The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Yahoo-Microsoft Search Deal Finally Cleared By DOJ and European Commission
- OneRiot’s New Realtime Search API Served Up With A Side Of Revenue
- WizeHive Launches Tool To Help Organizations Manage Applicants
- Songkick Says It’s Now The Biggest Live Concerts Database
- Shout for Android Offers One-Tap Texting
- Moonshoot Raises $6.6 Million To Teach English Through Online Gaming
- Nooka Augmented Reality Accessorizer: Not Real But It Should Be
- Clicker Raises Another $11 Million To Become The TV Guide Of Online Video
- Motorola BACKFLIP First Android Phone To Land At AT&T
- Google Warns Latitude Users That They Might Be Sharing Their Location
- Confirmed: Salem Buys Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air Blog
- Opera Shows Off Opera Mobile For Android (Video)
- Perhaps We Should Hold Apple And Other U.S. Companies Responsible For Foxconn’s Crimes
- Last Post On Sarah Silverman v. TED
- Pollice Verso: Google Buys Awesome iPhone Email App; Kills It
- AccelGolf Scores $600K To Help Golfers Play Smarter
- Mountain View Mulls A Googletopia
- The Most Stalker-Friendly People On Gowalla. Scoble Not Included.
- Poker.org sold for $1 Million, Most Ever For .org Domain
- Retweet.com For Sale. Buy It And Risk A Lawsuit From Twitter.
- Android Has Been Graced With A New eBay Application
- Microsoft Outlook Is Starting To Look Like A Poor Man’s Xobni
- A Sneak Peek At Google Calendar’s Upcoming Facelift
- Palo Alto Power Outage Affects Up To 240 Startups
- Google Continues Shopping Spree; Acquires reMail And Former Gmail Employee
| Yahoo-Microsoft Search Deal Finally Cleared By DOJ and European Commission Posted: 18 Feb 2010 09:00 AM PST
It’s been a long and winding road for Yahoo and Microsoft since Redmond’s first attempt to buy Yahoo for $45 billion two years ago, which ended up in the two companies agreeing to a complicated search deal in July, 2009. Today, the last hurdle to that deal has been removed, with government regulators in both the U.S. (the DOJ) and Europe (the European Commission) approving the deal. Yahoo and Microsoft can finally get on with their lives. Microsoft will take over Yahoo’s organic and paid search results and blend those resources into Bing. Yahoo will continue to control the front-end UI of search on Yahoo’s sites, and consumers will continue to see and be able to use the Yahoo search engine. The transition of the back-end search algorithms and results may still take until the end of 2010 to complete. Advertisers and Website partners which use Yahoo search may have to wait until after the 2010 holidays to be transitioned to Bing. Since the deal was announced, Bing has been taking search share away from Yahoo. The question now is whether the combined scale of search across all of Yahoo and Bing can help Microsoft make a dent in Google’s dominance.      
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| OneRiot’s New Realtime Search API Served Up With A Side Of Revenue Posted: 18 Feb 2010 08:58 AM PST
Last summer, realtime search engine OneRiot was one of the first engines to debut an API to allow developers to integrated OneRiot’s search results into their applications. Less than a year later, OneRiot is seeing 97 percent of its total searches coming through its API. Today, OneRiot is rolling out a new version of its search API, which includes support for for RiotWise, OneRiot's ad network, enabling developers to make money off of search results. Additional new features include the ability to deliver vertical and domain-specific search experiences for their users. OneRiot originally opened its free search API to web developers in June 2009. The startup says the API is now powering hundreds of millions of searches for a growing number of partners. Partners include social messaging apps (e.g. Digsby), browsers (e.g. IE8), mobile apps (e.g. ÜberTwitter), large consumer websites (e.g. Guardian.co.uk) and, other search engines (Yahoo and Microsoft). Currently OneRiot has 105 API partners in total. The first major part of the new API is the integration of a href=”http://www.crunchbase.com/product/riotwise”>RiotWise. Last year, OneRiot ventured into the advertising world with RiotWise, an ad format which places content in an emphasized position in their realtime feed. The search engine also launched a pilot program of RiotWise Trending Ads, a stream of ads that correspond to trending topics as they emerge across the social web. Now any developer using the OneRiot search API will now also receive RiotWise ads for the realtime web. Developers can choose to display them (and get paid) or not. RiotWise's ads are comprised of content that similar to within Google, are served up via keywords being searched for. But unlike Google, advertisers aren't bidding on keywords. Instead, content producers strike a deal with OneRiot to place their content in an emphasized (but clearly labeled) place in their realtime feed within the