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- Gowalla Gets $8.4 Million Series B For Geo-Networking. Attracts All-Star Investors.
- Skyfire Lights Up New Version Of Rich Windows Mobile Browser
- Niklas Zennström Talks European Entrepreneurship At Le Web 2009
- Milo’s Local Shopping Engine Leaves Beta With One Million Users In Tow
- Privacy-Per-Post: Facebook Rolls Out Its New Privacy Settings
- Pitch The World: Davos Debates 2010 Opens On YouTube
- Twitter Comes To Pearltrees, The Visual Social System
- Greystripe Launches Ads For Android
- Israeli Man Tattoos YouTube Logo On Bicep. Chad Hurley Mildly Impressed
- Le Web 2009 Roundtable: What Makes A Platform, Exactly?
- LeWeb: Shutl Brings Back Urbanfetch – It Might Just Work This Time
- Twitter Crows About Chirp, Its Official Developer Conference
- LeWeb 09 Live Startups Coverage on TechCrunch Europe
- MySpace Launches New Set Of Realtime APIs With Google, OneRiot And Groovy
- Twitter Spawned 50,000 Apps To Date, Will Open Up Firehose For More
- Shutterfly’s Wink Gives You Photobooth Pictures Without The Booth
- The iPhone Finally Gets Live Video Streaming With Ustream Live Broadcaster
- 60 Million People A Month Use Facebook Connect
- Mobile Roadie DIY iPhone App Huge Hit At Le Web
- Le Web 2009: Appsfire Announces iPhone App Star Award Winners
- Le Web Kicks Things Off With Jack Dorsey
- Apple Continues To Open Communication Channels About The App Store
- Google Steps Up Collaboration For Apps Users With Google Groups Integration
- Google Web Toolkit: Now With Speed Tracer, Code Splitting, And More
- Service-now.com Gets $41M Infusion; CEO, CFO Take $37M Off Table
| Gowalla Gets $8.4 Million Series B For Geo-Networking. Attracts All-Star Investors. Posted: 09 Dec 2009 08:25 AM PST
Geo-networking apps on mobile phones are scorching right now as everyone is trying draft off FourSquare. Today, Foursquare competitor Gowalla raised an $8.4 million Series B round, led by Greylock Partners. Reid Hoffman, who is now a partner at Greylock, will take an observer seat on Gowalla’s board. Other new investors include Shasta Ventures, Maples Investments, Ron Conway, Kevin Rose, Gary Vaynerchuk, Shervin Pishevar, Jason Calacanis and Chris Sacca. Previous investors the Founders Fund and Alsop-Louis Partners put in more money as well. The Austin-based startup has now raised a total of about $10 million since it was founded in 2007. (Foursquare has only raised $1.35 million and the former Googlers who run it have declined offers from VCs to put in more cash). Since the public launch of Gowalla’s service just ten weeks ago, 50,000 people have signed up and checked into 150,000 locations in over 7,500 cities worldwide. The company is currently seeing 20,000 check-ins daily. Like Foursqaure, you check in at places you want your friends to know you are at, and then they can see where you are and join you if they are nearby. But Gowalla pulls the actual GPS coordinates instead of relying on users to tell the app where they are. Gowalla also has its own gaming elements, including the introduction of GPS-aware virtual goods which can only be picked up at certain locations. These could form the basis for a business model similar to FourSquare’s around for location-based coupons, promotions, and marketing. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  |
| Skyfire Lights Up New Version Of Rich Windows Mobile Browser Posted: 09 Dec 2009 08:10 AM PST
Skyfire, the developers of a "game-changing" PC-like web-browser for mobile devices, has launched a new version of its browser for Windows Mobile. Skyfire is free and the only browser of the bunch to support Flash, Silverlight, and a number of other technologies generally reserved for desktop browsers, hence the comparison to a PC browser. Skyfire, which has over one million users, supports devices from Nokia, Samsung, LG, HTC, Palm, Motorola, and is BlackBerry. Enhancements in the new version include full support for high-resolution screens, a sleeker user interface that is more finger friendly, crisper text, smoother zooming, and a full-screen mode that maximizes screen real estate. Skyfire will now provide native support for the VGA and wVGA resolutions and has added Kinetic scrolling to improve smoother browsing. In addition to adding more touch capabilities, Skyfire has added a mode for touch screens that allows users to remove all UI icons and elements from the screen to enlarge visibility of the browser. The new version will also be speedier thanks to a server upgrade and keep any text entry box visible when the virtual keyboard is used. And the latest versions of Adobe Flash 10 and Microsoft’s Silverlight. 1.5 rich media technologies have been updated in the browser. Additionally, Skyfire features a customizable and high-resolution homepage, known as the “Fireplace,” integrating RSS feeds, Facebook and Twitter feeds, and Gmail, into one stream. Skyfire has had a productive year-the startup recently raised an additional $5 million in Series B funding and added former Travelocity exec Jeffrey Glueck as CEO. To date, the startup has raised a healthy $28 million in funding. You can download the new version of Skyfire’s browser here. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Niklas Zennström Talks European Entrepreneurship At Le Web 2009 Posted: 09 Dec 2009 07:31 AM PST
