The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Google Chrome For Mac Is Here!
- Build It With Me Helps Connect Designers With Developers
- Russell Simmons And Global Grind Acquire CelebrityTweet
- NPR Makes Its Mobile Website Appalicious (And Readies An Android App)
- Enterprise Search Provider Coveo Adds $8.2 Million In Funding
- One Kings Lane Raises Funding From KPCB, First Round And Reid Hoffman
- Look Up, Don’t Look Down! TC50 Star Tonchidot Raises $4 Million Series A
- Image Recognition Startup PicScout Adds Joi Ito As Advisor
- Digg’s Money Guy Joins High Gear Media Board
- Brightcove Teams Up With TubeMogul To Power Its Analytics
- Hold On, MySpace/Imeem Deal Ain’t Done Yet, Being Renegotiated
- A Million People Riding Google Wave. Most Of Them On Their Stomachs.
- LaLa Was Bought By Apple For $17 Million, Not $80 Million
- Mozilla’s Thunderbird 3 To Take Flight With Faster Search, Tabbed Email And More
- Assistly Comes Out Of Stealth, Adds Mark Cuban And David Liu As Advisors
- Go FISHn Casts Off As A Fishing Site For The Facebook Age
- Microsoft Looks For Don Dodge Replacement
- Google Analytics Gets An Upgrade With Annotations, New API And More
- Video: Google Goggles Live In Action
- Apple Bans Another Developer, 1000+ Apps Pulled
- Online Sample Sale Site Ideeli Raises A Whopping $20 Million
- Google Gets Its First Taste Of Facebook’s Realtime Stream
- Google Aims To Push The Speed Of Light With Realtime Results. Seriously.
- Google Rethinks Searching On The Go
- CrunchGear in China: The Factory
| Google Chrome For Mac Is Here! Posted: 08 Dec 2009 08:16 AM PST The wait is over. Google Chrome for Mac is now available in beta. It’s still missing a few features that are in the Windows version (like support for extensions), but the browser is lickety-split and more-or-less stable. I’ve been holding off really using Chrome until now. But I’m ready for something faster and less crashy than Firefox. (Crosses fingers). Right from the gate, you can apply themes from a gallery to trick out your browser. Are you more into gnomes (”Infected Mushroom” theme) or blurred out images of the Brooklyn Bridge (”Donna Karan” theme)? Yeah, I’m gonna stick to the minimal default look. Although one thing that takes getting used to is the almost complete lack of toolbar real estate. Where are all the buttons? One little feature I like, which Chrome borrows from Safari, is that when you click on a new tab, it shows you a gallery of recent sites you’ve visited. And you can drag a tab off to detach it as a separate window. Handy. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.        |
| Build It With Me Helps Connect Designers With Developers Posted: 08 Dec 2009 07:59 AM PST Finding the right designers and/or developers can be very difficult. Build It With Me is hoping to solve that problem by connecting the two through their online service. Build It With Me separates into two filters; People and Ideas. If you have an idea, you’ll get categorized into the idea tab. If you’re looking for projects to get involved in, then you’ll go into the people tab, where possible partners can search for developers and designers. When you submit an idea, it’s fairly simple. You have the option of choosing a web app, Mac app, Windows app, iPhone app, Android app or another mobile platform like WebOS. After you choose the platform, you indicate the status of the idea. Is it in development now, or is it still a raw idea? You then have the option of letting people know the equity offering in the project, which is similar to what you can do with TechCrunch50 alum FairSoftware. You can then upload screenshots of the service, or wireframes, depending on the status of the project. You can add additional information on the project, and then you’re good to go! If you’re someone who would like to get hired for a project, you have the option of adding your experience, what languages you know, what platforms you would like to work with—all the basic info. Currently, on the home page of Build It With Me, you can see all the designers and developers looking for a gig, or if they have an idea for a project. If you click on a name, you get a taken to a section where it has the user’s information including how much experience they have. It’s the same information you would add to your personal profile for a developer or designer that gets shown public so people can find you. The founder of Build It With Me, Drew Wilson, mentions that Build It With Me is working on some key features that are launching over the next few days. If you’re a developer or designer and not sure who’s working on your team, Build It With Me will have an option to join the team to see what they’re working on, and to see if you are interested in joining a team for a project. The only actual way to join the team though, is to work on either the code or the design and take part in the development. Also, there will be another user option coming up for people who are neither developers nor designers, but the creative types. So if you’re an idea kind of person, you can still pitch in and create ideas, and build your team on top of that. Also being added shortly are private ideas where only members can view the idea or website. Currently, anyone can view ideas, designers or developers. Although the basic idea of Build It With Me isn’t revolutionary by any means, what is great is how the project is executed. If you’re a freelancer, this is definitely a service to check out, and keep your eye on. The design is very well done, making it easy to use and navigate. Build It With Me is a project of Valio, the company behind the recently announced Firerift CMS. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   |
