs (typically $10-50K – earlier, the lower) because this goes into a different bucket and funds further patents. Ownership demands will usually range from 0-5%, and they'll hit you for around 2.5%-5% royalties. Late stage marketable technologies will draw 10% demand while early stage breakthroughs will only garner perhaps 1%.

If you do find worthwhile inventions, discuss licensing directly with the faculty. Faculty are open to discussion. Don’t encourage them to go around their tech transfer offices — this can create immense amounts of litigation and deferred liability risk. Be honest and open with them and they will generally be honest and open with you in return. They may be protective of their IP but that is natural. They understand the potential value of their work better than anyone else. Protect their interests and guide them through the system (the tech transfer office, term sheets, valuation, options, vesting, etc.).

Become the person who navigates this and they’ll do the world for you. But whether you succeed or fail in your mission, you'll come out a lot smarter. If everything goes really well, you might change the world. So what do you say – do you want to launch another dumb iPhone app or shoot the moon? I thought so.

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

The Selling Of Google AdWords

Posted: 30 Sep 2009 05:00 AM PDT

Throughout 2005, the year after the company went public on NASDAQ, Google commissioned multiple research agencies to run analysis on the importance of Internet search and search advertising in purchasing decisions across a variety of verticals. While part of this research – which the company probably still orders considering how important the business continues to be for Google’s bottom line – eventually finds its way to the Google AdWords product page, it’s interesting to gain some insight into what kind of studies the search giant commissioned and which conclusions the research agencies pulled from the data gathered from direct consumer surveys and other means.

Below are some screenshots from internal documents used by Google to gauge the importance of keyword search in purchasing decisions for industries like B2B technology, logistics, travel, healthcare, entertainment and more which we got our hands on. Bear in mind that this data is relatively old, with some of the research going back as far as March 2005. Nevertheless, it’s a fascinating look at how Google looks at its own core business and how it apparently uses the information weeded out by research agencies to better market AdWords and related services to the verticals cited above.

Below is a screenshot of a graph used in an internal Google presentation, showing survey data collected by Global Market Insite and Media Screen. The research agencies had conducted 300 web-based interviews with consumers that use the Web to research and/or purchase telecom services. In this case, they demonstrated that portals and retail shopping sites were rarely visited first by the surveyed persons when going online to research telecommunication services. 64% went to a search engine first, double the amount of people who answered that they’d visit the website of a telecom service provider before anything else.

The second chart lifted from the docs reveals the agencies also found that more than 70% of all survey respondents preferred Google for their product searching needs over other engines.

For the Beauty vertical, the survey also yielded some insightful data on which other influential information sources respondents indicated as important to them when purchasing beauty products on the Web. Topping the list were Print (49%) and TV (46%), closely followed by search engines searches and POS displays in stores (both 43%). Sponsored links in search results was surprisingly low in the list, with 12% of respondents saying it’s an important resource for them when buying skin care products, fragrances etc.

Google also researched why people use search engines, in this case with regards to people who browse the Web in search for health-related information. The results are likely similar for most major search engines, but what I found noteworthy – considering the topic of health – is that these persons definitely don’t use search engines primarily because they consider them to be trustworthy or sources for objective information.

Here are some embeds of full documents, namely research conducted on the B2B tech, entertainment and travel verticals.


The Role of Search in the Business Technology Purchase Process –


Use of Online for Entertainment Products & Information –


Use of Online for Travel Information and Purchasing –

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

StickK Raises More Funding For Self-Commitment Service, Eyes B2B Play

Posted: 30 Sep 2009 04:10 AM PDT

We haven’t written about StickK, the company that allows you to put a contract on yourself in order to help you commit to improving your lifestyle, since the service was launched back in February 2008. Good thing the company got in touch with us and pointed out they’re doing quite nicely, which gives us a good excuse for an update on them.

