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- Unboxing the Windows 7 Launch Party Kit
- Settling The Google Book Debate and Other Unicorn Fantasies
- Interview: Mike Paolucci, The Founder Of Space-viewing Service, Slooh
- Another Day, Another Lawsuit Against Facebook (Well, Two)
- VentNation Offers A Place On The Web To Blow Off Some Steam
- Twitter Search Refines Trend Searches To Give You More Real-Time Results
- Microsoft Co-founder Sells Company He Started To “Help Him In His Own Songwriting”
- Hearst Takes A Stab At Semi-Automated Content With LMK
- YouTube’s New Logo Shouts From The Rooftops: ‘1 Billion Views Per Day!’
- Wufoo Launches Integrated Payments Feature For Online Form Builder
- Twillist Wants To Become The Ultimate Resource For Twitter Lists
- If Teens Don’t Use Twitter, Then Why Do I Have To Read About Miley Cyrus?
- Paul Kedrosky: Why I Love Venture Capitalists
- More Features Piling In The Minivan As Circle Of Moms Expands
- Digg Testing A Way To Surface Older Content And Get Paid For It
- Twitter Needs You To Translate Its FIGS
- The Evolution Of Click Fraud: Massive Chinese Operation DormRing1 Uncovered
- J.D. Power Calls Apple Best In Consumer/Business Smartphones, LG Best In Feature Phones
- How To Enable The Super-Spartan, Totally Buttonless Google Home Page
- Digg Is Also Feeling The Need For Speed
- Hulu Labs Cooks Up Linux Support For Hulu Desktop, New Publisher Tools
- Motionbox Acquires Fellow Video Sharing Site Viddyou
- Startups 101: The Complete Mint Presentation
- CrunchBoard: iSocket, MySpace, Like.com, and More!
- CrunchGear’s Seven Words to Envy Contest: Win An HP Envy 13
| Unboxing the Windows 7 Launch Party Kit Posted: 09 Oct 2009 07:51 AM PDT  It's finally here! Oh, man, look at all this stuff. Streamers, balloons, party bags, playing cards, a puzzle, and a poster!!! Microsoft sure knows how to through a party. Add some jello shots and a beer bong, and this party will should be crazy. Oh, and the fact that I now have a full, legal copy of Windows 7 Ultimate 32- and 64-bit makes me smile too. Click through for more pictures. We'll have a full party report shortly.   |
| Settling The Google Book Debate and Other Unicorn Fantasies Posted: 09 Oct 2009 07:15 AM PDT
Despite ongoing legal wranglings, Google is still on the offensive against critics of its book settlement. The latest salvo is an Op-Ed in the New York Times by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. He goes over much the same ground that he articulated at a meeting with reporters on Wednesday: Google has done the hard work of digitizing more than 10 million books, while its competitors who oppose the settlement like Microsoft and Amazon have done nothing. “I guess they scanned 15 books,” Brin quipped at the meeting. The main objection to the settlement is that it will give Google a monopoly on out-of-print, or orphan books. Brin swats that argument in his Op-Ed, writing:
In other words, there is no choice in out-of-print books because for the most part they are simply not available other than in large research libraries. Brin also points out that the settlement does not impose a compulsory license on unclaimed works, only a default license which can later be changed. Furthermore, he argues, as he did at the meeting, that the settlement is not anti-competitive because it does not preclude other companies from striking similar deals. In fact, it sets a precedent for them to do so. Everyone agrees that digitizing these books is a good idea, and will help unlock the information hidden away in them. Brin quotes liberally from out-of-print books in his Op-Ed to make his point. But Google is not digitizing these books so it can sell copies of them. They are out of print for a reason. There is no market for them as whole books. Their value lies in cutting them up into snippets and relevant excerpts, and showing those snippets along with search ads to people looking for related information. The reason they are valuable to Google is because they are a rich source of high quality information that will improve its search results, and in fact give them an information advantage over other search engines without equal access to the world’s books. Brin’s attitude is that if Microsoft or Amazon want a similar corpus of digital information, they should go scan their own out-of-print books. Of course, there are other efforts such as the not-for-profit Internet Archive’s (which has scanned 1.6 million books), but they don’t have the same resources as Google. The response, however, would be that the settlement gives Google a free pass against any legal liability for orphan works still under copyright protection. On Wednesday I asked Brin, why not just open the settlement to other book digitizers to afford them the same protections? He said that would be “legally impossible.” After all, those rights aren’t Google’s to extend. But what about the Author’s Guild? Would it be willing to apply the same terms to other companies and book digitization efforts to help open up and distribute out-of-print books even further? How great would it be to be able to download millions of such books for free (or a token fee of $1) onto your Kindle and other devices? Everybody wants to see that world happen. But first this legal hurdle must be overcome, and second other organizations must catch up in their book scanning efforts or Google should do the right thing and choose to license its digital book database to other companies that don’t compete in search like Amazon. Making all the world’s books accessible in digital form through more than just Google doesn’t have to be a unicorn fantasy. Photo credit: Flickr/Eggybird Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
