The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- EtherPad Gets A Makeover And Becomes Even More Of A Threat To Google Docs (Invites)
- Online Ad Revenues At The New York Times Keep Dropping Like A Rock
- The Song of the PowerSquid: The Inside Story of the Life of an Invention
- RackSpace Opens The Cloud
- Bubble Motion Scores $6 Million In Funding For Voice Messaging Solutions
- ‘How To’ Video Site 5min Raises An Extra $7.5 Million
- Woah, People Really Don’t Like IE6
- Artist Finds His Own Music Video Removed From YouTube, Lashes Out On Twitter
- Are Some Spinvox call Centre Staff Putting Voicemails On Facebook?
- Sure, The U.S. Has A Lot Of Click Fraud, But At Least We’re Not Vietnam
- Zivity Splits Employees, Execs, Venture Funding Into Two Companies
- Groovy’s SQL Switch: A Powerful Tool In The Quest For A Truly Real-Time Web
- Ooyala Hits Profitability In A Crowded Market, Looking For A New CEO
- Google Listens, Gives A Friend-Only “Likes” Option In Reader
- Someone Please Caption This
- Show Off: YouTube Now Lets You Share Just How Well Your Video Is Performing
- The iPhone’s Competitors Have A Big Problem: Their Games Stink
- CrunchBoard: Content Associate, PHP Developer, Search Specialist
- Softball: Marc Andreessen Talks Tech At Fortune Brainstorm
- Billboard Hopes Its API Will Be A Cornerstone For Music Mashups
- Patent Defense Play RPX Closes Series B From Index, Kleiner, And Charles River
- Guess Who Lost Big on the Zappos Deal?
- Skype Unleashes A “Super-Secret” Project: A Cheap Headset
- Bypass Loading Facebook By Emailing In Your Pictures And Videos
- Windows 7 Passes The Test, Is Ready For Manufacturing
| EtherPad Gets A Makeover And Becomes Even More Of A Threat To Google Docs (Invites) Posted: 23 Jul 2009 09:00 AM PDT  AppJet’s EtherPad, the real-time Google Docs-like wiki tool we wrote about last fall, has been upgraded to be prettier, more user-friendly and far more collaborative than before. EtherPad was the brainchild of former Googlers (who founded online programming tool and Y Combinator funded AppJet) who wanted a real-time, yet group oriented way to collaborate on notes and documents. Thus, EtherPad was born. We have 100 free beta invites to the premium version of EtherPad here. When we first reviewed EtherPad, we found the web-based rival to Google Docs to be sore on the eyes but incredibly useful. What made EtherPad unique from the start was the ability to have multiple people making edits and writing in a document in real-time. You simply create a document, send the link around, and anyone can join. Each user's edits are highlighted in a different color (with a key featured on the side with which color belongs to each user). Changes are made in absolute real time, something even Google hasn't been able to do (Google docs update every fifteen seconds). Users can also chat in the sidebar and save versions of documents forever. Now, EtherPad has launched a new, redesigned version with more tools and functionality that may just give Google Docs a run for its money. First, EtherPad completely redesigned the entire UI to look softer and simpler. The interface is much less stark and easier on the eyes. EtherPad also lets you import and export Word, PDF, Plain Text and HTML documents. Appjet made writing a document in EtherPad more like writing out notes in Word or Google Docs, adding rich text formatting, including bold, underline, italics and strikethrough commands to the wiki. And organization of notes within a document became a little better with the ability to add bullet points. Additionally, EtherPad now has a monetization strategy. You can use the service for free, but you cannot make your documents secure via a password. The EtherPad Professional Edition is securely hosted in the cloud, free for up to 3 users; $8 per user per month above 3 users. The Private Network Edition for Enterprises is $99 per seat as a one-time fee for life, but your documents will be kept behind a firewall. AppJet’s co-founder Aaron Iba says that 300,000 synchronous pads have been created on EtherPad and it is being used by a vast variety of companies and organizations. For example, students at Stanford Law School use EtherPad to collaborate on note-taking during class. And tech companies are using the product to interview engineers remotely while still being able to test the ability to write code for an application at the same time. AppJet recently closed an angel round of funding of about $250,000 led by Mitch Kapor, who was joined by Chris Yeh, and others. The startup has also received seed funding from Y Combinator and the FriendFeed founders. After seeing a demo of the new and improved EtherPad, it seems clear that the fledgling product has the potential to rival Google Docs and other popular collaborative wikis on a pure feature basis. EtherPad is planning to add several more features to the mix in the near future including spell check, the ability to import images and video conferencing. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| Online Ad Revenues At The New York Times Keep Dropping Like A Rock Posted: 23 Jul 2009 08:02 AM PDT As if the New York Times doesn’t have enough to worry about, with total advertising revenues down 32 percent in the second quarter, its online business is deteriorating as well. In its earnings announcement this morning, the company breaks out Internet advertising revenues of $68 million, which is a 15.5 percent drop from a year ago. The year-over-year declines keep getting worse, as you can see in the chart above. In the last three quarters the annual decline went from a 3.5 percent drop in the fourth quarter of 2008 to a 6.1 percent decrease in the first quarter of 2009 to negative 15.5 percent this quarter. Annual Decline In Internet Advertising Revenues 4Q08: -3.5% While the $68 million is a fraction of the NYT’s $454 million in total advertising revenues in the quarter (and an even smaller portion of the company’s overall revenues of $702 million, which includes circulation and other sources), the NYT is a bellwether when it comes to media sites on the Web. And if it can’t stem the bleeding on the Web side of its business, other publishers are likely having trouble as well. There is one glimmer of hope, however. On a sequential basis, compared to last quarter, the NYT’s Internet ad revenues were virtually flat ($68.0 million vs. $67.6 million). And the company as a whole was able to eke out a profit of $21 million, but only because it slashed $132 million worth of costs. And Classified advertsing revenues were down 45 percent. So it is still very much in the woods. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| The Song of the PowerSquid: The Inside Story of the Life of an Invention Posted: 23 Jul 2009 07:49 AM PDT  Hello, my name is Christopher Hawker. I am a professional inventor, specializing in innovative consumer products. My company is called Trident Design, LLC. I have developed many products in numerous industries and have over 20 products on the market. My most famous invention is the PowerSquid, a cephalopod-inspired power strip with outlets situated at the end of short cords, thereby eliminating the problem of losing outlets to bulky transformer plugs. John Biggs, editor-in-chief of this blog, has asked me to write the story of the birth of the PowerSquid and its development and journey to market. This is the Song of the PowerSquid. Part 1: Genesis This is a story of the birth of a product, a company and a career. It's an example of how to turn ideas into reality. But, more importantly, it is also a story – albeit a cautionary one – of how to earn a profit from new product ideas, something easier said than done.
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| Posted: 23 Jul 2009 07:38 AM PDT
In addition, The Rackspace Cloud (formerly known as Mosso) has made available Cloud Files language bindings along with technical guidelines for Java, PHP, Python, C# and Ruby under the MIT license through GitHub. Rackspace aims to offer a reference implementation in Python soon and in a press release casually mentions it “is aware of Ruby, Perl, Java, and Twisted Python Cloud Servers bindings”, which are all in the process of being developed. With the approach, the company hopes to compete better with cloud computing giant Amazon on its own turf - and also Microsoft with its upcoming Windows Azure service - by generally being more open to developers as far as their client-side tools go. In case you were not aware, Rackspace also recently released its Cloud API for Cloud Servers, which allows users to write code that detects a workload in the cloud and scales up the number of servers meeting it as needed, in public beta. The company is heavily trying to position itself as the best alternative to Amazon, which it acknowledges is bigger in size but lacking an open strategy towards the cloud and standards. On a sidenote, we’re hearing the company is preparing the launch of a new iPhone application that will let customers manage their Rackspace cloud accounts from their iPhone devices. It should be arriving some time in the next few weeks. Will Rackspace’s efforts in breaking open their cloud offering be enough of a differentiator to compete effectively in an increasingly saturated market? Time will tell, but judging by its stock performance investors are taking quite a liking into the hosting company and its growth strategy. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| Bubble Motion Scores $6 Million In Funding For Voice Messaging Solutions Posted: 23 Jul 2009 06:24 AM PDT
Venturebeat had earlier confirmed the fundraising based on a regulatory filing but at the time it was unclear who the investors were. Al Snyder, former COO of Openwave and currently CEO of Aepona will join the Bubble Motion’s board of directors along with Amanda Reed from Palomar Ventures. Bubble Motion is mostly known for BubbleTALK, a so-called 'click, talk, and send' messaging service that the company deems to be more fun than SMS and doesn’t require any calling. The company works with mobile operators from around the world to create a network of voice messaging and voice content applications, making BubbleTALK available to over 225 million subscribers worldwide. Considering its international approach, it makes sense for the company to have offices spread across the globe: Bubble Motion currently employs people in Silicon Valley, Singapore, London, Madrid, Rome, Stockholm, Helsinki, New Delhi, Kuala Lumpur, and Tokyo. The new funding round brings the total amount of capital invested in the company to $35 million. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0  
