Friday, December 11, 2009

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The Latest from TechCrunch

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Apple Says Nokia Missed The Boat And “Chose To Copy The iPhone” Instead

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 08:28 AM PST

Now that Apple has responded to Nokia’s patent lawsuit filed last October with its own countersuit today, we have a clearer picture of what the dispute is all about. As suspected, it is about money, specifically the patent licensing fees Nokia is trying to get out of Apple for wireless patents it holds and it alleges are infringed by the iPhone.

But more broadly, it is about Nokia missing the boat on the shift from conventional phones to mobile computers where the phone functionality is relegated to one of many features, and not the most important one at that. Apple lays this argument out in its countersuit, saying that Nokia tried to overcharge it on patent fees because it missed the boat on the shift to smartphones.

In Apple’s countersuit today, it accuses Nokia of attempting a “patent hold-up.” The patents in question are part of industry standards, and as such Nokia must license them under fair and reasonable terms, argues Apple. But instead, Nokia tried to put the squeeze on Apple. Apple states in its countersuit:

In dealing with Apple, Nokia has sought to gain an unjust competitive advantage over Apple by charging unwarranted fees to use patents that allegedly cover industry compatability standards.

Whether or not Apple’s arguments hold water is for a court to decide. But Apple takes the opportunity of this legal battle to make a swipe at Nokia as a flailing competitor. If you read between the lines of the suit, the reason Nokia is not willing to license its patents under “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms” to Apple is because while Apple was creating a “revolutionary change in the mobile phone category” with the iPhone, Nokia was sitting on its haunches:

In contrast, Nokia made a different business decision and remained focussed on traditional mobile wireless handsets with conventional user interfaces. As a result, Nokia has rapidly lost share in the market for high-end mobile phones. . . . In response, Nokia chose to copy the iPhone.

In other words, Nokia is losing in the marketplace so it is falling back on the only thing it has left—its patents. Apple is already more a profitable phone manufacturer than Nokia, and it has no intention of returning those profits via exorbitant patent fees. Now, what exactly those proposed fees are and whether they are in fact exorbitant we don’t know because the numbers are not in the suit. Presumably, those will come out at trial.

Apple could lose that trial or end up paying a huge settlement fee. Both of these suits are negotiations by other means. In addition to patent fees, Nokia wants access to Apple’s patents so that it can try to catch up on the smartphone front. Regardless of the outcome, though, it feels like Apple has already won the bigger battle in the marketplace.

Photo credit: Flickr/Rob Marquardt


AAPL-NOKCountersuit –

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Apple Countersues Nokia, Accuses Them Of “Patent Hold-Up”

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 07:26 AM PST

In a very concise statement, Apple has let the public know that it has today filed a counter suit against Finnish handset maker Nokia, who at the end of October 2009 took the Cupertino company to court over alleged patent infringement for technology related to its GSM, UMTS, and WiFi "standards". Read our detailed report here.

In its response lawsuit, Apple says Nokia infringes on 13 of its own patents, and even outright accuses the company of theft:

"Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours," said Bruce Sewell, Apple's General Counsel and senior vice president.

We’ve reached out to Nokia for comment, and will update if and when we hear back.

We’ll post more details and thoughts on the litigation between both companies very soon, so stay tuned.

Here’s one bit from Apple that’s explains the concept of a “patent hold-up”, for starters:

“Left unconstrained, owners of patents that purportedly cover certain features within the standard could take advantage of lock-in and demand exorbitant royalties from designers, knowing that it would be less costly for teh designer to pay the excessive royalty than to incur the cost of switching. This is commonly referred to as a patent hold-up.”

The court documents are below (via Digital Daily):


AAPL-NOKCountersuit –

(Image via Knitware)

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Mobcast Brings Geo To Facebook And Your iPhone

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 07:02 AM PST

If the $8.4 million raised yesterday by geo-social network Gowalla tells us anything it is that geo is red hot right right now. The trickle of geo apps is already turning into a flood. The latest example is Mobcast, an iPhone app (iTunes link) which adds lets you broadcast your location to your existing Facebook friends.

Mobcast is like a combination of Foursquare and Google Latitude. Except you use your Facebook ID to sign in and there are no check-ins. You simply select which friends you want to “mobcast” to, and then they see your updates on a map. Why join a new geo-social network when you can just tap into Facebook?

But Mobcast does have its flaws. Like Google Latitude, it constantly broadcasts your location to your chosen friends or subset of friends. But the app must reman open to do that since you can’t run the app in the background (Latitude’s iPhone app shares the same problem). Also, the locations are shown on a map, but Mobcast doesn’t match the locations to a directory of known businesses or points of interest like Foursquare or Gowalla try to do. Although you can include that information in your update if you want.

Until Facebook decides to release its own geo-location support (like Twitter has already), Mobcast is a close approximation of what might very well one day become a feature of all mobile Facebook apps, including the company’s own. But the prospect of competing with Facebook doesn’t bother the developers Jeff Schnitzer and Nikolai Sander. “This isn’t some big VC-backed play hoping to take over the world,” says Schnitzer. “We’re two guys who spent a month and a half building what Facebook should have built a long time ago.”

On the iPhone, you can see your friends’ location on a map and when they send out a new geo-update, you get a notification as well (presuming you both have Mobcast). Using Facebook’s friend list, you can determine who can see your location and who cannot, and you can always delete your location history or go into stealth mode for those private rendezvous.

