The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Google Docs Gets More Realtime; Adds Google Drawings To The Mix
- Twitter Launches A New Guide For Media Organizations
- AppsFire Hands Out iPhone / iPad App Star Awards (Videos of the Winners)
- Opera Now 100 Million Strong (Half On Mobile)
- GoGoStat Competes With Ping To Sync Your Social Networks
- NachoFoto Launches Realtime Image Search Portal
- Best Buy Officially Selling Nook reader
- Korea’s NHN Buys Japanese Portal Livedoor For $68 Million
- ZoomSafer Raises $1 Million, Could Be Your Next Personal Safe Driving Assistant
- GeeknRolla Prepares To Rock Startups – And Roll London
- Another Steve Jobs Email: Apple To Drop Support For The First-Generation iPhone
- Google Buys Mobile Visual Search Startup Plink
- Germany’s Friendticker Recycles Foursquare, But With A Real CRM Backend
- Netflix Now Shipping Free Instant Streaming Disks To All Wii Owners
- Like.com Brings A Live, Glamour Magazine Trained Stylist To The iPhone
- Zynga’s Newest Game: FrontierVille
- Overture Founder Launches Tweetup, “Adsense For Twitter”
- EdgeCast Secures $10 Million From Menlo Ventures
- Dear Authors, Your Next Book Should be an App, Not an iBook
- NSFW: I Admit It, The iPad Is A Kindle Killer. I Just Wish It Weren’t Going To Kill Reading Too
- iPad Marriage Proposal: Congrats Zach, You Dork
- From The China Social Game Summit 2010 in Beijing: State of the Industry And 6 Demos From Local Startups
- Going It Alone: How to Make Your Stuff In China, Part 2
| Google Docs Gets More Realtime; Adds Google Drawings To The Mix Posted: 12 Apr 2010 08:58 AM PDT
Slowly but surely, Google keeps trying to chip away at Microsoft’s core Office productivity suite with Google Docs, its free online word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation software. Today, Google Drawing is being added to the mix and Google Docs and Spreadsheets is getting a major realtime update. Both are being announced at Google’s Atmosphere event. Google Drawings is not really a drawing app, it’s more of an online whiteboard. The app is designed to help people visualize ideas through flow charts, diagrams, and stencils. There is a chat window where participants can chime in. Images can be imported and moved around. But sadly there is no freehand drawing option. Google Drawings requires an HTML5 browser (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, IE9). Google Docs will also be discontinuing offline access via Google Gears on May3, and will bring it back later via HTML5. The real news, though, is that Google Docs and Spreadsheets is getting more realtime. There has always been a noticeable delay when new edits get saved and synced up, especially when more than one person is working on the same document. Google is addressing this delay with an entirely new architecture built from the ground up. Instead of waiting a few seconds to see the new sentences or spreadsheet figures someone else entered onto the doc you are both working on, you will now be able to see each change in realtime as each character is typed in. Google’s engineers developed a new Javascript layout engine which sits on top of the browser and allows realtime editing, faster overall responsiveness, and new features such as the ability to drag-and-drop floating images through a document while the text rewraps itself around the image on the fly. “Working on documents should be as easy as having a conversation,” says Goggle Docs product manager Anil Sabharwal. Users will need to turn on the new features in settings in order to see them. Google Docs still lags Microsoft Office in features, but tries to make up for that by being a better way to edit and share docs and spreadsheets collaboratively among co-workers or anyone else. The key is to make it feel as responsive as a desktop app, even though it is in the cloud. During a briefing, Sabharwal showed a slide comparing the two, with check marks next to all of Google Docs’ supposed advantages (realtime multi-user editing, IM, storage in the cloud, mobile web access, no patches or updates, free with Google Apps). He also showed the slide below, which is more conceptual than anything else in that it is not based on any data. But it does illustrate how Google thinks about attacking Office from below and winning over time by becoming a better collaboration tool. What I love about the chart, though, is that it places Google Docs in 2010 at just below Office 2003 in terms of an individual authoring tool. Of course, Microsoft is also moving to the cloud with Office 2010, and I’m sure they can make marketing charts which look very different.
     
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| Twitter Launches A New Guide For Media Organizations Posted: 12 Apr 2010 08:43 AM PDT
The site has the description, “Knowledge and tools to help you use Twitter to transform media, entertainment, and journalism.” at the top, then gets right down to business with a series of blog posts. The first details how the Oxygen network used Twitter and other networks to hold a “social viewing party” as an episode was broadcast, which helped boost ratings 92%. (As a control the network only did this on the East Coast; the West Coast, which didn’t hold a “viewing party”, only saw a 14% increase in ratings over the previous season of the show). The site allows users to browse by media platform (tv or web); type (case studies or howto); and topics, which include API, design, legal issues, and news. Twitter has created a similar guide to using the platform before, when it launched its Business portal. That site includes things like a ‘Twitter 101′ guide, case studies, and a glossary of common Twitter terms.      
