Tuesday, October 20, 2009

The Latest from TechCrunch

The Latest from TechCrunch

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Wowd Takes A Stab At Realtime Search With A Peer-To-Peer Approach

Posted: 20 Oct 2009 07:55 AM PDT

A new realtime search engine called Wowd is launching publicly today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Founder and CTO Boris Agapiev gave the first public demonstration of Wowd at our Realtime Stream Crunchup last July (see video below).

Wowd takes a very ambitious approach to search in that it is a peer-to-peer search engine. Users download a peer-to-per client and the index exists not on any central cluster of servers, but across all the user’s machines. Agapiev, who formerly founded the vertical search engine Vast, set out to conquer scaling issues in a new way and settled on a P2P approach.

What makes Wowd a realtime search engine is that ranks sites based on how often and recently the Wowd community has visited that site. On Wowd, you vote with your mouse, so to speak.

The search engine uses other more traditional ranking algorithms as well, but its main point of differentiation is the realtime clickstream data it gets from the peer-to-peer clients which it wants users to download. In theory, this will provide Wowd with your complete attention history if you allow it—every site you go to, not just the ones you click to from the search engine (in this regard, it is similar to what the Google toolbar records if you have the Web History feature enabled).

As with any attention recorder, Wowd offers a full range of privacy settings so that you can share only what you wish, and it is all anonymized and Wowd doesn’t even know your IP address anyway. You can always see and search your entire Web history, which is helpful when you are trying to remember that obscure furniture site you saw last month. Nevertheless, this will be a big barrier for many consumers who might not feel comfortable sharing their surfing habits with an unknown startup. Simply asking people to download a client will be a barrier to adoption.

But for those who do, they will be presented with a slightly different search experience. Results are ranked based on which sites are most popular with the Wowd community. Sites that have been visited recently get a stronger weighting. You can also switch to see the freshest results. The quality of the results depend on the Wowd community’s finding and visiting the best sites, but it is all based on passive activity.

Wowd’s results supposedly won’t be as susceptible to SEO spam as other search engines. But if it becomes popular enough I’m sure spammers will try to game it by simply getting lots of people to download Wowd and visit their own sites continuously. Wowd obviously tries to monitor this type of behavior and weeds those clicks out from results.

I’ve been testing Wowd for a coupel months, and the results are decent already with only a few thousand beta users. Now that Wowd is open to the public, the real test will begin. Realtime search is hot right now, with tons of startups (Collecta, OneRiot, Topsy) and as well as bigger companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google going after it.

Below is a video of CTO Boris Agapiev’s demo at our Crunchup in July. It starts at the fourth dot along the timeline at around 29 minutes.

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Xsights – Use Your Cellphone To Turn Static Items Into Interactive Experiences

Posted: 20 Oct 2009 07:27 AM PDT

Xsights is an Israeli startup that develops interesting technology that allows for transformation of static objects like billboards, posters, printed images and more into interactive multimedia experiences using your cellphone camera. Theoretically, you could use Xsights to dynamically obtain more information based on e.g. words from a newspaper article, a landmark, a photo of an actor on a movie poster, a street sign, etc.

This bares some resemblance to augmented reality applications for mobile phones, except that it’s not really real-time, since camera shots are analyzed in the background after saving photos to the phone.

By pointing the phone camera to objects and saving shots to the program, users should be able to gain information such as directions, prices, videos clips, audio files but also purchasing opportunities, digital coupons, and more.

At least, the technology seems interesting on paper. In reality, there’s a big caveat: all the associated content needs to be preset by third parties on beforehand. That means it currently doesn’t recognize stuff I tried to test the app, such as company logos (Sony), pictures of celebrities (Jennifer Connelly, Brad Pitt) and a couple of movie posters (easily identifiable ones like the ones for Batman and The Godfather). All I got was a cryptic error message because no one has associated the images with anything so far.

It’s a far cry from what the demo and this video makes the mobile application look capable of. Xsights is looking to set up B2B partnerships with publishers, other content providers and advertisers to expand their database of recognizable items.

Xsights is today also launching a user generated campaign for individual users, basically giving them the opportunity to add creative touches to their interactive experience by “attaching" video clips to invitations, greeting cards, photos or videos – making the associated interactive content personal.

Xsights is giving 1,000 TechCrunch readers exclusive invites to be the first users to upload to the UGC Campaign. Just head on over here; only TechCrunch readers will be able to upload at this point.

Additionally, users will now be able to watch trailers for new movies currently showing in local U.S. theaters by capturing an image of a movie poster with their camera phone. In contrast to my experience with random images, analyzing the posters listed here worked just fine.

Xsights supports 3 ways of connections: Video Call (clientless), iPhone, BlackBerry, and selected J2ME handsets, and also works with MMS on all mobile handsets equipped with a camera.

Try it out and let us know what you think.

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Buddy Media Launches Integrated Facebook And Twitter Client For Brand Management

Posted: 20 Oct 2009 07:00 AM PDT

As more brands look to Facebook and Twitter for a social media presence, the need for applications that make this presence simple grows. Buddy Media, a startup that develops applications for social networks, is hoping to attract the attention of brand marketers with its new all-in-one social media management system.

Targeted towards advertisers and PR reps, the Buddy Media Platform helps create, manage and track social campaigns on Facebook and Twitter (the client will soon offer functionality for MySpace and other social networks). With regard to Facebook, the platform lets agencies create, manage and track Facebook Pages to drive and increase user and brand engagement. Users don’t need to have any prior HTML knowledge to create pages on Facebook and can create sleek and interactive pages fairly easily. And the pages themselves aren’t just advertisements; users can add a variety of apps to their pages such as polls, YouTube videos, coupons, slideshows and virtual gifts. The platform also lets you publish updates directly to a page’s wall. And the Buddy Media Platform lets agencies implement Facebook Connect on a brand’s site to tap into the social network’s graph.

Buddy Media's Twitter Management System, which we wrote about here, lets marketers measure and identify Twitter trending topics around a particular brand, related topics and competitors. You can also track performance and trends for a brand and entire industry across Twitter with easy to view data on followers, mentions, and re-Tweets.

Buddy Media’s tool will let you track volume and frequency of click-through rates in Twitter as well as monitor and analyze the sentiment of Tweets about a particular brand compared to competitors. Within the system you can create various profiles to manage several brands and different Twitter account and schedule Tweets to be published in advance of campaigns. And the system acts as a Twitter client itself, so you can have a centralized place to both Tweet and monitor and graph brands.

The platform also offers other services that let advertisers and PR folks better monitor brand engagement, such as real-time analytics of campaigns and resources to help managers drive and track social actions and clicks. And Buddy Media's system offers real-time search capability, which can be especially useful to companies wanting to gain insight into the conversations about their businesses taking place on the social graph.