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Command Guru: Reality TV Meets iPhone Development

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 07:00 AM PST

What happens if you put some of the top designers and developers in the same room, hooked up to multiple HD cameras, and the internet? Welcome to Command Guru. Command Guru is located in Venice, Italy and the team includes Jonathan Badeen, Jim Matthews, Matej Bukovinski, Matteo Caldari, Max Schoening, David Hodge, Peter Watling, Steve Shi, Emanuele Vulcano and Eddie Wilson. All ten team members have come all over the world for one week to work on an iPhone application, and launch it by the end of the week.

The goal of Command Guri is to create an iPhone application together in one week, under the supervision of Aaron Hillegass. Every single moment when the team is working together is caught on camera by three cameras, and then streamed to the web. Even if it’s a brainstorming session, or just ten people sitting in a room together coding — it’s all caught on camera.

Command Guru is using Ooyala to stream the content. The website features a Twitter column were users can leave their comments, give advice and suggest solutions to the iPhone Reality Show team.

The application that is being developed is Wikimeety, a new social network application based on geolocalization. People can stay in touch with friends, organize events or opt-in to other peoples events. Once finished, the application will be free for download on the App Store.

Command Guru is also posting the source code online, so anyone can download the application once it’s done. You can also follow all the members of Command Guru through this Twitter List.

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Have Geeky Friends, Will Travel

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 06:36 AM PST

I've spent a wonderful week in Paris, attending the infamous Le Web conference put together by Loic Le Meur and his amazing wife Geraldine. But while the event kicked off only on Wednesday, I arrived in the French capital on Sunday noon, and my motivation wasn't tourism. I was cordially invited by the organizers of the Traveling Geeks tours, who bring together bloggers and industry pundits from all over the world to travel all over the globe looking for great stories from equally great tech startups and established companies, to join them in the days before Le Web.


CloudShare Lands $10 Million To Bring Software Demos To The Cloud

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 04:30 AM PST

Startup CloudShare, formerly known as IT Structures, has raised $10 million in series B financing from Sequoia Capital, Gemini Capital, and Charles River Ventures. This brings CloudShare’s total funding up to $16 million.

That amount of funding isn’t shabby for a company that has been in stealth for nearly two years. Cloudshare, which launched to the public, last week, has produced a service for demoing software in the cloud. Organizations can instantly deploy multiple, independent copies of their existing demos or training environments from CloudShare’s platform.

The platform is also integrated with Salesforce.com’s CRM so sales teams can pull in information from an account on CloudShare back to Salesforce. Many large-scale companies have internal demo centers in the cloud to allow prospective sales clients to demo software, but most small to mid-size companies don’t have this functionality, which can be used to show how a product works.

CloudShare charges per user, and will adjust the cost of the demo or the proof of concept is complicated. The startup already has signed on VMware, Cisco, SAP and other big-name clients and has already delivered over one million demos, proofs of concepts and software training hours to date. The company plans to use this round of funding to accelerate product development.

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CrunchPad Federal Lawsuit Filed; Some Additional Thoughts

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 03:20 AM PST

Thursday afternoon we filed a lawsuit against Fusion Garage in the Northern District of California Federal court. The causes of action include Fraud and Deceit, Misappropriation of Business Ideas, Breach of Fiduciary Duty, Unfair Competitition and Violations of the Lanham Act. The complaint is embedded below, or you can view it here.

This was the first time I’ve ever filed a lawsuit, and it was certainly not the way I thought the whole CrunchPad project would end when I first wrote about the idea in July 2008.

I believe the lawsuit (and attached exhibits) speaks for itself. A timeline is provided as well as supporting evidence from the Fusion Garage blog (now deleted) and emails between our companies. But I do have a few additional thoughts:

  1. We’ve shown through our posts (see The End Of The CrunchPad and CrunchPad Litigation Imminent) and that we’ve got nothing to hide. Our statements are backed up with emails and other evidence. Fusion Garage also makes a lot of statements about us, none of which are backed up by evidence.
  2. Fusion Garage deleted their blog shortly after the dispute erupted. A lot of statements on that blog directly contradict statements made by Fusion Garage this week (these are included in the lawsuit). That deletion, combined with the fact that they very clearly misled us over the last month into believing everything was on track, while they simultaneously registered a new domain name and rebuilt the case of the device to include the new brand, shows a pattern of lies. The press has mostly given them a pass on this.
  3. Fusion Garage is, and always has been, a company on the edge of going out of business. Their main shareholder, the guy who wrote the now infamous email telling us that we were no longer part of the project, is a chiropractor named Bruce Lee. The company was constantly raising debt from unsavory investors, borderline loansharks, to make payroll. We paid a lot of expenses directly, and we agreed with Fusion Garage that they had to clean up their cap table before we could acquire them. Fusion Garage agreed and attempted to do this but was never successful. All of this is shown in the exhibits to the lawsuit.
  4. We have had financing from top tier investors lined up for the CrunchPad. Those investors didn’t love the way Fusion Garage and its founder checked out on background checks, but they were willing to support the project. That financing was on hold until we launched the device. At any time we could have pulled the trigger on it, and we have statements and evidence to support it (these investors are also talking to press directly). We also had partnerships lined up for retail distribution at unheard of terms, as well as soft revenue to drive the retail price down on the device. All of this has evidence to support it. All of these partners will support these statements on record.
  5. Fusion Garage’s financial situation is a mess, and it is inappropriate for press to recommend to people to pre-buy a CrunchPad. The company has not yet hired an attorney to respond to our lawsuit. We believe they do not have the cash flow to do so. When the device goes on pre sales today, linked to from scores of gadget and press sites, they will suddenly have cash flow to defend themselves. What they won’t have is cash flow to build the devices. We believe it is irresponsible for press to link to the pre-sale site without disclosing this to readers.
  6. Much of the key intellectual property, including the board and much of the mechanicals, is owned by Pegatron, the manufacturing arm of Asus. Pegatron was licensing this IP back to the project exclusively. Fusion Garage is no longer working with Pegatron, they’ve hired a new ODM. They have likely given Pegatron’s IP to the new ODM to speed development. Pegatron has expressed concern to us about this, and I would not be surprised if they sued Fusion Garage separately over this issue.
  7. A few people have suggested that we can’t own any IP in the CrunchPad because we are just a blog. That’s not correct. The entire blueprint of the device was created by me. And we also have hired direct resources, including the former head of hardware at Vudu, as well as very high level software engineers, who have worked directly on the project here and in Singapore with the Fusion Garage team. Their direct work on the project was crucial to its success, and the device would not be finished without their work. The fact that Fusion Garage had nearly its entire team here in California for the last few months working with us illustrates this. Why would they have brought them all here at great expense (and we organized visas and housing) unless this was a joint project? The answer is they wouldn’t have.
  8. The founder of Fusion Garage, Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan, isn’t a good guy. He has been caught plagiarizing articles. His previous company Radixs disintegrated in shareholder disputes and angry employees. We didn’t learn about this until last Summer because Singapore media, including blogs, are largely controlled by the government. Embarrassing stuff just isn’t reported. But we’ve spoken to plenty of people associated with the company, and their statements will be included in the lawsuit. Chandra and Fusion Garage have shown a long term pattern of deceit in their business dealings. There is no reason to think that anything will change now.

The lawsuit is below:


SF-38-303-C2_20091210160410_00000001 –

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Google’s Big December Code Freeze

Posted: 11 Dec 2009 02:45 AM PST

419036369_296c175ddeEach Winter, the United States Congress adjourns through the end of the year. Before that recess occurs, there’s usually a flurry of legislative activity happening to squeeze it in before the break, during which time nothing gets done. This week, there has been a curious amount of activity coming out of Google at a time when many companies are in holiday mode. And guess what? It’s the same idea.

Okay, not exactly the same, people at Google are still working, but apparently Google has a “code freeze” policy that goes in place sometime in December. If you don’t get your product/service out the door by then, it gets pushed til when the freeze is lifted, likely sometime in the new year. A few Googlers confirmed this policy off-the-record, but all seemed concerned about publicly acknowledging it. Perhaps they’re worried about the competition working overtime to take advantage of Google taking its foot off the gas.

Based on the huge level of activity this week, it would seem that this code freeze date is rapidly approaching. It may even be this Friday, which marks the first day of the Jewish holiday Hanukkah. That could well be why we saw Google Realtime Search, Goggles, and some new mobile search ideas at the event on Monday. While later, Google upgraded Analytics and opened Wave to everyone who had requested an invite so far. Tuesday brought beta versions of Chrome for both Mac and Linux, Chrome Extensions, and the new service, Vevo (which is based on YouTube technology). That night, Google also held one of its Campfire events, and launched a few new things for Google Web Toolkit. Wednesday saw the official Chrome Extensions event and the integration of Google Groups in Google Apps. Thursday brought Twitter support for Google Search Appliance and a new deforestation effort.

And on Friday, Google rested. Maybe — we’ll see.

If I were a Google rival like Microsoft, I’d use this Google downtime to pump out some new things that they can’t have an answer for. They have to wait until their code thaws in the new year.

[photo: flickr/audreyjm529]

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Stealth Startup Relaxed Raises $2 Million From Redpoint Ventures For CouchDB Support

Posted: 10 Dec 2009 10:54 PM PST

Couchdb-logoRelaxed, a stealth startup centered around Apache CouchDB has raised $2 million from Redpoint Ventures according to an SEC filing which was confirmed by CEO Damien Katz. Three original authors of Apache CouchDB–Damien Katz, J. Chris Anderson, and Jan Lehnardt–are listed as Executive Officers of the company.

For those who are unfamiliar, CouchDB is a free open source indexable document database server which uses Javascript as a query language. CouchDB is designed for the reporting and storage of large amounts of semi-structured, document oriented data, unlike SQL databases which store and report on very structured and correlated data.

CouchDB is part of the rapidly growing NoSQL movement, which is schema-free and focuses on adding horizontal scalability to databases. Major companies already use NoSQL database systems including Amazon’s Dynamo, Facebook’s Cassandra, and Google’s BigTable. Other NoSQL-related projects include Project Voldemort, Hypertable, VPork, MongoDB, Apache’s Hadoop and more. Two other companies in this space recently received funding as well: Swedish-based Neo Technology garnered $2.5 million in late October and 10gen raised $3.4 million in November.

