Saturday, January 16, 2010

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How The EFF Lost Its Way By Defending Hate Mongers And Tunnel Rats

Posted: 16 Jan 2010 07:01 AM PST

Freedom of SpeechFree speech is a basic human right and is essential to creativity and innovation.  But every society places limits on this, particularly when it transgresses into "hate speech" – which disparages someone or some group on the basis of race, gender, age, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, and so on.  Calls to violence are tolerated even less.  These often lead to jail terms.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been the tech world's champion of free speech since its inception in 1990.  I have always admired this group for defending the oppressed.  But when organizations achieve too much success, they often develop a sense of confidence and arrogance that, when unchecked, leads to their downfall.  They begin to believe they can "do no evil".  A recent statement by the EFF makes me wonder whether it has reached this stage and needs to have its "Google China" moment. Michael Arrington wrote in 2007 that the "EFF may be getting a tad overzealous in its desire to defend our right to violate copyright and other intellectual property laws, and needs to take a step back and consider if the oppressed are now becoming the oppressor".  I'm beginning to believe that Michael was right.

Let me explain the background of a case which the EFF has just passed judgment on so that you can decide for yourself whether this is indeed the situation.

The anti-immigrant groups and xenophobes I've written a lot about see the H-1B visa issue as the beachhead in their battle against skilled immigrants.  Nearly all foreign skilled professionals (such as engineers, scientists, and doctors) need this visa to work in the U.S.  As with the tax system, Medicare, and the big bailout, the H-1B visa program has its flaws and is occasionally abused.  You don't see much visa fraud in Silicon Valley, because skills and competence are the only things that matter.  But for grunt-type IT work, cost is a bigger factor.  Most large service companies are highly ethical and go by the book. There are, however, a few shoddy body shops that bring in low-skilled workers and pay them below market wages.  These are a small minority.  Nevertheless, they make an easy target.

One of the most vocal members of the anti-immigration alliance is a computer programmer who calls himself "Tunnel Rat" (he doesn't have the courage to reveal his real name).  He maintains several websites (ITgrunt.com, Endh1b.com, and Guestworkerfraud.com) that focus on attacking Indians, Hindus, and H-1B workers, whom he calls "curry-scented slumdogs".  His websites are laced with racial slurs and profanity in English and Hindi and openly advocate hatred and violence.

Here are some examples from these websites.

Immediately after the massacre at the Fort Hood military base in Texas last November, which left 13 people dead and 29 wounded, Tunnel Rat put up a blog post that tried to link the killings to the H-1B program.  It said:

"American tech professionals have been forced to cower to the Indu-Invaders in I.T. because if they stood up for themselves, they would be labeled racists.  And thus, like the Feds, they said nothing, even as they were training their slumdog replacements and packing their boxes".

A few days later, a gunman shot six people in Orlando, Florida.  According to CNN, Jason Rodriguez had worked for a year at RS&H, a facilities and infrastructure consulting firm, as an entry-level engineer before he was put on several months of probation and fired for "performance issues".  Then he worked at Subway for two years before losing his sanity.  Kim Berry, President of a group called the Programmer's Guild (which claims to represent the technical and professional workers of America, and which, according to Wikipedia, had 400 members at what was presumably its peak in 1999), posted on a blog suggesting that the murders might not have happened if RS&H (which has 800 employees) had not applied for six H-1B visa slots in 2007 and 11 in 2008.

IT-4

Tunnel Rat piled on:

"It is my belief that Rodriquez was pushed aside to make room for an H-1B…  I predict that this is just the beginning of a massive wave of violence as middle-aged American men reach their breaking point and start to settle scores.  … H-1B program is now a national security issue.  We can't have an invasion of curry-scented pod-people displacing millions of Americans".

All of this is bizarre, despicable and disgusting, but other than the racial slurs, may not cross any lines. It is still free speech. Here is a posting from Tunnel Rat that does cross the line:

Now that the slumdogs have taken over Google, I can no longer trust them to protect my anonymity…  That is why I am protecting myself and my family by stockpiling weapons and ammo…  My greatest hope is that some techie goes crazy and acts out violently against his slumdog replacement and the collaborators that hired the feral jackal.  That techie in Pittsburgh was way off the mark by going after women at a gym.  If he was going to kill himself anyway, he should of stopped off at the nearby law offices of Cohen & Grigsby.

[Cohen & Grigsby has been in the news for a talk one of its lawyers gave on how to work the H-1B system].

ITGrunt-1

In another post he responds to an Indian concerned about his racist remarks: "You should be concerned about THIS [link to article about violent attacks against Indians in Australia]." Tunnel Rat also gloated about having emailed the person "pictures of dead Indians and other nasty things" and said:

Here’s a deal, SLUMDOGS.  Get rid of Vineet Nayar, “the highly respected CEO of HCL Technologies” and I will stop blogging.  Here’s a picture, so you can identify the FAT FUCK…  Go ahead, eliminate that fucker.  I promise I WILL STOP BLOGGING…  The ball is in your court.

I can cite many more examples of threats of violence and "retribution", but I am sure you get the idea.

One of the companies maligned, Apex Technology Group, filed suit against these sites.  In late December, a New Jersey court ruled in favor of Apex and ordered the sites to shut down, although allowing them enough time to file an appeal.

After the decision, the EFF put up a blog post criticizing the takedown order and claiming that the “… order dangerously overreaches.  By restricting access to entire websites, it places a prior restraint on all of the speech on the websites, even if that speech is unrelated to Apex". EFF argued that this would be like "a court shutting Amazon.com or Yelp.com because of a disparaging review of a single product".  I'm not sure whether this is a good analogy.  In my mind, those sites clearly cross the line from protected speech into terroristic threats or harassment.  A better analogy would be a Jihadi site posting hateful propaganda and calls to violence.  These sites use the same techniques: posting misleading information and hateful rants and suggesting that readers do something to right the alleged wrongs.