Offering a comprehensive platform that serves as a one-stop-shop for brand managers to manage social media campaigns is a wise move for Buddy Media. There a few services that are providing similar services out there, such as PeopleBrowsr and CoTweet (which focuses on Twitter). But Buddy Media’s compelling Facebook features, such as the ability to make a visually appealing and interactive page, could be popular among brand managers that have little to no technical background.

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Gadget-Picking Site Measy Goes Live

Posted: 20 Oct 2009 06:50 AM PDT

As the holiday shopping season approaches many of us will be facing some very tough decisions: do we get the Asus netbook computer or the HP Mini, a Canon digital camera or a Nikon. A whole sub-industry has arisen to help consumers make those decisions with sites ranging from CNET to gdgt. Today, Measy enters the fray by trying to help you make that decision by asking you a series of questions about the gadget you want and then coming up with the top three choices based on your criteria.

Launched in private beta in September, Measy’s site is now publicly available. It helps you make purchasing decisions about digital cameras, HDTVs, and netbooks by asking you about your needs and preferences. (”How important is travel?”; “How important is brand?”). It then scores each device on the traits important to you and delivers an overall score.

The site only supports a handful of consumer electronics categories, but every month or so it will add a new category. Smartphones are next. With today’s launch, Measy also added information on the site about the best places to recycle electronic gadgets (which I never know how to find).

Taking a decision-tree approach and then boiling down each attribute of a product to a score is one way to cut through the consumer-electronics clutter, but can you really trust it to come up with the best product for you? Give it a whirl and tell us what you think in comments.

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Zoosk Hits 40 Million Members, Eyes $20 Million In Revenue This Year

Posted: 20 Oct 2009 06:00 AM PDT

For a long time, dating sites and social networks have been two very different beasts, rarely co-mingling as users maintained two entirely separate online identities. But that’s starting to change. Zoosk, a social dating site, has largely passed under our radar until now, but it’s posting some serious stats: the service sees an average of 12 million unique users a month, and has a member base totaling over 40 million. Based on last month’s performance, the company says it has a $30 million run rate, and expects to close out this year with $18-$20 million in revenue.

Zoosk launched back in 2007, and has been showing some strong growth recently, particularly on social networks. Zoosk co-founders Alex Mehr and Shayan Zadeh say that the site differentiates itself from other dating sites like Match.com by tapping into your social graph. The site has a strong presence across social networks including Facebok, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, and Friendster, and users can also sign in through the site’s web portal at Zoosk.com. And if that’s not enough, you can reach Zoosk through a desktop AIR client and a mobile app. To help build your Zoosk profile, you can import information from whichever social network you’re using Zoosk on. You can also tie it together with services like Last.fm and Netflix, to give potential matches an idea of your music and movie taste.

The site itself has a friendly and not-overly-serious atmosphere. Mehr and Zadeh say that part of the site’s success has stemmed from the fact that many of its users are in the 25-35 year old demographic, with many members who aren’t neccesarily looking for a long-term serious relationship, which stands in contrast with more serious dating sites like eHarmony. In other words, a successful match on Zoosk may well result in a return visit from the user — a successful match on eHarmony might lead to that user getting hitched.

To generate revenue, Zoosk offers a premium subscription model for $25 a month (you pay less if you buy multiple months of a time), or you can purchase features using the site’s virtual currency. Dubbed “Zoosk coins”, these can be used to either buy Facebook-like virtual gifts, or to buy premium features a la carte, like the ability to see if someone has read a message you’ve sent them. While much of the site’s traffic comes from the social networks, the site’s homepage tends to monetize more effectively, with around 50% of revenue coming from each. The site also earns money through advertising.

For another service that combines dating with your social graph, check out Thread, which launched as part of Facebook’s fbFund over the summer.

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Live From Munich – Our Seminar And Meetup

Posted: 20 Oct 2009 05:25 AM PDT

TechCrunch Europe is hosting TechCrunch Munich at the Sun Microsystem offices in Munich today from 2.30 pm Munich time (1.30pm London, 8.30am New York) onwards, followed by networking drinks.

We’ll be hearing startup pitches and speakers in this key German city in the European startup ecosystem, focusing on a number of current and relevant themes for the tech community here. The event is sold out.

After the jump you’ll find the live stream (the event is in English) and a run down on the event and supporting sponsors. The Twitter hashtag is #tcm09.

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Real-time Tracking For Rockstars – Try Out MusicMetric On Us

Posted: 20 Oct 2009 04:25 AM PDT

A real-time trend-tracking platform that trawls the web using semantic analysis to make sure that all hits for a band’s name are contextually correct. That’s the pitch of MusicMetric, which has today launched the beta release of its music industry trend-analysis, targeted at bands, promoters, record labels and agencies.

The idea is that you can greatly reduce the number of false positives which you’d be likely to get if you just typed the band’s name into Google Trends, for example. Potential competitors would be Big Champagne or Next Big Sound though MusicMetric hope to differentiate themselves by using text-derived data to measure the public opinion of a band rather than relying on counting plays and hits alone.

For TechCrunch readers we have 250 free 30-day subscription – more details after the jump.

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PeopleMaps Helps Graph Personal And Professional Connections

Posted: 20 Oct 2009 03:55 AM PDT

Startup 7 Degrees is launching PeopleMaps, a social business application that aims to give professionals direct visibility into how they are connected to any person or company. Basically, PeopleMaps sifts through educational, social and business information to determine personal and professional relationships between people.

PeopleMaps allows users to automatically search their personal contacts from Outlook, LinkedIn, Facebook, Gmail, and Yahoo, while simultaneously searching data from public Internet sources. The application’s graph engine then analyzes all of this data to determine "connection paths" to any person or company, which lets you see how you are connected to any person or company. PeopleMaps also pulls in bios of individuals (when they are public info).

The application also offers a professional, paid edition that is optimized for sales professionals to create better leads. PeopleMaps is actually launching on Salesforce’s AppExhcange today and will be available to be incorporated into any Salesforce CRM. Similar to the free version, PeopleMaps will import contacts and then establish connections with leads, letting salespeople establish personal and professional connections with leads and potentially create more successful sales. The CRM-focused app will instantly analyze and ranks sales prospects based on the strength of personal and professional connections to people and companies. Sales managers can then assign each prospect or lead to the salesperson with the most relevant connections within the CRM itself.

Sales teams can also access maps of each employee’s personal and professional relationships to tap into the collective network of an entire organization. While the professional edition is priced at $49 per user per month.

