Wednesday, December 2, 2009

The Latest from TechCrunch

The Latest from TechCrunch

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Time Inc’s “Manhattan Project” Is A Tablet Magazine

Posted: 02 Dec 2009 09:03 AM PST

SIdgital

The magazine business is hurting just like all print publications. And even if their Websites are popular, they generate one tenth the ad revenue of the print side. Since last summer, Time Inc has been working on a “Manhattan Project” to create a digital magazine for the new breed of color tablet computers soon to come to market. (Condé Nast is also working on a similar concept). Today, I got a sneak peak at a demo of the tablet magazine designed for Sports Illustrated.

The demo was shown on an HP table computer with a touchscreen, but it could easily be ported to an iPhone or an Apple iTablet, whenever that becomes available. The idea is to create something so beautiful and fluid that readers will actually want to pay for it. The cover takes up the full screen and you tap it to show a table of contents with thumbnails of the actual layout, which you can rearrange to read in any order you like. To flip through the pages you swipe with two fingers, and you can also tap to get a navigational timeline at the bottom. There is also a navigation wheel which lets you share stories via email, Facebook, or Twitter, favorite a story, go to related videos or photos interviews, other articles, or stats such as live scores.

The tablet format is much easier on the eyes than reading the same story on the Web, and you get the added bonus of full-screen slide shows or videos. You can also flip through photos within the text, while continuing to read. Sports scores and other data can be dynamically updated from the Web, or you can share stories and photos via email, Facebook, or Twitter.

The concept was designed by David Link at the Wonderfactory, and it’s all done in Adobe AIR. If I still read magazines, I’d much rather consume them in this form than on paper.

Terry McDonnel, the editor of Sports Illustrated who showed me the demo, thinks that readers will be willing to actually pay for a digital version contained within a tablet. That remains to be seen. Josh Quittner, an editor at Time (and my former boss) who spearheaded the task force behind the digital magazine thinks of it as an app. If people are willing to pay for apps on the iPhone, why not deliver magazines as apps also? He’s the one who calls it Time Inc’s Manhattan Project. Hail Mary might be a better name.

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NY Judge Throws Out Last AOL Time Warner Merger Lawsuit

Posted: 02 Dec 2009 08:24 AM PST

It’s fairly ironic to learn that there was still a lawsuit lingering over Time Warner’s merger with America Online from the beginning of this decade, given that AOL is in the process of spinning off and hitting the public markets as an independent entity before year’s end.

Anyway, there was still one pending suit out of the hundreds that were filed after the multi-billion dollar merger, and now it has been dismissed as well. The end of an era, of sorts.

A federal judge has thrown out the last of the Mohicans lawsuits, granting Ernst & Young’s motion to dismiss shareholder Dominic Amorosa’s complaint alleging it had failed to link the auditor’s statements to investor losses. U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon of the Southern District of New York dismissed the private investor’s case earlier this week, saying the E&Y was not the cause for any of the man’s losses.

Amorosa, an AOL shareholder who voted in favor of the merger with Time Warner and exchanged his stock at a one-to-one ratio for stock in the combined entity, filed his suit in May 2003 as the last in a wave of lawsuits that followed media reports of widespread fraud at AOL and its successor corporation.

Aside from Ernst & Young, the suit named AOL, Time Warner, the merged company, Bertelsmann AG and 11 individual executives, but all of those defendants had previously been dismissed from the case in earlier proceedings.

(Source: Law360)

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MOG Launches All Access, Sets New Standard For Online Music

Posted: 02 Dec 2009 07:05 AM PST

MOG’s much anticipated All Access music service launches today for anyone to come and give it a try. I’ve been using the service for the last few weeks and, despite my initial skepticism over the fact that users must pay for the service, I’ve been impressed. MOG makes millions of songs available users on demand over the Internet. The user experience and social aspects of the service put it far ahead of any online music service available today, and it’s well worth the $5/month.

All Access is a nearly flawless product that is an absolute joy to use.

MOG, founded in 2005, was essentially a social music portal and advertising network until today. But they’ve been working on this All Access product for well over a year now, hoping at first to provide it free to consumers. But the big music label’s willingness to dabble in free streaming music to consumers is clearly waning – and so MOG was forced to charge users for the service.

And I think a lot of users may just be willing to pay for the service once they realize how much better it is than it’s most obvious competitor, MySpace Music.

For whatever reason MySpace has been slow to iterate on its year-old service. The service remains slow and buggy. Getting to and listening to music requires more steps than it should. And the advertising is often intrusive. Perhaps it’s the fact that they have to pay every time a user listens to a song, but sometimes it just seems like MySpace Music is trying to slow you down rather and add friction to the music experience.