So I e-mailed the author of the EFF blog post, Kurt Opsdahl, a senior staff attorney at EFF, to ask him what gives.  I asked what if the site EFF had been defending were attacking African-Americans or Jews: would EFF be taking the same stand?  What if the site had been advocating a holocaust or calling people "niggers" instead of "slumdogs": would this cross the line?  I also told him that I had received death threats traced back to the domain names in question via email and in the reader feedback section of BusinessWeek in articles I had written about immigration.

Kurt would not respond to the substance of what I asked.  The jist of his response: "A court order should not shut down any website unless the entirety was not protected speech.  While a 'true threat' is not protected speech, there are many views which are protected, even if repugnant".

What shocked me about Kurt’s response was this comment: "I have not read the sites, since they were offline before this matter came to our attention".  I find this absolutely unbelievable. Doesn't the EFF know how to search the Google cache?  Doesn’t it have a responsibility to ensure that it is using its power effectively and wisely?

What sort of "power" does the EFF have exactly?  Right after its blog post, ComputerWorld's Patrick Thibodeau wrote this article condemning the judge's decision, which, like the EFF statement, didn't even mention the nature of the speech on the site ordered to be shut down. (Patrick has been a vocal opponent of H-1B visas, something else he does not disclose in his coverage).  Likewise, the San Francisco Chronicle and The Oakland Journal posted articles holding up the EFF blog post as a shining beacon of justice.  The favorable media coverage became a major victory not only for opponents of H-1B visas but also for the general white supremacist, neo-Nazi, “kill all dark foreigners” crowd.  Nice company, EFF.  I’m sure you’ll get invited to the David Duke annual Christmas party soon.

You can debate the merits of the EFF stance from a legal standpoint.  But the EFF cannot function in a contextual vacuum.  I am certain its employees feel overworked and underpaid like those of many other non-profits.  But, by siding unwaveringly with some of the most hateful sites on the Internet and not even mentioning the nature of those sites, the EFF betrayed its charter of upholding justice.  A simple Google cache search would have easily shown Kurt and his colleagues that the sites in question were vitriolic.  By giving Tunnel Rat a free pass, the EFF encouraged several major media outlets to echo its one-sided defense of the ability to talk about killing and hurting Indians and H-1B holders.  If people want to have a debate about whether H-1B visas are good for America, let’s have it.  But if the most spirited response they can muster is to threaten the lives of their opponents, they’ve already lost the debate.

The only silver lining on this dark cloud is that it has brought this sort of xenophobia and racism out in the open. The anti-immigrant groups have claimed to be fighting a righteous battle for American workers.  Now it is clear what lies beneath the surface.  They can only fight with hate because logic escapes them.

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.

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12 Surprising Things Holding Back Online Video Advertising

Posted: 16 Jan 2010 05:40 AM PST

Editor’s note: Earlier this week, guest writer Ashkan Karbasfrooshan wrote a post about the state of online video. In this post he follows up with some thoughts on what’s holding back this budding industry. Karbasfrooshan is 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 100 million streams since 2006. Photo credit: Flickr/Paraflyer.

After four years in the online video business, one thing is clear: if you produce high quality content and build sufficient distribution across a large enough number of consumer touch points, you can generate more than enough revenue from multiple sources and platforms to build a profitable, stand-alone business.  But no one said it would be quick or easy. Building distribution isn’t obvious and most producers fail to build any meaningful reach, but if you can hatch an editorial direction and business strategy that can attract an audience, over time you will be able to create a real business around it.  But keep in mind the surprises below.

Surprise #1: Lack of Definitions and Standards After All of These Years

Steven Spielberg was trying to transition online with Pop.com in the 1990s and, until his resignation last week, Real Networks’ Rob Glaser has been “at this” for 16 years since 1994 .  Yet to this day, in online video, we still don’t speak a common language.

Heck, we’re not even on the same planet. The first thing you realize about video advertising is that most of the money being generated from video content isn't derived from in-stream advertising (such as pre-,mid-, or post-roll) but rather by in-banner ads (be they standard display ads or rich media). Yet when you look at the projections being forecast by eMarketer and Forrester, they focus mainly on videos sold inside the video player.

Meanwhile, as online video consumption continues to soar, it is clear that the share of total advertising for video content is going to be much larger than the projections suggest.  YouTube, for example, sells pre-roll ads on an infinitely small percentage of its videos. They generate the lion's share via display banners. Personally, I think that while display banners aren't worth much in articles because a reader scrolls down quickly past them, next to video content they are worth a lot more.

But with so much video being consumed on third-party sites, how can producers stay in business, let alone thrive?

One answer, of course, is branded content, which remains unproven at best, and the latest fad at worst.

Surprise #2: The Myth That Branded Content Is a New Thing

Branded content can be many things. It is ultimately the blurring of church and state, or information and advertising. Examples are numerous and include:

  • Soap operas, which were funded initially by Procter & Gamble
  • That ubiquitous Coca Cola cup on American Idol
  • A web series about a couple trying to conceive sponsored by a home pregnancy test
  • How-to videos featuring products, such as the use of a particular vodka or gin in a how-to-make-a-martini video.

Whereas publishers have always relied in part on advertiser support, branded content tends to be fully supported by a marketer.  With the so-called death of the 30-second spot and the short-form nature of online video entertainment, the appeal of branded content is growing among video producers desperate to make a buck.

Problem is if a producer waits for the green light from a marketer to produce content that bakes in advertising, they just won't scale their libraries, which means they won't grow overall streams.

Also, it begs the question: does branded content fall into video advertising or sponsorship? That detail isn't clear yet. But with so many competitors vying in the genre, it's worth questioning how important it will be over the long term and if audiences will accept it.  What looks like the light at the end of the tunnel for many struggling online video producers could turn out to be an oncoming train.