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| AppsFire Hands Out iPhone / iPad App Star Awards (Videos of the Winners) Posted: 12 Apr 2010 08:40 AM PDT
This was the second edition of the App Star Awards – the first one was held at the Le Web conference in Paris last year (check out the winners of the first edition). This year, the winners received a free ad campaign with a good number of online publications, a brand new iPad and a 3 months worth of Animoto Pro. AppsFire received more than 80 submissions for unreleased applications in 5 days, from developers in 20 countries, including Japan, Spain, Italy, Brazil and even Iceland. Out of those, 33 iPhone and iPad apps were pre-selected by a professional jury, and for each of the 3 categories (‘Entertainment and Fun’, ‘Games’ and ‘Utility and Other’) the overall winner and the runner-up were announced at the conference just moments ago. And the winners are … Entertainment and FunWinner: Mixr (video) “DJ App for iPad. Feels & functions like authentic turntables. Mixr gives you a DJ experience unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. Beautiful interface, professional mixing.”
Runner-up: PocketZoo – “Wikipedia for animals” (video) Utility and otherWinner (and our personal favorite): LiveCycle (video) “LiveCycle is the first wireless cycling computer and mounting system for iPhone and iPod touch. Leveraging the advanced features of the iPhone and iPod touch, LiveCycle provides users with a hi-res color interface, real-time performance feedback, GPS feature, data file system, and performance analysis.”
Runner-up: iMockups – “nice mockup tool for iPad” (video) GamesWinner: IsoCards (video) “IsoCards is a multitouch-gesture and physics driven deck of cards that allows you to play any card game you want. With intuitive controls such as cupping your hand at the top of you cards to reveal them to only yourself. You can also connect your iPhone to the iPad via Bluetooth so that you can literally hold your own cards, and then use the iPad as the communal cards.”
Runner-up: Jim & Frank – adventure game (video)      
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| Opera Now 100 Million Strong (Half On Mobile) Posted: 12 Apr 2010 07:40 AM PDT
While user growth of Opera’s desktop offering has increased over 30 percent from last year, Opera Mini is growing much faster in terms of usage. In February, Opera Mini saw a 145 percent increase in users from the previous year. And Opera Mini’s growth is steady. Each month, the conclusion is always the same: mobile web usage around the world keeps on growing and growing. Clearly, the most significant growth is taking place in Opera’s mobile offering. But it’s always a positive sign when a browser company is seeing an increase of usage in both of its products. Earlier this year, Opera saw a spike in downloads of its latest desktop browser (10.5) after Microsoft started offering Windows users in Europe a choice in browser with a so-called ballot screen. And Opera just submitted an application for an Opera Mini app for the iPhone, which it claims is up to 6 times faster than the native browser thanks to its compression and server-side rendering technology. It’s unclear if the app will be approved.      
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| GoGoStat Competes With Ping To Sync Your Social Networks Posted: 12 Apr 2010 07:15 AM PDT
On GoGoStat Sync, you can synchronize contacts and photos across multiple social media sites, publish status updates across sites, and sync address books with social networks and email accounts. Similar to other syncing applications, users can decide which social networks to automatically sync updates to. For example, you can automatically send tweets to Facebook and MySpace as status updates. One feature of the Sync app is that synchronization occurs in the background, not just when users are logged in. Synchronization can be defined in any direction, and users can set-up their Sync rules using credentials from any of their social media sites, so it is not necessary to set up different credentials for GoGoStat Sync. The startup will also soon be releasing a parental tool that allows you to track your child’s behavior on social networks like Facebook and MySpace. In terms of monetization, GoGoStat Sync is looking to partner with mobile device companies and telecommunications providers, such as Sprint or Verizon, to add the app to cellular plans and phones. Syncing your social network profiles isn’t an original idea, but if GoGoStat Sync can build a compelling offering and possibly license its technology to carriers, then the startup could gain a loyal following and userbase.      
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| NachoFoto Launches Realtime Image Search Portal Posted: 12 Apr 2010 06:50 AM PDT
A new realtime search engine is launching today but this portal is focused solely on images. Startup NachoFoto, is launching a realtime image search engine that helps users find the latest images related to current events. NachoFoto will autosuggest search terms for you, but the site only indexes photos related to current or trending topics on the web. The site will crawl the web and blogs (but not Flickr or other photo sharing sites) for images related to current topics. For example, a search for Tiger Woods returns photos of Woods taken at the Masters Tournament that was taking place last week and over the weekend. You can also filter results by time period and NachoFoto will suggest other terms related to your search query that may be of interest. For example, for a Tiger Woods search you can also narrow search to find images for Tiger Woods’ wife. The site is actually useful for finding the must current images of a particular topic, but is sure to face stiff competition from Google and Bing’s image search offerings. Plus, its unfortunate that the site can’t index photos from photo sharing sites like Flickr.      
