The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- What’s Next For Some Of the Biggest Gadgets Of 2009?
- The Valley of My Dreams: Why Silicon Valley Left Boston’s Route 128 In The Dust
- Barnes & Noble Planning International Expansion
- Smartphone Showdown: iPhone 3GS vs Motorola Droid
- Facebook Director of Mobile Jed Stremel Resigns
- Don’t Forget to Enter CrunchGear’s Spooky Halloween Contest
- YouTube Spotlights The Colorful Wonders Of Fall’s Foliage
- Twitter Tricks And Treats For Halloween
- Don’t Be A Featured Loser: Facebook Helps Out The Unpopular
- Stealth Startup Zkatter To Launch Real-Time Broadcasting Site To Capture “Live Moments”
- Check It Twice: Twitter Lists Now Open To All Users
- Benioff, Conway And Costolo Are Speaking At Our Realtime Crunchup. Tickets On Sale Now.
- Big In Japan Has A Massive Goal: 100 iPhone Apps In A Year
- We Catch Our First, Fleeting Glimpse Of VEVO On YouTube
- Microsoft Makes It Easier To Bing Tom Brady On The Go. Especially On The iPhone.
- How Cloudmade Will Deal With Google Navigation Monster
- Actual Royalty To Join Social Media Royalty At Le Web 2009
- Google Makes Fading Homepage A Little Less Confusing For Unaware Searchers
- CrunchGear PSA: If You Run XBMC Or Boxee On Your Apple TV, Do Not Upgrade To 3.0
| What’s Next For Some Of the Biggest Gadgets Of 2009? Posted: 31 Oct 2009 08:38 AM PDT  It's time to put on the Swami hat and predict just what we have in store for 2010 and beyond. Considering all of the movement in the gadget world in the past few months, I'm fairly sure most of this going to be accurate. Given the current status of some of these technologies, it's hard to prognosticate very far out but there are a few things that have become apparent over the past year, especially the rise of Android and our expectations for the iPad. Without further ado... the envelope please: Apple TV -> 27-inch iMac -> Wall Mount for 27-inch iMac  It's sad but true: Apple doesn't care about Apple TV. All the real brain power is going to the desktop and laptop and probably onto the iPad. They've made it clear with the 27-inch iMac that they can make a high-resolution screen and powerful computer inside of a case the thickness of a college textbook. Who needs a TV, let alone an Apple TV? The obvious conclusion here is that the 27-inch iMac becomes a real Apple TV. The Mac Mini already makes a great multi-media system and a quick update to FrontRow, now considered abandonware, may make it a great 10-foot interface.   |
| The Valley of My Dreams: Why Silicon Valley Left Boston’s Route 128 In The Dust Posted: 31 Oct 2009 08:00 AM PDT
I mentioned a little bit about my first Columbus Day in California in a previous column. But I didn't tell you the whole story. I was invited to three amazing events on the night of October 12. Venture capital firm Alsop-Louie—known as one of the wackier and unconventional VC firms—invited me to their legendary Columbus Day party. On that same evening I had an invite from Henry Chesbrough, Executive Director of the Center for Open Innovation at the University of California-Berkeley to attend a dinner party for his forum. Down in Silicon Valley I also had an invite to speak at an event with India’s former Minister of Disinvestment, Arun Shorie—the guy who was once in charge of privatizing the country’s moribund nationalized firms and who is as close as you can get to financial royalty in India. It was a really hard decision which one to pick. And I found myself wondering, where else in the world would I have to face such a decision? The answer is nowhere. Silicon Valley, which has expanded to embrace the entire Bay Area as an engine of entrepreneurship and innovation, is a unique place of powerful and concurrent overlapping networks. As a new arrival to Silicon Valley and San Francisco, I had read about this and did believe it. But it was hard to understand to what degree these types of concentric circles of connections were pervasive in the Valley. I am now studying how some of these networks develop and their influence on success rates in entrepreneurship. I am focusing on what is possibly the largest of these networks, an organization called The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE). This started as an Indian network and served as a mechanism for those from the Subcontinent to help each other. Silicon Valley is the birthplace of TiE and remains its stronghold. But at the latest TiE Global Conference, held in Silicon Valley a few weeks ago, an interesting debate broke out among the Board of Directors. While the organization remained largely Indian in composition, a significant number of non-Indians had joined TiE and become very active members (some had risen to the role of chapter president). Some members