The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Startups.com Becomes a Q&A Site For Business Questions
- Why the Droid Eris Is Not Running Android 2.0
- CrunchGear Meetup in Columbus, Ohio: Monday, November 9
- Judge In Google Book Settlement Case Says Photographers Are Not Authors
- Scripps Buys 65% Stake In Travel Channel, Sets Up Joint Venture With Cox
- TechStars Graduate Everlater Secures Funding
- YouTube Gives Partners More Control Over Video Blocking
- EA’s Spore Evolves Once More, Launches On Facebook
- Spotify Competitor Deezer Launches Premium Offering, Desktop App
- Google Gives You A Privacy Dashboard To Show Just How Much It Knows About you
- Massive Facebook and MySpace Flash Vulnerability Exposes User Data
- Founder Institute On Track To Graduate 300 Startups Per Year, Expands To New York
- A Little Perspective (Digg, Twitter, Facebook)
- Say Goodbye to Voicemail, Hello To Ribbit Mobile (500 Invites)
- Search Til You Drop: Google Launches Hosted Commerce Search For Retailers
- Bodega: A Cross-Platform Marketplace That Lets Gamers Swap Virtual Currencies For Cash
- At The Top Of Its Game, And The App Charts, Ngmoco Bets Its Future On In-App Purchases
- Twitter Testing Out New Tweet Notifications To Keep Users Engaged
- Offerpal Tries Out A New CEO. Shukla, Queen Of Scams, Is Out.
- Kiersten Hollars Never Actually Joined Digg. She Was Just On Loan From Brad Garlinghouse
- All The News That’s Fit To Print — And Vanity-Driven, Ego-Dripping Good Stuff
- Apple’s New Remote Is A Riddle, Wrapped In A Mystery, Inside An Enigma
- Credit Karma Raises $2.5 Million To Take The Mystery Out Of Credit Scores
- Eventbrite Gets A $6.5 Million Infusion From Sequoia Capital
- Domain Industry Rocked By Shill Auction Bidding Admission
| Startups.com Becomes a Q&A Site For Business Questions Posted: 05 Nov 2009 08:55 AM PST
A year ago, KillerStartups bought the killer domain name Startups.com for a few hundred thousand dollars. The company didn’t do anything with it other than redirect to the KillerStartups blog. Today, it realunched as a Q&A site for business questions. Want to know “How to edit a business video before uploading it to YouTube”, “What is the typical annual income of a freelance webdesigner”, or “How can I copyright an idea?” (Answer: You can’t. Ideas aren’t protected by copyright). Well, you might not find the answers quite yet on Startups.com, but KillerStartups CEO Gonzalo Arzuaga is hoping that you will soon. You can also ask questions via Twitter, by sending a Tweet to @askstartups, or you can follow different tags such as taxes, advertising, and management. Questions are placed in the queue, and visitors can vote them up or down. Each one is also tagged so you can see all questions about marketing or copyright. Users earn reputation points and badges for filling out a profile and answering questions. The site was built on StackExchange. Everyone and their mother seems to have a Q&A site these days, so why not have one aimed only at the startup community? At bottom, many of these sites are SEO plays. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
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| Why the Droid Eris Is Not Running Android 2.0 Posted: 05 Nov 2009 08:52 AM PST  Another day, another Android phone. I believe we will soon come to a day when Android phones will be looked at with the same jaundiced eye as, say, the latest LG Chocolate, but since that day hasn't come, I'll share a few observations with Verizon's new $99 Hero-alike, the Eris. The Eris is basically a mini Hero. It's slightly thinner and clad in all black and but the Sense UI is in place and all of the things that made the Hero great - responsive OS, apps, and social networking connectivity - are here. One thing lacking, however, is the "latest" version of Android with its superior navigation application and multi-touch. |
| CrunchGear Meetup in Columbus, Ohio: Monday, November 9 Posted: 05 Nov 2009 07:56 AM PST  Remember, remember, the 9th of November! Gadgets, technology, and beer. I see no reason why gadgets and tech should ever bring little cheer.Last year's Columbus meetup was a huge success, and folks have been asking me when we'll do it again. Well mark your calendars for Monday, November 9, and join us for a friendly evening of networking and libations at the Surly Girl Saloon, my favorite cowgirl/pirate themed bar! |
| Judge In Google Book Settlement Case Says Photographers Are Not Authors Posted: 05 Nov 2009 07:36 AM PST
The latest twist in the ongoing settlement talks between Google and book authors is that yesterday, the judge in the case denied an attempt by photographers to become part of the settlement. In the decision (embedded below), Judge Denny Chin basically ruled that photographers are not authors, and that the settlement only covers “word-based material,” with the exception of illustrations in children’s books. The judge writes that the motion was filed too late, and that in any case, the current settlement does not preclude photographers from bringing their own lawsuit. The motion to join the suit was brought by the American Society of Media Photographers, the Graphic Artists Guild, the Picture Archive Council of America, the North American Nature Photographers Association, and several individual photographers. The current settlement is between Google and the Author’s Guild. Obviously, many books include photographs and illustrations. If a book is scanned into Google’s searchable database with a copyrighted image, it appears that Google might still be liable for displaying those images. At least that is what judge Chin suggests when he writes that the settlement does not copyright holders of “pictorial materials and binds them in no way.” I’ve asked Google for clarification on how it intends to deal with such issues. Photo credit: Flickr/Mike Baird Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Scripps Buys 65% Stake In Travel Channel, Sets Up Joint Venture With Cox Posted: 05 Nov 2009 07:35 AM PST
