The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Weebly’s ImagePerfect Gives Users Drag-And-Drop Image Editing
- As Mobile Advertising Heats Up, Millennial Media Prepares For An IPO In 2011
- Review: Dell Streak
- GoodData Secures Another $6.5 million In A Round Led By Fidelity
- Vodafone Launches Mobile Clicks Startup Competition, Dangles €150,000 In Prizes
- Apple, Time, Inc. Fighting Over Ability To Sell Digital Subscriptions?
- Victory For Nintendo As R4 Cards Made Illegal In The UK
- Mobile Roadie Goes Pro; Launches New Version Of Customizable App Builder
- Nick Bilton Lives In A Future Where There Are No iBooks (Video)
- Safari 5.0.1 Lands, Comes With Extensions
- Tinychat Boasts 500 Million Minutes Of Usage And 300,000 New Users Per Month
- eWise Raises $12 Million For Online Payments Technology
- European VC Funding Bounces Back, Information Technology Is “Star Performer”
- Hungry For Growth, Search Marketing Startup KENSHOO Raises More Funding
- Short Notice: PayPal Removes Electronic Withdrawal Option For Indian Users
- Adobe Buys Swiss Company Day Software For $240 Million
- Eric Schmidt: The World Doesn’t Need A Copy Of The Same Thing
- The Mouse Is Dead. I Just Killed It. Now Can We Move On?
- Kanye West Raps About Getting Laid And Disses Twitter At Facebook [Video]
- Facebook Closing In On Acquiring Check-In Service Hot Potato
- Turn Your Blog Into An iPad Native With PadPressed
- Last Chance for Tickets to the Summer Party at August Capital
- Android Takes A New Approach To Fighting Piracy With Licensing Service
- With Olark, You Can Follow Customers Around Your Online Store To Make Sure They Buy
- Xtreme Power Gets $29.5 million to Store More Power From Renewables
| Weebly’s ImagePerfect Gives Users Drag-And-Drop Image Editing Posted: 28 Jul 2010 10:00 AM PDT
No, this isn’t anywhere near the first web-based image editor (also see services like Aviary and Google-owned Picnik). But it is tightly integrated into the Weebly experience — instead of kicking you into another window when you go to edit an image, ImagePerfect slides nicely into view, allowing you to modify your image in context with the rest of the page. Rusenko says that the company looked at other web-based image editors, but they couldn’t find one that would tie as seamlessly into their site as they wanted — so they built their own. ImagePerfect doesn’t have as many features as standalone image editors, but it has more than enough tools for what the typical user will need: opacity, gradients, a variety of text and image options, layers, and other effects. You can import images from Flickr, your desktop, or a URL. The tool is built in Flash, but the images you create appear as standard JPGs on your Weebly site.
At this point ImagePerfect can only be used to edit header images, but Rusenko says that Weebly plans to let users utilize it for other purposes in the near future. Likewise, the service also intends to offer some header templates (which users can customize with ImagePerfect). And you’ll soon be to make the image frames rotate through a series of photos. In other Weebly news, Rusenko says that the company has well over 4 million registered users, and 22.5 million monthly uniques globally from visitors coming to sites on the Weebly network. He also says that both the Weebly for Education and its deal with web hosting provider Endurance are going well.
     
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| As Mobile Advertising Heats Up, Millennial Media Prepares For An IPO In 2011 Posted: 28 Jul 2010 09:18 AM PDT
Currently, Millenial has the largest U.S. reach out of all the networks in terms of audience size according to Nielsen; with ads reaching 63 million of a total of 77 million mobile web users in the U.S., or 81% of the U.S. mobile web. Despite being one of the “big three” in the still-small mobile ad space, Millennial is relatively unknown, while its competitors have seen prominent coverage in the media. Besides its monthly reports on mobile ad traffic, Millennial has avoided some of the drama that has been taking place in the industry. I caught up with the company’s CEO and co-founder Paul Palmieri to talk about how Millennial catapulted from a bootstrapped Baltimore-based startup to the largest independent mobile advertising company. Palmieri is a seasoned vet in the wireless and advertising industries. He ran the consumer mobile data arm at Verizon and developed a fledgling mobile ad network at Advertising.com. Unfortunately, as the bubble burst, Advertising.com cut Palmieri’s group before it was eventually sold to AOL. But Palmieri always thought there was more potential in the mobile advertising industry, especially as mobile web usage grew. While iPhones and Android phones were nonexistent in 2004, Palmieri knew that the market would produce more technologically advanced phones than the current offering at the time, the Palm Treo. In 2006, he teamed up with another Advertising.com alum, engineer Chris Brandenburg to work on developing a company that could monetize mobile display advertising. Fast forward another four years, and now Millennial Media, which Palmieri jokingly calls the “quiet giant,” is competing with the likes of Google and Apple in mobile advertising. The company is still small with only 85 full-time employees. I was actually surprised that Millennial had less than 100 staff members considering it is one of the largest mobile advertising networks in the world. Palmieri counters that Millennial’s proprietary technologies have helped not only keep customers happy