of the board thought it was time to change the name of TiE from The Indus Entrepreneurs to The International Entrepreneurs. They eventually agreed to drop the "Indus" from the name and to just call the organization TiE. The fact that such a debate even took place illustrates both the power of networks to embrace outsiders and draw them in, as well as the power of these networks, when unconstrained by convention or conservative establishment rules, to grow in unexpected ways. It’s a metaphor for Silicon Valley. Which brings me to Boston. Ever heard of Route 128? To my surprise, neither have any of my students at Duke or the entrepreneurs I've met in Silicon Valley. I'm surprised because it wasn't so long ago that Silicon Valley was considered a poor cousin of Boston's tech center—a cluster of technology companies located along this freeway which partially rings the city. Starting in the 1960s and on through the 1980s, Route 128 was, if anything, more closely associated with tech than Silicon Valley. Today few young technology workers even know where Route 128 is located, let alone its importance in the tech world. Silicon Valley has simply left Boston's tech center behind. In the 1980's the Silicon Valley and Route 128 looked very similar—a mix of large and small tech firms, world class universities, venture capital, and military funding. If you were betting on one you’d have been wise to bet on Route 128 because of its longer industrial history and proximity to a large number of high quality educational institutions (Harvard, Yale, Brown, MIT, Tufts, Amherst) and proximity to Bell Labs and other large corporate research centers. You remember Bell Labs, right? It’s where the transistor was invented. Now, aside from big biotech breakthroughs, Boston is a distant second nationally to Silicon Valley in technology entrepreneurship. So, what happened to Boston? A young professor at UC-Berkeley, AnnaLee Saxenian, wrote a book in 1994 which answers this question. At a time when Boston still thought it was the powerhouse of the tech industry, Saxenian declared Boston the loser in the tech race and explained why it would only fall further behind. This book was titled Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128. It kicked off a firestorm of criticism from the Boston elite. Saxenian also alienated friends at her alma mater, MIT. She noted that Silicon Valley had an amazing dynamism about it. There were extensive professional networks, job hopping was the norm, information was exchanged openly, and the culture encouraged risk taking. The Silicon Valley ecosystem supported entrepreneurial experimentation and collective learning. In other words, Silicon Valley was a very open network—a giant social networking site working in analog before the concept of such a thing even existed. This organizational mechanism was in sharp contrast to that of Route 128. Dominated by large, vertically integrated, and secretive minicomputer producers such as DEC, Wang, Prime, and Data General. Technology, skill, and know-how were trapped within the boundaries of the large corporations. The differences were evident at many levels: venture capitalists in Silicon Valley had deep roots in local networks and were far more nimble than their east coast counterparts; educational institutions and research labs in the West partnered with local startups as well as more established firms, while those in the East worked only with the largest corporations; and the meritocratic openness of Silicon Valley made it a magnet for non-traditional talent and immigrants. By the mid-1990s the east had missed the shift from minicomputers to personal computers as the flexible Silicon Valley ecosystem sped ahead with innovation across a diversifying range of components and systems going from chips, routers, and application software to ecommerce and search engines. Today Silicon Valley is the leading location for cleantech venture activity, an area widely considered to be the next big value creation engine for the U.S. and the world. Boston, however, is no slouch. The Route 128 community remains the second biggest in the U.S. in terms of venture funds committed. Boston has powerful research institutions, still, and lots of very strong companies. In some areas, such as biotech, Boston may even rival Silicon Valley. But overall, its pretty clear that the Valley has not only won but is racing further ahead. Most entrepreneurs and engineers that come to Silicon Valley, come to experience this network and to embrace the culture it has created. That’s why I came, too. Network effects don’t just work for fax machines. But then again, most of them knew that intrinsically. University guys like me need to do a bunch of surveys to figure it out. They voted with their hearts and feet. Editor's note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| Barnes & Noble Planning International Expansion Posted: 31 Oct 2009 12:38 AM PDT
