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- Outright Tracking More Than $1 Billion, Launches W-9 Management Service
- Skribit Finally Launches, Aims to Cure Your Writer’s Block
- Local Advertising Startup Yodle Sues Former Employees Over Alleged Data Theft
- The Swiss Give Us A Peek At 360-Degree VideoStreetView Maps
- CrunchGear Reviews the Vibram Five Fingers KSO Trek
- Greystripe And Tribal Fusion See Success With Web-To-Mobile Ad Campaigns
- Skimlinks Secures Series A Funding To Expand In US
- Plurk Still Considers Suing Microsoft Over Copy-Paste Debacle In China
- Twitter’s Retweet Button Gone Missing Again (Update: Messages Delayed Too)
- Russian Investment Group DST Ups Its Facebook Stake To 5%+, Wants More
- Aria: Providing Cheaper PCI Compliance for Payment Processors
- CrunchBase Product Update: Follow Products and Companies, Top 10 List and Twitter Feeds
- Are U.S. Drones Really Being Watched With a Simple “Satellite Internet Downloader?”
- Get Ready For The Google Branded Chrome OS Netbook
- Exclusive: Ex-MySpace Execs Launch Gravity Into Private Beta
- Craigslist Unclogs Yahoo Pipes
- Google Browser Size Helps Keep Your Content Above The Fold
- Danke! Twitter Rolls Out German Version
- RepairPal Grabs $4 Million For Google Health For Cars
- Earth Aid Pays You To Save Energy
- As Zynga Closes Funding, It Answers Its Critics
- A Great Deal On A Handgun. Woot!
- Rackspace Endorses reMail To Bring Full-Text Email Search To Its iPhone Customers
- Facebook Helps Brands Get A Clue With Preferred Developer Consultant Program
- App Store Champ Smule Raises Another $8 Million
| Outright Tracking More Than $1 Billion, Launches W-9 Management Service Posted: 17 Dec 2009 09:00 AM PST
Outright.com’s platform manages all business finances, tracks income and expenses, and automates tax preparation. The site is now launching a new automated W-9 management service today. A W-9 tax form is required for anyone outside of employees to whom you pay money (i.e. contractors, freelancers), to ensure you properly file a 1099. Outright strips the W-9 form from confusing IRS jargon and simplifies the language so both business owners and contract workers can easily understand how to fill the forms out. Contract workers fill out the W-9 online, business owner tracks W-9 status online and Outright assures that all information is transferred safely and securely. Outright will then track the status of W-9s for business owners to make sure all IRS deadlines are met, and penalties are avoided. Launched earlier this year, the startup recently raised $5 million in funding and previously raised $2 million in seed funding. It’s not surprising that Outright has been able to gain traction as a popular bookkeeping application; it’s easy to use and it has integrations that are useful for the self-employed, such as a plug-in with FreshBooks, Expensify and Shoeboxed. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Skribit Finally Launches, Aims to Cure Your Writer’s Block Posted: 17 Dec 2009 08:56 AM PST
Skribit, the startup that is trying to help cure writer’s block, has opened its doors to the public after being in beta since its inception at Startup Weekend Atlanta in November of 2007. Yes, that’s a really long time to be in beta, but Skribit is now ready to show all of its glory to the public. The main idea of Skribit is quite simple — to cure writer’s block as well as help bloggers and other website owners receive suggestions and topics to write about. It’s a problem that every blogger has. Coming up with original story ideas is hard. So it’s great to see a service try to address the problem and hopefully “cure it” through crowdsourcing. Skribit is offering TechCrunch readers 100 free pro accounts, if you use the code “techcrunch” when signing up. To use Skribit, all you do is install a customizable widget or a suggestions tab, which allows readers to make suggestions. People can follow these suggestions and get notified when they are completed and blogged about. Users may also follow their friends and see their recent activity throughout Skribit. Skribit offers a free account, as well as a pro account, which removes restrictions on the number of blogs and suggestions as well as introduces suggestion moderation and better widget and suggestions tabs customization. Skribit co-founder Paul Stamatiou says that the goal of Skribit is to enter the analytics space as well as offer solutions for larger publishers in the near future. Stamatiou, a recent Georgia Tech graduate, worked on Skribit part-time until his graduation and has been a full-time employee for a year now. Also, Skribit is a member company of Georgia Tech’s ATDC incubator and received a seed round from the Georgia Tech Edison Fund last December. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Local Advertising Startup Yodle Sues Former Employees Over Alleged Data Theft Posted: 17 Dec 2009 07:57 AM PST