StickK was founded by three Yale economists (two professors and a graduate student) and basically allows you to accomplish a goal by setting up a contract against yourself, whether it’s about losing weight, stop biting your nails, writing a novel or whatever else you feel you need to achieve in life. The site takes credit card information up front and charges it on a weekly basis should you fail to meet your self-submitted goal(s). You can designate someone to be your referee — a friend, co-worker or spouse, for example — but in the end, if they fail to do their jobs, StickK.com will take your word for it. The concept is similar to what HealthyWage recently presented on stage at the TechCrunch50 conference.

StickK has been busy raising more funding for the development of the web service. After the founders put in $150,000 of their own cash to get started, the New York-based company went on to raise two rounds totaling an amount north of $2 million from a pool of investors. That brings the total investment in the company to about $2.2 million to date.

User numbers are trending upwards too, fortunately for the upstart (I’m sure it was one of their own goals). When the company launched in February 2008, it grew to 4,000 users by the end of the month and now counts 42,000 registered members. Users so far have entered into 28,000 contracts, and put almost $3 million on the line for their commitments. StickK claims the system is working, too: users are said to be 80% successful when financial stakes, a Referee, and Anti-Charity are utilized.

StickK is now thinking of ways to monetize the service with a B2B offering. The freshly launched stickK.com Corporate Portal offers companies, schools, gyms, health insurance agencies etc. a chance to set up a co-branded version of stickK where customized goals can be designed to achieve wellness and corporate performance-related initiatives. The idea is that corporations could use the platform to drive down healthcare costs while at the same time increasing worker productivity.

As I said, the concept reminds me a lot of HealthyWage, which was one of the startups I was most impressed with at TechCrunch50. I really think it’s a model that works – I like the idea of financial incentives for achievements that have a positive effect on people’s lifestyle and ultimately, society – and I’m very curious to see how much growth these and other companies in this space have in them.

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

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

iMeem Wipes The Slate Clean With $6 million Funding

Posted: 30 Sep 2009 03:34 AM PDT

iMeem may go down in the history books as the little company that could. The service morphed from an instant-messaging centric social network into a widget service to a full on music streaming service (read an early post by us on iMeem here). Over the years they’ve been close to shutting down more than once. And yet, they’re still here, and still fighting.

In May news broke that iMeem may have found a lifeline with new funding and a new business plan, although there was still an issue of $4 million owed to Warner Music.

Now we’ve been able to confirm some of the rumors around that financing. As suspected it was a recapitalization, which means that earlier investors were mostly wiped out. A recap is a difficult pill to swallow, but once it’s completed a company can get a fresh start. And, importantly, current employees get refreshed stock options and an incentive to continue the fight.

The company raised around $6 million in fresh capital, we’ve heard from multiple sources. Most of the new cash came from existing investor Morgenthaler Ventures. Sequoia Capital and other early investors declined to participate, and so their ownership percentages dropped to miniscule levels. Warner Music also participated in the round, we’ve confirmed, likely by dropping in cash that was immediately returned to them for past debt or future royalty commitments.

The company was valued at around $6 million prior to the funding, meaning new investors took 50% or so of the company in the round. That’s a highly dilutive funding, but it gives iMeem a new lease on life. And if rumors are true, the company may have found a business model that works for them (we outlined that business model here). Profitability, albeit at a low burn rate, may hit sometime next year.

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

Friendster Partners With Intelius. Let The Scams Begin.

Posted: 30 Sep 2009 01:45 AM PDT

I knew the glory days of Friendster were behind them, but I didn’t know things were this bad. The company is proudly announcing a partnership with Washington based people search company Intelius this evening. The goal, they say, is “to provide a more robust and comprehensive user search experience on Friendster and to power people searches originating on Friendster with results from across the web.”

What Friendster isn’t saying is how they’ll monetize this search, and whether Intelius’ scammy privacy services will be offered to Friendster users. Earlier this year we wrote again about Intelius and the myriad of lawsuits and consumer complaints that the company was fighting.