| Interview: Mike Paolucci, The Founder Of Space-viewing Service, Slooh Posted: 09 Oct 2009 06:34 AM PDT  In honor of the LCROSS impact we talked to Slooh.com founder Mike Paolucci about his telescope system and his mission to bring astronomical content to a wider audience. Slooh streamed the LCROSS impact live this morning. Tell me about Slooh. There was a time when the only option for star gazing was paying around $2000 for a backyard telescope. But, Slooh is offering an innovative way for space enthusiasts to control multi-million dollar telescopes for about 10 cents a minute. Slooh provides consumers of all ages an unparalleled opportunity to explore space live by taking control of mountaintop telescopes situated throughout the world with their Mac or PC. The Web-based program offers live viewings of outer space, 24-hours a day through powerful telescopes located in Europe, Chile and Australia. The Slooh concept is changing the way we think about space discoveries, as anyone now has the capability to discover a comet! Slooh's patented technology makes celestial images appear like Polaroids during 5 minute "missions." These images can be saved, altered and shared in a person's mission log. Slooh Kids organizes themed mission packs, which present an experience in a broader context and provides a storytelling component with a beginning, middle and end. Slooh has been operating since 2004 and sells online and at retail stores (activity books which include time on the telescopes), as of this year at ToysRus, Barnes & Noble, and many others. |
| Another Day, Another Lawsuit Against Facebook (Well, Two) Posted: 09 Oct 2009 04:38 AM PDT
Facebook is getting hit by that simple truth yet again: Phoenix Media/Communications, publisher of the Boston Phoenix newspaper among other publications, has fired a legal salvo at the popular social networking service for allegedly violating a patent related to setting up online personal profile pages. In addition, the company is being sued by a Japanese company called Mekiki, which operates a social network called SamuraiTime and claims Facebook was built using its patented technology. According to Bloomberg, Tokyo-based Mekiki claims Facebook infringes three patents for a "human relationships registering system." The Japanese company is actively seeking patent royalties and a court order to prevent further use of its inventions, according to the complaint filed a couple of days ago in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware. The Phoenix Media case appears to weigh a bit heavier, though. Apparently, a division of the Phoenix company’s People2People Group called Tele-Publishing filed the complaint in US District Court in Boston last Wednesday, alleging that Facebook's "computer network and method of creating and sharing a personal page'' is covered by one or more claims of a patent issued by the USPTO in June 2001. The company, which provides multimedia personal and dating services ads to 200 newspapers and broadcasters nationally, says the patent includes an online template and graphics for building a personal Web page and also provides users with a secure way to share personal information with other computer network users. It’s unclear what damages Tele-Publishing is seeking. More info on the Boston Business Journal website. Facebook has responded with a statement about the latter case, saying it’s ‘without merit and will be fought vigorously’, unlike the Mekiki case which they chose not to comment on for now. (Image credit: /ABC News) Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| VentNation Offers A Place On The Web To Blow Off Some Steam Posted: 09 Oct 2009 03:54 AM PDT
You can choose to do so in a variety of categories, either anonymously or using your own name, and you can even rate other users’ vents by using a slider placed next to each entry. Once you’ve published your rant, you can push it out to a range of other social networks with just a couple of clicks, allowing you to easily share your frustrations with as many friends and family members you can possibly reach on the Internet. Alternatively, you can simply try to relax a bit and work out any issues you might have on your own or with the help of a professional. Because frankly, I think the last thing the Internet needs at this point is another website that collects rants from frustrated people.
