3ones
The Simplest Stable Structure
January 26, 2010
GigaOM
A year or two ago, few would have seen the potential for MOG to become a disruptive force in the music subscription arena. But what started in 2006 as a music-blogging network has become a full-fledged on-demand streaming music service one whose...
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz trumpeted the comeback of display advertising on the companys fourth-quarter call with analysts today by saying: Frankly, our competition is television. Yahoos display revenue grew 26 percent on a sequential basis, to $503 mi...
August 13, 2009
TechCrunch
When Robert Scoble, lover of all things web, says something is lame, you know it must be really lame. And thats what hes saying about a new Yahoo site, Know Your Mojo! — and hes right.
The site claims to tell you what kind of social mojo you posse...
If youve ever spent much time working from the command line, theres a good chance youre going to love TweetShell, a new Twitter client that replicates the terminal environment in the browser. No, it isnt very user-friendly — if youve never heard ...
Popular music recommendation service iLike launched a music download service this afternoon, offering users MP3 downloads for $0.99 to $1.29 per song. Previously the service only offered users the ability to sample 30 second clips of songs, or res...
Theres some excitement around the web today among a certain group of high profile techies. What are they so excited about? Something called WebFinger, and the fact that Google is apparently getting serious about supporting it. So what is it?
Its a...
If you need proof that the stream makes complex services more accessible, take a look at Glide Engage. Launched last week, Glide Engage is a stream front-end for the Glide, a Web OS which offers a suite of integrated Web Apps including docs, spr...
Analytics firm comScore has just released its latest statistics for video steaming sites in the United States for the month of June, and at first glance the results are quite surprising: the top video sites have seen a major shakeup, with many of ...
If you’re on the hunt for a new job, check out our CrunchBoard. We’ve added nearly 50 new jobs from leading internet businesses in the last two weeks. Here’s a quick sample:
- Product Designer
TokBox, Inc. - San Francisco, CA
- VP, Products
TokBox, Inc. - San Francisco, CA
- Product Manager
Ustream - Mountain View, CA
- Research Scientist
Orange Labs San Francisco (France Telecom RD) - San Francisco, CA
- Sales Account Manager
Glu Mobile Inc. - San Mateo, CA
For job hunters in Europe, check out our Europe CrunchBoard.
Movie piracy is a problem, but its not as huge of a problem as music piracy was this past decade. While certainly the size of the movie files and the need for fast broadband connections to get them in a reasonable amount of time plays into it some...
The doodle for todays Google logo might give a new meaning to the term Google bomb. While it is not actually a drawing of a bomb—it is an electromagnet in celebration of the birth of its inventor Hans Christian Ørsted—a lot of people might mista...
Its a great story for us whenever an entrepreneur makes a crazy amount of money and we get to tell the world about it. For the entrepreneur? Not so much. Hitherto unknown relatives, entrepreneurs seeking angel investments, money managers and suppo...
Marc Andreessen is backing a new browser company called RockMelt. Not much is known about RockMelt other than it is being designed by an all-star team (including software engineer Robert John Churchill from the Netscape days) and that it is tied...
I’ve been taking a brief respite from my international travels, but the last weekend in August I am hitting the tarmac again. This time, it’s a few weeks in Brazil. Right now, I’m planning on spending the time in Sao Paolo but am open to exploring...
If you're like me you've always wondered about making an iPhone game. What mad skillz do you need? What course in computer science will teach you how to vector a jet across the screen? Well, Nicholas Francis set out to solve that problem and came ...
Perhaps youve been following the Tr.im fiasco. If not, basically the URL shortening service shut down and said all its links would cease to work by the end of the year, dealing a severe blow to users of any URL shortening service. Tr.im has since ...
Facial recognition service Riya will shut down on August 21, 2009, says founder Munjal Shah in an email to users this morning. We are adding it to the TechCrunch DeadPool.
This was one of the original services that defined the early Web 2.0 moveme...
If the RIAA cant stop music sharing, the U.S. government is going to have an even harder time trying to stop the sharing of federal court documents hidden behind a paywall. Those documents arent protected by copyright law.
The PACER service provid...
FatSecret, an Australian social network focused on nutrition and weight loss that we covered back in 2007, is launching a new API tonight that allows third party sites and services to tap into its database of nutritional data, excercise informatio...
One of the big problems with starting a new service that relies on user submitted data is getting people to actually use it — nobody is going to routinely boot up your app if they dont have an incentive to do so. One way to tackle this problem is...
Canadian photo sharing startup BubbleShare will be shuttered on November 15, 2009. Users were notified via email and a notice on the sites home page.
The site, founded by Albert Lai, first launched in late 2005 and we immediately liked it: Toront...
Goodbye, Desktop Factory, we hardly knew ye. Desktop Factory was supposed to offer a sub-$5,000 desktop 3D printer. Alas, they are no more and they've sold their IP and assets to an unnamed buyer.
But a funny thing happened as we launched our ef...
I want live streaming video recording apps on the iPhone. You want live streaming video recording apps on the iPhone. Everyone wants live streaming video recording apps on the iPhone - except for Apple. Though such applications have been availab...
When FriendFeed launched new themes back in June, I wanted but one feature: The ability to create my own. Today, I got my wish.
Despite being purchased by Facebook for close to $50 million earlier this week, FriendFeed is still rolling out new fea...
August 11, 2009
TechCrunch
The Onion strikes again, announcing Google Opt Out today, a product that lets people opt out of Googles information gathering activities by having their home destroyed and moving to a covered villiage complex at an undisclosed location. As always,...
Weve already written a half dozen times or so about how the Mac version of Googles Chrome browser continues to surge towards being fully usable on a daily basis. And today brings another update on that front.
The latest builds of Chromium for Mac ...
This is going to end well, and no one will be upset about this. Also, everything I said in that last sentence is probably wrong.
When Debian developer Joey Hess started tinkering with webOS, he noticed that it was sending something to Palm once...