but also helped keep the company lean. The company offers a mobile media planning platform, called MYDAS, that quickly creates and implements advertising plans; in fact, all sales reps carry iPads to meetings to demo the product and actually create campaigns on the technology. Umpire, another Millennial product, is a realtime ad serving platform that allows publishers to dynamically switch between ad networks based on impressions and performance. Millennial also provides advertisers with highly optimized audience creation and retargeting technologies, which include preset anonymous audience segments that Millennial has identified through its own interactions. Ad viewers are enrolled in "Audiences" based on their observed behaviors on sites, survey participation, and click-stream data. Once enrolled, users can be specifically targeted in campaigns that Millennial’s advertisers purchase and leverage for future re-targeting purposes. Millennial claims this ability to target ads to highly segmented audiences promises advertisers with a 5-times lift in interaction rates. The company also notes that it makes a clear disclosure of these techniques and provides a simple opt-out mechanism. Nevertheless, online ad targeting is a political hot potato, and when you add in location targeting, it could get tricky. On the device side, Palmieri highlights that Millennial’s platform independence creates more diversification and thus reaches more mobile users. In a given month, 45% of the impressions on the network are from smartphones, roughly 39% from feature phones, and around 16% from connected devices such as tablets and gaming systems. One of the little-known secrets of Millennial is that it’s more than just a mobile ad network. The company also operates and manages private mobile ad networks for large media companies and conglomerates that have multiple apps and sites, essentially powering a self-service ad network for these companies. Millennial also has a deal with a “prominent internet media company” (Palmieri declined to name the company) that has completely outsourced its mobile advertising to Millennial. While Millennial may not generate the press hype that AdMob and Quattro have seen, the company has certainly attracted the attention of technology’s leading venture capital firms. The company has raised $38.3 million to date in venture funding from Charles River Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Bessemer Venture Partners and Columbia Capital. While Palmieri won’t disclose concrete revenue and sales numbers, he told me that revenue has been steadily growing and the company is well past its target revenue for the first half of the year. According to IDC research published last December, Millennial Media was on target to make $35 million in U.S. mobile advertising revenue for 2009. AdMob’s revenue was estimated at $31 million (we reported a $40 million run-rate at the end of last year) and Quattro Wireless was reported to have seen $20 million in revenue for the year. Palmieri says the company isn’t cash-flow positive yet but will hit that mark this year. Still, Millennial is playing in a competitive space with two of the most powerful tech companies on the planet, Google, and Apple. Either one could have bought Millennial, but they decided to go with its rivals instead. Remember, Apple makes the iPhone and iPad—two devices that dominate the mobile advertising market. And Google is behind all the Android devices. With the launch of iAds, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that he expects 48% of spending on mobile advertising in the United States from July through December of 2010 to go to Apple's iAd platform for the iPhone and iPad. But Palmieri says he isn’t worried. “We’ve been offering the same rich-media formats as iAds for years now,” says Palmieri. While there is certainly a novelty to iAds, Palmieri expects Millennial’s ads to perform as well if not better than Apple’s ads. Millennial has also been making acquisitions to boost its offerings to advertisers and publishers. Earlier this year the company acquired startup Tap Metrics, a company that provides mobile analytics to developers. And the company is actively looking to make more purchases in the space, says Palmieri. The looming question in everyone’s minds is whether Millennial will sell to a big technology company looking to take a piece of the mobile advertising pie, such as Microsoft. While Palmieri says that an acquisition isn’t something he’s totally against, his focus at the moment is on taking the company public in the next year or so. George Zachary, a partner at Charles River Ventures and board member of Millennial, also feels confident that the startup can be a public company in the next year. Zachary credits the company’s success partly to the core ideals of the founders in not wanting to sacrifice quality, despite growing fast. If mobile advertising is going to be as huge as everyone thinks, there is plenty of room for more than two players. Millennial is proving that a non-Silicon Valley based startup with the right technology, talent and leadership can find success in a competitive field that includes both Google and Apple. And with a possible IPO in 2011, it looks like Millennial won’t be a “quiet giant” for much longer.      
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| Posted: 28 Jul 2010 08:57 AM PDT
It is with these life-lessons in mind that we examine the Dell Streak, a 5-inch Android 1.6 tablet that shows much promise but is hobbled by Android OS fracturing.      