The network, which will be controlled by Scripps, was put up for auction last Summer and attracted interest from other juggernauts such as News Corp and NBC Universal. Cox said in June 2009 that it had received unsolicited offers for the Travel Channel, which it acquired from Discovery Communications back in 2007. Scripps was planning to announce quarterly results this morning but has now pushed back its earnings call until tomorrow morning. Under the terms of the agreement, Cox will contribute the Travel Channel while Scripps Networks Interactive will contribute $181 million in cash to the fresh partnership. The joint venture will take on $878 million in third-party debt that will be guaranteed by Scripps and indemnified by Cox, with the proceeds to be distributed to the latter party. The companies expect to close the deal by January. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| TechStars Graduate Everlater Secures Funding Posted: 05 Nov 2009 06:17 AM PST
Everlater is a place where you can basically record your travel experiences, share them with others, and discover new travel ideas from your social graph and other travelers that match your profile. The goal of the service is to centralize all travel conversations and information sharing into a single place. The startups provides tools to geographically organize photos, stories, and trip details, and has partnerships with the travel industry in place to provide a new marketing channel directly through existing social networks. There’s a plethora of online travel startups and established companies trying to crack this nut, so I predict the fledgling company will have a hard time gaining awareness for its service, however nice it may be. Everlater was selected to participate in the 2009 TechStars program in Boulder, Colorado.
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| YouTube Gives Partners More Control Over Video Blocking Posted: 05 Nov 2009 05:46 AM PST
A source just tipped us on some interesting changes Google-owned YouTube has made that give its partners more control over the blocking of video content they upload to the service. Basically, there are two new buttons in the interface for partners. One says ‘Block by Country’ and provides content partners with the ability to geo-block a single video rather than an entire account, an oft-requested feature that allows partners to restrict the geographical rights for specific videos. The second button reads ‘Enable Auto Block outside Ownership’ and addresses a problem that YouTube partners have with duplicate videos that get uploaded to the service without their explicit consent. Until today, the process to claim ownership over duplicate videos and have them blocked by YouTube was long and cumbersome, and apparently the new button makes it easier for partners to automatically block duplicates with just one click. We’ve contacted the company for more information and will update accordingly. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
| EA’s Spore Evolves Once More, Launches On Facebook Posted: 05 Nov 2009 05:00 AM PST
I took the game for a spin last night and found it to be pretty fun, though there’s a bit of a learning curve. The game is effectively broken down into two main sections: the creature builder, where you can tweak both the appearance and the attributes of your character (things like speed, reproductive rate, and over a dozen others). Once you’ve fine tuned your creature to your satisfaction, you can go into ‘observation’ mode, where you watch miniature versions of the island’s animals fight over food, eat each other, and reproduce (by way of eggs hatching). The graphics in the simulation portion are pretty basic — everything is presented in a 2D, top-down view, but they’re charming and get the job done. The game’s strategy lies in crafting the ideal creature that’s best suited to both your island’s enviroment (which can be impacted by the type of food available) and the other creatures living on the island with you (if you’re slow and another create is quicker to get to the food available, you’ll probably die of starvation). This can be harder than it sounds, because when you’re playing against your friends the variables will be constantly changing, as the game allows you to further tweak your creature’s attributes between rounds using DNA points, the game’s virtual currency. As with most Facebook games, Spore includes a number of viral mechanisms that invite you to publish your accomplishments to your news feed and to invite friends to come play with you (the biggest draw will be the buttons to invite friends to join you on your island). To monetize, the game allows users to purchase extra DNA points for further customizing their creatures.
