Friday, July 9, 2010

The Latest from TechCrunch

The Latest from TechCrunch

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eBay Apps For Apple, Android Devices Now Available Internationally

Posted: 09 Jul 2010 06:30 AM PDT

Digital commerce giant eBay announced this morning the international releases of its eBay Selling application and its eBay for iPad application. The free Selling application is now available in Germany and the UK, and the eBay for iPad application is now translated into French, Italian, German and Spanish and currently available through Apple's 77 iTunes App Stores. In a separate release, eBay also announced that its Android app is now available for free download in the Android Market in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.


Former Googler And White House Staffer Katie Jacobs Stanton Heads To Twitter

Posted: 09 Jul 2010 06:15 AM PDT

Twitter has made another key hire today: former Google vet and White House and State Department staffer Katie Jacobs Stanton. According to Stanton’s Tweet stream, she will be leaving her role at the State Department for greener pastures at Twitter. She will be based out of the company’s California office.

At first I thought Stanton would be taking on Twitter’s newly announced role of government liaison, but according to Stanton, she’ll be working on international and business strategy. Stanton joined Google in 2003 and was the Product Manager of Google Finance. She was one of the first Googlers to join the Obama Administration, as the "Director of Citizen Participation," in which she helped develop of online tools that help Americans get move involved with White House.

She then moved to the State Department early this year as the Special Adviser to the Office of Innovation, where she worked on projects related to Twitter. Stanton seems to have the perfect blend of government and technology experience, which makes this a big win for Twitter.

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NTP Sues Apple, Google, Microsoft And Others Over Wireless Email Patents

Posted: 09 Jul 2010 05:56 AM PDT

NTP, which claims to have founded the technology of which wireless emails are based, has filed lawsuits against Apple, Google, HTC Corp, LG Electronics, Microsoft Corporation, and Motorola, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia for allegedly infringing NTP’s eight patents related to the delivery of electronic mail over wireless communications systems.

As you may have noticed, each of the companies who are being sued manufacture or develop wireless handheld devices or software used to deliver email on mobile devices.

NTP has a reputation for being a patent troll. NTP is known for its patent litigation and eventual settlement with Research in Motion over similar wireless email patents. RIM agreed to pay NTP $612 million to settle all pending claims in 2005.

Founded in 1992 by the late inventor Thomas J. Campana Jr. and Donald E. Stout, NTP has a a portfolio of 50 US patents that mainly relate to the areas of wireless email and RF Antenna design. While the company has apparently licensed its mobile email patents to Visto, Nokia, Good Technology and RIM, NTP has also filed filed patent infringement lawsuits against AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless, which seem to still be pending.

The lawsuit draws comparisons to Wi-LAN’s suit against every major mobile device manufacturer over blue tooth technology. Of course, NTP’s lawsuit will just be added to the growing stack of patent suits that companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft face from patent trolls.

Photo credit/Flickr/Bloomsberries

Borders Looking To Boost Downloads Of Mobile And Desktop Apps With Free eBooks

Posted: 09 Jul 2010 05:55 AM PDT

In the latest chapter of the great Ebook Wars of 2010, Borders is attempting to drive more downloads for its free mobile applications for Android, iPad, iPhone and BlackBerry as well as its equally gratis desktop applications by offering five free books – valued at more than $40 – and content exclusive to the company.

Beginning today, Friday, July 9 through Wednesday, July 14, Borders is offerings titles like Dean Koontz’s “Frankenstein: Prodigal Son” and”The Alchemyst” by Michael Scott, along with exclusive content in the form of chapter 6 of Danielle Steel’s upcoming novel “Legacy,” which goes on sale September 28.

The promotion comes right off the heels of the launch of the Borders-branded eBook store and the release of BlackBerry, Android, iPad and iPhone eReading applications, all powered by Kobo. Question is if all this is too little, too late.

Has the Kindle already won?

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Google Gets Its License To Operate In China Renewed

Posted: 09 Jul 2010 04:43 AM PDT

Back in January 2010, Google declared that it was no longer willing to continue censoring search results on Google.cn, and that it would possibly shut down the Chinese search page, and potentially even its offices in China. In March, Google backed that talk up by redirecting Google.cn to Google.com.hk, a move that enabled it to keep providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese but from Hong-Kong.

At the end of last month, the Chinese government made it clear to the company that it wasn’t happy with the redirect, and that its Internet Content Provider license would not be renewed if they would keep up this “unacceptable” behavior.

Google flinched, and set up a landing page on the Google.cn domain that took all visitors of that site who clicked anywhere on said page to the Hong Kong-based search page, enabling users to conduct Web search or continue to use Google.cn services like music and text translation, which Google can provide locally without filtering.