MOG, by contrast, just flies. Searching, discovering, saving and listening to music is intuitive and fun. The social aspects of the service let you share and discover new music with friends. And the user experience will be an inspiration to the next generation of web designers.

And as if that wasn’t enough, MOG Radio, a feature of All Access, is just about the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Or rather, heard.

Our complete overview of the service is below. But don’t rely on us, give it a try. MOG is letting people test the service for free for an hour, without any obligation (no credit card required). And we’re also pleased to give 250 TechCrunch readers a one month free membership to MOG All Access. Just email TechCrunch@MOG.com, first come first serve.

Overview Of MOG All Access

Music Library: MOG has songs from all four major labels: Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and EMI Music. And they also a deep collection of indies as well. If the music is legally available anywhere online, it’ll likely be available on MOG.

Overall user experience: Prepare to be shocked. Everything is as it should be. Music is played via a fully controllable pop up window, so you don’t have to stay on the full site. You’ll see album art and information on the song currently being played. Related music is listed below the song, or, if you’re listening to a playlist, other songs on the list. There are no restrictions on skipping or changing songs at all, and the service responds as quickly and crisply as if it were a desktop application.

One feature I love – lyrics for whatever song you’re listening to are one click away.

Search & Discovery: It’s awesome. Search by artist, album or song. Or a combination. Search is very fast – as I said above, it’s a lot like using a desktop application like iTunes to search for music sitting on your hard drive.

And if you can’t think of what you want to listen to, check out the playlists that others have created and made public. MOG ranks them using an algorithm to push the most popular and most played lists to the top. Or find other users who you share music tastes with and follow them. You’ll see what they’re listening to.

MOG Radio: This is worth the $5/month alone. If you’re a Pandora fan you’ll know the joy of typing in a song or artist you love and listening to music from other related artists. It’s an amazing way to discover new music. But MOG goes way beyond what Pandora offers. Not only are there no ads and you can skip songs at will without limitations, they let you decide exactly what you want to listen to.

Only want to hear David Bowie songs? No problem. Just keep the slider (see image) all the way to the left. But if you want a more Pandora-like experience, slide it to the right and get some Iggy Pop, Queen, Duran Duran and other artists you might like as well.

Pandora doesn’t let you just listen to one artist because it changes the nature of their music license from radio to on-demand. MOG doesn’t care because they pay a set fee per user per month to the labels no matter how much music you listen to. So if there’s band you love and don’t want to bother creating a playlist, just type it in, set the music slider to the left, and listen to as much of their music as you want.

Library And Playlists: If you stumble onto a song you love, you can one-click save it to your library or put it into a playlist. See more on playlists in our post here.

Wish List: As I said, MOG is nearly flawless. But I do have a few requests. First, I’d like to be able to type two or three artists into search and create a radio station on the fly that only plays those artists. MOG says that is something they’re considering. Another request – I’d love it if MOG could scan my iTunes collection and automatically add all those songs and Playlists to my MOG library.

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Branders.com Scores Another $5 Million In Venture Capital

Posted: 02 Dec 2009 06:49 AM PST

Branders.com, an online-only promotional items store operator, raised another $5 million in venture funding, bringing the total invested in the company to $46 million. Participating in this round were Menlo Ventures, DCM, Venture Strategy Partners and Altos Ventures, all of whom backed the company in the past.

According to the Promotional Products Association International organization, the promotional items marketplace reached $18.1 billion in 2008, and saw growth even despite the recession. Branders.com is one of the leaders in this space, having launched over ten years ago and currently boasting more than 100,000 customers, including The White House and many Fortune 500 companies.

The San Mateo, CA-based dot-com survivor also claims profitability, but did not share revenue numbers.

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CrunchGear in China: Seeing Where the Tech Sausage Is Made

Posted: 02 Dec 2009 06:11 AM PST

Greetings from sunny Shenzhen, just north of Hong Kong. I've spent some time in Asia - at least the tech centers - and have never found a place like this. It's like Blade Runner meets 1990s Prague meets the end of the world. I'm here to report on what's going on here in terms of electronics and how it's changing the way we think about price, cost, and value. It's pretty crazy. Thirty years ago Shenzhen was a rice paddy, a town of about 50,000 souls. Today it is a hive, and a dirty one at that. Smog is a way of life. As the sun goes down over the city, the streets take on an amber cast and the darkness falls quickly. There are no picaresque sunsets here.

HipLogic Raises $7 Million To Bring Smartphone Intelligence to Mass Market Phones

Posted: 02 Dec 2009 05:56 AM PST

Mobile application platform HipLogic has raised $7 million in Series B funding from Benchmark Capital, Stage 1 Ventures, Bay Partners, and Accrue Sports and Entertainment Ventures. HipLogic’s platform helps improve content discoverability and applications on both smartphone and non-smartphones.