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| Spotify Competitor Deezer Launches Premium Offering, Desktop App Posted: 05 Nov 2009 04:07 AM PST  [France] Paris-based Deezer is not waiting for Spotify to expand into new territories and is moving forward with its own plans pretty quickly. The French startup recently raised $9.5 million (€6.5 million), bringing the total invested into the company to nearly $20 million, and today the company's launching its previously rumored premium offering and a couple of new products. Basically, the Deezer website, where users can listen to streaming music and create playlists, will remain free of charge while users who would like better sound quality (up to 320 kb/s) and no more advertisements can opt to pay €4.99 per month for Deezer HQ. The Premium offering (€9.99 / month) is the most interesting though, since it gives users the opportunity to download a full-fledged Adobe AIR desktop application and lets them gain access to their accounts through a wide range of mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPod Touch and multiple Android-run and Blackberry devices. |
| Google Gives You A Privacy Dashboard To Show Just How Much It Knows About you Posted: 05 Nov 2009 02:00 AM PST
The more Google products you use, the more data it collects about everything you do online—your search history, your emails, the blogs and news sites you read, which videos you watch on YouTube, your news alerts, tasks ,and even shopping lists. For some of these, you need to explicitly grant Google permission to keep track of data associated with your profile. But it’s hard to keep up with everything Google is tracking. So now the company is launching a Google Dashboard, which will give you a high-level summary of everything Google knows about you by virtue of the Google products you use. This might include how many emails are in your inbox, recent subject lines, which YouTube video you’ve watched lately (yes, all of them), appointments on your calendar, and more. If you want more detailed data, it sends you to the particular data repository for that product. And for security purposes it does not create a second database of all the data, it just brings it up in your browser without restoring it server-side. The Dashboard is only for Google products which require you to sign in with your Google account. It does not include cookie-based data Google collects through DoubleClick ads or other ads. For that, you need to go to the Ad Preference Manager, which has its own issues. You can see the list of all the products the Dashboard keeps track of below. Account & profile
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| Massive Facebook and MySpace Flash Vulnerability Exposes User Data Posted: 05 Nov 2009 12:55 AM PST
Schaap stumbled upon the exploit and contacted both Facebook and MySpace. According to his blog MySpace has since fixed the bug, and while his blog indicates that Facebook is still working on it we’ve confirmed that they’ve fixed it as well (we’re waiting on a statement from MySpace). So what exactly could the exploit do? From Schaap’s blog:
In other words, if you’ve ever checked that ‘remember me’ button on Facebook or MySpace’s login screen and have at any point viewed a Flash app taking advantage of the exploit, it’s possible that all of your data was compromised. You wouldn’t even have to neccesarily open anything — in Facebook’s case, if one of the infected items showed up in your News Feed you could have your data stolen without ever knowing it. Yeah, that’s pretty damn scary. For what it’s worth, Facebook gave us this statement:
Of course, Schaap pretty clearly writes that there’s no way for a user or even Facebook to tell if their data was harvested, so for all we know it could have been used by multiple developers for months or longer (Facebook is currently investigating how long the bug may have existed). Granted, Schaap could be the first developer to ever stumble across the exploit. But the potential of this bug is so huge — allowing a developer to mine all of the data for any user who accessed their app — that less honest developers may well have used the hack for their own benefit. Facebook has previously said that there are a whopping 300,000 developers building on its platform. And we’ve seen time and time again that some of those developers are not opposed to Black Hat tactics. MySpace has seen its own share of problems. This is obviously bad news for both social networks, but Facebook in particular has long been heralded as the safer of the two, with its extensive privacy settings and authentic identities. Yet the site has repeatedly seen glitches in its security. I’ve written before about the sorry state of our privacy and the security of our data online, and issues like this underscore that the problem isn’t getting any better. Facebook is no longer just a platform for learning about your college buddies — it’s a serious business, used for photos and messages that can be very sensitive. Hell, I’ve heard of journalists who regularly use Facebook to reach out to potential sources, when secrecy is of the utmost importance. Apparently that’s not a good idea. The security vulnerability works by taking advantage of an oversight in a If you’re interested in the nature of the exploit itself, head over to Schaap’s blog for a full description of how he stumbled on it. Image by Lisanne! Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Founder Institute On Track To Graduate 300 Startups Per Year, Expands To New York Posted: 05 Nov 2009 12:05 AM PST
More expansion news from Adeo Ressi’s Founder Institute. The startup incubator is steadily expanding. It recently opened up an outpost in Seattle, and now is expanding to New York. “New York City needs a kick in the pants,” says Ressi. The Winter New York City Semester will be led by Razorfish co-founder Craig Kanarick. Mentors for the program will include Munjal Shah, Patrick Keane, Max Hoat and others. You can apply here. The Founder Institute, which just completed its first successful “semester” in Silicon Valley, also announced expansions to both Washington DC and San Diego, California in the past month. With the expansion to new cities, (2 semesters per year in Washington DC, San Diego, Seattle, and New York, each graduating approximately 25 companies) and 2 semesters per year in Silicon Valley graduating over 50 companies, Founder Institute is set to churn out 300 companies per year. The program was first announced in March 2009. It is a semester-based startup camp for very, very early-stage entrepreneurs and students who have basic ideas for potential startups but have not yet founded a company. So far 66 startups have graduated from the program, with 31 companies incorporated by founders so far. A handful have actually launched (including Skimble and Molo Rewards). Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| A Little Perspective (Digg, Twitter, Facebook) Posted: 04 Nov 2009 10:06 PM PST It wasn’t all that long ago that Digg captured our collective imagination. In fact, even last year Google thought it was important enough to seriously consider buying Digg, only to back out at the last minute. Digg was the future of news. It was crowdsourced, democratic editorial. The masses decided what was news, not some 50 year old guy in a skyscraper in New York, who secretly hated the Internet. a lot of the shine has come off Digg. And while it still drives a tremendous amount of traffic, it’s amazing to see just how completely it has been eclipsed by Twitter, which in turn is still just a drop in the Facebook bucket. Comscore worldwide data says Digg, Twitter and Facebook have 32 million, 58 million and 411 million unique monthly visitors (September 2009), respectively. Google Trends says much the same thing, but the growth over time is fascinating visually. We started with Digg, then added Twitter, and then added Facebook. In the end, Digg and Twitter are just footnote blips in the chart. About a third of all Internet users worldwide visited Facebook in September 2009, says Comscore. A year ago it was 17%. And what about Digg? They grew from 15 million worldwide unique visitors a year ago to 32 million today. And they tripled page views to 171 million. So it’s not really about Digg doing anything wrong. They just pale in comparison to the guys currently in the spotlight – Twitter and Facebook. If you could only use one service, which one would you choose? I’d be unhappy about the forced decision, but I’d go with Twitter, even with all its flaws.
