The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Pacific Defense For The iPad Plunges You Back Into WWII (Video)
- When Clones Attack! German Groupon Clone Gets €7m Warchest
- Philly.com Partners With FanDuel To Let Readers Place Fantasy Bets
- Conduit Labs Strikes Deal With Universal Music Group To Bring Lady Gaga And Rihanna To Social Games
- More iPad Sentiment Analysis: 87% Of Tweets Indicate Intent To Purchase
- Benchmark Helps Web Talk Radio Startup Stitcher Turn Up The Volume By $6 Million
- Want More Followers On Twitter? Make Sure You Have A Profile Picture
- John Doerr: The Next Big Thing
- Venture Funding Doubled To $12.8 Billion In First Quarter
- Can Amazon, Sony, or Google Catch Apple? [Video]
- iTunes To Integrate Facebook Connect
- Google Shipping All I/O Attendees A Free Droid Or Nexus One Before The Conference
- A Re-Birth for Enterprise Software? [Video]
- Facebook’s iPad Impostor ‘Facebook Ultimate’ Removed From The App Store (Updated)
- MySpace Planning To Roll Out Facebook Connect ASAP (Or Not)
- Clicker Helps You Find iPad-Friendly Videos
- Top 4 Signs Your HDTV Isn’t Properly Configured
- comScore: Android Market Share Continues To Gain On The iPhone
- Digg’s Kevin Rose: “One Of Us Has To Leave”
- Zapoint Acquires Social Job Search Site Jobster From Recruiting.com
- HP Shows Off Their Slate’s Social Networking Features, Wants You To Remember They Have a Slate
- Early Web Browsing Data Suggests The iPad Is For The Weekend, The iPhone Is For Work
- Apple Holding Special Event To Preview iPhone OS 4 This Thursday
| Pacific Defense For The iPad Plunges You Back Into WWII (Video) Posted: 06 Apr 2010 08:08 AM PDT
Games are the most lucrative category of apps on the iPhone (and iPod Touch) and they promise to be just as popular on the iPad. Yesterday, I visited Edo Segal, CEO of Futurity Ventures, to see what a game developed specifically for the iPad looks like and how it is different from iPhone games. One of Futurity Ventures portfolio startups is Vertigore, which developed its first game for the iPad. It is called Pacific Defense ($1.99 on iTunes for the next two days) and it puts you in a WWII destroyer gun turret shooting at enemy planes above and torpedos below. The game is designed so that you hold it up in front of you and look through it like a window into another world. The bigger size of the screen gives it more of a window-like feel than the peephole view you get on the iPhone. The game is in black and white with scratches to make it look like an old newsreel. You tilt the iPad to aim and tap the guns on either side with your thumbs to shoot. But the game really becomes interesting when you turn on the augmented reality control mode in settings. Then instead of just tilting the iPad, you can turn your whole body and spin around to shoot at the planes 360 degrees around you or at the torpedos below. If you play with headphones, there is also 3D sound, so you can hear the planes coming from your left or right or from behind. A swivel chair is really key to augmenting the augmented game play (see video below). If the iPad ever gets a camera, the game could be updated so that the planes fly through your room or wherever you are. Maybe the iPhone version will have that feature. In the video below, Segal shows off some of the game play and talks about the opportunities for augmented reality video games on the iPad.
     
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| When Clones Attack! German Groupon Clone Gets €7m Warchest Posted: 06 Apr 2010 06:49 AM PDT  While the Groupon-clone fall out has already begun in the UK, it's looking more and more like a two horse race in Germany based on funding alone. Berlin-based Daily Deal, whose main rival is the Samwer brothers' City Deal, has secured a further 7 million euros, this time from Mangrove Capital Partners and Adinvest. Stefan Glänzer (an early investor in Last.fm), Michael Brehm (Ex-StudiVZ) and Jochen Maaß are existing seed investors. 
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| Philly.com Partners With FanDuel To Let Readers Place Fantasy Bets Posted: 06 Apr 2010 06:43 AM PDT  FanDuel, from UK-based social gaming company HubHub, has picked up its first major US newspaper partner. A white-labeled version of the fantasy sports site is being used by the Philadelphia Inquirer's Philly.com to bring social gaming to the newspaper and, of course, generate much needed revenue. It's a model that has already proved successful in the UK, says HubHub. FanDuel, which focuses solely on US sports, offers a slightly different take on the traditional fantasy sports game model. Instead of games lasting the whole season, players play and win in as little as a day - think of it as "one-night stand" fantasy sport.