| Russell Simmons And Global Grind Acquire CelebrityTweet Posted: 08 Dec 2009 07:48 AM PST A celebrity Tweet consolidation! Mogul Russell Simmons and hip-hop media platform Global Grind are acquiring CelebrityTweet, which collects and aggregates Tweets from celebrities on its platform. The terms of the acquisition were not released. Launched in October 2008, CelebrityTweet capitalizes on the growing number of celebs who take to Twitter to connect with their fan base. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0   |
| NPR Makes Its Mobile Website Appalicious (And Readies An Android App) Posted: 08 Dec 2009 07:30 AM PST National Public Radio has the fourth most popular news app in the iTunes store in the U.S., but now it is taking some of that Appalicious goodness to the mobile browser. Today it launched a new version of its mobile website at http://m.npr.org/ which looks like a stripped down version of the iPhone app but doesn’t require a download. The redesigned NPR mobile site shows top stories and lets you browse by programs or stations. When you click on the “Listen now” button it starts streaming a podcast via the Quicktime player on the iPhone. You can also add a program to your playlist. And if you want to listen to live radio, you can also search for stations by call letter, city or zip code and then it starts streaming that station. NPR is also developing a similar Android app which will have the ability to play in the background while you use other apps or surf the Web on your phone. As more sites update their mobile Websites for a better browsing experience on Webkit-based mobile browsers (such as those found on the iPhone and Android), there will be less need to download specific apps because you can always just bookmark the page as an icon. Although the mobile site tries to get you to download the app as well. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   |
| Enterprise Search Provider Coveo Adds $8.2 Million In Funding Posted: 08 Dec 2009 06:32 AM PST
The company plans to use the extra capital to expand aggressively: it intends to hire an additional 60 employees over the next two years, nearly doubling its current workforce (80+ people around the world). Coveo markets enterprise search technology and information access solutions for hundreds of companies across the globe, including Deloitte, ESPN, Lockheed Martin, P&G, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Rabobank and the U.S. Navy. Coveo, founded in 2005, is managed by a bunch of former Taleo and Copernic executives. Counting this second round, the startup has raised $10.7 million to date. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   |
| One Kings Lane Raises Funding From KPCB, First Round And Reid Hoffman Posted: 08 Dec 2009 04:37 AM PST
One Kings Lane was started by Susan Feldman and Alison Gelb Pincus, who took notice of the success of the online private sale model (see Amazon’s $3 billion interest in Vente Privée) and applied it to their passion: home furnishings and decor. One Kings Lane runs brand- and theme-specific sales, at least two per day, five days a week. During the 72-hour window that items are on sale, members have can move to purchase limited quantity of hand-selected products at significantly reduced prices. It was launched in March of this year. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   |
| Look Up, Don’t Look Down! TC50 Star Tonchidot Raises $4 Million Series A Posted: 08 Dec 2009 04:00 AM PST
The Sekai Camera service launched in Japan a few months ago, and has already become a national hit as the top app on the iPhone app store. The service leverages augmented reality and adds a social layer to it, allowing users to add virtual items in the real world (you hold the device up to your face as a viewfinder, then look at the world around you as tags pop up). The company says that within four days, 10% of all iPhones in Japan already had the app installed, though the number of devices in Japan is a small fraction of those in the US and worldwide. Major companies have already formed partnerships with the site — partners can insert sponsored tags into the virtual world created by Sekai Camera.  Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   |