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| ‘How To’ Video Site 5min Raises An Extra $7.5 Million Posted: 23 Jul 2009 05:40 AM PDT
Its most recent financing round was $5 million from Spark back in November 2007, following a painful $300,000 angel round (at least it was painful for the startup’s founders) which we talked about a bit in the post covering the announcement of their first VC round. 5min is in essence a syndication platform for instructional, knowledge and lifestyle videos, both professionally produced and user-generated. The service’s video library boasts tens of thousands of videos across a variety of categories (e.g. Pets), submitted by media companies and independent producers from around the world. The site has clearly struck a chord with legions of people looking for free hands-on instructions captured on video, since 5min reportedly attracts a significant audience of between 160 and 200 million unique visitors on a monthly basis. A big part of its vast reach comes from hundreds of publishers and advertisers who use the company’s VideoSeed product, which uses semantic technology to automatically match videos to their respective audiences. What I personally like about 5min is the rich, custom video player, dubbed SmartPlayer, and the generally high quality of the how-to videos. An example video is embedded below. (Thanks to Ouriel Ohayon for the tip) Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Woah, People Really Don’t Like IE6 Posted: 23 Jul 2009 03:45 AM PDT
Of course, the main reason why IE6 is still being used at all is because of corporate IT departments across the globe needing to make upgrade decisions. And we all know these things can take (far too much) time, particularly in major companies where the IT force oversees thousands if not hundreds of thousands of computers. Now a passionate bunch of IE6 haters, their fire apparently fueled by our earlier post, is once again taking to the Web to shout out “Hey IT” and attempt to persuade IT departments into getting a move on the browser upgrade decision making. The arsenal of weaponry: the website, some funny posters, a Facebook group and a Twitter campaign. I’m sanely skeptical that this effort will make any difference, but can’t blame one for trying, right? Update: apparently the Hey IT website isn’t IE6 or IE7-friendly (oh, the irony). Update 2: there’s also IE6Update.com Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| Artist Finds His Own Music Video Removed From YouTube, Lashes Out On Twitter Posted: 23 Jul 2009 03:10 AM PDT
Harris’ strong words are directed mostly at the BPI, ‘the representative voice of the UK recorded music business’ according to the organization’s website, who apparently filed the complaint in this case. They sure don’t seem to represent this particular artist’s voice, since he’s currently threatening to drive a hired car through the front window of their building and “hopefully reach the online monkeys at the back of the office” in between calling their employees retards and bastards and using the F-word a lot. There’s a bigger issue here. According to the tipster who pointed us to Harris’ rant, this is just one example of apparent spats between music labels who are apparently turning on the heat by throwing DMCA notices at each other in the hope that music videos from competing record companies get removed from legitimate accounts (where they generally get the most views). In this case, it’s the BPI who filed the copyright claim, according to the artist on Twitter. Apparently, no warnings were given on beforehand, leaving Harris virtually powerless now that the video has effectively been removed without him being contacted. How ironic is that, given this excerpt lifted from the BPI website:
Who needs a change in behavior here? Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| Are Some Spinvox call Centre Staff Putting Voicemails On Facebook? Posted: 23 Jul 2009 02:57 AM PDT
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| Sure, The U.S. Has A Lot Of Click Fraud, But At Least We’re Not Vietnam Posted: 23 Jul 2009 01:31 AM PDT
This initial report spans the first 6 months of 2009. Clicks are broken down as “valid” or “invalid”, with “invalid” ones further broken down into “innocuous invalid” and “attempted click fraud”. That last classification is obviously the key one. Over those two quarters, Anchor Intelligence’s data indicates that click fraud has remained steady, increasing slightly in Q2 to 22.9%, up from 21.7% in Q1. Yes, it remains a problem. But the real interesting data comes when you break down the click fraud rates by country, as the report does. While the U.S. is pretty bad with an attempted click fraud rate of just over 25%, that pales in comparison to Vietnam, which has an attempted click fraud rate approaching 50%. No other country is even close to them, as Canada is number 2 with a 27.7% attempted click fraud rate, and the U.S. is third. And while the U.S. accounts for the majority of the clicks that Anchor Intelligence sees, it’s not like Vietnam is entirely insignificant on the list. Of the top 30 countries Anchor measures, Vietnam has the 6th most amount of click volume across the network. Back in April, Anchor Intelligence announced that the search engine Ask became a client to try eliminate some of its click fraud. While the service is fairly secretive about who it works with, other Anchor clients include Technorati, LookSmart and Adbrite. Find some of the key parts of the report below. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Zivity Splits Employees, Execs, Venture Funding Into Two Companies Posted: 23 Jul 2009 01:27 AM PDT