Recruiting firm Russell Reynolds Associates is representing Barnes & Noble in a search for the “head of their international business,” according to a source who was contacted about the position. The job entails building the international business for BN.com from scratch, hiring the team and “building the infrastructure outside the U.S.” They prefer the executive live in New York, but Europe is ok, too. Global ecommerce experience is preferred. Barnes & Noble is no Amazon, but it is a billion dollar company and they have an upcoming ebook reader that kicks the Kindle’s butt (it’s so easy to love unlaunched products, isn’t it?). Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Smartphone Showdown: iPhone 3GS vs Motorola Droid Posted: 30 Oct 2009 07:48 PM PDT  If hype were to be believed, the Motorola DROID is the pièce de résistance of the mobile world; the conclusive creation sent down by the Great Smartphone in the sky to rid us of our woes. It would prepare your breakfast promptly each morning, tuck you in at night, and, maybe -- just maybe -- knock the iPhone down a notch or two. Beginning about a week before its launch (largely due to Verizon's incredibly intense marketing campaign) I began getting calls and tweets from friends and colleagues asking about the Droid. They always had two questions: the first would be something like "What do you think of the Droid?", followed by "Would you recommend it over the iPhone?" Same questions, each.. and.. every.. time. I've been using the Droid as my primary phone for a few days now, and I think I'm finally ready to answer them. |
| Facebook Director of Mobile Jed Stremel Resigns Posted: 30 Oct 2009 04:58 PM PDT
Below is Stremel’s bio, taken from last year’s MobileBeat conference page.
Other recent departures from Facebook include Josh Elman, who was Facebook’s Platform Program Manager and was deeply involved in the launch of Facebook Connect. Elman joined Twitter earlier this week as a product manager. We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| Don’t Forget to Enter CrunchGear’s Spooky Halloween Contest Posted: 30 Oct 2009 03:24 PM PDT  Wait! Before you head off to that weekend costume party, snap yourself in your Halloween costume and enter our First Annual(TM) Halloween Costume Contest. We're offering one Xbox 360 Modern Warfare 2 Limited Edition Console to the winner of our First Annual CrunchGear Halloween Costume Contest. Here's how to enter. |
| YouTube Spotlights The Colorful Wonders Of Fall’s Foliage Posted: 30 Oct 2009 02:18 PM PDT
Videos include one called “Autumn on the Blue Ridge”: And here’s one of a local pumpkin patch: Image by Micky
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
| Twitter Tricks And Treats For Halloween Posted: 30 Oct 2009 01:28 PM PDT  Twitter tweeted out a message today about a special Halloween feature if you Tweet “#trick” or “#treat.” It was difficult to figure out at first, but if you tweet either from your Twitter home page (this is key, you can’t enable the feature when you are on a client), your home page background will go “ghoulish” and the avatars on the Tweets on your page will turn into zombies and ghouls. The way to trigger it is by tweeting ONLY “#trick” OR “#treat” with nothing else. #Treat is the top trending topic on Twitter so it looks like the masses haven’t figured it out. If you only post #trick or #treat, it doesn’t actually Tweet it out (if you post from Twitter’s site). Happy Halloween! There are a few variations of backgrounds that Twitter is featuring in the trick. Here are the ones we found.   Thanks @orli! Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
| Don’t Be A Featured Loser: Facebook Helps Out The Unpopular Posted: 30 Oct 2009 01:21 PM PDT
Our guess is a fair number of the geeky employees at Facebook were exactly that kid. Which is why I’m sort of surprised that they’d think asking people to help out Facebook friends who don’t have a lot of Wall activity, or even many other friends. These people get mocked. Obviously. We’ve all seen the messages under Suggestions on the Facebook home page. So and so only has two friends on Facebook, suggest friends for him? Others are urged to write on the Wall of unpopular users. A reader writes to us today with a screenshot:
Who knows what levels Facebook will go to to ensure that your unpopularity turns into a mocking sideshow like the one above. Don’t be that guy. Find some friends and convince them to leave a wall post every week or two. The last thing you want is to be a Featured Loser Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Stealth Startup Zkatter To Launch Real-Time Broadcasting Site To Capture “Live Moments” Posted: 30 Oct 2009 01:15 PM PDT  British stealth startup Zkatter is launching a real-time microblogging service in the next few months that could be a hit. Similar in theory to Twitter, Zkatter asks users “What do you see now?” vs. Twitter’s “What are you doing?” The service, which has been in development since 2008, will allow anybody to broadcast and archive ‘live moments’ comprising location, media (image, video and text) to ‘friends only’ or ‘the public’ which can then be discovered instantly via search and friends time-lines. Zkatter’s focus is towards capturing information that you physically see live which offers a interesting addition to the real-time space. Zkatter, which has received $1.5 million in Series A funding, is also developing iPhone and Android apps to work in conjunction with the standalone site, with the platform updated in real-time across all devices. So if you post an update on your iPhone, it will automatically show on the site. And Zkatter will be integrated with Facebook and Twitter, so you can publish you updates to both social networks as well. There are additional features to the site but this is the general idea of what the Zkatter will be able to do. We took a little test run of the site, and it’s impressive. Not only is the user-interface easy to use, but the seamless real-time integration between mobile and the web. But Zkatter will still face competition from Twitter and the plethora of content-sharing Twitter applications, like TwitPic or TwitVid, which also let you broadcast “live moments.” The site is also similar to DailyBooth. Zkatter’s founder Matt Hagger tells me that there is still a good amount of development that needs to be done for the site but he’s confident that Zkatter will find a place in the real-time space. There’s no doubt that the rise of real-time streams is fundamentally altering the way we communicate and interact with one another, which is why we are holding our second RealTime CrunchUp on November 20th. You can buy tickets for the event here. Startups will be launching their latest real-time products and we are bringing together a host of notable panelists to share their thoughts on the realtime stream. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Check It Twice: Twitter Lists Now Open To All Users Posted: 30 Oct 2009 12:39 PM PDT
This means that not only can all users now finally make their own lists, but perhaps more importantly, you can now see which lists you have been included on. The latter is quickly becoming a new metric for measuring popularity on the service (which users seem divided about if that’s a good or bad thing). And everyone will now have access to the third party sites already starting to pop up around the Lists API, such as Listorious, a Lists directory. So, now that everyone can see them, be sure to check out our TechCrunch team list. Later today, we’ll also share some other interesting lists that we’ve been working on. Update: As a side note, List descriptions should be coming in the next week or so, Twitter’s Vitor Lourenco confirms. This will definitely help users tell what the list is supposed to be, rather than simply relying on the list name. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Benioff, Conway And Costolo Are Speaking At Our Realtime Crunchup. Tickets On Sale Now. Posted: 30 Oct 2009 12:16 PM PDT
Ever since our first Realtime Crunchup last July, the momentum behind realtime streams just keeps getting stronger. Which is why TechCrunchIT editor Steve Gillmor and I are putting together another Realtime Crunchup on November 20 in San Francisco. Tickets are on sale now (the price is $395 until the final week when they will go up to $495—there are only 500 available). The one-day event will take place in San Francisco’s fabulous new Intercontinental Hotel. The agenda is still coming together (hey, they don’t call it realtime for nothing). But I am pleased to announce some phenomenal speakers who will be joining us. Many of the members of our Realtime Board will appear on stage, including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, FriendFeed founder (now Facebook exec) Paul Buchheit, Microsoft’s FUSE Labs chief Lili Cheng, and angel investor Ron Conway. Twitter COO Dick Costolo will also sit down with me for a conversation about the transition from RSS to Realtime, among other subjects. The CrunchUp will explore different aspects of the realtime stream, including it’s rise as a new communications backbone, the different stream platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Google Wave) and how to navigate between them, and the business opportunities that the realtime stream presents. Is the realtime