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| Conduit Labs Strikes Deal With Universal Music Group To Bring Lady Gaga And Rihanna To Social Games Posted: 06 Apr 2010 04:54 AM PDT
Universal Music Group (UMG) has struck a deal with Conduit Labs, a startup that creates musical social games, to provide users with access to UMG’s library of licensed music from the record label’s artists such as Lady Gaga, Rihanna and others. The partnership will all 1 million users of Conduit Labs’ games, including Music Pets, Super Dance and Loudcrowd, to access the tracks. All of Conduit Labs’ games are free-to-play but allow users can purchase virtual items, such as songs, to further personalize their experience. For example, Loudcrowd, which we reported on here, allows users to create their own virtual world with avatars and access music playlists while playing a series of music-themed games with friends. Conduit uses a virtual goods model to sell music within games and songs on the social network range will range from costing nothing to several dollars. Through the agreement, Conduit will share revenue from all sales of UMG’s music with the record label. Users will also be able to purchase separate digital downloads of UMG music and other products. UMG will be offering licensed music from Lady Gaga, Little Wayne, Rihanna, The Killers, Beck, Kanye West, Black Eyed Peas, Weezer, Justin Bieber and several other well-known artists. Conduit Labs has already partnered with Indie rock record labels including the Beggars Group, DFA, Domino, Downtown Records, and Modular but the UMG deal is fairly huge for the gaming startup. The company, which recently raised another $3 million in funding, is rapidly growing its userbase. Its Facebook game, Music Pets, has already surpassed one million monthly active users less than 30 days after its launch. And Universal Music has long been a little trigger-happy on the lawsuits against music and video sharing services (MySpace, Veoh and its investors, Grouper / Bolt.com, etc.), so the deal is definitely a win for the young gaming startup.      
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| More iPad Sentiment Analysis: 87% Of Tweets Indicate Intent To Purchase Posted: 06 Apr 2010 04:15 AM PDT
We’ve already posted some sentiment analysis after the arrival of the iPad last weekend, based on messages posted on Twitter, which showed that people were split about the launch of the tablet (people either love it or hate others for not shutting up about it). Here’s some more: Attensity used its Cloud tool to collect some 50,000 Tweets on the iPad – a relatively small sample considering the heaps of chatter on the iPad that has taken Twitter by storm over the past couple of days – and analyzed the general sentiment. According to Attensity, an “overwhelming majority” of people really like the iPad. Neverthless, nearly 25 percent of the tweets pulled were from people that are apparently not thrilled with the iPad (although it’s unclear if these people actually purchased and used one too). Also interesting is that positive sentiment has remained fairly constant since the announcement of the iPad back in January (see Attensity’s findings from that period). In other words, actually holding an iPad did not significantly change the way people feel about it.
Attensity also analyzed what excited people about the iPad exactly. According to its study, the top positive drivers have remained largely the same since just after the announcement: the applications, the device’s ability to replace people’s iPhones and the quality of screen and (virtual) keyboard. More people are talking about it being a Kindle-killer today then back when it was announced, and for the first time, a significant number of people are talking about the quality of the email interface.
Now that the iPad applications are actually available (check out our list of the best apps at launch), Attensity looked at which ones are being talked about and how people feel about them. Initially, there was very little negative sentiment about the top applications, and people were particularly wild about the Netflix app. The iWorks applications have also been downloaded quite a bit, but there the sentiment hasn’t been quite as positive. First, many people seem to have gotten the impression that it was going to be included in the iPad free of charge, and those that did understand that they were going to have to pay for it were expecting a lower price point for them. The one application that had severely negative sentiment expressed was the third-party Facebook application that was recently pulled from the App Store.
Post-announcement, the lack of Flash support was the number one negative sentiment driver, and according to Attensity that lack of support has become less important since the launch of the device. Now, the number one driver is people understanding that it won’t replace their iPhone, the prices of the available apps and a number of performance issues related to synchronization and backup speed when connecting with iTunes. Interestingly, more people are now considering the iPad as a replacement for the Kindle than back in January.