search engine. OneRiot claims that RiotWise ads have been performing at 3 to 4 times the average industry standard click through rates (CTR) for ads in realtime web apps. Developers who tap into the new API will share revenue with OneRiot but it’s unclear what the rev share will be. The new API has also been tweaked to allows for specific searches. Developers can enable domain-based search, which allows for realtime search across a specific website or network. For example, the Guardian is the first partner to use this feature of the new API in its "Zeitgeist" tool that features realtime news content from the site. OpenRiot’s API will include the ability to integrate vertical realtime search so developers can choose to receive realtime results for specific verticals such as news, videos and images. The same filter can be places for searches across niche verticals, including realtime search results for gadgets, politics, and music. Lastly, OneRiot has rolled out a new “Tweet” format to search results allowing developers to receive search results and ads formatted like a Tweet, with only 140 characters, including a bit.ly shortened URL. This format is ideal for third-party Twitter applications working with limited real estate. As we’ve written in the past, OneRiot runs the risk of surfacing irrelevant or spammy content with realtime ads. But as a realtime search engine, OneRiot has invested heavily in spam prevention and is constantly sorting through millions of pieces of content to determine what is relevant and what isn't. Regardless, it seems like a viable monetization tool for developers. The startup, which just raised $7 million in funding, has been steadily innovating its product and is gathering up partners quickly. The realtime stream ramped up this year with all the big players adding functionality to their search offerings and OneRiot was smart to get in the game early. As we’ve seen with the various partner deals struck with both tech giants and startups, OneRiot’s search results and API are in demand. And the improvement to its API to be able to refine results and possibly make money will only make its offering more appealing in the future.
     
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| WizeHive Launches Tool To Help Organizations Manage Applicants Posted: 18 Feb 2010 08:04 AM PST
Managing thousands of applications can be a daunting and complex task for many organizations and small businesses. WizeHive, a group messaging and task management app is launching a new product designed to meet help manage applicants and applications at foundations, grant providers, scholarship funds, admissions directors and contest managers. WizeHive’s Applicant Manager features preset forms for application submissions and a secure workspace for ranking and reviewing submissions. The application also includes data mining and analysis capabilities as well as an email-messaging tool to quickly update groups of users and schedule interviews. And WizeHive’s standard features like assigning tasks, storing and editing files round out the manager’s functionality. Applicant Manager is provided as a monthly service starting at $75 per month. We are big fans of WizeHive, and used the Applicant Manager when sorting through and organizing applications from startups for TechCrunch50 in 2009. WizeHive’s online collaboration tool has received positive reviews thus far thanks to an easy-to-use and collaborative interface. The application combines microblogging features found in Twitter, project management features, and general collaboration and organizational features found in Microsoft SharePoint. Similar to Yammer, WizeHive lets users establish a private and continuous feed of activity.      
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| Songkick Says It’s Now The Biggest Live Concerts Database Posted: 18 Feb 2010 06:55 AM PST
Their latest figures say the site now carries information on 100,000 upcoming music events, with over 2,500 added daily added from about 80 sources. These include Ticketmaster down to small local listings papers, as well as by the Songkick user community. It’s particularly that aspect which has supercharged the site: user uploads are now up 900% year on year. The live music industry’s benchmark for coverage until now has been Pollstar’s data – and their homepage currently says they know of “11,978 Artists and 78,818 Events”. Songkick’s numbers quoted are from internal data.      
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| Shout for Android Offers One-Tap Texting Posted: 18 Feb 2010 06:48 AM PST  Shout could save your life. It's a voice-activated texting program for Android that listens to your message and recipient ("Text Joe 'It's herpes, it's not transmittable right now'") and shout repeats the message and, after you press the big "Yes" button, sends the text message. I could definitely imagine using this in a car or on a high-wire strung between two buildings over Cincinnati. 
