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- Tap Tap Revenge 3 Downloaded 300,000 Times First 24 Hours After Going Free
- This Week On TechCrunch: Zuckerberg eaten by zebras, Al Qaeda invests in Twitter, Spotify profitable and more
- The Wonder Of Apple’s Tablet
- Merry Christmas, Meagan Donahue. You Are Going To Machu Picchu
- GROU.PS DIY Social Network Platform Reaches 2 Million Users, Becomes More Customizable
| Tap Tap Revenge 3 Downloaded 300,000 Times First 24 Hours After Going Free Posted: 26 Dec 2009 06:47 AM PST
Less than three months after launching its popular iPhone game Tap Tap Revenge 3 as a 99-cent app on iTunes, developer Tapulous made the game free a few days ago. The game was downloaded 300,000 times in 24 hours, overwhelming the Tapulous servers so much that the company had to turn off the online playing feature of the game. Tap Tap Revenge is now the No. 2 most popular free game on iTunes. Making Tap Tap Revenge 3 free is another high-profile bet on the power of in-app purchases. Tap Tap Revenge 3, which is a Guitar-Hero style game, comes with free music tracks, but you ca also buy new tracks through the game. So far, as a paid app, it’s sold about 1 million songs, but it believes it can sell a lot more by making the game free. The Tap Tap Revenge series of games have been downloaded more than 20 million times, and the company claims 4 million active users per month. Games do a better job than other categories when it comes to in-app purchases, although nearly all of the top-grossing apps in iTunes are still paid apps. But another iPhone game company, ngmoco, is shifting its entire strategy to from paid to free games with in-app purchases. It is not clear whether Tapulous is moving to this model as well, or launching new apps for 99 cents and then making them free once sales begin to die down. When it launches its next game, Riddim Ribbon, we’ll see if it is paid or free. If it is paid, one advantage of making Tap Tap Revenge 3 free now is that it can flood the market and then be used to cross-promote Riddim Ribbon. The shelf-life of an iPhone app is so short that it makes sense to sunset a paid app early to help push sales of a newer game. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Posted: 26 Dec 2009 01:32 AM PST
Safe in that knowledge, I can pretty much claim anything I like. That this week’s top story was Mark Zuckerberg being eaten by zebras, for example, or Al Qaeda investing in Twitter. Hell, I could probably claim that Spotify is profitable and it would still pass entirely without remark. Who would know? Just me and Google’s spider. But I’m a professional – which is why I only missed my Christmas Day deadline by 24 hours – and as such I take seriously my responsibility to bring you this week’s top stories, regardless of whether you care or not. Hell, I’ve even come up with a festive theme in a vain attempt to keep you reading. Even though I know you’re not. Here we go then… On the first day of Christmas, TechCrunch gave to you…. One billion dollar exits On the second day of Christmas, TechCrunch gave to you… Two out of every ten companies suffering from “stealth disease” On the third day of Christmas, TechCrunch gave to you… Four screenings of Avatar
Five hundred and fifty million dollars On the sixth day of Christmas, TechCrunch gave to you… Six-ty thousand nooks will be shipped by Barnes & Noble this year Seven million more dollars raised by ChaCha
Eight million dollars raised by Livemocha
Nine ‘rock-star’ names associated with WePay’s new group payments services
Ten IPO Candidates for 2010 Eleven billion valuation for Facebook
Twelve (at least) religions that I’ve certainly offended by suggesting that the entire world stops for Christmas. I look forward to the comments. Not that I’ll be reading them – after all, it’s Christmas! Have a good week! Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Posted: 25 Dec 2009 02:22 PM PST
My point in telling that story is that all signs indicate that we’re closing in on another new Apple product, a tablet computer. And the hype around it is already palpable. But so is the skepticism among many — skepticism similar to what I felt with the iPhone. “Why would anyone want a tablet computer?” “It will be way too expensive, no one will buy it.” “This is all just nonsense Apple hype.” Those are a few of the more common reactions against the still-mysterious device. But I’m not going to be tricked again. Conventional wisdom suggests that Apple will not be able to succeed where so many others have failed. But Apple makes billions defying conventional wisdom. The truth is that most of us don’t understand the allure of a tablet computer because they’ve all sucked up until now. It’s the exact same reason that I didn’t understand the iPhone at first. My cellphones leading up to the iPhone ranged from “okay” to “junk.” The idea of getting one with such a high price tag was insanity to me. But within seconds of using the iPhone, I was able to tell that Apple had made something completely different. It wasn’t a cellphone as I had known them. It redefined the category. And while there are no sure things in the tech world, I would bet that Apple’s tablet will do the same.