| Image Recognition Startup PicScout Adds Joi Ito As Advisor Posted: 08 Dec 2009 03:25 AM PST PicScout a startup that produces image tracking technology for stock photography agencies, professional photographers and others is adding the CEO of Creative Commons, Joi Ito, to its board of advisors. PicScout originally started off as a content copyright enforcer, hunting down unlicensed images on the web with its flagship ImageIRC technology. The company also launched PicApp, a flash-based image provider that offers legally licensed images from large databases for free. The company makes money by including ads as part of the embedded picture viewer. Ito said that PicScout is bringing sensibility to the image sharing economy by bringing the commercial world and open world together to drive awareness around licensing power for images. Ito’s role as advisor makes sense considering PicScout’s efforts to license images legally. PicScout recently launched a browser plug-in called ImageExchange that identifies photos that have been fingerprinted within its image tracking and credit technology that identifies images. The add-on will track microstock images, right-managed images, royalty-free and UGC images. So when you search Google, Flickr, the web and more, IRC can provide you with image credit information when applicable. Image IRC provides a way to support the efforts of Creative Commons licenses and RDFa by validating, fixing and filling in missing metadata on all images online. PicScout claims that tens of millions of images have already been identified. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   |
| Digg’s Money Guy Joins High Gear Media Board Posted: 08 Dec 2009 02:30 AM PST
Today, the company’s announcing that Chas Edwards is joining its board of directors. Edwards is the former Chief Revenue Officer of Federated Media who in May 2009 left the digital advertising network to become the money guy at Digg. High Gear Media is riding the wave of built-for-the-web content production platforms, publishing a mix of original, licensed, aggregated and user-contributed content. You could compare this approach to the Demand Media model, the route AOL is taking towards massive low-cost content production and Seeking Alpha’s strategy in the stock market vertical. It’s clearly turning into something of a trend. High Gear Media publishes automotive content through about 75 websites targeting key buyer and vehicle segments and currently reaches about 2.2 million unique monthly visitors in total. Including its own editorial staff, the media startup at the moment counts over 200 content contributors. They make it really easy for people to become one, too: all you need is to sign up using Facebook Connect and you’re off. High Gear is announcing a partnership with a major media company shortly that will lift its profile and audience even more, although the company remains tight-lipped about the name of the new partner (Yahoo? AOL?). Curious to see if Edwards can help them sustain their growth and monetize the traffic they’re generating. He’ll be sharing a board seat with High Gear Chairman and Founder Hesky Kutcher, CEO Matt Heist, Rob Solomon, (former CEO of Sidestep.com) and investors Andrew Braccia of Accel Partners and James Slavet of Greylock Partners. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0   |
| Brightcove Teams Up With TubeMogul To Power Its Analytics Posted: 07 Dec 2009 08:52 PM PST When Brightcove released a major upgrade to its online video platform last month, one of the new set of features was better analytics. It turns out that Brightcove’s new video analytics suite is powered TubeMogul. Professional video publishers who use Brightcove can now measure things like the geographic distribution of their viewers, how many seconds they watch each video, their drop-off rate, number of unique viewers, number of new viewers, as well as total video plays. The two companies have also signed a joint R&D pact to develop new video analytics products exclusively for Brightcove. TubeMogul will also become a marketing partner for Brightcove’s paid video hosting, streaming, and advertising services. About 125,000 people use TubeMogul’s free video analytics. Many of them are online video professionals Brightcove is hoping to turn into paying subscribers for its new “low-end” $99/month plan. Analytics are an important part of the video equation, especially for advertisers and marketers who need to demonstrate the ROI of spending money on online video. TubeMogul already has an advanced analytics package Brightcove can plug into its latest release. TubeMogul adds Brightcove as a customer and will receive both R&D payments and marketing fees for each new Brightcove client it helps to sign up. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   |
| Hold On, MySpace/Imeem Deal Ain’t Done Yet, Being Renegotiated Posted: 07 Dec 2009 07:53 PM PST
All of that was accurate, including the $1 million fire sale price. But despite reports to the contrary, while the deal was signed it never closed (which explains why MySpace hasn’t announced it). Sometime between signing and closing some problems came up in due diligence, we’ve heard. Specifically that some of the hard assets that MySpace was acquiring, hundreds of servers, were leased rather than owned. Meaning that MySpace couldn’t buy them. The two sides have feverishly been renegotiating the deal, say our sources. At this point a deal may still be done in the next day or so at an even lower price than the $1 million. Or the deal may be terminated altogether (we’re hearing it’s likely some sort of deal will still happen). It’s also always been unclear exactly how much capital iMeem raised to fund the company. We’ve tracked just $25 million in announced or leaked deals on CrunchBase. But we’ve heard the total is much closer to $80 million, including debt and pre-paid royalties to music labels. It’s clear that those investors aren’t seeing any return at all on that investment. Users, though, are still hoping the service lives on under MySpace. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   |