Google submitted its ICP license renewal application around the same time, hoped for the best, and CEO Eric Schmidt just yesterday said he was confident the Chinese government would renew its license to operate a website. He was right.

Google told Reuters on Friday that Beijing had indeed renewed the license, thus averting a potential shutdown of its search page in the fast-growing Internet market, the world’s biggest with over 400 million estimated users.

The renewal of the license had been in doubt due to the tension between Google and Chinese authorities over alleged hacking of Gmail accounts and censorship of Google search results.

But as you can tell from the update in the earlier blog post about its China stance, things seem to have cooled down, at least for now:

We are very pleased that the government has renewed our ICP license and we look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China.

End of story, or just the beginning of a new chapter? Time will tell.

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Ericsson Estimates 5 Billion Mobile Subscriptions Worldwide, Growing Fast

Posted: 09 Jul 2010 03:26 AM PDT

Ericsson, which provides technology and services to telecom operators around the globe, estimates we’ve hit another milestone in the Internet becoming increasingly mobile. The company claims, based on estimates based on industry information, that the 5 billionth mobile subscription was accounted for on Thursday, July 8.

The 5 billion mark was hit largely thanks to a surge in mobile subscriptions in emerging markets like China and India, the company says. In the year 2000, about 720 million people had mobile subscriptions, less than the amount of users China alone has today, still according to Ericsson.

Mobile broadband subscriptions are growing at similar pace and are expected to amount to more than 3.4 billion by 2015 (from 360 million in 2009).

Furthermore, Ericsson estimates, 2 million mobile subscriptions are added on a daily basis, and the number of 3G subscriptions has now exceeded 500 million worldwide. The company also posits we’ll be at no less than 50 billion connected devices by the year 2020.

(Photo via Ericsson)

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Spain Owns The Social Media Conversation, Holland The Positive Sentiment #WorldCup

Posted: 09 Jul 2010 02:53 AM PDT

Social CRM platform vendor Attensity has issued its analysis of the sentiment expressed throughout various social media platforms about the World Cup finalists. Based on data drawn from the likes of Facebook, Twitter, blogs, video and forum sites, the startup has concluded that while Spain owns the largest share of conversations across the Web, social media users speak slightly more positive of The Netherlands. According to Attensity, 54 percent of the total conversation about the World Cup (by English speakers) is being directed toward Spain, yet, of that total amount, only 47 percent of the chatter has been positive in sentiment. While only garnering 46 percent of the total conversation, Holland, on the other hand, has seen greater positive sentiment (53 percent).


1000Memories: A Loved One Has Passed Away. What’s Your Digital Strategy?

Posted: 09 Jul 2010 01:49 AM PDT

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A loved one dies. You get things under control by notifying family and friends, working with a funeral home for the physical remains, and generally getting everything done that needs to get done. You may even get the obituary taken care of for the newspaper, if you still have a local newspaper. But one thing that our culture hasn’t really figured out yet is how to celebrate a past life online. At some point soon we’ll start having an awful lot of dead people around. I’m very sure Google and other search engines will start to filter for deceased people search. It won’t be long at at until we have way more dead people online than live people online.

Legacy.com has partnerships with newspapers to turn obituaries into online sites to commemorate the deceased, but they are more than a little cheesy in their cash extraction procedures. Other services like venture backed Respectance is less aggressive about getting money out of loved ones, but the site design is very dated and there’s still that leave-a-bad-taste-in-your-mouth feeling.

1000Memories launches today, a new service funded by Y Combinator that is trying to bring some dignity to the deceased online. There’s a big focus on design at 1000Memories. Here’s an example site, the great uncle of one of the founders.

Visitors are first presented with a big picture of the deceased, presumably that one image that best captured his soul and personality. From there it’s easy to navigate to your next step as a reader, and sign a guest book. You can also invite others to the page at that time.

But what makes each site really rich are the stories and pictures that loved ones add to the site. Some are silly. Others rip tears from your eyes. But it helps fill out the picture of a man, and it helps family and friends remember that man more richly. There’s also an area for projects – simple things like lighting candles for the deceased to setting up memorial funds for various causes.

Best of all the company isn’t going to charge for the sites – they just don’t think that’s the right way. They’ll develop their business model over time, perhaps creating print books of the content that is left for an individual and letting people buy these books.

They don’t need to make much per site, and it really doesn’t cost that much to keep these sites live in perpetuity. I wonder if, in a hundred and fifty or so years when I finally shuffle off this mortal coil, where I’ll end up being memorialized online. I hope it’s somewhere calm and serene like 1000Memories, and not somewhere that is just trying to gouge cash out of my family. I like this project, I hope it succeeds.

