The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Urbanspoon: Half A Billion Shakes And Counting
- Browser-For-Kids Maker KidZui Scores $4M, Deals With Best Buy, DreamWorks
- Yahoo Search Hits The App Store; Takes On Yelp With Sketch-A-Search
- LookTel, An App For The Blind
- NileGuide Unveils New Location-Based iPhone App For Travel Recommendations On The Go
- Dell’s Android-based Aero Hits The Big Time On AT&T
- AdMob Launches New SDKs For Android And iPhone Platforms, Enhances Publisher Tools
- mSpot’s Mobile Movie Streaming Service Expands To The Web
- Google-Backed Life360 Acquires Lost Item Tagging Service Foundog
- Opera Submits Browser App For iPhone, But Will It Be Approved?
- OpenDNS Now Serves 1% Of The Internet (That’s A Big Number)
- Opera’s AdMarvel Partners With PointRoll For iPad Advertising Platform
- The Contract-Free iPhone Is Simply The First Sign That A New iPhone Is Nearing
- Offerpal Media Acquires Tapjoy, Gains Beachhead For Mobile App Monetization
- Amazon: You Need To Change Your Idiotic Customer Reviews Policy Right Now
- NBC’s Meet The Press Gets An iPhone App Courtesy Of Zumobi
- Better Late Than Never. Justin.tv Comes To The iPhone.
- What’s In The Health Care Bill? According To Google, A Bit Of Farmville.
- Some Crazy Postbellum Data From Foursquare And Gowalla
- Google Maps Tests Integrated Hotel Price Listings
- SV Angel Adds New Partner Mike Ghaffary To Replace The Guy That Left To Run Dailybooth
- Colourlovers Mixes With ColorSchemer, Added To Twitter’s Design Palette
- News Corp. Throwing Away The Crown Jewel: Fox Audience Network
- YouTube Axes Its RealTime Toolbar Experiment
- Erply: Skype of Business Software?
| Urbanspoon: Half A Billion Shakes And Counting Posted: 23 Mar 2010 08:49 AM PDT There’s no denying it. People love to shake their iPhones. It’s almost as if they want to see how much they can shake it before it breaks. But shaking it is half the fun, especially when apps take advantage of the built-in accelerometer to turn shaking into a feature. One of the earliest apps to make shaking a central element of its interface was Urbanspoon, the restaurant recommender. You shake the slot-machine inspired app to find nearby restaurants. Since launching in the summer of 2008, Urbanspoon’s iPhone app has been shaken more than half a billion times. The app has been installed more than 9 million times, and continues to be popular (currently it is the No. 5 most popular free app in the Travel category, right after Yelp). Since being acquired by IAC last year (it is now part of the Citysearch business), its Website has also grown. According to Citysearch’s internal numbers, Urbanspoon.com is getting 7 million monthly unique visitors, up 220 percent from a year ago right before the acquisition. Comscore shows 2.3 million monthly uniques worldwide as of January, 2010, and 1.8 million in the U.S. as of February, 2010, with 129 percent and 83 percent annual growth respectively. (Comscore’s numbers are estimates, but they corroborate the upward trend in traffic reported by Citysearch). Below is the U.S. chart from comScore:      
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| Browser-For-Kids Maker KidZui Scores $4M, Deals With Best Buy, DreamWorks Posted: 23 Mar 2010 08:42 AM PDT
This round, which brings the total investment in KidZui to $14 million, was led by Mission Ventures and joined by prior backers of the company. Probably the biggest deal KidZui managed to ink was with retail giant Best Buy, who will be including a pre-installed version of the browser with its OEM computers starting next quarter. Secondly, the company has created an integrated sponsorship for ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ for DreamWorks, essentially integrating the lead character from the movie into the social network experience of KidZui. Kids can take a quiz about the trailers and parents are subsequently alerted via the company’s weekly emails that their kids are interested in seeing the movie. KidZui is also featuring the movie content on its home page, and lets kids personalize their KidZui experience with movie-branded material.      