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| Best Buy Officially Selling Nook reader Posted: 12 Apr 2010 06:10 AM PDT  Barnes & Noble and Best Buy have teamed up to sell B&N's Nook ereader on April 18, just as we predicted. As the press release states, this is just in time for Mother's/Father's Day, graduation, and the Feasts of St. Apollonius the Apologist and St. Wicterp. The Nook will cost $259.99 and will be available in Best Buy stores. As you recall, the Nook has generated quite a bit of buzz but folks across the country have had trouble finding them in the wild. By selling them in Best Buy, B&N is at least assured of a relatively larger audience of tech-savvy consumers walking past its displays. However, because Best Buy is also selling the iPad, I suspect those same consumers will find the Nook - heck, even the Kindle - a hard sell after eying Apple's latest creation. As we mentioned before, Kindle and Nook are excellent ereaders with great battery life. However, I'm concerned that smaller, cheaper ereaders, some without eink screens, will be taking their share of this sub-$300 market from Amazon and B&N. 
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| Korea’s NHN Buys Japanese Portal Livedoor For $68 Million Posted: 12 Apr 2010 06:10 AM PDT
LDH’s main asset is the eponymous portal service whose 30 million unique users per month make it one of the biggest in Japan (it’s ranked No. 7 on Alexa Japan). LDH, formerly known as Livedoor Holdings, delisted in April 2006 in the wake of an accounting fraud scandal. It’s still embroiled in post-scandal lawsuits filed by Livedoor shareholders. NHN operates Korea’s biggest search engine (Naver) and the country’s top gaming portal (Hangame), offering localized versions for both services in Japan, too. But whereas Hangame Japan boasts 3 million unique visitors per month (it’s the country’s No. 2 gaming site), Naver never made a splash in Japan’s search engine market, where it struggles against Yahoo and Google. In the past few months, NHN repeatedly said it wants to significantly boost its presence in Japan, the third largest Internet nation in the world. NHN announced that under the deal, Livedoor will become a part of NHN’s Japan unit and keep its brand name. The company will pay for the purchase “sometime before May 15″.      
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| ZoomSafer Raises $1 Million, Could Be Your Next Personal Safe Driving Assistant Posted: 12 Apr 2010 05:58 AM PDT
Zoomsafer markets what it refers to as a “personal safe driving assistant”, software for mobile phones that aims to prevent distracted driving. Once downloaded to a mobile phone (Blackberry and selected Windows Mobile devices only for now, with support for Android, iPhone and other smartphones in the works) the ZoomSafer software detects when the user is driving and automatically puts the phone into ’safe drive mode’. That way, inbound alerts are suppressed and the phone's keypad and screen are locked to eliminate the temptation to text, email or dial while driving. Additionally, ZoomSafer offers a variety of customizable and hands-free services so users can stay connected while driving, including auto-replies to incoming texts and emails to let others know that you're driving, one-touch access to voice dialer for making hands-free outbound calls and the receipt of hands-free inbound calls from priority contacts. The company says it will use the additional capital to expand marketing and sales and deliver enhanced policy controls and analytics to help consumers, large-scale corporate fleet customers and everything in between ensure safe, legal and hands-free use of mobile phones while driving. Here’s a pretty explanatory video of how Zoomsafer works:
     
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| GeeknRolla Prepares To Rock Startups – And Roll London Posted: 12 Apr 2010 05:57 AM PDT  We're just over a week away from GeeknRolla the annual conference from TechCrunch Europe which brings together Europe's technology startups and investors in London. We have an amazing line-up of speakers, panels and startup judges on April 20. We'll be launching around 15 startups in front of a panel of around 18 judges. There will also be a DemoPit for startups not selected to appear on the main stage. Plus, we just released only 100 tickets to the now legendary Afterparty where you can join the 350+ delegates from the main day - I'd grab one of those before they all go very shortly. The start-studded line-up includes: Tommy Ahlers, ex-ZYB now Vodafone; Morten Lund, Skype investor & serial entrepreneur; Stefan Glaenzer, Angel; Brent Hoberman, MyDeco & PROFounders; Reshma Sohoni, Seedcamp; Mattias Ljungman, Atomico Ventures; Lukas Gadowski, Team Europe; Anil Hansjee, Google; Irena Goldenberg, Highland Capital Partners; Daniel Heaf, 4IP; Ari Wegter, LoveFilm Co-Founder and Alicia Navarro, Co Founder, Skimlinks. As with GeeknRolla's fast pace style, the speeches will be fast, furious and fulfilling. I'd strongly advise you get a full day ticket. Last year we more than sold out. Check out our awesome sponsors and partners after the jump.
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| Another Steve Jobs Email: Apple To Drop Support For The First-Generation iPhone Posted: 12 Apr 2010 04:54 AM PDT
I’m starting to think Steve Jobs is getting a real kick out of replying to random customers’ emails and watching the blogosphere go nuts over it. The Apple CEO has now apparently replied to a user’s question about future support for the first-gen iPhone (2G), MacStories reports. The customer, an unidentified German that goes by the name ‘Niko’, sent Jobs the following email over the weekend:
To which Jobs, in his usual style, responded:
(You can click the image embedded above for a larger version – it includes the headers.) So there you have it folks – better upgrade your phone. Even if this turns out to be a hoax.      