| A Million People Riding Google Wave. Most Of Them On Their Stomachs. Posted: 07 Dec 2009 07:13 PM PST
On its Google Wave Blog today, the company announced a very significant milestone for the young service: A million invites have been sent out. The single biggest complaint about Google Wave so far has been the lack of access to it as everyone who wants to see what all the fuss is about. So Google has opened up the floodgates today and apparently let in everyone who previously requested an invite (though they are still requiring the invite request here). But a million invites is hardly a million users, and certainly not a million happy riders. After a huge amount of hype following its unveiling at Google I/O, some amount of backlash for Wave was inevitable. But many Wave users still can’t quite figure out what to use the service for. My main problem with it right now is more of a chicken-and-egg one. During my busy days, I never remember to open up Wave, and there is no good notification method that you have new Wave messages, so I skip entire days without visiting. And then when I do, I’m too overwhelmed with what I’ve missed. And even if there was a good notification technique, that in some ways defeats the point of the service. Ultimately, I think Google Wave is something I’d like to have open all the time, as I see it as a new potential variety of communication for the web. And if I have it open, I don’t need another service, like email, to notify me about new messages. But I don’t have it open all the time now because usage among people I know is too sporadic. Luckily for the Wave team, they have Google backing them. If Wave were a startup, they’d likely be in some trouble right now trying to figure out how best to position themselves. But with Google’s resources, Wave can take its time to find its audience, and most importantly, to let developers build things on top of it. “Although we are opening up access a bit, do remember that Google Wave is still only in its early preview phase,” the team notes today for the umpteenth time. A very early preview with a million plus invites sent out; that’s a pretty impressive early preview. While Wave finds its way, it has been the source of some great comedy on the web. There have been sites dedicated to pointing out what Google Wave is easier to understand than. And there have been videos using it to reenact scenes from Pulp Fiction and Good Will Hunting. And also the Declaration of Independence. And then others are using it for the opposite reasons: Like to hunt down killers. [photo: Universal Pictures] Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   |
| LaLa Was Bought By Apple For $17 Million, Not $80 Million Posted: 07 Dec 2009 06:08 PM PST
LaLa was purchased for $17 million by Apple, according to our sources with indirect knowledge of the deal. And the company supposedly had $14 million in cash in the bank, meaning the actual purchase price was really $3 million. That’s in line with recent competitive sales like iLike ($20 million) and iMeem ($1 million). LaLa had plenty of cash in the bank, but they were burning $500k/month, say our sources. There’s just no reason Apple would pay $80 million for the company. We also believe that LaLa was acquired mostly for the star engineering team and the awesome recent Google deal more than for the product. iTunes in the cloud isn’t something we should hold our breath for. $3 million for top-of Google music results and a top team of engineers makes a lot of sense. $80 million not so much. LaLa has raised $35 million and was valued at $180 million or so in it’s last round of funding. The reason for the misreports on the $80 million sale may have to do with those numbers. We’ve heard that the purchase price was “forty or fifty cents on the dollar” from one source, meaning 40% or 50% of the $35 million in venture capital the company has raised. But a misunderstanding of what that means could easily have people thinking it was 40% or 50% of the last round valuation, which gets you the $80 million number. If we get additional sources on this story either way we’ll update. LaLa, which used to love to talk to us, has become scarce when we call or email. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0   |
| Mozilla’s Thunderbird 3 To Take Flight With Faster Search, Tabbed Email And More Posted: 07 Dec 2009 04:49 PM PST  Tomorrow, the makers of Firefox will be launching the third version of Thunderbird, its open source and free email application that is produced out of Mozilla Messaging, which is a subsidiary of Mozilla devoted to producing innovation around communication and the internet. Thunderbird 3, which is available in 50 languages and is compatible with Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, has made more than 2,000 improvements and fixes to the new email client. Thunderbird 3 will be available to the public mid-day tomorrow here. One of the main improvements to Thunderbird 3, says Mozilla Messaging CEO David Ascher, is the client’s search capacity. The new search interface contains filtering and timeline tools to try to help users pin-point emails by words, correspondents or attachment types. Thunderbird 3 also includes tabbed email, which