Caveat: apparently the three ex-employees now all work for a company that rivals Yodle in the local online advertising space. New York City-based Yodle helps local businesses advertise online by publishing ads on search engines and driving leads to its custom-built client sites. Former Yodle employees Daniel Mousetis, Christopher Esgro and Ronald Pousson, who once ran Yodle’s Philadelphia operations, allegedly helped competitor Local Internet Doctors to ‘hack’ Yodle’s systems and steal proprietary data, according to a complaint filed earlier this week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. LID was founded by Pousson together with his partner Frank Norris, who is the fourth defendant in the suit. Since the ‘hacking’ involved using an old user name and password to gain access to the system, the alleged employment contract violations and data theft clearly weigh more. Fired June 5, 2009, Pousson allegedly began soliciting other Yodle employees, saying he had found work at a Yodle competitor, WebVisible. In reality, Pousson had founded Local Internet Doctors along with Norris, according to the complaint, to compete with Yodle directly. Beyond soliciting Yodle’s employees, Pousson also allegedly gained unauthorized access to Yodle’s computer systems, the complaint adds. With that access, Pousson allegedly downloaded as much confidential information as he could, including “competitively sensitive” data on Yodle’s current and prospective customers — names, contact information, monthly budgets and contract terms, according to the complaint. The suit accuses all defendants of conversion, tortious interference with business and contractual relations and civil conspiracy. It also accuses Pousson, Mousetis and Esgro of breach of duty and loyalty, misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of implied contract and violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. (Source: Law360) Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| The Swiss Give Us A Peek At 360-Degree VideoStreetView Maps Posted: 17 Dec 2009 07:25 AM PST
As Google keeps collecting 360-degree Street View, panoramic photos of the world’s roadways, bike paths, and park trails, most of us are becoming accustomed to calling them up on Google Maps. Microosft and even MapQuest now have street-level photos. Now that we’ve mastered placing stitched-together panoramic photos on a map, the next step is obviously to go to video. Europe seems to be ahead of the U.S. in this regard. I’ve already written about yellowBird in the Netherlands. Now, GlobalVision drove a Citroen equipped with 360-degree video cameras around Switzerland and put up a demo site called VideoStreetView to show off the experience. (They’ll have to be careful, though, the Swiss are particularly sensitive when it comes to public images on maps). The VideoStreetView site shows a map on the right and the video view on the left. Red lines on the map indicate which routes have accompanying video footage. You pick a starting point and an end point and then the video starts playing, showing you what’s along the route. But just like a 360-degree photo, you can swivel the view in any direction and the video continues to play from that angle. Below the video and map, there is a street listing on the bottom left and points of interest on the right. These are clickable, and the points of interest could easily contain businesses which might pay for placement. The site takes a little getting used to and the UI is a bit clunky, but it shows what is possible with 360-degree video maps. The technology works. The user interface just needs to be simplified so that people can jump right in without wondering what to do. But seeing the technology actually work makes you wonder how long it can be before we see video street views in Google Maps. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| CrunchGear Reviews the Vibram Five Fingers KSO Trek Posted: 17 Dec 2009 07:00 AM PST  Short Version: There are two kinds of people in the world: those who will wear Vibram Five Finger shoes and those who won't. After a bout with plantar fasciitis and shinsplints, I joined the former camp and feel much better for it. These new shoes, called the VFF KSO (Keep Stuff Out) Trek, add a bit of coverage to what are essentially foot gloves for running, hiking, and looking like a total freak.