Apache’s site describes CouchDB as such:

“In an SQL database, as needs evolve the schema and storage of the existing data must be updated. This often causes problems as new needs arise that simply weren't anticipated in the initial database designs, and makes distributed "upgrades" a problem for every host that needs to go through a schema update.

With CouchDB, no schema is enforced, so new document types with new meaning can be safely added alongside the old. The view engine, using Javascript, is designed to easily handle new document types and disparate but similar documents.”

While we don’t know much about what Relaxed will be doing, we speculate that they will provide support for developers using CouchDB in addition to trying to expand the adoption of CouchDB by enterprise companies. Their role seems similar to that of RedHat’s in the Linux community, but we won’t know more until Relaxed makes an announcement early next year.

Prior to Relaxed, the three founders were affiliated with a CouchDB consultancy company, appropriately named couch.io. At couch.io, they focused on CouchDB support and training, as well as the managed deployment of customer’s CouchDB cluster.

CouchDB is still in its early stages at version 0.10, but has gained significant traction and has been adopted by many websites and software projects, including Ubuntu. For a more high-level view of what CouchDB does, see their overview.

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Foodzie Lands The Man Who Invented Google Gadgets As Its VP Engineering

Posted: 10 Dec 2009 09:33 PM PST

Foodzie’s artisan food marketplace just got some heavy duty engineering talent behind it. The company has hired Googler Adam Sah as its VP of Engineering. Sah is best known for helping invent Google Gadgets, which is used to power many widget-based services like iGoogle and Gmail Gadgets. He later served as a tech lead for Google research, and spent his time before Google at a number of startups.

Foodzie helps speciality food vendors get exposure by giving them a central online marketplace to sell their goods. Foodzie takes a cut of each sale, but the vendors are still left with more than they’d get if they sold their goods through traditional speciality food sites. It’s been a while since we last heard from the company, but CEO Rob LaFave says that things have been going very well. The site has grown from 25 vendors last December up to 250 this year. In the last 30 days it has seen around 85,000 unique visitors. And, perhaps most importantly, LaFave says that revenue for the site has grown by an order of magnitude in the last thirty days.

Much of that growth can be attributed to holiday shopping, but the site has also been working with media sites to help integrate co-branded marketplaces. For example, The Atlantic now features a co-branded Foodzie store to complement its ‘Food’ section.

Foozie debuted as part of the TechStars class of 2008, and last winter it raised a $1 million funding round led by Jeff Clavier of SoftTech VC with First Round Capital and some other angel investors participating.

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Wolfram Alpha Does The Math, Slashes iPhone App Price (Sort Of)

Posted: 10 Dec 2009 09:00 PM PST

iphoneIcon-holidayThere’s a lot to love about Wolfram Alpha’s iPhone app. But as regular readers will know, one of them is not the price. At $50, it’s just way too hard to justify the purchase when you can get all of the information online, for free. So just in time for the holidays, Wolfram Alpha is doing something about it: Slashing prices!

The app will be on sale for a much-more reasonable $19.99 starting tomorrow and running through the end of the year. I’m still not sure that that isn’t a little high ($9.99 seems more a bit more in-line with the current app economy, but obviously that’s entirely up to Wolfram Alpha). The company also notes that despite the three-week discount, they absolutely plan to jack it back up to the regular $50 price after the first of the year.

I asked the company to give me some sales figures, but they declined. They did say that the app sales are “robust” and have “beaten our expectations solidly.” Those two things can mean just about anything without some solid numbers, obviously. At the same time, the company noted that it was very much thinking about other discounts/promotions in the future for the app. In other words, it might not be the smartest thing in the world to shell out of the $50 even if you do think it’s worth it.

Curiously, they also decided to remove the iPhone-formatted version of the website a while back in a move that I’m positive was in no way meant to spur app sales. That was sarcasm.

But again, the app is solid, and if you’re looking for a better than 50% off deal on it, check it out tomorrow in the App Store. The company also has a little blog post about some holiday-themed searches you can do with it.

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Are Microsoft Users More Gullible When It Comes To Online Advertising?

Posted: 10 Dec 2009 08:47 PM PST

Is there something about people who use Microsoft products that makes them more likely to click on an online ad? Some data from search advertising network Chitika suggests so. Earlier this week, we noted that people coming to Websites from Bing are about 75 percent more likely to click on an ad than those coming from Google.

Following that post, Chitika ran some analysis on browsers and operating systems, and it found that users of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer are about 40 percent more likely to click on an ad than Firefox users, about 50 percent more likely than Apple Safari users, and 80 percent more likely than Google Chrome users.  The numbers are based on Chitika data from 134 million across 80,000 sites.

When it cut the numbers by operating system, Chitika a similar trend.  Windows users are about twice as likely as Linux or Mac users to click on ads. All of this data comes from one advertising network, so I’d say it is more suggestive than scientific (I’d love to know if other ad network are seeing the same trends). But it is a large sample.

Assuming they are representative, you can look at these results two ways. One is that Microsoft users are more valuable to advertisers since they click more. The other conclusion you could come to is that they are simply more gullible and are twice as easy to dupe into clicking on an ad than users of other products. That of course would bring you back to point No. 1, that they are more valuable to advertisers.

The thing that strikes me is that you’d expect to see similar behavior among the mainstream users of whatever brand. For browsers and operating systems that is Microsoft. The users of other brands are more likely to be switchers who are at least technically savvy enough to try something new. Those are the same types of people who are savvy enough to ignore (or actively block) ads.