lets users view emails and folders in tabs within the client, similar to the way that you manage tabs in Firefox. Tabs are remembered in the client, so you don’t have to keep re-saving tabs. Thunderbird has also added a new archive feature that moves email from your inbox into separate archive folder, a sleeker address book, a new setup wizards, and the ability to combine individual mailboxes to manage multiple email accounts in one spot. The email client has been tweaked to integrate more seamlessly with Gmail and Windows and Mac OS X. Ascher tells me that Thunderbird currently has 10 to 15 million users. While this doesn’t reach the user base of Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and others, Thunderbird has seen steady growth in a field with formidable competitors. And this version is the most powerful iteration of the email client yet, so I expect Thunderbird to gain a few more fans with this release. We expect for Thunderbird to collaborate with Mozilla’s recently launched, open-source, experimental email and communication platform, Raindrop. Ascher tells me that Raindrop is still constantly evolving but it will be interesting to see what two-way interactions the platform will feature and what content it eventually will bring in. Full disclosure: My husband works for the Mozilla Corp. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0   |
| Assistly Comes Out Of Stealth, Adds Mark Cuban And David Liu As Advisors Posted: 07 Dec 2009 03:38 PM PST
CEO Alex Bard says that Assistly looking to capitalize on some key trends: first, that more and more businesses are establishing themselves on the web, and that consumers now have louder voices than ever with their presences on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs which makes customer service more important than ever. Bard says that existing customer service solutions are either old and difficult to use, or are new and easier to manage but lack much depth. Bard says that Assistly is looking to provide a platform that combines the best of both worlds, offering a robust customer service with self-service ease of use. You can see some of the upcoming features, including engaging with a customer on Twitter and managing multiple customer service tickets, in the screenshots below. We still have’t gotten a chance to try out Assistly for ourselves, but the team behind it is enough to make us optimistic about its potential. The site was founded by Alex Bard, Gary Benitt, Jeremy Suriel, and Brad Birnbaum, each of whom previously worked together in building customer service-based companies back in the 90’s. The first, called eShare, was acquired in 1999; the second, called eAssist Global Solutions, was eventually acquired in 2004 after stumbling through the dot com bubble burst. Following the eAssist acquisition three of the team members left the space to start Goowy, a Flash widget maker that later sold to AOL. Now all four are reuniting as they return to the customer service space. Bard says that Assistly is targeting an early 2010 public launch. Other startups looking to help businesses interact with customers via social media include BuzzGain, PeopleBrowsr, Viralheat, and Scout Lab.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   |
| Go FISHn Casts Off As A Fishing Site For The Facebook Age Posted: 07 Dec 2009 03:02 PM PST Ned Desmond has gone fishin’ and he wants you to Go FISHn too. Today, Desmond launched a fishing site for the Facebook age. You can sign in with your Facebook ID, share fishing stories and photos with your friends, ask questions to fishing pros and the community, and review all the gear in your tackle box. Go FISHn is an enthusiast site for people who love to fish—and there’s an estimated 30 million recreational anglers in the U.S. alone who spend about $45 billion a year on gear, supplies, and trips. “Nobody has done a good job in enthusiast sites,” says Desmond, who is the former president of Time Interactive and was once my boss (we launched a magazine together). There is something deeply satisfying about seeing an old boss of mine from my mainstream media days embrace niche media. Go FISHn is the first site from his new company, Go SPORTn, which will take the same model and create communities for different enthusiast groups much in the way magazines like Field & Stream used to do. “I think a mass audience is the ability to address a lot of niches within a category,” he says. Hmm, where have I heard that before (cough, nichebusters)? What’s even more satisfying is to see him do it so well with a bootstrap budget, five engineers in India, and a few other contractors. The whole site was built on Rails, MediaWiki, and the Sphinx open-source search engine. I’m obviously biased because Desmond is my friend, but judge it for yourself. There are other social networks for fishermen such as Angling Masters, Fishing Files, and the Fishing Network where people can share fish tales and photos. But they seem to be modeled more after MySpace than Facebook. Go FISHn isn’t trying to create a new social network. “People fish for the challenge, but also for the companionship,” says Desmond. Go FISHn starts out by connecting you to your fishing buddies on Facebook (and, yes, it has a Facebook Fan page as well). Once you join, you can add fishing-related status