Mint, the popular personal finance site that won 2007s TechCrunch40 conference, has closed a new $14 million Series C funding round. Silicon Alley Insider discovered the round in an SEC filing this morning, and weve just gotten off the phone with...
Apples App Store policies have been under fire for months now. It looks like tensions are starting to thaw following a couple of emails from Apple Senior VP Phil Schiller to some vocal bloggers. But it seemed a bit odd that it was Schiller doing t...
Do you guys remember my belt buckle? It's cool, right? What could be cooler than a QR code belt buckle? How about a silver brooch that displays a topographical map? I know, right?!
At almost 300 euros the Earth Brooch imposes a pretty hefty premi...
Socialcast, the realtime collaboration software platform, today announced the release of its official developer API after weeks of beta-testing. Essentially, Socialcast lets employees in companies communicate via activity streams, create groups, a...
If it wasnt bad enough that Facebook bought FriendFeed on Monday and turned on real-time search to better compete against Twitter in the Stream Wars, and is playing around with a lite version that resembles Twitter even more, now Twitter really h...
iGoogle, a personalized homepage that competes with My Yahoo, My MSN, My AOL, Netvibes and others, will release 19 new in-house and third party iGoogle widgets today that add new social and sharing features to users of the service. An overview of ...
As Erick pointed out yesterday, IPO registrations are up. But even if all of these companies go out, does this mean VCs are out of the no liquidity woods? Hardly.
Sure everyone brings up LinkedIn and Facebook as the potentially huge homerun IPOs i...
So, apparently, Apple's Phil Schiller is starting to talk about Apple's missteps. After months of silence, one of Apple's top executives (and possibly the most public-facing one next to Jobs) has started to reach out to the tech community to help ...
Microsoft and Nokia announced a broad ranging alliance this morning which will bring Microsoft Office and other productivity software to a Nokia phones. The agreement marks the first time Microsoft will make Office for non windows mobile phones,...
Boxee, the media center software startup, has won a lot of fans with its open approach to streaming content. And as a result it has won some more money, to the tune of a $6 million second round, led by Bostons General Catalyst Partners. The new mo...
Go ahead and clean up the coffee you just spit all over your keyboard. We'll wait. Back? OK. A judge and Texas as ruled that Microsoft Word's XML systems violate patents by Toronoto-based i4i Inc. Word uses XML in reading and writing XML, DOCX, an...
I suspect the femtocell has missed its chance, wrote Charles Arthur in the Guardian recently. Not so fast. It seems the existing shareholders of femtocell manufacturer Ubiquisys beg to differ, because theyve just pumped a further $11m into the com...
So, weve already explained why the newly revealed Facebook Lite at the very least wasnt conceived to be a Twitter-killer, but it does look interesting. The service, which is currently being tested in India (and sadly, not in the U.S. despite the m...
So, the web pretty much exploded tonight over the appearance of something called Facebook Lite, a new service thats apparently being beta tested by Facebook. But users who received the message that they were invited to test it out, were frustrated...
GigLocator, a live music aggregator, launches today in open beta. It promises to offer a large collection of gig listings worldwide, sourced from major ticket providers and a number of independents too. It enables users of keep track of their favourite artists and venues while offering a discovery mechanism to help you find more gigs you might like.
It has a smart search engine which knows if youre looking for artists, venues and so on. Enter multiple Last.fm, Pandora or iLike usernames and the site will k...
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LinkedIn tonight celebrated their 45 millionth user sign up, according to LinkedIns Marketing Project Manager Florina Xhabijas Twitter message.
According to comScore, LinkedIn had 16 million worldwide monthly unique visitors and 331 million page ...
It looks like Facebook has tonight turned on a feature called Facebook Lite for some users to test out. Were getting bombarded by tips about it, and some of us are seeing it as well. Unfortunately, it appears that it may not be fully ready for p...
By now, most businesses and self-employed individuals know that they can use social media services like Twitter and Facebook to help themselves grow their customer base and (hopefully) make some money. But for most people, actually using these se...
Weve known for a while that Googles Knol is no Wikipedia killer, but now the knowledge-sharing site is being reduced to a sad Craigslist wannabe. The original idea behind Knol was that people could collaboratively write definitive articles about...
As weve seen before, DVD Jon loves messing with Apple. And now hell get his chance in a major way. Jon Lech Johansen (better known as DVD Jon), the co-founder of doubleTwist, a company attempting to circumvent the iTunes/iPod ecosystem, has posted...
Another small sign that the worst of the recession may be behind us: IPO registrations are clawing their way back from the shadow of the valley of death (also known as the first quarter if 2009, when there were zero IPOs registered with the SEC)....
A few weeks ago, we wrote about Steven Frank, a well-known Mac developer who was giving up his iPhone over his disgust with the ways Apple is managing the App Store. (This was right before Mike also gave up his iPhone). Well, Frank is already cons...
The tough thing about being a startup is that no one is willing to share their numbers with you.
With that in mind, wed like to announce the 2009 TechCrunch Web App Survey.
Its an (optionally) anonymous survey where we can all share a bit of data ...
August 10, 2009
TechCrunch
Facebook is certainly pumping on all cylinders this week. Yesterday came news that the site had acquired FriendFeed, and this morning it proposed a new Terms of Service. Now Facebook has announced some additions to its API, including a new Mailb...
Im still finding it a little hard to believe that Aaron Sorkin (he of A Few Good Men, he of The West Wing) is writing the screenplay for the upcoming Facebook movie. But not only is he, but upon hearing the proposal (based on Ben Mezrichs The Acci...
Everyone knows how hard it is to raise funding right now. But the European VC market has been even more abysmal than the US one of late, with first round fundings thin on the ground and down-rounds aplenty. So one startup has decided to jump ship from the VC merry-go-round and seek a third way for itself.
Trampoline Systems, specialists in social analytics for companies, launched in the UK and the US last year but a search for a new $8 million round after an initial $5 million round in 2007 from Tudor Inve...