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| Say Goodbye to Voicemail, Hello To Ribbit Mobile (500 Invites) Posted: 04 Nov 2009 09:04 PM PST
First, there was Google Voice. And all was good, and not so good. But it showed that there is a better way to manage voicemails than to listen to 15 in a row just to get to the one you care about. Now, there is an alternative to Google Voice called Ribbit Mobile. And it too is very good. Ribbit Mobile is in private beta, but the first 500 people to sign up with the invite code “techcrunch” will jump to the front of the line. Ribbit Mobile starts out by taking over your cell phone’s voicemail. You give it permission to do this by entering some codes it presents to you during the sign-up process. So Ribbit Mobile lets you use your existing number, something Google Voice also recently added as an option. Once you set up your voicemail, and record a new greeting message, you can get started. All voicemails will now get routed to Ribbit Mobile and stored there. Every time you get a voicemail, it appears in your Ribbit inbox, where it can be played on your computer. It is also transcribed (using Phonetag/Simulscribe’s speech-to-text engine). And it is pretty accurate. It was even able to understand and transcribe a message left by my three-year-old son. Every transcribed voicemail also gets sent to you as an email. So there is really no need to listen to a voicemail again. But you can retrieve them the normal way, by calling an assigned number you can save to your phone. The one drawback I found is that I no longer see the notification on my phone showing how many voicemails I have. Ribbit also lets you route calls to any number, including Skype and Ribbit’s own Java phone which rings in your browser so you can take calls on your computer. It does not yet, however, let you assign different actions to different callers (put my wife through to my cell, put anyone not in my contacts through to voicemail). When you are online, you can also sign into various social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr) and see recent Tweets, status messages, and photos from the person who is calling. It’s very Xobni-like in that way. Soon there will be an iPhone app, and the ability to send “shouts” to Ribbit Mobile members. A shout is a voicemail that doesn’t actually ring the person’s phone, it just goes straight to voicemail, where it is then transcribed and sent along as a regular text message. Why talk, when you can shout? Ribbit Mobile will launch with a free basic package, and then start charging between $10 and $30 a month for more services, such as human transcription. Ribbit was acquired by British Telecom last year for $105 million, so it’s not going anywhere. One day, we’ll get a service like Ribbit Mobile or Google Voice that actually is built into our phones.
