Future Technology

Say Hello To The Buzz Button. Google Didnât Make It, So We Did.

2010-02-11T13:30:00.001+05:30

Love it or hate it, everyone is talking about Google Buzz right now. And, judging from my account, a ton of people are actually using it too. The main use envisioned for Buzz was sharing, but the problem is that for content, you still need to copy a URL and then head over to Buzz to share it. Not anymore. We're all used to tweet buttons (like the one built by Tweetmeme), Facebook buttons, Digg buttons, and even Yahoo Buzz buttons on many posts around the web. These make it easy to share without having to leave the content. So we made a Google Buzz button.

One Block Off the Grid Raises $5 Million

2010-02-11T12:30:00.001+05:30

One Block Off the Grid, a company that helps residents get competitive group pricing for solar panel installation, has raised a $5 million series A round of venture capital from New Enterprise Associates. The company has gotten pretty far without formal venture cashâ"facilitating more than 600 installations in 2009, most of that in the fourth quarter. 1BOG, as it's called, hopes to install five-to-ten times that amount this year, so that NEA cash will help the company hire and grow. Think of 1BOG like another NEA investment, Groupon, but focused on solar panels. The site groups together customers in large metro areas interested in having panels installed and helps get them the best price. Only one could argue thereâs a much bigger need for IBOG. Most people donât know where to start if they want to install solar panels and have no idea how to compare bids between contractors. On average, 1BOG saves customers 15%. And, of course, thereâs the whole getting-us-off-foreign-oil/saving-the-planet benefit to 1BOG.

Gmail Banned By Iran; Is Twitter Next?

2010-02-11T11:30:00.001+05:30

The Iranian government has officially banned the use of Gmail in the country, reports The Wall Street Journal. In place of Google's email platform, Iran will allow citizens to use a State-sponsored national email service. The ban coincides with the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Republic, which is expected to draw mass protests and riots from citizens who are both for and against the regime. Last summer, during the controversy surrounding the Iranian elections, Iran banned social network FriendFeed. Facebook was also banned around election time. As many other communications outlets were blocked around this time period, Iranian citizens took to Twitter as the main tool of choice to spread information about what is going on.

The Zany 2006 Twitter Video Biz Stone Would Probably Rather Forget

2010-02-11T10:30:00.000+05:30

These days, thanks to its growing ubiquity in the media, nearly everyone knows what Twitter is. But back in 2006, when it was known as Twttr, a side project of the podcasting service Odeo, no one knew what it was. So co-founder Biz Stone made a video. As you can watch below in "Twttr 101," dug up by Say OMG, Stone dresses up as some sort of crazy scientist with Harry Potter glasses and sports an even crazier accent. Also worth noting is that at the time, Twitter was described as a "social texting service based on the contents of you mind." Most users today don't realize it, but in the early days, Twitter was almost entirely based around SMS.

Facebook Chat Launches XMPP Support

2010-02-11T09:30:00.000+05:30

If you're a fan of Facebook Chat but haven't been able to use it in your favorite chat client, good news: Facebook has just launched support for Jabber/XMPP, an open protocol that makes it very easy for any chat client or web service to integrate Facebook Chat (it's also the same protocol used by Google Talk). Facebook first announced that it was working on implementing Jabber/XMPP support way back in May 2008, and rumors that XMPP support was on its way began anew in November. There's a chance that this will lead to a surge in Facebook Chat usage, since it can now be easily integrated into just about every chat client out there, including iChat and AIM.

MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta Steps Down

2010-02-11T08:30:00.000+05:30

MySpace has just announced that CEO Owen Van Natta has left the company. Taking his place will be co-Presidents Mike Jones And Jason Hirschhorn, who had been serving as the company's Chief Operating Officer and Chief Product Officer, respectively. The news comes less than two weeks after we interviewed Van Natta about his first eight months running MySpace, when he gave no indication that he was intending to leave the company. Van Natta joined MySpace last April alongside Jones and Hirschhorn as part of a major executive shakeup. We'd previously reported that Chief Product Officer Hirschhorn would soon be leaving the company. Obviously that isn't the case. Our sources tell us that there has been a long standing conflict between News Corp digital chief Jon Miller and Van Natta, and that part of Van Natta's decision to leave was his inability to terminate Hirschhorn.

Hands On With D&D On The Microsoft Surface

2010-02-11T07:30:00.000+05:30

I just returned from the Microsoft campus, where some students from Carnegie Mellon University are showing off their awesome project, a version of D&D that runs on the Surface. Now, before you start rolling your eyes, just recognize that this isn't just a holy grail for tabletop gaming nerds. I mean, it's that too, but really it's a proof of concept that shows how fun and intuitive something like this can be, and how accessible a team can make it. I honestly think that if they had these things scattered around like Golden Tee cabinets, they'd get a huge following. The build we played with was last semester's (it's a student project, not a professional development), and since then there's been a lot of bug-squashing and feature-adding, but the newest build isn't playable. So they've got a short little scenario where we went from a zoomable map screen to a town where we... spotted some orcs! Roll for initiative!

With Subscriptions Off The Table For Now, Apple To Test $1 TV Shows

2010-02-11T06:30:00.000+05:30

Leading up to its January event, rumors were swirling that Apple was talking to the TV networks about offering possible subscriptions to their shows through iTunes. Of course, that never happened. While reports had CBS and ABC interested in such a deal, the other networks apparently were less enthusiastic about it â" perhaps out of fear of repercussions from the cable companies. But that doesn't mean that Apple is giving up. A new report today in the Financial Times indicates that Apple will begin testing the sale of $1 U.S. TV shows this year. Specifically, the new pricing could launch around the time that the iPad does, which will be March/April, FT notes citing people familiar with the discussions. Apple currently sells its shows for $1.99 (standard definition) or $2.99 (high definition) through iTunes. These $1 would be the standard definition variety, apparently, as they will play on the iPad.

Brands Wasting No Time With Google Buzz. This Could Get Annoying.

2010-02-11T05:30:00.000+05:30

When it came to Facebook and Twitter, it took brands a while to figure out how to take advantage of the social networks. With Foursquare, they have been much faster. But now with Google Buzz, they're beating plenty of early adopters to it. Samsung has already set up a Google Buzz account this morning and is already cranking out buzzes. Not only that, but they're apparently trying to start their own trends on the service, as they have today tagged a bunch of their "favorite buzzers" and tagged the buzz with "#BUZZwednesday." Of course, the problem here is that Google Buzz doesn't support the "#" symbol the same way Twitter does (at least not yet). Still, you can search Buzz (right from within Gmail) for the term "#BUZZwednesday" and Samsung's buzz will appear.

Topsy Becomes An Even More Powerful Alternative To Twitterâs Offical Search Engine

2010-02-11T04:30:00.000+05:30

If you've ever tried to use Twitter Search, you know that it's got some pretty serious problems. First, the site only lets you search back through a couple weeks of tweets. Even worse, the service doesn't seem to employ any relevancy algorithm to speak of â" you just see the most recent tweets that contain your query's keywords, regardless of who said them (which oftentimes yields junk and spam). Today Topsy, the startup that views tweets as the currency of the web, is launching a handful of new features that improve on the official Twitter search in almost every way. Up until now, Topsy has been based entirely around links. When you visited the site, it would prompt you to enter a search query, and then would display a list of links most relevant to whatever you searched for. The links are ranked by the number of times they've been retweeted, and also by the influence of the people who have tweeted them; the site actually keeps track of the number of retweets each user typically gets to establish their overall reputation. Now, Topsy is taking this reputation system and extending it beyond just links, allowing you to search for both photos and tweets that don't contain links at all.

Facebook Mobile Hits 100 Million Users, Growing Faster Than On Desktops

2010-02-11T03:30:00.000+05:30

For years, one of the most popular ways to access Facebook has been from mobile phones. The company has done quite a bit to make this possible, offering everything from SMS messaging functionality to web-based mobile sites and native applications for most smartphone platforms. Today, the company has announced that 100 million Facebook users are tapping into these mobile services, up from 65 million users last September. Of course, Facebook has grown by over a hundred million members since the last milestone, so this increase isn't a big surprise. But mobile growth seems to be accelerating even faster than Facebook is acquiring new members â" Facebook had 65 million mobile users in September, and less than a week later announced that it had hit 300 million total active users (in other words, around 21.7% of users were using Facebook mobile).

Hulu Could Still Launch On The iPad

2010-02-11T02:30:00.000+05:30

When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad last month, one notable potential partner absent from the stage was Hulu, now the second-largest video site on the Web. The launch event focussed more on the iPad as an eBook reader to rival the Kindle, but watching videos on it will be just as important. The TV shows on Hulu would be perfect on the iPad. There is just one hitch: the iPad doesn't support Flash, and all of Hulu's videos currently run inside a Flash player. But that could change by the time the iPad launches in March. One rumor I've heard from an industry insider is that Hulu is working on an iPad-friendly version of its site that should be ready by the time the iPad hits the market.