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| Twitter Search Refines Trend Searches To Give You More Real-Time Results Posted: 09 Oct 2009 02:57 AM PDT
But when I went to Twitter Search to find out what people were saying about the announcement in real-time (cause, you know, that’s what it’s good for) I noticed something I hadn’t picked up on before. Apparently, Twitter automatically refines search queries for trending topics to maximize the number of results you get. This is something that other real-time search engines so far don’t do (at least not OneRiot or Topsy, which are the ones I checked). I have no idea when this started occurring exactly and I haven’t seen any earlier mentions of this that I can remember. I’m sure you’ll correct me if it turns out to be a really, really old feature and move on to tell me I’m a moron. To try it out, click the current trending topic ‘President Obama’. Only, that will not be the search query that will kick off an overview of tweets, but instead it’ll become “President Obama” OR #obama which evidently turns up much more results. Update: ok so this appears to be nothing new. Now I’m wondering why they don’t explain why topics are trending anywhere on Twitter Search. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| Microsoft Co-founder Sells Company He Started To “Help Him In His Own Songwriting” Posted: 09 Oct 2009 02:06 AM PDT
Yes, I didn’t know either one of those companies or products either. But I do know Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and founder of investment firm Vulcan Capital, who apparently started Submersible to “help him in his own songwriting” (release). Submersible started as a project within Vulcan and was initially meant to be a search engine designed to manage an extensive collection of loop libraries. The company eventually went on to develop its flagship product DrumCore, which is essentially a combination of a database/browser for musical content, a library of drum content from ‘world-class’ drummers like Matt Cameron (Soundgarden, Pearl Jam) and Sly Dunbar (Bob Marley), and software tools for audio content generation and export. But the main caveat is that the company was started by Allen, of course. The man lost a cool $5.5 billion the past year according to Forbes, about one third of his net worth as estimated in 2008, so maybe he’s simply offloading some of his assets to make up for it. No word on if the Submersible software ever actually helped him become a better songwriter, unfortunately, but we’re digging for more information. And yes, that really is Paul Allen in that picture (credit: The Sydney Morning Herald) Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Hearst Takes A Stab At Semi-Automated Content With LMK Posted: 09 Oct 2009 01:15 AM PDT
The problem with magazines is that they are so very expensive to produce. All those writers, editors, photographers, and designers cost money. Even original news sites require a lot of resources to run. That is why Hearst is taking a different approach with a new site launching today called LMK (Let Me Know). It brings in a river of news and photos on 2.3 million people and topics from authoritative sources. In other words, Hearst is getting into the news aggregation game, but with its own high-design twist. Each page, whether it’s about a celebrity, athlete, or company, pulls in news feeds and photos from the AP and Getty about that topic. LMK is licensing semantic filtering technology from Evri, which parses through the feeds and photos to help create the automated topic pages. But LMK will also have specially curated pages which will have its own freelance editor and designers. The first enhanced topic page it will be launching is for U.S. college football. Bob Roe, a former assistant managing editor at Sports Illustrated, is the sports expert who will be overseeing the sports pages. Once the best sources for stories about each team, player, and coach are selected from both major news sites to fan blogs, Evri’s technology does the rest. Whenever there is game against another team, LMK will also show the most authoritative news sources for that team in a “behind Enemy Lines” column. Each page will also show stats, photo galleries, and interactive data modules which illustrate information such as which starting players have injuries. Just mouse over their position, and you can see if they are scheduled to play and what injuries they have. Or check out the “big fat number,” which compares the total weight of each team’s offensive line. The site also lets you drill down into individual player or coach pages, which again show a feed of the most authoritative news about that person and fun stats such as how much more each college football coach makes in salary than the head of the school where he works. LMK is the first business to come out of Hearst Entertainment’s new digital incubator under deputy group head George Kliavkoff (formerly the chief digital officer at NBC, where he helped create Hulu). Hearst Entertainment manages the company’s stakes in various cable channels, but is also now incubating and investing in startups. Kliavkoff boasts that LMK has only one full-time employee. “There is no variable cost in this business.” LMK will launch other channels around reality TV, financial news, medicine, and more.