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| Moonshoot Raises $6.6 Million To Teach English Through Online Gaming Posted: 18 Feb 2010 06:35 AM PST
Moonshoot tries to make English fun and exciting for children by using online games. Moonshoot, which hasn’t launches yet, will first be released in Japan. Moonshoot’s President and Co-Founder, Jay Jamison, says that Japan has a significant English language learning market, with nearly 50 percent of families paying for their children to take a form of supplemental English education. The first product released by Moonshoot will help children build a vocabulary of 600 words, 200 phrases, that will enable them to read up to 50 classic children’s books. Teaching English through forms of gaming seems to be catching speed. We recently wrote about WizWorld, a startup that is helping to teach English to children in China through virtual worlds.      
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| Nooka Augmented Reality Accessorizer: Not Real But It Should Be Posted: 18 Feb 2010 06:20 AM PST  Nooka is one of our favorite brands and these guys created a new way to try on a Nooka watch at home. By using augmented reality technologies - albeit technology that may not work quite yet - you can try on any watch just by putting on a specially coded bracelet. The system senses the position of your hand and lets the Nooka watch appear in 3D right on your wrist. It's honestly an amazing idea and someone better patent it before Trojan and Victoria's Secret get their hands on it. Click through for video.
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| Clicker Raises Another $11 Million To Become The TV Guide Of Online Video Posted: 18 Feb 2010 06:00 AM PST
Clicker doesn’t actually store content on its servers, but instead makes it very easy to search through the vast amounts of content available online. Clicker’s index includes over 600,000 full length TV episodes spanning 10,000 shows. The service also allows users to search through premium content including Netflix’s Instant Streaming movies and Amazon Video on Demand (though you have to pay to watch them). The site also offers music videos, and has started teaming up with schools to index their lectures and other original content (UCLA is the first school to try the system out). CEO Jim Lanzone says that the new funding wasn’t a case of the company needing more money (he says they have plenty left in the bank), but that the company was seeing a lot of inbound interest from VCs and decided to take advantage of the opportunity. The company now has 32 employees. Clicker made its debut at last year’s TechCrunch50 conference, and opened to the public in November.      
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| Motorola BACKFLIP First Android Phone To Land At AT&T Posted: 18 Feb 2010 04:28 AM PST  AT&T and Motorola this morning confirmed earlier rumors that the BACKFLIP with MOTOBLUR will be available in online and in AT&T stores across the nation, beginning March 7. This is the first Android handset for the carrier. The device will go for $99.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate. More information, pictures etc. are available here. Also check out our hands-on review of the phone.
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| Google Warns Latitude Users That They Might Be Sharing Their Location Posted: 18 Feb 2010 04:27 AM PST
The company apparently sent out an e-mail to some Latitude users this morning, warning them that the service might be giving away their location – which is kind of the whole point of the app – and asking them to check their settings. Update: commenters tell us Google started sending out said e-mails a while ago, not today. As a reminder, Google Latitude is a location-aware application that was specifically designed to let mobile phone users broadcast their location to certain people. This is the e-mail, forwarded to us by Andrés Catalán:
     
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| Confirmed: Salem Buys Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air Blog Posted: 18 Feb 2010 03:33 AM PST
The news comes after Mediaite yesterday reported the acquisition as a done deal, although neither party confirmed the agreement until earlier this morning. Hot Air was started by Malkin on April 24, 2006 as a “conservative Internet broadcast network” and is currently managed by editors Ed Morrissey and (someone who goes by the pseudonym) AllahPundit on a day-to-day basis. The Hot Air blog will join Townhall.com as part of Salem’s Internet division, Salem Web Network (SWN). Combined, the two conservative websites will reach 3 million unique readers, Salem claims, although the media company didn’t specify whether those are monthly uniques. Press release:
     
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| Opera Shows Off Opera Mobile For Android (Video) Posted: 18 Feb 2010 03:08 AM PST  We had a brief chat with Opera Software product analyst Phillip Grønvold here at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Tuesday. We had a conversation about the company's plans to submit an Opera Mini iPhone app up for App Store approval, of which we posted the video yesterday. Another thing we touched upon was the recently announced plans to provide handset manufacturers with a toolkit to get the company's Opera Mobile product preloaded on Android devices. Grønvold demoed the app running on Google's Nexus One phone, and we recorded the video of the app in action.