Formerly known as Numobiq, the startup raised $4.5 million in Series A funding in 2008. Founded by three veterans from Sun Microsystems, it wants to bring sophisticated applications to the simplest cell phones by keeping all the complexity in the network. In essence, HipLogic is trying to bring the quick, easy interface of the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry to more simple, lightweight phones that are available for the mass market.

HipLogic makes existing phones ’smarter’ by allowing consumers to toggle on a more iPhone like interface complete with real-time content, social networking and apps. This is all done via a free downloadable mobile application that has yet to be launched. Behind the curtains, HipLogic’s application platform features a lightweight, JavaScript virtual machine connected to the cloud and aggregates info from network operators and the web to create mash-ups on mobile devices

HipLogic is currently being deployed through a partnership with The Carphone Warehouse, a European mobile retailer and hopes to partner with retailers and phone developers in the near future. The startup is remaining mum about the intricacies of its platform for now, but HipLogic could be on to something.

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Gift Guide Giveaways: Samson Go Mic and… Mittenberry!

Posted: 02 Dec 2009 05:24 AM PST

Another day, another set of giveaways in honor of our Gift Guide. Today we have a Samson Go Mic - you know, for podcasting - and a pair of mittens with thumbs that pop off that the manufacturer is calling Mittenberrys but we're calling a cute idea. To enter, just pop over to the contest pages on our Gift Guide.

Seeking Alpha Finds $7 Million In Funding, Partners With Nasdaq.com

Posted: 02 Dec 2009 04:22 AM PST

Financial information and analysis community Seeking Alpha announced that it has recently closed a Series B round of financing to the tune of $7 million, led by first-time investor DAG Ventures with participation from existing investors Benchmark Capital and Accel Partners.

Seeking Alpha also inked a content partnership deal with Nasdaq.com, under which terms it will deliver opinion pieces from its now 3,272 contributors and timely news products like MarketCurrents and Wall Street Breakfast. You can see the integration in effect here and here.

Seeking Alpha scored its first similar major content partnership agreement with Yahoo Finance around the time that it secured its first round of funding from Benchmark and Accel.

The company also informed us that Instablogs, its blogging platform customized for finance that was launched in May 2009, recently crossed 2,000 publications from financial advisers, portfolio managers, newsletter authors, data providers and economists alike. According to PaidContent, Seeking Alpha claims more than 4 million monthly uniques based on internal Google Analytics stats.

On a sidenote: it seems like there’s renewed interest from investors in innovative companies in the stock market analysis and discussion space: we earlier today reported that StockTwits scored another $3 million in funding from True Ventures and Foundry Group.

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Web-Based Productivity Suite Zoho Launches Full Integration With Google Docs

Posted: 02 Dec 2009 03:54 AM PST

Zoho is undoubtedly the lesser known name and an underdog in the productivity suite race with Google and Microsoft. But the startup has a compelling strategy: Zoho continuously launches integrations with its competitors and also iterates on it product to offer new and innovative products. Previously, Zoho has launched various integrations with Google sign-ins and with Google Apps. Today, Zoho is launching a full integration between Google Docs and Zoho’s Apps.

Google Docs users can now attach files from Google Docs to Zoho’s CRM within Leads, Accounts, and Cases of Zoho CRM. When users try to attach a document from Google Docs, they will be prompted to authenticate using Google credentials. Google Docs will be listed within Zoho once users sign-in.

And while composing emails in Zoho Mail, users can attach files directly from Google Docs and Zoho Docs. Zoho users also have an option to upload files directly from Google Docs to Zoho Docs.
Zoho currently has a limit for users to to upload only 5 files at a time and plans to offer increased flexibility in the future. Lastly, files from Google Docs can now be attached directly in Zoho’s project management app Zoho Projects.

This latest and more robust integration with Google Docs represents Zoho’s compelling strategy to continue to innovate by launching new products and add-ons to its existing offerings. Most recently, the startup launched Zoho Discussions, a online forum tool for businesses; and Zoho Recruit. Over the past two years, Zoho has added support for Sharepoint, mobile, Google and Yahoo IDs and group sharing.

Zoho knows that it will have to fight an uphill battle to keep users from flocking to Google Apps and soon Microsoft’s Web-based version of Microsoft 2010. Although Zoho ’s the underdog, the startup’s strategy may be paying off—the startup has reached 2 million users in just 4 years.

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StockTwits Adds $3 Million From Foundry Group And True Ventures

Posted: 02 Dec 2009 03:44 AM PST

StockTwits, a social and microblogging service for stock investors, has pulled down another round of financing – $3 million in a Series B round led by Colorado-based Foundry Group. Foundry Group partner Seth Levine joined the company’s board of directors, and True Ventures, an investor from earlier this year, also participated in the round.