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| YouTube’s New Logo Shouts From The Rooftops: ‘1 Billion Views Per Day!’ Posted: 09 Oct 2009 12:34 AM PDT
So why the spiffy new banner now? Turns out, it was three years ago to the day that Google acquired YouTube for a whopping $1.65 billion. One other fun note: check out the name of the logo’s image file. It’s “logo_holy_crap_1bn_a_day”. Holy crap, indeed. (Good eyes Coweybear). Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| Wufoo Launches Integrated Payments Feature For Online Form Builder Posted: 08 Oct 2009 09:45 PM PDT  Wufoo, an online HTML form builder that helps anyone create contact forms, online surveys and event registrations without writing a single line of code, has launched a new feature that now lets users collect money. When you design a form with Wufoo, it basically does all the heavy-lifting for you and builds the database, backend and all of the scripts needed to collect and understand data, which is hosted by Wufoo. One you build a form, you can either embed the code on your website or blog or provider access to the form via a Wufoo link. We previously wrote about Wufoo, which was funded by startup incubator Y Combinator, here. Now, Wufoo is integrating payments into its forms, letting users create forms with payment collection options, including PayPal Payments Pro and USA ePay. After a Wufoo form is submitted, the user will not be taken to another page on the merchant or gateway's web site. Instead, there is a seamless transition from data submission to payment collection. Administrators of forms will receive a payment summary pages, can receive lists of shipping addresses, and can ensure that all users receive an invoice or receipt of the transaction for their records. Invoices can be customized with a personal message. In fact, payment pages powered by Wufoo can be branded and personalized to reflect a users logo and style. Wufoo has made payment integration features in their forms surprisingly cheap. Plans start at $24.95 per month but users can try the first five transactions for free. Founded by Chris Campbell, Kevin Hale and Ryan Campbell, Wufoo has flown under the radar even though the startup provides and incredibly useful and innovative product. With this new payments integration Wufoo is embarking into the e-commerce territory and could be an incredibly useful tool for sites that want to incorporate payments in a cost-effective and simple way. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Twillist Wants To Become The Ultimate Resource For Twitter Lists Posted: 08 Oct 2009 07:34 PM PDT
Of course, Twillist’s release comes less than two weeks after Twitter announced that it would offer its own natively supported Lists, which are still in testing with a subset of users. So where does that leave Twillist? Founder Michael Broukhim (who is also the co-founder of Totspot) says that the site plans to feature heavy integration with the upcoming new Twitter API features, with the intention of becoming the de facto place to create and find Twitter lists. The site will include added features like the ability to see which shared links are most popular in a given list, embeddable lists that you can share on your blog, the ability to collaborate on Lists with friends, and a feature that would let you see which Twitter users appear in the most lists. These features would all certainly come in handy — at this point it’s a matter of where users are going to turn to to find them. Twillist is easy to use, and can effectively serve as an alternative to Twitter’s web interface. At the top of the page is a box where you can tweet new messages, along with a menu containing all of the lists you’ve created. Clicking one of the lists will bring you to a page that looks similar to your normal Twitter feed, except it only shows tweets from the members of the list. Creating a list is simple too: just enter what it should be titled, as well as their user names (you can add more people to the list later on, too). My only gripe with the process is the lack of an autocomplete function, so you’ll have to make sure you’re spelling each name correctly. Twillist is quite well done, with a simple but good looking interface and straightforward functionality. That said, it’s certainly got its work cut out for it: along with the aforementioned grouping/list sites that already exist, we’ll likely see quite a few other sites spring up that look to become the authoritative site for Twitter Lists. And this all assumes that Twitter isn’t intending to make a hub of its own, which is hardly a given. But for now, Twillist offers a good way to create and use Lists on Twitter, before they’re actually available through the service itself. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
| If Teens Don’t Use Twitter, Then Why Do I Have To Read About Miley Cyrus? Posted: 08 Oct 2009 06:44 PM PDT
Okay, yes, it’s possible that there are plenty of — how do I put this…perverted — gentlemen out there begging for her to come back. And undoubtedly seeing as #mileycomeback has been the top trending topic all day on Twitter, the spam bots are out there latching on to the trend. But still, I’ve seen the story like a dozen times today all over the web. Reuters has it, the AP has it, the Wall Street Journal has it, the Telegraph has it. Then of course, the entertainment press: MTV, Entertainment Weekly, Extra, etc. And I saw it on CNN earlier. Why does anyone care if teens, Cyrus’ audience, aren’t using Twitter? Looking over the #mileycomeback results, most tweets (and there are a truly massive amount), do appear to actually be from real teens tweeting about it. Many are asking her father (yes, former Mr. Mullet, Billy Ray Cyrus) to persuade her to come back, others are just mad that she quit her nearly 2 million followers. But most do appear to be real people, and yes, most appear to be teens. So maybe teens don’t use Twitter except when Miley Cyrus quits, to get her to come back to a service they don’t use? Or maybe the idea that teens don’t use Twitter is simply not true. I kind of wish it were true at this point, so I could stop hearing about Miley Cyrus. Going back to the entertainment press, I’m a little concerned about them encroaching our beat. Normally, its the tech press that gets to bitch about Twitter being down (like this morning) and come up with conspiracy theories as to why that’s the case. But now outlets like Extra are getting on board. “Did Miley Break Twitter?,” they ask. No real evidence to support that — other than, Kirstie Alley not tweeting for over 16 hours? What? It has come to this.