Cofounder Cyan Banister takes the CEO spot at Zivity, which will continue to publish adult content. She also keeps Zivity-related software and other assets, two other employees and a portion of the $4 million or so that the company still has in bank. Former Zivity CEO Jon Elvekrog will now become the CEO of Top Fans, and the remaining 7 employees will join him. The original founding team of Zivity and the angel investors in their first round of financing are now the sole shareholders of Zivity. Venture funds BlueRun Ventures and The Founders Fund, who invested $7 million in Zivity in March 2008, will transfer their ownership to Top Fans. The net effect of the transaction is to split assets, people and ownership between the two entities, with no overlap. The companies will now pursue separate strategies. Earlier this year Zivity launched the Top Fans product as a separate strategy for growth. The product lets fans create celebrity "fan pages," and then add content, such as images, video, and news, to those pages. It’s been clear that the exec team and investors started to have diverging opinions on the future of the company since that launch. The founding team still believe strongly in the original vision. The newer execs and investors were pushing for the fan pages. The exodus of the founders was the likely outcome, but investors and senior employees worked to split the companies to pursue their separate destinies instead. Frankly, I’m amazed they pulled this off without litigation. Hats off to everyone, particularly the investors who consented to this. They likely could have killed the deal, retained all the remaining venture capital in Top Fans and forced the founders out. That didn’t happen. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| Groovy’s SQL Switch: A Powerful Tool In The Quest For A Truly Real-Time Web Posted: 22 Jul 2009 10:51 PM PDT
Groovy CEO Joe Ward stresses how important it is to make the distinction about what real-time really means, pointing out the fact that the vast majority of “real-time” content on the web really isn’t holding true to the definition of the term. Instead, he says most services are “near-time”, with delays that can range from a few seconds to a few minutes, which isn’t going to cut it as more and more of these services become integral to the way we use the web. Ward also says that the key difference between near-time and real-time lies not only in the time lag seen with these services — after all, you can still get updates within a few seconds using the current methods — but in the way the current techniques interact with the server. Current methods of ‘real-time’ typically rely on frequent polling, where your browser continuously pings a server for any updates. This, Ward says, results in very high sever loads, with costs growing exponentially as the number of users increases. Conversely, Groovy’s technique in the SQL Switch is akin to a ‘Push’ technology, where the server pushes the data without the need for the client to continuously poll for new information. This, in turn, leads to significant savings in server load by reducing the footprint on the application service fourfold, which also leads to a 20% saving in overall costs (you can see an estimate of the processing costs for the competing technologies below). The new software runs on special Intel boxes, with performance that the company says matches 100 standard SQL servers. For more, you can check out the full product spec sheet here.  Groovy offers a number of demos of the technology that are currently completing some final benchmarking, so you can’t try them out just yet, but they will be available here by the end of the week. Among them is a real-time Twitter client, which accesses Twitter’s API 20,000 times an hour. Of course, it’s hard to tell just how powerful this technology will be until it’s actually released. Fortunately, we won’t have to wait long: Groovy will be making its debut, with benchmarked stats, at next week’s AlwaysOn conference. Disclosure: Groovy Corp was a sponsor for the TechCrunch Real Time CrunchUp. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| Ooyala Hits Profitability In A Crowded Market, Looking For A New CEO Posted: 22 Jul 2009 09:32 PM PDT
