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- Google GDrive Launches. Just Don’t Call It That.
- PlaySpan: $30 Million Spent On Virtual Gifts Over Holiday Season
- Kleiner And Bessemer Put $8.65 Million Into ReputationDefender
- Google I/O 2010 To Feature Chrome, Android, And The Enterprise; Registration Now Open
- ImageShack Updates iPhone App With Powerful Photo, Video Sharing Options
- In A Year When Online Ads Slumped, VideoEgg Doubled Revenues To More Than $25 Million
- eMusic Reels In Another Major Label With Warner Music Deal
- PBWorks Launches Template Store For Collaboration Platform
- U.S. Private Equity Firms Raised Less Than $100B In Funds Last Year, Down 68%
- VigLink Raises $800K To Take Hassle Out Of Affiliate Programs
- Forrester Forecasts 8.1 Percent Increase In Global IT Spending In 2010
- An iPhone Lover’s Take On The Nexus One
- Oh, Snap! Streamy Runs Out Of Steam, Looking For A Buyer
- Ok You Luddites, Time To Chill Out On Facebook Over Privacy
- Foursquare Now Seeing A Check-In Each Second
- LPD: Prysm’s New Acronym Promises Huge Screens, 75% Less Power Consumption
- Friendster Strikes Deal With Yahoo Southeast Asia
- Mochi Media Acquired By Shanda Games For $80 Million
- The State of Online Video: Getting Paid for Content
- Purported Interview With Facebook Employee Details Use Of ‘Master Password’
- CrunchBase Funding Digest: Nicira, TopTenREVIEWS, Tangerine Solar, Powered
- UFC Vows To Go After Pirates No Matter The Cost
- Riding The Nexus One Wave, Google Releases The Android 2.1 SDK
- Digg’s New Head Of PR Comes Highly Recommended By Pandora
- Dave McClure To Launch Early Stage Venture Fund
| Google GDrive Launches. Just Don’t Call It That. Posted: 12 Jan 2010 08:41 AM PST
“This is not GDrive” said Google Docs product manager Vijay Bangaru yesterday while showing me something that sure does look exactly like the fabled GDrive. “How is it different,” I asked. “That’s hard to say, because GDrive doesn’t exist.” Alrighty then. Putting that aside, you can soon upload any file type at all to Google Docs, not just the dozen or so Office formats that the service allowed as of yesterday. Video files. Images. Audio Files. Even Zip files. As long as those files are 250 MB or smaller, you’re good. The new feature will roll out over the next several weeks, says Google. Like other documents in Google docs, files can be kept private, made public or shared with a few users. Google Viewer can be used to view many file types, with the notable exception of video. Regular users have 1 GB of free storage and can purchase more for $0.25/GB. Enterprise customer pay higher prices, starting at $17/year for 5 GB. There are no bandwidth charges. Three Third Party Apps Available NowThree partners have been working with Google to build value add features on top of the new product. The most interesting, Memeo Connect (from Memeo), lets users sync files between the desktop and Google Docs. Syncplicity is offering businesses an automated backup and file management application. And Manymoon, an online project management application, is also now integrated with Google Docs file storage. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| PlaySpan: $30 Million Spent On Virtual Gifts Over Holiday Season Posted: 12 Jan 2010 08:40 AM PST
Should we be considering virtual goods when evaluating online holiday spending? We’ve seen that e-commerce spending over the holidays was strong, with consumers shelling out nearly $30 billion over a period of a few months. Now, virtual goods platform PlaySpan reports that digital goods have seen a similar, if smaller trend, with Americans spending $30 million on virtual gifts in November and December of 2009. It’s no surprise that the digital goods world saw strong sales over the past year; the business was projected to make $1 billion in 2009. And as virtual goods are booming, various startups have emerged to capitalize on this growth by facilitating the exchange around these goods. PlaySpan powers micro-payments across over 1,000 video games and virtual worlds and has virtual goods storefronts on Facebook, MySpace, within games and on its standalone site. PlaySpan’s research found that one in five of its digital goods buyers also gave virtual gifts. And about 15% of all virtual gift giving occurred during the November and December months. PlaySpan also found that nearly 1 in 12 Americans purchased a digital good in 2009, with the average price of a virtual gift estimated around $3 per transaction. PlaySpan itself seems to be doing well in the space. The startup just struck a deal with Nickelodeon to power the media company’s virtual worlds' currency, called NeoCash, across multiple payment providers including credit cards and prepaid cards. Last year, PlaySpan acquired micro-transaction app developer Spare Change, which powered micropayments across 700 social networking apps on Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo. And PlaySpan also announced a deal to power micropayments on hi5. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Kleiner And Bessemer Put $8.65 Million Into ReputationDefender Posted: 12 Jan 2010 08:08 AM PST
The line between online security and reputation is blurring. ReputationDefender is a new kind of online security startup that helps you monitor your reputation on the Web and take actions to make sure that when someone Googles you they see you in the best possible light. Last year, ReputationDefender raised $8.65 million from Bessemer Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins, which it is announcing today. The round came in two tranches, with $4 million form Bessemer in May, 2009 and another $4.65 million from Kleiner in August, 2009, with Bessemer participating again. David Cowan of Bessemer and Ted Schlein of Kleiner now have board seats, along with angel investor Mike Maples who led the Series A in 2008. ReputationDefender sells four different security products on a monthly subscription basis (MyReputation, MyPrivacy, MyChild, and MyEdge) which lets you monitor information about you across the Web, as well as in semi-private databases, and helps you remove inaccurate information or counter by promoting your own vetted profile. CEO Michael Fertick thinks “we are entering a third phase of digital security.” The first phase was around protecting your devices from viruses and malware. The second was around financial payments and making sure people are who they claim to be. “Now we have a third phase,” he says. “Your whole life is on the Web. You live, work, date on the Web. Nobody has your back yet. Nobody gives you the tools to control your life on the Internet.” Privacy might be dead, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about it. “Information security has to evolve form protecting hard drives to protecting identities,” says Cowan. ReputationDefender specializes in recursive search. It doesn’t just do a search on your name. It will match your name to your employer, college, address, and other information it knows about you so that it can pull up comments, blog posts, photos, and other mentions of you across the Web even if your full name isn’t used. In computer science this is known as the persona