The service launched just a year ago as a way for Twitter users to organize, share and discover their thoughts on public company stocks: “Users can eavesdrop on traders and investors, or contribute to the conversation and build their reputation as savvy market wizards. The service takes financial related data and structures it by stock, user, reputation, etc.”

In September the service moved on from Twitter and built their own platform and Air desktop application. They kept the familiar 140 character format for messages, and users can easily cross-post to and from Twitter.

StockTwits is also part of an official NASDAQ iPhone application.

Traders are clearly enamored with the product and love the constant stream of company/sector specific data. And new products, like StockTwit TV, seem to be a hit (even if, for most people, listening to stock talk is like watching paint dry). The service will expand greatly next year, says CEO Howard Lindzon.

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More Research To Back The Notion That Streaming Kills Piracy

Posted: 02 Dec 2009 03:34 AM PST

Research conducted by London-based Global Web Index, a collaboration between online market research agency Lightspeed Research and Trendstream, suggests that streaming might in fact be the right antidote against content piracy.

The findings are in line with other research and conclusions reached earlier this year by The Leading Question, MusicAlly's consumer research division, which suggested that the number of teenagers who download copyrighted content from illegal sources has fallen dramatically over the past few years in favor of streaming.

According to the Global Web Index, streaming video online has unequivocally turned mainstream with almost two thirds (64%) of Internet users watching video clips, almost a third (31%) watching full length TV and video programming and 13% sharing videos. 27% of UK Internet users have downloaded free TV shows/films to their desktops.

The research showed that the most active internet users – those who spend more than three hours a day online – are the most likely to download illegal content, either through a P2P network or unauthorized file sharing websites.

Contrary to popular belief, the research also shows that people who download illegal media content are not only driven by the desire to access it for free, but increasingly by the fact that they want to get their hands on the content as soon as it’s available, even if only legally in other countries.

Whilst the research shows that consumers don't really like using P2P networks to obtain content, people tend to use them when they can't find what they want any other way.

Tom Smith, Managing Director of Trendstream says:

"Thanks to the rise of online services such as Spotify, Hulu, iPlayer and of course YouTube, the environment has been created where you can stream almost all the content you would ever want. If everything I want is available on demand, the concept of ownership is diminished. I no longer need to have it on my hard drive. I just play what I want when I want. This is not only a threat to traditional packaged sales of music, TV and film, it will also kill off piracy. Why pirate when you can stream?"

To reach its conclusions, Global Web Index interviewed 16,000 web users in 16 markets for a first wave. The survey was carried out online between July 6 and the August 7 of this year: 2000 internet users were interviewed in the US and the UK, 1000 users in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, China and Canada and 750 users took part in the survey in The Netherlands, Russia, Mexico, Brazil, India, South Korea , Australia, Japan. GWI plans a second wave this and next month.

(Top image via Flickr / cc Maurits Burger)

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Groupon Gets A Hefty $30 Million From Accel For Local Offers Service

Posted: 02 Dec 2009 12:01 AM PST

Chicago based Groupon, which was formerly known as ThePoint, has raised a hefty Series B financing – $30 million – from new investor Accel Partners and existing investor New Enterprise Associates. Accel’s Kevin Efrusy joins Groupon’s board of directors.

The company is going gangbusters. They offer users deep discounts on local deals – spas, sky diving lessons, hotels, restaurants, golf, whtaever. Discounts range from 40%-90% of the normal price. If enough people buy into the offer, everyone gets the deal. If there aren’t enough people, no one gets the deal. Groupon collects payment and passes it on, minus their fee, to the business.

Example – 1,600 people in one day bought skydiving lessons in Chicago, says the company, getting a 44% discount on the $229 price. And the company making the offer normally sells just 6,000 lessons per year. They sacrificed some profit, but gos lots of new customers.

What makes the service so compelling is that people have an incentive to get their friends involved to make sure the minimum is hit. And Groupon makes it easy to spread the word about offers via Facebook and Twitter. Their user acquisition costs? zero.

Groupon generally takes 30% – 50% of the total price paid for the service, and they are on track, they say, to do $100 million in gross merchandise sales in 2010. They reached profitability in June 2009, just six months after launching the service.

Chicago launched first but the site now covers 26 cities and is adding a new one every week. They have 126 employees, more than half of which are sales staff finding new deals for users. The company has now raised about $35 million in aggregate, including an early angel round.

Think they deserve a Crunchie for best application or best new product in 2009? Vote for them here.

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Really?

Posted: 02 Dec 2009 12:00 AM PST

Dana Hanna updates his Facebook and Twitter, at the altar. Without his bride Tracy knowing he was going to do it. I’m sure she was thrilled:

I surprised not only my guests, but also Tracy by pulling out my phone and posting on Facebook and Twitter from the altar during out wedding. I had her phone ready in my pocket, so when she asked for it I could hand it to her. No one knew about this except the minister, and myself.