But this hypothesis fails when you look at the search engine data. In that case, it is Google which is the dominant brand whose users include more of the mainstream, average consumers. Bing users are the switchers. Yet they are more click-happy than Google searchers. Why is that?

Clicks Impressions CTR Vs. IE
Chrome 17,742 8,553,969 0.21% 19.83%
Firefox 398,812 60,250,532 0.66% 63.27%
IE 1,609,309 153,834,681 1.05% 100.00%
Other 25,969 4,349,524 0.60% 57.07%
Safari 100,589 19,961,950 0.50% 48.17%
Vs Windows
Windows 1,987,558 216,115,472 0.92% 100.00%
Linux 7,348 1,610,737 0.46% 49.60%
Mac 123,891 23,885,453 0.52% 56.40%

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Chitika
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TC50 Finalist 5to1 Adds A $1.8 Million Extension To Previous Round

Posted: 10 Dec 2009 07:19 PM PST

5to1logoMonetizing remnant advertising is not an easy task, but 5to1, a TC50 finalist, seems to be off to a good start, and they’ve added on another $1.81 million to their previous round of $4.5 million from existing investors Fuse Capital and Prism VentureWorks. The platform employed by 5to1 gives content owners the ability to place ads in relevant places at the right time, and to the correct audience. The company is run by former Fox Interactive executives Jim Heckman and Ross Levinsohn and this extension brings its total intake of funding to just over $6.3 million.

Jim Heckman, the founder and CEO of 5to1, says the following about the funding:

“5:1 secured a small extension of funding to add a little runway so we could stay focused on growing the business. Wasn’t an urgent move, but our adoption is much better than expected, so didn’t want to risk any loss of focus. No new partners or investors were involved and we don’t expect to be engaged in money raising activities in the near future.”

5:1 did note the extension, when final paperwork is filed, will “end up at $2 million” and the company is days away from surpassing 400 million duplicated uniques amongst 30 distribution partners.

For more information on 5to1, check out our TC50 coverage.

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Cloud Engines Raises $3 Million For Global Expansion Of Pogoplug

Posted: 10 Dec 2009 04:15 PM PST

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Cloud Engines, the company behind Pogoplug, the device that turns any USB hard drive into a network accessible drive, raised $3 million in funding according to an SEC filing. We’ve confirmed the investment with the company with existing investor Foundry Group and others participating in the round.

According to the startup’s CEO, Daniel Putterman, Cloud Engines will use the money to kick start their international plans for retail, specifically in Europe. The company will also expand retail operations in the U.S.

Cloud Engines just last month updated the Popoplug by adding four USB ports, a new address book feature, global search across all the drives attached to a Pogoplug and all the devices associated with a single account, and a host of other improvements.

The Pogoplug comes with a handy iPhone application, that allows users to stream music (or movies) that they don't have room to store, back up photos as they're taken, or read docs stored at home.

You can also check out CrunchGear’s review of the Pogoplug, and their coverage of the NAS Adapter that comes optional with Pogoplug.

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SeeqPod’s Assets Are Finally Being Sold, And Its Team Is Coming Back For More

Posted: 10 Dec 2009 03:25 PM PST

The tumultuous story of music search engine Seeqpod is finally coming to a close. Last June, we wrote that the company was looking to sell off its domain name, with evidence suggesting that it was about to be acquired by Microsoft. That didn’t happen. We’ve just heard from CEO Kasian Franks that the technology assets of SeeqPod are now being sold to a “large Japanese media company” (he wouldn’t divulge the name). And now the SeeqPod team is back building another company: the Mikojo music search engine.

Before we get to that though, a recap of SeeqPod’s difficult year. In February SeeqPod was slapped by lawsuits from EMI and Warner Music, as the record companies looked for billions of dollars in damages. In March, Seeqpod filed for bankruptcy protection and put itself up for sale.

There were strong rumors that the company was going to be acquired by Microsoft in a firesale, but that apparently didn’t pan out and Franks says that the company decided not to sell the domain name. But SeeqPod is now close to closing a deal with the unnamed Japanese media company, with the only holdup being the patent rights to the technology behind Seeqpod, which is owned by Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. Negotiations are ongoing, but it sounds like they’ll be reaching a conclusion soon.

So what about the new project? Three of Seeqpod’s lead engineers are now working on Mikojo, a music search engine that Franks says wants to be the comprehensive music search engine. But rather than only serving audio files, as SeeqPod did, Mikojo is meant to search all things music related. Run a search for “Led Zeppelin”, and you’ll see listings for lyrics, merch, tickets, and yes, links to songs. But unlike Seeqpod, which let you stream music directly from the site, Mikojo links you off to sites like Songza, which will keep them clear of the music labels’ wrath. Franks wants Mikojo to be the place people go when they want to find a music video from Vevo, or a song on MySpace Music.

One last (and unique) thing to note about Mikojo: the site has already IPO’d. Mikojo went through a reverse merger and is now listed under the ticker symbol MKJI. Franks says that the company did this because he’s not interested in “the romantic startup phase”. Rather than rely on speculation that leads to wildly varying acquisition prices (see Last.fm and imeem), he wants to “derive the real valuation based on a reflection in the stock price”.