According to Apple, over 300,000 iPads were sold on launch day, but how are the intent-to-purchase levels today? Well, this graph sums things up nicely:
     
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| Benchmark Helps Web Talk Radio Startup Stitcher Turn Up The Volume By $6 Million Posted: 06 Apr 2010 04:15 AM PDT
Stitcher CEO Noah Shanok wants his company to become the Pandora of Web talk radio, and he just raised a $6 million Series B to help him get there. The round was led by Benchmark Capital, and follows a $2.7 million Series A in 2008. Existing investor New Atlantic Ventures put in more money as well. The company’s apps stream news, talk, and informational podcasts to people’s iPhones, Blackberries, and Android phones. You can get NPR, Fox News, The Onion, The New York Times, and even TechCrunch. You assemble a “station” by picking different audio feeds, and Stitcher automatically plays the most recent stream from each one. The big difference between music on the Web like Pandora and talk and Stitcher is that songs don’t get updated. But both are trying to create a radio-like experience. Stitcher has a much smaller audience than Pandora, and is more mobile-oriented. About half its usage is from its iPhone app. But they are also complementary. Both Stitcher and Pandora are featured apps in Ford’s Sync in-dashboard entertainment system. Stitcher’s biggest competitor is perhaps iTunes itself, which includes vast trove of free downloadable audio podcasts. But managing your podcasts can soon become unwieldy or you quickly run out of new things to listen to. Stitcher wants to be a discovery tool for that kind of audio. As it builds out its audience, Stitcher is still relatively ad-free, but it has experimented with ads that are a combination of audio and in-app display where the audio ad prompts listeners to click on the ad on their screen.      
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| Want More Followers On Twitter? Make Sure You Have A Profile Picture Posted: 06 Apr 2010 02:33 AM PDT
Marketing software maker HubSpot has analyzed close to 9 million Twitter profiles based on data collected through its Twitter Grader tool, and has come to the conclusion that accounts with a profile picture average about 10 times more followers than those without. That on itself is not so surprising; a Twitter profile associated with the default avatar generally screams ‘newbie’, which is generally an incentive not to follow someone unless you know that person in real life or on other social networks. There’s a good reason why spammers who create fake Twitter accounts tend to include pictures in profiles – it’s human nature to instantly trust personalized online accounts more than generic ones. But we love stats here at TechCrunch, so here you go:
(Via Mike Volpe, who has a pretty good profile picture)      
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| John Doerr: The Next Big Thing Posted: 05 Apr 2010 11:41 PM PDT
It's hard to imagine that once there was no Internet. Just 15 years ago there was no browser, no web point-and-click. It was 1994, and Steve Jobs had left Apple. Steve was making Toy Story, and object-oriented software for Next. Then one day Bill Joy showed me a beta version of Mosaic, the FIRST web browser. It was magic. Bill said "John, I have NO idea where this is going. You just better dive in." The rest of the 90's were a ONCE-in-a-lifetime experience. Entrepreneurs created the Web, and great ventures – Netscape, Amazon, Ebay, Google, and others. And they changed our lives. Silicon Valley became the Florence of the New, Networked Economy. The advent of the iPad feels like deja-vu, like it's happening all over again. Not once, but TWICE-in-a-lifetime. Inventing The FutureNewsweek put it best… "Steve has the uncanny ability to cook up gadgets we didn't know we needed… but suddenly can't live without." Steve showed us what computer legend Alan Kay told us… namely, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." At Kleiner Perkins we say "If you can't INVENT the future, the next best thing… is to FUND it." The iFundSo two years ago Apple and Kleiner Perkins announced an unexpected collaboration: the $100 million iFund. The best venture fund for mobile entrepreneurs. Think back to March 6, 2008. The iFund idea was risky – some thought crazy. There was no 3G iPhone. No apps. No appstore. And no iFund. Today the iFund is 14 ventures. 3 are stealth. We are proud to have backed great entrepreneurs in communications, gaming, publishing, media, mobile advertising, and mobile commerce. The iFund companies include:
Each of these companies has received capital from the iFund and participated in bi-annual iFund Summits with other founders, CEOs and industry leaders. Through this network, we've seen phenomenal collaboration between iFund companies and tremendous learning in a space that evolves rapidly and changes daily. iFund ventures have had well over 100 million downloads. And we expect more than $100 million in revenue from these companies this year. We've already committed $100 million, and raised another $330 million from others. That's almost ½ billion dollars.
