The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- How To Find Those Red Balloons
- The Startup Visa And Why The Xenophobes Need To Go Back Into Their Caves
- 11 Chrome Extensions, For Starters
- Apple Has Acquired Lala
- CrunchPad Litigation Imminent
- This Week On TechCrunch: Dead CrunchPad, Craigslist dickishness, Jugaad and goodbye to Leena
- SGN’s Skies Of Glory For iPhone Looks Pretty Damn Fun
- TechCrunch Friday Giveaway: Kodak Zi8, The Flip Killer #crunch
- Get Those Crunchies Nominations In Today Or Lose Them Forever
- See Geolocated Tweets On Google Maps And The iPhone Too
- Microsoft/Yahoo Search Deal Finalized, Still Faces Government Scrutiny
- Man Promotes Band In The Middle Of Nowhere On Google Street View
- Loopt Takes Location-Based Gaming Literally
- Apple Reportedly In Talks To Acquire Lala
- Dear FDA, Gimme My iMac
- Confirmed: Google Acquires AppJet, The Maker Of EtherPad
- Source: Google Is Acquiring AppJet, The Company Behind EtherPad
- As Digg Turns 5, SF Mayor Declares Today “Digg.com Day”
- iPhone Developers Get An Open Ad Management Platform From .App/Ads
| How To Find Those Red Balloons Posted: 05 Dec 2009 08:25 AM PST
This morning DARPA launched ten red balloons across the U.S. in a Network Challenge to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the precursor to the Internet, Arpanet. The first team to correctly locate all ten balloons will win a $40,000 prize. The idea is to see how people can self-organize on the Internet and how information disseminates through social and viral networks. There are thousands of people looking and teams set up on the Internet. They offer different incentives for participating. For instance, a team at M.I.T. is offering $2,000 for each correct balloon sighting submitted. The 10 Red Balloons team claims to have already found pone balloon before the contest even started. And the Open Red Balloon Project is taking more of a, well, open approach. It wants everyone to report their sightings and guesses, make all of that data available to everyone, and then let the first person to make sense of the data win the entire $40,000. You drag ten balloons around on a map. Known locations turn red. It already shows ten reported balloon locations on its map (whether those are correct or not, only DARPA knows).  And there’s always Twitter. Just search for #redballoon or #redballoons. One’s supposedly been spotted near the public library in Brainerd, Minnesota. But beware of false reports! That is just another strategy to throw people off the scent. If you are balloon hunting today, here’s a theme song to keep you focused on the prize:
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  |
| The Startup Visa And Why The Xenophobes Need To Go Back Into Their Caves Posted: 05 Dec 2009 07:00 AM PST
After all, this visa is about creating American jobs and moving innovation here which would otherwise happen in other countries. We can boost the economy without any cost to taxpayers. It's not about admitting H-1B visa holders who sometimes make Americans compete for high-paying jobs, but bringing in entrepreneurs who expand the pie for everyone. Not only do the Democrats support this, but so do the Republicans (their thought leader, Newt Gingrich blogged about my previous TechCrunch post on immigration and his staff told me that he was a supporter of the startup visa). So this seems like a no-brainer. But, no, logic doesn't prevail with this crowd. I got the same stream of hate mail that I'm used to, and the xenophobes hijacked the BusinessWeek reader feedback section again. Most of their statements are illogical and uneducated. But there are two potentially meaningful arguments which opponents of the startup visa make, which are worth discussing: that the founders we are bringing in aren't always the "best and brightest" and that there is already a visa category for geniuses called the O-1 visa. I know we're not always bringing in the best and brightest. Most are just average techies. I can offer myself up as an example. When I came to this country in 1980 from Australia, I was just a low-level computer programmer. Yes, I took pride in being able to write the slickest Assembler code (anyone remember what this is?). But I was pretty average in my education and skills. I had no PhD. I had no patents. No one would ever have thought of giving me an O-1 visa. But I came, I worked hard, and I learned. And I developed ideas for how to make better software. Years later, technology which I invented formed the basis of a software company which employed over 1,000 people and changed the way enterprise client-server systems were built. I don’t know my total value-add to the American economy but I certainly added hundreds of millions of dollars over the life of my two startups. And now I'm giving back to America by contributing my time and energy to 3 great universities, Duke, Harvard and UC-Berkeley. Now let's discuss the genius visa. Any immigration attorney will tell you that qualifying for this visa is so hard that even Einstein wouldn't have cut it. You've got to have a perfect academic record, have topped every class you took and have as many as 10 independent authorities say you walk on water. I happened to meet someone at a talk I gave at Berkeley last week, who qualified for this. He has a remarkable story which shows how screwed up our immigration