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| Yahoo Search Hits The App Store; Takes On Yelp With Sketch-A-Search Posted: 23 Mar 2010 08:11 AM PDT
Yahoo’s Search app includes the ability to refine results based on your location. The app will also autosuggest local keywords when you type a query into the search box. The app delivers local content, with photos, ratings, phone numbers and more from Yahoo Local, Yelp and Citysearch. And the app includes voice search so you can speak your query. To clear a query, you shake your phone. Yahoo’s Sketch-a-Search is a little more of a unique offering. To conduct a search, you use your finger to draw a circle or boundary on your phone’s map to look up businesses within that location. The app defaults to the users’ current location, and also allows people to search for a specific city, or area. The app initially will only deliver results for restaurants in given areas but will launch other local categories in the near future. Within the results, you can refine restaurants by cuisine, ambiance, and star rating. You can click on restaurants to read reviews, browse photos, get directions, or make a phone call from within the app. It’s similar in some ways to the functionality of Yelp or CitySearch. Yahoo is definitely late in the game to launch a search app in the App Store. The much younger Microsoft Bing launched a search iPhone app in December. Yahoo Search on the web has been steadily losing marketshare since Bing arrived on the search scene. And with the search deal with Microsoft finally approved, Yahoo search will go through another transition. Microsoft will take over Yahoo’s organic and paid search results and blend those resources into Bing. Yahoo will continue to control the front-end UI of search on Yahoo’s sites, and consumers will continue to see and be able to use the Yahoo search engine.      
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| Posted: 23 Mar 2010 07:34 AM PDT  Now here's a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day. LookTel is an object identifier - you point it at something and it tells you what it is. You can teach it to recognize new objects and by aiming it at a product, the program can tell what it is using real speech and when you need to ID something on the fly, you can stick on an image sticker and read that sticker. It's more or less a barcode and QR scanner with some image recognition thrown in, but it really could be a boon to those with failing - or failed - eyesight. Click through for a video and a bit more on the product.
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| NileGuide Unveils New Location-Based iPhone App For Travel Recommendations On The Go Posted: 23 Mar 2010 06:41 AM PDT
What’s Next aggregates content from over 30 different sources, including Citysearch and the NileGuide website, for 200 destinations. The app is designed for travel spontaneity. Travelers can arrive at a destination, turn on their device, touch the "Near Me" button, and find recommendations for nearby activities, restaurants, nightlife, hotels and more. Users can refine these recommendations by filtering with preferences such as "romantic," "business" or "off the beaten path," or by searching based on activity type such as museums, spas or golf courses. There is also a filter for hotels and restaurants for "good for business travelers". Users can also plan trips in advance by touching "Where To" button from the Home screen, choose any destination, and start building an itinerary before they arrive. And the app features much of the guidebook-like content that NileGuide includes on its web site. NileGuide also has a free iPhone app that integrates more of the travel itinerary-creation functionality that is included on the startup’s website. While the travel app industry is a competitive space, this new app from NileGuide could be an incredibly useful tool for on-the-go recommendations with a location-based twists. And its reasonably priced given the vast amount of information included in the app. Founded in 2006 and based in San Francisco, NileGuide has received $9.5 million in funding from investors including Draper Richards, KPG Ventures, Austin Ventures, and Tenaya Capital.      
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| Dell’s Android-based Aero Hits The Big Time On AT&T Posted: 23 Mar 2010 05:48 AM PDT  Dell's Aero is a decidedly odd duck. When we first discussed it a few months ago, it looked like it would be a non-US device. Now, however, it's hit AT&T and it looks like a cross between the new T-Mobile CLIQ XT and a NeXT Cube. Dig those photorealistic icons!