Zennström said he found it encouraging to find that so many European entrepreneurs and startups are busy building innovative things in Europe too, and that conferences and Le Web are a great way to bring everyone together. He talked about his most successful venture to date, Skype, and also acknowledged that mistakes were made building other companies like Kazaa and Joost. Unsurprisingly, he regards those mistakes as valuable lessons rather than failures. Zennström said being an entrepreneur is a lifestyle, and requires complete dedication. Real company builders should forget about spare time and hobbies, and prepare for a lot of sweat and hard work. On the other hand, he said, riding that wave can prove to be very rewarding. The entrepreneur turned venture capitalist / entrepreneur left his job together with Janus Friis back in 2000, funnily enough on the same day NASDAQ peeked. P2P technology back then was regarded as the next big thing, like realtime at present, and something else in two years. First lesson that he learned: to be successful in business, you have to believe. Sometimes, you’ll be the only one who believes, but you need to be strong and passionate in order to see things through. Zennström and Friis saw Kazaa grow quickly in terms of users and installs, but they consider themselves now to have been ahead of the time. Zennström acknowledged that mistakes were made and opportunities missed, particularly in terms of working together with record companies for business development. The vision for Skype came when the duo saw broadband getting critical mass, and that their technology would fit right in there. They knowingly went after a large industry they considered needed fixing, and figured if they could just take one percent they’d be successful, mainly because of the high margins in that industry. Skype grew really quickly, but it was bootstrapped for a long time. In fact, Zennström said Skype had a lot of trouble getting interest from venture capitalists in Europe because of the risk involved, and mulled talking to VCs based in the United States. Ultimately, they stuck to Europe, also because it wouldn’t be a good idea for them to travel to the U.S. because of pending litigation from the Kazaa days. Zennström said Skype was always a global company, and more European companies should be thinking that way, try to build distribution partnership across borders. They should make their own path and swim against the tide, he adds. The Swedish entrepreneur also said there’s a misconception that Europe is bad at building very big companies, and that it’s mainly an issue in the high-tech and Internet sector. He referred to companies like Louis Vuitton and Ikea as counter-examples, and pointed out that most of these companies never took venture capital to grow. Zennström said Europeans generally don’t have the right mindset for entrepreneurship, and that they are too risk averse. There’s also the issue of brain drain, European entrepreneurs moving to Silicon Valley, which he thinks will become less of a problem in the future. He also lamented the fact that European tend to stigmatize failure. Success, after all, is not a pre-defined formula. Europe has other problems too, according to Zennström. Too complicated to set up companies, hire and fire people, and so on. The EU has so far been unable to adequately address that problem. Zennström did say that he thinks the trends are changing now, and that more success will come. He praises conferences such as Le Web, the fact that entrepreneurs are starting to connect more and come more agile and less averse to changing the business strategy if necessary, and that there are more role models for aspiring entrepreneurs. In the end of his talk, Zennström said there’s no Silicon Valley in Europe, but that he’s convinced we do not need one either. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Milo’s Local Shopping Engine Leaves Beta With One Million Users In Tow Posted: 09 Dec 2009 06:59 AM PST
Milo has slipped under our radar until now, but it’s been around for two years. It recently raised a $4 million funding round with participation from some of Silicon Valley’s most well known investors, including True Ventures, Ron Conway, Jeff Clavier, and Mint.com’s Aaron Patzer (this is his first investment). Alongside the full launch of the site, Milo is releasing a new Kayak-inspired search interface that shows you results in real-time as local retailer inventories are queried. It looks nice (albeit almost exactly like Kayak), allowing you to use sliders to filter products by price and rating. You can also use checkboxes to specify which retailers you’d like to search through. Of course, Milo just got some major competition: Google just announced that it would start offering inventory counts for local stores beginning in Q1 of next year. CEO Jack Abraham acknowledges that Milo will directly compete with this, but points out a few reasons why he thinks Milo is still in a good position. For one, the site now has partnerships with thirty retailers. Google has only announced two (Sears and Best Buy). I don’t think that advantage will hold up for long, as Google obviously has more partnerships in the works. But it is true that Google isn’t always successful when it tries to move into new verticals with existing leaders — just look at what happened between YouTube and Google Video. So Milo still has a chance, but it’s going to have to move quickly to increase its visibility before the Google goliath starts to gain momentum here. Here’s a full list of Milo’s investors:
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| Privacy-Per-Post: Facebook Rolls Out Its New Privacy Settings Posted: 09 Dec 2009 06:55 AM PST