To summarize those posts, Intelius has been accused of tricking users into long term credit card subscriptions via a third party for worthless privacy protection products.

The Friendster press release doesn’t talk about how the service will be monetized, but it looks like the integration may be through a recent Intelius acquisition, Spock.

I’ve emailed Friendster for clarification on whether or not they plan on exposing their users to Intelius’ very questionable monetization practices. Because if they are this desperate for revenue, it’s a sign that Friendster is in very serious trouble indeed.

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

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

Xobni Brings Twitter To Your Inbox

Posted: 29 Sep 2009 11:07 PM PDT

Earlier tonight, Xobni quietly released, at least to some users, a new version of its Outlook plug-in that brings Twitter streams into your email in an intelligent way. Instead of acting like any other Twitter client and showing you the full stream of everyone you follow, it shows you only the recent Tweets of the person whose email you are reading, whether or not you follow them on Twitter. (A Xobni blog post went up briefly about it and then was taken down, but not before I was able to grab the screenshot at right).

Instead of replicating Twitter outright, it shows you the Tweets in the context of an email to help you learn more about the person with whom you are communicating. This is consistent with the way Xobni brings up similar information about a contact from Facebook or LinkedIn or Skype. If you don’t know the person, it gives you some more context. If you do, it gives you something personal to talk about. (Threadsy, which launched at this year’s TC50, also shows Tweets in context alongside emails).

With both the full Facebook stream and now Twitter built into the product, chances are you’ll see what each contact has been doing recently. Xobni also lets you reply via Twitter, and follow a contact from within its application.

One of Xobni’s investors is Vinod Khosla, who told me a few weeks ago that Xobni is getting “great traction.” I’ve since heard that the product is approaching 3 million downloads.

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

Facebook Spreads Its Crowdsourced Translations Across the Web, And The World

Posted: 29 Sep 2009 09:37 PM PDT

Facebook has long relied on its own users to help translate the site into more than 65 different languages. Now, Facebook wants to unleash its army of volunteer translators on other sites and apps across the Web. Any site or app that use Facebook Connect can now tap into the Facebook community to get help translating their site into any language that Facebook Translations supports.

As Facebook strives to cement itself as the social glue of the Web, offering free translation tools gives developers yet one more reason to choose Facebook Connect over Google Friend Connect or other competing platforms. It gives them access to new markets extremely quickly. Facebook thinks its crowdsourced translation tools are so good that it’s patented them.

The Internet is a global platform, which makes translation a must for sites both large and small. But the effort it takes to translate a site into many languages is expensive and time-consuming. Getting users to do the heavy lifting is appealing. Even if the translations aren’t top-notch off the bat, they will improve over time if enough people who speak a particular language care enough about a site to fix it.

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

OnLive Raises Series C Round from AT&T, Warner Bros. and Others

Posted: 29 Sep 2009 09:30 PM PDT

OnLive, the gaming company trying to reinvent the Games On Demand service, has announced a Series C round of venture financing from AT&T Media Holdings, Inc., Lauder Partners, Warner Bros., Autodesk, and Maverick Capital. Warner Bros., Autodesk and Maverick Capital have participated in previous rounds of financing as well. OnLive did not disclose the size of financing.

OnLive has been working on the launch of its cloud-based OnLive Game Service, which delivers the latest games instantly through the MicroConsole TV adapter. Unveiled in March at the 2009 Game Developers Conference, the OnLive Game Service recently went into beta testing and is speculated to officially launch this winter.

Palo Alto-based OnLive raised $16.5 million in previous funding.

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

Touching: All Rumors Point To The End Of Keys/Buttons

Posted: 29 Sep 2009 08:00 PM PDT

523179243_8d45df6fe2Anyone who has followed Apple news/rumors/patents over the past couple of years has probably noticed a certain trend emerging: Apple seems to be slowly shifting its entire line of products to touch-based computing. That is to say, it’s moving its products away from buttons and keys, towards manipulation through a touchscreen interface.