updates, longer blog-post-length stories, and fishing photos and videos to your Go FISHn data stream and share those with your friends on Go FISHn as well as on Facebook and Twitter. The site is also designed as a social marketing tool for guides, charters, outfitters, lodges, and other small businesses. They can have their own version of fan pages which are more likely to show up on Google than their own Websites, and it gives them an opportunity to connect with potential customers. For instance, there is a Q&A part of the site where anyone can ask or answer questions, with the best answers being voted to the top. Pros can get in front of potential customers by providing the best answers to the fishing questions they are expert in. Another section of the site is the reviews. Anyone can write a review about their favorite piece of gear. These products are linked to affiliate sales via Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s. Underlying the site is a database of about 100,000 fish species, lakes, rivers, fishing gear, guides and outfitters which helps to create a consistent taxonomy throughout the site. So whenever you post a report or ask a question and start to tag it, an auto-complete suggests the names of species, gear, and so on. Anyone later searching for those topics will be able to find your updates. The taxonomy also makes possible an online fishing encyclopedia seeded with licensed content, built on MediaWiki. Desmond thinks the same model can be applied to many other outdoor enthusiast activities such as hunting, gardening, surfing, backpacking, even classic car rebuilding (is that a sport?). His criteria: “There has to be big enthusiasm, lots of small businesses, and a narrative that attaches to it in a daily, ongoing way.” But first, he has to prove the model with Go FISHn. The bait has been cast. Will anglers bite? Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   |
| Microsoft Looks For Don Dodge Replacement Posted: 07 Dec 2009 01:42 PM PST
Eleven days after Dodge was let go he was a Google employee. Now Microsoft is looking for his replacement, it seems. From a job listing (we’re trying to confirm with Microsoft now that it’s authentic):
This is very nearly an exact description of Dodge’s job, although it may be a more junior role. The job is also based in Boston – Don was based there, too. Did Microsoft let Dodge go to hire someone younger and cheaper? Seems like a penny wise and pound foolish decision to me. Startups loved Dodge. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0   |
| Google Analytics Gets An Upgrade With Annotations, New API And More Posted: 07 Dec 2009 01:38 PM PST  With all of the news surrounding Google’s newest additions to its search technology, Google’s latest upgrade to Google Analytics has been overshadowed. Analytics is the search giant's free software product that allows website owners and publishers to get detailed statistics about the number, whereabouts and search behavior of their visitors (and much more). Today, the product is being upgraded to become even more customizable. The most noteworthy new feature is the ability to leave annotations or notes within in analytics charts, helping to explain sudden spikes or drops in traffic. Annotations lets analytics users to leave shared or private notes right on the over-time graph in an effort to let users bring intelligence to data. The beauty of Google Analytics is that it is customizable to collect the specific data that is important to a user or business. While users have been able to define multiple custom variables when it comes to receiving data (for example, visitors, page views), users can now see these variable across all data in their reports. Previously, you’d have a separate report for custom variables, but with this feature, users can create an advanced segmentation of data and see it across all reports. Google also made it easier for users to track data across multiple subdomains, mobile sites and more with a new tracking code setup wizard. The new technology will automatically generate the appropriate code for specialized tracking without the user having to input it manually. Finally, Google is going to be making a significant upgrade to its Analytics API, which launched in public beta earlier this year, to include advanced segmentation and new data metrics features that were announced in October. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   |
| Video: Google Goggles Live In Action Posted: 07 Dec 2009 12:30 PM PST It’s one thing for Google to talk about how cool its new Goggles service is, and to show it off in staged demo videos — it’s another to see it in action. Our own Jason Kincaid was at Google’s Search Event in Mountain View today and got a chance to get a real world demo of Google Goggles. The service, which is currently an application for Android, is impressive. Watch below:
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   |