Today Facebook is rolling out a new set of more granular privacy controls to its 350 million members. Founder Mark Zuckerberg already announced the changes on December 1, but today they are going into effect. For every status update, photo, video, or any other piece of content posted on Facebook, members will be able to choose exactly who they want to share it with. Their options will be: “Friends, Friends of Friends, Everyone and Customized.” Facebook is killing regional networks such as “New York” or “Silicon Valley,” which are too big and meaningless anyway. The customized options will allow you to create Friends Lists so that you can share baby photos with family, inappropriate YouTube videos with just your college buddies, and your promotion news with your business friends. Facebook is also simplifying its privacy settings to make them less confusing in general. Giving users the ability to select privacy settings on the fly should encourage more people to select “everyone” as the default for much of what they share on Facebook, since they can now easily select a more limited group to share with on a per-post basis. The more data that is made public on Facebook, the more that opens up opportunities for Facebook search and outside search engines in the future. Currently, Facebook search only brings up results from your own social network, not from everyone’s public posts on Facebook. And Facebook’s recent deal with Google is only for public posts from public fan pages, not personal accounts. But that may just be a first step towards broader Facebook search. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Pitch The World: Davos Debates 2010 Opens On YouTube Posted: 09 Dec 2009 06:01 AM PST
This year the program is back. They’re asking everyone to “pitch the world” and upload a video highlighting an important issue that the forum should address next month. An independent jury composed, among others, of writer Paulo Coelho and blogger Arianna Huffington, will shortlist finalists, and the YouTube committee will then determine the winner. That person will be brought to Davos to address the forum. More information is here. Submit your videos by January 4, 2010. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Twitter Comes To Pearltrees, The Visual Social System Posted: 09 Dec 2009 05:44 AM PST
They will announce two new things today: Twitter synchronization (enabling a user to create a pearl automatically from Twitter and to tweet automatically from their new Pearltrees), Pearltrees search, Real time discussion and connection. The other new aspect announced today on stage at Le Web is the Pearltrees Social System. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
| Greystripe Launches Ads For Android Posted: 09 Dec 2009 05:30 AM PST
Mobile advertising network Greystripe is rolling out its ad formats for the Android this morning, offering Android app developers with an an Android SDK and an opportunity to monetize their applications. Greystripe, which has delivered ads into over 300 million ad-supported games and applications on the iPhone and Java platform, says that with the success of its ads on iPhone apps, it makes sense to expand to the growing Android market. Greystripe's Android SDK supports pre-roll, interstitial and post-roll inventory. A few developers are already using Greystripe’s Android ads including the Casual Games Network, Adam Schmelzle, and Jump Games. It should be interesting to see how the dust settles following the recent acquisition by Google of competitor AdMob. While it seems doubtful that Google would close the ad market off for Android, the fact remains that Google develops and produces the Android OS and AdMob has Android-specific ads on its network. The recent acquisition has left other ad networks scrambling to make their offerings more attractive. Greystripe recently launched a guaranteed download program and introduced a guaranteed CPC program. Google has high hopes for AdMob and it should certainly continue to be the leader of the pack in the future. AdMob also launched ad formats for Palm WebOS recently. That being said, Greystripe has been able to raise an impressive amount of VC funding and even got a $2 million infusion from NBC. Greystripe maintains that its rich media full-screen ads generate higher click through rates and are able to generate better revenue to its publishers. Although Greystripe claims its rates are higher, we’ve heard they are on par with AdMob’s rates. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| Israeli Man Tattoos YouTube Logo On Bicep. Chad Hurley Mildly Impressed Posted: 09 Dec 2009 05:10 AM PST
Video is below: Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Le Web 2009 Roundtable: What Makes A Platform, Exactly? Posted: 09 Dec 2009 04:44 AM PST