system is. Alex Kosorukoff learned programming in high school in Russia and started working part-time as a software developer. He later joined Ivanovo State Power University and worked part-time as a researcher in a Russian-American joint venture. He came across several American books on entrepreneurship, read them, and started thinking about becoming an entrepreneur. Alex persuaded two friends to start a company in 1991. (Let me remind you that this was very, very early in the transition in Russia from Communism to Democracy). They built accounting software which became a big hit. Alex rode the rising tide of entrepreneurship and launched several other companies. In 1995, he won a U.S. Information Agency “Business for Russia” contest. Part of the prize was an exchange program at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School. He came to the U.S. for 2 months, learned more about American business and went back home to solve some of our problems. (Like nearly all foreigners who come here, he fell in love with America and wanted to share the American Dream).  The flower, by runnerfrog (Cristian René) Alex started researching why organizations struggle to scale well, why decision processes become more inefficient and why talented employees leave. Alex looked around at the natural world and noticed that biological organisms do a better job of scaling up. He designed a form of participatory organization based on evolutionary algorithms and prototyped it with a website that attracted hundreds of participants in 1998-99. His research was discovered by Prof. David Goldberg (University of Illinois), who invited the young Russian to join his lab. Dr. Goldberg’s lab was amongst the top in the field of evolutionary computation. Alex expected he would have the best of both worlds by coming to America—performing groundbreaking research and becoming an American-style entrepreneur. Once he got to Illinois, however, Alex realized that neither his academic research aspirations nor his entrepreneurial ambitions would be completely fulfilled. The university told Alex that he could not work outside the strict classification of his visa, could perform no side work, and definitely could not launch a company. “They even told me I couldn’t continue to run my website, since it had ad-generated income. I had to move it to Taiwan and have a friend over there run it for me,” Alex explains. Since the focus of his research was forming companies using evolutionary computation, Alex realized he would not be able to take his theorems and try them out in the real world, as he had done in Russia. “I had to postpone all my entrepreneurial activities and resort to simulation and doing related evolutionary computation research for other professors, but that meant a big switch away from my main area of interest,” says Alex. Still, he managed to win a number of awards for his research.
After Alex finished his Ph.D., he got an offer from StumbleUpon (ironically, a company that was founded in Canada in 2001 and later relocated to Silicon Valley). StumbleUpon uses human-based evolutionary computation techniques as does Wikipedia. Alex was clearly grateful for the offer. But it's pretty easy to tell that he is itching to start his own company, something he’s done successfully several times before in Russia in what might be considered a far harsher business environment. So what’s he doing right now? Waiting for his green card to be approved. In the meantime, the unemployment rate in California is now over 12%, a near record high. The national rate is at 10%. Credit markets are totally frozen and small businesses—the most dynamic part of the U.S. economy are suffocating for lack of operating capital. So slightly tweaking a law to allow smart foreigners to jumpstart our economy would seem to be a really easy decision politically and economically. Rather than listening to the emotion of misguided anti-immigrants, we need to listen to reason. After all, it is immigrants like Alex who have started 52% of Silicon Valley's tech companies in recent times. Editor's note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| 11 Chrome Extensions, For Starters Posted: 05 Dec 2009 04:20 AM PST Google promised that Chrome would be fast to launch and fast to load web pages, but people predicted it would fail with the arrival of its extensions. Well, the extensions are here (at least for some of us) and surprisingly they do not effect the browser’s performance. And not only that, but playing with Google Chrome Extensions is like child’s play, whether you’ve added a new extension, or deleted one, you won’t need to restart your browser. Extensions are so easy to manage and use that once you have access to them, I’m sure you’ll be looking forward to testing everything in this Cromeextensions Directory. This is what I basically did. I tried most of the extensions, then realized I’m not ready yet to ditch my beloved Firefox, and I’m guessing that you won’t be either. On the other hand, there are some plugins that are worthy of a mention and from that list I’ve culled some cool ones to get you started. If you already have extensions enabled (lucky you), you are welcome to try the ones in this list. If Chrome is not allowing extensions for you just yet, try to upgrade to the developer’s version (don’t worry, all of your Chrome settings will be saved).