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| Search Til You Drop: Google Launches Hosted Commerce Search For Retailers Posted: 04 Nov 2009 08:57 PM PST
Searching retail sites can be frustrating at times. While many retailers try to present product search in a visually appealing way, search can often be slow or difficult to refine. Tonight, Google is making a huge play in retail space with the launch of Commerce Search, a hosted enterprise search product to power online retail stores and e-commerce websites. Google offers a general hosted search product that is used by organizations that want to add customized Google search functionality to their websites. Google is now entering the vertical space, by the first tailor-made enterprise product, with retail optimized space. There are four key components to thew new search offering for retailers: Speed: Google promises “ultra-fast speed and accuracy” by leveraging Google’s search technology to provide sub-second response time to customer searches on retail sites. Commerce Search also uses a proprietary ranking technology to analyze the products in each data feed and serve the most relevant match. Google says that faster search speed will help increase conversions to buy products, as customers can quickly find specific products without having to navigate complex search interfaces. E-commerce-Specific Search: Google Commerce offers a variety of features that are optimized for retail and product search, such as parametric search, sorting of results, spell checker, stemming, and synonym suggestion, which in some way or another let users to refine and target their searches. I’m told hosted search uses several proprietary signals to determine the ranking of search result. Commerce also offers a compelling product promotions features, that lets retailers fine-tune search results to push promoted products to the top of results. The search interface allows for retailers to specifically label products as promoted. One of my bones to pick with Google Commerce was that it’s interface may be to simple for retail sites like Saks, Bloomingdales or others who tend to display products in a more visually appealing way. Presentation, whether it be real-store or online, matters. But Nitin Mangtani, Lead Product Manager for Google Enterprise Search, told me that the Google Commerce Search API allows retailers to fully customize the search experience on their website and add all the bells and whistles they need to make the interface match the rest of their site. And, retailers using Commerce don’t need to show the Google logo on the search site. Scalability: Because Commerce Search is hosted by Google and based in the cloud, Google says it’s easily scalable to absorb additional traction on the site. For example, says Mangtani, during the holiday season, retailers will most probably experience high traffic on search. Google will ensure that retailers can manage the boost in traffic and scale the search application. And Mangtani adds that once all product data is incorporated, search can be deployed on any e-commerce site fairly quickly. Leveraging Other Google Products: Google promises integration with other Google products like Google Analytics and Google Product Search. Using Commerce, retailers can measure clicks, conversion rates, number of transactions, average order value and other data via Google Analytics. And e-commerce vendors can provide a single feed of products and catelogue items that will power Commerce and indexing of their products on Google Product Search. Product Search (formerly Froogle) was blends shopping results with Google search. Google didn’t release too many details on its pricing mode for Commerce Search, but a spokeswoman told me that the product will start at $50,000 per year. Beyond that, pricing will be based on the number of products (SKUs) in the customer’s database and the number of search queries entered on their site each year. This pricing isn’t cheap so obviously this appeals to bigger retailers and e-commerce shops. Google has already partnered with Birkenstock USA to power search, which looks mediocre. It was a little simple for my taste and it lacked a visible search bar but I’m really interested to see what can be done with Commerce for more embellished e-commerce sites. Google Commerce will now compete with the likes of Omniture, Endeca, and others. Google is playing into “conversion rates” when advertising the product for retailers, saying that while the average online retailer conversion rate is just three percent, it could be five to ten times higher with a powerful search technology. With Commerce, Google is making an aggressive move in the retail space. Google Product hasn’t really taken off, but Commerce could and could effect the use of Google Product as well (and maybe Google Checkout?). Google’s other enterprise search offerings have steadily gaining users, so it should be interesting to see if the search giant can make inroads with big-name retailers.  Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| Bodega: A Cross-Platform Marketplace That Lets Gamers Swap Virtual Currencies For Cash Posted: 04 Nov 2009 07:58 PM PST
Bodega lets users sell their virtual goods at auction in return for for Bodega’s own currency, the Bodega Bill. When you go to sell your virtual goods, you can either put it up as a ‘buy it now’ style purchase or an auction, with a minimum reserve if you want. Users looking to purchase virtual goods can obtain Bodega Bills by completing offers, buying them with their credit cards, or by selling their own virtual goods in the marketplace. You can also earn Bodega Bills by completing actions on the site, like adding another user as a friend or listing an item for sale. Of course, actually executing these transactions is difficult, because none of these games have any of this functionality built in. To work around this, Bodega holds the buyer’s Bodega Bills in escrow until there is confirmation from both users involved with the transaction that the virtual good has actually been received. This system does have the upside of allowing the platform to work across multiple social networks and platforms (Bodega is currently available on Facebook with plans to launch on MySpace, Bebo, and the iPhone soon), but