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| Google Buys Mobile Visual Search Startup Plink Posted: 12 Apr 2010 04:26 AM PDT
The company’s two founders, PhD students Mark Cummins and James Philbin, will work on Google Goggles and help enhance the search giant’s visual search applications. Plink is the relatively obscure company behind PlinkArt, a visual recognition app for Android that is able to recognize artworks and paintings simply by analyzing images. Users can share those photos with friends and also purchase poster versions after clicking through. Plink claims the Android app, which you can find here, was downloaded more than 50,000 times in the month following its initial launch.
Plink says they will immediately stop developing new features for PinkArt:
Back in December 2009, Plink was announced the winner of the second Android Developer Challenge in the Education/Reference category. The victory brought home $100,000 for the developers, and ultimately an acquisition offer. Need more incentive to join the Developer Challenge next time, Android devs?      
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| Germany’s Friendticker Recycles Foursquare, But With A Real CRM Backend Posted: 12 Apr 2010 02:37 AM PDT  Since Foursquare never officially checked-in to Germany, another company has decided to become the local Mayor. The clone company Friendticker came out its beta on Friday with a banging underground party in one of Berlin's secret club locations. Officially, the business of ruling Germany's location wars starts today. As is generally widely known, Germany has a very environmentally sustainable economy. There are recycling bins everywhere. So it's nice to see the recycling has extended to the layout and functionality of Foursquare. Friendticker's site and iPhone app resembles Foursquare with only minor changes and the browser bar's favicon looks very much like Facebook's - only in purple. However, look under the hood and Friendticker has features you won't find in Foursquare and Gowalla such as a greater emphasis on loyalty rewards and a full-blown Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to allow local businesses to control their offers.
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| Netflix Now Shipping Free Instant Streaming Disks To All Wii Owners Posted: 12 Apr 2010 02:35 AM PDT
Nintendo and Netflix initially announced partnership plans in January and are making Netflix on the Wii fully available as of today, after putting out a teaser and sending out disks to a subset of members a couple of weeks ago. Streaming from Netflix via the Wii console is provided at no additional cost to members who have a plan starting at $8.99 a month. Netflix announced that it had 12.3 million members at the end of 2009, and Nintendo says more than 28 million people are using the Wii console today. Check out Crave’s hands-on review of Netflix on the Wii for more, or check out this video on CrunchGear. For the record: this marks the online DVD rental pioneer's third major video game streaming deal, following agreements with Microsoft for the Xbox 360 and Sony for the PlayStation 3. The roll-out of Netflix on the Wii comes right off the heels of renewed distribution agreements with Universal Studios and 20th Century Fox.      
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| Like.com Brings A Live, Glamour Magazine Trained Stylist To The iPhone Posted: 12 Apr 2010 02:31 AM PDT
Once you open the application, you can take a picture of your proposed outfit or clothing item, choose your destination (i.e. dinner at a fancy restaurant, concert, picnic in the park) and ask your fashion question. Within minutes a real-life stylist will send you an answer and, if applicable, a recommendation on other items to complement your look. You will receive a push notification alerting you that your response is ready. If push is off, then you can get a notification via SMS. So why trust these stylists? Like.com has partnered with Glamour Magazine to train each stylist in the science of fashion and style. The app also offers features branded-stylists from retail stores. Of course, you don’t have to be in front of your closet to use the app. If you are shopping at a store and are having trouble choosing between a style of shoes or aren’t sure if the coat is fashion forward, you can call on a stylist to help with the decision. Stylists are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week and responses generally arrive within 2 minutes of the question. If applicable, the Stylist will offer suggestions on fashion pieces to complement the looks to make your outfit even better. If you choose a retail stylist, you can get suggestions from their brand, specifically. On occasion, a stylist will recommend a product with a clickable link that will take you to a site where you can buy the product. Munjal Shah, CEO of Like.com, says the app doesn’t have any revenue streams at the moment but will soon be integrated into a stealth site that compliment’s the app’s functionality. The app is part of Shah’s strategy of bringing interactive shopping tools to the online soft goods shopping experience. Couturious shows you how to wear styled looks on the web. Weardrobe helps you to be visually inspired with streetstyle looks; Covet helps you to visually personalize your shopping (using celebrity photos), Like.com helps you to visually shop for soft goods and now the new app adds a personalized styling consultant to the mini-empire’s offerings. Like.com, which launched in 2006, is growing steadily both in revenue and platforms. The startup raised $32 million in funding during the implosion of the financial industry, with a valuation just north of $100 million. And the startup is churning out verticals at a rapid pace.      
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| Zynga’s Newest Game: FrontierVille Posted: 12 Apr 2010 12:07 AM PDT
Next up is FrontierVille, if the screenshots I saw while logged in to Facebook as a Developer Test Account are to be believed. The game description? Click and then keep clicking. Ok, not really. It’s “Howdy Pardner! Let’s explore a new life on the frontier. You gotta chop trees to construct buildings, clear land to raise livestock, plant crops, and raise a family. The untamed wilderness is hazardous, but your fellow pioneers are there to help.” Milestones include things like “learned the ropes,” “just broke ground for a new homestead!,” and “just finished building a General Store in FrontierVille.” I just wish they’d create BloggerVille. I think I’d be really good at that.      