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| AdMob Launches New SDKs For Android And iPhone Platforms, Enhances Publisher Tools Posted: 23 Mar 2010 05:18 AM PDT
The new Android SDK allows for expandable canvas and multi-panel banner advertisements on Android devices, with the updated iPhone SDK featuring performance enhancements and additional server side flexibility. The new Flash Lite SDK, which is in beta, enables monetization with CPC text ads. And AdMob is rolling out a new adaptive mobile ad unit, which allows for a banner sizes ad unit to remain a constant size as consumers pinch and scroll through a Web site that's designed for a PC screen on their mobile device. New publisher tools include a enhances Publisher Dashboard with a customizable interface for publishers to view all the key statistics for their mobile Web sites and various applications in one location. AdMob has rolled out a better Reporting UI and now allows publishers and advertisers to build their own tools and dashboards via a new reporting API. Other additions include Server Side SDK Controls, which gives publishers the ability to dynamically control the display and format of the ads in their applications; and AdWhirl (which AdMob bought) for iPhone and Android applications. In a recent survey AdMob found that 31 percent of developers in its network are working across multiple mobile platforms today and almost half (47 percent) said they plan on developing on more than one platform in the next six months. Other findings from the survey include: AdMob also released some interesting stats from the app developers the company works with. The advertising network says that more than 70 percent of iPhone developers plan to develop apps for the Android platform over the next six months and close to half of Android developers (48 percent) plan to develop for iPhone. Developers were most satisfied with the iPhone platform and least satisfied with RIM. And 58 percent of developers said they currently develop mobile Web sites. Google is currently awaiting approval for its deal to buy AdMob. We recently heard Google has been reaching out to mobile companies for help in getting the acquisition cleared by the FTC. Specifically, they’re asking select companies to write letters in support of the deal, which Google will then forward to the FTC.      
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| mSpot’s Mobile Movie Streaming Service Expands To The Web Posted: 23 Mar 2010 04:57 AM PDT
mSpot has struck deals with Paramount, Universal, Image Entertainment, and Screen Media Ventures to stream full-length movie rentals to users' PCs and cell phones, allowing you to switch between both devices as you pick up and leave off throughout a movie. The PC streaming functionality builds upon the mobile movie service mSpot launched last year. The service includes 1000 titles that can be streamed to both a computer and mobile device. The service works on over 50 different handset devices – including the iPhone, Blackberry, Palm, Android, Windows Mobile and others. Users can stream individual movies for $4.99 each or join a monthly Movie Club: $9.99/month for up to 4 movies, $12.99 for 6 movies, or $15.99 for 8 movies. Of course, mSpot’s main competition is Apple, which lets Mac, iPhone and iPod touch users, download and sync movies and shows onto all of their devices via an AppleTV. But mSpot And mSpot will face other series competition from Netflix, when the company eventually moves into the mobile space.      
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| Google-Backed Life360 Acquires Lost Item Tagging Service Foundog Posted: 23 Mar 2010 04:27 AM PDT
Foundog is a tagging service that allows you to track your items via a “eTriever tag.” You simple affix a tag to any item; the tag has a number and instructions for someone who finds the lost item to to go Foundog’s site and register the item. The owner can then track to see if their lost item was registered. IBM, Symantec and HSBC use Foundog’s system in-house. With the acquisition, all users of Foundog’s recovery tags will gain free access to a white-labeled version of Life360’s online safety and security suite, which includes services that provide identity theft protection, cell phone-based family tracking, emergency child identification, lost item recovery, sex offender monitoring, and an emergency messaging system to reconnect families even when some communication lines are down after a natural disaster. Life360 just raised $750,000 and won the first Android Developer Challenge (good for a $300,000 award). The startup was also chosen to be part of last summer’s fbFund REV.      
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| Opera Submits Browser App For iPhone, But Will It Be Approved? Posted: 23 Mar 2010 02:39 AM PDT
Million dollar question: will Apple allow it in, or leave the Norwegian software company hanging? The company says Opera Mini for iPhone is up to 6 times faster than the native browser thanks to its compression and server-side rendering technology, based on internal tests, and after having tried it at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year I have to say it’s definitely zooming. Opera at the time told me that they’d analyzed the App Store policies in great detail, and that they’re completely certain of being 100% compliant – which sort of puts the ball in Apple’s camp. What do you think its chances for approval are?      