Good News – Bad NewsThat's the good news. Truly good news. But the bad news – is that at the worst possible time, on eve of the iPad, the iFund is out of money. The first rule of venture capital is (to quote my friend Coach Campbell) is…"you gotta have the friggin' money." It's hard to be a venture capitalist if you don't have the money. Doubling DownSo we're doubling down on the iFund, increasing its size to $200 million dollars. Here's the real reason why… The original PCs in the early 80's were pretty crummy, that is, until 1984 when Apple introduced the mouse and the Mac… Back then Alan Kay, inventor of the Dynabook tablet, said "The Mac is the first PC worth criticizing." Fast forward to 2007. When Steve introduced the iPhone, Alan Kay told him "Steve, make the screen size 5 by 8 inches and you'll rule the world." Welcome, iPadOn Saturday (April 3) the iPad arrived. We believe it will rule the world. I've touched it, held it, and caressed it. It feels gorgeous. It feels like touching the future. It is not a big iPod. But it IS a very big deal.
The New WorldWe're going from the Old World to a brave New World.
The iPad is the beginning of the New World, the post-PC era. One More Thing… The FutureApril's iPad shipment is just the beginning. It is truly, just a beginning. Twice in the last 15 years we've witnessed 100,000 flowers blooming. Flowers of applications for the Web, and then for the iPhone. Both were paradigm shifts in how we interact. Here comes the third shift: interacting fluidly on full and fast screens with vast information stored locally. And that will start a third renaissance of software. Beyond BrowsersIt's time to move beyond spreadsheets and word processors, beyond web sites limited by browsers… to interactive, connected applications with incredible simplicity, speed, and fluidity. To a future that transforms games and entertainment, education and publishing, healthcare, communications and commerce. And almost everything else. The tablet, the iPad is where these new dreams will blossom. And where the revolution is happening. Much More PerformanceBill Joy says the key to more performance is lower power. Over the next decade he sees 3 times better batteries, and 10 times lower power chips. So we should be able to run, for the same price, 30 times as much application. And as for storage, there's no reason that can't be 30x also. Or, about a terabyte of local, faster, solid state storage. (A terabyte is several hundred movies) Interpersonal SurfacesWhat's important is the new ways tablet computers will be used. They won't just be reactive, responding to commands. They'll also be proactive. They will be much more than personal computers. They'll be interpersonal surfaces and services. Working seamlessly, unobtrusively, and comfortably in the spaces between us, between you and me and others. To iPADdicts and Entrepreneurs…I like to define entrepreneurs this way: Entrepreneurs do MORE than anyone thinks possible. With LESS than anyone thinks possible. At Kleiner we're awed by entrepreneurs. They surprise us with the improbable – they don't know what's impossible. So to Steve, Supreme Commander of the Rebel Forces, and to the entrepreneurs at Apple, congratulations! To iPADdicts and entrepreneurs everywhere: there's never been a better time than now to start or join a new venture, and launch a new application or service. Whether you're seeking $50K or a few million or a great job… contact us. John Doerr, jdoerr@kpcb.com Aileen Lee, alee@kpcb.com +1 650 233-2750      
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| Venture Funding Doubled To $12.8 Billion In First Quarter Posted: 05 Apr 2010 11:09 PM PDT
Venture capital is flowing once again to startups at a steady pace. During the first quarter of 2010, the total value of venture funding doubled to $12.8 billion from $6 billion a year before, when it was scraping the bottom of the barrel. However, the funding amount is down 16 percent from the $15.3 billion in the fourth quarter of last year, based on an analysis of CrunchBase data. Some of the venture rounds during the first quarter include Sonos (http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/12/sonos-confirms-25-million-investment-from-index-ventures/), betaworks ($20 million), Hunch ($12 million), and Posterous ($4.4 million). All in all, there were 1,201 fundings recorded in CrunchBase, during the quarter, up 77 percent from a year before, when there were 679. Compared to the fourth quarter, the sheer number of funding rounds was down 5 percent. While venture capital hasn’t exactly come roaring back, it is very much alive and kicking. Deals are getting done, which is an encouraging sign.