Part of it is that Apple has a sterling record with consumer-oriented products. Sure, there are some duds, like the Mighty Mouse. And yes, there are some slip-ups, like my new iLemon. But overall, Apple commands attention in the consumer space because more often than not, they nail it. Going deeper, Apple is not afraid to step outside of the traditional comfort zones to try to create a new product — even if others have failed there before, as is the case with tablets. While this stirs skepticism in some, in many more people, it creates a sense of wonder. What if Apple can do it right this time? It’s exciting partially because it’s no sure thing. It’s exciting because the payoff is potentially huge. By this time next year, we may have a whole new genre of computing. It’s an undiscovered country. But it’s also familiar. There’s a quote from the first season of Mad Men that I think applies in this regard. “But he also talked about a deeper bond with the product. Nostalgia. It’s delicate, but potent,” Don Draper says leading up to his Kodak Carousel presentation. The core idea of a tablet is interesting to people on a fundamental level. At least as far back as Moses with the Ten Commandments, it has been a part of the human psyche. It’s something that couldn’t be simpler. It’s a slate that displays information. It’s not a computer with a mess of peripherals and/or physical buttons. If a media and web-centric computer were being designed today with no thought to what the computing norms of the past were, it would be a tablet. It also points to the future of interacting with computers. The mouse and keyboard will one day die and everything will be touch and gesture-based. I think a lot of people understand that, even if they don’t realize it. That’s why we saw so much interest in the CrunchPad. It was to be a simple, touchscreen device that you could surf the web on. For many people, that’s more than enough of a computer. And the truth is that Apple has already proven the concept. The iPhone is a tablet computer, just smaller. Recently, a former Apple employee was quoted in the New York Times as saying that much of the early work on the tablet exists today in the iPhone. The iPhone is the computer I use the most now day in and day out. And again, I never thought I’d want one. So while the immediate use of the tablet in our homes already riddled with computer may not be apparent just yet, I have no doubt that it will prove itself to be very useful. I have no idea what the tablet will be called (Robin lays out a comprehensive tale of why it may be the “iSlate”), what its specs will be, or how much it will cost. But I’m not going to make the mistake of dismissing it like I did with the iPhone simply because its practicality isn’t immediately apparent. If it succeeds, it will likely redefine the role of computing in our lives just as the iPhone has. That’s exciting. And that’s why we care so much about it. [images: 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures] Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Merry Christmas, Meagan Donahue. You Are Going To Machu Picchu Posted: 25 Dec 2009 02:20 PM PST
A month ago we ran a contest giving to give away a 7-day adventure trek for two to the ancient Inca ruins of Machu Picchu. As we wrote back then:
And we have a winner, reader Meagan Donahue. Merry Christmas. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| GROU.PS DIY Social Network Platform Reaches 2 Million Users, Becomes More Customizable Posted: 25 Dec 2009 10:44 AM PST
GROU.PS, a do-it-yourself social network focused on moderated online collaboration has steadily gained an impressive amount of users and added compelling features to its application. The social network platform has just hit 2 million users, adding another million members in just 6 months. And GROU.PS has amped up its offering for publishers by launching Elastic Modules, which gives publishers the ability to change the way the data is displayed to their visitors. To date, the highest reach of look and feel customization was at the template level; the GROU.PS counts Don Dodge, developer evangelist at Google, is among the community builders that have chosen GROU.PS as their online platform. “Don Dodge’s Startup List” is sort of a Crunchbase for Boston area. The startup’s networks are attractive to users because it lets you run all of your group's collaboration tools from one GROU.PS domain using a single login. The system supports wikis, photos, links, blogs, calendars, chat, forums, maps, profiles, and subgroups – each of which is available as a plug-and-play module for your community. These modules also allow users to pull in their data from other third party services (flickr, Digg, blogs, etc). The startup, which has over 40,000 networks on its platform, also recently added ActivityRank Pipelines, a point and reward system that lets moderators of a social network measure and rank members' content contributions and then extend moderation privileges to members based on these rankings. And the social network is launching a subscription model that will allow moderators to charge subscription fees to members (GROU.PS gets a 50% cut on any fees charges). GROU.PS just raised $1 million in funding, bringing the startup’s total funding up to over $2 million. But while the social network is growing, it is still faces major competition form the leader in the space, Ning, which recently hit 37 million users with 1.6 million social networks created on the platform.  Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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In 2007, just prior to its launch, I was absolutely positive I wasn’t going to buy an iPhone. My rationale was that I didn’t even like using a cellphone, so why would I want a $600 one? What I wanted was a touch screen iPod — basically, an iPhone without the phone. In other words, I wanted an iPod touch, but that didn’t exist yet, so I would sit back and wait, I told myself. Then came iPhone launch day: June 29, 2007. Curiosity about the launch day hoopla drove me to an Apple store. There was a line around the block just to get in. So again, there was no way I was getting an iPhone. But then I started to wonder why so many people were lined up for this device — what was I missing? A few hours later I returned to the Apple Store. I waited in a much shorter line to get in. I walked up to the iPhones out on display, picked one up, played with it for all of 10 seconds. I left the Apple store $600 poorer.
If an outsider were to look at the tech news 
We’ll be living in a future with Minority Report, Star Trek, and Avatar interactive technology. To many of us, few things are more exciting. To others, that concept is foreign and as such, scary. Regardless, it will happen and the tablet computer is the latest, and perhaps most important step in a line of technology taking us there.
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