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| Greystripe And Tribal Fusion See Success With Web-To-Mobile Ad Campaigns Posted: 17 Dec 2009 05:30 AM PST
Mobile ad network Greystripe recently partnered with ad placement service Tribal Fusion to allow online ads to run on iPhones, diminishing the need for mobile specific ad formats. The partnership allows online ads to run on iPhones, eliminating additional mobile campaign creative production and dealing with an additional mobile advertising vendor. And of course, online ad budgets tend to be higher than mobile ad budgets, so Greystripe says this saves companies money. Greystripe, which extended the ads to over five hundred online to mobile campaigns, says that advertisers are seeing 10-20 percent higher performance with the mobile-online ad compared to the same online campaigns with average click through rates above one percent. The mobile ad network maintains that its rich media, Flash full-screen ads generate higher click through rates and are able to generate better revenue to its publishers. With the Tribal Fusion program, Greystripe takes online Flash ads and transcodes them to make them fit on iPhones. Although Greystripe claims its rates are higher, we’ve heard they are on par with AdMob’s rates. That being said, the program does make it easier for ads to travel seamlessly from web-based to mobile platforms. It’s important to note that one of the leaders in the ad network space, AdMob, was recently acquired by Google, leaving many of its competitors scrambling to compete with one of the largest companies in the world. Greystripe has been actively working to innovate its offerings over the past year; and has even received an $2 million infusion from NBC Universal. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Skimlinks Secures Series A Funding To Expand In US Posted: 17 Dec 2009 05:04 AM PST
The round, effectively a follow-on internal round, was led by Sussex Place Ventures and includes the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) and The Accelerator Group, along with a number of the original angel investors involved in Skimlinks' seed round earlier in the year. The funding will be used by the company to expand its US operations, along with investing in sales and marketing initiatives, and product development. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Plurk Still Considers Suing Microsoft Over Copy-Paste Debacle In China Posted: 17 Dec 2009 04:47 AM PST
Microsoft was quick to blame a third-party vendor for cutting a few corners here and there when developing the beta service (MSN Juku), and promptly yanked it off the Web. The company said it felt ‘disappointed’ in the vendor that worked together with its MSN China joint venture and said it would be reevaluating practices around applications code provided by third-party vendors. But as far as Plurk’s concerned, that’s not where the story ends. Just moments ago, Plurk published an official response to the public apology on its blog, saying it still mulls taking legal actions against the Redmond software giant. Microsoft, Plurk alleges, assumes responsibility but doesn’t offer accountability. In the words of Plurk co-founder Alvin Woon:
Meanwhile, Plurk keeps getting heaps of promotion because of this whole ordeal. Irony much? Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Twitter’s Retweet Button Gone Missing Again (Update: Messages Delayed Too) Posted: 17 Dec 2009 04:34 AM PST
The retweet feature, which was rolled out to the masses at the beginning of November, has gone missing before: it disappeared right after launch due to technical issues, and it was again temporarily removed two weeks ago. Now it’s gone again. For the record: we can’t find any mention of the removal on Twitter’s Status blog and the @twitterapi account isn’t providing any clarification either. The meaning of all this? Absolutely nothing, except that if you’ve just gotten used to spread other people’s tweets using the native functionality you’ll need to resort back to effectively typing “RT” before the full tweet, or use a Twitter client that has similar functionality built-in. We’ll tell you when the oft-disliked, confusing functionality makes it way back to Twitter. In the meantime, try not to panic. And don’t forget to retweet this post, by any means necessary. Update: Twitter seems to be running into more issues with the service, as lots of users are reporting missing out on tweets from people they follow, and a general slowness. (Thanks for the tip, Startups Nigeria) Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Russian Investment Group DST Ups Its Facebook Stake To 5%+, Wants More Posted: 17 Dec 2009 03:55 AM PST