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| GoodData Secures Another $6.5 million In A Round Led By Fidelity Posted: 28 Jul 2010 08:37 AM PDT  GoodData is rapidly becoming a key example of the technology innovation emerging from Central Europe - and laying a bet on Europe seems to be paying off for Fidelity Growth Partners Europe, the venture and growth equity investor, which backs European entrepreneurs exclusively. It's invested $2 million in the startup, the second investment for the £100 million fund, leading an overall $6.5 million investment round. GoodData provides an on-demand business intelligence services. Other returning investors include General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz and Windcrest Partners. 
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| Vodafone Launches Mobile Clicks Startup Competition, Dangles €150,000 In Prizes Posted: 28 Jul 2010 08:27 AM PDT  Vodafone has launched Mobile Clicks 2010, a competition to identify and reward innovative mobile Internet startups. Now in its third year, the competition will be open to any fledgling mobile Web startup - provided your market is The Netherlands, Portugal or the UK. Vodafone has set aside a prize fund of €150,000 (2/3 of which will go to the overall winner, the remaining €50,000 to the runner-up), based on these five criteria: originality, creativity and innovation; technical and operational feasibility; economic and financial viability; value to end-users; and the quality of the management team. Startups can apply here until midnight, August 22nd, 2010.
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| Apple, Time, Inc. Fighting Over Ability To Sell Digital Subscriptions? Posted: 28 Jul 2010 08:21 AM PDT
     
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| Victory For Nintendo As R4 Cards Made Illegal In The UK Posted: 28 Jul 2010 08:11 AM PDT
     
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| Mobile Roadie Goes Pro; Launches New Version Of Customizable App Builder Posted: 28 Jul 2010 05:58 AM PDT
The idea Mobile Roadie Pro is to offers clients more creative control over the development of their app, offering customization of menu layout, colors, buttons, and fonts. Pro also supports multiple categories of content, a global search for users, and newly designed landscape views. And the functionality that is included in Mobile Roadie’s basic app creator is also available. For example, the apps can feature integration with YouTube, Brightcove, Flickr, Twitpic, Ustream, Topspin, Google News, RSS, Twitter, and Facebook. Mobile Roadie has been testing the Pro version of the platform with a number of branded apps, including one for the hotel Wynn in Las Vegas. The app allows users to explore the rooms in the hotel, make reservations, read the restaurant menus and reserve a table, and learn more about nightlife, shopping, and entertainment options in the area. Mobile Roadie’s pricing starts at $499 to setup and $29 per month. The company says that using the platform requires no tech knowledge, and apps can be created in about 30 minutes. And another bonus of Mobile Roadie’s platform is that its CMS allows users to simultaneously make updates to both their iPhone and Android Apps. And using push notifications, customers can send alerts that appear on users' screens, geo targeting messages down to a one-mile radius. For a fledgling startup, Mobile Roadie has been able to attract a number of high profile brands and celebrities using its platform, including Taylor Swift, Madonna, Live Nation, Levi's, Twilight, and Vera Wang. Mobile Roadie also developed the official iPhone app for LeWeb, the foremost European technology conference organized by French entrepreneur and Seesmic founder, Loic Le Meur and his wife, Geraldine. The app was a huge hit at the conference. Mobile Roadie also recently struck a deal with Random House to power iPhone apps for authors.
     
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| Nick Bilton Lives In A Future Where There Are No iBooks (Video) Posted: 28 Jul 2010 05:55 AM PDT The future, as William Gibson once said, is already here. It is just unevenly distributed. You can find the future in new technologies and the people who wade into them early on—people like Nick Bilton, the chief blogger for the New York Times. (His official title is lead technology writer because the New York Times doesn’t like to admit it employs bloggers, I guess). Bilton, who previously worked in the R&D department of the New York Times, has a book coming out titled, appropriately enough, I Live In The Future & Here Is How It Works. Apparently, that future does not include Apple’s iBooks, the digital books Apple sells on the iPad. The book will be available in September in print, digital editions for the Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s eBooks, but not for the iBook. Bilton’s publisher, as a division of Random House, does not make its titles available in Apple’s iBook store. But no matter. There will be an accompanying iPad app, iPhone app, and mobile website. I caught up with Bilton a couple weeks ago, and he showed me a preview of the mobile website, which he explains in the video above. Each chapter has a 2-D barcode that can be scanned with a camera phone to bring up a corresponding Webpage with all of the links referenced in that chapter, videos, and the ability to comment. In that way, each chapter will become like a blog post with reader comments and discussion. I am not sure you can do any of that stuff with an iBook anyway. In the future, everything is an app. Part of the book tries to answer the question of what effect the Internet is having on our brains. Unlike another author named Nick (Carr), Bilton does not think the Internet is a making us stupid. I concur (you can watch Carr interviewed on TechCrunchTV by Andrew Keen). When Bilton looks at the brain research, he finds evidence that people can process information just fine when skipping from text to video to links, as long as all the different bits are related.      