Surprise #3: It Takes A Different Playbook

The biggest difference with regards to monetizing videos as opposed to articles is that it requires a "distribution-over-destination" strategy. When Quincy Smith took over as CEO of CBS Interactive, he said that the Tiffany network's Innertube project should have been renamed "CBS.com/NoOneComesHere."

No wonder then that the first video content companies went out of business—because they sought to build "owned-and-operated" properties. This strategy might work with text content but is nearly impossible with videos. Search engines don't pick up video content well. Hosting videos is expensive. Plus, audiences who read a business article don't automatically watch business videos (and so on).

Looking at the leading video destinations, you quickly realize that they are all basically aggregators or traditional media companies who still reasonably view online video with suspicion and fear.

Surprise #4: Video Consumption Patterns Are Whack

From our experiences, we see that audiences (readers, listeners, viewers) consume content by type (video vs. articles vs. podcasts) and not categories (auto, business, fashion, etc). And when it comes to videos, some categories are much more popular than others, which lead to unreachable expectations for marketers.

According to TubeMogul, 25% of views come in the first four days after a video is published and, over time, the average YouTube video is seen 500 times. Articles are the opposite: search engines tend to drive people to older articles.  This is alarming. In order to win, it is imperative to grow video views over time and generate exponentially more video views than the average.

Surprise #5: Just Because You Build an Audience, Doesn’t Mean The Advertisers Will Come Knocking

There are three main ways to build an audience: the old way and the new ways.

  1. The first is a retail approach where viewers watch your videos on your site and your network channels. This is historically how publishers have built audiences.
  2. The second is through wholesale partnerships, which are facilitated by MRSS. (RSS – or Real Simple Syndication – has change the way users consume content and publishers ingest and distribute content  Analogously, MRSS – or simply Media RSS – was designed in 2004 by Yahoo! and the Media RSS community. Unbelievably, it has made distributing videos even easier than syndicating text content).
  3. The third is through social media: be it bloggers and/or social media referrers on Facebook, Twitter and the countless other outlets.

YouTube pioneered the embedding and viral distribution of video.  It is certainly true that bloggers are the new "newspaper editors" who can make or break a producer. Similarly, the same way that MySpace helped build YouTube's success at the macro level, social media referrers will help a video take off on the micro level.

Between MRSS simplifying distribution and video's embeddable nature, syndication exploded . . . but revenues didn't. But don’t worry.  Over time, marketers follow the audience, they always will.

Surprise #6: When It Comes to Sales, Sell Your Audience, Not Your Videos

Historically, publishers sell ads by audience. But with online video and the lure of branded content, some have developed a tendency to pitch individual videos or a series of videos to advertisers.  Publishers don’t sell by individual articles, so why should they think that they should sell by individual videos, especially when you consider the widespread nature of videos and where they ultimately end up.

Nonetheless, I see way too many producers sell videos over audience, and then when they fail to generate any meaningful distribution, the marketer gets disappointed, blaming the strategy over the tactic.  You have to create audiences for your content. It can be one audience or it can be many.

With a magazine, you can take any one article and project the demographic of that one piece to the whole publication. With videos, due to their embeddable nature, each video can have its own audience profile and as such can embody the demographic of the site that embeds or distributes the video.  So videos have the potential to reach a broader demographic than content locked into one site.  Regardless, until videos generate more revenue from in-stream ads than in-banner ones, videos' embedding nature remains a double-edged sword.

For a producer to distribute through third party distributors, it means:

  1. less recognition of your reach initially. This hurts producers in the short term, but over time, services such as comScore and Nielsen will catch up and offer something while startups like TubeMogul seek to establish the best practices. More importantly, agencies recognize this phenomenon and will let you build your case.
  2. less control of the ad inventory, which can be seen as a negative or a positive. Ultimately, as a producer, you have to position this as a plus because you can offer advertisers more reach and share of voice across a larger segment of the online video universe. But, it takes time, especially with a lack of data to support your reach.

Surprise #7: The Myth and Danger of the Viral Video

Too many clients get enamored with the idea of green lighting a viral video. You might as well just flush your money down the toilet instead of approving such a campaign. It is impossible to actually plan for this and if the ad agency you hired is guaranteeing video views, then fire that ad agency yesterday!

But by the same token, who cares if a video generated a million views last month. If an advertiser runs banners next to that video next month and the video fizzles away, it's moot. This is why it is more important to publish and syndicate videos that over time can generate incremental and sustainable views.  This makes the real estate before and next to the video more valuable.

Surprise #8: With Advertisers Sitting on the Sidelines, Partnerships Need to Make Sense for Producers

Historically, advertisers seek revenue-share deals with publishers to mitigate risks. With video, advertisers have sat out the dance, so the commercial nature boils down to producer/publishers and distributors, who in turn seek revenue share deals with producer/publishers. Problem? Most can’t generate any sales, so producer/publishers don’t get any revenue out of the deals. So my advice is to seek revenue guarantees until advertisers really embrace video advertising.

By and large, most revenue share deals flop because:

  • Media companies have great sales teams, but they are only warming up to online video. So while they might be starting to generate revenue from online video, it is immaterial to their operations. Most of these traditional media companies are not producing or publishing enough online, so they are turning to new media producers like us. However, even though they have great sales organizations, they lack volume to make a dent.
  • A lot of the video views are coming from video social networks, but most of them are just not set up to sell ads. They are technology companies operating in the media space, not media companies that understand advertising. Often times their VCs bring in experienced sales executives but have very unrealistic expectations. They also have not yet mastered shifting large portions of their audiences from non-sellable user-generated or pirated material to professional content. It has been stated that YouTube, for example, only sells ads next to 15% of their total streams.