AOL Shells Out $200K To Join MIT Media Lab Consortium

2010-02-11T01:30:00.000+05:30

AOL has joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab as a sponsor, which according to the consortium's site, costs around $200,000. The MIT Media Lab is a research community that focuses on the study, development and invention of digital technologies. The sponsorship, which lasts for 3 years, was spearheaded by AOL Ventures, an investment fund launched by AOL in 2009 to nurture early-stage external and employee-originated ideas. With the sponsorship, AOL have access to all of the research conducted at the Lab; Lab-wide visiting privileges; open invitations to Lab-wide lectures and special events; and most importantly, non-exclusive, license-fee-free, royalty-free licensing rights for IP that's developed within the lab.

Next New Networks Sees 300 Million Views In 2009; Approaches Profitability

2010-02-11T00:30:00.000+05:30

Online television studio Next New Networks is reporting a few milestones today, releasing news that the network has seen over 300 million views across its networks in 2009. The company also claims it doubled revenue from 2008 to 2009 and saw a 70% increase in the number of sponsors. Next New Networks builds internet based âmicro television networksâ for targeted niche communities. Over the past few years, Next New Networks restructured and reshuffled its executive team and staff, bringing in Lance Podell as CEO in late 2008 and added a new chief of programming Kathleen Grace in 2009. The company says viewership grew thanks to programming and networks in 2009, which include Fast Lane Daily, Barely Political (aka Obama Girl),Beyond The Trailer and more. In 2009, NNNâs networks grew to over one million subscribers on YouTube, podcasts and e-mail, a 300% increase from 2008.

DailyMotion Secures EMI Video Content In Ad Deal

2010-02-10T23:30:00.000+05:30

Music giant EMI is to deliver its premium music videos onto the platforms run by DailyMotion, the French-based 'European YouTube'. Content will go onto the main site, mobile, iPhone app and the DailyMotion channel on Internet-connected TVs. The deal covers all EMI's labels, and the labels represented by EMI Label Services and EMI's Caroline Distribution unit. Artists featured from April will include Coldplay, Katy Perry, Robbie Williams and David Guetta. Dailymotion will deliver ads against the videos to all three screens. Paris-based Dailymotion has over 65 million unique monthly visitors, according to comScore. It raised another â¬15 million in financing late last year. The venture recently turned profitable, but that additional investment was required to fund its steep growth. It expects a 50% increase in turnover in 2009 and 2010. DailyMotion says it currently serves 1 billion video views per month.

Encoding.com Raises $1.25 Million For SaaS Video Encoding Platform

2010-02-10T22:30:00.001+05:30

Encoding.com, a startup that provides online video encoding services, has raised $1.25 million in Series A funding. The funding was led by Metamorphic Ventures and included angel investors Patrick Condon, Fred Hamilton, Zelkova Ventures, Dave Morgan, and Allen Morgan. The funds will be used to further sales, marketing, and partnership programs. Launched in September 2008, Encoding.com provides a cloud-based, video encoding SaaS offering to let users host and encode user-generated and premium video. The company encodes an average of 30,000 videos per day for a variety of well-known media and technology companies including MTV Networks, WebMD, Nokia, and MySpace. To date, Encoding.com has encoded more than four million videos since its launch.

AOLâs Surphace Goes Self Serve With Private Beta Of S4

2010-02-10T21:30:00.001+05:30

Surphace, previously called Sphere, is an excellent tool for bloggers and other publishers to add related content to their articles and posts. The company, which was acquired by AOL in 2008, has now released S4, a self serve product that gives smaller sites the ability to use Surphace's more advanced features. More than 2 billion articles per month bring in Surphace content, says CEO Josh Guttman . Until now only the largest publishers were able to tailor the types of related content links, as well as the look and feel of the Surphace widget. Small sites had to make due with a standard pop up Surphace widget that had little flexibility in terms of content and design. Now, sites of any size can customize the size, interface and types and quantity of content that Surphace pulls into posts. The result, says Surphace, is higher reader engagement. Read on for more details and an invite code:

TED: Now with More Elitism?

2010-02-10T20:30:00.001+05:30

Let me say upfront: I have never been to TED, mostly because I have never been invited and I canât imagine a world where I justify paying $6,000 for a conference. But I live in Silicon Valley so every year leading up to the star-studded event, I have to hear about it from nearly everyone I know: People who love it and people who hate it. For the last few years, these conversations have gotten ugly. What Iâve seen and heard from the outside depicts the sad transition from what used to be an inventive, elite industry conference that cross-pollinated experts from the worlds of technology, entertainment and design to a $6,000, always-sold-out-unless-you-âmatterâ invitation to rub shoulders with celebrities and talk about how compassionate of a millionaire you really are.

Buzzkill: Google Won Disputed Googlebuzz.com Domain A Month Ago

2010-02-10T19:30:00.001+05:30

Naturally, which you launch a new product with a huge amount of hype, like Google Buzz, you're going to want to own the .com domain name for it. And Google obtained googlebuzz.com just in the nick of time, according to a document from the National Arbitration Forum. On November 13, 2009, Google, represented by Meredith M. Pavia (presumably, a Google lawyer), filed a complaint that BuzzNews Network was using the googlebuzz.com domain in bad faith. Further, they argued that it was "confusingly similar" to Google's trademark on the company name. This was an easy one for the forum to rule on since BuzzNews Network never responded to the complaint.

Is This @EricSchmidtâs Facebook Profile?

2010-02-10T18:30:00.001+05:30

Some people are suggesting that Google CEO Eric Schmidt may have just created a Facebook profile for himself, after signing up for Twitter in early December 2009 and right on the heels of Microsoft founder Bill Gates setting up an account on the wildly popular social networking service. Evidently, we can't be 100% sure that this is his real account at this point - unlike Twitter, there's no 'verified account' stamp for Facebook profiles and the man has yet to confirm our friendship (I forgive him, since it's the middle of the night in the United States).

Sergey Brin Used Google Buzz To Write His NYT Op-Ed On Google Books

2010-02-10T17:30:00.001+05:30

During the Q&A session today following the Google Buzz event, Google co-founder Sergey Brin revealed something both humorous and interesting. When asked a question about practical uses for Google Buzz, Brin noted that he actually used the service to help him write his op-ed about Google Books that ran in the New York Times last year. Brin noted that he was having difficulty with the article because it's just his one point of view. So he put out his draft on Google Buzz (which Google was testing out internally within the company at the time), and quickly got dozens of comments. Brin then used this feedback to edit his article.

Video: Sergey Brin On His Six Months Using Google Buzz, The China Situation, And More

2010-02-10T16:30:00.001+05:30

Today, Google's social strategy took a big step with the launch of Google Buzz â" a new FriendFeed-like feature that's integrated into Gmail, mobile search, Maps, and more (you can see our live notes from the announcement here). Shortly after the event, Google co-founder Sergey Brin fielded questions backstage from members of the press. Our own Steve Gillmor was there to record the conversation (and ask a few questions himself). We've embedded the footage below, and have transcribed some of his answers. In the video, Brin answers questions covering a broad array of topics, including Google Buzz, Google's current situation in China, and the company's research in clean energy. Among the revelations: Brin hopes to eventually remove the task of having to choose between Email, Buzz, and IM, so expect those to converge more in the future.

A Look At 4INFO, The King Of SMS

2010-02-10T15:30:00.001+05:30

When Google bought mobile ad network AdMob for $750 million in November 2009, 4IFNO CEO Zaw Thet said that he received a couple of phone calls from investment bankers and potential buyers who where were sniffing around the space. When Apple bought Quattro Wireless for $275 million two months later, he says his phone started to ring off the hook. Why? Because 4INFO is usually described as the AdMob of SMS advertising. That isn't a very good description of the company, but it's enough to make everyone think that the company is next in line to close a big acquisition. And that last part just may be true. The company, which has raised around $40 million in venture capital, is where companies go when they want to create a "mailing list" of SMS subscribers. For example - when Zynga began testing SMS notifications in December, they turned to 4INFO to power the product. 4INFO has 250 premier publishers, plus a couple of thousand more that use its self service platform.

What The Wii Did For Console Gaming, Glitch Wants To Do For MMOs. And It Just Might.

2010-02-10T14:30:00.001+05:30

Last night, the news started to come out about Glitch, the new massively multiplayer online game that a few of the key cogs that built Flickr had been developing in secret for much of last year. Today, I got to see a still relatively early build of the game. It is both beautiful and impressive. I met up with Stewart Butterfield, one of the co-founders of Flickr, so he could demo Glitch for me. Sitting in a hotel lobby on a WiFi connection being used by who knows how many other people, the game, which runs in the browser and is Flash-based, was incredibly smooth. Even more impressively, Butterfield was able to manipulate the game from the backend (using his "God" mode tools) to add new elements on the fly right in front of me. This is a key part of what will likely make or break Glitch.

Gowalla To Roll Out API Today

2010-02-10T13:30:00.001+05:30

As location-based social networks gain serious traction, its inevitable that that these applications will become full-fledged platforms. Like Twitter, these networks can become ecosystems. Plus, they have a better chance of continuing to survive when Facebook enters the location ring. Foursquare released its API in November. And now Gowalla will be releasing its API today, we've heard. We will update with more details when the announcement is made. We originally reported on the impending release here, with Gowalla working on adjusting privacy setting for users as as third-party services start getting access to their data. Gowalla's Josh Williams said that privacy controls are becoming more granular so that users can pick certain things to share while holding back others.