Founded by for Yahoo Finance exec Tim Sheehan, PeopleMaps has received $1.2 million in seed funding from vSpring Capital and Parkview Ventures. PeopleMap’s graphs are similar in theory to the connections made by LinkedIn within the social network. The application is undoubtedly useful to visually determine your social connections, and is even more compelling when used in conjunction with a business software like Salesforce.

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Apple’s Sauce: $34 Billion In Cash, Stock Peaks, And Mysterious Shipping Anomalies

Posted: 20 Oct 2009 02:52 AM PDT

34677017_7dc55768a1The big, obvious take away from Apple’s Q4 earnings report earlier today was that it once again crushed the estimates. And not just its own forward-looking estimates, which are always laughably low, but even the estimates of the most optimistic analysts — by a lot. But some of the other numbers from today were just as impressive, and some of the information, even more interesting.

Apple now has $34 billion in cash in the bank. Apple watchers will also know that they have no debt. So what are they going to do with all this money? That’s $10 billion more than they had a year ago, and this past quarter alone, they added about $3 billion to the pile. Apple keeps saying that it will use the cash for “preservation of capital,” which is a fancy way of saying that they’ll be take little risk and keep it close.

That’s more cash than Microsoft has, and for some comparison, $34 billion is $10 billion more than the overall market cap of Yahoo. It’s also about $1.5 billion more than the market cap of eBay, and $4 billion more than the market cap of Dell. It’s almost exactly the same as the market cap of News Corp.

Apple’s stock could open tomorrow at or near its all-time high. Let me repeat that, all-time high. You probably haven’t heard that too often over the past year, but it’s true. Apple’s all-time high is $202.96 a share, which it reached on Dec. 27, 2007, nearly 2 years ago. Today, after earnings were released, the stock shot up over 7%, pushing it past $203 a share. It has since settled a bit lower, but it’s not out of the question that the stock could hit the mark again tomorrow during regular trading hours. Apple’s stock price has more than doubled over the past 7 months alone.

Sales of the iPod touch were up 100% year over year. This is especially impressive considering two things. First, overall iPod sales were down, once again. Second, despite indications that they would, Apple did not add a camera to the iPod touch during that line’s refresh a few months ago. Instead, the iPod nano got the camera, but it would seem that the iPod touch is still the hot sibling in the family.

OS X Snow Leopard came out of the gates twice as fast as OS X Leopard. This really shouldn’t be all that surprising, considering the upgrade costs just $30. Still, impressive.

Half billion apps downloaded in the last quarter alone. We already knew the big 2 billion app download milestone was hit, but Apple clearly stated that a full half billion of those came just in the past three months. That’s huge.

Portable sales were up 35% year over year. Apple didn’t want to seem to talk about its desktops at all when it came to the Mac business (which had its best quarter ever). Instead, it’s very clear that notebook sales are the driving force (nearly 3/4th of Mac sales now). Of course, some new iMacs, which may launch as soon as tomorrow, could help balance the sales a bit more.

China is getting the iPhone on October 30, but Korea should get it this quarter as well. Obviously China is a huge key to the Apple’s plan for international success, but getting the iPhone in Korea won’t hurt either. Apple COO Tim Cook made a quick reference to the unlocked iPhone issue in Asia, and noted that the company is excited to finally be able to meet a demand that is clearly there.

Apple has some new products coming that have relatively low margins and cost a lot on to ship in. The obvious guess here would be Apple’s tablet. But the latest rumors had the thing being announced in January, but not shipping until closer to mid 2010 — neither of which are fiscal year Q1 (which ends December 31). Instead, the lower margins could well be related to new iMacs and MacBooks that have been rumored to be cheaper.

But the more interesting bit comes from Cook’s wording about why Apple spending more on shipping: “In general, we spend more in freight in Q1, but this increase is larger than usual. I’m sorry, I can’t be specific on the product, but it’s an abnormal sequential increase.” That would seem to suggest a new type of product outside the ones it already offers, like the iMac and MacBook, which it has, of course, shipped in the past. Could the tablet come early? It seems unlikely, but something is causing Apple to worry about out-of-the-ordinary shipping costs.

Apple has until Q1 2011 to use the new accounting rules. The changes allow Apple to count money made of off its so-called "subscription" devices, the iPhone and the Apple TV, immediately, rather than spreading the money over a 2-year period. While they were approved in September, Apple is still debating on when to start using them, and will not for Q1 2010. Cook noted that Apple was “pleased” with this new rule.

[photo: flickr/stu_spivak]

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Micro-blog About Your Love Life Much? Head Over To Relatious. Please.

Posted: 20 Oct 2009 02:51 AM PDT

I follow a lot of people on Twitter, so I understand when people say they sometimes get tired of mundane messages from people they often barely know in person.

In particular, the amount of coffees one has in the morning, what he or she is having for lunch, which airport terminal they’re currently waiting for a plane in and why their relationships are complicated are often of little interest to people following you on Twitter, besides maybe your parents. (Yes, I plead guilty too)

But the latter category of tweets now at least have a dedicated home with the launch of Relatious, a micro-blogging community site for people who enjoy sharing every little detail about their love and/or sex lives.

This excerpt from the news release captures the essence of the site:

It's a place where anyone old enough—or young enough—to have a crush, make a commitment or suffer a breakup can share all their relationship news. You can rejoice in your romantic adventures (or lament about your misadventures), dispense advice to your lovelorn peers, or seek advice about everything from dating to divorce.

So there you have it. It’s Twitter, but for relationship chatter, although I’m a bit unsure how to plan to stop people from talking about whatever they feel like. Oh, and messages can be 400 characters, not 140. Oh, and you can share information anonymously, which means the message will still appear in the public feed but without your account attached to it.

Other than that it’s just like any basic social network, with the ability to comment on messages, ‘like’ them, assign categories to your own Relatious messages and share any public one with others on Twitter or Facebook.

Little more to add about the service, except that it was built and funded by a team of entrepreneurs who’ve sold Internet startups in the past and asked to remain anonymous for now. One thing is sure: they’re funny. Just check the copy on the ‘About us’ page and the last e-mail address on that page to see what I mean.

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With Fresh Funding And A Hollywood PR Firm, Will Ad.ly Define Twitter Advertising?

Posted: 20 Oct 2009 02:11 AM PDT

I’m still not sure if the Twitter stream is the right place to be for advertising, but with the way the company set out to make it easy for developers to build upon their platform with open APIs, it’s no wonder so many ad networks have sprung up since it got started. Its massive growth and the fact that the San Francisco startup is a media and celebrity darling probably helped in that regard, too.

One of the companies that is dabbling with advertising on Twitter – even if Biz & co seem to be reluctant to do some serious testing of their own – is Ad.ly, an LA-based startup that launched about a month ago.