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Craigslist Blocks Yahoo Pipes After Dev Shows Craig His New Mashup

Posted: 01 Dec 2009 09:29 PM PST

Developers take note: if you’ve got a mashup built off of Craigslist’s data, don’t even think about showing it to anyone who works there. At least, that’s the lesson learned by developer Romy Maxwell, who says that Craigslist has blocked both his mashup and every single project built on Yahoo Pipes a few days after a friendly Email exchange he had with Craigslist founder Craig Newmark.

Maxwell is one of the developers behind a new mashup called Flippity, which lets you plot Craigslist listings on a map. In a blog post, Maxwell writes that he had been having an Email exchange with Newmark over the last few weeks, during which Maxwell asked if the techniques employed by his project would be acceptable under Craigslist’s restrictive Terms of Use.

Newmark replied that “as a rule of thumb, [it's] okay to use RSS feeds for noncommercial purposes.” Since the project used RSS feeds and was non-commercial, that seemed to indicate that the project would be OK. Maxwell followed up by asking if he was allowed to ask for donations on the site, which Newmark said he would look into. A couple weeks later, Maxwell sent Newmark a link to a working alpha version of Flippity. Newmark went silent, Craigslist pulled the plug on Flippity and every other Yahoo Pipes project soon thereafter. From Maxwell’s blog:

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw what Craigslist had done. They literally added a check for “pipes.yahoo.com” in the referrer header of any HTTP request, which was then redirected to the home page. In essence, they blocked them. Really, Craig ? This is your response ?

To be clear, Maxwell says that his post isn’t meant to be an attack on Newmark himself. Newmark actually CC’d a customer service representative on a couple of messages during the exchange, so it’s possible that they were the ones who ultimately decided to shut down Flippity and all of Yahoo Pipes.

Maxwell writes in his blog that he and another developer have been building the mashup for 2 months. The goal was to build something that would plot Craigslist listings on a map, offering an easy way to see what goods are being sold in your proximity. There’s already a great mashup called PadMapper that does this for housing, but Flippity was supposed to work for any Craigslist listing. For details on how the mashup worked, check out this post.

Of course, this isn’t really anything new for Craigslist. The site has previously shut down mashups using its data many times before. But they have permitted some sites, like Housingmaps, to tap into Craigslist data for years. And it seems strange that they would ban all Yahoo Pipes apps in response to this.

Maxwell says that this doesn’t mark the end of Flippity: the site will adapt to use another source of data, like eBay or Oodle.

We’ve reached out to Craigslist for comment and will update if we hear back.

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Bessemer Snags a “Designer In Residence” From Mint.com

Posted: 01 Dec 2009 07:38 PM PST

Venture capitalists like to hire well known entrepreneurs and executives as “entrepreneurs in residence.” These are short term jobs, a place for someone to park themselves for up to a year or so after they’ve sold their company or otherwise have moved on. They sit in on pitch meetings, advise partners and portfolio companies, and plan their next move. And the VC generally, but not contractually, gets first dibs to invest in their next gig.

Sometimes people get creative with their titles - Jason Calacanis was called an Entrepreneur In Action during his stay at Sequoia Capital in 2006-2007, but his job was essentially the same.

Bessemer Venture Partners is expanding the idea further, and are adding what they’re calling a Designer In Residence. Jason Putorti, former lead designer at Mint (now a subsidiary of Intuit), is the guy they hired for the job.

Jason will work with Bessemer’s portfolio companies to help them build “simple, intuitive and engaging web sites,” said Bessemer partner David Cowan.

Some of the Bessemer startups that will now have access to Jason include Yelp, Hunch, Yodle, LinkedIn, Smule and Wix. For some startups, this may be a reason to go with Bessmer in a competitive funding round.

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Xirrus Raises $20 Million More For Enterprise Wi-Fi

Posted: 01 Dec 2009 07:31 PM PST

Xirrus, a provider of enterprise Wi-Fi, has recieved $20 million in a funding round led by InterWest Partners, bringing the total investment in the company to $80 million. Xirrus is also backed by August Capital, US Venture Partners, Canaan Partners and QuestMark Partners.

The company aims to replace ethernet in the enterprise, resulting in reduced setup and usage costs for corporate networks. Xirrus has been especially active gaining traction in the university market in the last year. Xirrus constructs Wi-Fi Arrays that improve coverage and performance. The Arrays integrate up to 16 Wi-Fi radios in circular configuration to maximize effect. They also provide a platform for managing their Wi-Fi Arrays and security as well.

Xirrus CEO Dirk Gates previously founded and led Xircom. Xircom specialized in providing ethernet connectivity to mobile computers and was sold to Intel in 2001 for $748 million.