it’s not the ideal situation. CEO Mark Sendo says that the company is currently in discussions with a number of big games in this space, in the hopes of integrating an API into the games themselves that would negate much of the hassle associated with the transactions, but it sounds like it may be a while before any big deals come to fruition. Once you’ve earned some Bodega Bills, you can use them to purchase other virtual goods (so you could potentially buy points on another game or social network), or you can trade them in for cash — something that sounds like it could be especially appealing to gamers who are looking to turn their online wealth into something a bit more tangible. Sendo says that the amount of money paid out will be established by the market (the actual conversion rate will likely play a big role in how quickly Bodega catches on). Virtual currency marketplaces have always been a tricky area, rife with scammers, so-called ‘gold farmers’, and fraud (there’s a reason eBay has largely banned them). But that doesn’t negate the fact that there are lots of people who’d like to sell their virtual goods. Bodega is going to be fighting a long uphill battle here, but if it can pull off a unified, safe platform, there’s plenty of money to be made. Bodega rose from the ashes of urTurn, a startup we covered last year that looked to reward users for their actions on Facebook. It’s worth pointing out that Sendo was convicted of wire fraud a decade ago and was later forced to wrangle with the SEC over violations involved with InternetMoney.com (Sendo settled by agreeing never to deal with penny stocks). Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
| At The Top Of Its Game, And The App Charts, Ngmoco Bets Its Future On In-App Purchases Posted: 04 Nov 2009 06:37 PM PST
On Monday, ngmoco released worldwide its latest game for the iPhone and iPod Touch: Eliminate Pro. It’s been downloaded 500,000 times so far at a rate of about 25,000 an hour, currently making it the top free app in iTunes. The top paid app, Skeeball, also happens to be affiliated with ngmoco through its Plus+ social game network. ngmoco has had it’s own top paid apps as well, like Rolando, but CEO Neil Young says that Eliminate Pro is more “representive of where we have been moving our business—free applications, that we monetize with in-app purchases.” Ever since Apple opened up in-app purchases for free apps two weeks ago, it’s been catching on. In general, free apps are downloaded 10 to 20 times as much as comparable paid apps. Now, says Young, the payments can be “built into the compulsion loop of the game.” In other words, developers will get consumers to try their apps and then ask them to pay only once they are hooked. This model works particularly well for games. Eliminate Pro easily could have been a paid app for which ngmoco could have charged $7.99 or $9.99. It is the first multiplayer first-person-shooter for the iphone. You play against other people on their iPhones around the world, and can connect to the server-based game via WiFi or the 3G cellular data network. In order to advance or level up, your battle suit needs to be powered, and you need to buy power cells to charge up your suit. Power cells are the currency of the game. The game comes with 30 free power cells, and then you can buy them in increments going from $0.99 to $39.99. You can still play the game without buying power cells, and your suit gets trickle-charged, but some people are really impatient and they’d rather pay to play. It only takes a small percentage of hardcore gamers who opt to pay for their power-ups to exceed the revenues ngmoco could have made with an all-paid app being bought by fewer people. Ngmoco has three more games it is planning to release before Christmas, and they will all follow the same freemium model. “We think at the end of the day this is the best way to build a big business on the iPhone,” says Young. Both Eliminate and Skeeball are also part of ngmoco’s Plus+ social gaming network, which allows players to send out game challenges to their friends via push notifications on the iPhone 9the most effective method), as well as Facebook and Twitter. Add the multiplayer aspect to Eliminate, and what we’ve got here is a realtime game on the iPhone. No wonder it’s so popular. Ngmoco is part of Kleiner Perkins’ iFund portfolio of iPhone startups. The company also announced today that back in July it acquired another iPhone game developer, Miraphonic, creator of the Epic Pet Wars game. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
| Twitter Testing Out New Tweet Notifications To Keep Users Engaged Posted: 04 Nov 2009 05:35 PM PST
Twitter has a problem: A number of users tweet, then lose interest. It needs a way to reengage them in the site. And tonight it’s starting to test one way: Notifications. The test is currently only rolled out to a “limited” number of users right now, according to this update. But those who have it should notice an indicator similar to what Twitter does to let you know there are new search results on a query (see a capture above and below). There’s another service that does these types of notifications for new messages also: Facebook. Yes, Twitter for once is taking a playbook from its rival rather than the other way around. When Twitter was still a young service, it used to auto-update with new tweets as they came in, in realtime. That was one of the first features killed off as the service began to explode in size and was having trouble scaling. FriendFeed implemented a similar live-updating stream before the Facebook acquisition, and that seemed to help boost engagement. Twitter currently offers live updating stream with its widgets. There has always been some debate as to whether a constantly updating stream is better than notifications. Twitter is clearly now choosing the latter. When FriendFeed first launched it, plenty of users complained that the live updating was moving too fast. Seeing as Twitter is much larger than FriendFeed ever was, that could be an issue. The notification method is probably easier on server load than the constantly moving stream, as well. As you can see in the screenshot below, these notifications shows up in the titlebar as well (just like with Twitter Search).