While obviously, MacBook trackpads have used some level of touch for a long time, this trend really started with the iPhone, which presented the first excellent use of multi-touch in a consumer device. From there, Apple slowly began adding multi-touch support to the aforementioned notebook trackpads, to the point where they all now feature it. And then of course, there’s the iPod touch, which is an iPod with multi-touch support.

But where things really start to get interesting is when you look at Apple’s patents and the rumors that spin out of them. If you name any Apple product now, you’re almost for sure able to find some sort of rumor that it will be gaining touch support in the future. In fact, a few more have hit just this week; including a touch screen remote for the Apple TV and a new multi-touch enabled mouse.

Touch Remote

These latest two make varying degrees of sense. Apple’s current remote (that tiny white one), which comes with the Apple TV and as an additional add-on with any Mac, is pretty bad. It’s especially bad for the Apple TV, which now has so much content on it, that it can take dozens of clicks to find what you want. And God-forbid you have to search for anything (nothing is worse than text-input on that thing). But Apple came up with a very smart solution for it: Turn the iPhone and iPod touch into a remote. The result is brilliant.

AppleRemoteBut would Apple really create create a new touch device that is only a remote? Such a peripheral would undoubtedly be exponentially more expensive than what it costs to produce the current Apple remote. But if Apple is finally ready to consider the Apple TV a real product (rather than just a “hobby”), it could well put in the effort to perfect a new kind of remote for a new kind of living room experience.

Boy Genius Report, which is reporting on the rumor, says it comes from the same source that was dead-on in naming some of the iTunes 9 features weeks before that product launched.

Touch Mouse

A touch-enabled mouse is much more interesting to me. Some of you may recall my rant a few months ago against Apple’s Mighty Mouse. The device, quite frankly, sucks. And really, it continues a line of Apple mice (or whatever the plural of “mouse” is) that have been laughably sub-par. And what’s interesting about that is the reason they have been sub-par: Because Apple did not want to add multiple buttons to the thing.

So in that regard, a multi-touch mouse makes perfect sense. It could eliminate the need for Apple to add more buttons to make a competent mouse, while at the same time adding new input functionality that we probably don’t even realize we’re missing with current mice (swipe left, swipe right, pinch to zoom, anyone?).

And the worst part of the Mighty Mouse, in my opinion, is the track ball. The reason it’s awful is because it gets dirty way too easily, and it’s annoying to clean. Again, a mouse with say, a multi-touch top, would eliminate that ball, and thus, the headache.

Touch Tablet

Of course, the big fish in the touch sea is Apple’s long-rumored tablet. More rumors today suggest that device could be announced in January 2010 (which is what earlier rumors suggested as well), and would be released sometime around the middle of 2010.

I don’t think I’m going out on any limb by assuming the device is real at this point (we, along with many others, have been hearing about it for months now). So when it does launch, it will likely be the most important test yet of Apple’s touch goals. For all intents and purposes it will be a computer that is just a 9 or 10 inch screen. It undoubtedly will not have a physical keyboard, which means it will be entirely touch-based.

isamu_sanada_macbook_touch_concept_2How consumers react to this will be important. I would bet that at first, many will wish there was a physical keyboard to go along with it (and maybe Apple would even offer such an accessory as an option add-on). But then, as they get used to it, many of those people will forget all about the keyboard.

The same thing has happened with iPhone. While plenty of people still bitch about its lack of keyboard, most of those people seem to be those who don’t actually have one (yes, there are exceptions), and/or haven’t used the touch keyboard extensively. Many iPhone users I talk to thought they would hate having no keyboard, but now would just consider it a waste of space.

Touch Beyond

And the idea that a physical keyboard is a waste of space is an interesting one, and one that I definitely agree with. The notion of a physical keyboard in this day and age is kind of silly. Back in the day they made sense as keyboard keys were physically connected to typewriter letters, and pushing one would produce type. But today, on computers, touching a key simply triggers a digital signal. Really, the keys are not necessary beyond our desire for tactile feedback. And they are a huge waste of space.