In essence, Ad.ly aims to link up high-profile advertisers with celebrities on Twitter and distribute links to marketing campaigns through the celebs’ tweet streams with full disclosure.

The model is pretty straightforward: the celebrity (or publisher) gets a lot of cash in return for a couple of messages that are under 140 characters, and Ad.ly takes its cut.

As my colleague Leena Rao wrote upon Ad.ly’s launch:

Each publisher sets the price of a Tweet campaign but Ad.ly will give the publisher a pricing suggestion based on variety of metrics. Ad.ly's proprietary algorithm evaluates follower counts, authority, quality of Tweets and will help determine the Twitter's value. And when I say that celebs get paid "handsomely," I mean it. If a celeb has above a million followers, each Tweet gets in the five figures, with multiple Tweets about a product netting the celeb a six-figure reward (yes, for four Tweets!). Ad.ly takes a cut of what the celeb makes, but Rad wouldn't reveal what the percentage is.

That’s a lot of money for tweets, so time will tell if it’s a sustainable model, if celebrities keep signing up and using the service and if Ad.ly will be able to pay their promised dues. But some investors are bullish on the potential, at least.

Yesterday, GRP Partners’ Mark Suster wrote an interesting blog post on the topic of VC seed funding. In the post, Suster reveals that GRP Partners, where he is a General Partner, has just closed a $500,000 seed round for Ad.ly and that he’d be interested in leading or joining follow-up VC financing rounds if the startup keeps performing well.

A couple of weeks ago, Ad.ly even hired a West Hollywood PR and marketing firm called Entertainment Fusion Group to be its ‘Agency of Record’; EFG will help the fledgling company with public relations and talent procurement. Since it’s deeply embedded in the entertainment industry, the firm should help Ad.ly get some exposure within the circle of movie stars and other celebrities.

So what gives? Has Ad.ly, with its focus on high-profile advertising partners and celeb Twitter users with a large number of followers, cracked the nut of Twitter advertising? Impossible to say without seeing some numbers, but it appears to be striking a chord or two.

Not that Ad.ly is the only one trying to capitalize on Twitter’s growth and celebrities’ massive audience. SponsoredTweets (from IZEA) does much of the same, and then there’s ExecTweets, a cooperation between Microsoft and Federated Media. Others, like Be-A-Magpie and Twittad, have their sights set on the long tail of Twitter.

Whether you think of it as stream pollution or an innovation social media monetization, Twitter advertising is here to stay, for better or worse. And you can rest assured many of these ad networks are going to run a profitable business way before Twitter does. The flip side of that coin is of course the fact that all of rely on the Twitter platform, so if they prosper or perish is partly Twitter’s call.

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Apple Gets A Little More Serious About Using Twitter

Posted: 20 Oct 2009 12:42 AM PDT

Screen shot 2009-10-20 at 12.34.03 AMWhile the various forms of social media are becoming increasingly important to brands, Apple is one company that hasn’t exactly rushed to get involved. Sure, they have a few accounts here and there, but they’re not exactly Google, with their 500 Twitter accounts (okay, it’s really more like 50). But they could be slowly warming up to the idea.

Back in March, the company started tweeting from its first official Twitter account, iTunesTrailers. They even went so far as to highlight the account on their Apple.com Trailers page. Thanks to the suggested users list, that account now has well over 1 million followers and they’re probably seeing a not entirely insignificant amount of traffic coming from there. And now they’ve added a few more accounts:

iTunesMusic

iTunesMovies

iTunesTV

iTunesPodcasts

These are all new accounts. A couple of them have just over 1,000 followers, but the other two have under 100, and haven’t tweeted yet. But it would seem that Apple wants to promote all of them now, as it has created a customized background for each account’s Twitter page, highlighting the other accounts (and its Facebook iTunes Fan Page, as well).

One account you’ll notice that Apple does not have though, is twitter.com/apple. That account has one tweet, from March 16, which reads, “I love apples.” That hardly seems like something Apple the company would say, and the account points to a Gmail account in its profile, which would seem to suggest they may be interested in selling it. But with just one Tweet in 7 months, Twitter is probably within its rights to simply close the account and give it to Apple, if the company wanted it.

(As a sidenote, there is also a Twitter account with the name “appleinc“, but it’s currently protected.)

Obviously, Apple added a bit of social media to iTunes 9 recently, by including the ability to share items on both Facebook and Twitter. But the effort is half-hearted as best. It’s not like you can share what you’re listening to, just what you’re thinking about buying, or just bought.

Apple has always marched to its own drumbeat, so it seems unlikely that we’ll see Apple corporate tweeting the way that people at Google, Yahoo, and even Microsoft do, but these new accounts could signify a slight thawing of the ice. After all, we do know that Apple does like Twitter.

Screen shot 2009-10-20 at 12.33.40 AM

[via Ian Dodsworth]

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DropCam: A Fire-And-Forget Webcam Monitoring System From the Programmer of Xobni

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 10:47 PM PDT

Welcome to the era of completely computer-less webcams. We tried the Avaak Vue a few weeks ago with mixed results but this new system, called Dropcam, looks more useful for homes and small businesses. The kit allows for multiple cameras to be connected to the Internet via wired Ethernet or WiFi. You simply set it up, plug it in, and start streaming. The system records video at 320x240 pixels at 15 frames/sec. The cameras weigh 3 ounces and are about an inch thick.

The New Twitter Hole That Probably Isn’t

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 10:29 PM PDT

Earlier this evening the LA Times Tech Blog ran a post claming that Google has unrestricted access to Twitter’s protected tweets, or, as the Times put it, the “key to the city”. And you can apparently search those tweets with a not-too-difficult advanced Google search. As supporting evidence, the post includes snippits of supposedly protected tweets from Bill Clinton’s Twitter account, with messages like, “John Edwards…why did you,” “NY Gov got caught with a,” “Oh Hillary, 3rd place in,” and “I have been too depressed…”

What, you say? Those sound like some bizarre things for a seasoned politician to be tweeting about? Yeah, I had the same thought. So I did a bit more digging, and as it turns out those tweets didn’t come from Bill Clinton at all, at least not the real one. Instead, they came from someone who was masquerading as Bill Clinton at some time in the past, when they were cached by Google. But now they can all be found under the Twitter account NotBillClinton.

Here’s the full text of those tweets:

John Edwards…why did you cheat on your wife that has cancer, you’re a dog! If Hillary gets sick, that’s it, no more Hoochies! FAMILY FIRST

NY Gov gets caught with a Hooker. At least it’s a 5000k/hour quality hooker and not those FREE ones that keep a blue dress.I’m still pissed!