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NextStop Deal Is All About Facebook’s Unquenchable Thirst For Top Talent

Posted: 08 Jul 2010 11:12 PM PDT

Earlier today, Facebook acquired NextStop, a social travel recommendation service. There’s been some speculation as to why this deal went down. Is Facebook getting into the travel space? Is this about their unlaunched location offering? From what we’re hearing, it’s much more simple than that. It really just boils down to Facebook getting a few very talented people at a relatively low price.

Facebook has been on a mission to scoop up as many smart management types as possible, we’ve heard from a few sources recently — some of whom have talked directly to Facebook. That may seem obvious — after all, who wouldn’t want the best talent? But Facebook is in the unique position now to have resources to simply acquire companies in order to get these people. And that’s exactly what they’re doing, we’re told.

NextStop is just one of a few companies that Facebook has been sniffing around recently in order to bulk up the projects under Facebook Director of Product Blake Ross, we’re told. It’s well known that Ross is leading the charge on Facebook’s Questions product, but their new emphasis on local — including the upcoming Places area of the service — is likely a focus for these deals as well. The NextStop acquisition makes sense in both of those arenas.

Two of NextStop co-founders, Carl Sjogreen and Adrian Graham, are former Googlers with impressive resumes. Sjogreen led the Google Calendar team at its launch (and was heavily involved in Google Maps), while Graham launched both Google Groups and Picasa.

There are at least a few other members of the small team going over to Facebook as well, including one other former Googler. The team also had one employee who was formerly a member of the user operations team at Facebook.

But Sjogreen and Graham seem to be the keys to this deal. At Facebook, both of them will be reporting directly to Ross, we’re hearing. It’s not entirely clear yet what exactly they’ll be working on (and Facebook won’t comment). But the aforementioned projects are good guesses, as is anything Facebook is working on around events.

Facebook Questions has been pretty well covered both because the company is currently testing it with certain members and because some have dubbed it the next “killer app” of the service. But Facebook Places may end up being just as interesting.

The service, which the company has yet to confirm but we’ve previously spotted, is believed to be a big part of Facebook’s entry into the location space. We’ve heard that Facebook has a deal in place with Localeze to fill out this Places area — similar to a deal Twitter signed with the company. This may explain why Facebook was okay with NextStop releasing their own built up database of places under Creative Commons license — they don’t need that data.

Speculation aside, it’s pretty clear that the NextStop acquisition is the latest in a series of acquisitions Facebook has made to bring in high caliber talent. This dates back to Facebook’s first acquisition, Parakey, in 2007. And it includes their most high-profile buy, FriendFeed, last year. In both of those instances, Facebook hasn’t done anything with the actual product they acquired, and instead has used the talent behind them to further their own products and core team.

Just look at the roster from those two deals. The Parakey deal brought in both Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt. Both worked at Netscape before they moved on to help found Mozilla, and create the Firefox web browser. Ross, as we’ve mentioned, is now the Director of Product at Facebook. Hewitt, meanwhile, created Facebook initial mobile web app (before there were native third-party applications on the iPhone) and went on to create the company’s excellent iPhone app (though he has since moved on to other projects).

With the FriendFeed deal, Facebook picked up a number of ex-Googlers, but none more important than FriendFeed co-founders Paul Buchheit and Bret Taylor. Buchheit is often credited as being the creator of Gmail (and the Googler that coined the phrase “don’t be evil”) as well as the builder of an early prototype of AdSense (you know, that thing that makes Google all its money now). It’s not entirely clear what he’s working on at Facebook at the moment, but whatever it is, you can be sure it’s vital. Taylor, meanwhile, was the original manager behind Google Maps. He’s now Facebook’s CTO.

So that’s the creators of Firefox, the creator of Gmail, the creator of Google Maps, the creator of Google Calendar, and the creator of Google Groups and Picasa that Facebook has picked up through acquisitions. Not bad.

From what we’ve heard, Facebook got NextStop “cheap” as the company had done a couple rounds from a private investor, but never a big round. There had been some talk that they weren’t able to pull in a larger round and that’s why they went with the sale, but other sources say that’s not the case, it was just a good fit and good timing.

Either way, Facebook is stocking up. They’re on a mission.

[photo: flickr/popfatticus]

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Cavs Owner Goes Online To Rip LeBron A New One… In Comic Sans

Posted: 08 Jul 2010 09:57 PM PDT

The national distraction is over. NBA star LeBron James has chosen the team he’s going to play for: the Miami Heat. Of course, this means that he won’t be returning to his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers and owner Dan Gilbert is not too happy about that. And he made that very clear to everyone tonight in a scathing letter posted to the Cavs main page on NBA.com.