| Apple Bans Another Developer, 1000+ Apps Pulled Posted: 07 Dec 2009 12:00 PM PST As the old mantra goes, “Cheaters never prosper”. In this digital age, it may be time to revise that saying. Granted a veil of anonymity by the Internet, cheaters surely prosper from their cheating; it’s just that when they get caught, they go down hard. Alas, “Cheaters may temporarily prosper – but if they get caught, they’re totally boned” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. Such was the case earlier today, when the development company behind over 1,000 iPhone applications was busted scamming the review system. In a flash, the developer — and all one thousand of their applications — have been pulled from the store. Read the rest of this post at MobileCrunch >> Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0   |
| Online Sample Sale Site Ideeli Raises A Whopping $20 Million Posted: 07 Dec 2009 11:56 AM PST We’ve written about the rapid growth of online sample sales; with the latest news coming from the rumored acquisition of European sample sale site Vente-Privee by Amazon for an estimated $3.01 billion . Today, online shopping site Ideeli, which was founded in 2007, has raised $20 million in funding, according to an SEC filing. We’ve contacted the company for further comment. Prior to this round of funding, Ideeli raised $3.8 million from Kodiak Venture Partners. The amount raised isn’t surprising considering that similar startups in the online sample sales space like Gilt Groupe, and Hautelook are all raising huge amounts of money, growing their user base at a rapid pace and turning a strong profit. Gilt recently raised an estimated $40 million in funding in July, which valued the company at $400 million. VC firm Kleiner Perkins recently invested in One Kings Lane, an online sample sale site for home decor and accessories, which we wrote about here. The concept has even attracted retail giants like Saks and Neiman Marcus, which are now jumping on the bandwagon to offer their own private sales. The basic idea behind the online sample sale model is this: big designers, such as Marc Jacobs or Versace, place excess inventory on a sale site at 50 to 70 percent discounts over a several day period. The sales are private, available only to members, with upcoming sales from brands announced via emails. Products include clothing for men, women and children as well as jewelry, handbags and home accessories. You can get invites from other members or request invites via the site. A few months ago, I spoke with Ideeli’s CEO Paul Hurley, who revealed that the site just hit one million members and is set to do $50 million in revenue this year. Hurley expects to do $175 million in revenue next year. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   |
| Google Gets Its First Taste Of Facebook’s Realtime Stream Posted: 07 Dec 2009 11:39 AM PST Google’s new realtime search wouldn’t be complete without Facebook updates. At the tail-end of today’s Google search event Marissa Mayer announced that Google will start to include realtime results from Facebook as well as MySpace. While Twitter and MySpace is making available everybody’s updates (or at least the public ones), Google right now will only show updates from public Facebook pages, which are generally fan pages. “Facebook will be providing us with a feed of updates from public profile pages, also known as Facebook pages,” says Mayer. Facebook is still holding back publicly-designated updates from individuals (those visible to “everyone”). These individual updates make up the widest and most valuable part of Facebook’s stream. Mayer would not discuss the financial terms of the deals with Facebook (or with Twitter or MySpace). But it is likely that Google is paying a hefty fee for this data. The amount it is paying probably depends on whether it is just ingesting the data or providing its realtime index of these status updates back to the underlying services. Facebook however is already indexing all Facebook status updates on its own, so it is not clear that it would want or need Google’s indexed data, and may be holding out for a more lucrative offer for the full fed of public updates. So today’s announcement may be just a first step for Facebook, with that more valuable set of updates open to future negotiations. For Google, mastering realtime search is critical because it is one of the few areas where it is playing catch-up, and thus there is an opportunity for another search engine to steal the realtime show. In order to become the most comprehensive realtime search engine, Google must be able to index and display the most important sources of realtime data. Being able to dive deeper into Facebook’s stream will be necessary in order to do that. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   |
| Google Aims To Push The Speed Of Light With Realtime Results. Seriously. Posted: 07 Dec 2009 11:05 AM PST
“It's Google's relevance technology meeting the realtime web,” is how Singhal described it. As we’ve learned over the past several months with Twitter Search, relevancy is perhaps the key to making realtime search a pillar of the web. Google seems to believe it has cracked the code for this, and has been internally testing it for a while now. But starting today it’s going live for everyone. Singhal showed off the new feature by doing a query for “Obama.” The results page shows results coming in in realtime. And yes, it works with Twitter. For example, Google’s Matt Cutts tweeted something from the audience, and in popped in the results immediately. This is the first time any search engine has integrated realtime results into a standard page, Google says. Obviously, this is huge.