And now they’re considering the hire of a new CEO, we’ve confirmed. Bismarck Lepe, the current CEO, says he’s actually been looking for his replacement for the last year. This isn’t being driven by the venture investor, Sierra Ventures, he says. And in fact the founding team retains stock and board of directors voting control, making their consent a requirement of any CEO change. Lepe just feels as though he isn’t necessarily the guy to take the company to the next level, whatever that may be. So he’s retained a search firm to find someone better than him to run Ooyala. The company is certainly doing well. We first covered them in late 2008 and they already had big name customers like National Geographic, TV Guide, AOL, and Warner Brothers. Today, Lepe says, they stream 250,000 - 350,000 hours of video a day through partners. One Michael Jackson video last week racked up 70 million views in just 36 hours. The company has a software as a service model that charges users to set up accounts and manage video. There is an additional fee based on hours of content streamed as well. This is a crowded space. Brightcove has raised nearly $100 million in capital, for example. Yahoo paid $160 million to acquire competitor Maven Networks and then killed the business line 17 months later. And most recently Joost announced a strategic shift to focus on this space as well. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| Google Listens, Gives A Friend-Only “Likes” Option In Reader Posted: 22 Jul 2009 08:38 PM PDT
It’s not quite the on/off switch that some people wanted for the feature, but I’d bet that eventually we’ll see that too. Still, this should ease the pain of those who simply did not care what RSS items random people like. Now, it will only be those users you know, or at least said that you know and want to follow. I suppose if you really want to turn “likes” completely off, you could just unfollow everyone. But that’s probably not the social evolution Google was hoping for with the product. [via Mike Knapp] Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| Posted: 22 Jul 2009 08:21 PM PDT This picture is great. And it’s just begging for some kind of caption. It was taken today at Microsoft’s MGX conference in Atlanta, where Windows President Steven Sinofsky and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took the stage to reveal that Windows 7 was ready to be released to manufacturing. In other words, it’s done. But what on Earth are Sinofsky and Ballmer doing in this picture snapped by Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc, and sent out to Twitter? It looks like Sinofsky might be trying to throw a baseball left-handed (assuming he’s right-handed). Or maybe he’s asking Ballmer to take his arm and skip? Ballmer looks to be screaming, which is nothing new, or is he yawning? Also, it looks like he just used a CD-ROM to burn a copy of Dave Matthews Band Under the Table and Dreaming, which he either borrowed from the library, or downloaded through Kazaa. (Okay, yes it’s the gold Windows 7 RTM disc, but what is he going to write on it?) Are the two men exorcising Windows Vista as Windows 7 rises in the background? Or is Ballmer in the midst of saying something in threes? Maybe they’re singing? If so, where and who is the third tenor? We need to know. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0  
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| Show Off: YouTube Now Lets You Share Just How Well Your Video Is Performing Posted: 22 Jul 2009 08:02 PM PDT
YouTube is currently down for scheduled maintenance to enable the feature, but some videos are already beginning to display the data (you can see a screenshot below, taken from this video). You’ll now be able to publicly display information related to your video’s performance in various geographical regions and demographics, as well as more thorough information about which sites are driving traffic to your content. Finally, there’s a nice graph that displays your video’s popularity over time. These new data-points have all been previously available though YouTube Insight to the video’s original uploader, but this is the first time they’ll be publicly shareable. In a way, the new feature is similar to what Quantcast has done with its ‘Quantified’ sites, which lets websites publicly share some of their traffic data without having to face accusations of having doctored it. Likewise, YouTube publishers will now be able to basically flaunt just how well their videos are doing — something that could prove very important for publishers looking to attract relevant advertisers. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| The iPhone’s Competitors Have A Big Problem: Their Games Stink Posted: 22 Jul 2009 07:06 PM PDT
At the Casual Connect conference in Seattle today, some numbers were thrown out there, talking about just how big gaming is now on the iPhone. Of the nearly 70,000 apps in the App Store, some 20% are games. Yes, that means there are between 10,000 and 15,000 apps that are games, just for the iPhone alone. To put that in perspective, that is more than the total number of apps that all of the App Store’s big competitors (Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store, Palm’s App Catalog, BlackBerry’s App World) have — combined. Sure, all of those stores are younger than the App Store, but it’s already clear that none are taking hold as true gaming platforms like the iPhone is. At least Palm has already come to that realization early in its lifespan, and has started trying to hire gaming engineers to try and change that. But there are no shortage of questions as to just how well webOS, an OS built on web technologies like HTML, CSS and JavaScript, will be able to handle graphic-intense gaming, like the iPhone can. And the competitors have another problem: The games on the iPhone are getting even better.