A letter, posted in Comic Sans.

Yes, Gilbert wrote the entire letter in probably the worst font ever to grace the computer screen. Normally a staple among six year old and grandmothers, Glibert for some reason decided to use the font to write what will undoubtedly be the most public message he will ever write. And it’s too bad, because the content of the message itself is quite good — very juicy. Gilbert’s use of quotes, capitalization, and bolded letters makes it very clear just how pissed off he is.

And that’s good because all of Cleveland (incidentally, my hometown) is pissed off tonight as well. Gilbert’s letter should give some comfort, if for nothing else that he guarantees – yes, guarantees — that the Cavs will win a championship before LeBron does. This is a city that hasn’t won any major sports championship in nearly 50 years (and that was when the Cleveland Browns won the NFL Championship in 1964 before there were even Super Bowls).

But again, all anyone can talk about is the damn Comic Sans faux pas. “Comic Sans” is currently a Trending Topic on Twitter thanks to the letter — just above “LeBron James”!

Thomson Reuters’ Anthony De Rosa may have summed in up best in a tweet: ”The last time I saw a letter written in Comic Sans it was a chain email containing LOLcats from my mother.”

Apparently, Gilbert doesn’t keep up too well with some of this here Internet stuff. I await a LeBron response in Wingdings.

Yahoo Outsources For-Sale Real Estate Listings To Zillow

Posted: 08 Jul 2010 08:56 PM PDT

Yahoo is outsourcing yet another product to an outside company. Tonight, Yahoo is announcing an exclusive partnership with real estate listings and search site Zillow. As part of the partnership, which will go into effect later this year, Zillow will power all for-sale listings on Yahoo Real Estate. The financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.

Zillow's will integrate its 4 million for-sale listings on Yahoo’s real estate site, where users will still be able to search for home listings by the same parameters as on Zillow’s site, such as by geography, price and other criteria. For-sale listings placed on Zillow will automatically appear on Yahoo Real Estate.

But the partnership is more than just an outsourcing of listings. Zillow and Yahoo Real Estate will be coordinating sales efforts for the advertising network, so that advertisers who buy Showcase Ads or Featured Listings on either site will automatically have those placed on both Yahoo Real Estate and Zillow. Zillow’s Premier Agent program will be extended to Yahoo Real Estate, and current Zillow advertisers will be offered the first chance to purchase Premier Agent placement on Yahoo.

This deal feels like deja vu of two months ago, when Yahoo announced that it was outsourcing personals to Match.com. Yahoo also outsources job listings to Monster, after it sold HotJobs to the job listing service for $225 million.

Similar to the situation with Match.com a few months ago, Yahoo and Zillow have a history of working together. In 2006, Yahoo Real Estate integrated Zillow’s home valuation technology into its user experience.

But it seems that yahoo isn’t completely handing over the keys to its real estate search to ZIllow. Zillow, which launched as a mortgage marketplace in 2008, also powers rentals, which Yahoo doesn’t appear to be aggregating. For now, at least.

Still, it’s a good deal for Zillow, a startup that survived the real estate market implosion, and seems to be back on its feet. The site has seen record traffic over the past six months and has seen 1.75 million downloads of its mobile apps. In my opinion, it’s only a matter of time until Yahoo just outsources all real estate listings, including rentals, to Zillow.

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Finally, An Arrington We Can Stand. An Arrington We Can Unplug

Posted: 08 Jul 2010 07:23 PM PDT


Okay, the future is officially here. A few days ago, the team from Mountain View-based startup Anybots swung by TechCrunch headquarters to deliver a special new addition to our office: Anybots robot model QB, which stands around five feet tall and can zip around the office at 3.5 miles per hour on a pair of sturdy wheels. It looks like a cross between a Segway and E.T., with some optical sensors and cameras making up its ‘face’. Oh, and it’s currently being controlled by my boss, Michael Arrington, who has been using it to remotely roam the TechCrunch office to make sure we’re working hard while he’s up in Seattle. At least, that’s what he’s supposed to be doing — he’s spending most of the time gleefully running over our feet as he blinds us with a green laser beam. The future really is amazing.

In the video above, Mike takes control of QB via an internet browser to help me interview Anybots robotics engineer Daniel Casner.  And by help, I mean he shows us what happens when you drive the robot directly into a wall and repeatedly bump into Daniel in an attempt to get him to spill Anybots secrets (it didn’t work). Note that the little wire hanging down from the robot’s head is actually a microphone that’s transmitting to our camera.