Meebo Eyes A New Market For Its Chat Bar: Online Retailers

2010-02-10T12:30:00.001+05:30

We've been covering the growth of Meebo's chat bar extensively since its launch: after a fairly slow ramp up in 2008, it's since been deployed to 130 partner sites and now has a reach of 100 million unique visitors. Now that the company has landed partnerships with a number of large publisher sites and social networks, it's settings its sights on a new target: shopping. The company has been approached by various online retailers to see how they could help make shopping sites more social, and now they're making an effort to expand into the market. From a functionality standpoint, Meebo isn't changing much about the bar to suit retailers â" you'll still drag and drop items to share them with friends, and you can chat with buddies using integrated services like Google Talk, Facebook Chat, and AIM. The big differences will lie in the monetization strategy and the level of analytics retailers will be able to take advantage of.

Pursway Scores $6 Million To Help Companies Leverage The Power Of Social Influencers

2010-02-10T11:30:00.001+05:30

We wrote about the power of brand buzz on social media sites yesterday, and one contributing aspect to buzz are individuals who are "influencers," similar in some ways to the trend that Malcolm Gladwell highlighted in The Tipping Point. But how do companies find and then leverage the power of these influencers on the web? Israeli startup Pursway (formerly known as Datanetis), aims to help companies identify the influencers and followers for each product or offer within their customer database. The startup has just raised $6 million in Series A funding from Battery Ventures. Pursway will use the funding to expand its operations in Europe and North America and hire more engineers to contribute to product development.

Google Street View Goes To The Top Of The Mountain

2010-02-10T10:30:00.000+05:30

Google's Street View has gone to many strange places, even off-road. But in preparation for the Winter Olympics it equipped a snowmobile with 360-degree cameras and took it to the top of Whistler, the Canadian ski resort where the Games will take place. The slope-side views can be seen in the map on Google's new Winter Olympics information page. Google should do this for all major ski mountains. It's a great way to see if you really want to go up to the top of that double black diamond chair lift.

OpenTable Seats 2 Million Diners Via Mobile Apps

2010-02-10T09:30:00.000+05:30

In less than six months, online restaurant reservation site OpenTable has seated an additional one million diners via its mobile apps. In late October, OpenTable had reached the milestone of seating one million diners via its mobile offerings, a year after its iPhone app launched. It took only four and a half months to seat another million diners. Additionally, the site says that based on an estimation of a $50 average check per diner, OpenTable claims that diners using its mobile applications have generated more than $100 million in revenue for its restaurant partners. OpenTable allows diners to find and book reservations at more than 11,000 different restaurants in multiple countries via mobile applications for the iPhone, Palm, Blackberry and Android. Other smartphone users can book reservations through OpenTable's mobile-optimized Web site.

Microsoft Slams Google Buzz

2010-02-10T08:30:00.000+05:30

"Busy people donât want another social network, what they want is the convenience of aggregation. Weâve done that. Hotmail customers have benefitted from Microsoft working with Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and 75 other partners since 2008." - Microsoft statement on Google Buzz. When one of the big guys launches a new product, competitors generally just sit it out and let the press do its thing. But Microsoft made a point of reaching out today with the quote above, criticizing Google Buzz as "another social network" and noting that Hotmail has aggregated Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and other services since 2008. Of course Microsoft also owns a chunk of, and has a search deal with, Facebook. So they're being threatened on a number of fronts. Still, just the fact that Microsoft is speaking on the record about Buzz shows that the guys in Redmond are a little worried. And they are not the only ones.

IVT Raises $5.5 Million For Webcasting Software

2010-02-10T07:30:00.000+05:30

IVT, a company that produces enterprise-friendly webcasting software, has raised $5.5 million in Series B funding from Syncom Venture Partners with Barshop Ventures, Monitor Ventures and Tudor Ventures participating in the investment round. IVT raised $3 million in Series A funding in 2006. IVT's SaaS offering not only helps power webcasts, but also converts multimedia files, such as slideshows, into viewable videos for the web. IVT also offers a YouTube-like hosting and social media site for companies to disseminate videos and webcasts. And the startup has a number of prominent companies that use its webcasting software including Oracle, Dow Chemical, IBM and NEC.

FriendFeed (and Gmail) Founderâs Reaction To Google Buzz: âThis Seems Vaguely Familiarâ

2010-02-10T06:30:00.000+05:30

As soon as Google Buzz was released earlier today, all the early adopters piled in to give it a spin. Paul Buchheit, the creator of Gmal and a founder of FreindFeed, was among them and his initial reaction was: "This seems vaguely familiar . . ." Or, as he put it elsewhere, "There's a FriendFeed in my Gmail. Sweet! :) " It is vaguely familiar to him on various levels. Like FriendFeed before it (which was acquired by Facebook), Buzz acts as a way to bring together different social streams togetherâ"Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, Google Reader shared items, status updates, shared links and videos. It presents them all in a single stream from everyone you follow from you Gmail contacts. Each item can be commented on, "liked," or taken into a private email or chat conversation. You end up getting comment strings around a single shared link, photo, or video, just like on FriendFeed, except FriendFeed can import items from many more social websites. (Although FriendFeed is not enabled as a connected site for most users, strangely enough it is enabled for Buchheit's account.).

Scrapblogâs New App Lets You Make Pretty Scrapbooks From Your Facebook Photos

2010-02-10T05:30:00.000+05:30

With 400 million users, Facebook is seeing 2.5 billion photos uploaded every month. Scrapblog, a startup that allows you to make beautiful Flash-based online scrapbooks, is hoping to help Facebook users make pretty collages of their photos via a new Facebook app, Share the Love. When you first start using Share the Love, the app will employ Scrapblog's recently launched QuickMix technology to instantly generate a photo collage with up to ten Facebook photos. The photos will be automatically arranged with a set theme, which you can change easily (Valentines themes appear to be set at the moment). Similar to Scrapblog's online site, the app offers users coordinated stickers, backgrounds and captions. And users can easily change photos from the photos they are tagged in and from their personal albums. You can also bypass Scrapblog's technology and start from scratch by picking a theme and choosing the photos to feature. Once you are finished designing your collage, you can publish the scrapbook to your Facebook page and photo albums.

If Google Wave Is The Future, Google Buzz Is The Present

2010-02-10T04:30:00.000+05:30

See our live notes from today's Google Buzz event here. Google has a problem. Despite having their hands in just about everything online, they've never been able to tackle what is a key part of the fabric of the web: social. Yes, they have Orkut and OpenSocial, but no one actually uses them. Okay, some people use them, but not in the meaningful social ways that people use Facebook or even Twitter. Today, Google may have just solved their social problem. Google Buzz is easily the company's boldest attempt yet to build a social network. Imagine taking elements of Twitter, Yammer, Foursquare, Yelp, and other social services, and shoving them together into one package. Now imagine covering that package in a layer that looks a lot like FriendFeed. Now imagine shoving that package inside of Gmail. That's Buzz. If Google Wave is the future, Google Buzz is the present.

Gowalla Rolls Out API

2010-02-10T03:30:00.000+05:30

As location-based social networks gain serious traction, its inevitable that that these applications will become full-fledged platforms. Like Twitter, these networks can become ecosystems. Plus, they have a better chance of continuing to survive when Facebook enters the location ring. Foursquare released its API in November. And now Gowalla will has released its API today. In a blog post announcing the API, Gowalla encourages developers to build out features that incolve location and the community, highlighting the recent addition of user-curated trips. Gowalla also suggested several uses of the API including an Indiana Jones Map (convert your road trip into an animated, epic adventure); Conference Games (encourage conference attendees to explore the city and get to know each other by tracking their check-ins and rewarding those who get off the beaten path); and LunchVote (Use LunchVote to decide on a nearby restaurant and track your history).

Bubble Motion Launches Twitter-Like Voice Blogging Service For Mobile Phones

2010-02-10T02:30:00.000+05:30

Sequoia-backed voice messaging company Bubble Motion is getting into the microblogging space today, that is the voice-based microblogging space. The startup is launching Bubbly, a voice-blogging social network built for mobile phones. With Bubbly, you can record and broadcast messages from any mobile device. When a users records audio messages and updates, followers can listen in whenever they want. To start voice-blogging, you enter a short code onto your phone, and start recording your messages. To follow another voice-blogger, users dial the phone number for whomever they want to follow. Whenever thereâs a new audio update, followers are notified via SMS with instructions on how to listen. Bubblers can also control who can listen to their messages, and have the option of masking their actual phone number to prevent followers from calling them directly. Deployed through partnerships with mobile operators, Bubbly is an extension of BubbleTalk, a click, talk, and sendâ messaging service that doesnât require any calling.

