The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- TechCrunch Japan TokyoCamp: 29 Asian Companies Show Their Wares
- Tudou: A Push Towards Mobile Video and Profits
- NSFW: After Fort Hood, another example of how ‘citizen journalists’ can’t handle the truth
- “Horrible Things” Slink Back Into Zynga
- Think The Droid Launch Was A Let Down? Not So Fast.
- Apple Has No Sense Of Humor. Luckily, Google Does.
- Apple Rushes Out Apple TV Update To Cure Disappearing Content
- SnapNames: Apologies Shouldn’t Be Conditional, Especially When You Steal From Customers
- IBM’s Steve Mills on RealTime
| TechCrunch Japan TokyoCamp: 29 Asian Companies Show Their Wares Posted: 08 Nov 2009 06:26 AM PST
This time, TokyoCamp gave a total of 29 startups from three Asian countries (Japan, Singapore and Korea) the chance to present their services to Japan’s leading journalists, fellow entrepreneurs, top-level VCs and TechCrunch readers. Here are thumbnail sketches (of varying depth) of all companies that were present at the event. (Here is my report on the first TokyoCamp that took place in August this year.) Demos from TechCrunch50 alumni from Singapore, Korea and Japan
iTwin’s Kal Takru told me his company is currently plans to release the device in five to six months, with the price likely to be $99 including worldwide shipping. Initially, the iTwin will be available online only – even though following TechCrunch50, the company was bombarded with inquiries from retail chains all over the world.
The three members of the six-man company (all of whom are college students) who were invited to Tokyo told me they now feel there’s life before TechCrunch50 and after. Following TC50, Sealtale in South Korea apparently got a boost in terms of user base, massive media attention (the service was even featured on national TV) and increased interest from brands and companies. Just one example: Sealtale was chosen as a partner for a media campaign in Korea’s political space and distributed more than 120,000 seals to users all over the country in the process. Sealtale’s major global roll-out is planned for the middle of next year.
The service launched at TechCrunch50 (LIFEmee presented at the demo pit) in English. The LIFEmee team has since been working on localizing the service into Japanese and collecting early user feedback for the English version to optimize features and functions. Demos from Japanese startups
But at TokyoCamp, CEO Yoski Akamatsu presented the “Joker Racer R/C Server” for the first time, the world’s first linux server exclusively designed for R/C model cars to be controlled over the web (specs and more pics here). This means you can buy the mini server, connect it with your own R/C car, and then control the car using its standard servo/speed controllers and a mounted standard web camera. For end users, the server’s final price and release date are yet to be determined. But JokerWorks already accepts inquiries from event organizers and advertising and promotion agencies.
At TokyoCamp, I tried out a fully working prototype, which instantly uploaded pictures to a nearby panel computer via a 3G modem stick plugged into the camera. HaaLee
Here’s how a typical drawing, submitted by a Pixiv member, looks (each piece gets a dedicated page):
The free site makes money mainly through display ads and premium memberships ($6 per month) but also organizes real life events. Learn more about Pixiv in the excellent English Wikipedia entry.