The Anybots robot has been in development for years — the company was started back in 2001 by Trevor Blackwell (who is also a Y Combinator partner), and the growing team has since iterated through several models. The flagship model QB, which is slated for release this fall, will sell for $15,000 per unit. That may sound a little steep, but keep in mind that the robot can be used by multiple people, though only one can be logged in at a time. And no, we don’t get to keep this one — it’s on loan for a week.

Using the robot is actually remarkably easy: after creating account, you install a Firefox plugin and head over to the Anybots homepage, where you’ll see a list of the Anybots you’re authorized to control. Click on one, and you’re in the pilot’s seat — QB will stream a video feed of what it “sees” to your monitor, and it features a microphone and speaker so you can talk with people around the office.

Moving around is intuitive, too: the up arrow moves the robot forward, left and right arrows to the side, and so on. You can also click anywhere on the video stream to activate and point a built in laser pointer. It took Mike all of two minutes to figure out how to weave between our office desks.

Some other key stats: Anybots says that the robot lasts 6-8 hours on a single charge. When it dies or is powered off manually, a little kickstand will pop out of its rear to hold it upright. And the device only weighs 35 pounds, so it isn’t going to hurt anyone.

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Apple TV Rumored To Get $.99 TV Show Rentals, But Will The iPad And iPhone Get The Service Too?

Posted: 08 Jul 2010 07:12 PM PDT

The Apple TV might suddenly be part of the next big thing from Apple. We’ve heard that there’s a major retooling underway and Apple shifted some of their best people on the project. Updated hardware is likely, but new services will likely be at the forefront of the relaunch.

The latest rumor states that Apple is in contract talks to bring TV show rentals to the platform. They would probably work like the movie rentals by giving users 30-days to start playing the show after downloading and then 24-hours after starting playback until it expires. Except there’s one big difference: the shows are said to be streamed. Combine that with the rumor that iOS will power the next-gen Apple TV for a cocktail of dreams and possibilities.

Facebook To Close Its Virtual Giftshop August 1st

Posted: 08 Jul 2010 06:17 PM PDT

Those goofy ninja drawings, multicolored troll things, and birthday cakes adorning your Facebook wall are about to become collector’s items. Facebook has just announced that it is closing Facebook Gifts — a feature that launched back in early 2007 as the result of a Hackathon project and went on to seed the creation of Facebook Credits (it marked the first time Facebook users could actually pay for something). You’ll still be able to purchase gifts up through August 1st, and all the gifts you’ve received will remain on your profile and Facebook Wall after that point, but you won’t be able to buy new ones.

The explanation Facebook gives for the change is a little odd — Facebook employee Jared Morgenstern writes that it will help Facebook focus on improving other products:

Closing the Gift Shop may disappoint many of the people who have given millions of gifts, but we made the decision after careful thought about where we need to focus our product development efforts. We’ll be able to focus more on improving and enhancing products and features that people use every day, such as Photos, News Feed, Inbox, games, comments, the “Like” button and the Wall.

It makes sense for Facebook to trim away products that are adding clutter to the site, but these are pure profit and it’s hard to imagine they were draining too many resources. That said, Facebook has continued to evolve the feature since it launched, with the addition of celebrity gifts and the ability to gift Lala songs last year (the Lala feature was disabled after the music company was acquired by Apple).

This also can’t be good news for RealGifts and the various eCard vendors that Facebook offered as part of its Gifts selection.

If you still need your gift-giving fix, Facebook suggests third-party applications like Birthday Cards, Hallmark, Pieces of Flair, and someecards.


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Calling All Startups For TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, September 27-29

Posted: 08 Jul 2010 05:05 PM PDT

Please join us at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco on September 27-29 2010.

It started as an experiment in New York this past May. We sensed a fundamental shift taking place with technology and media—a shift in platforms, applications, revenue models and consumer behavior—and we wanted to talk about it. Appropriately, we found an old Merrill-Lynch office building and took it over for three days to test a new event format, TechCrunch Disrupt. We had 3 objectives: (1) gather the best minds to debate what’s changing now and what to do about it; (2) showcase the hottest new startups we could find and (3) have fun and meet a ton of new people.

The response was more than we could have hoped for. Charlie Rose opened the show. Mayor Bloomberg stopped by for a surprise visit. Carol Bartz even made me blush (sort of). Twenty five new startups launched on stage. Over 100 other startups demo’ed their services in the wings. 1,700 tech enthusiasts showed up—rivaling our biggest events to date in San Francisco.

So we’re going to keep blowing it out, and we hope you’ll join us for TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, September 27-29 at the San Francisco Design Center Concourse. The main agenda will run 9 am – 6 pm, but save your evenings for after-parties and lots more networking fun.