Furthermore, DST is looking to increase its stake in Facebook even more, according to Yakov Sadchikov from Quintura, who picked up on the news this morning. The Russian investment group earlier this year invested $200 million in Facebook, giving the company a $10 billion valuation. Additionally, DST at the time had the option to buy another $100 million worth of common stock from existing employees and investors, which is exactly what it ended up doing last July (under unfavorable terms for former Facebook employees). The Road To 5% Kommersant now cites a source with inside knowledge of the firm’s operations as saying DST has invested up to $400 million in Facebook to date, bringing its stake in the social networking company to over 5%, more than three times Microsoft’s stake (1.6%). Broken down, that means Digital Sky Technologies took 1.96% in preferred shares for the $200M financing and increased its total stake by more than 3% so far, by buying up common shares at $14.77 per share. Hungry For More Still according to the business paper, the source claimed DST started another round of common share purchasing in October at the same valuation, and intends to increase its Facebook share even more in the future. For your background: Facebook recently said over 350 million people have now registered for the social network, and in September announced that it had turned cash-flow positive. Its annual revenue is estimated at about $500 million. We’ve contacted Facebook for more information and will update if they get back to us. Update: unsurprisingly, Facebook commented that it doesn’t disclose shareholder percentages as a private company. Digital Sky Technologies has been pretty busy lately: just this month the investment company announced the merger of Astrum Online with Mail.ru (DST backed both companies), were rumored to be negotiating the acquisition of ICQ with AOL and led a $180 million investment round in social gaming company Zynga. Something tells me we’ll be hearing much more from the investment firm in 2010. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Aria: Providing Cheaper PCI Compliance for Payment Processors Posted: 17 Dec 2009 02:47 AM PST  Achieving Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance for online transactions is an expensive and timely endeavor; routinely costing hundreds of thousands of dollars and spanning several quarters in tim. According to Gartner, PCI compliance will cost up to an average of $2.7 million among Level 1 merchants and $267,000 among Level 2 merchants. Further, Visa and Mastercard will be imposing new PCI requirements upon online merchants, which will include more frequent on and off site security reviews, beginning in 2010; thus forcing more companies to upgrade their systems to meet compliance standards. Demand billing and recurring subscription management company, Aria, offers a solution built to manage PCI compliance for companies.
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| CrunchBase Product Update: Follow Products and Companies, Top 10 List and Twitter Feeds Posted: 17 Dec 2009 01:40 AM PST Since the official launch of our integration between CrunchBase and Facebook Connect in November, we’ve seen 19% (5,087 out of 26,850) of our edits come from newly registered, non-anonymous users. Even after the predictable spike around the announcement, we’ve seen a sustained and growing percentage of our edits coming from these users. As they say, no good deed goes unpunished, so we thought it would be fun to give some credit to those users most actively involved in keeping CrunchBase up-to-date and accurate (apart from our internal team of course – it just wouldn’t be a contest). The top ten startup gurus are now highlighted in the right-hand column on the CrunchBase home page, and you can also view the full list to find out where you stack up. We’re planning to completely open up registration (without requiring Facebook Connect) in the near future as well to further broaden the field. We’re also excited to announce a few new ways for you to keep up to date with the latest CrunchBase data. First, there are now two Twitter feeds that are updated with funding rounds and acquisitions as they are added to CrunchBase; just follow @CB_fundings and @CB_acquisitions on Twitter. We’ll be adding more feeds in the future – suggestions about which ones you would find most useful are welcome. If you’d like to keep visitors to your site advised of the most recent happenings in the startup world, we suggest that you embed the Twitter widget by pasting the following code in the location of your choice: Acquisitions; Funding Rounds. If RSS is more your style, you now have the ability to create a custom RSS feed based on pages on CrunchBase that interest you – maybe the Nexus One, for example. Every page in CrunchBase has a “Follow” button that will add all major milestones for that person, product, or company to your custom RSS feed. The feed will appear on your account page (you’ll need to create an account) and you can import it to the reader of your choice as well. Just don’t tell Steve Gillmor. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Are U.S. Drones Really Being Watched With a Simple “Satellite Internet Downloader?” Posted: 17 Dec 2009 01:26 AM PST  Either the WSJ hasn't taken their anti-crazy pills or there is something severely wrong with the military industrial complex. I'm betting on both. The story says, essentially, that insurgents in Iraq are "taking control" of our pilotless drones with a $25 piece of software called SkyGrabber. By "take control" the WSJ means "download video feeds from" and by "software" I mean essentially a satellite network snooper. Now I'm not a rocket scientist, but it looks like what is happening here is that Iraqis are pointing their satellite dishes into the air and watching for downloads. This would be approximately equivalent to packet or token sniffing that, if I'm not mistaken, is popular with teen l33t haX0rz.