Perform a search from Wikipedia, Yahoo, Amazon, Google, and more with the QuickSearch extension. QuickSearch provides searching on your choice of search engine, right from the Chrome browser, and also enables you to customize it to the search engine of your choice. Unfortunately, you can’t delete already existing engines, you can only edit and delete additional search engines that you add. Direct download
If you use Google Task List, or are a fan of to-do lists in general, you should try Google Tasks for Chrome. This simple-to-use extension gives you full control over your tasks from the Browser and provides synchronization with your Gmail task list. Direct download
Some web pages will only work properly when viewed with Internet Explorer (go figure…). The Chrome IE Tab extension allows you to run IE from within a tab in Chrome enabling you to display such web pages without leaving Chrome. The awesomest thing is that you can configure the extension to do so automatically for URLs you specify in the setting for each page. Some users complained about this plug-in crashing their Browser, but it works like a charm for me on Windows7. Direct download
Translation was the first plugin I was looking for in Chrome, but so far there aren’t too many to choose from. Luckily Bubble-Translate seems worthwhile enough to use, but even this extension needs some improvement (more setting would be nice to have). Anyway, this is what you get once you install Bubble-Translate: You’ll be able to translate text on web pages from any language to yours. The extension uses Google Translate for in-line translations. How it works: After installation, go to the plug-in options, chose your desirable language, shortcut & theme. A small icon will show up in the URL address bar. Select text, then click the icon (or use one of the shortcuts suggested in the setting), and the tool tip is automatically displayed. Direct download
If you use Google Reader, this extension should make your life easier. Chromereader provides one-click subscription to blogs and websites that you like. When you see a page that you want to subscribe to, simply click on the Chromereader button and it’s goes straight into your Google Reader list – Simple as that. Direct download
A really nicely done extension is Fittr, which adds some helpful features to Flickr pictures. What does Fittr offer? First of all, lots of small and easy common shortcuts, which you can see by clicking ‘?’ at any given time. It auto-completes tags by showing the most popular tag that matches the prefix you’ve already entered. Quick access to a subset of the EXIF properties by clicking the link added at the bottom left of a photo. Also, a better view of an image with the lightbox tool. But the most significant addition is the ability to see Flickr’s short URL in the right sidebar of any picture, just click it to copy to your clipboard (and may I suggest that Flickr needs this one feature badly). Direct download
There are some Twitter extensions for Chrome (again, not many, but some). However, all of them are quite simple and don’t support too many features. But since we must have at least one decent Twitter client for Chrome, I recommend Chrome-Metrist. There’s also Chromed Bird extension, but I had some problems with it, so I gave up and switched to Chrome-Metrist instead. (But you are welcome to try them both for yourself) After you install the extension, it will automatically lead to a pop-up configuration screen so that you can enter your Twitter log-in information (only the first time). You can also choose the font size, but other than that, the options are really small. The interface alone makes up for the few options available and the other issues, it really just looks awesome. Direct download
If you’re a true geek, than you still must use Delicious. For me, it is one of the most important information sources on the web today, so of course an extension to Chrome is more than welcome and needed. The one that caught my eye is a simple plug in that allows you to easily save a bookmark to Delicious, see all of your bookmarks, and get quick access to your Delicious inbox (which unfortunately, not so many people use). Very simple, very clean, and a very useful extension for Delicious freaks. Direct download
The future of Google Wave is still a mystery, but we all know it’s here to stay so it’s better to be prepared with all the relevant tools. Who knows, you might find yourself using it on daily basis
I saved the best for last – The Jamendo Radio extension enables you to listen to music from your Browser like never before. Forget about Google’s 30sec-music, Jamendo gives you hours of free music. The service stores 27,475 independent albums, all are free to listen and free to download. And the wonderful thing is that you can listen to all of your favorite albums right from your browser. Direct download The configuration is a bit complex however: After you install the extension, go to its options. You have the ability to add albums that you like to the Jamendo Radio playlist. For that you’ll need to go to Jamendo’s site, pick an album, grab the number of the album from its URL address, and add it in the options as shown in this short demo: Feel free to share your thoughts about these extensions or recommend other ones. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| Posted: 04 Dec 2009 10:16 PM PST