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It is not often that a company waits ten years to take its first venture capital. MyWebGrocer, which was founded in 1999, raised $13 million today in a series A investment from the Stripes Group, a private equity firm in New York City. This is ...
Today Facebook has posted a note to its blog indicating that its proposing an update to its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities — one of the sites documents that establishes user rights and Facebooks Terms of Service. The post notes that the...
Nokia doesnt trust its Symbian mobile operating system any more and plans to equip many of its smartphones with the mostly open source Maemo operating system it uses in its Internet tablets, according to undisclosed Nokia sources speaking to the F...
Just as users and the entire Twitter developer ecosystem was getting back on its feet after last weeks multi-day outage, Twitter goes down again.
The outage last week, which was caused by a DDOS attack, started at around 6 am California time on F...
You post one shoe review and the runners come out of the woodwork. Take Racevine for example. This service allows you to search for and review races. Were talking everything: Ironmans (Ironmen?), triathlons, marathons, sprints. All kinds of stuff....
Does Googles search results page feel a little more crowded to you? The ads which used to run down along the right-hand edge of the page are now shifted over to the left, as if to declare, Hey, look at us! Maybe this will increase the number of...
We dont know what is going on over at Nambu, but it doesnt smell good. Today, just days after shutting down Tr.im and saying all support would cease at the end of the year, killing all the links shortened with the service, they have reversed cours...
These days, more and more books have accompanying Websites and smart authors even try to attract readers online before the book is even published. Sometimes they even try to enlist those potential readers into contributing to the book (for free)...
Silicon Valley based job listing search engine Simply Hired is announcing profitability and a new round of financing - $4.6 million from new investor IDG Ventures and existing investor Foundation Capital. The company is also announcing four quarte...
Can Microsoft’s latest Zune, the Zune HD, take down the king? It depends on which king you’re talking about. As it stands, the iPod Touch is a whole different beast because of the App Store. What Microsoft has done with the Zune HD is nothing shor...
For years you've been using the well-supported, ubiquitous file format called MP3. It's an international standard, it works just fine in every media player, and other universally-accepted formats are in place for the album artwork, lyrics, and wha...
You know that strange viral marketing campaign popping up around the Interwebs as of late? Well, we know what it means now thanks to GM's CEO Fritz Henderson and it's somewhat impressive - and a tad dubious. GM is claiming that under the new EPA g...
Again, this is nothing but a very vague rumor for the time being, but its also very interesting. Following up on its iTunes 9 rumors, Boy Genius Report claims to have new details from the same trusted source about what iTunes 9, and specifically t...
Seriously, these never get old. An enterprising soul has tonight re-created the pivotal Hitler scene from the movie Downfall, but done so with subtitles explaining why Hilter is so mad that Facebook has acquired FriendFeed.
This meme seems be done...
Joshua Schachter is best known as the creator of Delicious. But a few years after he sold it to Yahoo in 2005, he left the company and joined Google. Since then, hes been known to speak his mind about Delicious overall direction (which he doesnt s...
Today Yellix, a self-funded mobile startup from Vienna hits the crowded mobile app market. Yellix offers an interesting way of connecting your Facebook friends with your mobile device. By installing the free Facebook application onto your cell phone your Facebook friends are matched with your cell contacts - in real time. There are a number of apps out there that do this, but few pull real-time info from Facebook.
Its not entirely clear how this is done technically but the app runs on Android, RIM BlackBerr...
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New startup RXVantage is releasing a really smart SaaS product into a huge market - drug and medical device marketing.
Selling stuff to doctors is really big business - $60+ billion a year in the U.S. alone is spent annually in marketing to physi...
We broke the news on Dell launching a China-only cell phone on Sunday, and today major Chinese news portal 163.com reports the device is on its way: What Dell will be offering in China is an Android-powered "Ophone" called the mini3i.
China Mob...
Last month we reported that Silicon Valley based Ooyala, a service that manages video streaming for websites, was looking for a new CEO to take the business to the next level. Today theyll be announcing that new CEO - former Agile Software CEO Jay...
Search Engines are like sharks: If they stop moving, they die.
Okay, Im not even sure if thats really true about sharks. In fact, Im pretty sure its not. But still, it is true about search engines, in that they have to keep innovating and updating...
When most people are faced with the task of building their resume, they fire up Microsoft Word, trudge through a few generic looking templates, and export their page to HTML. Usually this results in something thats either boring, weird looking (b...
Earlier today, we reported on Bit.ly offering Tr.im parent Nambu Network, a couple of ways to ensure all its links dont die when the service stop supporting them at the end of the year. Nambu rejected those, as it is instead looking to sell. Now w...
With all the hoopla over the Facebooks $50 million acquisition of FriendFeed today, itd be nice to see how it actually went down. And now we can, thanks to pictures FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit, who posted some pictures of the two sides imm...
Just hours after we broke the news that Facebook had acquired FriendFeed comes Facebooks announcement that its deploying its improved search product to everyone. This improved search functionality, which has been in testing since June, gives use...
Everyone is obviously talking about the Facebook/FriendFeed deal, but everyone wants to know one key detail: How much did Facebook pay? Now we know: Facebook paid nearly $50 million when you add the $15 million it paid in cash with roughly $32.5 m...
Something dramatic is going on between Zynga CEO Mark Pincus and one of his old employees at Tribe.net, a company he cofounded in 2003. Pincus has obtained a temporary restraining order on Darren McKeeman, formerly the IT Director at Tribe. Cisco...
August 9, 2009
TechCrunch
Today VMWare has announced the acquisition of SpringSource, a provider of Web application development and management services. The deal closed at a $420 million valuation, with $362 million in cash and equity plus an assumption of approximately $58 million in unvested stocks and options.
SpringSource is a notable proponent of lean software, a concept that is gaining traction in the enterprise space as a means of accelerating the delivery of business applications in the cloud. With the acquisition, VMWare...