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| Get Ready For The Google Branded Chrome OS Netbook Posted: 17 Dec 2009 12:57 AM PST
Google has said from the beginning that they plan on working with select manufacturers to ensure a good Chrome OS experience for users when devices first hit the market next year. From an early FAQ: “The Google Chrome OS team is currently working with a number of technology companies to design and build devices that deliver an extraordinary end user experience. Among others, these companies include Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba.” Most people assume that “working with” around Chrome OS means the same thing as “working with” around Android – lots of meetings to make sure the devices and software work together as well as possible. But sometimes those pesky hardware guys just don’t do things quite right. And when you’re competing against Apple, everything most definitely needs to be quite right. That may explain why Google has, according to multiple sources, been talking to at least one hardware manufacturer about building a netbook for Google directly. As in Google gave the company a RFP with quite detailed technical specifications and has begun discussions on building it. They’re not in any particular hurry and seem to be aiming for the 2010 holiday season, a full year from now. Our understanding is that Google intends to have the devices built, branded with Google, and then sell them directly to consumers. The only firm tech spec we’ve heard is that they’ll be mobile enabled, and likely tied to one or more carriers with a subsidy. I’m dying to get my hands on that RFP and have been feverishly calling our contacts in Taiwan and China to see if we can get someone to quietly hand it over to us. In particular I want to know whether Google is going with an Intel Atom processor, the current leader in netbooks, or may be considering an ARM CPU. I’d be willing to bet one of our writers’ right hands that it’s ARM. And I’d even go out on a limb and suggest that they may very well be targeting Nvidia’s Tegra line. Those chips are outperforming Atom in every way, say some of the hardware guys we know. HD Flash video no problem (something the Atom can’t do), and at a fraction of the power usage. What does that mean? It means next Christmas you may be getting a high performance Google branded netbook running Chrome OS for next to nothing. And if it’s running ARM, Intel is going to be freaking the hell out about it. As an aside, if you need a netbook now, I’d recommend the Nokia Booklet 3G. It’s amazing, and you can get it for $300 with a 2 year AT&T data plan. Nokia may not be able to make phones anyone gets excited about any more, but that netbook is cool. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Exclusive: Ex-MySpace Execs Launch Gravity Into Private Beta Posted: 16 Dec 2009 08:37 PM PST
In May we learned that the company, then called Blue Rover Labs, had raised $10 million in funding. We also heard a few details about what the startup might be about: Today the company, now called Gravity, is launching into private beta. At a high level Gravity is an evolution on forums (vBulletin, phpBB, etc.) and groups (Yahoo Groups, Google Groups, etc.) services, which haven’t evolved much over the last decade. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Gravity is available both as a website service at Gravity.com as well as distributed via widgets and an API. They are also offering compelling analytics services for any service that hosts conversations (think broadly – Twitter, FriendFeed, Google Wave, etc.). That service, called Insights, is arguably a startup in itself. And, finally, Gravity has created a new way of thinking about and exploiting conversational data. They call the way they track and predict the relationships between people and things the Interest Graph (a play on Social Graph, a popular way of describing online relationships between people). I go into more detail on the products below. And here’s a video I took of the team in their Santa Monica offices yesterday: Gravity: The Service
Gravity won’t be a mystery to anyone familiar with groups or forums. But their goal is to bring some more recent thinking on data architecture and user interface to the table. The team also makes it clear that they think of their domain as much wider than now-ancient forum software. A lot of what they’re talking about is comparable to features added to Twitter, FriendFeed and Google Wave. The goal is to help users discover topics that they’ll be interested in quickly, and then foster productive conversation. Some of the features are simple and effective – like giving badges for participation. And others are just proven engagement tacticts, like adding a “like” link by comments to show support for what’s being said. This is nothing new to users of sites like Facebook and Twitter, but it’s compelling stuff when you look at aging forum services. If anything, Gravity is a nice balance of fun, fluffy stuff and seriously thought through features. Here’s an internal Gravity chart, for example, showing how Gravity compares to Google Wave and Twitter. This isn’t to show one is better than the others. It’s a way of quickly visualizing exactly what Gravity is and isn’t:
Insights AnalyticsThink Google Analytics but for converstationally-focused services. In addition to tracking visitors, pageviews, signups, etc., Insights shows you how many threads and posts are being created over time. It also shows which threads are the most active, most viewed, etc. It works on Gravity’s service as well as other third party forum software and services. In fact, Gravity has been testing Insights with a bunch of third party forum sites for some time now. They’ll provide the service to third parties for free. Their goal is to get access to the data to better build and understand the Interest Graph (more on that below). Here are some screenshots of Insights. The first one, which shows a stream of pictures being added to a forum as well as a live stream thread, is actually a pretty compelling user-facing product, too.