This could be bad news for Lala users. It’s unlikely that the innovative deals negotiated by Lala will survive through the acquisition. For over a year, Lala users have been purchasing the rights to stream their music an unlimited number of times for ten cents per song. If the deals with the music labels go up in smoke, Lala may lose the right to stream those songs. In other words, all the money users have been spending on web songs may go down the drain. If the deals are nullified, hopefully Apple will renegotiate them to at least cover existing purchases until it releases its own streaming music service. We’ve reached out to Lala but have yet to hear back. Likewise, this may well affect the Lala music gifts that have been recently offered by Facebook, and it could also harm the Music OneBox service Google recently launched (though Google can still rely on MySpace/iLike for its song streams). Stone writes that Apple is interested in Lala because of its engineering talent and technology, and that it was Lala that initiated the discussions. From the Times:
The deal makes sense. It seems inevitable that Apple will eventually launch its own cloud-based streaming music service. And that’s exactly what Lala is — an iTunes in the cloud, with some interesting pricing mechanics. A few other interesting things to note. This acquisition comes a little more than a month after Lala was integrated into Google’s OneBox and Facebook’s gift store. Lala may well have been viewing these launches as last-chance efforts to find a path to profitability. Given these reports that Lala’s “prospects for turning a profit in the short term were dim”, it looks like those launches may not have gone as well as Lala hoped. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| Posted: 04 Dec 2009 06:42 PM PST
They still have not returned our calls or emails. But they have spoken to press, and say that their side of the story has two key elements. First, that none of this was a surprise and we knew they were likely to break ties with us. And second that TechCrunch hasn’t done anything to help build the CrunchPad and therefore has no rights to the device. Both statements are completely untrue. Among other things, emails from Fusion Garage illustrate it. We aren’t going to restate every detail of the story here, mostly because it’s not all that interesting. But I will give a few highlights. And I’ve embedded letters sent from our law firm below to Fusion Garage as well as the ODM manufacturer, Pegatron. There are lots more details included in those letters. There is just no way to argue that TechCrunch is not the joint owner of all intellectual property of the CrunchPad, and outright owner of the CrunchPad trademark. The CEO of Fusion Garage has spent nearly six months this year working from Silicon Valley and our offices. Most of the Fusion Garage team has spent the last three months here working with our team on the project. And our key team members have spent time in Singapore working directly on the hardware and software that powers the device. Fusion Garage emails and their own blog, before it was deleted, acknowledge this. We have also spent considerable amounts of money creating the device, paying the vendor and other bills that Fusion Garage wasn’t able to. What’s even more absurd is the idea that we somehow knew about Fusion Garage’s intentions to break off the partnership before a couple of days prior to the device launching. Until November 17 we had every reason to believe that Fusion Garage was our trusted ally in creating the CrunchPad. We received nearly daily emails confirming that everything was on track. Raising funding for the project was a goal but wouldn’t have been necessary for some time; besides, we had U.S. investors lined up and ready to put money into the venture. Fusion Garage admitted to us on November 18 that the news of them pulling out of the partnership was “out of the blue.” When the company makes statements otherwise, compare them to the email below:
There is quite simply no way we will allow this company to move forward on this project. The extent of their fraud is only now becoming clear to me. The audacity of their scheme is staggering. We believe that they engaged with us until the last possible moment to get press attention and access to our development resources and cash, and then walk away hoping that we’d do nothing. Here are the letters sent by our lawyers both to Fusion Garage and Pegatron (who, it turns out, terminated their agreement with Fusion Garage in August, although Fusion Garage never told us and continued to pretend they were working together). We’ll likely move further updates on the lawsuits to our CrunchNotes blog.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| This Week On TechCrunch: Dead CrunchPad, Craigslist dickishness, Jugaad and goodbye to Leena Posted: 04 Dec 2009 05:11 PM PST