Some, like FlightControl are simple and addictive. Others like Rolando 2, make perfect use of all the iPhone’s capabilities like multi-touch and the accelerometer. Some rival fun I have with console versions, like Tiger Woods an Peggle. Some bring a feeling of nostalgia for the old NES days (with better graphics), like Castle of Magic. I could go on — StoneLoops of Jurrasica, GloBall, Tap Tap Revenge 2, Moonlights — these are all great games. And these are just games I’ve gotten in the past few weeks. And now, with the launch of the iPhone 3GS, there is hardware that will be able to handle even more impressive gaming. While Apple’s competitors are busy trying to build phones to dethrone the iPhone, Apple has built a device that not only is still running laps around them, it’s also taking on devices like the Sony PSP and the Nintendo DS.
Now, not all developers are having such success. But that’s partially due to the fact that there are so many of them now making games. And the fact that the iPhone has turned into a gaming platform has attracted the big boys, like EA. "Every day, the gap with Apple gets wider and wider,” Sling Media co-founder Blake Krikorian told Bloomberg today refering to the iPhone’s competitors. He had bought a Palm Pre when it came out, but switched back to the iPhone three days later because he couldn’t live without Tiger Woods. I completely understand. I just don’t understand why the iPhone’s competitors don’t seem to. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0  
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| CrunchBoard: Content Associate, PHP Developer, Search Specialist Posted: 22 Jul 2009 07:04 PM PDT Its CrunchBoard time, so let’s take a look back at the recent job news. Super Secret startup MOBshop is looking for some serious coding guns for hire. They say MOBshop “will hit the intersection of mobile and physical worlds.” If your looking to get your name out there and do some networking, Card.ly lets you create some cool online business cards. It’s time to get yourself a presence online, cause you know, this internet thing is here to stay. And we’re all about that business card dying thing. Things still don’t look good for the print media industry as the Condé Nast layoffs continue. They’ve hired consultants from McKinsey to help with the cuts, with the first casualty being their web brand for men. Well, atleast they’re hiring somebody. Here is our layoff tracker, which is updated regularly. If your on the hunt for a new job, CrunchBoard may be the place to find a new opportunity. Check out a snapshot of the jobs available below:
For job hunters in Europe, check out our Europe CrunchBoard. Click here to see all the jobs on CrunchBoard. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| Softball: Marc Andreessen Talks Tech At Fortune Brainstorm Posted: 22 Jul 2009 06:13 PM PDT
Lashinsky starts the talk off on venture capital, of course, given Andreessen and Ben Horowitz’s new $300 million venture fund called Andreessen Horowitz. Andreessen, rehashing old material, says the goal is to be one of the few venture capitalists who are able to survive. He says that only a handful of startups do well enough to really make the returns for a VC, and he says his connections and reputation are solid enough to attract those startups to his fund. His focus: consumer Internet, business Internet (cloud computing, “software as a service”), mobile software and services, software-powered consumer electronics, infrastructure and applications software, networking, storage, databases, and other back-end systems. On the economy in general: “We had a big breakdown in how western capitalism works,” Andreessen says, adding that “there needs to be a tremendous amount of deleveraging.” But it’s also an opportunity for entrepreneurs to disrupt some of the affected industries. Insurance, finance, etc. are very hard industries to enter, he says, and you have to compete with government subsidized entities. He seems to think the bailouts were a terrible idea. Lashinsky does ask one solid question at the end - Would you invest your new venture fund in Ning at a $750 million valuation, he asks? Andreessen says he loves Ning and would have taken a hard look at it. I’m not sure if that actually qualifies as an answer. That was quite possibly the worst interview of Marc I’ve ever seen. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Billboard Hopes Its API Will Be A Cornerstone For Music Mashups Posted: 22 Jul 2009 05:46 PM PDT