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| OpenDNS Now Serves 1% Of The Internet (That’s A Big Number) Posted: 23 Mar 2010 02:24 AM PDT
Today, OpenDNS is announcing that over one percent of the world’s Internet users are using its services. It’s the first DNS provider to hit such a milestone, and it means that over 18 million people are using the service to access the web in a way that founder and CEO David Ulevitch calls “safer, faster, smarter and more reliable.“ And that usage number has doubled in just the last 12 months, according to Ulevitch. That type of growth is important because a new, big time player just entered the ring: Google. But despite the big name, and the right price (free), the results for Google’s DNS offering have varied. And in a test we ran with Google’s own Namebench product, OpenDNS easily beat Google in DNS speed. The truth is that most users have no idea what any of these DNS services do, or how to go about changing them. So companies like OpenDNS have to rely on partnerships with schools (they have over 25,000), partnerships with large corporations (they have them with many Fortune 500 companies), or parents really worried about what their children are surfing for on the web. But again, the growth is clearly happening, and actually picking up speed, according to Ulevitch, so that’s a very good sign. An even better sign: OpenDNS has been profitable since 2007. [photo: flickr/jurvetson]      
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| Opera’s AdMarvel Partners With PointRoll For iPad Advertising Platform Posted: 23 Mar 2010 02:08 AM PDT
Dubbed the iPad Advertising Platform, the companies aim to combine PointRoll's rich media technology with AdMarvel's mobile advertising capabilities. The launch of the platform is part of a broader partnership between both companies, who will develop cross-platform solutions for ad mediation, campaign management, ad serving and analytics tailored to the latest mobile devices and operating systems. AdMarvel boasts about its cross-browser, cross-application SDK for developers to build services that include rich media advertising options for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch and other mobile applications including Android and Blackberry. Developers can source from some 60 ad networks from around the globe to deliver geo-targeted ads. In turn, marketers and ad networks can tap into the platform to manage campaigns, targeting and frequency control and get clear performance metrics. The iPad Advertising Platform is said to support JavaScript, expandable ad units, animation, interstitials, transparent overlays of content and interaction. The platform also supports in-app advertising units for the promotion of new features or content channels. Finally, the iPad Advertising Platform features click-to-contact, click-to-maps, click-to-app and click-to-video actions. AdMarvel / PointRoll is far from the only one coming up with solutions for Apple’s iPad – rival Mobclix released its iPad SDK just last week. And to think Apple has yet to commence shipping the first iPad units to early adopters. (Source: press release)      
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| The Contract-Free iPhone Is Simply The First Sign That A New iPhone Is Nearing Posted: 23 Mar 2010 01:44 AM PDT
But that doesn’t mean this move is entirely uninteresting. You may be wondering why Apple is doing this? And why now? Well, it seems fairly obvious that’s it’s an attempt to move inventory before a new piece of iPhone hardware launches in the June or July timeframe. Remember, that’s just a few short months away already. When Apple first ships its iPhone hardware, it requires that you also purchase an AT&T contract with the device. This is both practical (supplies are tighter), but also because AT&T pays Apple a ton of money for each subsidized iPhone sold. But as time goes on and new hardware nears, Apple is more concerned with moving existing inventory to make way for the new device. A $500, $600, or $700 (depending on the model and size) phone isn’t going to sell a ton of units — especially since it’s not unlocked — but there will be those who pay the premium to ship it overseas or are comfortable doing the relatively painless process of unlocking the phone themselves (which voids the warranty). Unfortunately, in the U.S., even if it is unlocked, the phone will only be able to work on T-Mobile as well as AT&T, since those are the two (major) GSM carriers. A different chip (CDMA) would have to be in the iPhone for it to work on the nation’s biggest network, Verizon (or Sprint, for that matter). Because of the price and restrictions, this move will probably have minimal impact on actual sales. So don’t be surprised if when the fourth generation iPhone is announced, if we also hear about a price cut for the current iPhone 3GS down to $99 (just as Apple did last year with the iPhone 3G). So, it was a nice pipe-dream for a few hours this morning that Apple was going to be changing its policy and selling the iPhone unlocked (as Google offers as an option for its Nexus One). After all, many would take it as a sign that they’ve grown weary of AT&T and could soon partner with another carrier in the U.S. But really, this is just the first of undoubtedly many signs that a new iPhone is coming.      