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| Overture Founder Launches Tweetup, “Adsense For Twitter” Posted: 11 Apr 2010 08:53 PM PDT
Let’s zoom back to 1998 for a minute. Search engines at the time had no real way to monetize traffic beyond normal ads. Then Goto.com came along and turned that world upside down by allowing people to bid to be at the top of search results for whatever keywords they wanted. The rest is, well, history. GoTo was renamed Overture, went public and was later acquired by Yahoo for $1.6 billion. Google later settled IP litigation with Yahoo over Overture patents for 2.7 million Google shares. It’s fair to say that GoTo was the seed that launched tens of billions in search revenue, and it is the standard way that all major search engines today make most of their revenue. Fun fact: I was Goto.com’s attorney way back when it was just a baby startup, and passed on the opportunity to invest in a very early venture round. If I had made a different decision you would not be reading me here today because I’d be living on the island that I bought with the proceeds of that investment. /Fun Fact Back to Tweetup: At its core it’s a Twitter search engine with an advertising platform built next to it. The site launches today for potential advertisers only, and the main service will follow in a few weeks. There are three parts to the service – the destinations site, third party widgets, and the advertiser product. The destination site will rank Twitter results by time and via an algorithm to determine if a result should go higher than other more recent tweets containing the keyword queried. And users will also see advertiser (paid) results within that stream as well. idealab is saying that advertisers paying for ranking for specific keywords will also tend to be good results, since bad ads will be bid out of the system. Tweetup says that they are data sharing with Bit.ly to fine tune results, and paid results will always be noted as such.
Advertisers will be able to bid in three ways eventually: by impression, by new follower or by click through to an end URL. At first, says the company, advertisers will only be able to bid by impression, and the minimum bid is 1 cent per impression. The first 1,000 advertisers to sign up will get a $100 credit towards ads. And the signup seems fairly trivial. Give them your Twitter name and your bio is automatically imported; you can edit from there. Will this work? I’ll never bet against Bill Gross and idealab (again). A lot depends on what advertising platform Twitter ultimately unveils themselves. But one thing Tweetup has going for it is it’s bold, and publishers will likely eat it up for the additional revenue stream. They already have deals inked with Answers.com (mentioned above), Seesmic and Twidroid. And more will be announced shortly, they say. Blue Chip InvestorsWhen Bill Gross, idealab’s founder, has an idea it’s usually a very big one. And it often has a little bit of crazy mixed in, too. Investors aren’t waiting to see how this one plays out before jumping in. They’ve closed a $3.5 million first round of funding led by Index Ventures, and have taken investments from SV Angel (Ron Conway), First Round Capital, Betaworks, Steve Case, Jason Calacanis and Jeff Jarvis. Gross is the interim CEO of Tweetup, and Index Ventures’ Danny Rimer is taking a board seat. More screenshots below:
     
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| EdgeCast Secures $10 Million From Menlo Ventures Posted: 11 Apr 2010 07:20 PM PDT
EdgeCast has secured $10 million in Series C funding from an investor group led by Menlo Ventures. The content delivery network has raised a total of $20 million since 2007, counting Steamboat Ventures (Disney’s venture arm), Mark Amin (Vice Chairman of CinemaNow) and Jon Feltheimer (CEO of Lionsgate) as investors. EdgeCast, which has been profitable since the fourth quarter of 2009, says the funding was necessary due to a surge in consumer demand and the need to scale up. Steamboat also participated in this round. Here’s a copy of an internal e-mail sent by a senior executive:
Under the deal, Menlo Ventures’ managing director, Pravin Vazirani, will join the company’s board of directors. Explaining his investment, Vazirani says: ” users demand a high-quality, instant-on experience – something legacy CDNs weren't built to deliver. As both supply and demand for content continue to surge, EdgeCast is ideally positioned to capitalize on that growth.” Founded in 2006 by CEO Alex Kazerani and President James Segil, Edgecast competes with other CDNs (like Akamai, Limelight Networks) to help websites around the world deliver multimedia (i.e. music, video, live stream, etc) to the end user. One of the company’s strengths is its flexible pricing model, there are no fixed bandwith contracts. Customer prices are tied to actual bandwidth costs. Edgecast serves over a thousand clients including IMAX, WordPress, ESPN, Kelloggs, LinkedIn and Lionsgate. While it has several big names on its roster, the company has been aggressively targeting smaller businesses. Last month, the company announced a partnership with ClickStream TV to offer no-committment delivery services. “Enabling ClickStreamTV’s pay-as-you-go CDN service is exciting for us, because it enables us to help smaller businesses we might otherwise miss,” Segil said in a press release. EdgeCast has experienced spectacular growth over the past year. To put it in perspective the company had roughly 300 customers in early 2009, it past the 1,000 mark last September. EdgeCast has relied on a two-pronged marketing strategy: direct selling and a network of resellers. By working with its resell partners, like Deutsche Telekom, Edgecast has been able to expand its sales force without additional overhead costs. The bulk of their customers now come through the resell channel.