While it may be hard to imagine right now, eventually there will not be physical keyboards. Apple’s tablet may well be the first product that will get users accustomed to this idea. And yes, as I said, plenty will bitch. But eventually, technology will improve, and virtual tacile feedback will improve, and there will be no need to take up so much surface area on any device with physical keys that really serve no purpose.

That’s not to say that all computers will look like tablets. Certainly, there is something to be said for the ergonomics of the notebook — the keyboard on the bottom with screen on top. If you had to type long emails on a tablet, you’d either be looking straight down or your arms would get very tired. But eventually, notebooks will be folding devices with two screens, one where the current screen is, and one where the current keyboard is. This bottom screen could then be turned into a virtual keyboard as needed. Otherwise, it would be a touch manipulation area — or even just a screen.

Or another idea is to have a tablet computer which could be converted into a keyboard with a screen that is then projected on some surface. Or vice versa; a screen with a virtual keyboard projected on some surface. Stuff like this graces the pages of publications like Popular Science every month, and it’s probably closer than we think, and certainly closer than some of us would like to think (remember: people don’t like change).

co1Touch Microsoft

Of course, Apple rival Microsoft is working on a lot of interesting things with touch computing as well, including the Surface and touch-support in Windows 7.

Microsoft’s first true test of touch in its consumers products is the Zune HD. Early reviews are good, and you can probably expect Microsoft to pass along its notes on the device to some of its phone-making partners.

Meanwhile, the Surface is an interesting device but it’s still too much of a gimmick at this point. There needs to be third-party software support (we’ve been told that has been coming forever), and more importantly, the thing needs to be thousands of dollars cheaper if anyone is ever expected to actually use it.

Microsoft’s TouchWall is probably the much more interesting technology to watch as it relates to consumers. But there hasn’t been much word on that in a long time.

Microsoft’s touch device getting the most buzz the past couple of weeks is the Courier tablet. Unlike Apple’s tablet, which is expected to be media-centric, it appears the Courier will be a virtual notebook of sorts that you manipulate with both your hands and a special pen. It looks very cool, and it’s apparently running Windows 7. And that means it’s likely much closer than the mock-ups and videos may have you believe.

In fact, it could come as soon as mid-2010, just like Apple’s tablet, sources tell Mary Jo Foley. If that’s true, Microsoft looks to be at the leading edge of the touch revolution right alongside Apple. But because Apple has much tighter control over its entire ecosystem, it will undoubtedly be able to fully shift towards touch computing first, and as such, could well become synonymous with the technology (just as the iPhone has with multi-touch, even though other devices use it).

Screen shot 2009-09-29 at 1.52.17 PMThe Golden Age Of Touch

Computing, as we know it, is on the verge of a transformation. The input devices of yesteryear finally look ready to be replaced by methods that are not based on technologies that are decades (the mouse) or even centuries (the keyboard) old.

It won’t happen right away, but it is starting to happen already. We just need devices like the ones listed above to serve as gateway drugs to touch.

I, personally, can’t wait for my Minority Report-style computer system (yes, I seem to bring this up every few months). But for now, I’ll settle for a multi-touch mouse. Oh, and a touch tablet. No matter who makes it.

[Minority Report images: 20th Century Fox/Dreamworks]

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

Sean Parker Joins Yammer’s Board Of Directors

Posted: 29 Sep 2009 06:14 PM PDT

16432v1-max-250x250Sean Parker is no stranger to Internet success. He’s 28 years old and has already helped start four very well-known services on the web: Napster, Plaxo, Causes, and of course, Facebook. And now he’s taking his impressive resume to Yammer, where he is joining the enterprise microblogging service’s Board of Directors, we’ve learned.

Yammer, which won the top prize at last year’s TechCrunch50, recently rolled out a bunch of updates to its web version, as well as its Adobe Air-based desktop client. We use the service on a daily basis for work, and those of us with iPhones are all eagerly awaiting the release of the new version of the iPhone app with Push Notifications.