stream the ultimate marketing vehicle, or just another spammer’s paradise? What are the new streams that are emerging? For instance, we will have one panel focusing on just geo streams and how that ties into emerging mobile apps. Another panel will explore how private and public messaging systems are becoming one and the same. I think I’ll put Gmail creator Buchheit on that one, along with the CEO of TC50 startup Threadsy, who has also agreed to attend. We’ll be sharing a fuller agenda next week. What is really exciting for me, though, is the incredible response from startups who want to launch at the CrunchUp, such as Brooklyn’s sorta-stealth Hot Potato, which is doing some very innovative things around geo-location, mobile apps, and events. Some established startups will also launch new products. There are still a couple slots left. If you want to launch a realtime product at the CrunchUp or have an eye-opening demo, please contact us at realtime [at] techcrunch [dot] com. The CrunchUp also gives us a great sponsorship platform for start-ups and brands to reach both conference and networking attendees. Please contact Heather Harde to learn more about sponsorship packages and custom opportunities. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Big In Japan Has A Massive Goal: 100 iPhone Apps In A Year Posted: 30 Oct 2009 12:08 PM PDT
The company has set a goal to release 100 apps before the end of 2010 for the iPhone. How are they going to do this? By pulling together a bunch of developers from around the U.S. to make an app development power house. Currently, the team has assembled 25 developers and 25 user interface guys to work towards the goal. The team members mix and match, pairing up to do one app at a time. When they complete that one, it’s on to the next one, with a new set of partners. The concept is actually much more straightforward than pulling new app ideas out of the blue and making them. The reason Big in Japan decided to do this was because they were being approached by so many brands and companies to help them build iPhone apps, that there was no way Big in Japan could keep up with the demand the way the team was previously structured. So now, when a new app request comes in, Big in Japan looks it over, decides if they think its a good fit for their large team to do, and then pass it along to the app developers. And it’s a good deal for the developers because they are all working together towards a common goal: Money. The way the model works is that this pool of developers collectively own half of the company (which is a sub-division of Big in Japan). As such, they get half of the revenue from the company to split up between them. So the better each of them do, the better they all do. And it’s based on a country club model, Big in Japan co-founder Alexander Muse tells us. Basically, these developers buy their seat, but if they decide they want to move on, they can sell it to someone else. Muse expects that 25 apps will be launched this quarter from the project. And he hopes to continue that pace through the end of 2010. Realistically, he admit that maybe only 80 or so apps will actually be available when all is said and done in the App Store. He, like everyone else, realizes that it can be tricky to get apps approved at times by Apple, and he suspects that some developers will get fed up and simply stop working on those apps. Still, 80 apps in a year from one house would be very impressive. Big in Japan made a name for itself with its ShopSavvy application, which won the Android Developer Challenge last year. ShopSavvy still has yet to launch for the iPhone, but Muse recently wrote that it will be launching very soon. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
| We Catch Our First, Fleeting Glimpse Of VEVO On YouTube Posted: 30 Oct 2009 11:56 AM PDT
Today it looks like Vevo decided to peek out from under the covers, though its appearance was short lived. Our tipster noticed a number of artists who had apparently been given Vevo-linked YouTube accounts, with names like EminemVEVO and DonnaSummerVEVO. Videos from these users look nearly identical to the music videos scattered throughout YouTube, but with one key difference: there’s VEVO branding on the bottom right hand side of the player. Clicking the VEVO logo attempts to kick you to a page hosted on VEVO.com, though the links are all broken. At least, they were. As I wrote this post, YouTube has apparently noticed the videos and taken them down. So does this mean that the VEVO launch is imminent? Probably not. A source we’ve spoken to says that this probably isn’t part of a large roll-out or launch, but that’s it’s more likely that someone stumbled across a video they weren’t supposed to see. The site is reportedly shooting for a December launch. And of course, this doesn’t really give an idea of what VEVO proper will look like, but it may give us some idea of what VEVO content will look like when it’s watched on YouTube. So far, the branding seems to be pretty minimal, though we may well see more skinning and ads on these clips once VEVO actually goes live.  Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Microsoft Makes It Easier To Bing Tom Brady On The Go. Especially On The iPhone. Posted: 30 Oct 2009 11:33 AM PDT