The Interest Graph
This isn’t a product or feature, it’s the religion of the Gravity service. The company isn’t giving a lot of detail on the software behind the Interest Graph, but they are willing to take time to describe the philosophy. The idea is that knowing which people are connected to which people is great for social networks, and Facebook and others have done a good job at that. Gravity is building an Interest Graph, which shows the relationships between people and topics that they are passionate about. Person A may love baseball and the NYTimes. Person B may love action movies and squirrels. Given enough data the service can start to predict exactly what you’re interested in over time. And they’re going to great lengths to gather that data. It isn’t simply based on what topics you start and add to. Gravity is also analyzing the language you use to gather further information about your interests.
Not only can they use that data to push you to new content you may be interested in, it gives them an amazing dataset to advertise against. And that’s the real value of Gravity. The more time I spent with the team the more clear it was that the conversation engine that people will use is merely the very tip of what this company is doing. There’s an ambitious project below the water line that has to do with gathering, analyzing and leveraging data to give people exactly what they want, when they want it. Even, eventually, advertising. Fascinating stuff. Trying Out GravityYou can sign up for the Gravity private beta on their home page. Make sure to properly fill out the form, they want to first add people who they think will really like using the service. And if you add TechCrunch in the appropriate field it will get you in quicker. Look for first invites to go out in a couple of weeks.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Craigslist Unclogs Yahoo Pipes Posted: 16 Dec 2009 06:01 PM PST
While Craigslist was initially quiet about the ban (it didn’t warn developers at all), CEO Jim Buckmaster did write a blog post the next day explaining the site’s rationale:
We’ve reached out to Maxwell to see if his app, Flippity, has been restored as well, or if it is considered to be in violation of Craigslist’s terms. Update: Maxwell says that his team decided to drop ties with Craigslist ever since the incident. He notes that while they could have continued using Craigslist data using something other than Yahoo Pipes, they have instead chosen to rewrite the site to use eBay’s API, which has been a positive experience thus far. Flippity is still a work in progress. Image by foxrosser Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Google Browser Size Helps Keep Your Content Above The Fold Posted: 16 Dec 2009 05:31 PM PST
One issue web designers face is ensuring that they keep their important content “above the fold” — you don’t want users to have to scroll down to see the hottest story or a call to action. Browser Size helps with this, by visualizing just what percentage of the Internet-browsing population can see a certain part of your page. This is related not only to screen resolution, but also how large people keep their browser windows. Using the tool is simple: type a URL in at the top of the screen, and the site will load your webpage in the background. It will then overlay a semi-transparent graphic depicting how much of the web’s population can view each section of your page without scrolling. The results aren’t particularly exciting — the further down or to the side you go, the fewer people can see it. But this will certainly be helpful for web designers. The data is generated based on the browser size of users who visit Google.com. Google says that it found that the install rate for Google Earth increased by a whopping 10% simply by moving it 100 pixels higher on the page.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Danke! Twitter Rolls Out German Version Posted: 16 Dec 2009 04:01 PM PST
The last of the “FIGS” has been completed. Twitter has rolled out a German version of the site today. The microblogging platform previously launched Italian, French, and Spanish versions of the site. As we’ve said in the past, Twitter is crowd-sourcing much of the work for these translations and the speed at which they’ve added the translations is impressive. Twitter was previously available in English and Japanese. As usual, Twitter has written the latest blog post on the matter in the native tongue, so we'll (roughly) translate it below. German is one of the most widespread languages of the EU and is the last language we introduced in 2009 on Twitter.com. With the indispensable help of our many fantastic translators and translators, we have five new languages in less than two months introduced – a huge achievement for our international group. The faster we can make available to Twitter for people all over the world, influencing the faster the different cultures of the world, the global conversation on Twitter. Here are a few German-speaking users who are already actively engaging on Twitter and might interest you: @ SPIEGEL_Eil-German magazine To set your language preferences, visit your preferences page and select German in the drop-down menu “Language”. The whole web interface is now translated! As a next step, visit and follow the official “Twitter in German” profile @ Twitter_De. Thus, our German users can stay informed about news at Twitter up to date. Last, tell your friends know and go ahead and twittering! Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| RepairPal Grabs $4 Million For Google Health For Cars Posted: 16 Dec 2009 03:49 PM PST