Disrupt SF will explore the Third Wave, a phrase coined by John Doerr in his interview with Charlie Rose. If the First Wave was the PC, and the Second Wave was the Internet, now the Third Wave is a combination of the social and mobile layers accelerating everything on the Internet once again from geo apps and tablet computing to social commerce.

Disrupt SF will also feature our new startup competition, the Startup Battlefield, where approximately 25 new startups will participate in a tournament-style launch competition to demonstrate their technology, business and marketing disruptions. One lucky company will take home the grand prize Disrupt Cup trophy (passed on from last May’s winners, Soluto) and a $50,000 check, and others will receive special awards and accolades.

So let the disruption begin. Startup applications are open today, hosted by Producteev, through midnight PST, August 8. We review applications on a rolling basis, so please apply as soon as you are ready for consideration. You can read all the fine print for rules and eligibility here. Just remember our motto: Create, Destroy, Repeat.

The Disrupt SF list of speakers and agenda will be announced on over the coming months, but grab our extra early bird tickets asap (best prices through July 31 via Eventbrite.)



[TechCrunch TV] Alleged Russian Phone Thief: “I Have No Phones”

Posted: 08 Jul 2010 04:31 PM PDT

Nokia is determined to compete with Apple at every level – even in sending the authorities to strong-arm journalists.

In a slightly creepy post titled “one of our children is missing,” the cell phone giant has accused Russian blogger, Eldar Murtazin of stealing a prototype of its newest handset. The company also claims that Murtazin is refusing to respond to their letters and calls and so has had no alternative but to report him to the Russian authorities.

In this week’s edition of “Too Long, Didn’t Watch” we continue our Russian obsession with an interview from Murtazin in which he says he did not steal the phone, he doesn’t have the phone, and what’s more he’s the one who has been trying to contact Nokia since his story months ago.

We also check in with TechCrunch Europe editor Mike ‘From London With Love’ Butcher to get his take on this Nokia-said-he-said game of Russian intrigue.

Apple’s Friend Bar: A Place Where Fanboys Can Talk At People All Day Long [Humor]

Posted: 08 Jul 2010 03:12 PM PDT

The Onion has done it again. The satirical news outlet is generally great at parodying a wide range of topics — but they always seem to be especially good at parodying Apple topics. The latest victim? Apple’s Genius Bars. According to The Onion, Apple will soon unveil an extension of this idea called “Friend Bars” which Apple users can visit to find someone to “talk at” about their newest mundane Apple thoughts.

What makes this video even funnier is that an idea like this really doesn’t seem all that far-fetched. I mean, there is already a dating site for Apple users that is growing quite nicely.

Watch the full video below. The best part may be towards the end when an Apple fan gets on the phone with a Friend Bar call center employee. “Oh, yes!”

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Want To Become An Angel Investor? YC’s AngelConf 2010 Will Show You How

Posted: 08 Jul 2010 02:50 PM PDT

Last year, Y Combinator held a special event called AngelConf, where it invited dozens of prospective angel investors to get advice from some of Silicon Valley’s most seasoned veterans. The event was a hit, and this year, they’re doing it again — AngelConf 2010 will be held on July 29 in Mountain View, CA. You can request an invitation right here.  We’ll also be covering the event, in case you can’t make it.

The premise behind AngelConf is simple: there are a lot of rich people out there who are probably interested in making some angel investments, but don’t know where to start. The event is meant to help them get off and running (which has the obvious benefit of nurturing the startup community in the process). Here’s a list of the confirmed speakers so far:

Sam Altman
Michael Arrington
John Bautista
Paul Buchheit
Jeff Clavier
Ron Conway
Paul Graham
Mitch Kapor
Mike Maples
Greg McAdoo
Ariel Poler
Geoff Ralston
Naval Ravikant
Joshua Schachter
Aydin Senkut

You may also be interested in watching the video archive of last year’s event, which you can find at the bottom of this page on Justin.tv.

Other annual YC events include Startup School and Work at a Startup.

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Yahoo Hires Another Ex-Microsoft Exec: Bill Shaughnessy

Posted: 08 Jul 2010 02:18 PM PDT

Yahoo just added another former Microsoft executive to its ranks. Bill Shaughnessy, who left Microsoft in during a shakeup in 2008, will join as a senior vice president of product management, reporting to chief product officer Blake Irving, another former Microsoftie who joined last spring. Shaughnessy was a global VP of sales at Microsoft. Now he is moving into product management after taking time off for the past year and a half. He is also an investor and sits on the board of ad-tech startup Mixpo.

Yahoo, under Irving, is rethinking its entire product strategy. Presumably, Shaughnessy will help in that process.