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| Safari 5.0.1 Lands, Comes With Extensions Posted: 28 Jul 2010 05:46 AM PDT
Fresh off the heels of launching a slew of new products yesterday, Apple this morning debuted Safari 5.0.1, switching the flip on Safari Extensions and formally introducing the Safari Extensions Gallery, a directory of available extensions across categories. The company had introduced extensions support in Safari 5 last June, giving developers the opportunity to start creating browser add-ons using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript standards. Perhaps surprisingly, two fierce Apple competitors were given the opportunity to tout their extensions first and foremost, namely Amazon.com with their Wish List extension and Microsoft with their Bing Extension for Safari. Also featured in the press release: MLB.com, The New York Times and Twitter (eBay also gets featured on the Gallery site). The new Safari Extensions Gallery is accessible straight from the browser menu or at extensions.apple.com. Users can download and install extensions from the gallery with a single click, and there’s no need to restart the browser (much like Google Chrome, and unlike Firefox). I did a quick count and came out at above one hundred extensions already. Add-ons can be automatically updated and are managed within Safari. Users can enable or disable individual extensions, or turn off all extensions with one click. Every Safari Extension comes signed with a digital certificate from Apple to “prevent tampering” and to verify that updates to the extension are from the original developer. Safari Extensions are also sandboxed, which prevents them from accessing information on a user’s system or communicate with websites aside from those specified by the developer. As Apple had made clear earlier, Safari Extensions run solely in the browser.      
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| Tinychat Boasts 500 Million Minutes Of Usage And 300,000 New Users Per Month Posted: 28 Jul 2010 05:10 AM PDT
Not so tiny after all: Tinychat, a simple text, video and audio communication platform, is growing by leaps and bounds. First launched in February 2009 as a simple way to create Web-based chat rooms, Tinychat today is a full-blown chat system with lots of bells and whistles. And the service is gaining traction, fast. Founder Dan Blake tells me they’ve reached a point where they’re gaining 10,000 new users on a daily basis (or roughly 300k per month), which is a lot considering registration isn’t even required to use Tinychat, and that they’re seeing 500 million minutes of usage per month. Blake adds that Tinychat, which won the award for best bootstrapped startup at our most recent Crunchies show, has over 50 servers in production to keep the service up and running 24/7, and that they’re seeing 11% week over week growth in page views these days.
He also stresses that, unlike sites like Chatroulette, there’s a moderation team working around the clock to make sure no nudity, other offensive and illegal content shows up. To make the service more appealing for users around the world, Tinychat is today introducing a new feature: real-time chat translation. Basically, users can now select in which language they want to read messages, regardless the native tongue of their conversation partner(s). The feature was built using Google’s Translate API, which means dozens of languages are supported and sometimes comprehensible translations are even served up. In all seriousness, the translations are actually pretty decent, and I think it’s a really cool feature. It reminds me a lot of XIHA Life, a social network that is also banking on real-time chat translations to position itself in a unique way. Check it out and let us know what you think.
     
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| eWise Raises $12 Million For Online Payments Technology Posted: 28 Jul 2010 05:07 AM PDT
eWise develops an technology, called Secure Vaults Payments, to allow users to automatically deduct a payment from their bank account without disclosing their personal information to online businesses. Payments are processed via a login and password to the bank’s site. eWise expects that this payments technology could reach 400 million uses within 5 years. Clients include Citibank and First Direct (part of HSBC) in the UK, Ping An in China and Westpac in Australia. The company plans to use the funding to expand to the U.S. as well as for sales and marketing efforts. Of course eWise faces competition from PayPal, which is a giant in the online payments space. While PayPal has a different payments mechanism, the company is growing at a fast clip, adding 1 million new users per motn.      
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| European VC Funding Bounces Back, Information Technology Is “Star Performer” Posted: 28 Jul 2010 04:44 AM PDT  European VC funding has bounced back. That's according to Q2 figures produced by Dow Jones VentureSource which reports that investment is up by 50 percent compared to the record low of this time last year. €1.1 billion into 289 deals against 252 deals, which raised just €735 million. But specifically, says Dow Jones, the Information Technology (IT) industry, which apparently accounted for much of the venture market's losses during the economic downturn, was the "star performer" in the most recent quarter. IT saw a 69% increase in investment from the second quarter last year to €334 million, as well as a 13% increase in deal flow to 90 completed deals. For the first time in two years, the report notes, IT was Europe's largest industry for venture investment, taking 31% of overall investment. Here's a few more interesting tidbits quoted from the report:
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| Hungry For Growth, Search Marketing Startup KENSHOO Raises More Funding Posted: 28 Jul 2010 03:54 AM PDT
Search engine marketing startup KENSHOO has secured an undisclosed late-stage round of funding from Sequoia's Growth Fund, the Israeli company announced this morning. This marks the fourth time Sequoia Capital has injected capital into the company, which claims it is now profitable and has doubled in valuation since 2009. KENSHOO offers search marketing campaign management and optimization tools (KENSHOO Search and KENSHOO Local are its flagship products) and provide automation solutions for advertisers' online demand generation needs across channels like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Facebook, AOL, Baidu, and Yandex. It’s a very crowded market, but with lots of room for growth left, particularly geographically speaking. KENSHOO currently already operates from nine locations on four continents, including a recently added office in Sydney, Australia. Armed with fresh funds from the famous Silicon Valley VC firm, the company will be opening two new offices in Europe (in Paris and an unnamed city in Germany) and also look at way to expand its presence in Asia. The new funding will also enable KENSHOO to enter into additional domains such as new social media advertising channels, and enable the development of re-targeting technologies.      