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| Offerpal Media Acquires Tapjoy, Gains Beachhead For Mobile App Monetization Posted: 22 Mar 2010 11:54 PM PDT
Tomorrow, Offerpal Media, one of the giants in social gaming monetization, will announce the acquisition of Tapjoy. That gives Offerpal a beachhead into the mobile space, an area they have only dipped their toes into to date. The company helps applications like Tap Tap Revenge monetize users. The vast majority of revenue comes via pay-for-installs on other mobile apps, meaning users are paid virtual currency to download other mobile applications (on Tap Tap Revenge 3, it takes about 3 installs of free apps to get enough credits for a free song download). Developers have access to turnkey software to easily add monetization and analytics tools to their iPhone, Android and other mobile apps. Tapjoy keeps between 1/3 and 1/2 of the revenue, passing the rest on to publishers. They are “very profitable,” say the founders. Tapjoy “dovetails nicely” with Offerpal’s existing offers and monetization platform, says Offerpal CEO George Garrick. Tapjoy, founded Lee Linden and Ben Lewis, has been integrated into apps by “more than 1,000″ developers and reaches 25 million mobile consumers. Offerpal isn’t saying what the size of the transaction is, or how much revenue Tapjoy is generating to date. It’s growing fast from a small base, though. Tapjoy says “annual installs, user base and revenue is expected to quadruple this year.” Our guess after asking a few of their customers is that revenue is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per month. Tapjoy raised just one round of funding – $600,000 from Tugboat Ventures in early 2009. The Tapjoy founders dropped by our office at about 11 pm for a quick video to talk about the company and the acquisition:      
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| Amazon: You Need To Change Your Idiotic Customer Reviews Policy Right Now Posted: 22 Mar 2010 10:55 PM PDT
Lewis’ latest book – The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine – was published less than a week ago and has already reached the number one sales rank spot on Amazon. It’s an impressive feat, especially for a serious piece of non-fiction writing with nary a wizard, a vampire or an ancient code that’s – holy shit! – hidden in plain sight to boost its sales. But the feat is made all the more impressive by the fact that many of the book’s reviews are, without a word of exaggeration, so negative that they’d made a Nuremberg verdict look upbeat and generous. At the time of writing there are 64 one star reviews – more than the total number of 2-5 star review combined – sending a clear message to potential purchasers: this book might be popular but it’s also a total sack of crap. Don’t waste your money. There’s just one problem with that message: less than half of those one star reviews are actually reviewing the book. Instead, most of the reviewers’ ire relates to the fact that publishers WW Norton have decided not to release a Kindle version of the book at the same time as its hardback release. Writes one (pretty representative) reviewer by the name of Ben Kaplan:
Go, Ben! No, seriously, go. I’ve written before about the flawed thinking of publishers who delay Kindle releases to protect hardback sales. It’s an idiotic move but it’s one that many publishers feel forced into due to Amazon’s policy of charging $9.99 for most popular Kindle titles. It’s loss-leader pricing for Amazon and publishers still get their full due, but the low digital price point discourages hardback sales which results – in the short term at least – in a drop in overall revenues. As someone who has spent hundreds of dollars on a Kindle, I completely understand the frustration of those who are irritated at having to wait until the paperback release of a book before they can get hold of digital copy. But the idea that one star reviews will provide “an excellent lesson for the author” to release their ebooks earlier is bullshit of the lowest order. I speak from pained experience as an author when I say that we have absolutely no say on when our books are released, in what format and at what price. And yet we’re the ones who have the most to lose from negative Amazon reviews. A book’s overall star rating is one of the most prominent pieces of information on an Amazon page and many readers – quite reasonably – equate a low average rating with a poorly written book. This damages sales of the book and also damages our reputations as writers. Almost nobody – unless they click through and read the full text of the negative reviews – sees a one star rating and assumes its a comment on the decision by the publisher to withhold an electronic edition. Barry Ritholtz, economics commentator and author of Bailout Nation, has written an excellent blog post on the subject, describing the one-star reviews as “nothing more than collective bullying. ‘Give me your lunch money (kindle version), or I will beat you up during recess (give you one star reviews)” and calling for Amazon to change their review policy. Ritholz is right – but this it’s a problem that goes far beyond this current Kindle spat. Amazon’s book review policy has long been a bugbear of mine, and most other authors’. Too often, especially with controversial authors, the most negative reviews come from people who haven’t even read the book in question. Their anger, and the resulting one-star review, is simply a statement of general antipathy towards the author and everything they do. I know of several authors who have had to ask Amazon to take down libelous one-star reviews that focus on their gender, their race, their political views and almost any other aspect of their character. While these might – might – be relevant factors in a general discussion about the author, they certainly have no place in a review of their work. And they certainly shouldn’t contribute to a headline star rating that helps readers decide whether a book is worth their money. The most frustrating thing is how easy this problem is to fix. Amazon needs to – immediately – change its review policy so that only people who have actually bought a book are allowed to review it. At a stroke, this would get rid of the complaints from people unable to buy a particular title on the Kindle, or unwilling to buy it in hardback – and it would also banish all of the general haters (who would never spend money on a book by the object of their hatred) as well as the kids and trolls who have never bought a book in their life. It’s hard, in fact, to think of a downside to restricting reviews to actual purchasers of a particular title. Sure it’s a restriction on the right of reviewers to express their opinion on a book or an author without first paying money, but so it should be. Amazon isn’t a general book review site, it’s a store – and as such its reader reviews exist to answer one question alone: is this book – in whatever format it happens to be published – worth my money? And that’s a question that should only be answered by real shoppers, not crazed Kindle fanboys or assorted haters with an axe to grind.      