This is an overview of what was said during the panel conversation at Le Web on Platforms, which was moderated by our own Mike Arrington. (right) Lots of panelists for this particular discussion – the conference organizers managed to get all of these people on one stage: Ethan Beard (Director, Facebook Developer Network), Cristian Cussen (Director of Business Development at Ning), Brandon Duncan (Director of Platform Engineering at LinkedIn), John Ham (Co-founder & CEO of Ustream), David Jacobs, (VP , Six Apart), Mike Jones (COO, MySpace) and Ryan Sarver (Director of Platform, Twitter). Michael Arrington: As we’ve learned today, Facebook Connect has really exploded. MySpaceID has had less impressive growth. Any comment on that? Mike Jones (MySpace): MySpaceID is generally available, we’ve seen it been used on thousands of publisher networks, it’s growing. We think of it as a healthy platform, but we’re obviously going to be pushing more weight behind it – it’s still definitely a vital part of our strategy. So how many people are actually signing in to websites using MySpaceID? MJ: I don’t have exact numbers, but we’re talking millions. You don’t feel like the online identity race is pretty much over, and Facebook and Twitter won? MJ: I think it’s healthy to have multiple digital identity providers, as long as it makes things easier for both publishers and users. What about LinkedIn are you guys playing along? Brandon Duncan (LinkedIn): We recognize the value of the systems, and consider us active in this field. We’re evidently more in the professional sphere than the personal one, and there’s loads of interesting things we can do. It’s not just about signing in, of course, but also taking your social graph with you wherever you go on the Web. Thoughts? John Ham (Ustream): the interactive piece of the platform pie, the social aspect of it, is evidently great for live events and thus live broadcasting. We’re showing that off here at Le Web with the livestreaming of the event online and via the iPhone app. Christian Cussen (Ning): At Ning, we look at it this way: Facebook is great for people who already know each other, Twitter is great for realtime, MySpace for entertainment … at Ning we’d like to allow people who don’t know each other, connect. We’re trending away from the whole friending thing, letting people communicate without actually being connected on the network. We’ll accomodate both of course, we want to both amplify using existing platforms and at the same time make it as lazy as possible for our members to use Ning. Okay, but Yahoo made great promises about its Inbox 2.0 too and now we see them teaming up with Facebook for the social aspect after all. Do you really think a combination is viable? CC: Definitely. At Ning, you can have multiple profiles and run more than one network with a single sign-on – adding Facebook Connect as a layer is not going to be a conflict. BD: Agreed, just take a look at our integration of Twitter and LinkedIn. There have been rumors about Facebook Connect soon getting deployed all over MySpace. Any comment on that? MJ: We’re not making any announcements today. Let’s just say we look at all platforms and all possible implementations based on their merit. Let’s talk about the way developers should be treated by the entity running the platform. Apple hasn’t been treating developers the way they should have, but users don’t seem to be minding all that much. Even though there are capable open platforms out there. Thoughts? Ryan Sarver (Twitter): we feel we have no choice but to treat developers within our ecosystem extremely well, we need that alignment. David Jacobs (Six Apart): It’s important to have an open platform, and the iPhone is a unique case for a multitude of reasons. But anyone else would be playing with fire doing it the way Apple does today. Ethan Beard (Facebook): We have more than 350 million members now, so that’s our key asset, it’s what can make our platform unique. What’s important to us is that user experience has to come first. I actually feel for the guys at Apple for having to manage their platform the way they are supposed to. But then again, our developers demand changes too, and we listen to them. Is Facebook treating its developers too well, though? Are you being too nice (e.g. Scamville kerfuffle etc.)? EB: We obviously try to balance things, but we realize full well that we’re unable to solve all problems upfront. We try to be a healthy ecosystem first and foremost, and we address problems quickly in my opinion. The balance between treating developers right and maintaining a high standard in user experience is really the key here. MJ: Same at MySpace. You want to commit to everything you release to third-party developers, push out things incrementally. JH: Being a developer on many platforms, I’d say most are treating us right. It’s important for us, evidently, we want them to pay attention to our needs. Has Apple treated you well? JH: We just announced the live broadcasting app. Continuing our efforts for the iPhone platform has paid off for us. And why did you stick with them? Despite the policy, and just because it’s too important to ignore? JH: It’s very much a strategic platform for us. BD: You don’t want to prescribe too many things to developers. We want to leverage the developer community so we can have stuff built that we couldn’t or wouldn’t build ourselves. Finding that balance is crucial. CC: We put the user experience first for Ning Apps. Our most valued users are our network creators, so we wonder how to enable people with limited means make money off our platform, easily and quickly. Whatever happened to OpenSocial? We don’t hear about it often. CC: All Ning Apps are based on OpenSocial, so it’s a very crucial element for our strategy. DJ: we look and consider every platform, because you just never know when and on which one the next killer app is going to surface. Is OpenSocial still: “build once, deplay anywhere”? BD: We’re continuing to support opensocial, and we take it seriously. MJ: OpenSocial is a big part of MySpace too, and it works great. We keep on trying to improve the standards around it. I don’t see any controversy here. Twitter is still young, and I admit when I first wrote about it I didn’t see the potential. But you’ve also never had the ability to grow along with your users, as it has surged so