As the core concepts behind Yammer are quickly becoming features that others in the enterprise space are realizing they will need to compete with, Parker’s guidance should help the company maintain an advantage, and push forward.

Parker is currently serving as the Chairman of Causes, one of the most popular social networking applications, and is a Managing Partner at the VC firm, Founder’s Fund. He is perhaps best known for serving as Facebook’s President during the time it was founded. That role is about to get the Hollywood treatment in David Fincher’s upcoming movie, The Social Network, based on Ben Mezrich’s book, The Accidental Billionaires, about the early days of Facebook.

Parker also served as an expert panelist at this year’s TechCrunch50 a few weeks ago.

Mr. Parker joins George Zachary, Keith Rabois, Adam Ross, Adam Pisoni, and David Sacks on Yammer’s board. The latter two serve as Yammer’s VP of Technology and CEO, respectively.

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

MySpace Co-Founder And CTO Aber Whitcomb Leaves, To Be Replaced By Alex Maghen

Posted: 29 Sep 2009 05:36 PM PDT

MySpace has just announced that CTO and co-founder Aber Whitcomb will be leaving the company, to be replaced by MySpace Music’s current CTO Alex Maghen. The news doesn’t come as much of a surprise — we speculated that Whitcomb would be leaving as part of the core executive shakeup that swept through MySpace last April (if anything it’s surprising that Whitcomb stayed on this long). At this point the last remaining member of MySpace’s old guard is Tom Anderson, who remains onboard in a limited capacity.

Maghen will take on the core responsibilities for running MySpace’s platform and will report to COO Mike Jones. Before joining MySpace, Maghen has previously served as CTO of MTV Networks and CTO of Yahoo Entertainment.

Other recent MySpace hires include former AOL and Tsavo exec Mike Macadaan as VP Product and former Facebook Director Katie Geminder as SVP of User Experience and Design. But it’s still seeing a trickle of current executives leaving — earlier this month SVP of Business Development Jason Oberfest left to join social and mobile gaming company ngmoco.

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

Microsoft Courier Gets Demonstrated More Fully, Limitations Suggested

Posted: 29 Sep 2009 04:15 PM PDT

The trickle of news about Microsoft's Courier device continues, and this time there's a bit more of a realistic walkthrough. The device is being shown to be much more of a next-generation notepad than all-purpose tablet, and that's probably for the best; Microsoft overreaching with a device like this could result in a real crash and burn. I suppose the best way to picture the Courier is just as a web-connected organizer — you know, one of those leather-bound ones that business people used to have, and which the Courier seems clearly designed after. Of course, with an internet connection and full-color touchscreen, much more is enabled and the device becomes much more complicated. Microsoft's (and Pioneer's) task has been to pare that down to a product, and it really looks like they've done it right. Still all renders, though.
TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Financial Startups Demo Their Dashboards At Finovate

Posted: 29 Sep 2009 03:49 PM PDT

The following guest post is written by Larry Chiang, a co-founder of Duck9 who also regularly blogs for BusinessWeek. Today he is reporting from the Finovate startup conference.

At the FinovateStartup conference in New York City today, it is clear that financial startups are pushing forward regardless of funding woes or a lackluster economy

Companies here at Finovate center around financial innovations. They track personal finance and are aggressively plodding forward because consumer adoption of the internet is rising. These companies did not just present ideas, they brought along established industry stalwarts to their demos. What’s more, many of these start-ups are already white labeling their product and integrating into established company sites (T-Mobile ads, Yahoo, Bank of America). The user interfaces are better than average, which is perhaps influenced by Finovate’s previous winner Mint.

Best in Show went to Kasasa, an Austin, Texas-based financial website that uses real-world rewards and charity donations to get people to open free deposit accounts. They dragged a community banker up to the stage who gave a testimonial about Kasasa’a ability to generate new saving accounts. BillShrink showed off a location-based ATM fee avoider and bank account selector. Canopy has tools to better understand and manage healthcare cost, including Health Savings Accounts. Their oh-so-chic iPhone App matches up medical services to your personal HSA.