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| NBC’s Meet The Press Gets An iPhone App Courtesy Of Zumobi Posted: 22 Mar 2010 08:50 PM PDT
The app features interviews with journalists, political experts and politicians from the show’s weekly roundtable. Consumers can easily share clips via Twitter, access podcasts and send host David Gregory questions directly from the app. The app also features the show’s extra web interviews which are expanded roundtables on the top news of the day. Boeing as the exclusive sponsor and advertiser of the app. A similar app will be launched for BlackBerry phones in April. Zumobi is actually not paid to develop apps, but actually takes a revenue share of branded content from advertising. Zumobi has also created iPhone apps for other NBC properties, including MSNBC, The Rachel Maddow Show, and The Today Show.      
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| Better Late Than Never. Justin.tv Comes To The iPhone. Posted: 22 Mar 2010 08:15 PM PDT Watching live video on your iPhone is nothing new, but it is becoming increasingly easier to do. More than a year after Ustream launched its live video viewing iPhone app, and followed up with a video publishing app, along with Qik and Kyte, Justin.tv is entering the mobile game with its first iPhone app (which should be available shortly in the iTunes store). Justin.tv CEO Michael Seibel says they took their time with the app because they wanted to get it right. “We tried not to cut corners,” he says. All the live videos and channels available on the Website can be watched in the iPhone app. You can find videos by looking at the featured channels or by searching. Videos play horizontally in landscape mode, and text chat is built into the app. The chat text is laid across the bottom of the video and can be tapped on to make it disappear. And the audio works both with or without headphones, which apparently isn’t the case with all other iPhone video apps. Video channels can be saved as favorites, and an upcoming update to the app will add push notifications to tell you whenever one of your favorite channels is on live. Videos can be shared via email. Where the app falls short is that it is only for watching live videos, not streaming them from your iPhone’s video camera. The issue is that the iPhone API still doesn’t allow apps to access the camera directly. Instead, other “live streaming” video apps have to come up with workarounds, which often involve sending out a succession of camera screen captures at one to two frames per second. Seibel hopes the next iPhone OS 4.0 will allow for direct camera access which would make video uploads from the iPhone much more efficient. If the iPhone OS 4.0 API makes live video streaming more practical, Justin.tv will include it as a feature in its app, along with the regular Twitter and Facebook broadcasting options. Check out the app and tell us in comments how it compares the other video livestreaming iPhone apps. Was it worth the wait, or is Justin.tv late to the game?      