     
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| Can Amazon, Sony, or Google Catch Apple? [Video] Posted: 05 Apr 2010 06:17 PM PDT
I found one person who has no plans to buy iPad 1.0: James McQuivey, a VP at Forrester Research. He’s less than impressed with Apple’s latest offering and if he buys an iPad in the future it will be in 2011 or beyond (when the second generation comes out). While the “Kindle Killer” chant is growing louder among iPad reviewers, he still has lots of love for Amazon. Expounding on his blog, he argues that Amazon’s business model is not jeopardized by the iPad because “Amazon is in this for the long term customer relationship. They actually don’t care if you want to buy their device they just care that you want to buy content from them in perpetuity.” Beyond Amazon, he sees Sony and Google as the iPad’s top competitors. In regard to legitimate competitors, he says: “The easy names that come to mind are Dell, HP, Lenovo, and I have to say they’re going to make a bunch of nice tablets but they’ll really all be notebooks or netbooks without keyboards…The people in the best position to make a media centric device, which is what the iPad really is, are going to be Sony. Remember they make Vaios as well as TVs as well as the number two e-reader in the business…And all they have to do is put all those assets together into a single asset and build on some of the assets they have on the gaming side, and on the music side, video side….Now historically they’ve struggled to bring them all together but that doesn’t mean they can’t get it right this time. And the reader business has shown how they can get it right when they really put their mind to it. Beyond them though, Google is a name that you got to keep bandying about here, they have a couple of different operating systems that could be relevant. Not only the Android phone-based OS, but they have the Chrome OS.” I’m less bullish on Amazon, I think the lion’s share of those considering a Kindle purchase, will defect to Apple’s camp— unless Kindle drops the price significantly (McQuivey expects some price drop). But even if Kindle drops the price to say $100 from the $259 baseline, I think many will look at the purchase decision as microwave vs. kitchen. Why spend $100 for the microwave, if you could get a whole kitchen for $499— the economics favor the kitchen (that is if you plan to use all the appliances, like e-mail, internet, multimedia and the app store). I’m a proud Kindle user who loves the e-ink technology but I would give it all up to have a more versatile device. McQuivey says the next Kindle will include many new features and leverage more of Amazon’s offerings (also evidenced by Amazon’s recent acquistion of Touchco and its introduction of a Kindle development kit), but I doubt Amazon will ever create an app store that could rival iPad’s. [image: flickr/d2digital]      
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| iTunes To Integrate Facebook Connect Posted: 05 Apr 2010 05:56 PM PDT
It certainly adds up. Over the last few weeks, iTunes has been building out its Facebook Page at Facebook.com/iTunes, which now includes polls, featured items, and is being promoted in iTunes itself. And Lala, which was acquired by Apple in December, has extensive experience working with Facebook Connect (they also power Facebook’s song gifting feature). To be clear, you can already share songs on iTunes using both Facebook and Twitter (the feature was introduced last September). It sounds like this integration would make this easier, and there’s obviously the possibly for Apple to leverage Facebook’s social graph in much more interesting ways in the future. Apple has previously worked to add Facebook support to other apps — iPhoto includes an integrated Facebook photo uploader.      
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| Google Shipping All I/O Attendees A Free Droid Or Nexus One Before The Conference Posted: 05 Apr 2010 03:27 PM PDT
The logic behind the move? I/O is going to be heavy on Android content, so Google wants to make sure everyone in attendance is set up with a working phone, without having to deal with the logistics of handing them out at the conference. Getting them shipped ahead of time will also give developers a chance to familiarize themselves with Android, if they haven’t used it already. Google is sending out Verizon Droids and Nexus Ones to developers based on the location they entered when they first signed up for the conference (and no, according to the FAQ, you can’t request to get a different model). Here’s the Email Google is sending out:
Thanks to Carlos Cardona for the tip.      