[photo via stephromanski] Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| Offerpal Tries Out A New CEO. Shukla, Queen Of Scams, Is Out. Posted: 04 Nov 2009 04:34 PM PST
From the press release quietly announcing the change: I had an…interesting public exchange with Shukla last week at the Virtual Goods Summit in San Francisco (see video at end of this post). I’ve also embedded it below. She vehemently denied that her company’s offers ever scammed users. Despite her defense of the industry, MySpace, Zynga, RockYou and others have since made significant policy changes to protect consumers from the types of offers Offerpal peddles. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Kiersten Hollars Never Actually Joined Digg. She Was Just On Loan From Brad Garlinghouse Posted: 04 Nov 2009 02:42 PM PST
Hollars is part of Garlinghouse’s old team at Yahoo, and left the company shortly after Garlinghouse did to take over PR and communications at Digg. She joins AOL later this month. “This is more about working with Brad again, and nothing about Digg,” she told us in a phone interview this morning, adding that she’s excited about the turnaround opportunity at AOL. She joins AOL as senior director of corporate communications, reporting to both Garlinghouse and EVP Corporate Communications Tricia Primrose. Digg’s looking for Hollars’ replacement immediately. So if you want be the person to handle all corporate communications and Kevin Rose babysitting duties at Digg, let them know. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| All The News That’s Fit To Print — And Vanity-Driven, Ego-Dripping Good Stuff Posted: 04 Nov 2009 02:18 PM PST
Google News has just launched a pretty cool new feature: Create your own news section. As you can probably guess, this allows you to create a new area of your Google News personalized page (you have to be signed-in) for anything you want. You simply fill-out a section title, put in any search terms you want it to look for, select a country, and you’re set. Previously, you could make customized sections for Google News, but it was limited to single queries about topics. With multiple queries, this is much more comprehensive. And the pages look a lot nicer with images automatically pulled in. You can also now filter by source locations, restricting items to a single country or even state. Also nice and new is that you can publish these section you make to a public directory. If you do that, anyone can then subscribe to (and rate) the section you’ve created. There are quite a few good ones that have already been created in this directory, like Mobile Technology. Here’s what else this is great for: Vanity searches. As with most search products, the real key thing everyone wants but no one likes to talk about, is to be able to find information about themselves. This new Google News section creator is rather brilliant for that if you say, work for a tech blog that appears quite often in Google News. “MG News” is probably the new pinnacle of Google News.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Apple’s New Remote Is A Riddle, Wrapped In A Mystery, Inside An Enigma Posted: 04 Nov 2009 01:48 PM PST
That’s not to say it’s not a nice looking product — it is, but there have been some changes that make me confused as to what Apple exactly is trying to do with this thing. From a design perspective, it makes sense. The new remote now has the brushed aluminum and black button exterior that graces both Apple’s MacBook Pro line and the iMac line these days. The original Apple Remote was all white plastic (aside from the top sensor), that matched the older iMacs that it originally launched with. Back in those days, the remote made more sense. First of all, it came with most new Macs. This, alongside Apple’s Front Row software, made it seem obvious that Apple was going to start taking media (beyond just music) very seriously across the Mac line (for a while the remove even came with Mac laptops). But today, the remote doesn’t come standard with any Apple product aside from the Apple TV (for obvious reasons). Instead, it’s a $19.00 add-on, even for the new huge 27-inch screen top-of-the-line iMacs (which seem like a natural fit to watch media on). Also odd: while the original white remote had a magnetic back to allow it to easily stick to the side of the iMac, the new remote does not. That means this remote is yet another piece of clutter sitting on your desk if you opt to buy one. It would seem that Apple doesn’t really care about you using this remote anymore, even though without it, Front Row is basically useless. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to use it over simply using iTunes if you have to sit at your computer to do it anyway. But the oddest thing about the new remote has to be that Apple has for some reason decided to move the Play/Pause button from the center of the navigational circle to the lower right side of the device, shifting the Menu button left to make room. That might make some sense as just a straight-up ergonomic design change, but the weirdest thing is that the center of the navigational circle is still a button, that does the same thing as the Play/Pause button.
Apple’s documentation for the new remote provides little insight, but they do label this new center button as “Select” rather than Play/Pause. But again, it does the exact same thing. Could there be some new funtionality for Front Row in the future that takes advantage of the Select button? Maybe. But even launching something like the new iTunes Extras content now being packaged with movies doesn’t seem like it would need its own button. Here’s something else: Apple doesn’t even bother mentioning it on the main Remote page on its site, but this new remote does work with the Apple TV. Again, from a design perspective, this makes sense as the new remote looks much more like the Apple TV than the white one that currently comes with it. But again, the remote’s phantom button does nothing different from the Play/Pause button aside from the fact that holding down Play/Pause brings up movie chapters, while holding the phantom button does not seem to. Odd. There is one definite advantage of the new remote: It’s much easier to change the battery. I have friends who have stacks of old dead white remotes simply because they didn’t even realize you could previously change the battery. So that’s nice, but does it really warrant the $19 price for a larger, heavier remote that no longer sticks to the iMac? Probably not. If you want a good remote for iTunes and the Apple TV, just use your iPhone or iPod touch. Apple’s own Remote app makes it much, much more useful than either of the physical remotes. You can, for example, do a search by typing on the device’s keyboard rather than being forced to do a ridiculous amount of clicks to manually enter each letter on the Apple TV’s onscreen keyboard. It’s also much better for scrolling through a bunch of titles. Really, it’s better in every way imaginable. The only downside is that you have to own an iPhone or iPod touch. But if you own an Apple TV, chances are you probably own one of those as well. I really don’t understand Apple’s thinking with these remotes. It would seem that they’re clearly inching towards products with less buttons and more touch elements, but this new remote is the opposite of that. There’s been a touch screen remote rumored for some time now, but this is what we got instead? What gives, Apple? Update: A few things from some insightful commenters: 1) It’s also a bit odd that the new remote does not feature an Apple logo anywhere on it. The old one did on the back. 2) It’s true that aluminum is not a magnetic metal, but neither is plastic, which the old remote was. 3) I had forgotten about this, but the old Apple Remote is very similar to the original iPod Shuffle. It’s certainly possible that Apple was using the same manufacturing for both, and with that Shuffle long retired, it was easy to move to a new type of remote. 4) Apparently, the Play/Pause separate button also allows you to stop/start content when you’re not specifically in that section. That could very well be why Apple did this, but that is also not very intuitive since the buttons do the same things the rest of the time.