Oh Hillary, 3rd place in IOWA sucks! What happened to all the “GIRL” power you keep on telling me about!

Not so damning after all. As for the other accounts mentioned in the Times article, I suspect that Google is displaying tweets from them, but only messages that were sent before they were made private. For some more evidence, I reached out to Britekite’s Jonathon Linner (who is mentioned in the LA Times post), who says that he did in fact change his account to private only in the last month or so. The fact that these messages are all cached still poses a problem — make the mistake of setting your account public for a while and you may have no way to ever pull that data back in — but it doesn’t look like Google has special access to these tweets.

We’ve reached out to Twitter to confirm that Google does not actually have these so-called keys to the city.

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Android Avalanche: A Complete List Of The Android Phones So Far

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 10:07 PM PDT

Google CEO Eric Schmidt stated emphatically during Google’s most recent earnings call that “Android adoption is about to explode.” We agree – despite developer hiccups, Android is about to have its moment in the sun. An avalanche of new devices are hitting worldwide markets, and some of them are serious contenders.

Our bet is that the upcoming Motorola Droid will be the breakout winner from this batch of phones. But here’s the complete list of officially announced Android phones, as well as stuff that’s just rumored at this point. Bookmark this post, and keep a lookout for updates.

Here are the Android contenders:

HTC Dream/T-Mobile G1

htc-dreamStatus: G1 launched October 22nd, 2008. Available internationally.
Touchscreen:3.2-inch/ 320 x 480 Resolution; Full HVGA TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with Horizontal Sliding FULL QWERTY Keyboard
Dimensions: 117.7mm x 55.7mm x 17.1mm; 158 grams
Camera: 3.2 Megapixels with AutoFocus
Battery: 1150 mAh Lithium-ion battery
Standby Time: 402 hours
Talk Time:5.8 Hours
Processor: Qualcomm MSM7201A, 528 MHz
Internal/External Memory:256 MB/MicroSD (up to 32GB)
Extras: HTC ExtUSB Headset Jack, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS enabled
Price: $149.99

HTC Magic/T-Mobile MyTouch 3G

htc-magicStatus: HTC Magic Launched May 1, 2009; MyTouch 3G launched July 8, 2009. Available through T-Mobile and Vodafone
Touchscreen:3.2″ /320 x 480 HVGA Touchscreen/TFT, TFD, LCD 262k
Dimensions: 113 x 55 x 13 mm; 118.5 grams
Camera: 3.2 Megapixels with AutoFocus (MyTouch has a 5MP camera)
Battery: 1340 mAh Lithium-ion battery
Standby Time: 420 hours
Talk Time:7.5 Hours
Processor: Qualcomm® MSM7201a™, 528 MHz
Internal/External Memory:192/288 MB (Underclocked)/ MicroSD up to 32GB
Extras: HTC ExtUSB Headset Jack, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS enabled
Price: $99.99 (T-Mobile MyTouch $149.99)

HTC Hero/T-Mobile G2 Touch/Sprint HTC Hero

sprint-htc-heroStatus: HTC Hero Launched July 24th for Orange UK. T-Mobile G2 Touch Launched July 29th.
Touchscreen: 3.2-inch/ 320×480 HVGA resolution; Full Touchscreen/TFT-LCD touch-sensitive screen
Dimensions: 112 x 56.2 x 14.35 mm ; 135 grams
Camera: 5 Megapixels with AutoFocus
Battery: 1350 mAh Lithium-ion battery
Standby Time: Up to 750 hours for WCDMA, Up to 440 hours for GSM
Talk Time:Up to 420 minutes for WCDMA, Up to 470 minutes for GSM
Processor: Qualcomm® MSM7200A™, 528 MHz
Internal/External Memory:288MB/MicroSD 2.0
Extras: 3.5mm Headset jack, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS enabled
Price: $179.99

Huawei U8230/ Pulse

t-mobile-pulseStatus: Available in T-Mobile UK
Touchscreen: 3.5″/HVGA 480×320 pixel Touchscreen w/ Hardware Buttons: Trackball/HVGA LED
Dimensions: 116 x 63 x 13.5 mm; 130 grams
Camera: 3.2 Megapixels with AutoFocus
Battery: 1500 mAh Lithium-ion battery
Standby Time: 300 Hours
Talk Time: 4.5 Hours
Processor: Qualcomm 7200A 528 MHz processor
Internal/External Memory:128 MB RAM / 1 GB internal storage/ MicroSD (Up to 16 GB)
Extras: 2.5mm Headset jack, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS enabled
Price: Free with contract.

Samsung Galaxy

samsung-galaxyStatus: Launched in July; Available on European Carriers
Touchscreen: 3.2 inches/320 x 480 pixels Full AMOLED Touchscreen
Dimensions: 115 x 56 x 12 mm; 114 grams
Camera: 5.0 Megapixels with AutoFocus
Battery: 1500 mAh Lithium-ion battery
Standby Time: 450 Hours
Talk Time: 6.5 Hours
Processor: 528MHz Arm11
Internal/External Memory: 8GB/microSD/microSDHC
Extras: 3.5mm Headset jack, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS enabled
Price: £240

HTC Tattoo

htc-tattooStatus: Launched October 8th on Vodaphone
Touchscreen: 2.8-inch/240 x 320 pixels QVGA TFT-LCD touch-sensitive screen with hardware buttons
Dimensions: 106 x 55.2 x 14 mm; 108 grams
Camera: 3.2 Megapixels
Battery: 1100 mAh Li-on
Standby Time: 520 hours (WCDMA), 340 hours (GSM)
Talk Time:342 minutes (WCDMA), 390 minutes (GSM)
Processor: Qualcomm® MSM7225™, 528 MHz
Internal/External Memory: 256 MB/MicroSD up to 32GB
Extras: 3.5mm Headset jack, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS enabled
Price: Free w/ certain contracts

Motorola CLIQ

motorola-cliqStatus: Available October 19th, 2009 on T-Mobile and Orange UK
Touchscreen: 3.1-inch/320 x 480 pixel Full Capacitive Touch Screen w/ QWERTY side Slider.
Dimensions: 58 x 114 x 15.6 mm; 163 grams
Camera: 5.0 Megapixels with AutoFocus
Battery: 1420 mAh Li-ion
Standby Time: 325 Hours
Talk Time:6 Hours
Processor: Qualcomm MSM7201A, 528MHz
Internal/External Memory: 256MB/MicroSD (32GB Capacity)
Extras: 3.5mm Headset jack, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS enabled
Price: $199