Dick Move Of The Week “Developers take note: if you've got a mashup built off of Craigslist's data, don't even think about showing it to anyone who works there. At least, that's the lesson learned by developer Romy Maxwell, who says that Craigslist has blocked both his mashup and every single project built on Yahoo Pipes a few days after a friendly Email exchange he had with Craigslist founder Craig Newmark.” To be fair to Craig, this seems to be less of a problem with Craig (who denies any personal knowledge of the decision) and more a decision by ‘Slist – but the fact remains that anyone who uses Yahoo Pipes to hack their Craigslist experience has now completely wasted their time. Dick Move Of The Week. Acquisitions Of The Week “I walked over to the Lala office, which is only a few blocks from us, to see if I could gather any more details. They didn't seem particularly happy to see me. I knocked on the door and a Lala employee answered, keeping the door half shut so that I couldn't see in. I asked if any of the company's executives were around. He looked over his shoulder, asked if they were, and a second later said they weren't (it was not a particularly convincing effort). He promptly shut the door, and I'm pretty sure I heard someone inside say something to the effect of ‘Are you serious, don't answer it!’.” Cowards! You can’t hide from the news.
It’s also a quality much in evidence at SMSONE – a micro-local news service that uses basic SMS to bring vitally important news to un-wired rural communities. For those commenters who whine every time TechCrunch writes another story about Valley-focused smart phone driven playthings like FourSquare, these two posts are for you. Plastic Fantastic Of The Week Goodbye Of The Week Happy Digg.com day everyone! Seriously. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| SGN’s Skies Of Glory For iPhone Looks Pretty Damn Fun Posted: 04 Dec 2009 04:30 PM PST We’ve had a chance to play SGN’s Skies Of Glory WWII person-to-person dogfighting game for the iPhone. But now they’ve released this trailer for the game to really show off what they’ve built. Look for a launch date shortly. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| TechCrunch Friday Giveaway: Kodak Zi8, The Flip Killer #crunch Posted: 04 Dec 2009 04:15 PM PST
CrunchGear’s overview of the Zi8 is here. This is a Flip-like picked video camera that records in 1080p high definition. The device includes a SD/SDHC card slot for expandable storage. And the best feature is this – the Zi8 has an external microphone jack to help get decent audio into the device. Poor audio has plagued the Flip cameras. Here’s how you can get the device. Just do one of two things: either retweet this post, and make sure to include the #crunch hashtag, or leave a comment below telling us why this device must be yours. The contest ends at noon California time on Saturday. Please only tweet the message once, anyone tweeting repeatedly will be disqualified. We'll pick a winner tomorrow afternoon and contact you for more details. Anyone in the world is eligible. Kodak is generously donating the device and we’re covering the shipping costs. If you aren't lucky enough to get the free one, you can buy the Zi8 for $177 here. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Get Those Crunchies Nominations In Today Or Lose Them Forever Posted: 04 Dec 2009 03:41 PM PST
Once all the nominations are in, the Crunchies Committee will choose five finalists per award category. From there, the popular voting will begin on December 21 and run through January 6, leading up to the live ceremony Friday, January 8, 2010 at 7:30 pm PT the Herbst Theater in San Francisco which we’re pleased to be co-hosting with GigaOm and VentureBeat. The full rules are here. Again, nominations end tonight at midnight, so get them in. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| See Geolocated Tweets On Google Maps And The iPhone Too Posted: 04 Dec 2009 03:17 PM PST
Simply load up Google Maps, grab the Twitter feed of anyone who checks-in and tags their location, and insert that URL into the search box on Maps. On the map, you’ll see a collection of blue markers indicating where the tweets were sent from (here’s an example). Clicking on any of these markers brings up the tweet itself in a bubble overlay. And in the left side column, you’ll see the a timeline of the geolocated tweets. You can add these feeds from several users and Google Maps will remember them, so you can see a collection of your friends’ tweet locations. And it even works for Lists feeds. Also cool is that this same process works on the iPhone. You’ll have to copy a feed URL to get it to work, and again, copy it into the search box, but it displays on the map nicely. The Bing Maps Twitter location integration (below), looks much nicer as it’s natively built in with things like user icons, and the ability to display tweeted pictures. But again, it also requires Silverlight, and you can’t easily filter by things like Lists.