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| A Re-Birth for Enterprise Software? [Video] Posted: 05 Apr 2010 02:54 PM PDT
I talked with Andreessen briefly afterwards about his comment, asking if he meant software-as-a-service specifically and whether he meant niche products or core software for running big businesses. His answer was ‘all of the above’, if it’s the right company — he thinks it’s time for an industry reset. Oracle’s – and to a far lesser degree SAP’s – shopping sprees of the past few years have cleaned out most of the late 1990s enterprise software brush and most big businesses rely on one or both of the big vendors, with no best-of-breed competitors mixed in and very little in the way of new products and real innovation. Corporate America’s rush to get with the modern times in the 1990s lead to a surge in enterprise software buying and several multi-billion dollar companies – Oracle, Siebel, PeopleSoft, BEA Systems et al. But growth slowed once most corporations had those systems, and consolidation set in. Meanwhile, there haven’t been many challengers coming out of the Valley. Thousands of software-as-a-service and open source companies were started over the last decade to upend the category with cheaper, more flexible pay-as-you-go offerings that didn’t involve the multi-million-dollar installation costs of hardware and customization. These companies were cheaper for venture capitalists to build and could get to millions in revenue quickly, but building a big company has been all but impossible: Salesforce.com still is one of the only billion dollar annual revenue businesses among the entire crop. And since software has long been the most dominant category of venture capital investment and returns, that’s weighed heavily on the asset class. If Andreessen is right and corporate America is ready for a computing restart, the Valley could be on the cusp of better times indeed. Unlike new media and Web 2.0 companies, enterprise software has a great business model: Companies pay millions for the software. But with Wall Street obsessed with cutting capital expenditures and boosting margins the onus will be on the startups to prove they have a next generation product worthy of the pain of a corporate upgrade. Here’s the video… (transcript below) Mr. ARRINGTON: What investments do you have coming up that you haven't announced? Mr. HORNIK: Right, what are those? Mr. ANDREESSEN: Oh, for example, we are very, very interested and active right now in the enterprise software and a very large number of professional investors think enterprise is dead and, you know, we just think that is absolutely not the case. Mr. ARRINGTON: It certainly isn't as fun as FourSquare. Mr. ANDREESSEN: Well – so there are some incredibly high quality entrepreneurs, we just – it's not been announced – but we just backed an incredibly high quality entrepreneur. With a great track record… Mr. HORNIK: Someone who is awesome. Mr. CONWAY: Can we co-invest? Mr. ANDREESSEN: He's building a fantastic – he's building what's going to be a great – he's going into a huge market, you know, going up against incumbents, you know, all the incumbents in the space have been bought by the likes of Oracle and… he's going up against, you know, incumbents that are not going to make the shift to the next generation nearly as aggressively as he is and there's all kinds of market demand for this and numerous companies. But none of us are ever going to use the product – it's not that kind of product. Mr. HORNIK: Well, this is the thing – right, actually, one of my most interesting companies right now is this company Splunk, which is a search engine for your data center. Does anyone have any idea what Splunk is? No, but on the other hand, it's pretty exciting.      
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| Facebook’s iPad Impostor ‘Facebook Ultimate’ Removed From The App Store (Updated) Posted: 05 Apr 2010 02:32 PM PDT
Facebook Ultimate certainly had a good run. As All Facebook pointed out yesterday, the $2.99 application rose to become the #7 top paid app on the App Store. The app received many poor reviews from upset users, plenty of which warned others that this was not the app they were looking for, but that apparently didn’t stop people from downloading it. So Facebook decided to take action, citing trademark infringement. We reached out to Facebook about the application’s removal (which apparently happened within the last few hours), and they gave us this statement:
It’s a logical move on Facebook’s part, but I’m surprised this was even allowed to happen in the first place — it should have been obvious to both Facebook and Apple that many users would be looking for a (still non-existant) Facebook iPad app. Update: We’ve been in touch with the developer of Facebook Ultimate, who sent us her side of the story. In short, she says that she submitted her iPhone app months ago, ported it over to the iPad after some positive feedback, and wasn’t out to fool anyone with the new app (she also told me she had no idea Faceook would not release an official app of their own):
     
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| MySpace Planning To Roll Out Facebook Connect ASAP (Or Not) Posted: 05 Apr 2010 01:56 PM PDT
So touchy, in fact, that my source tells me that by simply breaking the news early the whole rollout might be ditched or delayed. A key part of the launch is apparently a serious amount of message massaging by MySpace PR on what this means for MySpace. Earlier this year the MySpace UK team added Facebook Connect features to a fan video without, apparently, the knowledge of upper management at MySpace. MySpace also quietly (silently actually) rolled out sharing on Facebook for MySpace videos recently. This new Facebook Connect rollout is being done very quietly as well, we’ve heard. Some very senior MySpace execs seem to have no idea it’s happening. So what does all this mean? In the next week or two we’ll see at least a limited rollout of Facebook Connect on MySpace. Or, we won’t. Ah, the joys of having co-presidents to take your company to the next level.      