Billboard has been churning out charts featuring popular music since the 1940s, with its most well known chart, the Hot 100, making its debut in 1958. These vast volumes of data can be used in any number of ways, from tracking overall trends to charting the success of an individual artist over time (you can see an example use of the data in this piece on Michael Jackson in the New York Times). In short, the data is something of a goldmine for data-hungry music fans. Billboard is hoping that the new API will serve to make the site one of the foundations that music mashups are built around, in much the same way the Google Maps API has become a cornerstone for countless mashups. That’s much easier said than done, of course, and I doubt that the data will be as broadly useful. Still, we can likely look forward to some very cool projects in the near future. Billboard actually opened its API early this year, but up until now it has done a minimal amount of marketing around it (the company was still primarily concerned with its B2B offerings). Today’s news was also a major win for Lala, the very cool music startup that may have finally found the right formula for actually making money. The service now powers Billboard’s site-wide music player, offering immediate playback of many of Billboard’s top songs. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Patent Defense Play RPX Closes Series B From Index, Kleiner, And Charles River Posted: 22 Jul 2009 05:26 PM PDT Defense Play RPX, a defensive patent aggregator, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series B funding led by Index Ventures with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Charles River Ventures participating. The company also raised an undisclosed Series A round of funding in September 2008 from Kleiner Perkins and and Charles River Ventures. RPX first launched in November 2008 as a way to help companies defend themselves specifically against patent trolls (organizations that buy up patent portfolios with the express intention of forcing other companies to license those patents or face a lawsuit). RPX buys up its own patents, or strikes licensing deals on behalf of its members, and the charges companies $35,000 to $4.9 million a year for perpetual licenses to those patents. The deal is that if companies pay up, any patents in RPX's portfolio can't be used in litigation against a member company. The company says that it has purchased nearly $90 million in patent rights in the mobile, Internet search, telecommunications, consumer electronics and RFID markets to date. RPX will use the funding to try to surpass its goal of acquiring $100 million in patents during its first year of operation, which means that the company has raised (via venture funding, debt, credit lines etc.) over $100 million. Not too shabby for a startup that launched during a recession. RPX’s membership already includes many of the world’s largest technology companies, including HP, Nokia, Sony, Samsung, LG, Panasonic, and Seiko-Epson. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Guess Who Lost Big on the Zappos Deal? Posted: 22 Jul 2009 03:14 PM PDT
But there is one big loser in all of this: Draper Richards. Sources close to Zappos tell us that Draper Richards– a firm that is frequently listed as a Zappos investor– actually holds no shares in the company. They lent Zappos about $250,000 in its early days, and when the dot com bubble burst demanded repayment. Zappos was strapped for cash, so they tried to convince Draper Richards to take stock at a discounted conversion rate instead, but the firm insisted on loan repayment. (Draper Richards confirmed they were only a lender, not an equity investor.) I don’t have enough detail to know exactly what they would have netted today, but our source says they would have been Zappos’ largest– and no doubt happiest– shareholder. Sometimes it’s the deals a firm makes– or doesn’t make– in a crash that matter most. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0  
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| Skype Unleashes A “Super-Secret” Project: A Cheap Headset Posted: 22 Jul 2009 02:28 PM PDT
And today the company unveiled the FREETALK Everyman headset, a USB super wideband audio headset. While first and foremost the goal was to ensure great call quality, Skype also notes that this headset is, “lightweight and folds flat so you can throw it in your bag with your laptop.” This roadtest review gives a full overview of how it works. Their conclusion? It’s good, but the best part is the price: $22.88. Good-quality headsets usually cost much more than that. Of course, this super-secret Skype project did not solve the problem of looking like a huge dork when you are wearing a headset talking to a computer screen, but it’s a start. You can buy the FREETALK Everyman headset here. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| Bypass Loading Facebook By Emailing In Your Pictures And Videos Posted: 22 Jul 2009 02:17 PM PDT Facebook has fast become one of the leading photo and video sharing sites on the web. The social network already lets you upload photos via MMS or through Facebook apps on the iPhone, Blackberry and other mobile devices. Today, Facebook is giving users another way to share photos immediately— via email. Facebook now lets you create a unique upload email address where you can send photos and videos from anywhere you have email access on your mobile device. When you attach a photo or video to an email, you can include the comment to the photo in the subject line of the email. But if there is more than one image or video attached to the email, the caption will apply to all the attachments. Facebook says that your email provider determines the file size of how many videos and photos you can send in one email, but the social network doesn’t have any restrictions on how many images can be uploaded via one email. Images uploaded via the email will be placed in the “Mobile Upload” photo album (where photos from MMS and apps go) and will follow the privacy settings of that album, according to Facebook. This sounds a lot like Flickr’s option to upload via email. Similar to Facebook, Flickr gives you a unique email address that you can use to add your photos to your Flickr photostream. This move shows how important photo and video sharing is to the social network, which saw 1 billion video views last month. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Windows 7 Passes The Test, Is Ready For Manufacturing Posted: 22 Jul 2009 01:37 PM PDT Microsoft’s newest version of its operating system, Windows 7, is finally in the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) stage, so the OS will soon be preloaded on new computers. Though not officially released yet, Windows 7 is expected to be a hit. For instance, after just eight hours on Amazon UK, Windows 7 pre-orders outpaced the total number of pre-orders for Vista over a period of 17 weeks. According to Microsoft, Windows 7, which offers seven different versions of the OS, has undergone significant testing, quality assurance and validation required to get to the RTM stage. Independent software and hardware vendors will be able to download Windows 7 RTM as early as August 6th. Microsoft will be rolling out Windows 7 to other partners in mid to late August. Enterprise customers and developers will be able to download Windows 7 RTM in English starting on August 7, with additional language functionality for Windows 7 released shortly after. For the plebes/consumers, Windows 7 will be in retail stores and shipping on new PCs starting October 22nd, which we already knew. After receiving an overwhelming response from beta testers, Microsoft is also offering a “family pack” for Windows 7 that will allow installation on up to 3 PCs. The company has also officially released the new version of Expression 3, the set of tools Microsoft offers for developers to build applications off of Silverlight. Of course, the official RTM release of Windows 7 comes at a time when Microsoft’s stranglehold of the operating system is being challenged by the recent announcement of Google’s Chrome OS. Google is scheduled to release the open source code for Chrome OS later this year, which perhaps could conveniently fall around the October launch of Windows 7. The first Chrome OS computers won’t launch until next year. While Google says the Chrome OS is targeted towards netbooks at the moment, there is definite potential for Google’s OS to expand to the other types of computers, giving Microsoft something to mull over. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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Voice messaging company 
Instructional video site 
Hell hath no fury like a music-artist-who-sees-his-own-music-video-removed-from-YouTube scorned. The video sharing service may be doing its best to keep copyrighted material off its website, but London-based artist 
Some 
When it comes to ad clicks, 
In a highly unusual transaction, 
Silicon Valley based 
It seems like just yesterday we were complaining about the lack of options for the 
YouTube has always given you the chance to show off how well your videos are doing, but only to a limited extent. Aside from a star rating, view count, and of course, the infamous comments section, there hasn’t been an easy way to share more meaningful data with your audience — something that can make it harder for content partners to attract advertisers on the site. Tonight, that changes: you’ll now be able to publicly share select pieces of information from YouTube Insight, the site’s powerful analytics tool. 
It’s no secret that gaming on the iPhone has been one of the main keys to the App Store’s success. You know it, I know it, and so you have to believe that all the competitors know it too. And yet, their actions would seem to suggest that they don’t know it. Because they keep building devices, operating systems and app stores to compete with the iPhone, that simply can’t hold a candle to the iPhone when it comes to gaming.
If there’s one trend I’ve noticed in the App Store over the past few months, it’s that every week without fail now there are at least a handful of really, really good games hitting the store. I’m someone who, as I’ve grown older, has found that I don’t have much time or patience for gaming. But there I am on the iPhone at least once a week now checking for the hot new games and downloading them. They’re fantastic, and they’re not $50 or $60 like current console games are.
And naturally, with success, a lot of developers making games for the iPhone are making 
Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky is interviewing 
Earlier today came news that 
The 
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