A typical company presenting was SmartyPig, which adds a social component to saving. It crowd-shares personal saving goals for a vacation or a set of golf clubs. FinanceWorks demonstrated online banking data aggregated into TurboTax. Outright takes and scrapes sales data for one-person businesses (such as eBay sellers) and helps the entrepreneur alleviate the burden of quarterly tax pre-payments. Home-Account seeks to be a Kayak for loan mortgage shopping. It plugs into Homes.com, Movoto.com and Bills.com and ‘B’- and “C”-grade paper companies like Freedom Financial Network.

Most of the sites demoed today offer features such as interest payment tracking, loan shopping, expense account summaries and more everyday, core consumer finance applications. Many of the demos featured summaries of expenses, and visually extrapolated spending behaviors to identify trends. For example, Credit.com boils down 20+ pages of credit reports into one graph (with a trend line).

At the heart of the functionality for consumer finance are apps that summarize “money in” / ‘money out’. In the same way that dashboards revolutionized the ability of C-suite officers to forecast a company’s revenues and expenses, the average consumer now is able to get dozens of data points that paint a picture of their personal budgets.

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

Former MySQL CEO Marten Mickos Joins Benchmark As Entrepreneur In Residence

Posted: 29 Sep 2009 03:38 PM PDT

Mårten Gustaf Mickos, former CEO of MySQL, is Benchmark Capital’s newest Entrepreneur In Residence (EIR).

Mickos served as chief executive officer for the open source database company from January 2001 to February 2008, when Sun Microsystems acquired MySQL for $1 billion. Benchmark was a relatively early investor in the company; they participated in the $20 million Series B round together with Index Ventures back in 2003.

Mickos holds a M.Sc. in technical physics from Helsinki University of Technology and is also a board member of Mozilla Messaging and RightScale.

In the tweets announcing the move, Mickos says he likes Benchmark because they care about the needs of entrepreneurs and because they can ‘think big’. He will be joining Keith Krach, Mike Cassidy, Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, Dan Finnegan, Sarah Leary and Nirav Tolia as EIR at the Silicon Valley VC firm, which is behind a number of high-profile investments in web startups like Twitter, Gigya, Prosper, OpenTable, Mint.com and FriendFeed.

Anyone care to venture a guess as to when Mickos’ next Benchmark-backed startup will see the light of day?

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

Ruby-On-Rails Startup FiveRuns Acquired By WorkThink

Posted: 29 Sep 2009 03:17 PM PDT

Ruby-on-Rails startup FiveRuns has been acquired by WorkThink, according to FiveRuns’ site. FiveRuns provides a variety of monitoring products for Ruby on Rails and related open source and commercial systems. Built on Rails and delivered as a hosted service, FiveRuns' products manage the complete Rails application lifecycle — from installation to production.

Products include Install, a free Ruby on Rails stack powered by BitRock; Manage, which was an application that monitors your Rails applications in production (Manage was discontinued this summer); TuneUp (a debugging tool which we wrote about here); and Dash, which was a metrics, storage, reporting, and communication hub for applications connected to the web. According to FiveRuns, Dash’s services will be discontinued by the middle of October. It’s unclear if the other products will survive the transition.

FiveRuns has raised $9 million total from Austin Ventures and is in the same genre of startups such as New Relic, Heroku, and Engine Yard. It appears that Workthink hasn’t launched yet, but we’ll keep you posted.

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

Dropbox Meets The iPhone; Access Files On The Go

Posted: 29 Sep 2009 02:10 PM PDT

Dropbox, the easy to use file access manager which syncs your files across all your computers and the web, has introduced an iPhone application to make it even easier to access your files anywhere in the world. After almost 7 weeks of waiting, Apple has finally approved the application. With this new iPhone app, users will get access to all their Dropbox documents, PDF’s, pictures, videos and much more. Dropbox also introduced offline viewing in the iPhone app, with “Favorites.” If you add a file to your 'Favorites', they'll be accessible at any time. To do so, just hit the star at the bottom of any file, and it’ll be added. Otherwise, your files stay in the cloud.