CrunchGear Reviews the Withings Tweeting WiFi Scale

2010-02-10T01:30:00.000+05:30

So the Internet made me fat. That and all the beer. Anyway, now I'm going to depend on the Internet to make me skinny again and I think the Withings WiFi scale is just the thing to get me back in Abraham Lincoln mode. This glass scale features a body mass sensor complete with invisible electrodes as well as a backlit OLED readout. To start, you connect the scale to your computer via USB and assign your wireless hotspot. Then each time you hop on the scale you wait for the electrodes to sense your body fat (or if they can't it just transmits your weight) and then you check your progress online. New users are "added" when they weigh themselves and show up as unknown users until you assign their measurements to an account. Because folks usually float among a few data points, your wife's numbers won't get mixed up with yours and the dog's numbers will definitely not get mixed up with your son's (Note: Do not try to put a dog on this scale. They do not like it.)

In 2010, Itâs Time To Kill Off The Dotcom Hero CEO

2010-02-10T00:30:00.000+05:30

As I sit here listening to Ben Cohen's radio documentary about how he nearly became a teenage dotcom millionaire, I'm reminded of how tedious us journalists all found him back in the late 90s. We don't now of course - now that's he's grown up and actually turned out to be a pretty good tech reporter for Channel 4 News, and quite an OK guy, I'd quite happily have a pint with him. But the story of how he became a teenage dotcom (paper-only) millionaire and finally fell to earth has something to tell us about the nature of startups and Europe and why we must finally kill off the myth of the Dotcom Hero CEO. In 2010 there is no more room for dumbass Internet heroes. From now on we must focus on products, teams and businesses. Sure there will always be "the story" about a startup, or how it started with one person's idea. But as soon as that becomes their focus that are quite simply dead. Ideas are two-a-penny, it's execution that counts, and you can't execute anything totally on your own.

No Sense Of Humor, TechCrunch Is Blocked In China

2010-02-09T23:30:00.000+05:30

Over the past 48 hours, and perhaps longer, it appears that TechCrunch is being blocked inside China. We've confirmed this with contacts and tipsters inside China who can no longer access our site, as well as through Web tools such as WebsitePulse and Just Ping which pings sites from inside China's Great Firewall. Both of those services indicate that, at least in Shanghai, readers cannot connect to TechCrunch. Chinese readers have reported problems accessing the site in the past as well. If you are located in China and you can read this, please let us know in comments. We are not really sure why we are being blocked. Recently, we've covered Google's decision to to perhaps stop doing business in China following a cyberattack on its servers in the country, but we don't think that is it. Another possibility, which borders on the absurd, is that on Friday Michael put up a humorous post comparing a Google employee who stopped his SUV because he was talking on his cell phone to the Tank Man who famously blocked Chinese tanks at Tiananmen Square. The title of the post: "A Googler Has His Tiananmen Square Moment."

Twilioâs Telephony API Now Lets Applications Send And Receive SMS Messages

2010-02-09T22:30:00.000+05:30

Back in November 2008, we covered the launch of Twilio, a startup that's akin to an Amazon Web Services for telephony apps. After signing up for a phone number, Twilio lets you integrate phone services into your application using intuitive tags like Dial when you want your app to place a call. Today, the company is expanding to include support for the world's most popular data channel: SMS messaging.

The basic idea remains the same. As with its telephony API, Twilio's SMS functionality is meant to make previously complex tasks as simple as possible. If you want to send a SMS message to a user from your web app, you can do that using a single line of code. CEO Jeff Lawson says that this new functionality removes many of the hurdles associated with running a service that uses SMS. He explains that it's often very expensive and time consuming to get your own SMS shortcode, and that the logistical hurdles are substantial. With Twilio, you can get SMS up and running on your web app in a few minutes.

The Ten Biggest Advertising Publishers On The Web

2010-02-09T21:30:00.000+05:30

Last year, Yahoo still dominated display advertising on the Web in terms of sheer number of ad impressions on its properties, but social networking sites MySpace and Facebook came on strong. Some new data from comScore in its just-released 2009 U.S. Digital Year in Review ranks the top Web properties by the number of display ad impressions. Yahoo served up an estimated 521 billion impressions last year, according to the report, followed by Fox Interactive Media (i.e. MySpace) with 368 billion, and Facebook with 330 billion. Microsoft sites (No.4) only served up 218 billion display ads, whereas Google (No. 6) served up only 70 billion. (These numbers do not include paid search text ads) Here's the full ranking:

Google To Unveil Broad New Social Product Tomorrow

2010-02-09T20:30:00.001+05:30

Google is planning to unveil a broad new social product on Tuesday that will integrate with at least two existing Google products. Some details emerged earlier today on the Wall Street Journal ("a new feature that makes it easier and faster for users of Gmail to view media and status updates"), but our understanding is that the product goes well beyond a Gmail integration. As I wrote last night, there is still a lot of room for improvement in online social services. Status updates, photo and video sharing, review and location based content are not only decentralized today, but are becoming overwhelmed with spam and other noise. The Google event begins at 10 am. Tune in to TechCrunch for live coverage.

Flixster Gets A Thumbs Up From Investors, Raises $12.5 Million

2010-02-09T19:30:00.000+05:30

Movie ratings site Flixster raised $12.5 million in new funding, according to an SEC filing. The last time Flixster raised money was a $5 million Series B in April, 2008. The new round brings the company's total capital raised to $19.5 million. Flixster operates both a Web site and a companion iPhone app, which is the most popular movie app in the App Store. The iPhone app lets consumers find nearby movies, add their ratings, and buy tickets. In January, the company bought Rotten Tomatoes from News Corp for an undisclosed sum. The combined reach of the two movie review services is 30 million people, according to the companies.

Tiny Speck Uncovers Glitch, A New Flash-Based Massively Multiplayer Game

2010-02-09T18:30:00.000+05:30

Last July, we reported that the new company by Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield had received a name, and was looking to hire. Tonight, Tiny Speck's first project has revealed itself to the world: Glitch. So what is it? As we suspected, it's an online game in the vein of Game Neverending, the gaming project that eventually became Flickr (weird, I know). It's a Flash-based massivelyÂ multiplayerÂ game, that revolves around solving puzzles. While the game itself will be free, there will be some level of in-game purchases. Or as it's described on the site:

Foursquare Signing Mainstream Partnership Deals Left And Right

2010-02-09T17:30:00.001+05:30

Foursquare continues to sign interesting deals with major players in a wide range of fields. Following the service's Bravo deal a couple weeks ago, they've reached a deal with restaurant rating guide Zagat, according to The New York Times. And AdAge has some details about deals with even more partners, including HBO, Warner Brothers, and the History Channel. The service has been on a roll lately. They're now seeing over a million check-ins a week, with that rate doubling in the last month alone. And these new deals can only help them as they bring the type of mainstream appeal that it took services like Twitter so long to find.

Winter Weather Storm Watch Gets Streamlined On New Accuweather Site

2010-02-09T16:30:00.001+05:30

With the East Coast and Midwest awaiting a monster snowstorm, popular weather forecasting site Accuweather, is rolling out a timely relaunch of its site. The site, which provides up-to-date local information on weather in the U.S., is launching a beta version of the site that includes a complete redesign and a few extra user-friendly features. The new version of the Accuweather is still in private beta but will be publicly launched to the public on February 15. On the content side, the general theme for the new version of the site is "weather for your life," with specialized and interactive weather forecasts for Weather and Health, Weather and Travel, Weather and Home and Garden, Weather and Outdoor Activity in your area. The health-related weather interest sections include Arthritis Pain Forecasts, Asthma Forecasts, Common Cold Forecasts, Flu Forecasts, Pollen Level Forecasts and more

Google Launches Phone Support For The Nexus One, Lowers ETF By $200

2010-02-09T15:30:00.001+05:30

Since the launch of the Nexus One, early adopters have likely had one question lurking in the back of their minds: who to take the phone to if it broke. You see, when the phone was first launched, Google was directing people to either T-Mobile (Google's carrier partner) or HTC (the device manufacturer) depending on the problem, which could lead to an endless circle of hold times and few results. Today, Google has just rolled out its solution: it's launching its own phone support line specifically for Nexus One customers. Call 888-48-NEXUS (63987) and within a few minutes, you'll be talking to a real live Google support tech (the line is open from 7AM to 10PM EST).

This is, of course, a fairly major departure from Google's standard protocol of making it incredibly difficult to reach anyone for phone support for most of its products.

Back to the Future: How Apple is Becoming More Like a Carrier Every Day

2010-02-09T14:30:00.001+05:30

Editor's note: Is Apple going to far with its restrictions on developers? Alistair Goodman thinks so and explains why in this guest post. He is the CEO of 1020 Placecast, a location=based mobile advertising startup. Appleâs recent behavior bears an increasing resemblance to carriers with respect to the walled garden they are creating around the iPhone. Restricting applications, restricting the use of location on the device, blocking Flash, and now potentially taking advertising in houseâ"these moves are taken from the carrierâs playbook with the hope of locking out meaningful competition. Ironically, Apple may very well become the barrier to open innovation in mobile in much the same way as carriers have been before the iPhone came along. What is clear from the announcement to developers last week about plans to deny some apps that deliver location-based advertising is that Apple intends to control the flow of marketing dollars on the iPhone. Less clear are their plans for sharing the wealth with the ecosystemâ"but if you look closely at acquisitions like Placebase, key hires and patent filings, what emerges is a potentially more ominous view of a company that can only compete in the direct advertising business head-to-head with Google by seizing control of location-based advertising.