isolation problem, or in national security circles the “27 Mohammeds problem.” How do you know that the John Smith mentioned in an online forum is your John Smith. But ReputationDefender has an edge. Fertick explains: “The unfair or competitive advantage is we are doing searches of our customers, who give us more information about themselves.” So it can narrow down, when someone is talking about you. And it constantly keeps an eye out for new mentions, so you don’t have to Google yourself every morning. “We now have a whole generation of folks growing up who think it is ok to say whatever they want to whoever they want, whenever they want,” says Shlein, who is an online security veteran and sits on the board of Lifelock, another online security firm which addresses identity theft, with Cowan. ReputationDefender aims to help people regain control of their online reputation, which is increasingly becoming an issue whenever someone applies to a new school or for a new job, or even when they are trying to get a date. Because what is the first thing a college admissions officer, potential boss, or prospective date will do? Google your name. And anything said about you on the Web will come up. The extent that ReputaionDefender can actually do anything about erroneous or unflattering information about you varies, but for the most part simply knowing what’s out there is first step to doing something about it. And the company is definitely seeing strong early demand. “The numbers are going up and to the right,” says Shlein. Fertick won’t go into too many financial details, but does share that when the company launched in October, 2006 it made $33,000 in revenues. The next year, revenues grew to $1.21 million. He pretty much bootsrapped the whole thing. “We were profitable for much of the history of the company,” he says. Even in the fourth quarter of 2008, when the economy was falling apart, ReputationDefender had a record quarter, followed by an even better one in the first quarter of 2009. It was that financial strength which helped convince Cowan and Shlein to back the company. Now, the company is investing ahead of growth and is not currently profitable. It is still early days and there is a lot of work ahead. Perhaps ReputationDefender’s biggest weakness is that it does not have a full view into Facebook, where only public comments or photos show up. If somebody is going to badmouth you online, chances are it will be on Facebook. “I don't think we are especially awesome in getting into the semi-closed systems yet. We don't yet have the ability to search all of Facebook,” Fertick acknowledges. But he does have at least partial access to 40 social networks, and this is a big area of focus for him. And over time, as Facebook becomes more public by default, it will become more visible to ReputationDefender. It’s the public stuff that most people care about anyway. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Google I/O 2010 To Feature Chrome, Android, And The Enterprise; Registration Now Open Posted: 12 Jan 2010 08:00 AM PST
The main topics of discussion? Enterprise, Chrome (including Chrome OS), and Android. Eric Tholome, Director of Product Management for Google Developer, says that Enterprise is a key focus because companies are quickly beginning to adopt the web stack and cloud computing. Chrome will be in the spotlight as Google talks about Chrome OS, developer tools, extensions, and HTML5. And Android will be a hot topic because Android growth is rapidly accelerating. Tholome says that this year’s conference will retain the same highly technical focus as we’ve seen in past years. However, he says that there will be a new addition: the day before the conference begins, Google will offer a special ‘pre-event’ that features more basic, 101 courses. Tholome says that admission will be included with your I/O ticket, but says that Google doesn’t expect a very large turnout (he says most developers are interested in the more technical sessions). Google I/O has been home to some major announcements for the company, including the debut of Google Wave. Last year also saw Google’s Oprah Moment, when it gave a phone to everyone in attendance. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| ImageShack Updates iPhone App With Powerful Photo, Video Sharing Options Posted: 12 Jan 2010 06:54 AM PST
ImageShack Uploader 2.0, which is free of charge, lets you record videos and shoot pictures using the iPhone’s camera, and gives you the option to upload them directly to ImageShack servers. Thanks to further integration with its real-time photo sharing service yfrog, users can also opt to share pictures and videos straight to Twitter, including media that was already stored on the device. Finally, there’s a direct YouTube upload option for videos as well. A couple of months ago, yfrog also added the ability to snap pictures or record video straight from your Webcam and share it with the world in real-time. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| In A Year When Online Ads Slumped, VideoEgg Doubled Revenues To More Than $25 Million Posted: 12 Jan 2010 06:41 AM PST
Last year was the first time the online advertising industry saw a slump in revenues (JP Morgan is estimating a 5.2 percent decline, although things looked like they started to stabilize in the third quarter). But for online advertising network VideoEgg, 2009 was a great year. According to CEO Matt Sanchez, the company “more than doubled” revenues to $25 million last year and reached profitability seven months ago. VideoEgg delivers more than one billion ad impressions per month, which reach an estimated 100 million consumers in four different countries. While that is not terribly big as far as ad networks go, it does show that VideoEgg’s “engagement ads” are showing some decent traction. VideoEgg has a pay-per-engagement model and offers unique ad units —including roll-overs, ad frames, video ads, and iPhone ads—which go beyond bland banner ads. For instance, VideoEgg’s ads invite consumers to roll over and click on them to open them up so that they take over the whole screen, and then they can be presented with a video, a mini-website, or even a shopping experience. VideoEgg only gets paid when consumers engage with the ads. Sanchez says the engagement rate varies, but overall VideoEgg is still seeing more than 1 percent engagement, which compares to anywhere from 0.1 to 0.3 percent clickthroughs on run-of-the-mill banner ads. So although his ads are not yet seen by as many people as those of larger ad networks, he argues they are many times more effective. “There is tremendous liquidity in impressions,” he points out. At this point, “the idea of unique reach is a non-argument. Anyone can get access” to eyeballs. If this is the year the online ad industry begins to kill the CPM (cost-per-impression) model, VideoEgg is already on the right track. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| eMusic Reels In Another Major Label With Warner Music Deal Posted: 12 Jan 2010 05:59 AM PST