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If youre a partner at Benchmark Capital, youre having a very good day and celebrating two separate portfolio acquisitions.
Thats sort of like an unassisted triple play in baseball, it just doesnt happen that often. Maybe thats why the team looks ...
So, Facebook has acquired FriendFeed. But what does it mean? Well despite the rhetoric of some that this is a minor deal because FriendFeeds audience was small compared to that of its acquirer Facebook, or even Twitter, this deal should actually h...
Details on the Facebook acquisition of Friendfeed story that we broke earlier today are still coming in. But we had a chance to talk with Friendfeed cofounder Bret Taylor (pictured right) and Facebook VP Products Chris Cox a few minutes ago to dis...
Yahoo has been active in the domain buying and selling space the past few months. Today, it was revealed to be the buyer of OMG.com, which sold last week for $80,000, according to Domain Name Wire.
Its a great domain, and a really, really great pr...
Facebook has acquired FriendFeed, weve learned. Were gathering details now.
At this point details on the acquisition are still very sparse, but its clearly a good match. Over the last year or so, Facebook has borrowed quite a few of features tha...
Yesterday, upon hearing that the URL shortening service Tr.im was shutting down, Bit.ly, the largest URL-shortener, stepped in with a proposal. The offer wasnt to buy the service, but rather to propose that Bit.ly host Tr.ims URL-mappings indefini...
I thought I'd share this review with the TC audience because you seem like a fit lot and interested in the outdoors. Correct me if I'm wrong. So, we begin:
I swore I'd never wear them. We called them the Five Fingers of Suck a few years ago and I...
The leader of Pakistans Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, may or may not be dead after a CIA missile hits his father-in-laws home in the remote Zangarha area of the country. But now we can see exactly where that missile hit, and we dont even need acces...
When was the last time you read your ATT contract? If you answered “never,” then may I suggest you take two minutes to look this over. That's right, unbeknownst to you, you just lost the ability to enter into a class action lawsuit against the mob...
For all the angst around the demise of Tr.im, the fact is that there are way too many URL shortening services in the world and inevitably more will fall by the wayside. There simply is no need for more than a dozen services to make long URLs sho...
According to controversial paid follower service uSocial.net, Michael Jackson (or, more likely, his people) attempted to buy 25,000 followers for his Twitter account before he died.
“I cant admit that we dealt with Michael Jackson directly, though we were in touch with someone in his family recently who tasked us with conducting a Twitter campaign on an account relating to him,” said uSocial.net CEO Leon Hill. “It was exciting to say the very least to conduct work with such a big name.”
This doesnt mean any...
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Every now and again, you come across a service that promises to disrupt and change the entrepreneurial landscape. Buildabrand could possibly do just that. The service provides high quality strategically correct branding for startups for about the same price as domain registration, effectively bypassing what is a traditionally expensive and time-consuming process with brand expert agencies.
Answer a few questions about your business and buildabrand will provide a selection of brand identities: logos, fonts a...
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If you were a Bloglines user, consider yourself old school. Most people moved on to Google Reader long ago, and then bailed on RSS entirely for the Real Time Gang (Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, etc.).
The once-great feed reader, bought by IAC in ...
Diggs been busy lately adding new features—some loved, some not—but they seem to be having a positive effect on overall. In June, comScore estimates the site brought in 8.8 million unique visitors in the U.S alone, up 31 percent over the precedi...
More than two years after buying advertising network aQuantive for $6 billion, Microsoft finally unloaded the digital advertising agency that came with that deal. It sold Razorfish to French advertising conglomerate Publicis Groupe for $530 million in a combination stock-and-cash transaction. The price was 1.4 times Razorfishs 2008 sales of $380 million.
Microsoft has been shopping Razorfish around all summer. It was reportedly hoping to get $600 to $700 million, but the advertising recession didnt he...
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A source with knowledge of the situation tells us that Dell is launching (or at least announcing) a mobile phone in China in the next day or two. We are trying to verify the information and gather more details on the hardware and operating system ...
Nambu Networks, the company behind tr.im, pic.im, and the Nambu social application for Mac OS and iPhone has announced that tr.im will no longer be shortening URLs for the public. According to a blog post, the reason behind the decision is Twitter...
Since I joined TechCrunch Ive seen more Twitter clones and derivatives then Id care to remember, most of which havent really gone anywhere. But there are a few gems that have managed to tackle markets that Twitter has, for whatever reason, ignore...
August 6, 2009
TechCrunch
Anyone who has ever used Googles automated translation service knows that its not exactly perfect — generally youll wind up with words that are close approximations of what you started with, but Google inevitably decides to change the meaning of a...
The Microsoft PR team tweeted out the first image to Twitpic of the Microsoft Retail Store opening in Scottsdale and Mission Viejo. The stores are slated to open sometime in the fall, with more locations opening after. In July, Microsofts master p...
As we noted early this morning, Twitter is still having some major issues getting its service stabilized following the DDoS attacks. Co-founder Biz Stone has posted a new update on the situation on Twitters blog today. Apparently, the attacks are ...
Assetize, the startup known for selling Facebook vanity URLs, has launched a new service targeted at Twitter users with unused, unwanted accounts. The same concept from Facebook vanity URLs carries over to the Twittersphere. Assetize will let you park Twitter accounts, like domain names, for future use and in the meantime put ads on the account while you sit back and make money. To park your Twitter account, simply register with Assetize for an invite, then put in all of your account information, give keywo...
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Everybody's making noise about the upcoming Apple tablet, and who can blame them? It'll certainly be an interesting device, but the thing is that nobody really knows what it's going to be. Flat, to be sure, and tablet-shaped in all likelihood, but...
Twitter was down for a little while yesterday (its still a little iffy), and it was the closest the United States of America has ever come to collapsing.
P.S. I know the song is played out; thats why I picked it!