Motorola Droid

motorola-sholesStatus: Rumored to be available October 31st on Verizon
Touchscreen: 3.7-inch/480×854 Full Touchscreen with Full QWERTY Slider
Dimensions: 60 x 115.8 x 13.7 mm; 169 grams
Camera: 5.0 Megapixels with AutoFocus
Battery: Li-ion 1400mAh
Standby Time: 450 Hours
Talk Time:7 Hours
Processor: OMAP3430 processor
Internal/External Memory: 512MB Flash, 256MB RAM/MicroSD (16GB capacity)
Extras: 3.5mm Headset jack, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS enabled; Android 2.0
Price: Unknown

Samsung Moment/InstinctQ

samsung-momentStatus: Available November 1st from Sprint
Touchscreen: 3.2 inch AMOLED display (320 x 480 pixels)Touchscreen with Slideout QWERTY;16M colors
Dimensions: 117 x 59 x 16 mm; 161 grams
Camera: 3.2 megapixel camera with flash and camcorder with auto-focus
Battery: Li-ion 1440mAh
Standby Time: Unknown
Talk Time:5.5 Hours
Processor: 800 MHz Samsung S3C6410 CPU
Internal/External Memory: 256MB RAM/2 GB microSD card included (upgradeable to 32GB)
Extras: 3.5mm Headset jack, Wi-Fi, accelerometer, Bluetooth and GPS enabled.
Price: $179.99

Motorola Heron/Iron Man

motorola heronStatus: Rumored to be available in November from AT&T
Touchscreen: 2.8″ 240 x 320 pixels QVGA TFT Touchscreen with Vertical QWERTY slider
Dimensions: 57.5 x 104 x 15.9; 125 grams
Camera: 3.0 MP w/ fixed focus and Flash
Battery: Li-Ion
Standby Time: Unknown
Talk Time:Unknown
Processor: Qualcomm® MSM 7225 528MHz processor
Internal/External Memory: 128 MB RAM/microSD/microSDHC (up to 32G)
Extras: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS enabled.
Price: Unknown

Acer A1/Liquid

acer-liquidStatus: Rumored to be launched in November
Touchscreen: 3.8 inch/800×480 wide VGA touchscreen
Dimensions: 118.6 x 63 x 12mm; 130 grams
Camera: 5MP w/ AutoFocus
Battery: 1350 mAh LiIon
Standby Time: Unknown
Talk Time:Unknown
Processor: 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 8250
Internal/External Memory: 256MB RAM/microSD (up to 32 GB)
Extras: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS enabled.
Price: Unknown

Samsung Behold 2

samsung-behold-2Status: Rumored to be available during Holidays 2009
Touchscreen: 3.2-inch/480 x 320 pixels AMOLED Touchscreen w/ hardware buttons
Dimensions: Unknown
Camera: 5MP w/ Flash and AutoFocus
Battery: 1000 mAh
Standby Time: Unknown
Talk Time:Unknown
Processor: Unknown
Internal/External Memory: Unknown/microSD up to 16 GB
Extras: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS enabled.
Price: Unknown

ARCHOS Phone Tablet

archos-phoneStatus: Rumored to be available in January
Touchscreen: 4.3-inch/854 x 480 pixel full touchscreen
Dimensions: 10mm thick
Camera: Unknown
Battery: Unknown
Standby Time: Unknown
Talk Time:Unknown
Processor: 1GHz ARM processor
Internal/External Memory: Unknown
Extras: Wi-Fi
Price: Unknown

Dell mini i3

dell-mini-i3Status: Upcoming on China Mobile
Touchscreen: 3.5 Inch/640 x 360 resolution
Dimensions: 58 x 114 x 15.6 mm; 163 grams
Camera: 3.2 MP w/ Flash and AutoFocus
Battery: 950mAh Li-ion
Standby Time: Unknown
Talk Time:Unknown
Processor: Unknown
Internal/External Memory: Unknown/microSD card slot
Extras: No Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS enabled
Price: Unknown

Lenovo O1

lenovo-o1Status: Upcoming on China Mobile
Touchscreen: Unknown
Dimensions: Unknown
Camera: 5 MP w/ Flash
Battery: Unknown
Standby Time: Unknown
Talk Time: Unknown
Processor: 624 MHz
Internal/External Memory: 8 GB / 16 GB internal storage
Extras: Wi-Fi
Price: Unknown

LG Etna

lg-gw620Status: Upcoming on Vodafone
Touchscreen: 3 inch 240 x 320 pixels Touchscreen with Full Slideout QWERTY
Dimensions: 101.6 x 50.8 x 16.8 mm; 108 grams
Camera: 2.0 Megapixels
Battery: 800 mAh
Standby Time: 250 Hours
Talk Time: 4 Hours
Processor: Unknown
Internal/External Memory: Unknown/microSD/microSDHC
Extras: Bluetooth, USB enabled
Price: Unknown

HTC Lancaster

htclancaster_250x320Status: Rumored on AT&T (possibly canceled)
Touchscreen: 2.8″/240 x 320 pixels QVGA Touchscreen with Slideout QWERTY Keyboard
Dimensions: 109 x 54 x 17.1 mm; 110 grams
Camera: 3.0 Megapixels
Battery: 1,350 mAh
Standby Time: Unknown
Talk Time: Unknown
Processor: Unknown
Internal/External Memory: Unknown/microSD
Extras: Bluetooth enabled
Price: Unknown

Sony Ericsson Xperia X3

xperia-x3Status: Rumored
Touchscreen: 4-inch/800×400 Full Touchscreen
Dimensions: Uknown
Camera: 8MP w/ Flash and AutoFocus
Battery: Unknown
Standby Time: Unknown
Talk Time: Unknown
Processor: 1GHz Qualcomm Snap Dragon processor
Internal/External Memory: Unknown
Extras: Bluetooth and wi-fi enabled
Price: Unknown

Motorola Calgary

motorola calgaryStatus: Rumored on Verizon
Touchscreen: 320 x 480 Full Touch, Horizontal Slider with Full QWERTY Keyboard
Dimensions: Unknown
Camera: 3.1 MP with Autofocus
Battery: Li-Ion
Standby Time: Unknown
Talk Time: Unknown
Processor: Unknown
Internal/External Memory: 256 MB/MicroSD
Extras: Wireless and Bluetooth Enabled
Price: Unknown

Philips V808

philipsv808Status: Rumored
Touchscreen: Unknown
Dimensions: Unknown
Camera: Unknown
Battery: Unknown
Standby Time: Unknown
Talk Time: Unknown
Processor: Unknown
Internal/External Memory: Unknown
Extras: Unknown
Price: Unknown