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| Paul Kedrosky: Why I Love Venture Capitalists Posted: 08 Oct 2009 05:24 PM PDT
You can follow Kedrosky on his Infectious Greed blog, or get the cliff notes version on twitter at @pkedrosky. Hating venture capitalists is profoundly satisfying. After all, they are slack-jawed, monied, oily, know-nothings who carom off innovation, fire capable founders, squash angel investors, and exist mostly to make commercial bankers look smart and interesting. Or at least that's the story we like to tell. By "we,” of course, I mean all of us who lovingly poke venture capitalists in the eye with sticks now and then. They are such easy targets, what with making up numbers about how many jobs they create, missing great investments, delivering awful ten-year returns to investors, having higher failure rates among companies they fund than among the ones they don't, and generally being so self-important and irony-unaware. But that doesn't mean VCs are quacks. Or that what they do isn’t hard. Or that it's unimportant. Because it is important, and the good ones are smart, and what they do is very, very hard. Creating a successful startup is among the hardest things you can do in a capitalist economy. Entrepreneurs must successfully navigate a sea of multi-dimensional uncertainty, from technology (will it work?), to people (do I have the right employees?), to market (will anyone care?), to financial (can I finance doing this, and can I then sell the product or service for more than it costs?) At big companies you can fail at launching a product, fail at hiring people, fail at making money on a product, and fail at figuring out whether something will work. Your big company will probably be unaffected, and you may even get promoted. Do any of those things wrong at a startup and, in all likelihood, you're dead. You are wandering a maze of dark and twisty passages — most of which are paved with trapdoors to hell. The idea that anyone at all would build a business around funding startups is the remarkable thing. No revenues, no sure market ahead, no collateral, no liquidity, and doe-eyed founders who were in high school when Enron blew up. It all adds up to more ways to break down than an old Winnebago. Far from wondering why so few companies get venture capital, we should perhaps wonder why any do, and how venture capitalists remain so damn optimistic. To borrow an industry adage, the best venture capitalists retain the capacity to fall in love despite having had their heart broken over and over again. And the opportunities for heartbreak are legion. Even if the mortality numbers you usually hear are wrong, failures rates are high for startups. Across all sectors, about one-quarter of startups die off in the first year, while half-ish make it to the five-year mark. The numbers are different, however, for venture capital-backed companies. Failure rates among venture-backed firms are lower in the first few years, but higher later on. Does that sound nasty and mean-spirited? I don't think so. Matter of fact, it sounds like VCs are being precisely the sorts of patient investors that people say they aren't. They are giving risky companies a chance to experiment and find something that works, which is crucial, given that most successful startups don't end up doing what they started out trying. It is a luxury that markets don't afford other companies. Another favorite club with which to whack venture capitalists is their supposed inability to create innovative new companies. Just look at Bessemer's well-known anti-portfolio, with them turning down Google and Apple and Federal Express (seven frickin' times!). The "VCs as innovators" problem wouldn't be so bad, of course, were it not for the scene-stealing entrepreneurs. Those bastards keep creating risky startups and getting all the glory. Damn you Sergey Brin and Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs. Just in case you needed a reminder, it's not VCs who create companies, it's entrepreneurs. Blaming venture capitalists for their capital not changing the world is like blaming Pfizer's treasury department for Viagra not saving your marriage. Yo, you have bigger problems, so to speak. Wouldn't it be nice if venture capitalist drove more innovation? Of course it would. But that's like saying "Wouldn't it be nice if supermodels followed you home?" Of course it would, but it's fanciful. Innovation is one input into the startup business, not its main output. For startups or VCs to pretend otherwise is a speedy path to going bust. Venture capital investing is hard enough without turning it into a Disney-style dream factory for self-styled social engineers. Here is what we should want from venture capitalists. They should be trying to find and help early-stage companies at rising above the muck and dirt and crushing difficulties of being a startup. At the same time they must produce hefty profits in a timely way for their own impatient investors. That VCs can't do the preceding, while simultaneously satisfying their critics by making no funding mistakes and changing the world with every deal, is a feature, not a bug. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| More Features Piling In The Minivan As Circle Of Moms Expands Posted: 08 Oct 2009 04:53 PM PDT
Parenting communities are becoming increasingly common on the web as mothers and fathers turn to social networks to share stories and elicit advice about raising children. Circle of Moms, a social network for yes, moms, is celebrating its year anniversary with steady growth numbers and a few new features. The site is what you’d expect from its name— a community that lets moms connect with friends, talk about their kids, and join topical Q&A communities, with subjects ranging from recipe swapping, special needs children, and discipline for toddlers. Since the site’s launch last October, Circle of Moms has accumulated 7 million registered moms and is adding 150,000 new moms per week, according to the site’s co-founder and CEO Ephraim Luft. And the social network saw 2.1 million unique visitors last month, according to Quantcast. One powerful strategy that has helped Circle of Mom’s growth is its Facebook application. Luft says that Facebook has definitely