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| Perhaps We Should Hold Apple And Other U.S. Companies Responsible For Foxconn’s Crimes Posted: 18 Feb 2010 01:48 AM PST
Foxconn, which makes products for Apple, Sony, HP, Amazon, Nokia, Motorola, Nintendo, Microsoft, Dell and Cisco (and just about everyone else), has been criticized much in the past for sweat shop working conditions and the alleged suicide of an employee who allegedly lost an iPhone prototype. Neither of those stories could lead to much given the lack of evidence, witnesses, etc. But this attack of a journalist certainly left witnesses. If the attack had occurred in the U.S. it would almost certainly lead to lawsuits against Foxconn and criminal charges against the guards. In China, however, all the police will say is “But this is Foxconn and they have a special status here. Please understand.” Foxconn is massive – perhaps exporting as much as $100 billion worth of hardware a year out of China. And they are under great pressure to maintain confidentiality for their clients. But attacking a journalist, or anyone for that matter, goes too far. Foxconn will not be held to account for what happened. But maybe it’s time we started to hold those companies that do business with Foxconn – Apple, Sony, HP, Amazon, Nokia, Motorola, Nintendo, Microsoft, Dell, Cisco and other, responsible. By not buying products produced by Foxconn. Because next time someone (else) may end up dead after an interaction with Foxconn. Perhaps if they lose a few big name clients the company won’t be in the news quite so often alongside headlines involving sweat shops, physical attacks and suicides.      
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| Last Post On Sarah Silverman v. TED Posted: 17 Feb 2010 10:08 PM PST
But it turns out that a week before the super-liberal TED crowd was shocked by comedian Sarah Silverman’s repeated use of the word “retarded” on stage (so much so that TED organizer Chris Anderson tweeted how “god-awful” she was), she had agreed to donate her time to a fundraiser for children with Down syndrome. She was ridiculing Sarah Palin’s whole argument that the word “retard” can’t be used. The crowd, mostly bay area wine and cheese liberals, should have been cheering her on. But it went over their head, and TED stepped in it. So just to recap, TED invites Sarah Silverman, a shock and insult comedian, to the event to give a talk. She turns up and shocks and insults, but for a good reason. The crowd doesn’t get it even though it plays right into their politics, and the event organizer trashes her publicly. Silverman hits back on Twitter, and there’s a quick cameo by Steve Case in the whole drama. Then it turns out Silverman is already donating her time to help fight the very issue she brought up in the talk. In honor of the whole episode, TechCrunch is purchasing 10 tickets to Twenty Wonder on March 6 in Los Angeles on behalf of TED and Chris Anderson. If you’d like one of the tickets, let us know below and the first ten get them (say if you want two to bring a friend). Or buy your own. It’ll go to a much better cause than the $6,000 TED attendees spend to feel good about themselves for a couple of days.      
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| Pollice Verso: Google Buys Awesome iPhone Email App; Kills It Posted: 17 Feb 2010 09:08 PM PST
Here’s the key part of reMail founder Gabor Cselle’s post about the acquisition today: “Google and reMail have decided to discontinue reMail’s iPhone application, and we have removed it from the App Store.” Yep, it looks like this may be another battle in the Apple-Google mobile war. While you might assume this was a pure talent acquisition, there’s something odd: Cselle has already worked for Google in the past. On Gmail. While I’m sure Google is happy to have him back, I’m betting they’re just as happy to kill off what is hands down one of the best email applications on the iPhone — much better than the iPhone’s native email app. As an advisor for this year’s Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator startup competition at SXSW this year, I had a chance to take a good look at reMail recently. Not surprisingly, it was chosen as one of the finalists (though I’m sure that will change now). It’s sad that other iPhone users won’t get a chance to check out this app now that Google is killing it. But all’s fair in love and war, I suppose. And make no mistake, this is war.