However, social media and user generated content has increased pageviews and ad impressions greatly on these sites. Across the web, there is a chance the equilibrium is broken for good. As a result, CPMs are dirt poor and sell-through rates are abysmal. This adds to the challenge and forces a producer to take over the sales process which, while expensive, should ultimately be the end-goal.

Surprise #9: Don’t Chase Hits

Chasing hits is perhaps the most surefire way to kill your business. We adopted the Field of Dreams content strategy: creating content we're passionate about and/or think audiences will watch, build an audience around it, and only worry about monetizing it afterwards.

It's not ideal, but the reality is that what works online is very much random. When we look at our most popular videos, we are flabbergasted! This is why online video is such a challenge to TV companies, because they cannot program a show in a time slot and force it down audiences' throats.

Surprise #10: YouTube is More Open than Challengers

What kind of online video article would be complete without an observation on the leader in the space: YouTube. While far from perfect, YouTube has actually been fairly friendly with producers by allowing them to sell ads around their content.

Surprisingly, this is an "open" strategy. Usually, open strategies are adopted by challengers, not dominant market leaders. You would think that Daily Motion, Veoh and others would allow for this, but they don't. This hurts their standing and importance in the space. Time will tell if they change their policies and follow the market leader YouTube.

Surprise #11: Everything Won’t Be Ad-Supported

To quote Ty Ahmad-Taylor, it's true that in theory "if you make television shows, films or music, your business is actually the audience business.  In practice, however, right now there aren’t enough ad dollars to support the “audience” business. So let’s leave the theory for academics. Those in the trenches will tell you it’s about survival, and judging by the past year… it is still about surviving more so than thriving.

After we got disappointed by weak revenues in our earliest syndication deals, we held back distribution and began to pursue licensing deals.  Licensing can generate insanely high eCPMs for a producer, but most producers don't have the kind of libraries that can command guaranteed and recurring licensing fees. So your best bet to keep the lights on is to command licensing revenues in the short term while you position yourself for syndication revenue over the long term. By doing that, you will in turn build a large enough library to command the richer branded content deals that will push you over the top.

Surprise #12: Search and Video are Still Miles Apart

Ultimately, video is where search was in 1999: a major part of the online ecosystem is still looking for a business model. But history repeats itself and without a doubt video streams will be monetized just as search queries were.

But differences shall remain, with the two leading ones being:

  1. Expectations: Google saw over a dozen search companies precede it, most of them had gone out of business, sold or exited search for portaldom. By the time the Nasdaq crashed, Google had an open field with practically no competitors. Video is the exact opposite: even though only YouTube has had a gargantuan exit, VCs have continued to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into so-called YouTube clones (Veoh, Daily Motion, Metacafe) as well as enablers (CDNs and content management systems) and advertising networks (Tremor, Broadband, Yume, Scanscout).  It seems as if everyone is looking for the Google of video, even though for all intents and purposes, Google will be the Google of video thanks to its acquisition of YouTube.
  2. Short term vs. long term nature of the payoff. Search is largely a performance kind of medium, whereas video is a branding one. While search captures intent, video captures interest. Both are valuable, but in a very different way.

We’re still early in the development of the online video business, but we are starting to figure it out.

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MightyMeeting Lets You Conduct PowerPoint Presentations From Your Smartphone

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 06:45 PM PST

Last night, 200 entrepeneurs and investors from around Silicon Valley convened for the Founder Showcase, a quarterly startup event for seed stage companies that’s put together by Adeo Ressi’s TheFunded. The winner of the event, as voted on by the attendees is a new startup called MightyMeeting. MightyMeeting allows you to use your smartphone to host a PowerPoint presentation while you’re on the go, and also lets you manage your library of Office and PDF files from your phone.

The application seems best suited for people who often have to give presentations at a moment’s notice, but don’t want to be chained to their desks. Here’s how it works: first, you upload your presentation files to the service, which supports PDF and PowerPoint files. You can upload through a web interface, or via Email using a secret Email address. Once you’ve got your presentations in the cloud, you can easily share them directly from your phone using a native iPhone application or a web app (each meeting participant receives a link via Email or SMS message).

But unlike a standard file sharing service, the link you send from MightyMeeting isn’t just a link to the file — it’s actually a link to a presentation that you can control remotely. Clicking the link brings the attendee to a browser-based viewing window on their PC or mobile phone. Then, when you flip to the next slide on your phone, the change will be made on the screens of everyone else in the presentation. You can use a simultaneous voice call to communicate, or an integrated chat function. You can conduct the presentation from either 3G or a Wi-Fi network. And if you want your presentation to go viral for some reason, you can share it with Twitter and Facebook directly from your app.

MightyMeeting sounds like it could be a lifesaver for last minute meetings, but you’re going to have to remember to keep your archive of uploaded presentations current — it would be nice if there was some way to tie this into Google Docs and similar cloud based services. Also see Fuze Meeting, which offers support for mobile presentations.



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Fa.il: Bing’s URL Shortener Is Longer Than Bing’s Own Domain

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 06:44 PM PST

Screen shot 2010-01-15 at 7.03.06 PMEveryone is getting into the URL shortening game these days. Google, YouTube, and Facebook are just a few joining the likes of the established players such as Bit.ly. And now Microsoft is jumping in. But there’s something weird about their URL.

As the UK blog My Microsoft Life noticed, some of Microsoft’s Bing employees have begun publicly tweeting with the binged.it URL. Seattle PI confirmed with Microsoft that it has been used internally and is likely to be made public soon. But the odd thing about binged.it is that it’s actually one character longer than Bing’s own domain, complete with the .com part. Sure, many Bing search query URLs are going to be much longer, but then why not just shorten them using the Bing.com domain or something smaller? I don’t know how much Microsoft paid for the Bing domain, but I’m sure it wasn’t cheap. And wasn’t part of the point to be shorter than Google? Why not spring for bin.gd or something?