     
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| Dear Authors, Your Next Book Should be an App, Not an iBook Posted: 11 Apr 2010 05:58 PM PDT
So much has been said in the past few weeks about how the iPad will change the book industry but in almost all of the tweets, posts, and articles I've come across a simple questions seems to be completely dropped. Why do we have books in the first place? Paul Carr of TechCrunch published a post this morning that raised this question inadvertently. His argument went something like this: A.) The iPad is a better buy then the Kindle because it lets you do more than just read books. B.) Books can't compete with other applications on the iPad. Partly because the screen is too bright but mostly because you will get distracted by games like Flight Control. C.) Thus reading, as we know it, is dead. Carr, in some senses, is right. Reading has changed. What's not addressed is why this is a bad thing. Carr’s argument is rooted in a distinction between serious readers and non-serious readers. His example involves someone reading only a few paragraphs of a nytimes article, then posting it on Twitter. Carr defines this reading as, “reading in the way that rubbing against women on the subway is sex.” His example is vivid but also flat out perverse. Carr is confusing length with quality, and more profoundly, he's confusing the ends with the means. The mission of an author isn't to get you to 'read all the words', it's to communicate in the rawest sense of the word. Whether you're Jeff Jarvis or Dan Brown, you have an idea or a story and a book is a way to express it to the world. If you, as an author, see the iPad as a place to 'publish' your next book, you are completely missing the point. What do you think would have happened if George Orwell had the iPad? Do you think he would have written for print then copy and pasted his story into the iBookstore? If this didn't work out well, do you think he would have complained that there aren't any serious-readers anymore? No. He would have looked at the medium, then blown our minds. It's not a problem that the experience of reading a book 'cover to cover' on an iPad isn't that great as long as there are better ways to communicate on the device. On the iPad there are. What's challenging for authors at this point is the iPad enables so many different types of expression that it's literally overwhelming. Once you start thinking of your book as an app you run into all kinds of bizarre questions. Like, do I need to have all of my book accessible at any given time? Why not make it like a game so that in order to get to the next 'chapter' you need to pass a test? Does the content of the book even need to be created entirely by me? Can I leave some parts of it open to edit by those who buy it and read it? Do I need to charge $9.99, or can I charge $99.99? Start thinking about how each and everyone one of the iPad's features can be a tool for an author to more lucidly express whatever it is they want to express and you'll see that reading isn't 'dead', it's just getting more sophisticated. There are literary techniques, there will be iPad techniques. I'm 21, I can say with a lot of confidence that the 'books' that come to define my generation will be impossible to print. This is great.      
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| NSFW: I Admit It, The iPad Is A Kindle Killer. I Just Wish It Weren’t Going To Kill Reading Too Posted: 11 Apr 2010 12:38 PM PDT
And then there’s me. I’m still not convinced. No. Strike that. I am convinced. And that’s what worries me. As I’m contractually obliged to never let you forget, I write the occasional book – and as such, I have a vested interest in the future of the medium, both in print and in digital form. One of the labels attached to the iPad – along with laptop killer and television killer – is Kindle killer. Why, the argument goes, would someone buy a dedicated e-reader devices for (low) hundreds of dollars when for (high) hundreds of dollars they can have a device capable of displaying books, movies, web pages and just about anything else? It was a question, frankly, not worthy of an answer. Or at least not one that wasn’t accompanied by a roll of the eyes. Almost everyone who described the iPad as a Kindle killer chose to ignore the fact that no matter how nice and shiny Apple’s screen technology is, it’s still not designed for reading books. Without e-ink, such as that found in the Kindle, your eyes get tired after a few pages – which is fine for replacing a newspaper, but is basically useless for a book. I wrote as much back in January. “Just wait and see” said the fanboys, “wait till you get your hands on an iPad before you jump to judgment.” “Hmmm,” I said, “Ok…” Well I waited, and now I’ve spent long enough playing with an iPad to jump to judgment. And you know what? The fanboys were right. The iPad is a Kindle killer, but for all the wrong reasons. Let’s finally put to rest the myth that the iPad is a good way to read books – it isn’t. Without e-ink – who’d have thunk it? – your eyes get tired after a few pages. You find yourself wishing you could print out the rest of the book and read it properly, away from the screen. Even the way that Apple displays books – in their Delicious Library rip-off way – suggests that they consider books to be just another kind of app. Something to fire up, play with for a couple of minutes and then swap out for the next five minutes of Flight Control. The iPad is emphatically not a serious readers’ device: the only people who would genuinely consider it a Kindle killer are those for whom the idea of reading for pleasure died years ago; if it was ever alive. The people who will spout bullshit like “I read on screen all day” when what they really mean is “I read the first three paragraphs of the New York Times article