eMusic last year inked a similar deal with Sony Music Entertainment. The agreement includes titles from WMG’s Atlantic Records, Rhino Records and Warner Bros. Records as well as from independent labels distributed through WMG’s Alternative Distribution Alliance (ADA) stable that are not currently sold on eMusic. The deal will make 10,000 catalog albums from artists like REM, Depeche Mode and Aretha Franklin available for downloading, but does not include newer hit records. eMusic says it currently offers more than 7.5 million tracks, and that it has sold more than 350 million music downloads under its current ownership. The company sells monthly membership plans beginning at 24 credits for $11.99. One of its rival, FreeAllMusic, yesterday announced that it had signed an agreement with Universal Music for ad-supported downloads. eMusic CEO Danny Stein reiterated earlier rumors about its plans to complement the company’s subscription-based music download service with streaming, telling Reuters that the company is currently in talks with label partners for new licensing deals that would allow registered users to stream songs, similar to services like CBS-owned Last.fm and LaLa (which Warner Music Group invested in and was recently acquired by Apple). Streaming would be added in 2010, provided rights holders come to terms with the realities of new business models, Stein said. We’ve contacted the company for more information about its streaming plans, such as timing and pricing. Interestingly, Stein didn’t dismiss rumors about a potential sale of eMusic, but told Reuters that a buyer would have to pay its owner, Dimensional Associates, for a successful 2010 and 2011 upfront in order for them to consider it. Which sounds to me like something that you would say if you were definitely up for sale. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| PBWorks Launches Template Store For Collaboration Platform Posted: 12 Jan 2010 05:55 AM PST  Startup PBWorks, which was formally known as PBwiki, specializes in helping businesses, non-profits, and educational institutions collaborate via wikis. The startup has steadily added innovative, real-time features to its platform, most recently integrating Twitter-like microblogging and tapping into the real-time stream. Today, the startup is launching a PBworks “Template Store” that lets users adopt pre-built apps and workspaces that anyone can distribute. With over 25 different apps, the template app store will include PBWorks forms and community-generated templates. Companies can create, share, and apply workspace templates to solve specific business problems or manage specific industries, including advertising and PR. PBWorks offers apid and free templates. PBWorks, which had an overhaul of its user interface and features last year, offers businesses with a project management application and a customized wiki workspace, with mobile support, document management, access controls and more. With a real-time makeover, the platform became more attractive. So if a user is editing a page and realizes that he or she needs the input of other team members, the user can request fellow employees to join the appropriate page using IM Collaboration, start a Live Editing session, and use Voice Collaboration to initiate an instant conference call. Currently, PBworks manages 50,000 wiki groups with over 3 million users and has accumulated a loyal client base. The company serves teams at over a third of the Fortune 500, and was home to three presidential campaigns, the United Nations, The Financial Times and Harvard University. Like Salesforce, PBworks is a paid subscription service, with no advertising. The company has raised nearly $2.5 million in funding, with its most recent funding round of $2.1 million announced in 2007. Competitors include Microsoft Sharepoint, Jive, and Socialtext. And of course, we can draw comparisons to Google Wave, Google’s much-hyped new collaboration platform. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| U.S. Private Equity Firms Raised Less Than $100B In Funds Last Year, Down 68% Posted: 12 Jan 2010 05:24 AM PST
Zooming in on the past quarter (Q4 2009), Dow Jones LP Source figures show PE firms raised $20.5 billion in 75 funds, down 80% from the $102.7 billion raised by 188 funds in the fourth quarter of 2008. Jennifer Rossa, managing editor of Dow Jones Private Equity Analyst, isn’t overly optimistic for 2010 either, and says we’ll not be seeing a return to levels seen before the economic downturn even though limited partners are likely to become more active this year. Leveraged buyout and corporate finance funds raised just $53.7 billion across 133 funds last year, a 73% drop from the $195.5 billion raised by 204 funds in 2008. Despite that drop, it remains the biggest slice of the capital pie. Mega funds (funds of $6 billion or more) had most difficulty raising capital in 2009. Six mega funds raised $14 billion, but more than half of the year’s total for mega funds was raised by a single firm, Hellman & Friedman, which raised $8.8 billion for its seventh fund last year. One silver lining in the report: the secondary market was the only subsector of private equity to turn in a strong performance, collecting $17.5 billion in 2009, up 83% from 2008 and a new record. It wasn’t a stellar year for venture capital either, as you may have heard. Still, Dow Jones LP Source says, VC firms did not have as difficult a year as buyout firms. Venture fund-raising fell 55% to $13 billion across 120 funds from the $28.7 billion collected by 204 funds in 2008. In the fourth quarter, 21 funds raised $4.4 billion, a 56% drop from the same period last year. We’ve spotted an increase in VC funding deals in Q4 2009 based on CrunchBase data as well. A few of the big winners in 2009 were New Enterprise Associates, which raised $1.2 billion, taking the total amount raised to date for the firm’s 13th fund to $2.5 billion, and Norwest Venture Partners which closed its 11th fund in the fourth quarter after raising $1.2 billion. Outside of Hellman & Friedman’s mega fund and Goldman Sachs Private Equity Group’s secondary fund ($5.5 billion), the fund that closed on the most capital last year was TA Associates’ eleventh fund, collecting $3.5 billion for its $4 billion fund in 2009. (Image via Flickr / Oxfam International) Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| VigLink Raises $800K To Take Hassle Out Of Affiliate Programs Posted: 12 Jan 2010 05:00 AM PST
For those that aren’t familiar with them, affiliate programs are often offered by online retailers who pay you a commission to drive traffic (and purchases) to their webstore. Amazon is best known for their program, but many other businesses now feature them as well. VigLink looks to help you use as many as these programs as you’d like with a minimal amount of effort. The site is currently in a private beta, but plans to launch publicly in the next few months. To start using VigLink, publishers simply drop a snippet of JavaScript into their pages. Then, whenever the publisher links to a valid product (say, some shoes on Amazon), VigLink will automatically convert that standard link into an affiliate link. The publisher still determines which stores and products they’re linking to — VigLink simply modifies that link to include the proper affiliate program URL.