Google’s shortener, goo.gl, is 5 characters. Facebook’s is 4 characters. Bing’s is 8 characters. Bing.com is 7 characters. Fa.il.

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Zynga Gives Every FarmVille User A Free Crunchie Award

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 06:14 PM PST

Zynga’s FarmVille, with over 70 million monthly users, won the Crunchies Award for best social application last week. To celebrate, they are giving everyone on FarmVille a virtual gift in the form of the award.

There’s a story about the gorilla award that we give out to the winners. It was inspired by the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the gorilla’s first use technology/tools (bones) after discovering the monolith. The full story, and a picture of the actual award, is here.

Anyway, I added the virtual Crunchie award to my somewhat neglected FarmVille farm, right between my chicken and my dairy farm. You can see it below. It’s not a bad likeness.

Make sure to add yours when you use FarmVille. And if you don’t like it, you can always sell it for 100 coins.

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Yelp Enables Check-Ins On Its iPhone App; Foursquare, Gowalla Ousted As Mayors

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 04:00 PM PST

homeWhen you think of the idea of “checking-in” at a venue in a mobile app, you likely think of Foursquare or Gowalla right now. The two gained significant momentum, funding, and users in the location space in 2009. But even with the growth, both services are still relatively small, neither much bigger than 200,000 users. That’s why much larger social networks like Facebook are perceived to be a potential risk to them. And one of those bigger networks has just entered the fray: Yelp.

With the latest version of its iPhone app (version 4) which will be released today in the App Store, Yelp is introducing a bunch of new features. But none is bigger than the new ability to check-in to venues. Considering there are some 1.25 million users of the Yelp iPhone app, with this update, Yelp will already become the largest network offering this functionality by far. And it’s not just check-ins. Yelp is also adding rewards for users who frequent certain venues, and a leaderboard. Yes, they’re also getting into the gaming element of location.

So does this spell doom for Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, and the others? Maybe, but maybe not. No one is quite sure how well the concept of checking-in will work when tacked on to an existing social network. Yelp is a great one to try it though since it’s already based around venues. But the social connections on Yelp aren’t like more traditional social networks, so it will be interesting to see if with this feature, users start transferring their more traditional social graphs over to Yelp. From Yelp’s perspective, this is just another way to allow people to contribute to the service without having to write reviews or upload pictures, Yelp mobile product manager Eric Singley tells us. It also adds a new layer of credibility to those who do write reviews because other users can now potentially see that these users have been to the place they are reviewing numerous times.

And yes, the idea is to eventually allow Yelp users that check-in places to see certain deals offered up by the venues. Yelp already has this concept in place with their Sales and Special Offers program that’s about a year old. Already there are over 200,000 of these offers that businesses are serving up, I’m told. Yelp could easily turn this on for the new check-in feature as well, which Singley envisions happening. Perhaps most significantly, Singley doesn’t foresee Yelp using such a feature to augment their business model. While he wouldn’t entirely rule it out in the future, he noted that Yelp had no plans to change the idea of letting venues offer deals for free. This could potentially threaten the Foursquare and Gowalla business models. Right now, neither have paid arrangements with venues for the deals they offer, but eventually they were hoping to turn that on. If Yelp offers venues the ability to give customers coupons for free, it could get interesting.

biz_after_checkinJust as with Foursquare and Gowalla, Yelp users will be able to get Push Notifications when friends check-in somewhere. There will also be a check-in stream to show you where all your friends are. And as I alluded to, users who go to certain venues a lot will be rewarded with badges. At first, this is limited to a “Regular” badge, which you will get if you check-in somewhere twice in a 60 day span (though Singley notes this algorithm could be tweaked as needed). And this badge will appear next to your reviews on Yelp to let others know that you go there a lot. Singley also left open the possibility of other badges eventually. And while this is iPhone-only for now, the check-in data should be coming to the website in a couple of weeks, and then to the other mobile apps as well, I’m told.

But how the check-in battle will play out remains to be seen. First, we’ll have to see if the concept catches on with Yelp users. And that shouldn’t distract current the users from the wide range of other new features in the latest version of the iPhone app. In fact, “this is the biggest iPhone update we’ve ever done,” Singley says. So what else is new besides check-ins?

Yelp has finally added profiles to the app. You can now see and edit your Yelp profile just as you would on the website. This is an extension of the signing-in ability Yelp added in its last update. Also new is the ability to more easily find friends you may know. The Yelp app can use your iPhone’s address book, or your Facebook contacts if you’re hooked up with Facebook Connect.

Speaking of Facebook, you’ll now be able to share things more easily on that network, as well as on Twitter. This includes Quick Tips and the new check-ins. This could potentially help the Yelp app grow even bigger.

Finally, Yelp has updated the Monocle functionality. As you may recall, this is the augmented reality view of Yelp, and now it allows you to lay your phone horizontally to bring up a map overlay that will work with the iPhone’s compass. And with the new check-ins, you’ll also have an option to view where your friends are in this augmented reality view.

Overall, the look of the Yelp app has been updated too. And you can see in the screen shot at the top of this post, the main page now looks more like the Facebook app. It seems that a lot of apps are borrowing this design these days; LinkedIn did recently as well.

Just as it has always done, Yelp plans to test all of these new features on the iPhone first, then roll them out to the other mobile platforms. Of those, not surprisingly, Singley seems most excited about the Android platform.

With Yelp now in the check-in location game, maybe Google will be kicking itself for not scooping them up when they had the chance. After all, I have a feeling we’re going to see a lot of movement in terms of acquisitions in that field this year.