I saw linked on Twitter before retweeting it; and then I repeat that process for the next eight hours while pretending to work.” That’s reading in the way that rubbing against women on the subway is sex. And yet, and yet. There’s no doubt that the iPad is a beautiful device for almost everything else. It’s perfect for reading newspapers – Alan Alan Rusbridger’s space-filling fanfic not withstanding – and it’s perfect for email and web browsing and movies and games. If you have to carry around one device – for your commute to work, for an hour in a coffee shop, or on a long-haul flight – then the iPad is the one to carry. Which is precisely why I’m so worried for the future of books, and for reading. For a few months, the Kindle – or the Sony Reader, or whatever e-reader floated your (Three Men In A) boat – was the perfect take-anywhere device. Sales of ebooks soared as first early adopters, then everyone else, left their paper books at home and started carrying around something smaller and lighter that still gave them access to their reading material. Those same people are now the ones who will buy iPads, or presumably any one of the myriad alternatives that will soon be flooding the market. But those people don’t want to carry around two tablet-shaped devices to help pass their commute, so they’ll make the sensible choice and leave their Kindles at home. Sure, the Kindle is unarguably the better reader device, but what many booklovers (myself included) have arrogantly overlooked is that it’s not competing on a level playing field with other e-readers. It’s competing against the whole universe of portable entertainment. “This ebook hurts my eyes – I’ll just surf the web instead.” Even for those who love books enough to persevere with reading without e-ink will soon face another problem with the awesomeness of the iPad. The device does so many different things so well that there’s a constant urge when you’re using one to do something else. Two or three pages into a book, you’re already wondering whether you’ve got new mail, or whether anyone has atted you on Twitter. One of the joys of reading is to be able to shut yourself away from distractions and lose yourself in a book. When the book itself is packed with distractions, the whole experience is compromised. The first effects of this – I suspect – will seem like great news to publishers, who are increasingly frustrated by Amazon’s control over the ebook market. Having made a mental and financial commitment to their iPads, readers are unlikely to retreat back to their Kindles when their eyes start to hurt trying to read hundreds of pages on Apple’s device. Instead they’ll return briefly to physical books to scratch their long-form itch. They’re still portable, affordable and readable – and carrying one with you doesn’t feel like wasted space in a way that carrying a Kindle and an iPad would. Physical book sales will rise, Kindle sales will drop. Soon though, especially as more and more commuter friendly apps appear on the iPad and publishers push out more video content to further distract us from the need to read for prolonged periods, the idea of carrying a book will go back to seeming unnecessary. And at that point the iPad will indeed have killed the Kindle. But, for millions of casual readers, it will also have killed something far more valuable: the experience of reading for pleasure.      
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| iPad Marriage Proposal: Congrats Zach, You Dork Posted: 11 Apr 2010 11:31 AM PDT
What I don’t understand is why he didn’t record the whole proposal on his iPhone or other device. We want video! Anyway, congratulations, you dork.      
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| Posted: 11 Apr 2010 11:09 AM PDT
Thousands of game developers are toiling in this country (nobody at the summit dared to make a better estimate), churning out dozens and dozens of games for local and international social networks each month. Some attendees at the summit estimated the market for virtual goods in China to be worth to the tune of $5-7 billion, whereas Americans spent $1 billion on virtual goods last year. (That sum, however, is just one yardstick to measure the value of the social game market, as most yuan are being made outside the social game sector, i.e. through “traditional” online games – which aren’t played within social networks – or through avatar-related sales in instant messaging services.)
Things in China’s social gaming space are moving at breakneck pace, but interestingly, the top genres in the last 18-24 months have been identical to the ones in the US and elsewhere. The most popular time sinks are farming games (the top Chinese app in this space is Happy Farm, which can be found on Facebook, too), restaurant simulations (RenRen Restaurant is like Cafe World on Facebook), and pet games (i.e. Happy Aquarium on RenRen, which is also popular on Facebook). All in all, estimates peg the current number of China’s social network users – and potential social game players – at 124 million (or one in three web users in this country). But Internet penetration in China stands at a mere 28.7% currently (US: 76.3%), which leaves room for even more gaming startups. Companies like Happy Farm maker Five Minutes [CN] or Rekoo are already successful outside their home territory (making serious money in the US and Japan, respectively), and nobody should be too surprised to see the next Zynga coming out of Beijing or Shanghai. Especially if you keep in mind that more of those 765 million mobile users in China will want to play games in the future, too. China Social Game Summit 2010 – LaunchpadAt the China Social Game Summit, a total of six domestic startups demo’d their newest games. Here are thumbnail sketches for all of them. (Note: Some of the links below lead to Chinese-only websites.)