Notable mentions Here are the 16 other services demo’d at the TokyoCamp event: fabric video (a video delivery system to be made available next year), MOT (an ASP business tool), Photiva (a digital signage solution), Tabereko (an iPhone app for gourmets), Wombit (a Wi-Fi-enabled touch panel computer currently being developed by Tokyo-based Omnibit), Ataritsuki CM (a solution that links TV commercials to the web), Speeda (a database that users can access to get structured economic data in an SaaS-like model), Orihime (an online shop set up by a college student who sells self-designed and made-in-Japan PC bags and cases), AdLantis (an online ad management system), Cognitive Function Balancer (a piece of interactive software for self-test and training for mild cognitive impairment), Phroni (a Firefox add-on that displays information on keywords you highlight on a web page), RainbowApps (a platform that allows you to list up your iPhone apps and discover which apps other iPhone owners have installed), Conit (an iPhone app developer), Istpika (a social gaming company developing for Facebook, iPhone and other platforms), Pankaku (one of Japan’s most successful iPhone app development companies) and Linkthink (an entertainment content provider). Many thanks to all attendees, demo companies and Nikkei Digital Core for making TokyoCamp a success. Special thanks to TechCrunch50 finalists and Asian guests iTwin and Sealtale for the journey to Tokyo. Another TokyoCamp might follow very soon! Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0   |
| Tudou: A Push Towards Mobile Video and Profits Posted: 08 Nov 2009 12:15 AM PST
I met up with CEO Gary Wang and COO Sam Lai, who already raised some $85 million from Granite Global Ventures and General Catalyst Partners, and they swore they weren't here trying to raise more cash. That’s a bit of a shock. Last we wrote about Tudou and its arch-competitor YouKu, they were burning through hundreds of millions between them trying to find what YouTube still hasn't: A way for online advertising to pay for video's outrageous broadband costs. But more on Tudou's financial prospects in a moment. One of the more interesting things we talked about was the company's new push into mobile. Last week, Tudou won a deal to be the online video channel for China Mobile. Other than one-upping YouKu, who Wang says lost the deal, this doesn't mean a huge amount yet. So far video can only run on high-end phones and much of China can't even get 2G access, let alone 3G. And those who can have to pony up a pricey 150 RMB a year. While many game companies have reached massive new audiences via mobile, the people watching Tudou's videos on their cell phones are likely the same affluent audience the company is already reaching. But Tudou sees that changing in a few years for four reasons. One, China Mobile is investing some 58 billion RMB to build out 3G capacity in the country this year and will match that investment next year, hoping to catch up to other countries soon. Two, phones are changing. Taiwan chip company MTK is developing chipsets that allow very low-end phones the ability to download and upload video. Low-cost MTK chips already supplies chips for roughly one-third of the Chinese handset market, Wang says. Three, concurrent with the connectivity roll out and the dramatic step- up in what a crappy feature phone can do, data plans are plummeting in price. Lai says China Mobile is planning video-subscription plans that offer unlimited uploading and downloading of video for the equivalent of 75 cents a month. That'll break user generated video in China wide open. And lastly, in China people are replacing their handsets roughly every nine months. That means all of these changes could ripple out faster than if they required, say, a PC upgrade cycle to complete. Forget YouTube running on an iPhone as the model—if Tudou's plan plays out this could mean huge things for video in China, India, Africa and any other emerging market where basic mobile handset adoption and access is widespread but laptop-Internet usage lags. User generated video, gonzo journalism, and self-expression on this kind of scale will make Tweeting about the Iranian election (even if the merit of that can be debatable) look like a prehistoric version of social media-helping-social-good. And of course, in many countries monetizing over mobile is easier than monetizing over the Web, because mobile minutes—whether pre-paid or subscription based—are essentially becoming currency for people without credit cards. Tudou sees mobile video starting to take off in 2010, growing rapidly in 2011, and in 2012 generating enough actual revenues to equal what it makes in traditional online advertising. So, what about those online ads? Wang had vowed when we last talked that the company would prove profitability without raising more money. There are two ways to do this: Sell more ads and clamp down on broadband. To stay alive Tudou, and some of its competitors, have had to do something most Valley companies would find unimaginable: Restrict how many people can view their site. By just making its broadband pipe bigger, Tudou, YouKu or a new competitor could double views in short order—but it'd be bled dry financially in the process. Proof? Since we last talked, Wang says he's doubled bandwidth and was at capacity again in two weeks. To add to the costs, Wang is running around Asia doing content deals to add professionally produced, non-pirated content to the 30 million pieces of video inventory Tudou has already. In fact, next year, he expects to spend more on content deals than on