[image: Dreamsworks]      
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| AccelGolf Scores $600K To Help Golfers Play Smarter Posted: 17 Feb 2010 06:53 PM PST
AccelGolf offers native mobile applications for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry users. Using them is pretty straightforward: rather than jotting down your score for each hole on a piece of paper, AccelGolf’s apps allow you to also record both the club you used and the terrain type (tee, rough, green, etc.) you were hitting from. The whole process only takes a few seconds, so it shouldn’t slow down the speed of play much. CEO William Sulinski says that over time, this information can be used to help players identify what their weaknesses are, which clubs they should be using, and other key information. I’m not much of a golfer myself (it seems like it should be pretty intuitive to figure our your weaknesses), but Sulinski says that this data can be extremely valuable, and will be even more so once AccelGolf fleshes out its web-based analytics platform, which features various graphs and tables tracking your performance. The company currently has around 45,000 active users on its mobile applications, many of which are on BlackBerry. The apps are currently free, but AccelGolf plans to roll out a premium service in the near future. Sulinski also says that AccelGolf eventually plans to expand to provide analytics for other sports (though it sounds like that’s still a ways off). The company has also recently opened an API that allows other developers to tap into the platform.      
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| Mountain View Mulls A Googletopia Posted: 17 Feb 2010 05:50 PM PST
If you’ve ever been to Google’s Mountain View, Calif. headquarters, also known as the Googleplex, you may have noticed that the area is essentially a collection of low-rise office buildings off of Highway 101. There isn’t a large amount of housing, residential infrastructure or shops close by; which is one of the reasons why Google has an expansive cafeteria, gym, and even childcare options on-premises. Furthermore, there is little to no public transportation available nearby, which is why Google provides luxury buses with wi-fi to employees commuting from San Francisco. It appears that Google is trying to change this. Last week, the search giant sent a letter to the City of Mountain View to encourage the city to pursue sustainable development opportunities in area around Google campus (known as the North Bayshore area). I’ve embedded the documents below. Here’s an excerpt from the letter:
The issue is that some of the area around the Google campus is zoned for commercial use only and development may entail changes in zoning. Google is simply trying to lobby the City of Mountain View to change the zoning. We contacted Google for a response to this and a spokesman for the company confirmed that the letter was sent in an effort to begin the discussion of a zoning change. We’ve also contacted the Planning Committee for the City of Mountain View.
Here’s an except from the minutes of the Mountain View City Council meeting that addressed Google’s letter and proposal:
This seems to be just the beginning of a lengthy process (rezoning usually is). Since Google has a stake in the development of this property, it makes sense that it would subsidize any nearby housing or shops infrastructure in some way. It’s not surprising that Google wants to develop its complex to be more sustainable and comfortable for its employees. That way they never leave.
     
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| The Most Stalker-Friendly People On Gowalla. Scoble Not Included. Posted: 17 Feb 2010 05:31 PM PST
These numbers are interesting because unlike a service like Twitter, both Foursquare and Gowalla make you explicitly accept new followers that you will broadcast your location to. While back in December, it was Robert Scoble who was the most stalker-friendly person on Foursquare, he’s only the 210th most stalker-friendly on Gowalla, with only 54 friends. The most stalker-friendly person on Gowalla is entrepreneur and blogger Wayne Sutton, with 724 friends, according to Osnapz data. Judging from this data, Gowalla is clearly less social than Foursquare from from a friending-perspective. But that’s hardly surprising given that the emphasis on Foursquare is your friend timeline, while on Gowalla, that’s the fourth tab. And whereas “mayorships” are an important factor on Foursquare, “stamps” (sort of like badges) are a key to Gowalla, which the Osnapz data reflects. Meanwhile, looking at the Foursquare leaderboard, it’s clear just how fast that service is growing. Back in December, Scoble led the way with 1,768 stalkers (I mean, friends). Today, a user named @elarov is in the lead with over 5,800 friends. Leo Laporte is close behind with just over 5,000, while Scoble is now in third with just over 4,600. Just looking at Scoble’s numbers, he has nearly tripled his followers in just two months. I’m sure the Please Rob Me guys will have a field day with this data.
[photo: flickr/heyjoewhereyougoinwiththatguninyourhand]      
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| Poker.org sold for $1 Million, Most Ever For .org Domain Posted: 17 Feb 2010 04:03 PM PST
Domain registrations for .org’s have risen recently, up 11% in the first half of 2009 over the same period a year before according to pir.org Currently there are over 7 million .org domain registrations, making .org’s the third largest domain extension, trailing only .com and .net.      