[thanks Peter] Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Microsoft/Yahoo Search Deal Finalized, Still Faces Government Scrutiny Posted: 04 Dec 2009 03:03 PM PST
Of course, the deal is still under investigation by the Department of Justice, so nothing is in the bag yet. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
| Man Promotes Band In The Middle Of Nowhere On Google Street View Posted: 04 Dec 2009 02:47 PM PST
We’ve heard of people getting upset when their picture shows up on Google Street View (the street-level picture you can zoom into from Google Maps). For this reason, Google blurs out people’s faces for privacy. Others have protested Google coming down their street to photograph their house (cough, Paul McCartney). But can Google Street View also be used as a marketing vehicle? Nate Heagy thinks so. He went to great lengths to follow a Google Street View vehicle and anticipate its movements so that he could set up a sign in its path and start playing a guitar so that he could promote his band, Fear Salesman. Well, he is now on Google Street View. Heagy explains how he executed his bold plan: Last spring, . . . I hatched a plan to promote my indie band. After making a sign and keeping it in the trunk of my car for about a month I finally chanced across the google street view car. Then I had to follow it until I figured out its pattern, then get ahead of it with time to set up. There is only one problem. His picture was taken in the middle of nowhere. Not only is it in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (which is in Canada, for all you geography majors out there). It is on a random residential street in Saskatoon that maybe five people will ever look up. Until now, I guess. Damn you, Heagy! Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| Loopt Takes Location-Based Gaming Literally Posted: 04 Dec 2009 01:45 PM PST
The Loopt Holiday Scavenger Crawl is exactly what it sounds like: It’s a scavenger hunt during the holidays. But it’s also a bit more. As everyone knows, the holidays for many are also about a fair amount of drinking, so Loopt is mixing a pub crawl into the mix as well. The plan is to have this take place in three different cities: Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco at various dates in December and early January. Obviously, this crawl will be based around Loopt’s mobile application. The company recently shifted gears a bit to move away from a constant location updater to more of a check-in model that the aforementioned Foursquare and Gowalla use. The idea will be to follow others players using the app and go from location to location solving clues and interacting with others. There will be prizes to be won, and also access to some sort of VIP party, we’re told. The big prize is a round-trip ticket to Hawaii. The game will apparently work for users with and iPhone, iPod touch, or Blackberry. Alongside this event, Loopt has launched a new LooptGames website. For now this site is only for the scavenger crawl, but in the future, Loopt will continue to use this for other games of this nature. “We obviously have become interested in how some cool game dynamics can help people connect with their cities,” founder Sam Altman tells us. This first game takes place on December 12 in Los Angeles, December 19 in New York, and January 2 in San Francisco. The first 500 people to sign up on the site get a free Loopt t-shirt. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Apple Reportedly In Talks To Acquire Lala Posted: 04 Dec 2009 12:52 PM PST
Bloomberg is reporting that Apple is “in talks to acquire online music service Lala, according to two people familiar with the matter.” The shoe fits. Back when Lala launched I described it as an iTunes in the cloud — something that we believe Apple will inevitably launch. Apple is certainly building a lot of data center capacity for something. Lala is already one of two companies powering full-song streaming for Google’s new music search (the other one is MySpace Music via its iLike acquisition), and it is a part of the Facebook gift shop. Lala already has all the streaming licenses in place with the major music companies and a team which can help Apple create a killer streaming version of iTunes. We’ve been huge fans of Lala since its launch in October (you can see our extensive coverage here. The site uses an innovative ‘web song’ model that lets you buy albums for very cheap (10 cents per song) that you can then stream as many times as you’d like. That pay-to-stream model would certainly be more attractive to Apple than just an advertising-supported one. Lala’s streaming licenses might also allow iTunes to deliver a full-song sample instead of the 30-second previews currently available. Update: I walked over to the Lala office, which is only a few blocks from us, to see if I could gather any more details. They didn’t seem particularly happy to see me. I knocked on the door and a Lala employee answered, keeping the door half shut so that I couldn’t see in. I asked if any of the company’s executives were around. He looked over his shoulder, asked if they were, and a second later said they weren’t (it was not a particularly convincing effort). He promptly shut the door, and I’m pretty sure I heard someone inside say something to the effect of “Are you serious, don’t answer it!”