broadband. He says these deals are small compared to what gets done between the Valley and Hollywood. A hot new show (think an "Entourage" of Asia) may cost the equivalent of $200,000 US dollars for a two-year run, while a popular, but older show (think a "Friends" of Asia) would cost just $200 in US dollars for a two-year run. Meanwhile, Tudou is producing a ton of original content including a TMZ-style entertainment news show and a "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" style reality show it co-produced with Nokia. Reality TV is a natural for producing lean content for a mostly TV-entertainment-starved nation. The Nokia show cost some $500,000 in US dollars to produce and thirty million uniques tuned in for the six live shows, where contestants could use friends or search engines on their Nokia N97s to help get the answers. A 20-year old girl won 1 million RMB at the end. In fact, it's original content like that that helped Tudou win the China Mobile deal over competitors, Wang says. (No one wants to get dragged into a copyright war who doesn't have to.) It may seem a lot for one company to take on, but that’s the Internet business in China. Since so much of what we’d consider “old” media is developing at the same time, it’s a total land-grab free-for-all when it comes to content and information. That's the cost side. Wang said that revenues are increasing 40% per quarter, but admitted it was a small base. Total advertising revenues in China are small for the market: about $15 billion-$20 billion in US dollars. Half of that goes to TV, and a tiny 6% or so goes to online, Wang says. It's at most $100 million in US dollars the country is carving up. (This could explain why sales of virtual goods are such a hot market.) He’s hoping to break even next year. To put it mildly, between broadband costs, content deals, pioneering a new advertising segment in a young ad market, and now moving video to mobile, this is not an easy business. There's a reason that out of thousands of YouTube copy cats, YouKu and Tudou are the only big ones that have survived, by most people's estimations. But unlike when I wrote my post last May, there seems enough traction that someone can survive in China's online video business—whether it's Tudou, YouKu, or a competing site launched by an existing Chinese Internet giant like Tencent or Sina. And that's good news for the country's 200 million Internet users. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| NSFW: After Fort Hood, another example of how ‘citizen journalists’ can’t handle the truth Posted: 07 Nov 2009 07:25 PM PST
Smug that after two weeks of me suggesting that social media might not be an unequivocally Good Thing in terms of privacy and human decency, the news has delivered the perfect example to support my view. Unfortunately it’s hard to feel smug – hard to feel anything but sadness and nausea – when thirteen innocent people are dead. I’m talking, of course, about Thursday’s Fort Hood shootings. Better informed and more sensitive commentators than I have written about the massacre itself and what it means for the US army, and in particular for the thousands of Muslim soldiers currently fighting – and dying – for this country. How do you even begin to process the idea of an American soldier shouting the takbir, before mowing down his comrades in arms? On American soil? At the home base of the Combat Warrior Stress Reset program? Yes, that’s definitely one for the experts to parse. And yet, the first news and analysis out of the base didn’t come from the experts. Nor did it come from the 24-hour news media, or even from dedicated military blogs – but rather from the Twitter account of one Tearah Moore, a soldier from Linden, Michigan who is based at Fort Hood, having recently returned from Iraq. When Major Nidal Malik Hasan began his killing spree, commanders immediately put the base into lock-down in accordance with military procedure. Movements in and out were severely restricted, as was the flow of information to the news media. Official statements from army spokesperson Lt. Gen. Robert Cone were the only way for reporters to find out what was happening, while other base personnel focused on treating the wounded, and ensuring the threat had been dealt with. Or at least that’s what the commanders thought was happening. In reality Ms Moore’s was tweeting minute-by-minute reports from inside the hospital where the wounded were being taken for treatment. Reports like (in no particular order)…
That last twitpic link was particularly amazing: it showed a cameraphone image – of a wounded soldier arriving at the hospital on a gurney – taken by Moore from inside the hospital. Unsurprisingly, Moore’s coverage was quickly picked up by bloggers and mainstream media outlets alike, something that she actively encouraged by tweeting to friends that they should pass her phone number to the press so she could tell them the truth, rather than the speculative bullshit that was hitting the wires. There was just one problem: Moore’s information was bullshit too. As we now know, Major Hassan was not killed, but rather captured alive. Reports of a second – and third – shooter also now appear to be inaccurate. Whether someone was shot “in the balls” hasn’t been publicly confirmed and, for the sake the of the victim’s privacy, let’s hope it never is – but the point is that many of Moore’s eye-witness reports weren’t worth the bits they were written on. They had no value whatsoever, except as entertainment and tragi-porn. Two weeks ago, I wrote here about how the ‘real time web’ is turning all of us into inhuman