When the new Yelp app goes live (which should be shortly), you can find it here.

my_profile check_in_list

Facebook friends biz_with_regulars

monocle_friends check_in_map

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Interview: We Talk To The Lead Developer Of Plex Media Center For Mac OS X

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 03:56 PM PST

As far as XBMC forks go, Boxee certainly appears to have the most heat. It has VC money pouring in, flashy deals with content providers, and you'll soon be able to buy a dedicated D-Link box to more easily use it on your TV. But Boxee isn't the only XBMC-based media center that's worth your time. It's not even the first XBMC fork to go out and make a name for itself. Plex, which is exclusive to Mac OS X, was Boxee before Boxee was cool. I recently talked to the lead developer, Elan Feingold, to get a better understand of what Plex is, what it does, and where it's going. Needless to say, if you're running Mac OS X, you ought to give it a shot. It's good.


Yahoo: “The Open Web is not a rose garden.”

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 03:13 PM PST

St. Anne's Park & Rose Gardens by infomatiqueApparently, Yahoo didn’t like the bad press it was getting following its decision to shutter its own Shopping API and instead strike a deal with PriceGrabber to use their data. Neal Sample, Yahoo’s Vice President of Open Strategy has a rather passionate post today on the Yahoo Developer Network Blog responding to the criticism of the news. Among the key quotes:

  • “I’ve read the commentary here on the blog and out in the blogosphere. I’ve also read some of the speculation about what this means — and it’s dead wrong.”
  • “Yahoo!’s commitment to developers and to open platforms is not going away. Not at all.”
  • “As Yahoo! continues to refocus and rewire, businesses change and priorities shift. Strong leaders make tough decisions all the time.”
  • “The Open Web is not a rose garden. You know that.”

I dunno. I’m sure Sample believes everything he’s saying, but it’s hard for the rest of the web to believe it when Yahoo keeps shutting down services left and right while outsourcing other core aspects. He makes the case that the Shopping API is “an isolated consequence of a strategic partnership that will improve the Yahoo! shopping experience for consumers.” But that doesn’t speak to the countless other services Yahoo has had to shut down (or is thinking about shutting down). Sure, they may have to do it to make ends meet, but it might be better to be more communicative up front rather than telling us what we “know” after the fact.

Sample does acknowledge that Yahoo has to get better about communicating changes like this (and promises his team will going forward), but come on, this has been going on for several months. The only thing surprising about all of this is that Yahoo seems surprised that people are pissed off. Maybe instead of pouring money into a cycling team, Yahoo should have put resources into the Shopping API, which some developers clearly loved.

The fact of the matter is that the Open Web should be what we (meaning everyone on the web) make of it. The thing that isn’t a rose garden is Yahoo right now. That’s too bad. But that’s no one’s fault but Yahoo’s.

[photo: flickr/informatique]

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Text Message Donations To Haiti Cross $10 Million; Companies Commit Immediate Funds

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 02:52 PM PST

Screen shot 2010-01-15 at 2.49.06 PMYesterday, we noted that $5 million had be raised in donations for Haiti though text messaging in the U.S. alone. Today, that number surpassed $10 million, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced. Perhaps more importantly, some of the big players involved in the donations are making moves to make sure the money gets to Haiti faster.

As some people noted in the comments yesterday, there had been talk of 90 day delays for this money donated via text to be released to the various organizations helping out in Haiti. Since then, a number of the companies have committed to giving the money immediately. Verizon, for example, is giving its share (of the then $9 million), $2.98 million, immediately to the American Red Cross. Sprint, meanwhile, is giving 80% of the $1.2 million it has raised so far immediately. AT&T has apparently raised the most so far with $4.2 million (of the larger $10 million) and is also thinking about ways to get the money to Haiti faster.

All of this money has been raised with the help of mGive simply by people using their cellphones to text HAITI to the number 90999. Doing so will automatically donate $10 to the Red Cross, which will be added on to your bill at the end of the month. But that’s not the only way to give over text message. Here’s a list of many of the ways to text to help Haiti:

ext HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross
* Text HAITI to 25383 to donate $5 to International Rescue Committee
* Text HAITI to 45678 to donate $5 to the Salvation Army in Canada
* Text YELE to 501501 to donation $5 to Yele
* Text RELIEF to 30644 to get automatically connected to Catholic Relief Services and donate money with your credit card
* Text HAITI to 864833 to donate $5 to The United Way
* Text CERF to 90999 to donate $5 to The United Nations Foundation
* Text DISASTER to 90999 to donate $10 to Compassion International
  • Text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross
  • Text HAITI to 25383 to donate $5 to International Rescue Committee
  • Text HAITI to 45678 to donate $5 to the Salvation Army in Canada
  • Text YELE to 501501 to donation $5 to Yele
  • Text RELIEF to 30644 to get automatically connected to Catholic Relief Services and donate money with your credit card
  • Text HAITI to 864833 to donate $5 to The United Way
  • Text CERF to 90999 to donate $5 to The United Nations Foundation
  • Text DISASTER to 90999 to donate $10 to Compassion International

[photo: flickr/ydhsu]

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Rumor: iPhone Boot Camp Listserv Confirms January 27th Event?

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 02:29 PM PST

This just came in through the tip line purporting to know for certain that the iSlate event will happen at the Yerba Buena Center in San Fran on January 27th, just as others have reported. The agenda should include a new SDK (probably iPhone/iSlate 4.0) and that most iPhone apps presumably run on the iSlate.
In addition to the introduction of the iTablet hardware recent rumors have said that a new software development kit for iPhone OS 4.0 could be revealed at the presentation.Tthe new kit may includes a "simulator" that allows developers to adapt their iPhone applications for different screen sizes and resolutions i.e. the iTablet, or whatever it is called:-)

AT&T Matches Verizon With $69.99 Unlimited Voice Plans. iPhone Not Included (But Also Cheaper).