The Value Of Online Buzz For The Top 20 Brands

2010-02-09T13:30:00.001+05:30

Nowadays, buzz around brands on the news, blogs, tweets and other social media that spreads through product launches, PR campaigns, earnings reports are as valuable as traditional ad campaigns. But buzz and social dialogue on the web is tough to quantify. General Sentiment has released a report that calculates the dollar value of the buzz, content, and conversation taking place online. General Sentiment's technology evaluates the volume of mentions and sentiment value regarding a brand, company or person. The algorithm combines this data with website traffic and online news readership figures to determine the purchase-equivalent dollar value of the brand exposure across more than 30 million sources by gauging sentiment, frequency, and exposure of news mentions and social dialogue. Google topped the rankings, with value of its "buzz" itemized at $669.6 million. Google's social media reach costs $402 million, with its Twitter reach alone valued at $22.8 million. On the other hand, Apple came in fourth with total buzz reaching $293.2 million; social media buzz valued at $223.7 million; and Twitter reach valued at $5.6 million.

The Long Tail Of Video Sites Capture Half Of All Viewing Minutes

2010-02-09T12:30:00.001+05:30

YouTube might be streaming more than 13 billion videos a month, or nearly 40 percent of total individual streams, but when you measure by time spent YouTube only accounted for 26 percent of all viewing minutes on the Web last year. Â It is not surprising that it commands a smaller share of time spent watching videos than number of streams watched, sinceÂ most YouTube videos are so short. Â But what is surprising is how fragmented the Web video landscape remains once you go out past the top 25 sites. According to comScore's 2009 U.S. Digital Year in Review, more than half of all time spent watching videos on the Web (52 percent) last year was on Long Tail video sites beyond the top 25. Â What you see is a real barbell distribution, with Youtube on one end and the Long Tail sites on the other. Â Total video views more than doubled between December, 2008 and December, 2009, from 14 billion to 33 billion streams.Â So there is hope yet for niche video producers.

blueKiwi Rides the Freemium Wave

2010-02-09T11:30:00.001+05:30

With the continued success of Twitter and other social networking tools, any criticism (or praise) of products and companies is becoming increasingly public. Finding a way to manage these external communications in the internal decision-making process is an ongoing challenge for many businesses. Today, in an effort to help marketers and community managers better deal with such outside correspondence, blueKiwi, an Europas shortlist finalist, has announced the introduction of a free version of its Social Business Platform aimed at integrating outside conversations into daily internal communications to improve the decision making process. Instead of community managers simply engaging with outside audiences via social networking tools, blueKiwi pulls outside conversations into internal discussions in order to leverage the thoughts and ideas of its user base, much like Salesforce aims to do with Chatter or Bantam Live. It is social CRM. BlueKiwi combines a slew of web 2.0 capabilities: such as collaboration, document sharing, blogging, event posting, and polling, into a single, unified solution. The use of social analytics tools ensures that the most pertinent conversations reach the eyes of the community managers.

Still No Native Comments, But Tumblr Toys With Photo Replies

2010-02-09T10:30:00.000+05:30

Probably the most controversial thing about the blogging service Tumblr is that it doesn't have a built-in way to comment on posts. You sort of can do it now if you reblog an item and add your own note (which then shows up under the original post), but it's not the same. And while they still haven't added comments, tonight they've temporarily turned on a new feature: Photo Replies. While it doesn't appear the feature is working just yet, Tumblr notes that they're going to turn it on for the next 48 hours as an experiment. When it is on, you will presumably see a new photo icon in your dashboard which will allow you to upload a picture in response to a Tumblr post. So yes, basically it's a photo comment.

The Richter Scales Debut Animated Video Of âIâve Got Mail And Iâve Got It Madeâ

2010-02-09T09:30:00.000+05:30

We're big fans of The Richter Scales, the musical group that have brought us Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, Here Comes Another Bubble, and gut-busting songs at the 2008 Crunchies and most recently the parody of Silicon Valley at the 2009 Crunchies a few weeks ago. The group is releasing an animated video of its song 'I've Got Mail and I've Got it Made,' which was one of the two songs The Richters sang at the first Crunchies in 2007. As you may remember, it's about what happens to a guy when he follows the instructions in all the spam email he receives. Enjoy!

Facebook, Tesla And Solyndra Dominate SecondMarket Transactions In January

2010-02-09T08:30:00.000+05:30

Last month SecondMarket published data on private company stock sales that they helped complete in 2009. They've now released last month's data as well. A total of a little more than $13 million in sales occurred, with the average transaction size of around $2 million. There continues to be very strong demand for consumer products and services startups (which includes companies like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, etc.). But the sellers are spread out more evenly across all categories, particularly consumer, IT, Healthcare, energy and cleantech. 36% of the transactions were sales of Facebook stock, and we've heard from independent sources that sales are being completed for as high as $40 per share (or a $17.6 billion valuation). That's a substantial price increase from less than a month ago. Tesla took 29% of the transactions, and sales of Solyndra stock were 28% of the total. Gridpoint rounded the group out with 7% of the total.

Updated: Flixster Issues $12.5 Million In Shares To News Corp For Rotten Tomatoes

2010-02-09T07:30:00.001+05:30

Update CEO Joe Greenstein got back to us. He says, "We actually have not raised any new money recently." Movie ratings site Flixster ~~raised~~ issued $12.5 million in new shares ~~funding~~, according to an SEC filing. The last time Flixster raised money was a $5 million Series B in April, 2008. ~~The new round brings the company's total capital raised to $19.5 million.~~ Flixster operates both a Web site and a companion iPhone app, which is the most popular movie app in the App Store. The iPhone app lets consumers find nearby movies, add their ratings, and buy tickets. In January, the company bought Rotten Tomatoes from News Corp for an undisclosed sum. The combined reach of the two movie review services is 30 million people, according to the companies.

Flixster Issues $12.5 Million In Shares To News Corp For Rotten Tomatoes

2010-02-09T06:30:00.000+05:30

Give Your Index Finger A Rest With Facebookâs New Photo Slideshows

2010-02-09T05:30:00.000+05:30

Since the dawn of Facebook's Photos feature, users have been tasked with the not-so-terrible burden of having to manually click through every photo in an album. Sure, you can also hit the arrow key on your keyboard to jump to the next picture, but even that repetitive task could send you inching down the treacherous path toward carpal tunnel syndrome. Now, there's a way to view hundreds of photos without lifting a finger: a new Facebook Prototype lets you turn these photo albums into slideshows. You can activate the prototype here. The new feature was released as a Facebook Prototype some time last week, and it's about as basic as they come. After activating it, you'll find a 'Play' button nestled between the 'Previous' and 'Next' navigation buttons in the photo viewer. Clicking it will turn the album you're currently viewing into a slideshow, displaying a new photo every five seconds. That's it.

Win A Mentoring Session With Founders Of Digg, Flickr, Mint, Ning, Slide Or Zynga

2010-02-09T04:30:00.000+05:30

Are you a budding Web entrepreneur who would like some pointers or advice from seasoned company founders? MayField Fund and First Round Capital are sponsoring a raffle to give away mentoring sessions with the founders of Digg (Jay Adelson), Flickr (Caterina Fake), Mint (Aaron Patzer), Ning (Gina Bianchini), Slide (Max Levchin), and Zynga (Mark Pincus). The raffle will take place at a private event in Silicon Valley with space for 100 attendees on March 1. But you can win a ticket for the event by applying here. The event and raffle are free, but the 100 attendees in the running will be selected beforehand by partners at Mayfield and First Round.

MEETorDIE Quantifies The Cost Of Wasteful Meetings

2010-02-09T03:30:00.000+05:30

Company meetings are a nearly universally hated thing. No matter what line of work you're in, most are simply a waste of time. And even when they're important and necessary, they're still likely inefficient. A new startup aims to show you just how wasteful they are. MEETorDIE is an online tool that asks you to put in information about your meeting, including what company you work for, what industry you're in, how big the company is, how long the meeting is, and who is attending. When you submit that information, you're taken to a page that shows how much money your company wasted with that meeting. Below that, you can see the aggregate statistics for how much money your company has wasted on meetings total.

Oracle Buys AmberPoint To Boost Application Management And Performance Offerings

2010-02-09T02:30:00.000+05:30

On the heels of the EU's approval of Oracle's $7.4 billion deal to acquire Sun Microsystems, the tech giant has opened up the purse strings to acquire application management software provider AmberPoint. Terms of the deal were not disclosed and the acquisition is expected to close in the first half of this year. AmberPoint's software helps organizations diagnose and resolve issues in application performance and business transactions, such as insurance claims processing or account provisioning where multiple applications need to work together.