The main change is that Bing has been completely revamped for touchscreen smartphones and devices. Currently, this means the G1, the Verizon Imagio, the Samsung Omnia, the Zune HD, and yes, the iPhone. In its blog post, Bing even uses a picture to highlight how nice Bing Mobile looks on the Apple device. The new interface is easy to navigate, offering tabs for different types of searches, and an easy way to clear old searches and start fresh. It also offers a nice, visual way of looking up movies. Visual search is one of the key things Bing has been focusing on to differentiate itself from Google. For those users without these touch devices, Bing Mobile has some new features you can use as well. An easy-to-use flight status checker is nice, but the key new feature is the NFL search results. Now, with Bing Mobile, if you do a search for “Tom Brady,” you’ll get a player card at the top of the results with his picture, season stats, and previous and upcoming games this season. This is a nice feature for football season, and could actually drive some usage of Bing Mobile on Sundays. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
| How Cloudmade Will Deal With Google Navigation Monster Posted: 30 Oct 2009 11:25 AM PDT
But they aren’t reeling out of control either. Cloudmade CEO Juha Christensen sent us an email that he distributed to partners yesterday. It’s clearly an advertisement for Cloudmade (the last paragraph tells new partners how to get in touch). But it is also a blueprint for how companies can carve out a competitive niche from the Navigation product. We’re posting it because it’s a good example of a measured response to a potentially company-killing development. There are developers, device makers and carriers who strategically don’t want to let Google in, or can’t get the functionality they want from Google’s APIs. That’s where Cloudmade and others can get a foot in the door. The email is below: Earlier on this year a smart VC, who multiple times has competed successfully against Google, told me that Google is generally willing to act as an "irrational economic player". It's willing to destroy value just so others can't get at it, even if it means destroying value for itself. Google just announced that it will offer navigation. Navigation has so far captured 70%+ of the $2 billion mapping market. The bad news for established navigation players like Tele Atlas and Navteq is that this will erode the value of navigation, just like the value of maps have been eroded. The good news for those players is that Google has now tipped its hand and shown that it's willing to compete against the very ecosystem that it has been nurturing over the past couple of years. Google's strategy is to leverage maps, including navigation, to extend its current search franchise into local search. We've believed from day one of CloudMade that contextual search, using location data and some knowledge about the user (for example which app he/she is using) creates much more valuable CPM/CPC/CPAs. If you're an advertiser or a merchant, you will pay more per impression if you know someone is a mountain biker and is near the bicycle mega store you own. Google betting on one-size-fits all model Meanwhile, in the process of building out end-user applications rather than sticking to being a platform player, Google is causing considerable collateral damage. Its move into the territory normally occupied by mobile operators, OEMs and small, medium and large developers is turning the marketplace against itself. The honeymoon is over and the do-no-evil days have ended. Google has declared any monetizable pocket in tech a target, including the key franchises of Apple, Microsoft, the mobile operators and now also mobile application developers. The problem with Google's approach is, the value is not in horizontal services, but in leveraging the democratizing effect of the app stores to use the 100,000+ vertical apps as a way to divide the market into tiny segments and let them flourish and gain traction. CloudMade believes vertical apps will inherently nano-segment the market As I speak to mobile operators and handset manufacturers about the CloudMade business, it's clear that most of the players understand the value