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 01:57 PM PST

att_logoAs you may have heard, Verizon made some headlines today by unveiling new, cheaper plans to its customers. Specifically, they cut the price of their unlimited voice plans by $29 down to $69.99. As some noted, this looked to be a way to undercut its biggest rival, AT&T. Not surprisingly, AT&T is now matching that offer.

AT&T customers with “feature phones” will now have the option to get unlimited voice minutes for $69.99 a month. Text message plans will remain $20 a month for unlimited usage, so they’re matching Verizon’s $89.99 unlimited voice + text offering too. But wait, before you get all excited, you should note that “feature phones” do not include the iPhone. That is apparently a “smartphone” which is different in AT&T’s eyes (and Verizon’s for that matter). Smartphone owners will have the option to get unlimited voice plus data for $99.99, which is still a nice discount over previous unlimited iPhone plans which ran $129.99.

But what really sucks with these “unlimited” voice and data plans for the iPhone is that you’ll still have to pay $20 on top of that if you want unlimited texting too. So that’s $119.99 for truly unlimited iPhone usage. Again, cheaper than it was, but come on, why can’t we include text messaging? Because the carriers would make a lot less money without that rip-off pricing in play, that’s why.

These new plans go into effect this coming Monday, January 18. Existing customers will also be able to alter their plans without any sort of penalty, including no contract extensions, which is great.

Here are the full details of AT&T’s changes which were just announced:

DALLAS, Jan. 15, 2010 – AT&T* today announced new unlimited plans across all devices –including its industry-leading lineup of smartphones — to provide more value and choice for customers who want to talk, text and surf on the nation's fastest 3G network.

"With more than twice the number of smartphone customers as our nearest competitor, we are committed to offering great value and choice for customers who want to talk, text and surf on the nation's fastest 3G network," said Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. "Our new plans reflect customers' continuing desire to do more with their phones – including talking and browsing the Web at the same time.  Plus these new plans make it even more attractive to choose AT&T which already offers customers the best 3G experience and the industry's most popular and innovative devices."

The new plans, which will be available beginning Monday, Jan. 18, can be ordered at AT&T's 2,200 company-owned retail stores and kiosks, through convenient online service at www.att.com, or at one of the thousands of authorized AT&T retail locations.

  • Feature Phone customers may choose unlimited talk for $69.99. Family Talk customers (prices assume two lines) may choose unlimited talk for $119.99 per month.  Texting plans remain unchanged at $20 for unlimited plans for individuals and $30 for Family Talk plans.
  • Quick Messaging Device customers may choose unlimited talk for $69.99 and Family Talk plans may choose unlimited talk for $119.99 per month (for two lines). These plans require a minimum of $20 per month for individual plans and $30 per month for Family Talk plans in texting and/or Web browsing packages for new and upgrading customers.
  • All smartphone customers, including iPhone customers, may now buy unlimited voice and data for $99.99.  For smartphone customers with Family Talk plans (prices assume 2 smartphones), unlimited voice and data is now available for $179.99. Texting plans remain unchanged at $20 for unlimited plans for individuals, $30 for Family Talk Plans.

Beginning Monday, existing AT&T customers can change to any of the new plans without penalty or contract extension with the online account management tool at www.att.com/wireless.

For customers who do not choose an unlimited voice plan, AT&T offers Rollover, which lets customers keep the minutes they don't use.  In addition, AT&T offers A-List, which offers unlimited calling to up to 10 domestic phone numbers.

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MySpace Music Resurrects Imeem Playlists

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 01:08 PM PST


Last month, MySpace finally completed its deal to acquire troubled music startup Imeem. Unfortunately for imeem fans, the bank shut the service down as soon as the deal was completed, redirecting them to a MySpace Music splash screen. MySpace was subsequently trashed by outraged users who wanted their playlists back. Today, they’re getting what they asked for: MySpace has just sent out an Email to imeem users, informing them that they’ll be able to restore their playlists using a new import tool. We’ve confirmed with MySpace that the feature is now live.

The process is simple: users enter their imeem Email address, hit “Import Playlists”, and will find their imeem playlists restored under the “My Music” section of MySpace Music. The playlists will behave as normal MySpace playlists do, but will be labeled to indicate that they originated from imeem. The process should be seamless for most users, but there are a few caveats: MySpace won’t be able to restore songs where there are differences between the imeem and MySpace music license catalogs. MySpace says this won’t be an issue for most songs, but didn’t have an exact percentage for how much of the catalogs overlap.

It’s worth pointing out again that MySpace didn’t really have anything to do with the shutdown of imeem — it would have shut down anyway as its licences expired and money ran out. We’re hearing this actually took quite a bit of work from MySpace’s end, as they had to pair up thousands of songs to prepare for the import process.

Here’s the Email message being sent to imeem users:

We're happy to share that we've recreated your imeem playlists on MySpace Music. We spent a lot of time and effort to make a home for your music on our platform. Beginning today you'll be able to access your playlists. Here's how:

1) Access your playlist by clicking here: http://www.myspace.com/music/import-playlists. You will need to be logged into MySpace. Click here to login or signup for MySpace.

2) Enter your imeem e-mail address.

3) Click import and we will retrieve your playlists.

4) Upon completion, your playlists will be stored in "My Music," our playlist management tool. All playlists can be identified by the name “import_[yourplaylistname]"

This process isn’t perfect and while we expect most of your content to have migrated from imeem to MySpace Music, we appreciate your understanding if any discrepancies between the two music catalogs affected your individual playlists.

If you have questions, please visit http://faq.myspace.com/app/home.