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because its time for you to find a new Job2.0
When Amazon paid $928 million for Zappos in July, it got a little something extra in the box: the Clothes.com domain. It turns out that Zappos bought the domain last year from Idealab for $4.9 million (Bill Gross strikes again).
The detail is t...
Weve done more digging on the Spotify cap table story from yesterday, and have confirmed with one source that the company did close on at least part of the new round of financing the Financial Times reported they were negotiating earlier this week...
Silicon Valleys electric car company, Tesla Motors, says that it hit profitability in July. The private company reports that it made approximately $1 million of earnings on revenues of $20 million, and that it shipped 109 Roadsters, its $109,000...
If you’re craving city life or a university setting, Ann Arbor, Michigan is the place to be. Ann Arbor is the seventh largest city in the state of Michigan, with a population of 114,386, of which more than 30% are college or university students. ...
I had never heard of Spacelocker before, have you? Apparently, its a social network where you can go to meet friends and connect to online stuff but not to upload and store photos, videos, or music. So essentially its like Facebook or MySpace but ...
Going over the 10 startups that were profiled by guest author Don Dodge yesterday on the occasion of their TechStars 2009 graduation, Next Big Sound to me seemed one of the more interesting ones and I wanted to take a closer look at it. Basically,...
Hot European music startup Spotify is back in the news today. On August 4 we broke the news that the big music labels have secretly been shareholders in the company since 2008, and that they paid roughly the same price for their preferred stock as venture capital investors Northzone Ventures and Creandum paid last year.
Now, though, Swedish news site ComputerSweden is reporting that those music labels actually got their stock for free. Sony BMG, Universal Music, Warner Music, EMI and Merlinbought at the tim...
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Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal spent yesterday battling a DDOS attack that started around 6 am California time. Twitter and LiveJournal went down hard, Facebook stayed mostly online but was clearly under strain. CNET reports that a single indi...
With Twitter down this morning and reports of failure all over the social Web, I figured FriendFeed would be up, if denuded by the Twitter outage. Well, sorta. In fact, FriendFeed searches are down. How the hell does a denial of service attack pla...
Since the early days of the Facebook Platform, Causes has been one of the most popular apps. Its also big on MySpace, and the company behind it recently announced that they had raised some $10,000,000 for various causes in two years. It makes sens...
Earlier today I had a debate about the Realtime Web with author Andrew Keen on a Blogtalk Radio podcast hosted by Supernovas Howard Greenstein. (It is embedded below if you have an extra hour to spare).
Andrew thinks that real time streams such a...
As an online entity, Google is constantly evolving and improving its products. Some updates are silly, but some are far more serious and meant for good. Its update today to Google Earth to expand its Darfur coverage, is the latter.
Using data from...
August 4, 2009
TechCrunch
This afternoon Facebooks Open Stream API, which launched in late April, will be getting a few new additions that make the API significantly more robust and easier for developers to integrate.
One feature that will be familiar to Twitter and Frien...
At our Real-Time Stream CrunchUp event last month, one of the most interesting things that was demoed was PubSubHubbub, a new protocol made by a few Googlers in their spare time to improve the speed at which Atom and RSS items travel around the we...
Most of the public Internet companies have reported their second quarter earnings by now. In a research note sent out to clients today, J.P. Morgan provides a few takeaways from the quarter. We already know that the recession continues in overa...
Apple has just pushed out the newest update to its OS X Leopard (10.5) operating system, with 10.5.8. This could potentially be the last Leopard update we see before Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) is released to the public sometime in the next couple of...
What is it with all the toolbar copycat craziness lately. First, there was Digg going after StumbleUpon with the Diggbar. Then StumbleUpon, which already had a toolbar, introduced a new toolbar/URL shortening service called Su.pr.
Now, micro-...
In 2007, Radiohead sent a shock-wave around the music industry when it released its album In Rainbows online, letting the purchaser set the price they wanted to pay for it. Some hailed it as the future of music distribution, others thought it woul...
Last month at The Europas - TechCrunch Europe’s version of the Crunchies - a lot of impressive start-ups were honored. But one was clearly cleaning up: Spotify, the sexy online music app that has music lovers in Europe swooning.
Each time the comp...
Google just released a new beta version of its Chrome browser for Windows PCs. The company claims that it is 30 percent faster than the current stable version of the browser (based on V8 and SunSpider benchmarks).
What may be more significant...
Twitter is being sued again, and this time it isnt some angry baseball manager who doesnt like people impersonating him on the service. This time it is a little more serious. Twitter is being sued for patent infringement by TechRadium, a Texas-...
In another fascinating move by the App Store acceptance team (Motto: Lunch is tasty! Is that a butterfly? We like cake.) the Ninjawords pocket dictionary, a $2 app, has been given an 17+ rating after being censored by Apple. This ensures that titt...
For several months now, Ustream has had an iPhone app that allows you to view video from the service. But view is the keyword there. You could only watch it, you could not record and send your own video back from the iPhone. But starting today, yo...
Global mobile advertising network operator mKhoj shall henceforth be known under the name InMobi, which is infinitely easier to pronounce in the Western world. The company felt the rebranding was necessary given that it will be shifting more of it...
Online advertising marketplace TRAFFIQ today announced it has closed a $10 million Series B round of venture funding from Grotech Ventures, Greenhill SAVP and Court Square Ventures.
The New York-based company, which operates a management platform...
Washington DC based LaunchBox Digital, an early stage investment firm and incubator founded in 2007 by John McKinley, Sean Green, and Julius Genachowski (now the new head of the FCC and divested from LaunchBox), just wrapped up its second annual ...
Google and On2 Technologies jointly announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Google will acquire On2, a developer of video compression technology. The acquisition is expected to close later this year. On2 mark...
Google Radio, the Internet search and advertising giants online radio ad buying service, has been sold to online ad and media management software firm WideOrbit for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition was first reported by PaidContent back in July...
New Y Combinator funded startup Listia launched this morning, and I already love it. Its a really smart way to give stuff away for free.