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| Short Notice: PayPal Removes Electronic Withdrawal Option For Indian Users Posted: 28 Jul 2010 02:20 AM PDT
PayPal, the eBay-owned electronic payments company, continues to run into operational issues in India. Earlier this year, the company had to suspend personal payment transactions from and to India, albeit temporarily, when the Reserve Bank Of India (RBI) concluded that PayPal was not in compliance with all relevant regulatory requirements. This morning, an email was sent to Indian users, notifying them that they would (very) soon be removing the ability to withdraw funds from accounts electronically. In an update published on the PayPal blog, the company acknowledges that starting July 29 (in other words, tomorrow), Indian users will only be able to request for a cheque withdrawal of funds from their PayPal accounts. On the bright side, PayPal added that it would be waiving the $5 cheque withdrawal fee from July 29, 2010 onwards, at least “until further notice”. Again, the company cites compliance with regulatory instructions as the reason for the abrupt removal of the electronic withdrawal facility. PayPal does say they’re working to restore the service, and has set up a special website where its users can keep track of further changes, and also find instructions for the cheque withdrawal process. Already, the news has resulted in a flurry of blog posts from Indian users. We’ve contacted PayPal for further comment and will update if warranted. (Thanks for the tip, Sid)
     
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| Adobe Buys Swiss Company Day Software For $240 Million Posted: 27 Jul 2010 11:41 PM PDT
Adobe is strengthening its product portfolio with its intention to acquire Swiss firm Day Software, which makes Web content management systems aimed at marketers. Adobe announced an all-cash tender offer for Day’s shares. The purchase price is approximately $240 million. Many of Adobe’s products, such as Illustrator and Photoshop, are used already to create marketing materials for companies. Moving into Web content management is a natural step since as many of these marketing materials are consumed and distributed online. Day allows marketers to manage digital assets for online marketing campaigns and set up marketing blogs and other social media outreach. Day is publicly traded. The company reported revenues of 25.1 million Swiss francs ($23.7 million) for the first half of 2010, up 47 percent. Net income for the period was 3.7 million Swiss francs ($3.5 million). Adobe is clearly looking to grow through acquisitions. Just last September it bought Web advertising analytics giant Omniture for $1.8 billion.      
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| Eric Schmidt: The World Doesn’t Need A Copy Of The Same Thing Posted: 27 Jul 2010 11:15 PM PDT
And now the The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is trying to get a piece of the Facebook pie, the filling of which is primarily composed of social games, hence the rumored discussions with the newly acquired Playdom, and EA, not to mention Google’s recent $100 million investment in Zynga. Schmidt went on to state that Facebook was actually good for Google because “Facebook users use more Google products than any other users” which is a valid yet somewhat misleading statement, as the 500 million strong population of Facebook is greater than the United States. Schmidt also referenced our scoop on Google’s hooking up with Zynga, proclaiming “we haven’t announced it” but “you can expect a partnership with Zynga.” Schmidt’s “The world doesn’t need a copy of the same thing” attitude might have served Google well earlier this year when its reported “Twitter killer” Google Buzz did not actually kill Twitter.      
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| The Mouse Is Dead. I Just Killed It. Now Can We Move On? Posted: 27 Jul 2010 09:40 PM PDT
I mean come on, it’s a mouse. Does anyone really think it’s going to be the main way we interact with computers in the future? It’s a 50-year old technology for Chrissakes. Let me be clear: I’m not saying trackpads and other multi-touch surfaces are going to replace the mouse overnight. Of course they’re not. I’m also not saying that the Magic Trackpad specifically is going to kill the mouse. Of course it’s not — it’s Mac-only, that’s still a small percentage of overall computer users. What I am saying is that the Magic Trackpad is the device that is signaling the end of the mouse era. It’s a harbinger, if you will. I believe that we’re going to start seeing more devices like this (and obviously, not just from Apple) which focus on touch as a way of interacting with desktop machines. But even if we don’t, the desktop machines are slowly fading out as the primary computers in most peoples’ lives. Some people will think that’s absurd, but ask yourself if you already use your notebook or netbook more than your desktop? I know I do. It’s not even close. That’s exactly what Apple spoke to today with the unveiling of this new peripheral. Most Mac users are now using trackpads as their main point of interaction with their machines. Going forward, this trend is going to continue. And that’s not even including devices like the iPad and yes, the iPhone, which are also computers. Going forward, tablets and smartphones are also going to be the computing devices that people use much more than desktops. The mouse is a desktop device. Sure, you can bring a portable one to hook up to your laptop on the go — but just look at young people, kids in college and high school. They don’t do that. The only reason some of us do that is because we’re accustomed to the mouse.