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Playboy Gets A Sexy iPhone App. Sorry Guys, No Nudity.

Posted: 10 Dec 2009 03:00 PM PST

IMG_0817Playboy is a magazine that actually does have really good content, I swear. But yes, most people know it as the magazine that each month features nude pictures of their Playmates. And now the magazine has an iPhone app in the App Store. But those concerned that this might ruin Apple’s prude stance with the store, fear not: There is no nudity.

Instead, the app features easy access to some of the main articles in the magazine each month. And it does so in a very slick and sexy way, the app is among the fastest I’ve seen in terms of transition between the different areas. The app also shows you who the featured Playmate of the month is, but all you get is the introduction, the data sheet (which I’m actually kind of surprised Apple even let through), and a series of sexy, but clothed photos. Each Playmate also has a video about their shoot, but again, no nudity.

The plan is for the app to use in-app purchasing so that you can easily buy hard copies of older issues. But that apparently won’t be available until the next version of the app hits next week on the same day that the next issue of Playboy goes on sale. Humorously, to buy other things from Playboy, the app makes you go to the web, with a warning that you’ll be entering a page that contains content which may not be appropriate for children under 17. Of course, anyone with an iPhone can browse to that site directly without the warning from Apple.

Despite apps like this, Apple continues to straddle a difficult line of hypocrisy with regard to the App Store approval process. For example, apps that do satire are rejected, while apps that allow you to see up the skirts of asian girls are just fine. Also fine: Apps that simply showcase Asian Boobs, which is the name of the app. Oh, and Mein Kampf is also fine. But there can be no nudity in an app for a magazine known for its nudity. That kind of stuff which you see today in PG-13 movies is just too much for a device which has built-in parental controls.

The app is $1.99 in the App Store. You can find it here.

IMG_0819 IMG_0820

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The Social Times/AllFacebook Acquired By WebMediaBrands

Posted: 10 Dec 2009 02:44 PM PST

The Social Times, the company behind AllFacebook.com, has been acquired by WebMediaBrands. We’ve confirmed the news with Social Times founder Nick O’Neill, who will be joining WebMediaBrands as Director of Social Times. O’Neill couldn’t comment on the acquisition price, but says that he is pleased with the deal.

A big congratulations to O’Neill, who started the company two and a half years ago with the launch of AllFacebook, which extensively covers Facebook news. He followed that up around six months later with the launch of The Social Times, which covers a broader array of social media issues. O’Neill is the company’s only full time staff member, though he has a number of contractors contributing content to the sites.

Along with AllFacebook and the Social Times, the deal includes New Media School, a site that helps with social media strategy that launched in August. It also includes the company conference.

The news comes as WebMediaBrands, which is perhaps best known as the onwer of Media Bistro, goes through a major transition. The company has divested the majority of its properties, including its recent sale of Internet.com for $18 million. With today’s acquisiiton, WebMediaBrands is looking to expand into the social media space. O’Neill will be given resources to hire more writers to continue expanding his sites (he says they’ll probably be hiring ten more in the next few weeks). And we may well see more deals in the near future.

The Social Times currently draws around 500,000 unique vistors and 1 million page views a month.

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Facebook Is Totally Down

Posted: 10 Dec 2009 02:27 PM PST

In case you are wondering, it’s not just you. Facebook is down. Want to know more? Try checking Twitter (which is uncharacteristically up).

Update: It looks to be back up now. Just a hiccup, everyone back to work, er, socializing.

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The Italian Job: Twitter Adds Its Fourth Native Tongue

Posted: 10 Dec 2009 02:05 PM PST

TheItalianJob1969-wFollowing the successful launches of Twitter in Spanish and Twitter in French, the service has announced native support for another new language today: Italian. This means that of the initial “FIGS” languages (that is French, Italian, German, and Spanish) that Twitter wanted to get done, only German remains. Given that Twitter is crowd-sourcing much of the work for these translations, the speed at which they’re adding new ones is impressive.

Prior to the Spanish and French roll-outs, Twitter was previously available in English and Japanese. As usual, Twitter has written the latest blog post on the matter in the native tongue, so we’ll (roughly) translate it below.

We’re excited because today with the launch of the Italian version of our site becomes even more a platform for global communication. As always, we wish to thank all the translators who have participated in the project and who have shown us their skills.

If you have not already discovered, here are some users who are particularly interesting Twitt in Italian:

You can follow the famous journalists like @beppesevergnini or @radiodeejay of radio Linus & C. Or even one of the most famous Italian singer, Laura Pausini (@officialpausini).”

Now that the conversations on Twitter are enriched with increasingly diverse viewpoints on a global level, the network information will continue to grow in every nook and crevice of the planet. More events will be shared more knowledge and awareness will spread and the millions of people that feed Twitter will affect millions of others with their tweet.

“And what better way to celebrate the launch of Twitter in Italy? A nice Tweetup-based pizza, friends, and tweet. Our friends @pizzatwit will be happy to organize a pizza party and if you want to meet lots of new friends and tweet all night, you should follow their account and help them to organize one of their famous Twitter Pizza Party! “

To use Twitter in Italian, go into your settings and select the language from the drop-down menu. Enjoy!