We tend to give away a lot of the random stuff people send us at TechCrunch. Some of it is trivial - stickers,...
Close to half of Europeans use the internet every day but one third have never used the web, according to a new report (PDF) published by the European Commission. The study, which took a deep dive into the digital landscape in Europe over the last...
Ever since Netflixs awesome vacation policy was revealed to the public (basically, there is no policy, its take the time you think you need), the companys work policies have been of interest to people. A new 128-page presentation called Reference Guide on our Freedom & Responsibility Culture was recently sent around the company, and then put on SlideShare, where the blog Hacking Netflix found it.
The presentation, which you can see for yourself below, is as interesting as any 128-page document can be. If you...
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Google is clearly enamored with the netbook space. We already know that its serving as an entry point for the new Chrome OS, but Google isnt just going to sit around and wait for that, its starting to optimize its experience for netbooks already.
...
This is just kind of odd. Look at the picture below. See the picture of some guy in place of the X button? Yeah, thats this guy.
Apparently, one of Googles Chrome UI designers, Glen Murphy, has inserted his face into the latest nightly build of Ch...
When it comes to flight information, or to be more accurate, flight statuses, push notification can be a godsend. Case-in-point, Worldmate Gold (iTunes link), one of the first iPhone travel apps to utilize the new OS 3.0s push notification capabil...
Its a match made in real-time heaven. StockTwits, a popular site that lets you track real-time discussions about stock information on Twitter, is now featuring a live feed of real-time news provided compliments of SkyGrid, the powerful real-time...
Tonight Aneesh Chopra, US Chief Technology Officer and Associate Director For Technology, spoke at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View during his first trip to Silicon Valley since he took office in an event that is being put on by the Ce...
Slowly but surely, Google Maps is filling up with more and more places. If you do a search in a major city, you are likely to find landmarks, museums, famous stores and restaurants labeled right on the map even if you did not specifically search...
As we first reported the existence of a few days ago, Googles Theme Gallery for Chrome has gone live. On the page, you can find 29 official themes that range from subtle (greyscale) to hideously ugly (legal pad).
Installing them couldnt be simple...
July 29, 2009
TechCrunch
We on the web are a simple folk — especially us males. We need but two things to keep us happy: Explosions and boobs. And thank God someone has finally cut through all the BS, and given us exactly what we want in one brilliant site called yes, Ex...
Over the last few days weve seen a lot of attention centered on the new iPhone application from Spotify, the so-called iTunes Killer subscription service that lets you plays songs on demand from a library of millions of tracks. We still dont kno...
Mozillas Firefox browser is about to hit a major milestone: 1 billion total downloads. As you can see on this Twitter account set up to monitor the download numbers, it just crossed the 999,000,000 threshold earlier today. Judging by the rate at w...
NewsGator Online, one of the first online RSS readers I used back in the day, is being tossed in the deadpool by its parent company in a move that signals its newfound focus on desktop applications and social computing tools for businesses.
Users...
You know those idiotic commenters on Digg? Sure you do. You know, FIRST, LOLZ, URGAY, etc. Yeah, those guys. Well Digg took a step today that could possibly make them at least 10,000 times more annoying: Email alerts.
Now, lets be clear: This does...
Online travel services group Expedia has reported its results for Q2 2009, and the financials arent looking spectacular, but not as bad as expected.
Although the number of booking transactions handled by the company actually saw a small uptick, gr...
The conventional wisdom out there on Web video advertising is that most advertisers dont want to risk being associated with user-generated videos (i.e., the vast bulk of videos on YouTube). It is only the professionally-produced stuff on portion...
Lolligift solves a pressing problem in most offices. You know how when Maurice in accounting or Lydia on the dev team breaks a hip or has a birthday? And how Sarah in HR goes around collecting cash for a present for them? And how you know you have...
At first glance, Redux has a very appropriate name: It looks like its just another version of the aggregation and conversation service FriendFeed. But a new feature is fairly awesome. TV allows you to easily share video clips, just as you would sh...
Weve all seen the ads and screenshots that pop-up when you hover over keywords on blogs. For the most part, theyre annoying. But what if those pop-ups had actual useful information in them? Thats the idea behind Panels Network.
A key feature of th...
Google Voice has been making a lot of headlines lately, but not for the reasons youd hope. The service is already running into frustrating opposition from Apple and possibly ATT (depending on who you believe). Today, its getting opposition of a d...
The creator of iCombat wrote an analysis of his experience making and giving away a free "lite" version of his app alongside his paid, full version. The result? It makes economic sense to create a lite version early on and update it often to goose...
My Name is E appeared earlier this year with a product which sounded familiar to most. It enables you to collect all your social and contact accounts - on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and any other network - in one spot. However, the twist was that...
Dutch startup Nimbuzz , which bills itself as the mobile Skype today releases an IM application for Android phones which ties together multiple messaging tools (Skype, MSM, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, etc.) via a single interface. The Nimbuzz trump c...
When Jimmy Wales co earlier this year quietly added Wikianswers to the host of products launched under the Wikia umbrella, we werent the only ones who were skeptical about its potential to make waves. Did the Internet really need yet another QA s...
Getting sound out of an iPhone and online quickly has been pretty easy for a while, and there are a number of startups playing in the space. Trottr works from any phone and is a simple call-in or upload system. The Tweetmic iPhone app has been gat...
Like everyone else Ive watched the print media world fall apart over the last few years. The poster child for that industry is the New York Times, of course, and their many missteps in recent memory have been well chronicled. In early 2008 Marc An...
In June we wrote about AOLs evolving Toyota strategy to evolve into an online media powerhouse just as the print media world is falling apart. New CEO Tim Armstrong hasnt been pinned down on how hard hes betting on this strategy in recent public a...
Whether its a sign of economic recovery or just investment bankers getting ready to take off the month of August, theres been a lot acquisition activity lately. In the last week alone, IBM purchased SPSS for $1.2 billion, Amazon bought Zappos fo...