Yahoo, of course, was almost bought by Microsoft, but finally opted for a complex search deal instead. Now, its product strategy is being driven by former Microsoft execs. It will be interesting to see if Yahoo ends up looking more like Microsoft after all.

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Foursquare’s Next Game: Choose Your Own Adventure?

Posted: 08 Jul 2010 02:14 PM PDT

Foursquare is growing quickly, gaining momentum from mainstream deals, and now they have the money in the bank to keep it up. But the big question remains: can they keep it up in the face of major competition? Twitter already has location features, Yelp recently added check-ins, and soon Facebook will as well. How can Foursquare survive against competitors that have millions — if not tens of million or hundreds of millions more users than they do? Their answer, apparently, is to change the game. Literally.

Today, on The Big Money’s Disruptors podcast, Foursquare engineer Anoop Ranganath appeared to talk a bit about Foursquare and its future. He noted that “we need to build a compelling product on top of check-ins” and said that one important key to that was “making the game more fun for users — drawing more people in.” By that, of course, he means the gaming element of the service, which allows users to earn points and badges for checking-in.

When Foursquare first started, the point leaderboard was an area of emphasis for many users — it really was a game to try and get to the top of it. But that novelty quickly wore off (partially because of cheating, partially because it didn’t evolve) and instead users became more interested in things such as earning badges and getting mayorships (which in turn can earn you deals at certain venues). Foursquare has known the direct gaming aspect has needed to be revamped for a long time, but those features had to take a back seat to scaling and other product issues as Foursquare grew. But they appear to be closing in on a complete revamp of this gaming element, according to Ranganath.

“Foursquare is a game. If you think about games that allow you to level up in different ways and games that allow you to specialize. If you think about the city as the board of your game, you can’t do everything. We’re going to introduce gaming mechanics that allow you to choose a path that you’re going to go on and earn certain achievements,” Ranganath said.

In other words, Foursquare sounds like its game is going to shift towards a more Choose Your Own Adventure-style.

When host Chadwick Martin brought up that very idea, Ranganath responded, “absolutely.”

Foursquare isn’t alone in that type of idea, Gowalla, Whrrl and especially the Google-backed SCVNGR have similar elements baked into their products. But again, Foursquare has the momentum right now. And if they create a new, immersive gaming element on top of the service, it could propel the service to the next level.

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YouTube Leanback, Hulu Plus, And Even Google TV Will Not Break Us Away From Traditional Pay TV Services

Posted: 08 Jul 2010 02:03 PM PDT

Listen, I hate forking over $100 a month for my TV, too. I also wholeheartedly agree with The Consumerist picking Comcast as the worst company in America. But they still get my money every month and just like the vast majority of people who pay for their TV, that’s not going to change anytime soon. There simply isn’t anything that replicates the experience and is free or low-cost. No one, not even Google, Hulu or Netflix, will cause America to part ways with the subscription-based TV model.

The Paywall: Get Used To It

Posted: 08 Jul 2010 01:27 PM PDT

It can be argued that this has been the Decade of Piracy. Whereas media piracy existed as a scourge for millennia (Bach was totally pissed when PrisM posted the pre-release sheet music to the ‘Das Wohltemperirte Clavier’) the rise of the MP3 and other media compression formats – not to mention the release of the iPod in 2001 – brought piracy into the mainstream. I knew we were in trouble when, in 2002, a normally luddite professor of mine mentioned downloading lots of Bluegrass music from Napster.

It was also an unlucky coincidence that with the rise of piracy came a considerable contraction of the traditional distribution models for media and the Internet started eating everyone’s lunch. Users – and I mean all users and not just nerds – expected everything for free as in beer. While many will counter that users expect things to be free as in freedom, what they really want is free stuff and they want it all the time.

Read more…



Standing Cloud Gives You One-Click App Installs Across Multiple Hosting Providers

Posted: 08 Jul 2010 12:45 PM PDT

If you’re looking to build a website or webapp for your business, there are plenty of options to get started. First, there’s a variety of fully hosted solutions like WordPress.com, which take away the headaches of managing software and server configurations at the cost of reduced flexibility. Another popular option is to get a hosted server from the likes of Rackspace or Dreamhost, which can give you much more flexibility, but also come with more things to worry about. Standing Cloud is a startup that looks to take the ease of use of the fully hosted providers and combine them with the benefits of having your own server space, with the added flexibility of being able to change between these cloud service providers in a few clicks.

If you’ve ever used a shared hosting provider that offers one-click installs of software packages like WordPress, then the basics of Standing Cloud should sound familiar. Generally speaking, installing an open-sourced application to your server involves some fairly advanced configuration — you need to upload the proper files via FTP and run installation scripts, which are tasks that are pretty daunting for your average computer user. Many hosting providers offer a solution to this, allowing you to install a pre-configured version of the software to your server space in a few clicks. But Standing Cloud CEO David Jilk says this comes at a cost — once you’ve set up an app this way, it’s a pain to switch to another service provider down the line. Standing Cloud offers a solution to this problem.