contributed to the site’s viral growth over the past year. With 2,362,352 monthly active users, the site’s Facebook app sees significant amount of interaction with the site’s social network and and also helps pull in friends on the website and vice versa. And today, Circle of Moms is launching an upgrade of its popular feature, Child Spaces, which is a centralized online space within the network where moms can share child’s special moments, photos and memories with close friends and family online. In the past year over 5 million “Child Spaces” have been created. Now, you can share updates through Facebook and Twitter from the site, define a set of "followers" who get regular updates on what's going on in the child's life, and have greater access over privacy controls of who can see the site. Luft says that the network will be adding enhanced customization features, such as personalized templates and vanity URLs; as well as the ability to import content from other social media sites, such as Flickr, Picassa, and YouTube, shortly. And the site will soon let moms print photos and make other photo products (i.e. memory and scrap books). Circle of Moms creates revenue through advertising on the site, and Luft says that because of the demographic well-known companies like Nickelodeon, Old Navy and Nestle are all regular advertisers. Funded by Maples Investments, SoftTech VC and a number of angel investors. Circle of Moms faces competition from another popular mommy social network CafeMom. But Luft maintains that Circle of Moms has been able to gain a loyal and growing following despite having only received seed funding. CafeMom has received $17 million in funding over the past three years. Luft is onto something; it’s impressive that a niche social network like Circle of Moms has been able to see viral growth within a year.  Photo credit: Flickr/gsf747 Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Digg Testing A Way To Surface Older Content And Get Paid For It Posted: 08 Oct 2009 04:13 PM PDT
Digg is testing a new type of advertisement on its site that basically surfaces old content submitted to Digg that is relevant to certain advertisers. So, as you can see in the example below, if Norton wants to advertise its new security software, it can find a few old Digg items related to Internet security and put them in the ad box along with their banner. This not only advertises their product, but gives users something potentially useful to click on. The whole ad area is sponsored by the advertising company, but it’s not clear if clicking on one of the Digg stories in the ad space takes you to that actual story, and more importantly, if the advertiser is actually paying for all of those clicks. If so, that seems like a great deal for Digg. Regardless, this seems like a good way to build brand awareness through content that Digg users have already found useful by themselves. One thing I’ve been thinking about recently is that while Digg is full of interesting information, the lifespan of that information is very short. Once a story disappears from the homepage, the liklihood that anyone is going to see it again is very small. Digg has some methods to surface really popular items again, such as the “Top In” areas, but there’s plenty of information that is not a top item on Digg for whatever reason, but would still be interesting to some users to see again. This is one potential way of surfacing such information and making money for doing it. Digg notes that only a small percentage of users will see these ads for now. These are not the same as its Digg Ads platform, which asks users to vote on actual advertisements. It’s also worth noting that advertisers are not allowed to submit their own content to use in these ads. Any content used has to have been already submitted to Digg, though it doesn’t necessarily have had to have been on the homepage.
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| Twitter Needs You To Translate Its FIGS Posted: 08 Oct 2009 03:37 PM PDT
One of Twitter’s limitations when expanding to the global community is the fact that the microblogging network is currently only available in English and Japanese. Other social networks like Yahoo Meme have tried to capitalize on this gap by offering a Twitter-like network in Spanish and Portuguese. Today, Twitter says it will soon be rolling out support for FIGS: French, Italian, German, and Spanish. In a blog post, the social network says that it hopes to offer Twitter in several other languages in the near future. And while Twitter is going to be doing some of the translations in-house, they are mostly trying to crowdsource translations, which is a strategy that Facebook has used in the past. So now, Twitter will offer a tool that lets people suggest translations for the site. Once people submit translations, Twitter follow up on the technical backend. The tool will be rolled out to a small group of volunteer translators and as they come in, Twitter will distribute the translations to developers so they can offer multi-language support. Twitter adds that the crowdsourcing strategy has been the foundation for many features on the site such as @mentions and retweets. Users submit their ideas and Twitter will make them a reality. It appears that translation volunteers will be given a level, which will be indicated on their profile (see our screenshot of what this looks like below). It’s seems safe to assume that as your become more reliable with translations, you move up levels. It’s about time that Twitter rolled out more language functionality and what better way to do this than to lean on your loyal followers to help out with this endeavor. And with versions of the site in more languages, Twitter should be able to increase its international following. It’s certainly worked with Facebook. 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. Facebook recently launched a feature of Facebook Connect that lets developers tap into the Facebook community to get help translating their site into any language that Facebook Translations supports. Facebook even patented its crowdsourced translation tools. Update: here’s the translation agreement sent out by Twitter to a subset of users. Click the image to view a larger size.