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yFrog Launches Twitter Clients For BlackBerry And Android

Posted: 10 Dec 2009 02:01 PM PST

yFrog, an image and video sharing site for Twitter, is furthering its mobile strategy by launching both BlackBerry and Android apps. Yfrog for Blackberry lets you Tweet text, images and video to Twitter, view tweets, search Yfrog, view followers and people you're following, and view messages and mentions

The Android app is more feature-rich, and lets you Tweet text, images and videos, view Tweets, mentions and followers, and search Twitter. You can also download multiple files at the same time, and upload videos up to 15 minutes long with high quality video encoding. And, GPS location will be included with upload.

yFrog, which launched by ImageShack earlier this year, will face competition from the Twitter clients that have their photo sharing tool such as Seesmic’s BlackBerry and Android apps. yFrog also has an iPhone app that faces competition from Twitter image sharing rival TwitPic.

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Wattvision Shows The Power Of Simple, Realtime Energy Monitoring

Posted: 10 Dec 2009 01:32 PM PST

Screen shot 2009-12-10 at 1.24.44 PMIt’s freezing cold in San Francisco right now (which is to say, 50 degrees). As such, I’ve been using my heater like a madman trying to stay warm. I know that’s going to hurt when I get my electricity bill at the end of the month, but I have no idea how much it’s going to hurt. A Y Combinator startup, Wattvision, launching in beta today, wants to solve that problem.

The idea is simple: Wattvision wants to give you a realtime picture of your home (or office) energy consumption. But to do this, you need a device that can tap into your power meter. That’s where the Wattvision WiFi Sensor comes in. But the good news is that you don’t need an electrician to set this up for you. If you have a digital power meter, you can very easily attach the Wattvision Sensor and you’re all set. From there it will send your data wirelessly to the web, where you can monitor it. And if you have an iPhone, Wattvision has also created an iPhone-optimized version of their site so you can watch your home energy consumption on the go.

Screen shot 2009-12-10 at 1.24.49 PMSo the first big question is: How much does this cost? The Wattvision Sensor is normally $199, but alongside the beta launch, Wattvision is offering to give a $50 discount to the first 100 TechCrunch readers that use the coupon code “wvbetaTC“. In a world where many tech startups cling to the idea of “free,” $199 may seem like a hard sell, but this is actually very cool stuff. Take a look at Wattvision’s main page to see a realtime example of how easily you can monitor your power usage with this device. Done the right way, this could actually end up saving you more than the $200 you spend on the device. It’s interesting data, and you can compare it to data from others in your area. You can also tweet out your consumption results or send them to Facebook to enable some interesting social pressures.

There will also be a pricing model based on how much data you want to see. But for the beta launch, Wattvision isn’t focusing on that just yet. And if you order a sensor now, you’ll get the home standard plan (the 2nd-tier plan) for free for six months. The different plans mainly involve the speed at which the monitoring data comes in (15 seconds versus 8 seconds, for example) and how far back you can view your consumption history. Also in the higher tier plans you will have options to get alerts send to your email or phone, and the ability to have multiple accounts. More on these plans can be found here.

But the second, and potentially bigger question is: How can Wattvision compete with companies like Google and Microsoft which are also getting into this field (with PowerMeter and Hohm, respectively)? When I asked Wattvision co-founder Savraj Singh about that, he had a good answer:

We’re taking the bet that people and small businesses are interested in their live energy use–now–and they want something that works with their existing electricity meters.  The big players are taking the long-route — getting partnerships with power companies and banking on the coming smart grid deployments.  Unless your power company is on board, you can’t get those systems today.  And the fastest you can get data from the latest smart grid technology is, typically, every 15 minutes.  Wattvision updates every 10 seconds, and will also be compatible with the smart grid when it arrives. We’re also a for-profit endeavor, which means we’re hoping to stay sharply focused on customer needs, whether consumers or businesses, and excel at things like customer service and satisfaction.

Y Combinator’s Paul Graham goes on to note that he likes the idea of a small startup moving faster than the giants. “It’s like Apple back in 1976,” he tells us. That said, “we think those guys are doing great work and we’re keen to find areas where we can collaborate,” Singh also noted.

Find out more about Wattvision in the video below. And again, use the “wvbetaTC” code if you’re interested in getting your hands on one of the first devices at $50 off.

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Down To Business: Amazon Announces Its AWS Start-Up Challenge Winners

Posted: 10 Dec 2009 12:18 PM PST

Screen shot 2009-12-10 at 12.12.28 PMAmazon has announced the winners of its 2009 Amazon Web Services (AWS) Start-Up Challenge. The main criteria was to come up with a start-up that could have a lasting impact while utilizing AWS for its infrastructure. The grand prize winner this year is GoodData, a SaaS business analytics startup that helps companies easily visual data and metrics. The company won a combination prize of $50,000 in cash and $50,000 in AWS credits. The San Francisco-based company also has an investment offer from Amazon based on the win.

This year’s runner-up was Bizo, yet another business-oriented company, this one promising to deliver targeted audiences to customers. As the runner-up, Bizo gets $25,000 in AWS credits.

And finally, this year’s supplemental winner is FlightCaster, a company that says it can accurately predict flight delays. We’ve actually written about this Y Combinator startup a few times. With their AWS win they get $10,000 in AWS credits. Not bad, but probably not as big of a deal had they not just landed $1.3 million in new funding.

For next year’s AWS Challenge, Amazon is promising to open it up to a broader range of countries. They say they’ll announce details in early 2010.