Competitors include Aruba Networks, Cisco, Meru Networks and Ruckus Wireless.

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Cisco Leads $27 Million Round For Aravo

Posted: 01 Dec 2009 06:57 PM PST

Aravo, a SAAS supplier chain management tool just raised a whopping $27 million in Series D funding led by Cisco, with other investors participating. In addition, Cisco’s web meeting and collaboration platform, WebEx, will be integrated with Aravo’s Supplier Information Management (SIM) to facilitate real-time collaboration between buyers and suppliers.

This latest investment brings Aravo's total funding to $50 million. Investors that participated in the latest round include Big Sky Partners, Stephen Friedman and William Harrison. Aravo says the new funding will be used to develop new products and to expand sales, marketing, and delivery channels. As part of the agreement, Aravo will work closely with Cisco to power and enhance Cisco WebEx. Aravo's software includes options to track ISO certifications, sustainability initiatives, and risk analysis.

While this isn’t an acquisition, this latest news continues Cisco’s strategic investments and shopping spree. With deep pockets, Cisco has acquired a number of enterprise-focused companies, including ScanSafe, Starent Networks, and Tandberg. While Cisco doesn’t seem to be sniffing around for an acquisition of Aravo yet, it wouldn’t surprise me considering its recent shopping spree.

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Facebook To Roll Out New Privacy Controls To Its 350 Million Users, Kills Regional Networks

Posted: 01 Dec 2009 06:37 PM PST

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has just written an open letter to Facebook users regarding a privacy overhaul that is due to hit the site in the next few weeks. Soon, users will be able to selectively choose, on a per-post basis, who can see the content they post to the site. Facebook is also going to remove regional networks entirely, largely because some of those networks (like China) consist of millions of users, which makes them useless from a privacy standpoint. If these changes sound familiar, it’s because Facebook actually announced them way back in July. Zuckerberg also notes that Facebook now has 350 million users — it has added a whopping 50 million of them in the last two and a half months.

Alongside the regional network change, privacy controls will be simplified. As Facebook rolls out the new privacy settings, users will be presented with a page designed to walk them through the new options. Depending on your current privacy level, Facebook will make recommendations, though you’ll be able to change them as usual.

The way Facebook makes its recommendations will have a huge impact on the site’s future. Right now, most people don’t share their content using the ‘everyone‘ option that Facebook introduced last summer. If Facebook pushes users to start using that, it could have a better stream of content to go against Twitter in the real-time search race. But Facebook has something to lose by promoting ‘everyone’ updates: given the long-standing private nature of Facebook, they could lead to a massive privacy fiasco as users inadvertently share more than they mean to.

Back when Facebook first announced the changes last July, it sounded like the site might go in that direction. But it may have had a change of heart, which could have been the cause of the delay. Facebook has started to backpedal from the Twitter-like redesign it launched in March by working an old-style News Feed back into the homepage. Perhaps the site has decided to favor privacy over real-time. We’ll find out in the next few weeks.

From Zuckerberg’s letter:

We’re adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload. In addition, we’ll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy settings page simpler by combining some settings. If you want to read more about this, we began discussing this plan back in July.

Since this update will remove regional networks and create some new settings, in the next couple of weeks we’ll ask you to review and update your privacy settings. You’ll see a message that will explain the changes and take you to a page where you can update your settings. When you’re finished, we’ll show you a confirmation page so you can make sure you chose the right settings for you. As always, once you’re done you’ll still be able to change your settings whenever you want.

We’ve worked hard to build controls that we think will be better for you, but we also understand that everyone’s needs are different. We’ll suggest settings for you based on your current level of privacy, but the best way for you to find the right settings is to read through all your options and customize them for yourself. I encourage you to do this and consider who you’re sharing with online.

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Flip, Through Mossberg, Announces TV Streaming Solution

Posted: 01 Dec 2009 06:27 PM PST

If you've been waiting for some way to put your low- to middling-resolution videos onto a big TV, your prayers have been answered. Flip, through their mouthpiece Walt Mossberg, just dumped out a big bucket of howsyerfather and announced the Flipshare for all to enjoy. Not much has changed since we spotted this device in October. It's not even live on the Flip site yet so it's abundantly clear that the WSJ servers jumped the gun on posting.

Google News Makes A Concession To Whining Publishers: Only First Five Clicks Are Free

Posted: 01 Dec 2009 05:35 PM PST

Today, the FTC held a hearing on the crisis in the (print) news publishing industry, which gave Rupert Murdoch yet another opportunity to publicly call out Google about its supposedly thieving ways. Google’s response: Hey, we send out 4 billion clicks a month to news sites. If you don’t now what to do with all that traffic, it’s not our fault. (I’m paraphrasing).