quickly. Do you feel you’re finally getting ahead of the curve now? RS: We’ve had to grow up a lot this year, and the partnerships with Google and Microsoft are helping us a great deal. If you look at the numbers, you’ll notice we’ve grown to become much more stable now compared to the early days. Do you think you have what it takes to scale to a billion users, one of the self-declared targets for Twitter? Will you be able to maintain control over the basic plumbing and keep things centralized? RS: We think about the future, but a lot needs to be determined still. We don’t have any solid answers to your question at this point. We need more controversy in this panel. You’re all getting along too much for my taste. But maybe that’s also a sign of the times. What is a platform anymore, anyway? MJ: well in my opinion what Apple has is not a platform, it’s just a store, like Walmart. MySpace is more of a platform in my opinion: we help developers enhance their applications, not just run and distribute them. EB: I consider Walmart to be a platform, actually. After all, the store sells stuff that other companies make. We shifted from the App Platform, which was more tech-oriented at first, to Facebook Connect. Now that it’s as broad as it is, we evolved into thinking of FB Connect as a data access layer much more than a platform. After all, you can use it on the Web, for desktop clients, mobile apps, etc. MJ: What we’re seeing right now is definitely a new type of animal. Twitter is a platform, but it’s also more than that. It’s a different beast, it’s new, and frankly I don’t know how to call it anymore. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| LeWeb: Shutl Brings Back Urbanfetch – It Might Just Work This Time Posted: 09 Dec 2009 03:48 AM PST
Launching in London first, the service is targeted at multi-channel retailers and their customers, promising delivery within 90 minutes of purchase in urban areas — and all this at a lower cost to retailers than their standard delivery charge. The company is keeping quiet on delivery time or cost if you happen to live in the ‘burbs or the boondocks. The Shutl platform will initially plug into retailers' websites, enabling the retailer to offer its customers immediate home delivery of goods, delivered directly from their local stores. All the couriers have GPS units and this data is aggregated so customers can watch their delivery en route in real-time on a map. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Twitter Crows About Chirp, Its Official Developer Conference Posted: 09 Dec 2009 03:15 AM PST
The conference, which will be geared towards developers, is likely to be similar in some ways to Facebook’s F8 conference that is held each year in San Francisco. Not too many details were given but there is a landing page up already for the event (which is scheduled to take place sometime in 2010). At the event, Twitter will likely have a lot to talk about as there are already over 50,000 apps in the Twitter ecosystem. And next year the company plans to open the so-called “firehose” of data to all companies that want access, Sarver announced today. And there is a new developer website launching next week that will include things such as a status dashboard, tutorials, and more. Update: As he let us know in the comments, it looks like Ryan Carson of Carsonified will be producing the event. Carson is known for putting on the popular Future Of Web Apps (FOWA) events. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| LeWeb 09 Live Startups Coverage on TechCrunch Europe Posted: 09 Dec 2009 03:15 AM PST
We’re breaking the news about the startups launching at the event as they happen, so please tune in to our RSS feed and our Twitter account @TCEurope to get the latest updates. Tomorrow we’ll be publishing as wrap on the finalists and the winner. We’ve already blogged the launch of companies like CloudSplit, Task.ly, Tigerlilly, Stribe, and Friendbinder. And there’ll be plenty more throughout the day. As Mike Arrington says, Le Web isn’t just Europe’s most important tech event any more, it’s turning into a must-attend event for people around the world. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| MySpace Launches New Set Of Realtime APIs With Google, OneRiot And Groovy Posted: 09 Dec 2009 02:58 AM PST
The most important one to debut today is the Real-Time Stream API, which allows the full MySpace activity stream to be pushed to third-party websites and apps in, yes, real time. The API includes granular filters that allows developers that leverage it to exercise full control over the amount of data that gets pushed out. Google and realtime search company OneRiot are two launch partners that will be tapping MySpace’s fresh Stream API, enabling the search behemoth and startup to suck in data like status updates, music, videos, photos and more for inclusion in its search results. You may remember Google announced its realtime search initiative on Monday, and they had already said they would be including public MySpace data ’soon’. There’s still no exact date yet, but we’re told the implementation will go live next month. OneRiot, as we found out recently, already powers realtime search for the likes of Yahoo and Microsoft, too. OneRiot has already integrated MySpace activity stream data into its search engine, so go check it out right now or see the screenshot below. A third launch partner, Groovy, is leveraging its powerful relational data management software to debut a nifty public timeline application dubbed GroovyChannel on MySpace.