New Tweetdeck Puts Twitter On Crack â Adds YouTube and Flickr

2010-02-09T01:30:00.001+05:30

There remains an ongoing desktop Twitter application war. Traditionally Tweetdeck and Seesmic have been at loggerheads for the lion share, although Tweetdeck has remained in the lead so far. Increasingly it appears that Seesmic is heading towards trying to be a much more mainstream application, for anyone on any platform, from celebs to your non-tech friends. But for power Twitter users, Tweetdeck seems to be go-to app so far. Of course, all that can change, but that seems to be the landscape at the moment. Just now Tweetdeck has released the latest version of its desktop Air application, this one is v0.33. It's available right now as a manual download here. Existing Tweedeck users will get an auto upgrade in the next few days. For uber-Tweetdeck users (like social media experts, as we know) Tweetdeck can get pretty long as they plug in every search term they can think of to avert that client disaster (Eurostar, we're looking at you). So there are a bunch of new features which extend the app quite a bit and greatly enhance its speed of access to the Twitter firehouse.

The Filter Reboots As Recommendation Engine For Hire, Ex-Googler Doug Merrill Joins Board

2010-02-09T00:30:00.000+05:30

Almost two years ago The Filter, a startup backed by Peter Gabriel, launched to bring better music and movie recommendations to consumers. The site got lost in the abundance of more popular music and movie sites out there, so about a year ago CEO David Maher Roberts decided to shift gears and start licensing his recommendation engine to other businesses. It was the right move. Today, the Filter powers recommendations for sites and devices with a combined reach of about 20 million people, with two more large media deals in the final stages of converting from a trail to a full license which will bring its total reach up to 85 million. The startup's revenues went from $150,000 in 2008 to about $1 million in 2009. "All that money came from licensing," says Roberts. "I think we git $2,000 from Google for advertising." Since November, the company has been "borderline breakeven." And it just added to its board of directors former Google engineering VP Doug Merrill, who <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2008/04/01/another-

Monday Morning Marketing Quarterback: Which Superbowl Ads Scored On The Web?

2010-02-08T23:30:00.000+05:30

With the Super Bowl yesterday came the time-honored Super Bowl commercials, each costing $2.5 million for a 30-second spot. Â Even Google got in on the game with its first ever spot receiving rave reviews (although the commercial wasn't new). But which commercials went beyond TV to score on the Web? Â Reprise Media released a report that ranks Super Bowl advertisers based on the level of integration between their television commercials and presence on the web in terms of search and social media. According to Reprise's scorecard, Boost Mobile, Home Away, E*Trade and Google were the marketing standouts out of last night's commercials. Reprise decreed that Boost Mobile and Home Away, which were both first-time Super Bowl advertisers, had the best cross-channel promotion from the tube to the web. E*Trade and Google followed with compelling ad spots that encouraged users to look to the web for more information. Who fumbled? Â The Pop Secret/Emerald Nuts, Prudential, Dodge Charger and all movie commercials had the least amount of cross-channel integration.

Trackle Goes Pro; Launches Premium Version Of Realtime Tracking Alerts

2010-02-08T22:30:00.000+05:30

Trackle, the personalized web and realtime feed tracker, is going pro with the launch of premium tracking services aimed at marketing and PR professionals looking to track mentions of clients across the web. Trackle.comâs web service lets users create personalized RSS feeds for data such as the latest crime in a userâs neighborhood, fluctuating airline ticket prices, updated job listings, sports scores and more. On Trackle, marketing, PR and sales professionals can set up realtime tracking alerts for key words to track press coverage and mentions across Tweets, blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn and the web. The initial service will allow users to enable "Trackles" for a select number of keyword categories, including company, person, brand, SEC filings; website changes and LinkedIn updates. Trackle will email and SMS alerts for mentions and even provide users with graphs and charts detailing results. The service is available for $9.99 per month.

Vitamin D Video Surveillance System Sheds Beta Tag, Announces Pricing

2010-02-08T21:30:00.001+05:30

Vitamin D Video has officially gone out of beta and is now available in 1.0. The basic, single camera version of the software is available now for free while a two camera version costs $49 and unlimited cameras costs $199. The software watches a web-based camera - including many popular models from Linksys and D-Link - and records motion as it it happens, even alerting you when humans step into the frame. I've been using the beta for months now with a Linksys WVC54GCA and I consider the software an early warning system for the home. Since I work up in the attic I can't always tell if I'm facing a friend or a foe at the front door so I rely on Vitamin D to ping whenever someone comes into the frame. Special motion sensing systems also pick up lights and other activity outside while the system can also email clips to a mailbox whenever an event occurs or ring a chime.

Loopt Partners With Mobile Spinach To Offer Location-Based Deals

2010-02-08T20:30:00.001+05:30

Loopt continues to ramp up its focus on location-based deals. The pioneer of the mobile social network is launching a new app called LooptCard, which lets mobile consumers tap into offers, coupons and discounts by checking-in to spots. Today, Loopt is partnering with deals site Mobile Spinach to offer users deals and coupons for local merchants via the Loopt App. The deals are part advertising part coupon and will only be featured in San Francisco for now. Coupon site Mobile Spinach will offer dozens of deals exclusively to Loopt users and through their own site per week. For example, Blowfish Sushi, a Sushi restaurant in San Francisco, offers any signature roll for free which typically costs $10-$15 per roll. Loopt users show their phone message at the restaurant to receive these discounts. Loopt says it will be rolling out the offers in LA and New York in the coming months.

Update: Hands on With the iPad

2010-02-08T19:30:00.001+05:30

Unlike the iPhone, which Apple kept under such tight guard at its introduction that only a few special types got to touch it for a few minutes, there were iPads aplenty available immediately following the product's introduction Wednesday. As a result, members of the media--including the three of us--were able to spend roughly half an hour with our eyes glued to the iPad (and, when the crowd of media members abated, our fingers on the iPad). Here's an eyewitness account of what we noticed.

Wikia Says It's Profitable, Goes On Hiring Spree

2010-02-08T18:30:00.001+05:30

Wikia, a for-profit group of user generated wiki sites that was founded by Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales in 2004, is now a profitable company. CEO Gil Penchina says the company's revenues grew 4x in 2009 while they kept costs in check. Late last year the company reported strong financial results, but hadn't yet reached true profitability. He won't disclose what revenues are, but the company currently has 40 employees and has open spots for a dozen more, he says (although I only count eight positions on their jobs page). Wikia sites attracted about 21 million unique worldwide visitors in December (Comscore), and those visitors racked up over 2.7 billion page views. The company attracts around 8 million U.S. visitors monthly, they say.

Sysinternals Suite

2010-02-08T17:30:00.001+05:30

This is a collection of several system troubleshooting utilities. Lots of them are meant for experts but there are a good number of tools you can use to manage your system like tools that provides advanced options for monitoring what programs are loading on your PC at startup, lets you peer deep into the inner workings of all the programs, processes, and threads running on a PC, displaying vital information about your PC right on the PCâs desktop. Explore all the tools included and use them to enhance your system considerably.

AMEE Gets $5.5m Series B To Go Global With Realtime Carbon Engine

2010-02-08T16:30:00.001+05:30

AMEE, the US/UK-based startup that aims to build the largest engine for computing greenhouse gas emissions, has secured a $5.5m series B financing lead by Amadeus Capital Partners alongside existing investors, including OâReilly AlphaTech Ventures and Union Square Ventures. AMEE will use the funding to expand its geographic reach and platform. The prize AMEE is aiming for, known in the sector as "enterprise carbon management", is expected to reach $4 billion by 2017 because of government and consumer pressure to address climate change. AMEE's engine is now being used by companies offering carbon accounting or business intelligence software, as well as governments, multi-nationals and SMEs.

Wikia Says Itâs Profitable, Goes On Hiring Spree

2010-02-08T15:30:00.001+05:30

Social Today Feels Like Search A Decade Ago: Lots Of Noise And Lots Of Spam

2010-02-08T14:30:00.001+05:30

A decade ago most of us were using AltaVista or something similar for search. No one was really complaining very much about the huge amount of spam and other noise that cluttered the results because we didn't know there was a better way. Then Google came along with Page Rank, and had a profound effect on the quality of Internet search. Suddenly (and it really was that sudden), we couldn't imagine going back to AltaVista and searching pages of results for the thing that Google gave us immediately. For a good history of search, get John Battelle's book The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture. The online social landscape today sort of feels to me like search did in 1999. It's a mess, but we don't complain much about it because we don't know there's a better way. Everything is decentralized, and no one is working to centralize stuff. I've got photos on Flickr, Posterous and Facebook (and even a few on MySpace), reviews on Yelp (but movie reviews on Flixster), location on Foursquare, Loopt and Gowalla, status updates on Facebook and Twitter, and videos on YouTube. Etc. I've got dozens of social graphs on dozens of sites, and trying to remember which friends puts his or her pictures on which site is a huge challenge.

Maybe Hulu Is Right To Block Boxee

2010-02-08T13:30:00.001+05:30

If I may, I'd like to play devil's advocate to something I wrote a few days ago. To quickly summarize, Boxee took issue with NBCU's Jeff Zucker's characterization that Boxee was some sort of rogue piece of software, and that Hulu is in the right whenever it blocks access to the XBMC-derived media player. How about this: maybe Hulu is right to block Boxee? Let's see where this takes us.