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Yahoo Dribbles More Twitter Results To Search

Posted: 10 Dec 2009 12:03 PM PST

Earlier this week, Google made a massive push into realtime search, taking advantage of its newly gained access to Twitter’s firehose of data, as well as realtime feeds from Facebook, MySpace and others.  You can see these realtime results for every search you do by selecting the Updates option,  Bing is also in the realtime race.

So what’s Yahoo’s less-than-realtime response three days later?  A limp-wristed addition of selective Twitter results to its main search engine.  Already, Yahoo shows Twitter results in its News search for breaking news and trending topics.  Today, it is adding Twitter results to its main search page, but only for trending search terms.  So will not always see it, if ever.

If you are going to deliver a new search option, it should be consistently available, even if it’s not highlighted at the top of the page.  Why doesn’t Yahoo simply turn this feature on for all searches?  Could it be because it doesn’t have access to Twitter’s full firehose of Tweets like Google and Bing do?  They’d have to license that data, and maybe it’s too expensive for Yahoo.  So what Yahoo ends doing is a workaround for a manageable subset of Tweets.  If I am looking for realtime results, I want them for everything, not just what everybody is already searching for.

Hopefully, this is just a small step towards a bigger goal for Yahoo, with a more robust realtime search offering coming soon. But it does feel like their hardly even trying.

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The Top Ten Viral Videos Of 2009 (Are Mostly Music Videos)

Posted: 10 Dec 2009 10:37 AM PST

In an age of user-generated content, the most viral videos are not made by the users, just passed around by them. Below you will find a list of the top ten viral videos of 2009, as tracked by Visible Measures, which counts not only plays on YouTube but also video shared across social networks like MySpace as well as MTV networks and Viacom. The list of the most watched internet videos 2009 below are nearly all music videos, with the exception of the No. 1 viral video, which is the trailer for the movie Twilight Saga: New Moon.  Visible Measures estimates that trailer has been watched more than 592 million times.

All the other videos in the top ten are music videos such as the one for Beyonce’s song “Single Ladies” (No. 2), and thus are also essentially advertisements for mainstream media content.  Even the two Michael Jackson music videos on this year’s list (”Thriller” and “Beat It”) no doubt helped sales of the deceased singer’s albums.  The one “amateur” video is Susan Boyle’s heartwarming American Idol performance, but the whole point of that show is to elevate amateur singers to mainstream status so I am not sure that counts.

Visible Measures list is determined by data from viewership of both officially syndicated video clips and viewer-driven social video placements. The data is compiled using its database analysis on more than 200 million Internet videos across 150 video-sharing platforms. Here is the full list.

Rank Title Label/Studio Type 2009 True Reach All-Time Placements Months Available
1. Twilight Saga: New Moon Summit Entertainment Film 592,049,402 21,255 5
2. Beyonce: Single Ladies Sony Music Entertainment; Columbia Music Video 333,233,982 1,932 13
3. Lady Gaga: Poker Face Universal Music Video 317,708,763 518 12
4. Soulja Boy: Crank Dat Universal Music Video 313,861,193 2,253 27
5. Susan Boyle: Britain’s Got Talent Freemantle; iTV TV 313,177,779 1,390 7
6. Michael Jackson: Thriller Epic Records Music Video 257,016,016 930 3
7. Miley Cyrus: The Climb Hollywood Records Music Video 211,165,578 2,166 9
8. Michael Jackson: Beat It Epic Records Music Video 190,583,064 981 29
9. Mariah Carey:     Touch My Body Universal Music Video 173,736,822 1,467 20
10. Lady Gaga: Just Dance Universal Music Video 170,636,272 531 18
Source: Visible Measures (www.visiblemeasures.com)

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Google Search Appliance Goes Tweet Crazy

Posted: 10 Dec 2009 10:29 AM PST

Google search got a real-time upgrade and started to integrate Tweets from Twitter in real-time into search results. So its makes sense for Google’s Search Appliance (GSA) to now include tweets from Twitter next within enterprise’s internal Search Appliance results.

Google offers businesses its GSA product, a yellow box that resembles a slice of Swiss cheese, that can index any enterprise data generated by Oracle databases, SAP systems, Documentum, SharePoint, Salesforce.com, HR systems, intranets, wikis, and more, and presents it to employees in a familiar Google-like interface. Based on a standard Dell server and powered by Xeon 5500 Series processors from Intel, the latest version can index 30 million documents.

Tweets are now considering relevant search information but all the major search engines, and this view extends to the enterprise as well. Social information is important for businesses, Google says, and Twitter offers a platform for a variety of contextual information relevant to a vast amount of topics and data points. The new Twitter function in the GSA can be enabled for many or just a few users and users can choose how they want to see Tweets in their search results. It’s unclear what the financial terms of the integration are.

Google has steadily upgraded its enterprise search offerings with innovations and has seen its client base rise over the past few years. As of a few months ago, Google has 25,000 enterprise search customers, up from last year's 20,000 customers. Over half of customers use Google's search appliance and the rest use its hosted site search and other enterprise products. Most recently, Google improved the scalability of the GSA and also added two new tools for Google Enterprise Search: Side-by-Side search comparison and new connectors for the GSA, both available in Google’s Enterprise Labs, which is similar to Gmail Labs.

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