Pitched as China’s first “island life simulation”, Dream Island can currently be played just by RenRen users (developer HappyFish is looking for international distribution partners). The game mechanics can be summarized with “Sim City on an island”, although Dream Island looks and sounds much cuter (the game was designed for females in the 18-40 age bracket). The game is based on a DIY concept, meaning players must build every object from scratch (houses, harbors, entertainment facilities etc.). The goal is to create and maintain an island, attracting as many outside visitors as possible. Friends can help friends to manage certain activities on the island. Here’s the demo video that was shown at the summit:
One of my personal favorite social games out there, Paintball Paradise is labeled as an MMOFPS (massively multiplayer online first person shooter), which can be played over different platforms. A Paintball Paradise player on MySpace, for example, can battle it out and chat with another player who’s using the game on Facebook, on the game’s main portal or through a widget. Maker Cmune says their aim was to fill “the gap between MMO, social games and FPS”, adding they created the world’s first “3D social shooter”. Paradise Paintball is based on a freemium business model. The game is monetized through sales of virtual goods, for example better weapons or more effective ammo. It has passed the 200,000 active user mark (for the social network versions) just yesterday.
You read that title right, and “Vegetables vs. Zombies” is what only can be described as a blatant rip-off of PopCap’s ultra-successful action/strategy social game “Plants vs. Zombies” (the Seattle-based company is actually quite popular in China). The presenter from Kingdowin dared to ask the audience if it thinks their game looks like PopCap’s (hint: yes, it does). At least the Asia representative from PopCap (who attended the summit in Beijing) took the game, which is currently being tested on RenRen, with humor. Judging from this web page, it looks like Kingdowin plans to roll out “Vegetables vs. Zombies” on Facebook, too. Just look at these screenshots (or watch this demo video):
Here’s a demo video:
Play4F.cn is one of the many Chinese Fourquare clones out there (some people at the summit told me there are 2-3 domestic Foursquare copy cats, while others spoke of ten and more). It works much like the American original, including core elements like integration with other social networks, badges, location-based hints for fellow users etc. But Huancai’s CEO Xiao Xie (an ex- Microsoft China employee) told me his app offers some features especially geared towards domestic users, for example a China-specific badge design. People checking into a place that’s renowned in one way or another for martial arts, for instance, get a badge associated with martial arts. To hit the nerve of Chinese users, the app also features a system of virtual goods. For example, a user can leave a virtual item at a certain place and specify another user who can pick it up when checking in at that place at a later time (for example a flower for a girlfriend). The app will be released for iPhone, Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile.
Pilgrimage to the West Online is a mobile game created by renowned mobile MMOG developer Moca World. The presenter from the Beijing-based company said that social games in China have three problems: it’s hard to retain users, games are difficult to monetize and mobile payment is still in its infancy. That’s probably why the adventure-like game, which is based on a famous Chinese novel, will be published in Japan, too (where offering mobile payment systems, for example, isn’t really a problem). Moca World said Pilgrimage to the West Online will combine social networking features with those found in MMOGs, including a wealth of elements related to Kung Fu and Buddhism. The target group for the “light game” are females aged between 20 and 25 (demo video).
     
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| Going It Alone: How to Make Your Stuff In China, Part 2 Posted: 11 Apr 2010 10:24 AM PDT  Read Part 1 of this series by Adam Hocherman. I am sitting in the lobby of the Royal Plaza Hotel in Mong Kok waiting for the owner of the factory that makes our Neverlate and Quad-Timer items to pick me up. The final legs of my journey were largely uneventful although it was nearly 2am local time before I finally closed my eyes to go to sleep last night. Dealing with the jet lag on the way out is easy. I basically stayed awake the entire time, dozing in out of a half-sleep the way that someone who is over six feet tall does on airplanes. Some five small airplane meals later, I had lost track of what meal I was supposed to be on. Acclimation to the time zone on the way back is much more difficult and if you've ever been to the International Pavilion at the CES you can attest to this first-hand through the observation of countless sleepy Asian booth attendants nodding off in uncomfortable plastic rented chairs. Before I continue where I left off from last time, I'd like to pause to address the question that was the inspiration for writing this article. That question is why? Why "go it alone"? Why take the route that I've taken rather than license your idea (actually, let me be more specific – your product concept) to another party? I am of the opinion that there is a place for licensing, but it is not for low cost – say, sub $100 – consumer products. If you have a proprietary technology – something that you embed in another product then, by all means, license it. If you have an idea for a consumer product and the desire/willingness to put for the effort to bring it to market, then you should go it alone. The reasons are many, but the main ones are (1) IP, (2) margin and (3) control. Let me speak to these one at a time.
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Browser maker 
Managing your multiple different social network streams and accounts can be a time consuming task for some. A number of startups aim to help you publish to multiple social networks at the same time including 
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Publishers will also have the ability to add Tweetup directly onto their sites to generate revenue. Tweetup will split revenue from ads 50/50, says idealab, and results will be pre-populated with keywords relevant to that page. They’ve inked a deal with Answers.com and will go live at launch with that and other partners, they say.
This post was written by 21 year old 
For one reason or another, I’ve spent the past few weeks down at the TechCrunch offices. As a result, it’s proved almost impossible to avoid iPad fanboy hysteria. Mike has 
From Zach Iniguez: 
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