I went the other way. I argued that it would be stupid for Apple to put a physical keyboard on the iPhone. It would simply be a waste of space. The people complaining were largely BlackBerry (or Treo) users who, again, were accustomed to a certain way of doing things. And they didn’t think they could change, or that they wanted to change. The physical keyboard was actually a pair of handcuffs. But those of us who had never owned a BlackBerry couldn’t have cared less about such a feature. More importantly, a whole new generation of people were about to use smartphones for the first time. And they too wouldn’t care about the lack of a physical keyboard. We kept hearing the iPhone couldn’t make it without the physical keyboard. That the G1 would kill it. Or that the Palm Pre would. Yeah, how’s that working out? Here were are three years after the iPhone launch and most smartphones suspiciously seem to lack that very keyboard no one could live without. Most look like iPhones. It’s laughably short-sighted to think that computing isn’t going to change rapidly going forward. Are we all going to be tethered to a desk using a mouse and a keyboard? No. The whole concept never made a lot of sense in the first place — and to the next generation of children growing up with all sorts of new computing devices, it will make no sense. If companies like Apple listened to some of these short-sighted demands from users, we’d have an uglier and bulkier iPhone with a keyboard. It undoubtedly wouldn’t be as good. That’s because most users have no imagination. They want what they know. When they say they want the future, what they are really saying is that they want a moderately updated version of the past. With users in charge, we certainly wouldn’t have the iPad now. It’s would be the Henry Ford quote come true: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Right now, people may be saying they want the mouse. But they really don’t. They just don’t realize it yet because that’s all they know. I’m not saying the mouse will go fully extinct anytime soon. As I said, it will continue to be very popular for people who need precision when working with computers – If you really have a problem understanding that, these next few decades are going to be rough on you. It’s time to stop acting like you’re Brooks in The Shawshank Redemption getting paroled after 50 years in prison. The world evolves. Technology evolves. And the mouse is going to die. [images: flickr/heipei flickr/kairu and Warner Bros.]      
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| Kanye West Raps About Getting Laid And Disses Twitter At Facebook [Video] Posted: 27 Jul 2010 08:03 PM PDT
Facebook may be in the middle of negotiating a deal to acquire the check-in service Hot Potato, but that didn’t stop most employees from stopping by the cafeteria at the headquarters in Palo Alto today to see hip hop artist Kanye West freestyle. West, dressed in a suit, appears to be standing on a table as he lets loose. First, he raps a bit about getting laid. But then, cheered on by the crowd, he comes back to freestyle about a number of others things — and if you listen closely, you can even hear him diss Facebook rival Twitter (I’m not even sure those in the audience picked up on it). You may recall that early last year, West was mad as hell at Twitter — and blogged about it. Clearly, he’s a Facebook guy.
[thanks Jason for the pic and Joe for the vid]      
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| Facebook Closing In On Acquiring Check-In Service Hot Potato Posted: 27 Jul 2010 06:36 PM PDT
Terms of the deal are likely still be negotiated, but it’s believed that this would largely be a talent acquisition for Facebook. Yes, another one. Hot Potato raised a small $1.42 million Series A round late last year, so it should not be too expensive for Facebook to buy such a company. It would undoubtedly be much less than the supposed $50 million in cash and stock they paid for FriendFeed last year, for example. Hot Potato’s About page currently lists 8 employees. Hot Potato actually launched at our Realtime CrunchUp event last November. Since then, they’ve slightly pivoted away from check-ins based around events, and more towards check-ins based on anything you may be doing. While the service hadn’t yet exploded in usage, the team behind it impressed us with the way they built their application – particularly their mobile app for the iPhone. As I alluded to above, Facebook has been on the prowl for talent acquisition targets recently. In particular they’re supposedly looking to bulk up the projects under Facebook Director of Product Blake Ross, and on the mobile side of things, we’ve heard. This Hot Potato deal could fulfill either of those — or both. If the deal is completed, it would be the seventh known company that Facebook has acquired — with five of those deals taking place in the last six months (and a sixth, FriendFeed, happening just about a year ago). Earlier this year, Facebook is believed to have sniffed around both Loopt and Foursquare as potential acquisition targets. Hot Potato is often clumped in with those two as a location-based service. But, as I said, the latest revamp moved the service away from location check-ins (though location is still a central part), and more toward general check-ins — a space which is currently heating up quite a bit. (Still, I’ll chalk this up to up to the Great Location Land Rush of 2010, if it goes down.) But again, this would seem to be a pure talent buy. If the deal is finalized, you can probably expect Hot Potato, the service, to be shut down at some point in the future.