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| Clicker Helps You Find iPad-Friendly Videos Posted: 05 Apr 2010 01:38 PM PDT
Clicker, which made its debut at TechCrunch50 last fall, makes it easy to search through the vast amounts of video 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). Additionally, the site indexes music videos, and has started teaming up with schools to index their lectures and other original content. Clicker doesn't actually host any of this content — instead, it provides deep links that point you directly to whichever episode you want to watch. So when iPad users access Clicker’s site on their device, they will be redirected to a specially formatted version of Clicker that has indexed all of the sites and videos on the web that are able to be viewed on the iPad. Clicker’s iPad-friendly site will index HTML5, Quicktime, and H.264 formatted videos. For now, programs available for download via the iTunes store aren't in the Clicker catalog but should be added within the next few weeks. And as more content becomes available on the iPad, Clicker's universal search technology will index it and make it available for the iPad-specific site. At launch, the site will only be able to be accessed by iPad devices. In the blog post announcing the new site, Clicker says they will be launching a fill-fledged iPad app fairly soon. The site will surely be useful for iPad users to find the TV content on the web that works for the device. Of course, iPad users can also access TV content from a host of iPad apps from TV networks and others that are available for download. Clicker, which officially launched to the public in November, just raised an $11 million Series B funding round led by JAFCO Ventures, with existing investors Benchmark Capital and Redpoint Ventures also participating.      
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| Top 4 Signs Your HDTV Isn’t Properly Configured Posted: 05 Apr 2010 01:29 PM PDT  HDTV is probably the greatest thing to ever happen to the human race. It's too bad then that a lot of us are ignorantly watching poorly set-up HDTVs. You owe it to yourself to ensure that you're getting every ounce of enjoyment out of your expensive boob tube. There are a few common problems HDTV owners face and you can quickly diagnose an HDTV with a few simple steps. Don't fret if you're living with any of these calamities. Most of the time the fix is just one button away.
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| comScore: Android Market Share Continues To Gain On The iPhone Posted: 05 Apr 2010 12:44 PM PDT
The report concluded that 45.4 million people in the United States were using smartphones in the period ending in Feb. 2010, which is a 21% increase over period ending last November. RIM still has a strong lead over the field, with 42.1% of the smartphone market share, and it rose by 1.3% over this period. But the most interesting story is the rapid rise of Android, whose share grew 5.2%. Apple’s share has remained stable, with a .1% drop. It’s important to note that while Android is clearly growing quickly, it still has a long ways to go to match Apple’s mobile user base. Apple’s iPhone OS is also used by the iPod Touch (and now, the iPad); Android still hasn’t been deployed on any popular devices that aren’t phones.
Photo by svensonsan      
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| Digg’s Kevin Rose: “One Of Us Has To Leave” Posted: 05 Apr 2010 12:00 PM PDT
And that frustration led Kevin to slowly withdraw from Digg. He hasn’t been seen regularly around the office “in about a year” says a source inside the company, and he had no specific job duties. Product had largely been taken over by Keval Desai, who joined the company from Google last November. But Kevin’s and investor’s frustration over the direction of the company grew. V4 of Digg, which was supposed to launch in 2009, is only now being finalized. So the board made their move, and Kevin is back at Digg in a full time role. Today the company announced that Jay has left the company, and Kevin Rose, who hasn’t been completely focused on Digg day to day, is taking the acting CEO role. Kevin is unsatisfied with V4 of Digg, we’ve heard, and plans to change it dramatically (look for more delays on the launch). Other minor frustrations also bubbled up, like the fact that Digg has no iPad strategy while other media companies are jumping in head first. Still, it’s an odd move. Even though Digg is clearly not on the same trajectory as Twitter and some other companies, they are profitable and are on track to hit $30 million in revenue this year. So whatever happened at Digg seems to be largely a personal issue between Kevin and Jay, and the board had to make a decision. They apparently made the decision they had to make. Digg without Kevin Rose isn’t really Digg any more. But it may be hard for the company to find a high quality CEO to take Jay’s spot, knowing that Kevin is really the guy who runs the company. Here are the official statements from Digg, which have no useful information at all about what really happened: Update from Jay: Hey all, Got some news. After five years, forty million users, and an amazing The entrepreneurial calling is strong, and I am ready to incubate some I’d like to thank Kevin, the Digg staff and the Digg community for -Jay Update from Kevin: I want to be the first to thank Jay for the last five years of amazing While I’ll miss working with Jay day-to-day I am excited to be taking on Thank you very much for your on-going support of Digg, I’m truly -Kevin      
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| Zapoint Acquires Social Job Search Site Jobster From Recruiting.com Posted: 05 Apr 2010 11:46 AM PDT
Founded in 2004, Seattle-based Jobster is an online job board that has had a rough time over the past few years. The company radically changed its business model and suffered several rounds of layoffs. In 2006, Jobster acquired the Recruiting.com domain name and blog, and subsequently operated its business-to-business online recruiting tools under that brand. Last year, Jobster officially changed its name to Recruiting.com. As part of the deal, Recruiting.com is selling Jobster and its technology to Zapoint; and Recruiting.com will remain as an independent company. We are told Jobster and Recruiting’s CEO Jeff Seely will remain with Recruiting.com. Zapoint develops SkillsAssessment, a technology that gives a quantitative value to the skills and value of employees and prospective job applicants. Additionally, Zapoint’s SkillsMapper product helps employers identify potential skill gaps in the organization, giving hiring managers a guide more effective hiring. Zapoint says Jobster’s talent profiling capabilities will be complimentary to SkillsMapper and will also add a number of users to Zapoint’s technologies. Currently Jobster has around 800,000 users on its social job search platform. Jobster has raised a total of $55 million in funding since its launch.      