But Google also gave a concession to news publishers who have been complaining loudly about the backdoor to subscription-protected sites that is Google News. For instance, you can read WSJ.com stories for free if you search for them on Google News and then click through. News Corp, the owner of the Wall Street Journal, knows this, but allows it because otherwise Google won’t index its site and then it will lose 25 percent of its traffic.

Now Google is allowing publishers to opt into a First Click Free program, which should actually be called the First Five Clicks Are Free. A news site now can limit the number of free clicks from Google News for any individual to five a day. After that, anyone coming to their site from Google News will see a pay wall asking them to subscribe to read more. They can set the limit higher if they want or not have any limit at all. It’s up to them.

While this change in policy answers one of the main criticisms of Google News from publishers who want to grow their online subscription revenues, in reality it will do little to change the economics of the online news industry or the behavior of online news readers. Very few people call up a search of every article from the Wall Street Journal on a given day and click back and forth between Google News and the WSJ.com to read the entire paper for free. The vast majority of people find one or two WSJ.com stories on Google News, click through, and then continue surfing elsewhere across the Web.

The days of sitting down and reading an entire paper from front to back is over. On the Web, reading is more scattered as you flit from one link to the next and from site to site. Five free clicks per day is all most anyone really needs.

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Amazon Takes The Top Spot For Cyber Monday

Posted: 01 Dec 2009 04:06 PM PST

Experian Hitwise just released its Cyber Monday stats, with Amazon reportedly topping the list as the most visited retail website yesterday, seeing a 44% increase in visits compared to 2008. Amazon received 15.53% of the visits among the top 500 online retail sites. Hitwise says Amazon has been the top visited site on Cyber Monday since 2006.

Hitwise reports that among the top 500 retail websites, the percentage of U.S. online visits were down 9%o n Cyber Monday in 2009 compared to Cyber Monday 2008. Wal-Mart was the second most visited with 9.54% of visits followed by Target with 5.16%. BestBuy was the fourth most visited with 3.56% followed by JC Penney with 2.58 %. Walmart took the top spot for the most visited online site on Thanksgiving Day this year, according to Hitwise but Amazon edged out Walmart on Black Friday. This is the fifth year in a row that Wal-Mart was the top visited site on Thanksgiving Day.

Among the top 20 sites visited on Cyber Monday 2009, Staples saw the largest increase in visits compared to 2008 with a 61% increase, Barnes & Noble saw a 46% increase.The Apple Store, which didn’t make Hitwise’s top 20 sites, saw a 71% increase in visits on Cyber Monday 2009 versus 2008. Online stores who dropped in traffic from last year included Overstock.com (down 25%) and Home Depot (down 29%).

Most signs point to a positive trend when it comes to online sales and traffic this year. Coremetrics reported that online retailers saw a 13.7 percent increase in sales compared to last year, and 24.1 percent more than on Black Friday 2009. According to Hitwise, traffic to retail sites on Black Friday was up 9%. Of course, Hitwsie is just one metric used to measure traffic for these sites; comScore also provides an accurate measure for statistics but has not released its data yet for Cyber Monday.

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Fotonauts Raises $1.1 Million, Shifts Fotopedia From Desktop To Web

Posted: 01 Dec 2009 03:42 PM PST

We are big fans of Fotopedia (which is also known as Fotonauts), TechCrunch50 startup that turns your photo albums into collaborative Web pages about different topics and subjects. According to an SEC filing, Fotonauts raised $1.1 million in funding from Ignition Partners, Banexi Ventures and Jean-Marie Hullot, the founder of Fotonauts. Hullot confirmed the funding with TechCrunch. Previously, Fotonauts had raised $2.3 million in seed funding.

Recently launched Fotopedia is supposed to be a cross between Flickr and Wikipedia, serving as an archive of "images for humanity." Fotopedia’s newest platform lets you turn any photo album from your photos into a Web page entry on Fotopedia, complete with tags, associated Wikipedia entry, and Google Map information where available. Hullot told us that Fotopedia is now completely web-based, (the startup previously debuted with a desktop client) and that users will no longer need the desktop client to create and publish slideshows on Fotopedia. The platform is not dropping the client all together, so users can still continue to interact with the desktop app.

On the Fotopedia web site, anyone can access albums for a variety of topics, places, people and more. There are over 300,000 high quality pictures organized into 18,000 “articles.” Each article is a Web slide show, along with the associated Wikipedia entry and Google Map. Each photo contains a good amount of metadata making it search-engine friendly. The encyclopedia tab on the site lets you access a indexed archive of photo albums on topics like geography, history, art and more.

Hullot told us that a significant amount of growth since its launch earlier this year, adding Facebook Connect and even venturing into marketing partnerships. The startup is set to announce a a joint partnership centered around the UN Climate Change conference next week.