 Photo credit: Flickr/lepiaf.geo Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| The Evolution Of Click Fraud: Massive Chinese Operation DormRing1 Uncovered Posted: 08 Oct 2009 02:50 PM PDT
As long as advertisers pay for clicks, there will be click fraud. And the more people combat it, the more sophisticated the attacks become to get around the defenses that advertisers, search engines, and others put in place. But a recent click fraud ring discovered by click-fraud monitoring service Anchor Intelligence suggests that the practice is evolving to a scale never seen before. Anchor Intelligence identified a click fraud ring being run out of China which involved 200,000 different IP addresses and racked up more than $3 million worth of fraudulent clicks across 2,000 advertisers in a two-week period. That money was never paid out and the ring has now dissipated (or moved onto another scam), but who knows how long the ring was in operation before Anchor noticed. The operation was called DormRing1 because it was centered in dorms at technical universities in China such as the Shanghai Technology Institute. “We have seen 200 fraud rings,” says Anchor VP Richard Sim, “and this one by far trumps them all. I think it is indicative of how sophisticated the click fraud is getting. We are seeing the sheer scale and size of these rings growing.” Click fraud occurs when someone sets up a website, signs up with an ad network, and then clicks on the ads to generate ad revenues with false clicks. DormRing1 operated the same way, except it easily involved more than 1,000 people who set up more than 10,000 Websites to spread out the fraud. The image above depicts a portion of the ring, with each red dot representing a source of fraudulent clicks with similar digital signatures. (Anchor monitors such activity on behalf of advertising clients). Spreading the click fraud out across thousands of sites makes it harder to detect, but it also requires a lot more people to perpetrate it. DormRing1 recruited student click fraud workers on Chinese social networks where and forums participants would post images of checks they were getting for their activities. One drummed up interest by talking about his plans to buy a car with the proceeds. Just like with any criminal organization, people at the lower rungs had to do a lot of grunt work to move up the ladder of trust and money. A briefing paper provided by Anchor describes the operation:
Remember, we only know these details because DormRing1 was stopped. But nobody was arrested. The advertisers just stopped making payments to the fraudulent Websites. You can be pretty sure that DormRing2 is already up and running. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| J.D. Power Calls Apple Best In Consumer/Business Smartphones, LG Best In Feature Phones Posted: 08 Oct 2009 02:05 PM PDT  According to a J.D. Power study, Apple has been named number one in consumer satisfaction in the consumer and business smartphone market while LG is number one in the traditional feature phone market. First, a bit of explanation of terms. In this case, a smartphone is a phone with an operating system that is able to run more than the built-in application deck. A feature phone is a phone with a pre-set deck that perhaps can allow downloads but is not considered a smartphone. The Blackberry is a smartphone while the Moto RAZR is a feature phone. Based on a set of criteria, Apple scored highest over LG and Blackberry in the business category and highest in the consumer smartphone category, over second-place RIM. LG ranked highest in satisfaction in the feature phone market. |
| How To Enable The Super-Spartan, Totally Buttonless Google Home Page Posted: 08 Oct 2009 01:59 PM PDT  This morning Google Blogoscoped posted a special snippit of code that you can copy and paste into your browser to enable the new minimalist design. But that version falls short of greatness: it includes the “Google Search” and “I’m Feeling Lucky” buttons. For those looking for the ultimate in austere, these buttons are little more than ugly blemishes marring an otherwise perfect design. Fortunately, we’ve gotten our hands on the code for the version of the homepage that excludes the buttons. Note that this may not work for all browsers (I couldn’t get it to work with Safari, but it worked fine in my nightly build of Chromium). To set the cookie, do the following: 1. Head to google.com
3. Hit enter or ‘go’ to run it (you have to be on google.com at the time). It will not give you any feedback, it will just run and set the cookie. Thanks to Don MacAskill over at SmugMug for the tip. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| Digg Is Also Feeling The Need For Speed Posted: 08 Oct 2009 01:16 PM PDT
In a post today, Digg’s VP of Engineering, John Quinn, talks about what Digg is doing to try and make the site faster. This includes moving static resources like CSS and JavaScript to Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), and switching to higher performance distributed databases. But the one of the biggest changes is something so small, that it’s kind of humorous Digg didn’t do it a long time ago. Today, the service removed the tiny 16 pixel user icons that used to appear on the main page. The funny part is that they were so small, that you will barely even notice they’re gone. And thanks to this tiny move, they are “reducing HTTP requests to Digg for a warm cache load by around 75%,” Quinn notes. To be clear, Digg hasn’t killed off recognition for users who submit stories that make the front page, but only their names are listed now instead of their avatars and names. On the Digg story page, you will still see the (larger) avatar. Quinn notes that this is just the first of many speed initiative Digg has planned for the coming months, and notes that they “will result in order-of-magnitude speed-ups for many use cases.” Most users put pressure on services for new features, but the trend of speed over bloat is a good one. Facebook is going lite(r) (though sharing speed remains an issue), Google is going faster, and even the latest version of OS X is all about optimization. Speed, speed, speed.