egotists. How we’re increasingly seeing people at the scene of major accidents grabbing their cellphones to capture the dramatic events and share them with their friends, rather than calling 911. Last week I went even further with my doom-mongering, suggesting that the trend of adding people’s homes to Foursquare without permission was indicative of a generation that prioritised their own fun over the privacy of their friends. In the actions of Tearah Moore at Fort Hood, we have the perfect example of both kinds of selfishness. There surely can’t be a human being left in the civilised world who doesn’t know that cellphones must be switched off in hospitals, and yet not only did Moore leave hers on but she actually used it to photograph patients, and broadcast the images to the world. Just think about that for a second. Rather than offering to help the wounded, or getting the hell out of the way of those trying to do their jobs, Moore actually pointed a cell-phone at a wounded soldier, uploaded it to twitpic and added a caption saying that the victim “got shot in the balls”. Her behaviour had nothing to do with getting the word out; it wasn’t about preventing harm to others, but rather a simple case of – as I said two weeks ago – “look at me looking at this.” (I don’t know about you, but if I spotted someone taking a picture of one of my friends or relatives in a hospital then they would probably need a hospital bed of their own. “Tell me, Ms Moore, exactly how did the iPhone end up in your lower intestine?”) Perhaps fittingly, I posted some of these thoughts on Twitter yesterday, as events were still unfolding. Many people agreed with me – replying with links to the specific military codes that cover what information solidiers can share, and the HIPAA which deals with patient privacy. But plenty of others felt that by criticising Moore I was advocating censorship. As one reply put it, sarcastically: “Yes indeed, let’s moderate twitter and vet all tweets…” Others pointed out that it was just this kind of photography and ‘citizen journalism’ that ensured that the truth got out during the Iranian elections. What about the global outrage at the famous YouTube video of Neda Agha Soltan, shown dying after being shot by (alledgedly) pro-government agents? Yes – what of it? For all of our talk about “the world watching”, what good did social media actually do for the people of Iran? Did the footage out of the country actually change the outcome of the elections? No. Despite a slew of YouTube videos and a couple of thousand foreign Twitter users turning their avatar green and pretending to be in Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is still in power. It’s astonishing, really. Despite how successful ten million actual voters marching through Washington, London and other major cities in 2003 were in stopping the invasion of Iraq, a bit of entirely virtual cyber-posturing by foreigners didn’t lead to real change in Iran. And so it was at Fort Hood. For all the sound and fury, citizen journalism once again did nothing but spread misinformation at a time when thousands people with family at the base would have been freaking out already, and breach the privacy of those who had been killed or wounded. We learned not a single new fact, nor was a single life saved. What’s most alarming about Moore’s behaviour is that she probably thought she was doing the right thing. Certainly, looking at her MySpace page and her Twitter account (before the army finally forced her to lock it down) we see the portrait of a patriot. Someone who clearly cares a great deal about others, and who – despite the rhetorical question “remind me why I joined the army again” on her profile – is proud to serve her country. In tweeting from the scene, and calling out the media for not reporting the rumours from inside the base, I’m sure she genuinely believed she was helping get the real truth out, and making an actual difference. And that’s precisely the problem: none of us think we’re being selfish or egotistic when we tweet something, or post a video on YouTube or check-in using someone’s address on Foursquare. It’s just what we do now, no matter whether we’re heading out for dinner or witnessing a massacre on an Army base. Like Lord of the Flies, or the Stanford Prison Experiment, as long as we’re all losing our perspective at the same time – which, as a generation growing up with social media we are – then we don’t realise that our humanity is leaking away until its too late. As I’ve already said – and I’m even starting to bore myself now – the answer isn’t censorship (which won’t work), but rather in our social evolution catching up with the state of technology. We need to get back to a point as a society where – without thinking – we put our humanity before our ego. With that in mind, and in the hope of hurrying the process along slightly, I’m going to draw these three nay-saying columns to a close, not with yet another appeal to the better nature of social media addicts but rather with two videos that everyone should watch. The first is a clip from This American Life which I stumbled across on the blog of the comedy writer, Graham Linehan (Father Ted, The IT Crowd). It’s a thing of beauty. And absolutely terrifying. Just watch it. The second video is much less heartwarming, but far more terrifying – because it’s entirely real. So real in fact, that I don’t want to embed it here. I want you to make a conscious decision to click through and watch it. It’s the video of the final moments of Neda Agha Soltan’s life. Even if you’ve seen the footage before, you should watch it again. But this time bear in mind the following: the cameraman was not a professional reporter, but rather an ordinary person, just like the victim. And what did he do when he saw a young girl bleeding to death? Did he run for help, or try to assist in stemming the bleeding? No he didn’t. Instead he pointed his camera at her and recorded her suffering, moving in closer to her face for her agonising final seconds. For all of our talk of citizen journalism, and getting the truth out, the last thing that terrified girl saw before she closed her eyes for the final time was some guy pointing a cameraphone at her. “Look at me, looking at her, looking back at me.” Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| “Horrible Things” Slink Back Into Zynga Posted: 07 Nov 2009 06:21 PM PST