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What A Square Receipt Actually Looks Like

Posted: 01 Dec 2009 02:43 PM PST

squarereceiptWe’ve already had a number of posts about Square, the new mobile payment platform launched by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey today, but we’re going to keep posting on it, because it’s just that good. Most of the earlier stories covering the launch of Square included a screenshot of an example receipt that is displayed on Square’s site right now. The actual receipt doesn’t quite look like that, but it’s close.

I know this because I actually used Square today to buy myself and Dorsey coffee at Sightglass, which is already using the payment system. I made the purchase at 8:47 this morning and the receipt was immediately emailed to me in the form of a link to a Square page. On this page is a receipt featuring the logo of the vendor, their email address, and their Twitter handle. Below that, it shows the amount and the exact time of purchase. And below that is a Google Map of where the transaction was made and your signature.

Other real-world places such as Apple stores have been doing email receipts for a while, but this absolutely should be the way of the future. Not only can I see what I bought, I can easily see and remember where I bought it, and it shows exactly how it will be displayed on my credit card receipt.

It’s also humorous how bad my signature is when done with my finger on an iPod touch screen. Naturally, it doesn’t look nearly as good as the example screenshot. Speaking of that shot, Dorsey did note that in the future they plan to acknowledge how many times you’ve been to a certain place, and could even offer up deals from the vendors — not unlike the Foursquare coupon model, which Dorsey is also an investor in.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, there is also a plan to offer instant SMS receipts as an option in the future.

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Tech CEOs See Flat Annual Compensation For The First Time In A Decade

Posted: 01 Dec 2009 02:21 PM PST

In most years, come rain or shine, executive pay at technology startups always goes up because the competition for talent is always so intense. In 2009, however, cash compensation for CEOs at private technology companies will be flat compared to last year, according to a new CompStudy by executive search firm J. Robert Scott and Ernst & Young. This will be the first time CEO pay at private tech companies won’t go up since the survey began ten years ago.

Even with flat paychecks, nobody will be shedding a tear for these CEOs. But it does show that nobody was immune to the recession.

The average cash compensation for private tech CEOs in 2009 is on target to be $231,000, versus $230,000 last year. The average bonus for 2008 (which is also normally part of 2009 compensation) was an additional $61,000, and was down 6 percent from the prior year. These numbers are based on a survey of about 500 tech companies, most of which have fewer than 75 employees.

The survey also looked at executive pay at 200 private biotech and life sciences firms. Life Sciences CEOs fared better, with a 3.2 percent increase in base pay to $273,000. Their average bonus for 2008, however, was smaller at $48,000, or 44 percent of their target compared to 77 percent of the target the year before.

Below are some charts from the study, showing compensation across different titles for technology execs and equity compensation. Founder CEOs on average have 30 percent equity, while non-founder CEOs have 6 percent. Founder COOs have 18 percent, founder CTOs hold 12 percent, founder CFOs have 10.5 percent, founder heads of engineering have 8.8 percent, and founder head of sales have 7.7 percent. The corresponding equity positions for hires are between 1 and 3 percent.

Hat tip to @altgate. Photo credit: Flickr/memekode

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Heyzap Brings Xbox Live-Style Achievements To Flash Gaming

Posted: 01 Dec 2009 02:00 PM PST

One of the long-standing problems with Flash games is that they often have a very short shelf life: you may play for a few minutes when you’re bored, but there’s nothing to really keep you coming back for more. Today Heyzap, the startup that offers a platform for monetizing and distributing Flash games, is looking to help developers with that problem by bringing the achievements system popularized by Xbox Live (and subsequently Playstation Network) to Flash games. The company is also allowing developers to integrate a virtual currency into their games that is based on a player’s achievements.

For those that haven’t played Xbox Live before, achievements are essentially arbitrary tasks created by the game developer (for example, beating the first level or creating a new character). Using Heyzap, developers can create these achievements and reward players with points that can be put towards buying in-game items.

Heyzap has offered support for virtual currencies before this, but up until now these have been based on real money — to earn points, you either had to buy them with your credit card or complete offers. Today’s launch introduces a second set of currency that lets developers reward players for playing their games a lot. In effect, it presents gamers with two routes to success: they can either play through the game the old fashioned way to unlock things at a fairly slow pace, or they can pay money to jump ahead. It’s the same mechanic that has made games like Farmville so successful.

For now, Heyzap will help developers syndicate a player’s achievements to Facebook and Twitter. In the near future it also plans to offer a profile that compiles all of a player’s achievements — even across multiple games — into one place.

Heyzap says it now powers 10 million game plays monthly across 100,000 websites.

If you want to see what the new Points and Achievements systems look like in action, you can see them in the game embedded below:





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