     
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| Turn Your Blog Into An iPad Native With PadPressed Posted: 27 Jul 2010 06:36 PM PDT
Created by Jason Baptiste, PadPressed is a WordPress plugin that makes any WordPress blog look like a native iPad app when accessed from iPad. PadPressed bestows upon your humble blog the iPad features we’ve come to know and love such as “swipe to advance” articles, touch navigation, accelerometer positioning and home screen icon support when you’re really jonseing for that authentic app feeling. Baptiste started with WordPress because 8.5% of all websites (including our own) are WordPress, but has grander aspirations, “We did WordPress first because it’s the largest thing there is next we’re doing Tumblr, Posterous, Moveable Type, and then custom CMSs.” Exciting! We demoed the app and while the sparse interface harkens to the web browser/news aggregator hybrid we’re starting to see more of on the iPad (ala Pulse, and Flipboard) we’ve noticed some issues with its touch functionality. We had difficulty swiping article pages (you have to press down really hard and the pages tend to flicker) and accessing articles from images. Baptiste says he will address the flickering issue and the touch sensitivity in a minor update, “We don’t want it to be too easy to change, but we will do controls in the future to show how sensitive the touch will be. Right now you have to click on the title in order to access, but these simple things we can change.” While not yet nearly as fluid and visually breathtaking a way to view content as native apps Flipboard and Pulse, the advantage to PadPressed is that you don’t have to direct readers to download anything. If you aren’t looking to use a prebaked solution Sencha, an HTML-5 based mobile framework is another way to circumvent the app store. So If you’re a web publisher that wants to optimize your content specifically for the iPad as inexpensively and quickly as possible PadPressed is available now for a $49.95 one time fee which includes any updates to the theme. To try out on an iPad before you buy, you can check out Baptiste’s PadPressed personal blog here.
     
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| Last Chance for Tickets to the Summer Party at August Capital Posted: 27 Jul 2010 05:46 PM PDT
UPDATE: Sold out again. We’re releasing our final batch of 100 tickets now to our July 30 summer party at August Capital. Before that party we’re also hosting an all day event – the Social Currency CrunchUp. You can see the full agenda here. Ron Conway and Paul Graham kick off the morning, and then lots of great product discussions will follow. We’ve also lined up a half dozen different local retailers to share their own experiences using social currency in the wild. Combo tickets for the conference and the party are here.
Here’s a sneak preview of this year’s artwork for attendees generously provided by Hugh Macleod, the artist known as Gaping Void. We have lots of other great surprises in store as well. SecondMarket is hosting margaritas. PlacePop is organizing our photowall. Pandora will be spinning tunes, also our 5th year running. We’re live streaming the day with Ustream. Zong and Payvment have exhibits and treats to share with you. Engrave your phone with Coveroo. Thanks also to Adobe and Katalyst Media, Cannonball wine, Eventbrite, DesignAboutTown and BuildASign for support. There’s still time to grab a table, host beer or run a game. Contact Heather Harde or Jeanne Logozzo for sponsorships. See who’s going to the Social Currency CrunchUp and August Capital party via Plancast as well. Contact Laura Boychenko to request a press pass.      
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| Android Takes A New Approach To Fighting Piracy With Licensing Service Posted: 27 Jul 2010 05:21 PM PDT
According to the Dev Guide, developers are free to decide how they want to deal with an application that is deemed to be pirated (a developer could disable the app entirely, or perhaps they could activate a trial mode prompting the user to purchase the real thing). Only paid apps can currently be used with the service, though I’m not sure why you’d want to pirate a free one. The feature can be implemented on Android versions 1.5 and above using a set of official libraries. Of course, cloud-based verification requires that your phone has network access — Google’s guide says that in the event that a device can’t communicate with the server, developers can add license caching behaviors. For example, you could set you app to only require verification, say, once a week. So why go through all of this? Android has historically stored applications in a device’s internal storage — often with only be a few hundred megabytes or less available — but it recently began allowing developers to add support for encrypted SD card installs as well (SD cards typically offer far more storage space). But now Google appears to be abandoning the copy protection strategy in favor of this server-side verification. Google gives a few reasons for this:
If this effectively wards off pirates then it will be great news for Android developers, but it adds one more potential issue for users: it’s up to devs to decide how often they want to have their application phone home to request verification, and an over-restrictive application could be really frustrating if you’re trying to use it on a plane or in an area with poor connectivity. That said, if a developer implements a policy that forces you to ping Google’s servers every time you launch the app for no good reason, then it’s probably going to get hammered with negative reviews.      