Twitter is now seeing dozens of tweets a minute from users reporting that their Twitter updates are being posted as automatic updates to their Facebook profile, apparently without their consent. The change seems to have happened very recently, an...
Is Apple losing the plot? I ask this because, having just read this bollocks (Apple wants to make jailbreaking illegal because it supposedly threatens our nation's cellphone tower infrastructure, and thereby threatens our national security), I've ...
The Guitar Hero/Rock Band phenomenon is showing no signs of waning, with countless sequels still on the way (including one focused solely on music by The Beatles) and money continuing to pour into the coffers of their respective game publishers. ...
“You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two- year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone,” Elevation Partners (which owns a huge portion of Palm) co-founder Roger McNamee told Bloomberg in March. “Not one of those people will...
July 27, 2009
TechCrunch
This is, without a doubt, the best comment ever on TechCrunch. Left by J on MGs latest iPhone rant about the Google Voice debacle. Beautiful.
AT&T: You want answers?
TechCrunch: We think we’re entitled to them.
AT&T: You want answers?!
Tec...
Well, we never thought it would happen because of its intense rivalry with Google, but Facebook is almost ready to launch an official app for Android phones. Hints are already popping up here and there, but Ive been able to confirm it. The app...
Hosting provider SoftLayer was partially taken down this morning from a DDOS attack, and several well known websites, including TechMeme and TwitPic, went down with it.
The problem at SoftLayer was resolved, but some users of OpenDNS, a DNS servic...
You almost have to admire AT&Ts consistency. They are consistently finding new ways to fuck up almost daily now.
The latest issue involves the story we covered yesterday about apps using the Google Voice service getting pulled from Apples App ...
Google is finally figuring out that short links are just easier to deal with, especially on a mobile phone. No, it is not rolling out its own URL shortening service just yet (bit.ly, stand down). But today it is introducing what it calls smart ...
If youve got a company and you want a big acquisition in a year or two, you may want to consider hiring Alfred Lin, currently the COO/CFO of just-acquired Zappos. Every company hes worked for has been acquired, and the smallest deal was $265 milli...
We've been screaming and whining about the iPhone App Store for nigh on a year now and we seem to have avoiding talking about one of the most obvious sources for information about the Store: Steve himself.
Harry "Long Tail" McCracken remembers wh...
Years ago, London ruled one-fourth of the world's population. Now? Training its civil servants how to tweet “issues of relevance or upcoming events.”
The UK's Cabinet Office original story titlehas published a 20-page “how-to” of sorts, the go...
The much anticipated Microsoft/Yahoo search alliance is in the final stages of negotiation says a source close to Yahoo, and may be signed at any time. The two companies have been negotiating the terms of the transaction for weeks, and our source ...
Issuu, the Danish startup battling the likes of Docstoc and Scribd in the professional document publication and sharing space, is today introducing a REST-based API that enables its users to automatically upload and manage publications, bookmarks,...
iPhonAsia has some information on China's exciting WiFi-crippled iPhone. The device will cost less than the smuggled, grey-market iPhones currently available in China and will include special apps for the Chinese consumer.
Considering Apple and C...
Ive now been given an extended demo of the Spotify iPhone app which is currently awaiting Apples approval.
Unfortunately the guy who showed it to me managed to prize the iPhone with the app on it from my cold sweaty palms, so I wasnt allowed to t...
Hello, my name is Christopher Hawker. I am a professional inventor, specializing in innovative consumer products. My company is called Trident Design, LLC. I have developed many products in numerous industries and have over 20 products on the mark...
There are 1.2 million predictions made on Twitter everyday. Those are numbers that the prediction startup Blubet pulled 2 weeks ago from the service. Thats roughly 5% to 6% of the overall tweets being sent out on any given day, according to their ...
The following message is brought to you by TechCrunch50 co-host Jason Calacanis.
In order to build excitement for the TechCrunch50 conference, and in a blatant attempt to take over the Twitter trending topics list for the next six weeks, weve con...
In what looks to be shaping up to be another healthy week for MA activity, Sprint Nextel is putting more of its focus on the prepaid cell phone service market with a $483 million deal to buy out Virgin Mobile USA.
The acquisition, which was annou...
Mike Hudack, the founder of Blip.tv, just landed a major set of deals to expand the distribution of his Web video network. The biggest deal is with YouTube, which for the first time will allow Blip.tv to place its own ads in the YouTube player o...
IBM is buying analytics software and solutions provider SPSS in an all cash transaction at a price of $50/share, resulting in a total cash consideration in the merger of approximately $1.2 billion. The acquisition is subject to SPSS shareholder approval, applicableregulatory clearances and other closing conditions. The acquisition is expected to close later in the second half of 2009.
Big Blue said the acquisition of the privately-held Chicago company was expected to strengthen its information-agenda initia...
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Ben Darnell, a key member of the Google Reader team, has left Mountain View to jump into startup life. Darnell bailed Google for FriendFeed, which was founded by ex-Googlers and notably in part by Kevin Fox, who used to work with him on the Google...
The Linux Foundation, the non-profit that supports the growth of the Linux kernel, is today announcing an affinity Visa Platinum credit card for people who want to contribute to advancing the OS through the organizations initiatives. Reading the p...
MySpace has been taking quite a bit of heat lately for its stalling growth and waves of layoffs, but there are at least a few areas where the site has continued to do well, like MySpace Music, which still sees strong traffic. Now weve come across...
Twitter is great for a lot of things, but I think my favorite use of it is public smack-talking. Just read what Lance Armstrong has to say about his Tour de France-winning teammate, Alberto Contador. And in the tech world, we have some good smack ...
Earlier today we learned that Apple had begun to pull all Google Voice-enabled applications from the App Store, citing the fact that they duplicate features that come with the iPhone. Now comes even worse news: weve learned that Apple has blocked...
If Zappos was a forced sale, would someone please come force me a raise?