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| HP Shows Off Their Slate’s Social Networking Features, Wants You To Remember They Have a Slate Posted: 05 Apr 2010 10:24 AM PDT  HP may not have shipping product but by gar they're going to show you mock-ups. The HP slate may not be shipping and there may be another slate overshadowing it this week but HP wants you to know it runs social networking apps. Click through for video. 
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| Early Web Browsing Data Suggests The iPad Is For The Weekend, The iPhone Is For Work Posted: 05 Apr 2010 09:42 AM PDT
The iPad comes with a big, beautiful browser which may end up being its most powerful app (when the WiFi is working). Some early data from Web analytics service Clicky suggests that by Sunday the iPad accounted for 4.62 percent of all mobile browsing, versus the iPhone, which dipped nearly two points to 46.5 percent. Today, the iPhone’s mobile Web browsing share is back up to 48.6 percent, while the iPad’s is down to 2.6 percent. That two-point difference could very well be because people are leaving those iPads at home, and going back to their iPhones as they start the work week. If we keep seeing this pattern, with iPad usage spiking during the weekends, then that means people aren’t really taking it with them, but rather leaving it at home. Once the 3G version comes out, this pattern will likely change. Clicky runs Web analytics across 200,000 Websites visited by 100 million people a month, which is where these numbers come from.      
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| Apple Holding Special Event To Preview iPhone OS 4 This Thursday Posted: 05 Apr 2010 09:18 AM PDT
The event, which obviously comes just after the launch of the iPad, will showcase the new features coming with the latest release of the iPhone/iPad operating system, giving developers time to plan for and integrate the new features into their apps. There have been rumors for months that this new update will include the ability for certain third party apps to run in the background. Apple has been holding these developer preview events since before the App Store launched: there was one in March 2008 where the iPhone SDK was announced, and last March Apple gave a preview of the iPhone 3.0 software update. Historically (by which I mean, the last two years) these updates have been released alongside new iPhones in the summer (the iPhone 3G came out July 11 2008; the 3GS was released June 19 2009).      
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This guest post was written by 
We’re hearing that iTunes will be implementing Facebook Connect support in the near future, allowing users to share some of their recent purchases with their friends on Facebook. We’re still gathering more details, but it sounds like this could happen quite soon.
This May, Google is holding its annual I/O conference, where it invites thousands of developers to learn about the latest Google and web technologies. Last year, Google had its first (of many) “Oprah Moments” when it made the 
This weekend, as hundreds of thousands of people explored their iPads for the first time, many of them tried downloading the iPad edition of the App Store’s most popular application ever: Facebook. What they found was an application called Facebook Ultimate, featuring a sleek version of the familiar ‘f’ logo. The application quickly rose through the ranks to become one of the App Store’s top selling iPad applications. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent to these users that the application simply wasn’t very good, and that it wasn’t created by Facebook at all. And now, two days after the application rose to prominence, Apple has removed it from the App Store.
MySpace is preparing to add Facebook Connect features to its main service, we’ve confirmed from a source within MySpace. This will be the first time MySpace will publicly conceded defeat to Facebook over ownership of the social graph, and it’s more than a touchy subject internally.
As we’ve reported over the past few days, a number of online video sites are 
Last summer we’d heard that the Digg board of directors was considering terminating Digg cofounder and CEO 
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