“The importance of relevance has gone through the roof as the amount of information out there is growing. Relevance has become the critical factor,” Singhal noted. He went on to note that a lot goes on behind the scenes to make sure the relevancy remains intact — including Google apparently developing “dozens” of new technologies. Language is a key aspect to this (and on that front, realtime results will be available in English first, but should come to the rest of the web in Q1 2010). Another key is determining if things like tweets were sent automatically or manually by someone. When this goes live (update, it is live now), you will see a new “Latest” option in the “Show options” sidebar of Google Search. There is also a way to filter results just to status updates from Twitter and the like. “Light can travel around the world in 1/10th of a second, and we won't rest until the speed of light is the only barrier to getting good search results to you,” Singhal noted. Quite a goal. Update: Realtime search is now live on some accounts (including ours). Below find a quick video of it in action and some screenshots. [photo: flickr/fabbio] Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0   |
| Google Rethinks Searching On The Go Posted: 07 Dec 2009 11:02 AM PST At Google’s news event today, the search giant revealed a multitude of new technologies and strategies they are exploring to ramp up search. Google emphasized the significance of mobile search within its strategy, unveiling a multitude of new features that help users search on the go. The three main areas that Google’s mobile strategy is focused on are Voice, Location, and Sight. Voice Google’s VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra revealed that Google’s mobile app will be enhanced to take in-depth search queries by voice and then show more accurate results. And Google is launching support for additional languages besides English, including Mandarin and Japanese. The other component to this technology is the ability to translate voice technologies on the go.
Gundotra said today that location will be “a first class component of all the products” Google develops. Google.com’s new mobile homepage will now include customized search suggestions based on location. You’ll also be able to incorporate location with product search, with the new mobile technology providing inventory feeds of local stores. So if you do a search for a Canon camera, you could get results first from the stores that have the camera in stock closest to your current location. Also, a “Near Me Now” feature on the Google Mobile homepage will show you nearby restaurants, coffee shops, Bars, ATMS, similar to what Yelp offers users with its mobile applications. Google’s new version of Mobile Maps for Android will include this technology. Sight Google demoed a brand new product set to launch in Google Labs: Google Goggles, which is an attempt at visual search via mobile phones. The example that Google VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra showed on stage involved taking a picture of a particular bottle of wine. When he ran it through Google Goggles, the result showed that the particular bottle has a hint of apricots. You also will be able to use Goggles to look up things such as CD covers and bar codes (this is likely similar to the popular Android app ShopSavvy). For text, Google Goggles uses optical character recognition (OCR) to try and read things like labels to aid the search. Real-Time Search This morning, Google launched its real-time search offering, which will work on both Android devices and iPhones immediately. Google says there are over a billion realtime documents a day that it will be looking at. This includes tweets, blog posts, and also information from sources like MySpace and Facebook. Honestly, the push towards location-based search is not surprising at all, but it should be interesting to see if the new technology encroaches upon a space where companies like Yelp make their living. As we wrote earlier today, Goggles takes a huge leap forward in the field of visual search. Of course, rounding out Google’s offerings with real-time technology makes its mobile product significantly more powerful. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   |
| CrunchGear in China: The Factory Posted: 07 Dec 2009 11:00 AM PST  The driver pulled up to a small office complex in the heart of the city and beckoned us into the back of his scuffed white van. The surface of the vehicle was caked in dust and the seats, clad in new blue velvet, were sized for someone much smaller. I curled up in the back and we were off into the city, cars coming at all sides and bikes darting out in front of the unflappable driver, his smile never wavering as we drove. I was on my way to a factory outside of Shenzhen, a city of 14 million people mostly dedicated to the manufacture of the things we buy. If it beeps, makes phone calls, or increasingly, if you can wear it, it's probably come from out here. We roll through the city to the outskirts and then onto a wide five-lane highway that rolls up through the smog, past rocks and hills that look like a stage set for a Kung Fu fable. This is modern China, a place of conflicting images and a world of untrammeled growth.   |
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