Getting started with Standing Cloud is pretty straightforward. First you create an account, which takes a few seconds (no credit card info required). Next, you’re presented with two options: you can either test drive one of Standing Cloud’s 50+ open source applications, which includes software like Drupal, phpBB3, and WordPress, or you can host an application. The first option will create a temporary install of whatever application you’re looking to try out, free of charge (data from the temporary application is deleted after a few hours). The second option, and the one that makes Standing Cloud money, is to manage a permanent account on RackSpace Cloud, AWS, GoGrid, or SliceHost (you can create a new account or import your old one). You can get a sense for this process in the video below.

After signing up for a cloud hosting provider (or entering the information for your existing account) you can use Standing Cloud to start installing and managing new open sourced applications in a few clicks. The service’s special sauce allows you to jump between these different cloud providers at will, which Jilk says is fairly complex feat to pull off.

Standing Cloud’s service is free for now, aside from any costs you incur from your hosting provider, and will cost $19.95 a month some time down the road (though trial app installs will still be free). Jilk says that the company wants to build out more value-added features before it starts charging customers — features that will help users maintain their software installs on an ongoing basis (he didn’t get into many specifics, but said that there were plenty of features on the drawing board). The end goal, Jilk says, is to give users something they don’t have to think about.

Another player in this space is RightScale, which also offers cloud management services.

Playdom Keeps The Acquisition Fun Rolling With Virtual-World Startup Metaplace

Posted: 08 Jul 2010 12:25 PM PDT

Social gaming company Playdom is definitely on an acquisition spree. Last month it bought Hive 7, this month it is Metaplace, a startup that launched at TechCrunch 40 in 2007.

Metaplace has developed an in-browser virtual-world engine which can be applied to social games. Founders Raph Koster and John Donham previously worked at Sony Online Entertainment, where they helped develop games like Star Wars Galaxies and Everquest II. At Metaplace, they’ve already launched two Facebook games: Island Life (with 457,000 monthly active users) and My Vineyard (with 822,000 monthly active users). A third game is on the way. Playdom will use the virtual world game engine Metaplace has developed to create even more games in that genre and add the game design studio to its growing roster.

The company has raised $9.4 million from Charles River Ventures, Crescendo Ventures, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The acquisition price is not being disclosed.

Playdom just raised $33 million of its own last month from Disney’s Steamboat Ventures and Bessemer. Some of its other recent acquisitions include MMORPG developer Acclaim Games, Facebook game developer Offbeat Creations, Three Melons, and Merscom.

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Twitter’s Lastest Promoted Tweet Directs You To… Facebook

Posted: 08 Jul 2010 12:15 PM PDT

When I first saw the latest Promoted Trending Topic this morning on Twitter I thought it was a bit odd: “Predators.” Given the times we live in, when I see that term now I tend to think of something more alarming than some kind of an animal or the like. But fear not, the topic is being promoted here simply to showcase the latest movie in the Predator series, called, yes, Predators. But there’s something else weird about this Promoted Trending Topic — it’s linking to Facebook.

As you can see when you click on the Promoted Topic, the top tweet is from the PredatorsMovie Twitter account. This promoted tweet reads, “They can hear you, smell you, and see you.#Predators in theaters Friday – http://bit.ly/amt8XE” — that bit.ly link takes you to a Facebook page where the trailer is located. So yes, Twitter is effectively promoting their rival Facebook thanks to this latest ad buy.

I’ve reached out to Facebook to make sure they’re cool with that. After all, Facebook wasn’t so kind to Twitter last month when Twitter tried to roll out a new friend connection feature with the massive social network — and it was promptly blocked. Both Twitter and Facebook said at the time that they were looking into the issue — but it still isn’t working.

As an interesting side note, you may notice now that “LeBron James” is currently the top Trending Topic on Twitter. That’s interesting because just this past weekend, the NBA paid to have his name be a Promoted Trending Topic. As I said at the time, that was likely a smart idea because of the massive amount of interesting (and undoubtedly Twitter searches) around James. The fact that his name has organically risen to the top proves that.

Update: Twitter takes the high road. “We’re totally fine with that (and btw, it’s not the first time and won’t be the last time),” a Twitter representative tells us.

Update 2: Interestingly enough, the promoted tweet has switched to one that instead links the actual Predators movie website.

“Advertisers can change the tweet and links as often as they’d like,” is what Twitter had to say on the matter.

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