. Obviously this isn’t confirmation of anything, but they’re clearly on high alert. One other point to note: back in October we did an extensive sneak preview of the long-awaited Lala iPhone app. The Lala team had previously been concerned about having their app rejected because of the way it competed with the native iTunes app, but in light of the recent acceptance of apps like Spotify they were optimistic. It’s now been more than a month since we gave that preview. Six days ago I reached out to Lala to find out what the situation was, and, as a secondary question, to see if they had an extra spot in their iPhone beta program. CEO Geoff Ralston replied to my question about the beta, but he totally ignored my question about the iPhone app. Most CEOs in that position would have at least acknowledged that they had fallen prey to the Apple approval process. We’re still digging for more. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Posted: 04 Dec 2009 11:57 AM PST
Well, to be more specific, either the FDA or the Department of AG/PPQ has to approve it, according to UPS. Seeing as the FDA having anything to say about my computer makes no sense, I decided to check what the latter department was. Apparently, it’s the Department of Agriculture. Again, WTF? I don’t want to believe that either UPS or the U.S. Government are so stupid as to think that my Apple computer is actually an apple, but I can’t come up with any other explanation (and neither can people on Twitter). On my UPS tracking shipment screen right now all I see is “Exception” followed by a note that my iMac was held up in in Louisville, Kentucky because, “UPS HAS OBTAINED DOCUMENTATION AND SUBMITTED TO FOOD & DRUG ADMINISTRATION AND/OR DEPARTMENT OF AG/PPQ;AWAITING RESPONSE” Sigh. Those who follow me on Twitter may know that this is just the latest headache in obtaining this damn machine. I actually received the new iMac a few weeks ago (with no FDA problems — apparently FedEx is more on top of things), but it had one tiny problem: A crack in the massive 27″ screen. I’m not alone in this. So I sent it back. And apparently all I’m getting in return is a lousy fruit basket. Or so the FDA thinks.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| Confirmed: Google Acquires AppJet, The Maker Of EtherPad Posted: 04 Dec 2009 11:45 AM PST
As we reported earlier, we’re hearing that the acquisition price was in the low eight figures. The EtherPad post also says that they will be joining the Google Wave team, which is based out of Australia. CEO Aaron Iba, President & Chief Scientist David Greenspan, CTO J.D. Zamfirescu, and COO Daniel Clemens are all making the trip down under. If you’re an EtherPad user, you’ll want to check out the company’s blog post for instructions on exporting your data. The service will continue to operate through March 2010, but no new free public pads can be created, and the company isn’t allowing new customers to sign up, either. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| Source: Google Is Acquiring AppJet, The Company Behind EtherPad Posted: 04 Dec 2009 11:22 AM PST
EtherPad is a powerful real-time collaboration tool that’s similar (but superior) to the Google Docs text editor. Users can collaborate in true real-time, with virtually no delay. AppJet actually launched as a tool for building simple web apps. The team built EtherPad for internal use, but then decided to release it to the public. Since then, the product focus has shifted to EtherPad, which has started to take off. EtherPad may have been a threat to Google Docs, but it’s also quite likely to Google’s interest in the company is tied to Google Wave. The two products share some overlapping features, but AppJet has built technology that can be deployed behind company firewalls. If Google ever decides to roll out Wave as an enterprise product, which seems logical, this technology and the team’s experience could prove valuable. AppJet, which was part of the Y Combinator program, has raised around $700,000 in seed funding. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| As Digg Turns 5, SF Mayor Declares Today “Digg.com Day” Posted: 04 Dec 2009 11:01 AM PST