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| What’s In The Health Care Bill? According To Google, A Bit Of Farmville. Posted: 22 Mar 2010 07:59 PM PDT
Well, if you click through to the detail page for either of the two queries, the answer appears to reside there. First of all, there are a bunch of borderline spam sites suggesting the game launched today on the website Farmville.com. That’s not true, it has actually been there for several months, using Facebook Connect. But still, that doesn’t appear to be what’s causing the “On Fire” surge. That may be something much more interesting. It looks like queries are on fire because Google is tying in searches for “republicans” and “what is in the health care bill” to these Farmville searches, for some unknown reason. Both of those queries appear in the “Related searches” area for both of those Farmville queries. Seeing as just about all anyone in the United States is talking about is the House’s passing of the new health care bill, and the strong Republican opposition to it, it’s no wonder these queries are exploding. Meanwhile, according to Google Trends, “health reform bill summary” is only the 14th most popular search, just behind “chris johnson s car.“ At this point, we’re going to assume this is simply a Google mix-up and not some type of 4chan-style gaming of Google. But if anyone has more info, feel free to leave it in the comments or send it in: tips [at] techcrunch.com. [Thanks Shmuel]      
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| Some Crazy Postbellum Data From Foursquare And Gowalla Posted: 22 Mar 2010 06:39 PM PDT
GigaOm posted some numbers earlier today, including that during the five days of SXSW (Interactive), Foursquare signed up 75,000 new users, to push them over 600,000 total. We got some other numbers from both Foursquare and Gowalla, as well.
Neither company had any specific data as to whether they’re seeing a surge after Apple featured their apps in the App Store because it’s too hard to tell seeing as there was already a surge post-SXSW, I’m told. The App Store placement, assuming Apple keeps it up for a while, should help both maintain the momentum they have after the event. [photo: flickr/zhengxu]      
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| Google Maps Tests Integrated Hotel Price Listings Posted: 22 Mar 2010 06:08 PM PDT
According to the post, the feature is only available to a small number of users, so don’t be surprised if you don’t see it. It’s also only being tested with a small number of advertisers, so there’s probably a limited selection of hotels that have prices listed. Prices simply appear next to each listing on the map — clicking the price reveals which travel site is offering it (the example lists prices from Priceline and Expedia). Google notes that this doesn’t actually change the order of the hotels presented, it just augments the information shown about them. Assuming this test goes well, it’s not hard to envision more travel-related improvements that could be made for Maps, which could easily become a lead-gen goldmine. Yes, there are plenty of other travel sites that do this, but most of us use Google Maps out of habit, so it’s nice to have. This isn’t the first time Google has made moves affecting the travel space. Last summer, it launched a City Tours feature, which helps you automatically generate an itinerary of things to see on your trip.      
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| SV Angel Adds New Partner Mike Ghaffary To Replace The Guy That Left To Run Dailybooth Posted: 22 Mar 2010 05:43 PM PDT
SV Angel is in the process of closing its first outside round of funding – to date the firm only has invested capital from founding partner Ron Conway. And given their heavy investment rate of 3-4 companies per month, they needed to find someone to fill Brian’s shoes. Enter Mike Ghaffary, the newest partner at SV Angel. Gaffary joins SV Angel from TrialPay (a SV Angel investment). He was previously a vice president at Summit Partners, a venture capital and private equity fund. And he also co-founded Stitcher, an mobile audio service.      
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| Colourlovers Mixes With ColorSchemer, Added To Twitter’s Design Palette Posted: 22 Mar 2010 04:00 PM PDT
Design startup COLOURlovers.com, which is a creative community for color, has merged with ColorSchemer, a desktop color matching software. The Y Combinator-backed merged company, which is called CHROMAom, will launch in the next few months as the ultimate color authority, aiming to be the “Nielsen for all things color.” COLOURlovers officially completed the merger with ColorSchemer in November of 2009. Launched in 2006, COLOURlovers is a resource for people who use color and provides a place to compare and share color palettes, submit news and comments, and read color related articles and interviews. The site is currently seeing one million unique visitors a month and their users have created 1 million color palettes. Since the merger, COLOURlovers has been steadily growing its offerings and even struck a partnership with Twitter. When you go to your Design Settings within Twitter, you’ll see a link to COLOURlovers’ Themeleon, a tool that lets Twitter users create customized and sleek profile pages. In the past few months, Themeleon has been used to design and add color to over 500,000 Twitter profiles. COLOURlovers and ColorSchemer have also released a new web-based pattern design tool, called Seamless, which allows you to design seamless patterns. With COLOURlovers’ editing tools you can resize, rotate and add shapes, lines and text to the canvas and it tiles automatically. You can then save and use your pattern and template. Another new focus for the merged company is to partner with manufacturers to create products from the designs created on the site. You can create fabric, t-shirts, artwork, prints, and more from designs created on COLOURlovers. The startup’s co-founder Darius Monsef, who was formerly a engineer and designer for Microsoft’s Photosynth, tells me that eventually they’d like to become the Etsy for color design, allowing anyone to create and then sell design-related products on the site. While CHROMAom hasn’t been launched yet, its safe to say that COLOURlovers is fast becoming the go to site for all things color. Monsef hopes that CHROMAom will eventually be the global color authority to track all realtime information and research on color.      