HTC Click

htcclickStatus: Rumored
Touchscreen: Unknown
Dimensions: Unknown
Camera: Unknown
Battery: Unknown
Standby Time: Unknown
Talk Time: Unknown
Processor: Unknown
Internal/External Memory: Unknown
Extras: Rumored to be a free or low-cost Android Phone
Price: Unknown

Samsung Bigfoot

samsungbigfootStatus: Rumored on T-Mobile USA
Touchscreen: Full Touchscreen with Full QWERTY horizontal slider
Dimensions: Unknown
Camera: 3 MP
Battery: Unknown
Standby Time: Unknown
Talk Time: Unknown
Processor: Unknown
Internal/External Memory: Unknown
Extras: Unknown
Price: Unknown

HTC Dragon

dragonStatus: Rumored on T-Mobile USA
Touchscreen: 800 x 480 pixels
Dimensions: Unknown
Camera: Unknown
Battery: Unknown
Standby Time: Unknown
Talk Time: Unknown
Processor: Qualcomm 1GHz Snapdragon
Internal/External Memory: Unknown
Extras: Unknown
Price: Unknown

Samsung Galaxy Lite/Samsung Spica

samsunggalaxyliteStatus: Rumored
Touchscreen: Touchscreen with hardware buttons
Dimensions: Unknown
Camera: 3.2MP
Battery: Unknown
Standby Time: Unknown
Talk Time: Unknown
Processor: Unknown
Internal/External Memory: 1GB
Extras: Wi-Fi
Price: Unknown

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The Barnes & Noble Nook Reader To Be Revealed and Available Tomorrow for $259

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 09:37 PM PDT

That's no fun. Barnes & Noble was probably expecting to get all the attention tomorrow with its fancy-pants press conference, but the Wall Street Journal had to go ruin all the fun by letting the Nook ebook reader out of the bag today. Yeah, that's the name. Nook.

Jive Raises $12 Million For Social Enterprise Software

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 08:50 PM PDT

Jive, the maker of a all-in-one social enterprise software, has raised $12 million in Series B funding from Sequoia Capital. Jive previously raised $15 million in Series A funding from Sequoia in August of 2007.

Modeled to offer Facebook-like features to enterprises, Jive combines computing with social collaboration. Its suite of applications help businesses collaborate on a variety of tasks, including holding discussions, sharing documents, blogging, running polls, and social networking features and more. Jive says it will will use the funding for product development, to “expand its partner ecosystem,” and grow its sales and customer support teams. The company, which is profitable, recently launched integration with Microsoft SharePoint, letting Jive users easily access data and content from the CMS into Jive's software.

Last year, the startup released new versions of its Clearspace software in April and acquired Jotlet. This year, the software company integrated Jive’s software into a complete package and also recently incoroprated social media monitoring into its platform. Jive’s competitors include NewsGator and Socialtext.

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IBM Upgrades Software To Manage Data Centers And Virtualization

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 08:45 PM PDT

IBM is enhancing its VMControl software for managing data centers to give enterprise users a single point of control across multiple types of IT systems and virtualization technologies. Combined with IBM's Tivoli software, VMControl allows for combinations of physical and virtual IBM servers to be managed as a single entity, called "system pooling." IBM says this approach optimizes virtualization by helping corporate data centers simplify management functions and better share and prioritize use of critical resources such as CPU, memory and storage. Having centralized control over virtualized environments lets companies manage large amounts of information and processing resources and then parcel them out to applications when and where they're needed.

Kosmix Acquires Cruxlux, The Online Version Of ‘Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon’

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 07:33 PM PDT

Kosmix, the reference engine that dynamically generates comprehensive topic pages as soon as you search for them, has just acquired a small startup called Cruxlux. Cruxlux has spent the last two years building an engine that can take any two people, places, or things and tell you how they’re related. Terms of the deals were not disclosed, other than that that it was in both cash and stock.

If you’re a fan of the classic game ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon‘, you’ll love the Cruxlux engine. The company has built algorithms that will automatically figure out how various people, places, things, and topics are related through a handful of steps, using sources across the web. Say, for example, I wanted to see how TechCrunch is connected to President Obama: the site first says that TechCrunch was founded by Michael Arrington, who is connected to Stanford Law School (he went there). That in turn is connected to Harvard Law School (they both use non-letter grading systems). Which brings us to Harvard Law School, which Barack Obama attended. With each step, the site has a ‘how’ feature that tells you how the subjects are related.

Cruxlux has been in private beta until now, allowing you to type in any two topics to see how they’re related, and I’ve had quite a bit of fun playing around with it. Unfortunately, it isn’t going to be opening up to the general public, at least not in its current form. Instead, the service will soon be integrated with Koxmix, helping surface new connections as you browse through the site’s topics pages.

And really, the integration makes perfect sense. In its current form Cruxlux seems best for entertainment, not research — how often would you really take the time to plug in two topics to see their connections? Now that the relationship engine will be integrated with Kosmix, it will be much more useful, because they’ll be shown alongside every topic.

Cruxlux was founded in 2007 by Guha Jayachandran and Curtis Spencer, who met while they were students at Stanford.

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MOG Gives Lifetime Free Music Passes To All MOG Network Bloggers

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 06:05 PM PDT

MOG is on the verge of launching a $60/year “all you can eat” music service. We criticized them for over promising and under delivering, since earlier this year they were talking about a completely free music streaming service.

“Will MOG's user experience be so compelling that users will pay $60/year for something they can get free elsewhere?” I wrote. We’ll see as more details of the service comes out, but MOG seems pretty bullish on the quality of the user experience. So bullish, in fact, that CEO David Hyman is convinced I’ll change my mind once I see it.

One group of bloggers won’t need to make that critical pay/no pay decision, though – MOG network bloggers. The 800 or so third party music bloggers (up from 300 earlier this year) that are part of the MOG network are being given free lifetime passes to the new service.

The email below was sent to MOG network bloggers and forwarded to us. We asked MOG if the deal will apply to new third party bloggers as well, and they say it will. So if you have a music blog and want free music for life, here’s your chance. Just note that MOG has to approve all blogs before they get into the network, so it has to be the real thing.

The email is below:

Subject: MOG has chosen you to receive a “Platinum Ticket” to MOG ALL ACCESS

Dear MMN Partner,

It’s a big day, indeed. After years of brainstorming, we’re proud to officially announce MOG ALL ACCESS, a revolutionary music service set to launch in just a few weeks.

This is a music listening service that gives you access to just about every album and song you can imagine, on demand, in one all-you-can-eat outlet. The user interface and discovery features are unmatched; we’ve got millions of songs from thousands of labels; and the adjacent radio service is something you just need to experience to believe. It comes with interactive playlist functions, playlist sharing tools, and much, much more. We’re music nerds, and we know what nerd s want. Believe me; it doesn’t get any better than this.