With One Huge Hit Under Its Belt, Tapulous Debuts Another Music Game Series: Riddim Ribbon

2010-02-08T12:30:00.001+05:30

Back in July 2008, Tapulous released a music game for the iPhone called Tap Tap Revenge (TTR). The game proved to be a massive hit, growing to 1 million users within its first few weeks. Â Over the last year and a half, TTR and its sequels have become the most popular series on the App Store, with over 25 million installs. And tonight, Tapulous is ready to release an entirely new music-focused gaming series: Riddim Ribbon (iTunes link), featuring the Black Eyed Peas. Riddim Ribbon is a fusion between racing, popular songs, and to some extent, remixing music. After choosing a song, the game throws you into a hyper-colorful racetrack, where you pilot a futuristic spherical vehicle. The track is filled with small orbs (which are good) and obstacles (which are not), and there's a path showing you where you should be driving. To control your vehicle, you tilt your iPhone from side to side. Most of this is standard fare for racing games, but Riddim Ribbon comes with a twist: you actually can modify the music you're listening to during the race depending on how you navigate the course.

Tim Armstrongâs First Earnings Call: âAOL Is Not A Quarterly Projectâ

2010-02-08T11:30:00.001+05:30

AOL announced its first quarterly earnings today as a newly public company. Fourth quarter revenues dropped 8% to $471.6 million, and turned a profit of $1.4 million (see the slides below). Notes from CEO Tim Armstrong's first conference call are below. He laid out AOL's strategy, warned that sales would probably be dampened this quarter as a result of reducing a third of its workforce and noted that "AOL is not a quarterly project." He also said that AOl will pursue new paid subscription services in the future. Here are my live notes:

Hell Freezes Over As Google Runs Its First Super Bowl Ad

2010-02-08T10:30:00.000+05:30

As predicted, Hell has indeed frozen over. Yesterday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt sent a tweet hinting at something most people probably never expected to see: a Google Super Bowl ad. But the contents of the ad, and even the product it would be promoting, remained a mystery. Moments ago some 90 million Americans watched as Google showed off the search functionality that it's famous for, in an ad called Parisian Love. We've embedded the ad below. Yesterday, John Battelle correctly predicted that the ad would be running during the Super Bowl.

IdeaScale Powers 23 Crowdsourcing Sites For The U.S. Government

2010-02-08T09:30:00.000+05:30

Yesterday, California's Chief Technology Officer, P.K. Agarwal, wrote that the government is using a crowdsourcing tool, IdeaScale, to get a consensus on the ideas to spur IT innovation around the California's IT systems. IdeaScale, which is a crowdsourcing tool produced by startup Survey Analytics, is gaining serious traction as a crowdsourcing tool for government agencies. Currently, 23 agencies in the U.S. Federal Government are using IdeaScale to power crowdsourcing initiatives. IdeaScale's technology allows citizens to submit ideas to a site and then vote on their favorite ideas via a Digg-like voting system. The ideas that have the most favorable votes bubble to the top. Agencies can also participate in the discussion by commenting on ideas and posting updates, effectively creating a community around this ideation.

Ashton Kutcher Pays Homage To Twitter With Tooter

2010-02-08T08:30:00.000+05:30

We all know that Ashton Kutcher is a fan of Twitter. Last year, Kutcher raced CNN to a million Twitter followers (Kutcher won). Kutcher hosted Saturday Night Live yesterday night, and as a web exclusive, SNL released this bit Kutcher did about Tooter, which Twitter-like network that broadcasts Kutcher's flatulence emissions, or "gissions." It's up to you to decide how funny the sketch is, but it's certainly an entertaining poke at the celeb's love for the microblogging network and social media. Watch a video of the sketch after the jump.

How To Make Money In Online Video

2010-02-08T07:30:00.000+05:30

Editorâs note: This is the fourth in a series of posts on the state of online video by guest writer Ashkan Karbasfrooshan. He is the founder and CEO of WatchMojo. In Search of Profits Ten years ago, web companies didnât generate much revenue.Â Â These days, web companies are some of the most profitable around.Â Online video is where the Web was ten years ago: in investment mode as video companies that are generating high revenue are not necessarily the most profitable. Are those companies suffering low margins because theyâre investing in the future or are they fundamentally lower-margin businesses?

IdeaScale Powers 24 Crowdsourcing Sites For The U.S. Government

2010-02-08T06:30:00.000+05:30

Yesterday, California's Chief Technology Officer, P.K. Agarwal, wrote that the government is using a crowdsourcing tool, IdeaScale, to get a consensus on the ideas to spur IT innovation around the California's IT systems. IdeaScale, which is a crowdsourcing tool produced by startup Survey Analytics, is gaining serious traction as a crowdsourcing tool for government agencies. Currently, 24 agencies in the U.S. Federal Government are using IdeaScale to power crowdsourcing initiatives. IdeaScale's technology allows citizens to submit ideas to a site and then vote on their favorite ideas via a Digg-like voting system. The ideas that have the most favorable votes bubble to the top. Agencies can also participate in the discussion by commenting on ideas and posting updates, effectively creating a community around this ideation.

FlatFrog, Multi-Touch Display Startup, Raises $18m To Challenge Surface

2010-02-08T05:30:00.000+05:30

Everyone with eyes in their head can see the bright future of multi-touch displays, but the huge variety of technologies out there makes it hard to place a bet. Will capacitive film rule? Or will it be the IR overlay? Or will Microsoft's foresight in nurturing the Surface project pay off once they reveal their new, flatter display? Well, there's one more competitor joining the already-crowded field, and they're coming in heavy with $18 million in funding. There is some question of whether FlatFrog will be able to create a product that's truly distinct from the competition, but this money should go a long way toward getting their name out there and their tech up to spec.

VeriFone Going After Square Hard. Ads In NYC Taxis Already.

2010-02-08T04:30:00.000+05:30

When the mobile payment service Square launched in December, VeriFone rushed to get its own version on the market. A couple weeks ago, they accomplished that with the launch of PayWARE Mobile. Now they're looking to take out their competitor the good old fashioned way: out-spending them. VeriFone is already heavily advertising its PayWARE Mobile product with huge ads in New York City taxis. As you can see in the picture, VeriFone is paying for big screen real estate on the screens that are in the backseats of all cabs in the city now. The ad shows a large picture of the device (a piece of hardware that you attach to your iPhone) and promises users that not only will they be able to accept payments with the iPhone with it, but that they will "never miss a sale."

Betty Goes Boop: Cc: Betty To Be Reborn As Threadbox

2010-02-08T03:30:00.000+05:30

As a product, Cc: Betty was a good idea. Fundamentally, the goal was organize group email threads in a way that makes them more manageable. From an execution perspective, it left a bit to be desired. And from a naming perspective, it left a lot more. Today, the company is announcing that both are changing. In an email to customers, Cc: Betty has disclosed that it's changing its name to Threadbox. And actually the entire service will be morphing into a "new and improved product." The changes are the result of 10 months of beta testing. From the email

Pew Report: Kids Who Pay for Their Own Phone Are 4 Times More Likely To Sext

2010-02-08T02:30:00.000+05:30

The Pew Internet Project says that kids who buy their own phones are four times as likely to sext - that is send inappropriate images or texts to other kids. The sad thing is that some of these images make it into some of the 3,000 reports received by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children every week. While I still think sexting, like rainbow parties, is an overblown phenomenon, the report, found here and embedded after the jump, polled 2,553 Millennials (18-29) and 800 adolescents between 12 and 17. The results were quite interesting.

Apple Warns Developers Against Adding Geo Spam To Their Apps

2010-02-08T01:30:00.000+05:30

A couple days ago, Apple put iPhone developers on notice that location-aware ads will no longer be allowed in all apps. Some observers read this as a blanket prohibition, and noted that it looks like Apple might be reserving geo ads for itself through its acquisition of Quattro Wireless. But the notice itself only seems to ban location-based advertising from non-location-based apps. Here's what the notice on Apple's Dev Center says:

iPhone Still Dominates Foursquare Usage; Android, BlackBerry Up And Coming

2010-02-08T00:30:00.001+05:30

Foursquare is growing fast. Real fast. Traffic may be up as much as threefold over the past two months. But how are people actually using it? The main Foursquare account tweeted out stats today that give a nice breakdown of usage. It's just over a seven day span, but given that the service is now finally on platforms such as BlackBerry, is probably a good sample.

Secret London Facebook Group Amasses 180,000 â Morphs Into Startup

2010-02-07T23:30:00.001+05:30

There's a certain irony that TechCrunch's in-house satirist Paul Carr is currently slaving over the sequel to his book about his failure to launch a startup. Fridaycities was to be a site which allowed anyone to swap information in real time about London, and eventually other cities. The site failed, Paul wrote his book (and a few other things, let's admit) and the rest is history, including our little run in, thankfully. If only he'd done it in the era of Facebook rise into the mainstream. Because today, two weeks after launching, the Secret London Facebook group has 182,010 members and counting and is poised to propel its 21 year old creator into her first startup. Bristol university graduate Tiffany Philippou originally set up the group in response to a competition from ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi to win a mere summer internship. However, it seems unlikely that Tiffany will be too bothered. There's now a holding page and Twitter account (@secret_london) as her Secret London project morphs into a full-blown startup.