The new MySpace APIs are all free to use, unrestricted and based on open standards. Status and Mood Commenting API Enables third-party devs to suck in MySpace status and mood updates and allows people to comment on and interact with the stream from those sites without the need to leave. Open Search API Allows third-party sites to include public MySpace profile information in search results. Users will be able to search for people by name, profile type or e-mail address and filter search results by gender, age and location. Photo Upload API Enables users to upload photos to MySpace from third-party sites or MySpace Apps. The API enables creation of public or private photo albums. Updated Version of Post To/Share on MySpace Facilitates the sharing of content from third-party sites with a MySpace user's friends. When a user posts content from another site, it goes directly to his/her MySpace activity stream, creating a link back to the third-party site. To encourage developers to come up with new applications, MySpace also announced a competition aimed to award developers who use the new APIs in the most interesting ways with cash prizes ($50,000) and promotion on the social network. It kicks off January 4. MySpace’s move fits right into what CEO Owen Van Natta talked about at the Web 2.0 Summit (the “socialization of content”). The question remains: is this open approach, which goes much further than anything Facebook is doing today, going to help MySpace maintain its relevance as a global social network and maybe even regain its dominance? In my opinion, this strategy is the only way it could do any of that, but evidently much will depend on what developers will come up with. If you code anything cool, let us know. We don’t have $50k to offer you, but we like seeing
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| Twitter Spawned 50,000 Apps To Date, Will Open Up Firehose For More Posted: 09 Dec 2009 02:56 AM PST
He also shared a milestone for the company: Sarver said 50,000 registered applications to date have been built using Twitter APIs. The roadmap ahead: Transparency: “we need to be more public about our policy and intentions” Four announcements: 1) Firehose! No details yet (coming early 2010), but everyone will be getting full access to the data stream. This is pretty significant news. 2) New home for developers: new website launching within the next few weeks, including status dashboard, tutorials, and much more. 3) Anyone making OAuth requests to Twitter is soon getting an increased rate limit (10x) – about to launch API for browser-less apps, and starting Basic Auth decprecation in June 2010. 4) Twitter is hosting an official developer conference called Chirp in San Francisco next year. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Shutterfly’s Wink Gives You Photobooth Pictures Without The Booth Posted: 09 Dec 2009 02:55 AM PST
They key to this app is that beyond your regular camera phone pictures, it gives you easy access to both your Facebook pictures (via Facebook Connect), and your Flickr pictures. Once you have those, it takes just seconds to tweak them and send them off to Shutterfly to be printed and delivered to you (or friends) in a special photostrip case. And before that arrives, they send you an email preview of what the photostrips will look like. These strips can also be shared on Facebook and Twitter immediately. The best thing about these photostrips may be the price. For just $2.50, Shutterfly will print and send these things anywhere in the work. It’s “definitely in the micropurchase category,” the company notes. They are also using PayPal’s new in-app micropayments to allow for you to buy these photostrips (though regular credit card payments are welcome as well). The company is also giving away three free photostrips to the first 50,000 users who download the iPhone app. The company says it’s working to bring this service to other devices to allow for the same type of easy photostrip making on the go. It also plans to add other effects to the application. You can find Wink in the App Store here as a free download.
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| The iPhone Finally Gets Live Video Streaming With Ustream Live Broadcaster Posted: 09 Dec 2009 02:29 AM PST
The Ustream Live Broadcaster has just gone live in the App Store tonight and yes, it allows you to stream live video from the iPhone to the web. And yes, it even works over a 3G connection. And yes, it’s awesome. While one of the key features of the iPhone 3GS was video recording capabilities, that was limited to recordings that were captured on your device and could be uploaded to the web after they were done recording. With the Ustream Live Broadcaster, you can easily record videos right to the web, and allow others to watch them as they’re being recorded. These videos can also be archived so that people can watch them later, if they choose. Settings within the app also make it easy to automatically tweet out when you go live, as well as to do things like share the videos on Facebook and YouTube. The live broadcast can also send out your location, if you’re into that sort of thing. The app also allows for chatting with viewers, and yes/no polling. Ustream has long promised that it would be the first to allow for live video streaming on the iPhone, and it looks like they’ve finally come through — though almost a year after we first wrote about it. They’ve had an iPhone app out for a while, but it hasn’t had live capabilities until now. Qik has had a live-streaming app, but it was only an ad-hoc app, meaning it wasn’t available in the App Store. This Ustream app’s approval follows the approval of another live video streaming app, Knocking, after the developers emailed Steve Jobs personally about its rejection. But that app only does one-to-one streaming, this does one-to-many — full-on broadcast. Find the Ustream Live Broadcaster in the App Store here for free.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| 60 Million People A Month Use Facebook Connect Posted: 09 Dec 2009 02:27 AM PST
Beard’s talk focused on the notion of identity as defined by connections – to people, things, places, etc. “We aspire to be a technology that people use to connect to things they care about no matter where they are,” he says. More than 80,000 websites and devices (including iPhone and Xbox) have implemented Facebook Connect since it launched in December 2008, says Beard. And more than 60 million Facebook users use Facebook Connect each month. And it’s not just a lot of small sites using the product. Two-thirds of comScore's US Top 100 websites and half of comScore's Global Top 100 websites have implemented Facebook Connect. And some of these sites are even bigger than Facebook (perhaps not for long though). Sites like the Huffington Post have seen a 500% increase in Facebook referrals after implementing Facebook Connect, says Beard. 500,000 applications have been built on Facebook, says Beard. Facebook has been surprised by the growth of social gaming (playdom, Zynga, Playfish, etc.). The growth has just begun in social gaming, says Beard. Beard also says over 70% of Facebook users are from outside the U.S. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Mobile Roadie DIY iPhone App Huge Hit At Le Web Posted: 09 Dec 2009 01:51 AM PST
I had a chance to grab him just before he went on stage to talk about his company and show the app. The video is below. We first covered the company in April 2009, and also earlier this month. I like this startup a lot. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| Le Web 2009: Appsfire Announces iPhone App Star Award Winners Posted: 09 Dec 2009 01:48 AM PST
Caveat: since these are upcoming apps, they aren’t available on the App Store yet. On the upside, we have demo videos. You can find the videos of all 35 finalists of the awards here, but the three main winners are: 1. Games: Sketch Nation Sketch Nation Shooter allows users to create their own games by drawing a player, enemies and a level on a piece of paper and taking a picture of the drawing with their iPhone camera. Runner up: Extreme SheepDog Trials (YouTube video) 2. Utility: Here FileFile Here, File File! lets you access your Macs’ files (yes – all of your files from all of your Macs!) from your iPhone wherever you are. Browse files and folders, attached storage, network drives, view your files, stream media, and email your files all from your iPhone. Don’t worry about forgetting a file ever again – access your Mac whenever you need to wherever you are! Runner up: Baby Bubbles (YouTube video) 3. Entertainment: Cookmate Ever had a fridge full of food and nothing to eat? Misc items that you’re just not sure how to bring together into a spontaneous and delicious meal? There’s an app for that! And you have found it! Runner up: ISSUU mobile (YouTube video) Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Le Web Kicks Things Off With Jack Dorsey Posted: 09 Dec 2009 12:52 AM PST
The audience is eating this up. A large screen next to the stage is showing real time tweets related to the talk, and a new one is popping up every second or faster. Dorsey is kicking things off talking about his initial vision for Twitter (our first post). “I knew the concept was huge,” he said on stage. “The hardest part of any idea is getting started.” Dorsey says he’s been surprised by the velocity of growth, and the ways that users have changed it – retweets, @mentions, hashtags, etc., were all invented by users. Jack’s now giving the audience one of the first live demo’s of his new startup, Square (see here for a video of our demo). Square lets users make payments over a mobile phone, starting with the iPhone. The hardware will be given away for free, he says. Funny enough, the demo isn’t working properly, although Loic says it worked perfectly back stage. Dorsey switched from wifi to Orange’s mobile network and the payment went right through. Dorsey is highlighting the social aspects of the service. A picture of the payer pops up if they’re a registered user, adding security to the transaction. The service is in limited beta, says Dorsey. And a number of retailers around the U.S. are accepting payments via Square. Dorsey says the service will go live for all next year, hopefully by March. He also responded to a question I asked about Apple’s explorations into this space – they will become a direct competitor. Dorsey says they’re focused on the user experience, getting people in without contracts, merchant accounts, etc. Apple is doing things differently. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Apple Continues To Open Communication Channels About The App Store Posted: 09 Dec 2009 12:50 AM PST
We all know the App Store is broken. But we also all know that Apple is trying to fix it. Last night, Apple sent out notifications to iPhone developers letting them know that they had a new tool to share that will hopefully further open communications with developers. Apple has announced the availability of RSS feeds for Developer News. While this may not seem like a huge deal, Apple is promising that this will be a good way for developers to stay on top of:
The key there is probably the turnaround time for app reviews. Most of the developers who write to us complaining about the App Store simply note that their apps have taken longer to review than the standard two weeks. This line of communication should help Apple let developers know if there is an abnormally long waiting period for any reason. In terms of the App Store overall, we remain of the mindset that it’s ultimately an untenable model. Eventually, as the App Store keeps growing, Apple is going to have to open it up more (maybe with “trusted” developers) or it will have to hire an absurd number of people just to check applications. Yes, Apple’s trusted ecosystem is important, but it’s not like they check every website in the world, which the iPhone can access. [thanks Noah] Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Google Steps Up Collaboration For Apps Users With Google Groups Integration Posted: 08 Dec 2009 08:57 PM PST  Google recently added a sharing feature to Google Groups with the search giant’s productivity suite, Google Apps to make the two products work more efficiently together. Tonight, Google is going full monty with Groups and launching an enterprise-friendly version of Groups that will integrated with Premier and Education Editions of Google Apps. Google says that Groups is one of its most widely used applications. Groups is a collaborative application that essentially lets anyone create discussion forums, mailing lists, pages, and more for small and large scale groups. With the Apps version of Groups, employees can create groups for their departments, their teams or their projects. Employees can also use groups as mailing lists to share documents, spreadsheets, presentations, calendars, videos and sites with entire groups. Users can receive communications directly to their email inbox, in a digest format, or in the Groups forum view, and can access all the information in the groups archive, without the intervention of an IT administrator. On the administrator side, Groups gives users more flexibility to set up groups without relying on admins for support. Admins can also set group policies and manage other group settings. This is key because previously Groups was only able to be controlled by IT admins, whereas now admins can let users create “user-managed” groups which are operable by any employees of an organization using Apps. Additional features include the ability to search group archives, and reply on behalf of a group. As with most of the features in Google Apps, the collaborative component of Groups is the cornerstone to the announcement. As Rajen Sheth, Senior Product Manager for Google Apps, told me, “Collaboration is key to Google Apps,” and each product within the suite reflects this. Apps has been steadily growing in users, and counts more than 2 million businesses with 20 million users. While it still hasn’t caught up to Microsoft yet it’s certainly in the rear-view mirror. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Google Web Toolkit: Now With Speed Tracer, Code Splitting, And More Posted: 08 Dec 2009 07:00 PM PST
Speed Tracer is a new extension for Google Chrome that is meant to help developers streamline their web applications. In particular, the tool is built to help optimize AJAXy applications. Obviously there are other tools for speed optimization, but many of these have to do with load time. Speed Tracer is meant to track performance over an extended period of time, as users tap into an app’s various functions. Google’s Andrew Bowers explains that Speed Tracer can track performance bottlenecks in ways that were not previously possible, because it taps into APIs that were built into Webkit for that very purpose (APIs other browser engines don’t offer). The tool will allow developers to isolate exactly which functions in their app are taking a long time to perform, allowing them to monitor performance in real time. It will suggest that developers take a look at certain problem functions (namely actions that take over 100ms, which is when users begin to notice a lag time).