of their immense reach, and want to pick long-term partners with whom they can build a franchise in local search, local advertising and local geo services. It's clear that Google's latest move has served as a lighting rod for clarity in the value chain. Over the past days I have spoken to people throughout the ecosystem. So far, the uncertainty about what Google was doing has actually caused a lot of mobile operators, handset manufacturers and app developers to take a wait-and-see attitude. Now, with Google showing their hand, and making it clear that it's willing to compete directly with substantial parts of the eco system to get at the local search market, we're seeing that the wait-and-see is over. With Google choosing to go it alone rather than cooperate with the ecosystem, the ground rules have been laid down, and the competitive landscape is clear. So what are we doing at CloudMade? Local, relevant ads: We're jumping the learning curve on Location Based Advertising and Sponsored POIs. We'll shortly be offering developers, mobile operators and handset manufacturers a revenue share on Sponsored POIs and ads that they include in their apps. This is big news to developers, who so far have had to depend on the modest revenues from selling apps at $0.99, $1.99 etc. Data Marketplace: We're building a massive marketplace for geo data. In fact, in a few weeks we have our "opening day" at the CloudMade Data Marketplace, the Turkish Bazar from which developers can choose a variety of content that they can mash into their maps. This will result in more app diversity, deeper functionality and even completely new types of vertical apps. Offering for operators and handset manufacturers: CloudMade has created a super interesting set of propositions for mobile operators and handset manufacturers. We're doing rev share deals with them where we work side-by-side to build franchises in the local geo spatial arena. We offer them onboard maps (built into their devices) and offboard maps (loaded from our servers), we offer them navigation jointly with our navigation partners and we offer up relationships with our many vertical app developers. For Tier 1, 2 and 3 operators and handset manufacturers this is turning out to be very compelling. The big differentiator is that the operators get to decide what the services look like, they get to brand them and they get to make money from them. That is as opposed to the alternative, which is to take someone else's services, accept that they are all branded by someone else, who also pockets the ad revenues from them. We're focusing on making maps look the way the merchants and developers want them to look. Through CloudMade's Style Editor anyone, even non-technical people, can produce advanced, custom maps that reflect the brand and identity of their company or their customers company. We've found that many, especially those with no yellow in their corporate identity, prefer this to a one-size-fits-all yellow map. Navigation: We're continuing to ramp up our work with key players in the turn-by-turn navigation field to increase the scope for navigation solutions. We are building assets to help drive the verticalization of the field, so we see custom navigation for different verticals. Again, CloudMade doesn't believe in one-size-fits-all. We think different types of navigation will require different types of apps. For example, if I'm hiking in the mountains I don't care about roads. I want to navigate hiking trails, be directed to places where I can fill my water bottle, and I want to know where the vista points are. Last, but not least, the most important component of CloudMade' approach. Tools, tools, tools: CloudMade is focusing a lot of effort on the tools side. We believe that the best way we can serve the community of mappers and developers is to put all the control in their hands. We've demonstrated this through our efforts already, for example with our iPhone libraries. We're similarly putting the control of Location Based Ads and Sponsored POIs into the hands of developers. Put yourself in the shoes of the vertical app developer. You know better than anyone else how your constituents want to be advertised to, what ads they want (and don't want) to see and how to place those apps in your app. Similarly, we're readying a suite of tools that makes mapping easier, faster and more powerful. CloudMade's web based Mapzen tool (http://bit.ly/1MRz8U), and Mapzen POI Collector for iPhone will be available shortly. This suite of tools enables us to further serve the 180,000 person large OpenStreetMap community that is building the most detailed, finely textured and accurate map of the world. The community was founded by the founders of CloudMade, and most members of the CloudMade