The fee for this service is going to be $5 a month. BUT WE’RE GIVING YOU LIFETIME FREE ACCESS AS AN MMN MEMBER!!!!!!!!! This “Platinum Ticket” is ONLY available to MMN partners. CONGRATS!!! We do ask that you use ALL ACCESS to make killer playlists with the service. Playlists are shareable amongst members so the more you make the better the service. This is all we ask in return. A few a week to share the love. Additionally, we’ll soon be announcing you how can provide these playlists on your blog. Stay Tuned.

What about when you’re walking around? No problem: we have a mobile component coming out later this year that will allow full, on-demand listening through mobile devices like your iPhone and Blackberry. Now, since our fee to the labels is steep on this part, it won’t be free when it launches, but we’re arranging a steep discount for MMN partners.

We can’t wait to show it to you. Watch this space for news on a full-access free trial in the coming weeks. And, for the full lowdown, read the press release below, and check out just a small segment of the coverage that’s come out below.

Peace Out,

David Hyman

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TechCrunch Dealmaker Rankings: The Top 25 Most Active VCs In The Third Quarter

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 03:51 PM PDT

In the third quarter of 2009, we saw a slight rebound in venture funding from earlier in the year. But which venture capital firms were the most active in the quarter? One of my favorite new tables in our latest TechCrunch Trends report, which is based on company data we collect in CrunchBase, is the ranking of the most active venture capital firms. We've reproduced that ranking below in two interactive tables which show the top 25 most active VC firms in both the third quarter of 2009 and the most active year-to-date. (You can see a list of the top 100 most-active VC firms in the quarter ). The rankings are based on the number of deals each firm participated in during each time period. Draper Fisher Jurvetson tops both lists, with 17 deals in the third quarter, and 34 year to date. Then it was followed, for the quarter, by Sequoia (12 deals), Kleiner Perkins (11 deals), NEA (9 deals), and Benchmark (8 deals). The top ten for the year-to-date rankings show many of the same firms, although they move around a little.

FriendFeed Not Dead, Just In A State Of “Chrysalis,” Says Co-founder

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 03:38 PM PDT

3386588447_3cab6cd554This weekend, a number of people had things to say about the decay and seemingly inevitable death of FriendFeed. That included us, twice. While this was going on, the FriendFeed team remained largely silent, even on their own product. But today, co-founder Paul Buchheit has responded.

Naturally, in a FriendFeed posted item, here’s what he had to say:

There was a lot of chatter about the future of FriendFeed this weekend. The short answer is that the team is working on a couple of longer-term projects that will help bring FriendFeedy goodness to the larger world. Transformation is not the end. Consider this the chrysalis stage — if all goes well, a beautiful butterfly will emerge :)

But, this still seems to speak to very much what I was talking about this weekend. FriendFeed, as we knew it, is over. “FriendFeed goodness to the larger world,” would seem to imply either some more open-sourcing like they did with Tornado by way of Facebook. Or, a bigger movement of the FriendFeed technology over to Facebook itself.

Further open-sourcing FriendFeed and/or its APIs is great and all, but I fear things will get messy for end-users without a single product to focus on. Certainly, that will be useful for some people, and undoubtedly some services, but I have a hard time believing it will be able to fully replace the way I used FriendFeed, as a crowd-sourced pusher of information in real-time.

Facebook obviously has the size to provide that, but I still worry that it’s too big for the rapid pace of innovation we were seeing with FriendFeed to continue. I do hope the team is able to improve some of the areas that Facebook is lacking in, such as sharing speed, filters, and content discovery. But it won’t be the same.

And that’s fine, as Buchheit notes, “transformation is not the end.” But it’s hard to watch a service you relied heavily upon change drastically. Maybe the result will be a butterfly, but I didn’t consider FriendFeed to be a caterpillar before.

[photo: flickr/kiwinz]

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Poll: One In Three Canadians Are Sane (Hand Shake Story)

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 03:37 PM PDT

They say going to war without Canada is like going deer hunting without an accordion (ok, they actually say that about the French, but whatever). And we’ve had repeated run-ins with our frozen neighbor to the north in the past (see here, here, here). So you’d think the Canadians wouldn’t be our first choice of allies in our war against the hand shake.

But they also say the enemy of your enemy is your friend. And so, by that crazy logic, I am now friends with Canada. Or at least, one in three Canadians. Because they’ve joined us, CNN, the Dalai Lama, the Obamas, the Boston Globe and some random town in Germany in our fight against the dreaded, disease spreading hand shake.

From The Globe And Mail, which writes that one in three Canadians won’t shake hands due to flu concerns:

A Canadian Press-Harris Decima poll found roughly one-third of those surveyed said they were less inclined to shake hands because of the H1N1 virus.

Across the world, people have been urged to cut down on their contact with others. Olympic officials have advised athletes to think twice about shaking hands or kissing, suggesting some might want to bump elbows instead.

Health officials in Spain and France have said it might be a good idea for citizens to avoid the customary kiss of greeting on both cheeks.

Ridiculous? A little. But people keep sending these articles in, so we keep posting them.

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Apple On iPhone Competitors: They’re Still Catching Up To The First iPhone

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 02:56 PM PDT

698695902_cd1b9f4f01During Apple’s Q4 earnings call today, a question was asked about how Apple viewed its increased competition for the iPhone in the coming holiday season. In particular, it was asked how Apple views all the new Android phones coming out. Apple COO Tim Cook made Apple’s stance very clear: They’re still catching up with the first iPhone.

Yes, Apple views the smartphone market as still being behind the first phone they released over two years ago. “We’ve moved beyond that,” Cook noted.

Certainly, compared to some smartphones out there, the first iPhone still compares very well. The iPhone 3G compares even better — as we’ve written before, it’s kind of like James Bond, while a lot of others at the same price are Joe Schmoe. But to say the original iPhone is ahead of phones like the Palm Pre and the myTouch 3G seems a bit disingenuous.

That said, the iPhone 3GS is, in my view, still absolutely ahead of the competiton, including the aforementioned phones. By many accounts, the upcoming Verizon Droid phone could be first real challenger to the current leading iPhone. Verizon obviously feels the same way, given its advertising campaign.

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2009 State Of The Blogosphere: The Full Video From BlogWorld

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 02:41 PM PDT

Technorati released the first installment of its 2009 State of the Blogosphere report today – the rest will follow over the course of this week. Last week CEO Richard Jalichandra showed highlights from the report at BlogWorld in Las Vegas.

We posted the full powerpoint presentation from that talk. And now we have the 47 minute video of his presentation as well.

The video is below, along with the original powerpoint presentation:


Technorati SOTB 2009

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