So we were surprised yesterday to see a screen shot clearly showing a mobile subscription ad in a post on InsideSocialGames about the launch of a new Zynga game, FishVille. I went to the game to check myself, but those mobile ads weren’t there. I assumed they had quickly been taken down, or there was some other reasonable explanation. They weren’t taken down though. Or rather, they were, but just for me. Other users were still seeing the same mobile ads. And the filtering was clearly directed at me, since I logged in on the same IP address with a friends account and saw the ads. I held a laptop showing the ads up next to my screen that didn’t show the ads and took a picture:
Is Zynga intentionally blocking ads to journalists and bloggers that have criticized them for the practice, while leaving them up for everyone else? More on that in a minute. The ads, which have now been removed after I emailed Zynga, are exactly the same as before, and they are the main reason I started the whole series of posts on social games – see our ScamVille post and related updates. These ads clearly violate Facebook’s terms and conditions. They don’t state on the offer page that the user is required to enter into a $10 – $20/month mobile subscription, and there is no opt in by the user before entering in personal information. And they also violate the rules in other minor ways, like having auto-playing video and audio in the ads. There’s an image at the bottom of the post showing just the mobile offers that were up on Zynga’s games until earlier today when we asked them about this. All of these violate Facebook’s existing terms, and any normal human being would consider them scams. And none of these should be there given Zynga’s promise to take down all mobile offers. Since most people have never experienced one of these ads to understand just what we’re talking about, I made a video. After ten minutes I had been asked to subscribe to 5 or 6 separate mobile subscriptions, had been asked for my birthday, and had been asked to enter in my email address. Even after all that I hadn’t earned the originally promised coins, and abandoned the effort (getting users to abandon these offers part way through is its own business model, referred to as “breakage”). Here’s the video: What’s disheartening to me isn’t that Zynga put the mobile ads back up, or even that appear to have selectively blocked me so that I don’t personally see the ads. Their motivations are quite clear. What’s really disappointing is that Facebook, even after promising to enforce their rules, continues to just turn a blind eye to this stuff. I know Facebook hates the negative press, but I am really starting to think that they couldn’t care less about their users getting scammed. In the last few days the industry really started to make the right moves and I thought this was a problem that would soon be solved. But then I realized that as much users hate being scammed, and as much as the press is willing to put the pressure on (both Time and Newsweek are pointing the finger at Facebook), there may just be too much money at stake for any meaningful self regulation to occur. We await official comments from Zynga and Facebook. Update: From Zynga “We asked all offer provider networks to remove the mobile category. Upon learning today that one provider was still showing 6 ads, we asked them to remove these too. They told us they hadn’t realized this was still in their testing queue and immediately removed them.”
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Think The Droid Launch Was A Let Down? Not So Fast. Posted: 07 Nov 2009 04:13 PM PST
Today I returned to the Verizon store where yesterday’s quest began, looking to get my hands on one of the nifty docking stations that turns your Droid into a desktop clock/multimedia station. And while I expected a handful of other customers to be in the store, I was taken aback by just how crowded it was — each of the registers was busy ringing up a customer while others waited their turn, three people were standing in line just to touch the demo Droid unit, and I had to put my name on the list to talk to someone. When I asked one of the employees if they were selling a lot of Droids, his somewhat breathless response was “Yeah, a lot. Over 70 yesterday, we got a shipment of another 100 in today.” Oh, and they were out of both the dock I had come for and spare batteries. Maybe the lack of an early morning line wasn’t so damning after all. Obviously this store represents a single data point, but so did my story yesterday. Here’s some more evidence that Droid might be doing pretty well, after all: last night Pandora CTO Tom Conrad tweeted, “Just saw Pandora’s Android install numbers for the day. Wow! There may not be lines, but Droids are very much among us – and running Pandora”. We followed up for more details, and while Conrad declined to give any exact stats for now, he did say that Pandora’s download rate tripled, going on to say “We were doing well on Android before though, so the increase is pretty amazing.” If you’re an Android dev, let us know in the comments if you’ve seen a boost too. And if you’ve passed your local Verizon store, let us know how busy it was. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Apple Has No Sense Of Humor. Luckily, Google Does. Posted: 07 Nov 2009 02:21 PM PST