The second major addition announced at tonight’s event is developer guided code splitting. Bowers says that when the Google Wave team was first building Wave, the size of their JavaScript app grew to 1.4 megabytes (that’s a lot, and will lead to a long initial loading time for users). To help deal with this Google found a way to split code into chunks and to only initially serve the portions users needed. In other words, when you go to Wave now, your browser is only downloading the portion of the app it needs to run the most basic functions. If you decide you want to access something beyond that — say, the Settings menu — the app will quickly fetch that once you click the ‘Settings’ button. This isn’t the first time developers have been able to split their code — in fact, some of them try to fully automate the process. Bowers says that Google is taking a different approach. Rather than try to fully automate the code splitting, Google Web Toolkit will allow developers to pick and choose which functions users will need to be able to access. The tool will then identify which code corresponds to those functions. In effect, developers are still responsible for choosing which functions they want to have available on the app’s initial load, but the tool can manage things beyond that. The third tool to launch this evening was UiBinder, which came out of some of the work Google has done with AdWords. Bowers describes UiBinder as a declarative UI that allows developers to bind a layout template and associate it with a Java file, without having to merge the two. He explains that in a typical Java file, developers often have to combine the layout portion of the application with the logic portion of the app. In that scenario, when a designer wants to tweak the look of the app, the logic has to be tweaked too. Using UiBinder, developers can keep the two separate, so layouts can be adjusted without having to rewrite any logic code. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Service-now.com Gets $41M Infusion; CEO, CFO Take $37M Off Table Posted: 08 Dec 2009 06:50 PM PST
Service-now.com has raised $41M of a $66M funding round, the company disclosed in an SEC filing today. The company was founded by Fred Luddy in 2004 to provide on-demand Enterprise IT services and 2009 has been a boom year for the company. Service-now.com specializes in cloud-based Software as a Service (Saas) IT service management solutions. They cover everything from licensing compliance to the service desk all with a built in analytics system. On July 21 of this year a company press release detailed some of the company’s accomplishments including: recurring revenue of more than $28 million, 105 percent growth in recurring revenue and a variety of accolades. We’re awaiting word from Service-now.com about the funding. In the meantime we can deduce that some of the funding is probably from Sequoia Capital. Douglas Leone, who may have already been an investor, has become a director and the page of Partner Patrick Grady has been updated to reflect a new involvement with Service-now.com (Nov 30 and now). Interestingly, the company did not gain much capital from the funding. The SEC filing notes that $37M of the funding was used to repurchase shares of the Service-now.com’s common stock held by its CEO Frederic Luddy and CFO Andrew Chedrick. That is ~90% of the money received in the tranche and over 55% of the total round. From time to time discussion flares up about the idea of founders taking money off the table in funding rounds. It appears investors Sequoia Capital and JMI Equity were okay with it in a big way this time around. Update: We’ve just received word from CEO Fred Luddy confirming that Sequoia led the investment and that the entire round went towards buying employee stock, not just his own and his CFO’s. He sounds excited about the involvement of Sequoia and Douglas Leone. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
The 
Paris-based 
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Online shopping has come along in leaps and bounds since 1994 when the first e-commerce transaction actually occurred — but as dotcom bombs UrbanFetch and Kozmo proved, delivery can be the most painful point in the ecommerce chain. Enter 
Today at 
Just a few months after 
Services like 
Facebook’s Director Development Network 
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It’s about 9:45 am Paris time here at the sixth annual 
This evening at its Campfire One event, Google showcased a number of new technologies coming to Google Web Toolkit (you can see my live blog of the event 
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