One of Dropbox’s core features is sharing your files and folders stored in the cloud with anyone else who has a Dropbox account, and the iPhone is no exception. Users can easily share their Dropbox files and folders from their iPhone to any other Dropbox user by putting in their email address, just like on the web. The app allows users to upload photos for 3G users, and videos if you have an iPhone 3GS.

What’s really cool about Dropbox’s iPhone app is that you can even stream music and movies from your Dropbox straight to your iPhone, without any noticeable delay. Dropbox’s app is also heavily integrated into Apple’s camera API with straight photo and video uploading available too.

Just a few days ago, Dropbox reached 2 million users. Dropbox was a finalist at the 2008 TechCrunch50 conference.

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

Apps For Everything: Apple Continues To Try To Improve App Discovery

Posted: 29 Sep 2009 02:07 PM PDT

Screen shot 2009-09-29 at 2.10.23 PM

Apple today has rolled out a new series of pages on the iPhone section of its website called “Apps For Everything.” The idea here is to create an easy way for consumers to find apps based around certain categories that they may be interested in.

The categories are:

As you can see, all of these seem geared towards your average consumer across varying demographics. That’s hardly surprising seeing as with 2 billion app downloads (and counting) now, Apple clearly has a very wide reach.

But app discovery has been a problem for Apple in the past. It’s a good problem to have — it exists because there are so many apps (85,000) — but Apple is clearly realizing it needs to do something about it. The App Genius feature was one step, this hand-picked curation is clearly another.

I’ve asked Apple how it picked the topics for these apps, as well as the apps themselves, and will update if I hear back. But I suspect that just like the other areas where Apple highlights certain apps (such as in the App Store itself), it is doing so based on (what it deems to be) merit and the ability to show off some cool functionality of the iPhone and iPod touch.

As Jonathan points out in the comments below, this is also a great way for Apple to expose apps to the broader web, for users who don’t have or don’t want to load up iTunes to learn about some apps.

Much of the apps featured seem to be ones that Apple has featured in the past in the App Store or even in its commercials. It should be no surprise that developers who have been a part of this attention in the past say that the spotlight has helped drive sales through the roof.

Screen shot 2009-09-29 at 2.10.14 PM

Screen shot 2009-09-29 at 2.19.41 PM

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

With oDesk’s iPhone App, Bosses Can Now Monitor Workers From The Beach

Posted: 29 Sep 2009 01:44 PM PDT

Startup oDesk was voted as a TechCrunch50’s demopit winner thanks to the launch of a new iPhone application that allows project administrators to monitor the work stream of their team members while they’re on the go. Today, oDesk’s free app is available on the App Store.

The stream features photos of your team’s workplace, keystroke events, and lets you know when your workers are checking in and out. You can also see each team member’s latest work memo, local time, and billing status for work.

oDesk has been around for a while, offering a “marketplace for talent” that makes it easy to hire workers remotely. The company currently has over 340,000 providers, with 12,200+ jobs that are open. oDesk has also launched an API Center to encourage developers to create custom workspaces around oDesk tools. The API allows for users to log-in from outside of oDesk’s applications, the ability to search oDesk’s provider data and profiles, and lets users retrieve snapshots of worker activities.

oDesk is backed by Benchmark Capital and has raised $29 million, most recently a $15 million round last year.

The oDesk API is implemented using a REST web service interface that is available to developers looking to build oDesk functionality and content into custom applications. Aiming to build a cohesive and community-based approach to customizing oDesk tools, the oDesk API shares a common token authentication system that allows seamless access between products and services. Visit the oDesk API Center at: http://developers.odesk.com/

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