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| Retweet.com For Sale. Buy It And Risk A Lawsuit From Twitter. Posted: 17 Feb 2010 03:53 PM PST
As you can see on this Flippa page, the current bids for Retweet.com stand at $20,000. This is a huge increase from yesterday when the bids hovered around $10. So far, there are 27 bids. The listing on the site claims the domain gets 12 million uniques a month, and 26 million pageviews. If that’s the case, you have to wonder, why sell? Well part of the reason has to be that Twitter itself is trying to trademark the word “retweet.” Mesiab Labs was also apparently tried to trademark the name, though it’s not clear if that failed or if they are simply moving to sell before that happens. Twitter also tried unsuccessfully to trademark “tweet” last year. We also asked Mesiab Labs about the auction. Here’s what they had to say:
They go on to note that if they don’t find a suitable buyer in 30 days, they’ll continue to operate the site themselves. It is a pretty killer domain, but is it worth the risk if Twitter gets the trademark?
     
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| Android Has Been Graced With A New eBay Application Posted: 17 Feb 2010 03:50 PM PST
The new eBay app for Android could make shopping, paying and selling through the online auction site a breeze. Read the rest of this story at MobileCrunch…      
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| Microsoft Outlook Is Starting To Look Like A Poor Man’s Xobni Posted: 17 Feb 2010 03:34 PM PST
As we first reported on Friday, Microsoft is adding some social hooks into Outlook 2010. Outlook will gain the ability to pull in profile information, photos, and update streams from LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace. You can try the LinkedIn plugin now in beta. The other social networks will be added later when Outlook 2010 goes on sale, probably in July. The new social features make it look a lot more like Xobni, the social email startup backed by Vinod Khosla that Microsoft looked at buying nearly two years ago. Well, a poor man’s Xobni. With Xobni, which itself is a plugin for Outlook, you can pull in relevant contact information, photos, and social stream data from both LinkedIn and Facebook today. It also supports Twitter, and Hoover’s information on companies. Salesforce integration is currently in beta, and SharePoint is coming soon. The idea behind bringing social streams into Outlook is that as you are reading or composing an email, you can see recent status updates or pictures of the person you are corresponding with to give you some instant context. The Outlook plugins are built on top its “Social Connector,” and was previewed last year. The Social Connector was really created for Microsoft SharePoint, which supports corporate profiles and file sharing. Getting the major social networks to write their own plugins directly for the Social Connector means that Outlook can support additional social streams down the road. The bigger issue is that the Social Connector
Xobni could still be doomed, but it does have a few things going for it. The plugin has been downloaded more than 4 million times, its users are rabidly loyal, and the company will eventually expand to other email systems beyond Outlook. It also does email search a lot better (at least right now) than Outlook and can resolve different identities to the same person in your contacts list. Most people don’t sign up for Facebook or even LinkedIn with their corporate Outlook email accounts. If the email addresses of your contacts in Outlook don’t match their email on LinkedIn, Facebook, or MySpace, you won’t be able to see their profile information or stream data using the Outlook Social Connector. Xobni does a better job resolving the multiple identities people choose to have on the Internet. That doesn’t mean the folks at Xobni should be breathing easy. Microsoft has endless patience and eventually it gets things right. Update: Brad Feld finds another flaw with the LinkedIn Outlook plugin—it duplicates his contacts      
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| A Sneak Peek At Google Calendar’s Upcoming Facelift Posted: 17 Feb 2010 03:13 PM PST
As far as we can tell, the changes are all aesthetic and fairly minor but they add up to make a difference — the new version looks more modern, and it also looks more like Google’s other Apps. The new version replaces many of the text-based navigation links with the sleeker silver buttons, which are also found throughout Gmail and Google Docs. The calendar has been spruced up a bit, and the entire interface is now surrounded by a colored border (in the current version, some text and links and hover above the calendar, which looks a little less polished). You’ll also notice a worldwide clock in the screenshots of the new UI. These aren’t part of the default Google Calendar site now, but you can activate it through Google Calendar Labs, which launched last summer. New
Old      
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| Palo Alto Power Outage Affects Up To 240 Startups Posted: 17 Feb 2010 02:33 PM PST
According to the data in CrunchBase, up to 240 of these 28,000 customers are local startups, VC firms and other companies which include the likes of Facebook, Socialtext, Tapulous, and VMWare. (The TechCrunch office is also out of power). The interactive map below will give you an idea of who else is affected by the outage. We arrived at this estimate by looking at companies who are within a 1.5 mile radius of the middle of Palo Alto; thus encompassing most of the city. Although this is not a perfect number (some companies shown might have power, while omitted companies may not), it is a rough estimate of which startups might be without power. There is no current estimate for when power will be restored, but the last estimate, as of 930 AM PST, was 5:30 PM PST.