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| With Olark, You Can Follow Customers Around Your Online Store To Make Sure They Buy Posted: 27 Jul 2010 03:29 PM PDT
For example, with this new Olark tool, dubbed Shopping Cart Saver, a site owner can get an IM every time someone hits the site. And you can see the referrer indicating how they got there. While they’re there, you can see what pages they’re visiting and most importantly, what items they’re putting in their shopping cart. If a user has a question, this same IM window serves as your way to interact with them. You could get some of this information before with Olark, but now the service is designed to ping you depending on how you set it up. For example, if the value of the items in a user’s cart goes over a certain number, you can get an IM letting you know that. Most importantly, this gives owners a way to stop what Olark calls “shopping cart abandonment” — yes, users putting things in their cart and then leaving. Now, you can see exactly what’s in their cart and ask if they need any help to make sure they completely the purchase. Sure, that may sound a little creepy — kind of like a shop owner who follows a customer around the store to make sure they buy something — but it’s also extremely useful. And this type of tracking is actually not any different than the data most sites can already see — it’s just that with this IM integration, you get to see it in real time. Well, and annoy people. Olark co-founder Ben Congleton is clear with who they’re targeting with this product: small to medium size business owners. Obviously, if you installed this on Amazon.com, your computer might explode with IMs. Olark has partnered with the online store creation tool Shopify to offer this product with the click of a button. This IM tool will work with all the major IM services, iChat, AIM, Gtalk, Adium, etc. The business model for all of this is a freemium one. Basically, you can try out the features up until a certain point, then you have to buy one of their plans, which start at $15 a month and go all the way up to $149 a month. This model has helped Olark reach cash-flow positive status almost from the get go, Congleton says. Beyond the Y Combinator seed round, Congleton says Olark raised a small angel round a few months back. Since they are cash-flow positive, he’s not too concerned just yet about a larger round, but envisions it happening soon.      
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| Xtreme Power Gets $29.5 million to Store More Power From Renewables Posted: 27 Jul 2010 03:23 PM PDT
Xtreme Power aims to alleviate problems associated with renewable energy sources with utility-scale dry cell batteries, and software that monitors power flow in and out of them. The company does not sell individual batteries, notes Xtreme Power’s chief development officer, Darrell Hayslip, but “power systems” that include a “containerized unit with essentially large banks of batteries arranged in series and in parallel. A typical unit has 1,200 1-kilowatt hour power cells in it, and has the ablity to store 1,200 kilowatt hours of electricity. [Xtreme Power] manages that rack and system by looking at the voltage within.” The materials included in the units are 90% recyclable, he says, and can store generated power for weeks. Providing reliable solar and wind power storage at a large scale means that when the sun’s not shining or the wind’s not blowing, power utilities can still meet peak energy demand with electricity generated by these non-hydrocarbon sources. Xtreme Power’s fiberglass dry cell batteries are already working in systems from Antarctica to Hawaii. The company says they can work for 20 years, then get recycled. The batteries work even after they've been shot through with bullets, Xtreme Power has claimed. As reported earlier by Industrial Fuels and Power: “Xtreme Power is retooling a closed Ford Motor factory…as part of a joint venture with Clairvoyant Energy with the aim of producing 2000 megawatts of batteries a year…” An Xtreme Power spokesperson today confirmed that part of its newly attained funding will be dedicated to the development of that joint venture, and the site now known as the Ford Renewable Energy Park. The park (in Wixom, Michigan) will be used by Clairvoyant Energy and Xtreme Power to continue research, development, manufacturing and demonstration of their products. But the 320-acre site will also be open to suppliers and other manufacturers in the energy industry. Clairvoyant Energy and Xtreme Power have another goal of creating a minimum of 4,000 energy jobs in the area. Another piece of Xtreme Energy’s C-series funding will go to to bolster its wind power generating farm project in Hawaii. The New York Times today reported that Hawaii’s “state officials want 70 percent of energy needs to be met by renewable sources like the wind, sun or biomass by 2030.”      
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Mobile advertising is currently a 
Short Version
Time, Inc. and 
The importation, sale, or advertising of the R4 card, used to pirate 
Online payments company 
This morning when 
And that speaks to why people are getting so worked up about the previous post. By saying the time of the mouse is ending, I’m killing a comfort zone. It reminds me a lot of the arguments I would have a few years ago when the first iPhone came out. A lot of people were demanding that Apple build one with a physical keyboard. And some were saying that it was enevitable that Apple would have to do this.
like designers and gamers. But eventually they’ll also have some sort of new technology that they prefer over the mouse. That’s simply how it works. Shocking! Outrageous! Blasphemy! I know.
We’re hearing from sources close to the deal that Facebook is in late stage negotiations to buy 
Last August, we first wrote about 
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