team are active members of the OpenStreetMap community. The map we're building in the community is stunning in it's detail. It's essentially the Wikipedia of maps. After all, who knows better how to map a community than people who live in the community. Just look at this Stanford example: http://bit.ly/3HJiRh vs. http://bit.ly/1i2N8m. The Mapzen suite enables us to bridge the needs of app developers, who serve as a proxy for consumers in a given vertical segment, and the mappers, who are members of local communities or specialists in a certain type of mapping (e.g. mountain biking trails). Bridging the consumers needs for maps and the mappers' desire to create maps that truly reflect their local community will result in mobile and web applications that both feature better maps and be more attractive to users. So what's the bottom line? If you are a developer that has yet to use our platform, get started here: http://bit.ly/Vjdcp (or if you're an iPhone developer, go here: http://bit.ly/2IRZA3)." If you are with a larger company with a need for a mapping provider that does not compete with you email me at juha@cloudmade.com. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| Actual Royalty To Join Social Media Royalty At Le Web 2009 Posted: 30 Oct 2009 10:25 AM PDT
We interviewed Queen Rania earlier this year. Rania is a monarch on a mission. She focuses much of the messaging on her Twitter account towards helping women and promoting peace and education. A message earlier this week lamented the death of women and children in Pakistan. Another, yesterday, pointed to a NY Times article on the need for schools. She has become very adept at using social media, particularly Twitter and YouTube, to further her causes. And her very authentic, very human voice is doing a lot to dispel stereotypes about the Arab and Muslim worlds. Her presence is more than enough reason to attend, even though the conference is in France in December. Despite popular opinion I’ll be back this year – TechCrunch Europe is partnering with Le Web on a startup competition. And eagerly awaiting Rania’s time on stage. Le Web is offering TechCrunch readers a 10% discount on tickets. Just use this link. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| Google Makes Fading Homepage A Little Less Confusing For Unaware Searchers Posted: 30 Oct 2009 09:43 AM PDT
We first reported on Google’s bucket testing of a new homepage that fades to nothing but its logo and the search box after receiving a tip about it at the beginning of this month. Since then, we’ve been getting more and more incoming tips from people who are starting to see this and haven’t seen our or other reports about the gimmick. I have yet to see the experimental homepage myself, but judging from our inbox and chatter on Twitter the company does seem to be including more people in the bucket test than was the case a couple of weeks ago. Likely, they need to gain more data from actual usage to decide whether or not it can become a permanent feature or not. One new change to the fading homepage is the fact that there’s now a short sentence that appears under the search box when the rest of the page fades out. The line, which reads “This space intentionally left blank” was seemingly added because too many unaware users were confused by the fade effect and frantically started disassembling their computers in search of a solution (at least that’s what they do in my imagination). If the point is to remove all extraneous text, adding that message seems like the equivalent of explaining the punchline of a joke. It ruins the effect. Besides sowing confusion, it is also creating a minor backlash. People who are seeing the fade-out are apparently not big fans of it either. Some choice tweets:
This is what it looks like now: And this is the test they ran earlier this month: Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
| CrunchGear PSA: If You Run XBMC Or Boxee On Your Apple TV, Do Not Upgrade To 3.0 Posted: 30 Oct 2009 09:12 AM PDT  To repeat, do not upgrade your Apple TV to 3.0 if you're running hacked ATV plugins like XBox Media Center or Boxee. I'm sure this will be fixed in a matter of days - if not hours - but as of right now it means a ride on the Failboat to Sad Trombone Town. That's right: this update destroys the only thing that makes Apple TV usable and good. Also, as an added bonus, Apple TV firmware 3.0 is insignificant. It adds Internet radio to the package and improves the UI. It also adds Genius playlists. My cup, as they say, runneth over. You can pop through to see a video of me trying to hack my 3.0 Apple TV or you can just take this as a word of warning. More info on hacking Apple TV after the jump. |
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