But perhaps more impressive is that for their fifth birthday, Digg received quite the gift from San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom: An official proclamation that today is “Digg.com Day” in the city. Now, I’m not really sure what this means, but it certainly is all official-sounding; I count 5 uses of “whereas” and one “whereof” thrown in for good measure. “We are proud and humbled by this honor,” Rose writes. To celebrate the milestone, Digg has also launched a new visualization tool called Digg 365 to surface some of the most dugg items from the past 5 years. Built by The Barbarian Group, it’s really slick. And it’s a good idea. Much of the content on Digg has a very short shelf-life due to the nature of the site, but that doesn’t make some of it any less interesting, even 5 years later. Though recently, Digg has lost much of its early hype to services like Twitter and Facebook, the company is trying to push forward into a new phase of growth. They recently stole a Google executive to be their VP of Product, and are prepping the next version of the site. And thanks in part to their new Digg Ads, they could see revenues of up to $15 million this year, we’ve heard.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
| iPhone Developers Get An Open Ad Management Platform From .App/Ads Posted: 04 Dec 2009 09:29 AM PST  As the ecosystem around iPhone apps continues to explode, the opportunity for advertising and monetization grows simultaneously. There are been an abundance of mobile and specifically iPhone centric ad-networks that have emerged, like AdMob (which was acquired by Google a few weeks ago), Greystripe, InMobi and others, to help developers make money from advertising on aps. And ad exchange startups such as AdWhirl (acquired by AdMob a few months ago) and MobClix help developers optimize ad placement by dynamically choosing so serve ads from ad network that bidding the highest to reach the users of that particular app. A new kid, .app/ads, has stepped onto ad platform block today, hoping to provide the most open, and appealing ad platform for iPhone developers to optimize their app ads. While .app/ads serves a variety of purposes for developers, one of the startup’s primary functions is as a completely open iPhone app ad exchange. Like the other players, .app/ads provides a uber-simple dashboard for app developers to create mutiple ad slots within their apps, list their apps, and implement advertising through a variety of ad-networks/exchanges. But what makes .app/ads different is that its fully open to developers can run any ad network or any ad exchange whenever they want. And developers can pick and choose to integrate the ad code they need from the companies they want vs. a pre-selected loaded SDK. And there’s no limit to the number of SDKs developers can add. It’s like ordering from an a la carte menu. Apple recently rolled out the ability to implement in-app purchases for free apps, which was a boon to developers. .app/ads will power in-app purchases for developers for free, allowing developers to run in-app purchase ads easily. Once a product is setup, developers can create an add with text and images, and simple add the advertisement to the rotation. The site will automatically rotate in the in-app purchase add with other ads.
.app/ads also lets developers tweak the content of ad slots. For example, developers can import Twitter feeds to fill an ad slot. When an app user clicks on a particular link in the Tweet in the feed, he or she is taken to the source of the link within the app. So if the link was from TechCrunch, the user could browse TechCrunch from within the developer’s app. .app/ads also will allow developers to import RSS feeds into the slot as well as promote other apps, contests, updates and more. While this content will be mixed in the rotation with ads, the basic idea is to give developers the option of engaging with their users in other ways besides advertising. And the platform lets developers set the frequency of appearance of certain ads or content. Another compelling feature of .app/ads is a developer to developer marketplace where developers can barter with each other for ad space, set pricing terms and eventually sell ad space directly to each other. Currently this is the only feature where .app/ads. is monetizing; the platform is taking 10 percent of each transaction on the marketplace. As of now, .app/ads caters solely for iPhone developers and apps. The startup’s founder Evan Rifkin told me that the open platform has been optimized for the developer, and aims to level the playing field for developers to have a fully transparent app ad management platform. Openness on ad exchanges has been an issue in the past, when AdMob announced its decision earlier this year to cut off ad network aggregators like AdWhirl and Tapjoy, claiming it had been hearing of complaints of technical glitches related to ads served by such "ad net mediators.” The company later announced a delay in this decision in August. Of course, the ad network and marketplace arena is crowded. But the newly launched startup has experience on its side. Rifkin is a seasoned entrepreneur, who sold startup Flux (formerly Tagworld) to Viacom last fall. He also helped start Adconion and co-founded Traffic Marketplace (sold to Uproar/Vivendi Universal).
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