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| Credit Karma Raises $2.5 Million To Take The Mystery Out Of Credit Scores Posted: 04 Nov 2009 01:21 PM PST
Credit Karma, which launched in March 2008, is a site that features free credit checks, educational guides, and tools for analyzing your credit score’s current status (presented as a ‘report card’) and for optimizing your credit over time (you can check in on your score on a daily basis if you want to). The are also reviews of various credit cards, as well as sponsored offers based on your current credit rating. Credit Karma’s tools are all free — the site makes money through advertising and lead gen offers, in much the same way that Billshrink and Mint do. CEO Kenneth Lin says that the site doesn’t ever sell user information, but instead shows users offers that they can elect to pursue. For example, the site might use your credit report to analyze your auto loan rate, and then suggest packages that would give you a better deal. Credit Karma is also offering a private label version of its product. Sears has partnered with the site to give Sears Cardholders an enhanced version of Credit Karma that sends users a monthly credit update via Email (normal Credit Karma users have to manually check in on the site themselves for an update).
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Eventbrite Gets A $6.5 Million Infusion From Sequoia Capital Posted: 04 Nov 2009 01:17 PM PST
Popular online event site Eventbrite has raised $6.5 million in funding, according to an SEC filing. The company has confirmed the funding, and says Sequoia Capital is the new investor. Sequoia partner Roelof Botha joins the board of directors. Both Roelof and Sequoia backed Eventbrite CEO Kevin Hartz’s previous startup, Xoom. This brings the event site’s total funding to over $8 million. Previous big-name investors include Bebo co-founder Michael Birch, Jeff Clavier, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, and Flixster co-founder Saran Chari. Eventbrite provides online event management and ticketing services for any type of event. Eventbrite is free if your event is free. If you sell tickets to your event, Eventbrite collects 2.5% of the ticket price plus $0.99 per ticket sold. The startup competes in a crowded space, which includes Amiando and TicketLeap. But the startup’s model has proven to be popular for event organizers. In fact, TechCrunch uses Eventbrite for many of our events. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Domain Industry Rocked By Shill Auction Bidding Admission Posted: 04 Nov 2009 01:16 PM PST
The process for expired domains to get back into the system is complicated, but every day 20,000 or more previously owned domain names become available. Domain squatters know the list in advance, and spend time looking at Alexa/Compete rankings and lots of other data sources to try to figure out which ones are valuable. If they can just eek out $10 or so per year on a domain via ads, it’s profitable. And at scale, large amounts of money is made. There are a variety of companies that grab as many of the domains every day that they can and then auction them off to the highest bidder. I once ran a Canadian-based company called Pool.com that invented the practice of auctioning expired domain names, and our company was making over $1 million in profit every month from these auctions – there’s lots of money in this business. Today the largest company conducting these auctions is SnapNames, which was acquired by Oversee.net in 2007 for $25 million or more. Today SnapNames admitted that one of its executives was shill bidding on auctions. 5% of auctions from 2005 – 2007 were affected, the company says, and a lesser number since then. The employee was shill bidding on auctions to pump the price up. When he won, he’d arrange for a partial refund from the company. SnapNames is saying they’ll reimburse the difference between what an auction should have closed at and what it actually closed at, plus interest. This is a company that I know well – after leaving Pool.com I consulted briefly for them in 2004. It’s inexcusable that they let this happen, and didn’t catch it for years. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
A Facebook developer named Yvo Schaap has uncovered a massive security flaw present on both Facebook and MySpace that would give hackers the ability to steal all of your account data, including your photos, personal messages, and basically everything else you’ve ever put on the social networks, without you ever realizing it.
Anyone who doesn’t know how dirty the domain name business is just doesn’t know the domain name business. People pay exorbitant sums to acquire domain names, put Google or Yahoo ads on the parked pages, and collect the advertising fees. They often buy and sell individual domains and portfolios with other domain squatters. But the real feeding frenzy is around deleting domains – the domain names that people let expire and that go back into general inventory.| You are subscribed to email updates from TechCrunch To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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Guys gettinga card is not that tough but making it work is the real deal. If you get a card, get to the activation straight away. You won't be able to use it otherwise.
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