VigLink further streamlines the process by maintaining its own account with these affiliate programs, and any publishers using VigLink are housed under these accounts. This makes it relatively easy for a publisher to get started (they don’t have to sign up for anything other than their initial VigLink account). But I’m not sure it’s a foolproof setup: if one publisher using VigLink starts behaving badly, there’s a chance that the affiliate program being abused will ban the entire VigLink account, which would affect all publishers using it. CEO Oliver Roup says that the company is being as transparent as possible with affiliate programs to make sure that doesn’t happen. He also says that VigLink has a system that constantly monitors its publisher sites for spam, even long after they’ve signed up for the service (he likens it to the system Google’s AdSense uses). VigLink generates revenue by taking a percentage of the affiliate fees it generates (the company hasn’t settled on an exact amount yet). Roup wouldn’t comment on any features that are in planning stages, but I suspect that they’ll eventually help publishers monetize by suggesting when they should insert affiliate links at logical places in their blog posts (say, when they mention a product). Likewise, VigLink could potentially offer a feature that would poll all of the affiliate programs in its system before inserting an affiliate link to determine which one would generate the most money for the publisher. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Forrester Forecasts 8.1 Percent Increase In Global IT Spending In 2010 Posted: 12 Jan 2010 04:31 AM PST
The research firm says the global technology industry will see an 8.1 percent increase in IT spending in 2010, with software and computer hardware leading the charge, and IT consulting services following. After declining 8.2 percent last year, U.S. IT spending will grow 6.6 percent in 2010 to $568 billion, according to Forrester’s latest research report. Global tech spending, which dropped 8.9 percent in 2009, will rise to more than $1.6 trillion in 2010. Forrester is particularly optimistic about IT spending of businesses and governments in the United States, with Forrester Research VP and principal analyst Andrew Bartels predicting a the tech recovery that will be stronger than the overall economic recovery, with technology spending growing at more than twice the rate of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2010. Bartels said he sees 2010 as poised for a tech spending rebound and the start of a longer growth cycle, especially for technologies involving service-oriented architecture, server and storage virtualization, cloud computing and unified communications. But the regions where growth is predicted to be the strongest in 2010 (when not measured against local currency) are Western and Central Europe, where tech purchases are forecast to rise by 11.2 percent, boosted by the dollar's decline against the euro. Forrester Research expects IT purchases in Canada to grow by 9.9 percent, Asia Pacific by 7.8 percent, and Latin America by 7.7 percent. (Image via BusinessWeek) Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| An iPhone Lover’s Take On The Nexus One Posted: 12 Jan 2010 03:55 AM PST
And to start off, I’ll come right out and say what everyone will want to know: Do I think the Nexus One is better than the iPhone? No. There are certain things it does better (I’ll get to that), but overall, if I had to choose one, I would still choose the iPhone — specifically, the iPhone 3GS. Is that my bias talking as someone who has used the device on a daily basis for over two years? Maybe a bit, but overall I do believe that while the Android phones are rapidly catching up to the iPhone, they are still not quite up to that device’s quality. Lest you think I’m a complete newbie to the Android platform, I’ve actually had and used a number of Android devices over the past year or so. I still have a G1 unit, as well as the myTouch3G. I’ve also used the Droid quite a bit since its release. Each of those devices is solid in their own regard when compared to 99% of the phones on the market. And the Nexus One is the best yet. But none are the iPhone. I’m going to focus on the three biggest things that stand out in my mind about the Nexus One as compared to the iPhone (both good and bad). Google Apps Praise of the iPhone aside, there is no question what the Nexus One does better: Google apps. Every single Google app is better on the Nexus One (and all Android phones, for that matter, but on the Nexus One it’s more obvious because this device is the fastest). Gmail, Maps, and Google Voice in particular absolutely blow away their counterparts on the iPhone (of which only Maps is a native application, and Google Voice, famously, isn’t available).
Gmail is also ridiculously better on Android because it includes things like native support for starring messages, labels, and threading. Again, this is true of all Android phones, but the Nexus One showcases how much better Gmail is on Android than on the iPhone because it’s the fastest. If there is one thing that makes me want to use Android every day, it’s Gmail. And that won’t change unless Google ever (or ever is allowed to) build a native Gmail app for the iPhone. Maps offers a number of features on the Nexus One that aren’t on the iPhone native version. This includes Latitude (which can run in the background), and Navigation. Other Google apps, like Google Sky Map and Google Goggles are also pretty cool, and useful to varying degrees, and again, only available for Android. Third Party Apps Maybe the hardest thing (or Apple’s greatest strength, depending how you’re looking at it) in using an Android device after being accustomed to the iPhone is the app difference. Simply put, iPhone apps, as a whole, are much, much better than Android apps. Maybe that’s because Android apps aren’t quite as mature yet. But I don’t know. The Android Market has been around for over a year now, and the fact that there still isn’t a Twitter app that’s as good as the top five iPhone Twitter apps is a bit odd to me. Seesmic for Android is the closest yet, but it still gets blown away by the polish of apps like Tweetie on the iPhone. Likewise, none of the games are nearly as good on Android as they are on the iPhone. It’s not even close. On the iPhone, some of the 3D games rival the console versions, or at the very least, the handheld console versions. On Android, we might as well be playing Pong. All that said, there are a number of apps that are useful on the Nexus One in ways they couldn’t be on the iPhone. That includes the instant messaging apps (again, Google’s own seems to be the best), and Pandora. Pandora on the iPhone is great, but you have to have it open at all times. On the Nexus One, it’s brilliant because it can play music in the background while you do other things. Obviously, this issue (background apps) has been talked about in the past ad-naseum, so I won’t dwell on it here. Again, it’s worth repeating that the best Android apps are all Google-made. That’s not true on the iPhone where most of the best apps aren’t Apple-made. To me, that speaks to the power of Apple’s platform. Android’s platform will continue to mature no doubt, but so will the iPhone’s. It has to be worrisome for Google that the divide is still this wide. Hardware