Startup RepairPal, an auto repair and maintenance information site, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Tugboat Ventures, with Rick Keister, David Strohm, Mark Goines, and Michael Torres participating. The startup previously raised $3 million in seed and angel funding. The site, which we reviewed last year, is similar to a Google Health for cars. You get price estimates for different parts and repair jobs for your car. You enter your car year, model, and mileage, and it spits out price ranges for your zip code. There is also a directory of hundreds of thousands of local mechanics, with each shop placed onto a Google Map. Members can rate each mechanic and once a repair is completed, you can keep an online service record at RepairPal. It’s like a one-stop shop to maintain and record the health of your car. RepairPal also launched a free, handy iPhone app which will help users find reasonable prices for car repairs and provided them with locations of reputable repair shops in their areas on the go. The app also includes Google Maps integration, user reviews for each shop and a list of towing and roadside assistance services based on your location. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Earth Aid Pays You To Save Energy Posted: 16 Dec 2009 03:35 PM PST
New ways to monitor your home energy usage over the Internet are springing up. Google offers Powermeter and Microsoft has Hohm. Just last week we wrote about Wattvision. Now you can add Earth Aid to the list. But Earth Aid doesn’t just show you charts of how much energy and water your household goes through. It offers a rewards program to encourage you to save energy. Earth Aid monitors how much electricity, water, and natural gas you use and how much you spend on these utilities. It grabs the data directly from the utilities (with your permission), and compares how much energy and water you consume to the same month a year ago. As you consume less energy and water, you get reward points which are redeemable at local businesses. These are just like travel rewards, except for saving energy. You get to feel good and shop at the same time. The company also sells equipment to help make your house more energy efficient. And really, the only way you are really going to be able to keep racking up points is to change some equipment in your house. There is only so much you can turn the heat down or change your behavior to save water. Once you do those things, you are down to swapping out equipment and insulating your house better. If it takes rewards points to make people realize they should do that anyway, I guess that’s better (for the environment) than flying around the world to rack up points.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| As Zynga Closes Funding, It Answers Its Critics Posted: 16 Dec 2009 03:31 PM PST
Among the hardest: Playing that YouTube video for him at the very top of the show and asking him exactly what he was thinking. He answers in the clip below. The whole show can be found here. Update: We’ve apparently crashed their servers, but NBC Bay Area is working on fixing them. If the video below doesn’t work, try again a bit later — the video is well worth watching. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| A Great Deal On A Handgun. Woot! Posted: 16 Dec 2009 02:21 PM PST
Today, the most popular items in this deals section include a bunch of video games, some tennis shoes, a monitor, some laser pointers, oh, and a 9mm handgun. Actually, the handgun is by far the most popular item of the day so far (Woot uses a Digg-like voting system on items). Thanks to a deal BudsGunShop.com is having, you can get this Smith & Wesson dual action pistol for the low low price of $283 after a $50 rebate. Of course, as the site notes, “THIS ITEM HAS HI CAPACITY MAGS AND CANNOT BE SHIPPED TO NEW YORK OR CALIFORNIA.” As you might expect, the Woot page for the item has already turned into a back and forth about the gun laws in America. Here’s a good one, “Anyone who has a problem with America, can get the #$%@ out and go live in Canada.” Here’s another, “Guns don’t kill people. People do. Guns just make it really easy.” Buying handguns online is not illegal in most states, but it is a pain. Apparently, you’re free to buy the gun, but it has to be shipped to a federally licensed dealer in your state, where you then have to go fill out paperwork and pass the background check before you can pick it up. Also, the idea of Woot as a go-to place for handgun deals is kind of humorous and probably not what the people behind the site originally envisioned it as. But when you open it up to the community, they’re going to do what they want to do.