[photo: Paramount Pictures] Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Hulu Labs Cooks Up Linux Support For Hulu Desktop, New Publisher Tools Posted: 08 Oct 2009 12:50 PM PDT
At launch Labs’ most exciting (and surprising) new feature was Hulu Desktop — a downloadable native client available for both Mac and Windows that sports a new interface that allows users to sit back from their screens and navigate the site using either their Mac or Windows Media remotes. And today, it’s launching support for Linux. To be perfectly honest I did a double take when I heard the news — plenty of software never makes it to Linux at all, much less a few months after making its PC/Mac debut. But Hulu says that a Linux version was among users’ top requests, so they built it. The second new feature to launch today is Publisher Tools, which is designed to help bloggers and site owners quickly find content on Hulu that they can embed on their own sites. Upon launching Publisher Tools Hulu will intitially present you with a list of popular video clips, which is what most people are after. There’s also a search feature that lets you search Hulu for content hosted both on the site and the 100+ third party sites that Hulu indexes for premium content (these include MTV, TMZ, and funnyordie). To use the new tool you simply check off which videos you’d like to embed in your site, and Hulu will generate a custom playlist including each clip that you selected.  Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Motionbox Acquires Fellow Video Sharing Site Viddyou Posted: 08 Oct 2009 12:37 PM PDT
YouTube alternative and video sharing site Motionbox has acquired competitor and fellow video site Viddyou for an undisclosed amount. Motionbox, which raised $6 million in funding earlier this year, is similar to YouTube in that it allows users to upload and share their videos on the web, but it includes a more in-depth suite of privacy settings that make it better suited for sharing clips with a select group of friends rather than the whole world. Motionbox also got a boost from AOL, which recommended Motionbox to as an replacement for its Video Uploads service, which was shut down last November. Viddyou has a similar model to Motionbox by featuring extensive privacy controls. The site also focused more on quality of video over quantity by adding support for high definition video. According a press release, Viddyou users be able to move their account information and videos to Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Startups 101: The Complete Mint Presentation Posted: 08 Oct 2009 12:09 PM PDT Last night I posted the video of Mint CEO Aaron Patzer’s 45 minute presentation on building startups from the ground up. If you are an aspiring startup entrepreneur, you’ll want to watch that more than a few times. The candid disclosures and advice he gives is rarely seen in Silicon Valley. Some readers requested to see the presentation deck as well, so here it is. Patzer shows how he raised and spent money, and generated revenue, throughout the lifecycle of Mint, from the very beginning to the $170 million acquisition. He also showed historical slides from early presentations to investors and compares those to the actual results. I’m also re-embedding the full video below. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| CrunchBoard: iSocket, MySpace, Like.com, and More! Posted: 08 Oct 2009 12:00 PM PDT
For job hunters in Europe, check out our Europe CrunchBoard. Click here to see all the jobs on CrunchBoard. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| CrunchGear’s Seven Words to Envy Contest: Win An HP Envy 13 Posted: 08 Oct 2009 11:54 AM PDT  Who wants a new HP Envy 13? Anyone? I mean, after all, it is one of the hottest notebooks ever and comes preloaded with Windows 7. But no one probably wants this brand spanking new, never-been-opened, $1700 notebook for free. But if you do....click through for the simple giveaway entry instructions. |
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