The front of the Nexus One leaves something to be desired in my opinion. It’s the closest yet to the iPhone in terms of sleekness, but whereas the iPhone is almost one smooth surface except for the one button indent, the Nexus One has a face that is broken up by its frame and the silly trackball that Google keeps insisting manufacturers include. I have never once used the trackball, nor do I intend to. It’s a waste of space, and makes the device look and feel cheaper. While the Nexus One does have a nicer screen than the iPhone, it has a downside too. The OLED screen is much harder to see in daylight when compared to the iPhone’s screen. This is the same problem the new Zune HD has, and it really is a problem. In the dark, these screens look beautiful, better than the iPhone’s — but it’s not always dark. And when outside during the day, at times, it’s almost unusable. Instead of the one button that the iPhone employs, the Nexus One sticks with the standard 4-button (not including the scroll ball) Android approach. These buttons take a little getting used to, but can be powerful if used correctly. That said, I’m still not sure Android’s hardware wouldn’t be better served if these were software-based. There are a number of ways to get to Search via these buttons, for example. And while I get that this is Google’s thing, I find this repetitive, and in some cases confusing. One method to do that would be fine. The Nexus One’s 5 megapixel camera does seem to take significantly nicer pictures than the iPhone’s 3 megapixel variety. But the biggest advantage of the camera may be its LED flash, which is pretty powerful (though not fantastic for taking pictures in dark rooms still). I’d be shocked if the next version of the iPhone didn’t gain both of these upgrades. The single biggest problem I have with the Nexus One hardware is likely a combination of hardware and software. I mis-click on things way too often on the Nexus One. While the device’s touchscreen is obviously a huge improvement over the original G1’s, it’s still nowhere near as accurate as the iPhone’s. I’m not the only one who has noticed this. I often find myself mis-hitting icons, mis-typing letters, and the touchscreen mixed with the Nexus One web browser is simply not very good at all (try the menu system on espn.com to see what I mean). Apple is great at nailing the little things, and I’m not really sure why the touchscreen mechanics are so much better on the iPhone. But they are. Speaking of the touchscreen, whereas before it was just odd that Google wouldn’t include multi-touch support in its apps, now it’s just annoying. The little “+/-” magnifying glass that shows up when you should just be able to pinch to zoom is beyond lame. And it may be even worse when viewing/manipulating pictures on the Nexus One. I’m not sure if Google still has their gentlemen’s agreement with Apple not to use the multi-touch gestures, but Palm seems to be using them just fine. One Device To Rule Them All
Perhaps the single biggest reason that I like Apple products, and their software, in particular, is the attention to detail the company puts in. In my mind, that’s exactly what still separates the iPhone from all the Android phones. It’s the little things. The things that are almost too small for you to even notice, but which make the experience subtly better. Android is like a very nice painting done entirely with broad strokes. The iPhone is more like a masterpiece in which every little detail has been meticulously defined. Just as people have different tastes in art, people will have different tastes when it comes to the iPhone versus the Nexus One. But that doesn’t change the fact that some pieces of artwork are considered to be masterpieces, while some are considered to be merely very good. If you’re an iPhone user who is sick of AT&T or just looking for a new device, I’m not sure that the Nexus One will be enough to satisfy you. Both Jason and Mike of TechCrunch have successfully switched from the iPhone to the Android platform, but both will admit that there were speed bumps (well, Jason will anyway — while Mike will privately, then deny saying such things). Jason made some compelling arguments a few days ago about that switch, and how it takes time to get used to Android. I definitely agree with that. And think I could get pretty comfortable with Android. But the point is, I don’t really want to. In my mind, the iPhone is still the better device. Not better in every regard, but better overall. The Nexus One comes close, closer than any Android phone yet, but it cannot snatch the iPhone’s cigar. Further, the problem with switching to something like the Nexus One now is that even if you think it’s better than an iPhone, a new iPhone is inevitably coming in another 6 months or so that will be much better than the Nexus One. Who knows, maybe we’ll even see it on Verizon this year, which would negate at least half of the complaints about the device. And, of course, there will be better Android phones coming down the pipeline as well. So if I were an iPhone user thinking about switching (which again, I’m not), I’d probably wait to see what Apple announces in June and then see what Android phone is available by then if the next iPhone doesn’t blow you away. It’s impressive how far these Android devices have come in a year. But the software/hardware combination still lacks the refinement of the iPhone. Maybe by this time next year, with Google now taking a more hands-on approach, they’ll have a device that can match Apple’s. But they’ll still likely lack the apps. And the iPhone will still likely lack the best Google apps. But it’s good to have competition. And it’s good to have two companies that can play off each other and push innovation — while at the same time, changing the industry. It’s becoming very clear that Google and Apple will be those two. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Oh, Snap! Streamy Runs Out Of Steam, Looking For A Buyer Posted: 12 Jan 2010 03:41 AM PST
Sadly, the team behind the application secured only a modest round of angel funding in 2007 and again in 2008, and has been unable to raise follow-up funding last year. The fledgling company is now running out of cash, and is looking for another party to keep it alive and continue development on the app. And boy, do I hope someone ends up doing just that. The reason why I like Streamy so much is because of its versatility. The service basically marries two daily routines of mine, RSS reading and social networking, fits both of those activities in a single, attractive user interface and bolts a ton of sharing and communication features on top of it. Think FriendFeed on steroids. You really have to try it to get a feel for it, but for me Streamy is the main reason why I stopped using desktop applications for keeping track of Twitter, Facebook and my RSS feed subscriptions. It’s far from perfect, but there’s a lot of potential to the idea, and in fact I don’t understand why players like Seesmic and TweetDeck haven’t tried combining classic RSS feed reader functionality alongside the aggregation of social networks. Contrary to what others claim, I don’t believe Twitter and Facebook is the death of RSS, and Streamy is a great example of how the two could (and should) be able to co-exist. Anyway, 2009 sucked Streamy dry, and co-founders Don C. Mosites and Jonathan Gray have given up trying to convince investors to inject capital into the startup. Mosites also tells me they had a bit too much ambition for Streamy, and that the product as it is know is still far from what he and Gray had envisioned when they kicked off development. Fortunately for me, the service won’t be shut down in the near future, and apparently some potential buyers are already in discussion with Streamy about a potential purchase of the technology, team and brand. I’d be hard-pressed to find a single application that can replace Streamy for my own content consumption and social networking needs, so here’s to hoping one of the interested parties comes through. Pretty please?