[thanks Shmuel] Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Rackspace Endorses reMail To Bring Full-Text Email Search To Its iPhone Customers Posted: 16 Dec 2009 01:47 PM PST
reMail launched its iPhone app back in August, offering a very powerful and speedy alternative to the native iPhone mail client, which has a number of shortcomings. For one, the iPhone’s default app stores only a limited number of messages on your phone — it needs to query the server for anything going back more than a few dozen messages, which means you’re out of luck if you’re on a plane and need to look something up. reMail manages to store your entire Email account on your phone using some advanced compression techniques (you can fit 100,000 messages into 500 megabytes) which gives you full text search at all times and is generally snappier than the normal search. reMail has recently been tweaking its pricing model. It orginially launched as a $4.99 premium app, but recently shifted to a freemium model. You can now download reMail for free and use that with your Gmail account, but if you want to get IMAP access (which is what many people use for their work accounts) then you usually pay $3.99. Rackspace customers are getting that IMAP access for 99 cents.  Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Facebook Helps Brands Get A Clue With Preferred Developer Consultant Program Posted: 16 Dec 2009 01:01 PM PST
The directory is launching with 14 consultants, including Wildfire, a platform for building Facebook-enabled promotions (covered here) and Involver, which recently powered the launch of Alicia Key’s new album on Facebook. Facebook is allowing other consultants to apply as well. To become part of the program, consultants will have to demonstrate how they’ve previously built engaging experiences using Facebook, including screenshots and other examples. There isn’t an application fee, though I suspect the waiting period to gain acceptance will be long initially as the site sees a large influx of applications. Facebook says that brands have been asking for suggestions about consultants for some time, which is what prompted them to release the directory. It will surely be great news to anyone who manages to get accepted (especially the 14 launch partners) but it will also make it harder for newcomers to get their foot in the door. The big will get bigger, and everyone else will get left in the dust. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| App Store Champ Smule Raises Another $8 Million Posted: 16 Dec 2009 12:59 PM PST
When you’re running on a hot streak of smash hits, it’s not too tough to find investors. Such is the case for Smule, the developers behind I Am T-Pain, Ocarina, Leaf Trombone, and a handful of other App Store success stories. Today, Smule is announcing that they’ve secured an $8 million dollar round of Series C funding. That’s an absolutely massive pot for a development house focused solely on the iPhone, and it more than doubles Smule’s total funding thus far. Read the rest of this entry at MobileCrunch >> Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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Microblogging startup 
Not spotting the retweet button/link in your 
Most of the tech world now considers it a given that Google will be selling its own unlocked phone, called the 
Back in March 2009 a trio of MySpace execs -COO 
Gravity allows people to create conversations around topics. The service will be available on the Gravity website as well as via widgets and an API (we’re talking to them about adding a Gravity conversation to each record on 
And they’re thinking about the decay rate of interests, too. You may be very interested in cars right now, but next month after you buy the new Honda you may not have the same level of interest. They’re able to see how engaged you are on certain topics, and how that maps statistically to what others are doing. That helps them build out a very interesting profile of who you are, and who you may be in the future.
Two weeks ago we wrote about the 
Most of us take them for granted, but web designers have to deal with a myriad of frustrating problems on a daily basis. From browsers that 
Just before 
A few weeks ago, 
Facebook has been making a strong push lately to embrace brands and celebrities through its Facebook Fan Pages, applications, and through Facebook Connect. Unfortunately, many brands have absolutely no idea how to engage their audience through the site. Today, Facebook is lending them a hand: it’s launching a 
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