Thanks,
The MySpace Music Team

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Qik’s VideoCamera For Older iPhones Doubles Recording Speed, Adds Real-Time Effects

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 12:39 PM PST

Last month, we saw the launch of Qik VideoCamera, an iPhone app that brings local video recording to both the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G (neither of which support video recording out of the box). The app’s release was significant given Apple’s longstanding ban on video recording applications, but it left something to be desired. For one, it recorded at a mere 7 frames per second —  far less than the 30FPS the iPhone 3GS built-in video recorder can achieve. Today, Qik is releasing a new version of the app that more than doubles that rate to 15 FPS, and includes a number of new real-time effects.

Granted, 15 frames per second is still only half that of the iPhone 3GS rate, but the resulting videos will be far less jerky. And it may make the app the fastest recorder on the market —  Qik cofounder Bhaskar Roy says that the fastest competing app only gets to 10 FPS.

Users will also be interested in the updated app’s new video filters, which include a Black & White mode, B&W with red highlighting, a filter that reverses red and blue, and a mirroring mode. The app also adds digital zoom, audio boosting and live brightness control. Roy says that the new filters are applied to video on the fly, so users don’t have to wait for post processing (he says you can also apply multiple filters at the same time). However, these filters do degrade the speed of the video capture back down into the 7-10 FPS range.

Note that Qik also offers a Live Recorder app, which allows users to broadcast their videos live to the web from their phones. There are also quite a few competing apps out there, like Ustream’s Live Broadcaster (which also does local recording).

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Is AOL CTO Ted Cahall Leaving?

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 12:07 PM PST

As AOL started its long-awaited layoffs of 2,500 employees this week, one high-profile officer who is rumored to be leaving is chief technology officer Ted Cahall. Whether he is taking a severance package or simply leaving on his own accord, we don’t know, but sources tell us that he is already communicating to some of his direct reports that he will be leaving. He would be joining other high-profile AOL departees such as former SVP Eric Bosco and many others.

Cahall joined AOL in 2007 from United Online, and prior to that he was the CIO at Cnet. He was in charge of AOL’s ISP infrastructure, which is a declining business that TIm Armstrong is squeezing for all the cash he can get out of it. Cahall also invented DynaPub, the publishing system AOL uses for its own content. But a new content-management system called Seed is being pushed by CEO Tim Armstrong to make it easier to churn out Website content from both AOL staffers and contributors.

It is not clear how much of Dynapub is in Seed or whether it is an entirely new system. Regardless, Armstrong and Cahall probably did not see eye-to-eye on the technology direction of the company. I’ve reached out to both Cahall and AOL for comment.

Update: AOL spokesperson Tricia Primrose says “No, he's not leaving” and that he remains CTO.

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PlaceWidget Allows Venues To Show Off Their Foursquare Mayors With Pride

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 11:39 AM PST

Screen shot 2010-01-15 at 11.29.55 AMBusinesses are becoming increasingly interested in using location-based check-in services like Foursquare to encourage people to come to their stores. But those networks still have a relatively limited reach, and the majority of patrons haven’t heard of them. PlaceWidget offers a potential way to help with that.

The simple service uses the Foursquare API to allow any venues to embed a widget on their website. This widget, which prominently features the Foursquare logo shows the venue name, its address and phone number, and the number of people checked in. This is a good way to spread the word about Foursquare if businesses want to start using it more to offer up special deals to customers, and to entice them to come back.

And the widget also offers the venue a way to give thanks to its best customers. Below the standard data, the widget shows the Foursquare mayor of the venue, along with their picture. For those unaware, a “mayor” is the Foursquare user who checks-in to the venue the most amount of times. The widget also shows how many mayor preceded the current mayor.

Finally, the widget also shows the Tips for that venue that Foursquare users leave about what to try, buy, or do at that particular place.

Creator Brad Kellett says that Foursquare co-founder Naveeen Selvadurai gave him the idea on the Foursquare dev mailing list. It’s a solid one that both venues and Foursquare should love. And creating a widget is three simple steps. Once you do that, you’ll get a snippet of JavaScript to embed in your site and you’re good to go. Kellett also says that a WordPress plug-in is coming shortly to make it even easier to create and customize these widgets.

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MySpace Fan Video Not Indicative Of Wider Facebook Connect Rollout

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 10:24 AM PST


Yesterday, Inside Facebook reported on a nifty MySpace feature called Fan Video that allows users to pull in their Facebook profile photos using Facebook Connect — a notable move given the sites’ longtime rivalry. Some other outlets ran with the story, with CNET calling it “hard evidence that MySpace is committed to using the technology on its site.” As it turns out, that probably isn’t the case: we’re hearing that this implementation was only integrated as a one-off for Fan Video, and that it is not indicative of a MySpace move to embrace Facebook Connect on a wider scale.

In fact, we’re hearing that MySpace hasn’t even decided if they’re going to implement Facebook Connect on a wide scale at all, despite the rumors that have been circling for months.

Fan Video was built as a promotion for the UK launch of MySpace Music in December. The app is simple: it imports your profile photo using either MySpaceID or Facebook Connect, and inserts it into one of a half dozen music videos from big name artists like Alicia Keys and 50 Cent. The results are actually pretty entertaining — I now have a video of Alicia Keys singing a love song as she gazes longingly at a photo of me. But we’re hearing that the app didn’t come directly from MySpace — it was actually built by a third party under commission.

In related news, we’ve recently heard that Twitter is close to launching their answer to Facebook Connect.

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Patent Reveals Possible Groundbreaking Multi-Touch Features for Apple’s iSlate

Posted: 15 Jan 2010 10:21 AM PST

Now that everyone knows the iSlate is real, the question is: what the hell is this thing going to be like? How will it work? What will wow us about the iSlate that we never really expected? A tipster just dug up some great details about new multi-touch gestures that may help answer these questions [CrunchGear summarized many other cool gestures here]. Obviously, we don't know if Apple will use this technology, but patents from a company they previously acquired, Fingerworks, reveal two patents that might apply to the new Apple Tablet.


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