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Ok You Luddites, Time To Chill Out On Facebook Over Privacy Posted: 12 Jan 2010 02:18 AM PST
That might sound familiar to your great-great-great grandparents. Supposedly many people were apprehensive about using telephones in the early 1900s because they knew the phone companies could listen in on their phone calls. There are people who won’t use phones today because of the ease in which calls can be tapped. But the rest of us seem to be ok with Gmail. And our phone. That’s because the benefits of those products far outweigh the privacy costs. And people are going to be just fine with Facebook, too. Even if they did do a switcharoo on privacy settings a month ago that is still reverberating through the tech press. Contrary to published reports, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg did not say “the age of privacy is over” in my interview with him last Friday evening at the Crunchies. You can watch the video here for yourself. What he said is that he wants Facebook to change with its users, and keep its product fresh. Which is exactly what they are doing. The fact is that privacy is already really, really dead. Howard Lindzon nailed it the other day when he said “Equifax, Transunion, Capital One, American Express and their cousins raped our privacy,” Everything we do, everything we buy, everywhere we go is tracked and sitting in a database somewhere. Our location via our phone, or our car GPS. Our credit card transactions. Everything. Honestly, a picture of you taking a bong hit in college is mice nuts compared to the mountain of data that is gathered and exploited about every single one of us every single day. You just don’t really see that other stuff because those companies don’t like to talk about the data their gathering. I don’t see an Equifax blog post outlining exactly how they are gathering and selling your information, for example. The point is that we like Facebook. Very, very few of us are going to stop using it. It was inevitable that they’d rip the bandaid off and try to get their users to make data public. It’s what’s best for Facebook. And if users hate it enough, someone else will launch a competing service that has different policies and thrive. You can guess what the odds of that happening are. I spoke to Blippy CEO Philip Kaplan earlier tonight. Blippy is a service that lets users publish everything they buy with their credit cards. Crazy right? Who’d want to do that? Well, apparently a lot do. The company has let in 2,500 people so far. Those 2,500 people are publishing $200,000 worth of purchases a day to their friends. It’s less than a month old and they’ve tracked $3.8 million in transactions already, with an average transaction size of $46. And more than 10,000 people are on the waiting list to get an account and gladly share their consumption behavior with the world. Why are they doing it? To share what they’re buying, and talk about it. Or to let advertisers see what they like and tailor offers to them. Or something. The point is, we don’t really care about privacy anymore. And Facebook is just giving us exactly what we want. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Foursquare Now Seeing A Check-In Each Second Posted: 12 Jan 2010 01:22 AM PST
This past Saturday, Foursquare was averaging more than a check-in a second, according to this tweet from the official account. Some quick math tells me that this means they must have seen over 86,000 check-ins in that 24 hour span. While Foursquare hasn’t publicly stated how many users they have, our best guess is that the number is something around 200,000 (with many following Scoble) and growing fast. And while that would make Foursquare much smaller than Twitter (which, in turn, is much smaller than Facebook), it makes the check-in numbers even more impressive. That data would seem to indicate that a good number of Foursquare users are actively using it. This lack of use is something that has always been a big criticism of Twitter, for example. The latest version of Foursquare’s iPhone app, version 1.5, went live in the App Store today. It features some location enhancements, as well as a refreshed UI. Check out the free app here.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| LPD: Prysm’s New Acronym Promises Huge Screens, 75% Less Power Consumption Posted: 12 Jan 2010 12:58 AM PST
Developed by the Silicon Valley-based Prysm, LPD is being formally unveiled today as the latest type of screen technology. LPD stands for Laser Phosphor Display, which likely means nothing to you, but the company is promising that it’s a tech that will allow them to create massive, crisp digital displays that consume some 75% less power than the other display technologies. The company claims these displays are also much cheaper to build, and will last longer. So can they deliver on such promises? It will likely be a while before we as consumers can see, because at first, Prysm is targeting commercial vendors with the tech. They hope that arenas/stadiums, concerts, and big department stores will take advantage of their displays initially. But after that, assuming all goes well, this tech would ideally be available to consumers looking for large screens that consume little power. And following the hoopla of Avatar and some of the tech at CES, these screens are 3D compatible, we’re told. Of course, the key to that is also pricing, but again, they’re still a ways away from figuring that out for consumers. In fact, all they’ll say on their site is vaguely worded statements such as, “Finally, LPD technology breaks free of the performance limitations of conventional displays by offering high resolution, superb image quality, high brightness and the widest viewing angle at the lowest cost of ownership while consuming the least resources.” That sounds like the best of all worlds. But seeing is believing, and we haven’t seen yet. Prysm is a company that has actually been flying under the radar for about four years now in Silicon Valley. The privately held company has over 100 employees.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Friendster Strikes Deal With Yahoo Southeast Asia Posted: 11 Jan 2010 10:51 PM PST
More news from the social network Friendster. The site, which was acquired in December by Malaysian payments company MOL Global, has struck a deal with Yahoo Southeast Asia. The purpose of the deal is to integrate product features and cross-promote across both Friendster and Yahoo. Both Friendster and Yahoo stand to gain from the partnership as Friendster has a significant Asian audience and Yahoo also has a steady following in the regional area for certain web services. Friendster, which was sold for just under $30 million, has over 90 million registered users and 90 percent of its daily traffic coming from Southeast Asia today. The partnership will involve a a new social application built by Friendster that will be prominently displayed on Yahoo Southeast Asia properties and a cross-promotion of Yahoo products on Friendster. Yahoo Search will also feature results from Friendster user profiles and fan profiles, similar to the deals struck with Twitter and Facebook by the search giants. Friendster users will also be able to link their Friendster account to their Yahoo! account to share their Friendster network activity updates and inbox via their Yahoo accounts. So, users can check their Friendster account and send updates directly from their Yahoo homepage. Users will also be able to publish their Friendster network activity to Yahoo Messenger and other Yahoo applications. The cross promotion between Friendster and Yahoo has already been implemented but the search results and activity update integration will be rolled out over the next few months. Friendster, which was founded in 2001, has raised over $45 million in venture capital to date, and is sitting on some potentially lucrative IP. Friendster is no longer hot in the U.S. and still has members in the Asia/Pacific region. The social network, which just rolled out a much-needed redesign, appointed Richard Kimber as its new CEO, who used to head Sales and Operations in South East Asia for Google. The partnership makes sense; and Friendster should be doing everything it can to try to own the user base in Southeast Asia, considering that the social network is performing poorly in other parts of the world. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Mochi Media Acquired By Shanda Games For $80 Million Posted: 11 Jan 2010 09:38 PM PST
The deal will be announced shortly. Shanda is China’s largest operator of online games, with nearly 10 million active accounts. The company hosts so-called MMORPGs, or massively multi-player online role-playing games, under which users pay monthly subscriber fees as well as purchase items within the game. The company went public on NASDAQ late last year and has the enviable ticker symbol GAME. As of June 2009 100 million people were playing games that included Mochi Media. They also launched a payments platform for game developers last year. The company was close to being acquired last year, but an internal battle between the founders and investors led to a scrapping of that deal. Shortly afterwards the hired executive team left to other ventures. And the Mochi Media founders took over management of the company again. Shanda also acquired Goldcool Games earlier this month, a Shanghai-based online game developer and operator. Goldcool Games currently operates two MMORPGs, “Hades Realm” and “Dukes and Lords.” The company also has several MMORPGs in the pipeline, including “Dragon Heir,” “Zodiac Tales,” “Martial Glory” and “Hades Realm II.” Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| The State of Online Video: Getting Paid for Content Posted: 11 Jan 2010 08:53 PM PST
This guest post is written by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, the founder and CEO of WatchMojo, a leading producer of premium, informative and entertaining video content. The company's catalog of 5,000 videos has generated over 105,000,000 streams since 2006. Today, WatchMojo streams nearly 10 million videos each month and reaches 20,000,000 consumers online and offline. Party like it's 1999? Online video is where search was in 1999: a major part of the digital media ecosystem is desperately looking for a business model and a leading ad format. We know what happened in search, while the early leaders ditched search-as-a-business for portaldom, Google stayed the course and built a $200 billion company. Search captures intent, video captures interest. Intent offers advertisers a short-term benefit, interest a more long-term value. Perhaps that is why it is taking longer for online video revenues are materialize in a major way. Yet, over the past year, online video consumption has soared threefold and it appears that this might be the year that the medium grows up and sees its revenues take off too (fingers crossed). This explains why in boardrooms large and small, everyone is trying to crystallize their online video strategy. Old media and video: Those who can won’t, those who want can’t When it comes to traditional media companies and online video: those who can won’t, those who want can’t. Print media would love to ramp up video efforts, but they can't because it's not a natural part of their DNA, operations or culture. Conversely, while television media companies can transition online, they won't because it cannibalizes their larger offline revenue streams. To TV executives, online video is what the Web was to print media a decade ago: those who embraced it didn't fare that well; those who shunned it died. Lost in time Last year marked the first drop in online advertising revenues since 2002: a 4.2% decline according to eMarketer. Combined with the economic meltdown, media executives had the knee-jerk reaction to knee-cap free, ad-supported content in favor of subscriptions. Two years ago, the Wall Street Journal was considering going totally free. Now suddenly everyone wants to erect pay walls. Problem is by the time these tactics are implemented, advertising will return faster than ever and old media will once again find itself on the wrong side of the equation. The main difference between now and then In 2000, when the Nasdaq crashed, it dried up the advertising money that venture-backed startups were spending online. Traditional marketers had yet to really experiment with online advertising. Today, as marketers start increasing advertising spending again, they are shifting more money to online at the expense of traditional media: Pepsi will shun Super Bowl advertising in favor of social media. Social media and UGC changes things, sort of Social media has changed the rules of engagement in news and publishing. But when it comes to ad-supported models, marketers will never feel 100% comfortable advertising alongside user-generated content. This is why professional content remains the key ingredient to capturing those advertising dollars. Where video and text diverge Unlike articles, you can't fool audiences as easily with videos. It’s easier to get away with a slapdash article than with a slapdash video. Thus, most of the existing online video content relies on "talking head" footage and Q&A formats which are relatively simple to produce. Most of the videos that pass for professionally produced videos should be articles. No wonder marketers remain hesitant to underwrite the genre. Fiction vs. Non Fiction Even non-fiction video content needs to be demonstrative (vs. descriptive). Meanwhile, chasing hits with fiction remains too speculative; the risk/reward benefit makes it prohibitive online. Producers who understand this will have an edge over time as budgets shift to video. Premium vs. Super premium Naturally, not all online video content is created or valued equally. Traditional media companies produce super premium content. Web producers try to create premium content. However, both are professional. While marketers will pay more for super premium content (which explains why Hulu commands a large premium in ad rates over the industry standard), online audiences tend to favor Web content whose format and style is more in tune with their more fickle tastes. As such, those who mold their Web content offerings by mapping out super premium catalogs will also create more valuable libraries. While you cannot match production values, you should offer marketers the same value proposition, adjusted for the ROI that advertisers have come to expect from digital media. The branded content hype Branded content holds much promise. But it might be myopic to think that audiences will remain engaged with marketing videos disguised as entertainment. Advertorials in print media have long been a part of the magazine experience, but audiences have learned to bypass them. Over time, the content itself filters audiences for advertisers. Advertising cannot fully replace or become the content outright. But producers who tastefully weave commerce into content will win. Ultimately, the Field of Dreams approach might be more realistic: create content that you are passionate about and people want to watch, build an audience and then monetize it. We all want advertisers to pay for content before it's green lit, but that doesn’t mean it will happen. Licensing vs. Ad-supported Of course, getting paid for content is ideal. But consumers will never pay for it online, so find other media companies who will. To be able to become a supplier of content to other media companies and maintain the Field of Dreams philosophy, producers need to balance a) quantity, b) quality, c) frequency and d) consistency. Getting paid for content by other companies is especially important with video content because even large media businesses are having trouble generating meaningful video advertising revenues. Finally, to position for the day when video advertising becomes material, producers need to consider e) timeliness. Returning to the search parallel, what good did market share do in 1999 when queries weren't being monetized? Creating so-called evergreen content gives one's catalog a longer shelf life, which in turn protects against the short-term weakness in revenues and the long-term “build vs. buy” dilemma that old media (and eventual M&A acquirers) need to go through. Even if you don't take advice, learn from it But that's not enough. Companies will pay a supplier if they also offer f) variety. About.com founder Scott Kurnit once gave me the best advice I didn't fully heed. He cautioned me against covering too many categories. I didn't take his advice, but made sure that if we did want to offer clients variety, then each category's clips should be as good as what any best-of-breed producer offers. Today, I think we do that. As we mark WatchMojo's four-year anniversary and celebrate crossing the 100,000,000 cumulative video stream mark, we've learned that sometimes, you really have to go against the institutional imperative and find your own path in order to survive. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Purported Interview With Facebook Employee Details Use Of ‘Master Password’ Posted: 11 Jan 2010 07:24 PM PST
The interview wasn’t authorized by Facebook, and there are many who are doubting its authenticity. We’ve heard some rumors that the interview is legit, and The Rumpus’ editor stands behind it. For what it’s worth, much of it rings true to me — none of the ‘facts’ revealed are surprising or difficult to believe. Here are some of the highlights:
The rest of the interview is well worth reading. It covers Facebook’s international expansion, the efforts of one developer to create ‘Hyper-PHP”, and more. Could the whole interview be a hoax? Sure. The interviewee apparently got some of their stats wrong, but frankly I doubt many Facebook employees can spout off the site’s membership and data storage figures off the top of their head. Here’s the statement Facebook gave us:
Reading between the lines, if Facebook was able flatly deny the claims made in the interview I suspect they would have. Instead it is trying to undermine the credibility of the article without pointing out any facts that were incorrect. And even if the interview itself is fake, I still think much of what was discussed rings true. I’ve heard multiple times that Facebook employees can access your profile for security reasons, and they face the threat of being fired should they abuse that privilege. And it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the restrictions around these tools were much laxer a few years ago. These ‘Big Brother’ tools are very common at the social sites around the web, so Facebook would hardly be an anomaly in this case. One final note: if the interview is legitimate, I suspect many of the facts were fabricated to conceal the identity of the interviewee. The article’s author, Phil Wong, has apparently only contributed a single post to The Rumpus (he may well not exist). The article says that Wong visited Facebook headquarters, which means that the company would certainly have a record of who he was there to visit, which would likely reveal the source’s identity. If the interview ever took place, Wong has either done a bad job covering his tracks or some of these details have been made up. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| CrunchBase Funding Digest: Nicira, TopTenREVIEWS, Tangerine Solar, Powered Posted: 11 Jan 2010 07:12 PM PST  Every day I troll SEC Form D Filings to discover new startups, fundings and investments. I put everything I find into CrunchBase. For everyone else I give you the daily digest, a quick hit of the latest and greatest SEC Form D filings in the TechCrunch sphere: Nicira - Virtual Data Center Control Software TopTenREVIEWS - Product Research and Reviews Tangerine Solar - Community Solar Power Project Powered - Social Media and Marketing
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| UFC Vows To Go After Pirates No Matter The Cost Posted: 11 Jan 2010 05:35 PM PST  Do not expect UFC to look the other when it comes to online piracy of its various pay-per-view events. Dana White, the company's president, recently told the Vancouver Sun that he and the UFC will do whatever it takes to eliminate piracy. "It's gonna cost us a lot of money, but guess what, it's gonna cost [the pirates] a lot of money. It's gonna get to the point where it's like, f*ck it, maybe we shouldn't pirate MMA anymore." This is not a very forward-thinking way of looking at the problem, no. It was only a few weeks ago that I first made mention of UFC's efforts against piracy. The gist of the argument was, just let it happen and concentrate on maintaining the company's momentum. The UFC doesn't want to end up like the music industry, having sued its fans into indifference, if not antagonism, toward its product.
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| Riding The Nexus One Wave, Google Releases The Android 2.1 SDK Posted: 11 Jan 2010 05:10 PM PST
As noted on the Android Developers Blog, the team is releasing it before most devices have it so that developers can play around with and build for the new features introduced in 2.1. Though Google calls 2.1 a “minor platform release” over Android 2.0, there are a number of new elements such as voice recognition, live wallpapers, a new launcher, more home screens, and some WebKit changes. Those who have ported it over to the Droid note that the new OS is also faster. Google also notes that there is a new USB manager available through the SDK Manager that supports the Nexus One. This may or may not be related to the new services that it seems like Google wants to include with the device, such as a new docking station for backing up your data. You can find the new SDK here. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Digg’s New Head Of PR Comes Highly Recommended By Pandora Posted: 11 Jan 2010 04:39 PM PST
Husak takes the official title of Director of PR, which is the same position vacated in November by Kiersten Hollars, when she stepped down as Digg’s Director of Communications. Hollars left Digg to re-join her former boss, Brad Garlinghouse who is now helping to re-build AOL. Hollars and Garlinghouse both left Yahoo around the same time in 2008, which is when she went to Digg. Aside from Pandora, where she has been for almost four years, Husak has worked for Shopping.com as well as Jupiter Research. She also experience handling various roles in different areas of entertainment, apparently. Digg has recently been doing more video work with its Digg Dialoggs, which are interviews with various prominent people in different industries. It also appears to have trademarked the name DiggTV late last year, which currently is an area of the site that houses all their videos. Regardless of that, the company will be in definite need of some PR guidance soon as they gear up to launch a more realtime experience for the site. Husak may need a bit of time to get up and running with Digg, it looks like she signed up for the service just prior to landing her new gig. Update: And here’s another reason a PR person with entertainment experience is good for Digg: They’ve just launched a new Golden Globes project/section. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Dave McClure To Launch Early Stage Venture Fund Posted: 11 Jan 2010 04:17 PM PST
Now, though, we’ve confirmed that he’s launching his own venture fund, and at least some limited partners are already on board. Like Chris Sacca, who launched his own lower case capital fund last year, McClure is turning from an angel investor (who spends his own money) to a more organized venture capitalist (investing on behalf of limited partners). McClure won’t comment, but our sources say he’s raising at least a $10 million early stage fund that includes both an incubator for very early stage startups as well as a more traditional seed fund for larger investments. Investment sizes will range from $25,000 to $250,000, and the firm will focus on consumer Internet startups. The fund will also plan to reserve cash for follow on investments. This gives entrepreneurs an extra assurance that the fund can see them through at least a sizable series A round of financing. And McClure is clearly going to be focusing on startups that take design and marketing seriously, if his recent blog post is any indication. He says “If investors don’t have operational backgrounds in design, development, or marketing from proven consumer internet companies, you probably don’t want their money.” McClure, of course, has deep experience in all of these things. As far as we know the fund hasn’t been named yet and doesn’t yet have a website. But it is definitely already making investments in startups. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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Google’s annual 
Digital music company 
According to 
For the technology industry, 2009 was a pretty tough year, but Forrester says the tech downturn is now 
Last week, I attended the 
It’s hard to describe just how great Google Voice is on Android. When I set it up, I had to confirm maybe three or four things, and I was all ready to go. In two minutes, my Google Voice number completely took over my Nexus One. This included getting not only all Google Voice incoming calls and voicemails, but doing outbound calls with my Google Voice number as well. This is absolutely the future of number 
The Nexus One hardware is in some ways superior to the iPhone. For example, I’ve never been a fan of the iPhone’s plastic backing, which it received after the first generation (which had an aluminum back). The Nexus One has more of a solid rubber and aluminum back that feels nicer. HTC, which makes the device, has also finally managed to get a removable battery backing that isn’t awful or ugly.
If you were to ask me to describe in general terms why I like the iPhone more than the Nexus One, it would be hard to do. On paper, Nexus One seems to have a lot going for it, including a nicer screen, a better camera, a faster processor, etc. But using them side by side, when it comes to regular, everyday use, the iPhone (again, the iPhone 3GS) still wins.
If I were to pen my own list of 
In 2004 everyone freaked out when Gmail launched because Google would be reading your emails to figure out what ads to serve you. “Privacy advocates objected to the advertising model, which involves Google’s robot eyes scanning every e-mail for keywords and displaying contextual advertisements alongside a user’s inbox,” noted 
Last Friday, the location-based service 
If you’ve looked at buying a television the past several years, chances are you’re well aware of the terms: Plasma, DLP, LCD, and more recently, OLED. Well, there’s a new acronym in town: LPD.
Earlier today, The Rumpus 
One of the key features of the 
It took a little while, but Digg finally has a new head of PR. The company has hired Michele Husak, who previously held the same job at Pandora, the streaming music recommendation engine. According to her LinkedIn 
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