Well, not exactly. Apparently, Apple contacted Someecards a couple days ago because of some new content in the app — Someecards pushes new cards into the app just as it does on its site. There was one in particular that Apple did not find amusing, and wanted clarification on: A card making fun of President Obama Halloween costumes. It’s fairly easy to see why Apple wanted some clarification, the card involves race. Here’s what it says: “Just double-checking that your Obama costume will involve a mask and not shoe polish.” Fans of Someecards will know that they use these types of provocative jokes all the time. The intent, it would seem, is not to be racist, but to use a joke to make a statement about race. “It’s kind of hard to explain humor, but I basically said it was making fun of racist behavior,” Someecards co-founder Duncan Mitchell tells us that he told Apple. It is hard to explain humor. You either get a joke, or you do not. Apple, it seems, does not. “They said that they thought we could both agree we should remove the card. I said that we probably wouldn’t both agree that we should remove the card, but that we would remove it if they said we had to,” Mitchell says. “They said we had to.” Anyone who has ever talked to just about any spokesperson at Apple will immediately relate to what Mitchell is saying. If Apple contacts you about something, they’re really contacting you to make you do what they want. If you don’t, there is often the threat of repercussions of some sort. In Someecards case, it would have meant pulling the app from the App Store. As I’ve said many times, the App Store is Apple’s store, they can choose to do what they want with it. The problem is that Apple is perplexingly hypocritical when it comes to what apps get rejected and what apps get accepted. For example, apps that feature interactive Asian upskirt shots are fine. So are apps called Asian Boobs which feature young Asian women wearing next to nothing in sexually provocative poses. Also apparently fine is Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler’s famous work.
For whatever reason, Apple has decided that anything having to do with making fun of public figures is prohibited. Though satire is protected in this country, it’s apparently not okay in Apple law. Apple literally has no sense of humor when it comes to that. But guess who does? Google. In a seemingly coincidental bit of timing, Mitchell says that Google contacted him just hours after his call with Apple. They were calling to see if he’d be interested in making the app for Android. Their big selling points? “They pitched us on all the cool new phones that were coming out, and they also wanted to stress that they wouldn’t censor the app,” Mitchell tells us (emphasis mine). Google, it seems, has a much better sense of humor than Apple. And they’re definitely playing their cards right in attempting to set up Android’s Market as a more open alternative to Apple’s App Store. With over 100,000 apps now, the App Store is a juggernaut that keeps on growing. But it would be a mistake to believe this growth will continue on in perpetuity no matter what. Apple should be careful about pissing off developers (which it has done plenty of times already) when an alternative like Android is finally gaining some momentum. Regular readers will know that unlike a couple of my colleagues, I’m firmly an iPhone guy. Despite the advances that competitors are making, I still truly believe it is hands-down the best mobile device out there. But, as I hope you’d expect, I’m not above calling out Apple’s bullshit when I see it — as I do, very often, with regard to the App Store. I simply believe they are making a mistake with the way they’re trying to contain this environment. At first, it made sense from Apple’s perspective because the company is all about controlling the user experience. But as the App Store continues to grow, the app approval model be harder and harder to maintain. What happens when we get to a million apps in the App Store? What about 5 million? Is Apple prepared to hire thousands of people simply to approve apps? The more they hire and the more apps that keep coming in, we’re going to continue seeing more and more screw-ups and hypocrisy. And developers are going to grow more and more frustrated. This situation is simply not tenable. Lighten up on your heavy-handed rules, Apple. And just lighten up in general. [photo: flickr/swami stream] Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Apple Rushes Out Apple TV Update To Cure Disappearing Content Posted: 07 Nov 2009 02:19 PM PST
Last week, Apple released its new 3.0 software for the Apple TV. Unfortunately, it looks like it came with a pretty big bug in tow: Disappearing content. Here’s the problem in Apple’s words:
Today, Apple has sent an email to all Apple TV owners advising them to immediately upgrade to the new 3.0.1 software to cure this issue. Obviously, you’ll want to do this as an Apple TV with no content is pretty much useless. The new Apple TV 3.0 software has been generally well-received, though many feel it doesn’t go far enough to allow for content such as streaming web video. The UI has been improved, but it’s still hard to search for content without using an iPhone or iPod touch as the remote. The new Apple Remote works with the device, but it’s pretty much as useless as the white one in many ways. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| SnapNames: Apologies Shouldn’t Be Conditional, Especially When You Steal From Customers Posted: 07 Nov 2009 01:01 PM PST
SnapNames acquires expiring domain names from registries and then auctions them off to interested buyers. When everything goes well people are happy. SnapNames gets a good return on investment, and the domains go to the buyer who values them the highest. But it turns out things most certainly have not gone well. Since 2005 a substantial number of domain auctions had shill bidding by a SnapNames employee. This isn’t run of the mill eBay shill bidding. On eBay a seller may try to participate in the auction to drive overall bidding higher. But for the most part pricing doesn’t get out of control because most stuff sold on eBay isn’t particularly unique and price boundaries are well established. What happened at SnapNames is much worse. The company is the seller and has the most to gain by shill bidding. And the company is also in control of all auction information. Sometimes an auction may have two bidders, with one bidder putting in a maximum bid of $100,000 (yes, they go this high sometimes). Another may bid just $10,000, and so the winning buyer would just pay some small amount over $10k. From SnapNames perspective that isn’t a $10k gain. It’s a $90k loss. So SnapNames “fixed” the problem. An executive with the company simply bid on those domains. He could bid up to, say, $90,000 with full certainty that he wouldn’t be burdened with actually winning the auction and having to pay up. SnapNames made lots of extra money. And if the top bidder backed out and the executive accidentally won, SnapNames was secretly reimbursing him on the back end. Zero risk. SnapNames said only about 5% of total auctions were affected, but this is misleading. The top domains make up a substantial proportion of total revenue. So that 5% could easily have accounted for, say, much more than 50% of revenue. SnapNames was careful not to disclose the total dollar amounts involved, or even what percentage of overall auction revenue was affected. That was their first mistake. Not being open and honest. Now they’re demanding that customers sign an agreement waiving any rights they may have to sue SnapNames in exchange for the refund. That’s a big problem – some customers are complaining that auction data has been erased from their accounts, so they don’t even really know how much they were affected. And SnapNames isn’t making any promises that the reimbursement offers are complete. Once a customer signs the release, even if the settlement amount was calculated incorrectly, they have no further recourse against the company. A typical comment from a customer: “"Please be prepared to provide detailed information and data regarding your bidding and purchase activity to the extent that it differs from the information we have provided to you."Pretty hard to do since Snap took down a large portion of bid history!” SnapNames is making exactly the wrong moves here. They need to return this money to customers immediately with no conditions attached. And they need to provide full and accurate reports to those customers along with the refund. Anything short of that is just shady. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Posted: 07 Nov 2009 12:30 PM PST  As we prepare for our next RealTime CrunchUp on November 20th in San Francisco, we're seeing if anything an acceleration of the phenomenon known as RealTime. Startups, cloud platform vendors, the open standards community, and virtually every software and hardware category are being refreshed and reinvented in the new model. And while there are many familiar players talking and to some degree walking the RealTime walk, some have been busy for years building and deploying the fundamentals of this "overnight success." A few weeks ago, I traveled to Las Vegas to attend IBM's Information On Demand conference, and took the opportunity to sit down with Big Blue's Steve Mills, Senior Vice President and Group Executive of the IBM Software Group. In English that adds up to Steve being The Man at the helm of IBM's embrace of Web Services, with the software group accounting for one quarter of IBM's $100 billion business. While others have partied down on Web 2.0 and its various social themes in perhaps a more outward facing way, it turns out IBM is very focused in the same areas, albeit with an eye toward leveraging its deep relationships with the enterprise. If raw information accounts for the lion's share of useful data, IBM's investment in analytics and "mining the nuggets" suggests the company's history of eating its own dog food with early realtime technologies like Notes and Sametime will bear fruit as IBM begins to share its best practices with customers. But what of the TwitterSphere, the social media stream of micromessages? |
Executives from Tudou—one of two companies left fighting it out to be the YouTube of China—were in San Francisco earlier this week to meet with investors and do a little schmoozing.
I’d probably feel slightly smug, if I didn’t feel so sick.
Just five days ago Zynga CEO 
Yesterday I detailed 
Last month, Apple 
Earlier this week the domain name industry was rocked by a | 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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