Zappos just filed its S4 with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which details the history of the merger talks with Amazon. Theres a lot of boring boilerplate here, b...
July 23, 2009
TechCrunch
Are people who search on Bing more commercial than Google searchers? According to a study by search-advertising network Chitika, visitors who arrive at sites from organic search results on Bing are 55 percent more likely to click on an ad than i...
So, its looking more and more likely that a large form iPod touch, which we first reported on last December, is coming sometime in the next 6 months. But there are still a lot of unknown variables and question marks. One is the rumored deal Apple ...
Mixx, the Digg-like site that got a total makeover earlier this year, is launching a new site today that takes a different approach to surfacing hot links: Twitter. The site is fittingly called TweetMixx , and its currently in private beta. Tech...
For many features and innovations, FriendFeed has been ahead of Facebook, and even Twitter. Its usually Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites catching up to FriendFeed, not the other way around. Today, FriendFeed added a Recommend Friend...
Hello, my name is Christopher Hawker. I am a professional inventor, specializing in innovative consumer products. My company is called Trident Design, LLC. I have developed many products in numerous industries and have over 20 products on the mar...
[Additional reporting by Paul Carr].
Back in the heady days of 2007, flush with what was officially announced as $4.5m in funding from incubator Brightstation Ventures, UK Blog network Shiny Media held an event for advertising agencies to come an...
Google has made AdWords a little bit more local for businesses by allowing them to run location extensions on ads. According to Google, location extensions allow you to extend your AdWords campaigns by attaching your business address to your ads....
An Update to our post yesterday about Sequoia-funded search startup SearchMe. The company needs a new round of financing or a quick acquisition to stay online, but so far neither are happening. CEO Randy Adams wrote to me this morning with an update on where things stand. I reprint most of it below with his permission. Bottom line, The site may go offline at least temporarily tomorrow if a buyer does not step in (Update: The site now redirects to Google):
You are correct, we havent closed the financing. We ...
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You may recall back in December, we first reported the news about Apple gearing up for the launch of a large form iPod touch. While there had been no shortage of rumors over the years about some sort of Apple tablet, our sources indicated the devi...
Facebook wants really wants to make as much information as possible on Facebook public. It recently changed the privacy controls on the site to make it easier to share with everyone. It wants to know how much users are willing to share and, depe...
Geek Weekend is a continuing travel series about geeky things to do in cities around the world. Want your city featured? Write us at tips@crunchgear.com.
The RNR region is frequently recognized as a great place to raise a family and for its outst...
Yes, Tim Armstrong does have a secret plan to save AOL, and it involves cartoons starring Warren Buffet and Martha Stewart. At an employee meeting today to rally the troops with his new strategy, Warren Buffet and Martha Stewart were on hand to ...
“As usual, the truth lies somewhere in between. But a little whining from Apple isn’t going to stop Microsoft from running the ads.” Looks like Devin was right, as he often is. Microsoft has updated the “Laptop Hunter” ad that had annoyed Apple, a...
Even though Google gets more than three times the amount of traffic, Yahoo Search continues to add some pretty innovative features that its main competitor doesnt have. In the past year and a half, Yahoo introduced Search Assist, thumbnail images...
Theres no denying it any longer: research has finally proven that new technologies like laptop computers and mobile phones have increased our productivity significantly.
Furthermore, mobile communications have resulted in us working longer hours, ...
If you notice this morning that your follower count on Twitter dropped dramatically, dont be alarmed. It is just Twitter cracking down on spam accounts and bots that automatically follow people. So chances are those werent real people anyway....
German mobile startup Cellity is getting acquired by Nokia. The sale price was not disclosed, but it is not likely to be more than $10 million to $20 million. About a year ago, Vodafone bought Cellitys competitor Zyb for 31.5 million Euros.
Nokia didnt actually buy the whole company, only certain assets and the team, which is usually code for a fire sale. Cellity had a Series A round of funding in 2007, led by Mangrove Capital Partners.
Cellitys service is a social addressbook for mobile phones which wh...
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Barcelona-based dotopen has launched its B2B communication platform in public beta today in another attempt to create a successful matchmaking service for businesses where decision makers could come to collaborate and connect with each other.
Wev...
Weve known that that visual search engine SearchMe has been looking for a new round of financing these last few months. But from what we hear they arent having a lot of luck closing a new round of financing - something was on the table, our sources say, but fell through. As an alternative strategy, theyve approached a number of possible buyers to see if they can close an acquisition of the company or its technology, multiple sources have confirmed. If a buyer cant be found quickly, the site may shut down.
T...
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Human powered search startup ChaCha has been good for so many chuckles over the last few years. One of their investors called them as disruptive as Google, for example. Another time we posted their answer to a question about what time a show in Se...
Twitter Search is great. Unfortunately, unlike FriendFeeds search, it doesnt update live in real-time. Sure, for some searches, that would be annoying, but itd be nice to at least have the option to watch a stream of incoming tweets without have t...
Over the last few weeks, Google Voice has finally begun sending out invites to the throngs of people who have signed up since the service stopped accepting new users in 2007, following its acquisition. But now that all of these people are beginni...
One of the most key steps to building a succesful startup is figuring out what works — and what doesnt. To do this, many companies rely on things like A/B testing to figure out which workflows and designs work best. But there are some things that...
Twitters Biz Stone takes the stage at Fortune Brainstorm in Pasadena to talk with Fortunes Adam Lashinsky. The session, called Changing The World In 140 Characters Or Less begins shortly, Ill be live blogging it.
My real time notes follow. I can s...
The first step of Twitters business plan is something called Twitter 101, which the company plans to launch either tonight or tomorrow, co-founder Biz Stone revealed at the Fortune Brainstorm Conference in Pasadena this evening.
While Stone only g...
Project Fair Bid, a stealth startup that is creating a Swoopo-like Auction platform, has raised $4.5 million in funding, according to a SEC filing. The funding was raised from the Mayfield Fund, First Round Capital, and Foundation Capital, with R...