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| News Corp. Throwing Away The Crown Jewel: Fox Audience Network Posted: 22 Mar 2010 03:22 PM PDT
Fox Audience Network, the advertising arm for News Corp.’s digital assets has trudged stoically through all the drama. Under President Adam Bain the entity has grown and now powers the ads not only for MySpace and other News Corp. websites, but also a fairly robust set of third party partners. Fox Audience Network is the 8th largest advertising networks according to Comscore, with nearly 150 million U.S. unique visitors a month. And it’s a close race. AOL is first with 185 million, and Google is second with 178 million.
Our sources are a little vague on expected price. Half of FAN’s revenue is supposedly from third parties, and half from MySpace and other News Corp. properties. We’ve heard about current revenues in the $100 million – $150 million range. One source said the price would be around 1x revenue. We didn’t reach out to News Corp. on this story as they never actually reply, but there will eventually be an announcement on this if the deal goes through.      
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| YouTube Axes Its RealTime Toolbar Experiment Posted: 22 Mar 2010 03:21 PM PDT
RealTime looked and behaved a bit like Facebook’s notification system and the Meebo Bar. You could click on a menu item in the bottom right hand side of your screen to see what your friends were currently watching. If a friend invited you to watch a video, a small notification window would pop up immediately. This could have been a boon to discovery, as it made it very easy for friends to swap the cool videos they found on the site. But YouTube never rolled it out widely — you could only access it if you had an invitation. So why did YouTube get rid of the feature? As it turns out, RealTime didn’t increase engagement and discovery as much as the other features that the site has been rolling out, like auto-sharing videos to Facebook and Twitter, and the improved YouTube friend finder. Thanks to Michel Wester for the tip      
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| Erply: Skype of Business Software? Posted: 22 Mar 2010 03:04 PM PDT Erply, a business software firm, has raised $2 million in funding from Redpoint and Index Ventures, along with Marten Mickos, Zack Urlocker (both formerly of MySQL), Kenny van Zant (SolarWinds), Aydin Senkut, David McClure and the Accelerator Group. The company, founded by Kristian Hiiemaa in Estonia, is a 2009 Seedcamp winner and is already profitable. Its client base is growing roughly 20% each month, according to Hiiemaa. They currently have 2,000 business customers and 8,000 users. Seedcamp is a UK based incubator program cofounded by Saul Klein. This is the first Seedcamp winner to get funded by Index Ventures, where Klein is a partner. “We think Erply can do for business software what Skype did for telecom,” Klein told us. Skype, like Erply, was developed in Estonia before being sold to eBay in 2005 with a $2.75 billion valuation. Klein is hoping that Erply follows a similarly disruptive path, by making traditionally expensive business applications more affordable for smaller companies. Erply specializes in business management software, helping companies deal with inventory control, bookkeeping, and other tasks, from their brick-and-mortar stores to online operations. While rivals like SAP, Microsoft and Oracle dominate the larger accounts, Erply focuses on small businesses— courting them with cheaper fees. Typically, a small business will fulfill their software needs with the larger providers or local developers, but Hiiemaa says more are defecting to Erply as the company finds success in its marketing efforts. The lionshare of the $2 million will be funneled towards marketing and expanding the company’s team in Eastern Europe. So far, the company counts 8,000 seats and 2,000 companies. Although Erply offers a mix of free and paid packages, many customers are opting for the paid packages (the average subscription fee is $74 a month) — the company boasts a 25% conversion rate from free to paid. Small start-ups are taking advantage of the free versions, but Hiiemaa says most companies are entering on the pay side. Sidenote: the company is also betting on the iPad— Erply is preparing to launch a new application for the device in the near term that will help with real time inventory management.      
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Yahoo is 
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