Startups have reacted differently to the outage. While many have moved to nearby coffee shops, such as Starbucks, in order to have access to Wi-Fi, some are simply working from home (assuming they live outside of Palo Alto). A few outliers are taking the day off and enjoying the warm California sun. If you were affected by the power outage, let us know how you’re dealing with the situation in the comments section below.      
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| Google Continues Shopping Spree; Acquires reMail And Former Gmail Employee Posted: 17 Feb 2010 02:14 PM PST
Days after Google acquired social search startup Aardvark, the search giant has acquired another email-based startup, reMail. ReMail developed a powerful iPhone application that gives you instant full text-search for all of your Email. Launched in August, reMail is an alternative to the native iPhone mail client, which has a number of shortcomings. reMail manages to store your entire Email account on your phone using some advanced compression techniques (you can fit 100,000 messages into 500 megabytes) which gives you full text search at all times and is generally snappier than the normal search. Terems of the deal were not disclosed. The startup was incubated at Y Combinator, and was founded by Gabor Cselle, who completed his Master's thesis on Organizing Email, worked on the Gmail team, and was also VP of Engineering at Xobni, which he left last year to pursue his own company. The company's backers include Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh, who built Gmail and co-founded FriendFeed. According to Gselle, he will be joining Google in Mountain View as a Product Manager on the Gmail team. reMail will be discontinued and has been removed it from the App Store. If Google is shutting the technology down, it makes you wonder if they are going to be incorporating reMail into their mobile technology or just bought the company to hire back the obviously talented Gselle. Here’s the text of Cselle’s announcement: I’m thrilled to announce that Google has acquired reMail! I will be joining Google in Mountain View as a Product Manager on the Gmail team. Gmail is where my obsession with email started as an engineering intern back in 2004, and I’m thrilled to be coming back to a place with so many familiar faces. reMail’s goal was reimagine mobile email, and I’m proud we have built a product that so many users find useful. Still, I feel like we’ve only seen the beginning of what’s possible. Google is the best place in the world to improve the status quo on how people communicate and share information. If you have what it takes to make these changes happen, I encourage you to reach out and come join me. You might be wondering what will happen with reMail’s product. Google and reMail have decided to discontinue reMail’s iPhone application, and we have removed it from the App Store. reMail is an application on your phone. If you already have reMail, it will continue to work. We’ll even provide support for you until the end of March, and we’ve enabled all paid reMail features for you: You can activate these by clicking “Restore Purchases” inside the app. reMail downloads email directly from your email provider to your phone, and your personal information, passwords, and email are never sent to or stored on our servers. I want to take this opportunity to thank the people that helped make reMail a success. Fabian Siegel, Einar Vollset, Sridhar Srinivasan, Paul Bohm, Marissa Coughlin, Erol Koc, Matt Ronge, and Stefano Barbato have all contributed to building a great product. Our investors saw the potential in improving mobile email and took a bet on reMail in the darkest days of the recession. I couldn’t be more grateful to YCombinator: Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, Kate Courteau, and Trevor Blackwell all have provided invaluable guidance. Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh endured my slide deck on our multi-step plan for global email domination, and pointed out that instead I should build something small, simple, and useful. It worked.      
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Christian media company 
This is the last time we write about this, promise. 
As you might have heard earlier today, 
Back in December, we ran a post about the “
Last summer, we wrote about the launch of 
There’s nothing like finding and getting rid of junk on eBay, especially if you’re a gadget hound looking to offload last month’s toys for the latest and greatest. While it’s entirely possible to manage your eBay account on your phone’s browser, a dedicated application would make life so much easier.
Google Calendar may not be the sexiest product Google offers, but, as with Gmail, there are plenty of people who use it to manage their business and personal lives (and wind up staring at it for hours each week as a result). Today, we’ve gotten our hands on a screenshot showing what appears to be an internal build of Google Calendar, giving us an idea of what a forthcoming UI refresh might look like. We’ve included photos of both the internal version and the current version below for comparison’s sake (be sure to click on the photo for a larger version).
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