Silicon Valley: You and Some of Your VCâs have a Gender Problem

2010-02-07T22:30:00.000+05:30

âPeople in technology businesses are drawn to places known for diversity of thought and open-mindednessâ, is what Professor Richard Florida concluded after studying the growth and success of 50 metropolitan areas in the U.S. The most successful regions were those with the most gays, bohemians, and immigrants. These groups flourish in Silicon Valley, and its diversity has undoubtedly provided it with great advantage. But after attending the recent Crunchies Awards, I realized that something important is still missing -- women entrepreneurs. I was shocked that the only woman CEO on stage during the entire event was TechCrunchâs own Heather Harde. Nearly all the companies that competed in the event (other than the PR firms) had males at the helm. This dearth may be one of the reasons for which the Venture Capital community is in such sharp decline, and why the Valley isnât achieving even more success. An analysis of Dunn and Bradstreet data shows that of the 237,843 firms founded in 2004, only 19% had women as primary owners. And only 3% of tech firms and 1% of high-tech firms (as in Silicon Valley) were founded by women. Look at the executive teams of any of the Valleyâs tech firms â" minus a couple of exceptions like Padmasree Warrior of Cisco, you wonât find any women CTOs. Look at the management teams of companies like Apple â" not even one woman. Itâs the same with the VC firms â" male dominated. Youâll find some CFOs and HR heads, but women VCs are a rare commodity in venture capital. And with the recent venture bloodbath, the proportion of women in the VC numbers is declining further. Itâs no coincidence that only one of the 84 VCs on the 2009 TheFunded list of top VCs was a woman.

Linus Torvalds: Googleâs Nexus One First Mobile Phone I Donât Hate

2010-02-07T21:30:00.001+05:30

Linus Torvalds, the inventor of the Linux kernel, has an absolute disdain for mobile phones. All of the ones he has purchased in the past, the man writes on his personal blog, ended up being "mostly used for playing Galaga and Solitaire on long flights" even though they were naturally all phones run on open source operating systems. Things have changed now, he adds, now that he has caved and bought Google's Nexus One a couple of days ago. Torvalds has owned a number of phones before, including Google's G1 device and 'one of the early China-only Motorola Linux phones', but it took for Google to add multi-touch capabilities to the Nexus One before he finally broke down and bought one from the company's web store.

NSFW: Hey, 1997 â Macmillan called, they want the Net Book Agreement back

2010-02-07T20:30:00.001+05:30

This time last week I rattled off the world's laziest column. I was struggling against my book deadline which expired 24 hours later and I simply didn't have time to write anything else. This week should have been different; I should have finished the book days ago and now be sitting on a beach in the Caribbean, sipping a Diet Coke martini and lazily writing a long, well-thought-out column about some vital issue of the day. Why it's inadvisable to write a mea culpa in the passive voice (otherwise it's just a 'culpa'). Something like that. And yet, and yet - the fact that, seven days later, I'm still sitting at my desk and I still haven't delivered the manuscript to my publisher, should give a hint to how perilous things are right now. I'm Wile E. Coyote about five seconds after he looks down and realises he's overshot the cliff. And yet despite my urge to sack off this week's column and focus on lessening the size of crater I'm about to leave in the desert floor, there's something on which I can't remain silent on any longer. Four words which I've been seeing again and again all week, and which threaten to drive me mad...

Your Comments Are Safe With Us

2010-02-07T19:30:00.001+05:30

About half an hour ago, a post that was published on the Digital Inspiration blog hit Techmeme. The title of that post left little to the imagination: it read "TechCrunch Removes Reader Comments From All Older Blog Posts". That allegation in itself is inaccurate, as is most of the rest of the article, so I felt compelled to respond quickly and offer our side of the story. Which, on a sidenote, we weren't asked for by the person or people behind the blog (at least not to my knowledge).

IBM Acquires Data Management Software Company Initiate Systems

2010-02-07T18:30:00.001+05:30

IBM has acquired Chicago-based software firm Initiate Systems. Initiate helps healthcare providers and other government organizations manage and organize data across various sources. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. It appears that the acquisition is aimed at boosting IBM's healthcare offerings. According to IBM, Initiate's software us currently in use at more than 2,400 healthcare sites, over 40 health information exchanges and multiple government health systems around the world including CVS/Caremark, Blue Cross Blue Shield, United Healthcare Services and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Tesla Motorsâ Next VP of Manufacturing Is A Toyota (Veteran)

2010-02-07T17:30:00.001+05:30

Right off the heels of filing for a $100 million IPO, electric car company Tesla Motors this morning announced that it has hired former Toyota production engineering GM Gilbert Passin to lead the company's vehicle manufacturing operations as Vice President of Manufacturing. Passin has 23 years of international automotive experience under his belt, most recently serving as general manager of production engineering for Toyota in North America. Previously, Passin was vice president of manufacturing at Toyota's plant in Cambridge, Ontario, which produces over 200,000 automobiles per year.

Boxee responds to NBCâs Jeff Zuckerâs misleading statements to Congress re: Hulu-Boxee relationship

2010-02-07T16:30:00.001+05:30

The world's worst manager, Jeff Zucker, who just so happens to be the president of NBC Universal, was on Capitol Hill today trying to persuade lawmakers to allow the proposed merger with Comcast go through. Interesting to note his take on Boxee's relationship with Hulu, which, you'll recall, has been something of a mess. Boxee adds Hulu compatibility, Hulu breaks said compatibility, Boxee re-works its code so that Hulu works again, Hulu breaks compatibility again, etc. And on and on and on. Anyhow, here's the relevant exchange, as carefully jotted down by Boxee's point guards.

Video: Androidâs New Pinch-To-Zoom Multi-Touch In Action

2010-02-07T15:30:00.001+05:30

As we noted earlier, Google announced an update today to its Android OS for Nexus One phones that would enable the pinch-to-zoom multi-touch feature for the first time in a few Google apps: Maps, Gallery, and the Web Browser. We've just received the update, which is technically firmware 2.1-update1, and have taken a video of the new functionality in action. While some third-party apps have taken advantage of mutli-touch for some time on Android, Google has resisted the feature for its own apps â" likely due to an agreement with Apple. But now, all bets appear to be off.

Live From Facebookâs HipHop Technology Tasting

2010-02-07T14:30:00.001+05:30

I'm here at the Facebook Technology Tasting, where the social network is showcasing their newly open sourced PHP technology, HipHop. The new technology effectively transforms PHP into C++, resulting in a significant savings of CPU cycles on web servers. Facebook is streaming the event live, and we've embedded the live stream below. Facebook Senior Open Programs Manager David Recordon kicked off the event by walking the audience through some of the challenges Facebook faces, particularly with the dynamic pages it has to generate. He spoke about some of the benefits of various programming languages, and also the CPU costs of each.

PayPal Halts Personal Payment Transactions In India

2010-02-07T13:30:00.001+05:30

PayPal isn't working properly in India. eBay's electronic payment juggernaut appears to be blocking personal transactions to or from accounts of India-based users. It is reversing personal transactions; transactions involving businesses are still allowed. A reader checked in with us yesterday to let us know PayPal notified him that the company had stopped allowing personal payments to be sent to or from India (full e-mail can be found below). This does not appear to be an isolated incident: see here, here and here for more reports, although we gather commercial payment transactions are unaffected at this point.

Huddle Takes Top Prize At Microsoftâs SharePoint SocialFest

2010-02-07T12:30:00.001+05:30

Last week, Microsoft invited seven BizSpark startups from around the world to a special event called the SharePoint 2010 SocialFest. Each company was invited to spend the week working in close collaboration with Microsoft SharePoint team members, as they tried to take their existing products and see how they could be used to leverage SharePoint. The event culminated in a demo day on Friday, when each startup showed off what they'd managed to put together in the preceding four days and a panel of judges chose the best one. Here's a video with Lynda Ting, Microsoft's Director of Business Development, Emerging Business Team, explaining the goals of the program:

The Ridiculous Becomes The Absurd (Tiananmen)

2010-02-07T11:30:00.001+05:30

If you can't laugh at yourself... Robert Scoble insisted (insisted!) that we take these photos. Possibly to let the healing process begin after yesterday's Google phone drama. And he isn't the only one who wants to turn this into some kind of meme. I hope we call just let this go now, and move on with our lives. I promise to try to use a headset much more often while driving in those states that require it, and otherwise abide by the laws of the land.

Looks Like Google May Have A Super Bowl Commercial

2010-02-07T10:30:00.000+05:30

While Google is a company built on advertising, for the most part it has stayed out of advertising itself on the dominant medium: television. Yes, there have been those short ads for Chrome and a few for Android that it has been involved with. And Google is even said to have considered an ad during the Olympics, but that was killed at the last second, apparently. But now, it looks like Google may be ready to advertise itself on the biggest stage possible: the Super Bowl. Google CEO Eric Schmidt has just posted this very intriguing tweet: