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| | Smartphone Showdown: iPhone 3GS vs Motorola Droid
October 30, 2009 at 10:48 pm | |
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If hype were to be believed, the Motorola DROID is the pièce de résistance of the mobile world; the conclusive creation sent down by the Great Smartphone in the sky to rid us of our woes. It would prepare your breakfast promptly each morning, tuck you in at night, and, maybe -- just maybe -- knock the iPhone down a notch or two. Beginning about a week before its launch (largely due to Verizon's incredibly intense marketing campaign) I began getting calls and tweets from friends and colleagues asking about the Droid. They always had two questions: the first would be something like "What do you think of the Droid?", followed by "Would you recommend it over the iPhone?" Same questions, each.. and.. every.. time. I've been using the Droid as my primary phone for a few days now, and I think I'm finally ready to answer them. | | |
| | Facebook Director of Mobile Jed Stremel Resigns
October 30, 2009 at 7:58 pm | |
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Jed Stremel, Facebook's Director of Mobile who has been with the company for four years, has resigned, according to a post on his Facebook profile. Stremel was charged with leading the company's mobile strategy, and was previously involved in Business Development at Facebook. Below is Stremel's bio, taken from last year's MobileBeat conference page. Jed Stremel oversees Facebook's mobile strategy transforming how individuals find and express information relevant to their life. Prior to Facebook, Jed played key partnership, business operations, and strategic roles at high-growth businesses. He spearheaded mobile initiatives for Yahoo! building the company's efforts to empower seamless communications across SMS, WAP, Java, BREW, and other mobile technologies. At Tellme Jed managed distribution, promotion, and licensing relationships with leading online and telecommunications partners. Jed holds a law degree from Santa Clara University and a bachelor's degree in economics and public policy from Duke University. Other recent departures from Facebook include Josh Elman, who was Facebook's Platform Program Manager and was deeply involved in the launch of Facebook Connect. Elman joined Twitter earlier this week as a product manager. We've reached out to Facebook for comment. 
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| | YouTube Spotlights The Colorful Wonders Of Fall's Foliage
October 30, 2009 at 5:18 pm | |
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YouTube has just posted a series of videos highlighting one the more impressive feats of Mother Nature: the colorful transition from summer to fall. It may sound a bit lame, but if you've ever enjoyed the changing colors of autumn leaves or the charming landscape of a local pumpkin patch, the videos are well worth a look (they remind me a bit of the Planet Earth series that came out a few years ago). You can find the four videos featured at the top of YouTube's homepage, or you can check out the ones we've embedded below. Videos include one called "Autumn on the Blue Ridge": And here's one of a local pumpkin patch: Image by Micky  
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| | Twitter Tricks And Treats For Halloween
October 30, 2009 at 4:28 pm | |
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Twitter tweeted out a message today about a special Halloween feature if you Tweet "#trick" or "#treat." It was difficult to figure out at first, but if you tweet either from your Twitter home page (this is key, you can't enable the feature when you are on a client), your home page background will go "ghoulish" and the avatars on the Tweets on your page will turn into zombies and ghouls. The way to trigger it is by tweeting ONLY "#trick" OR "#treat" with nothing else. #Treat is the top trending topic on Twitter so it looks like the masses haven't figured it out. If you only post #trick or #treat, it doesn't actually Tweet it out. Happy Halloween! Thanks @orli! 
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| | Don't Be A Featured Loser: Facebook Helps Out The Unpopular
October 30, 2009 at 4:21 pm | |
| |  Nobody wants to be the kid who only gets invited to birthday parties because his mom calls up the other mom and asks. Everyone knows that only succeeds in making you even more unpopular.
Our guess is a fair number of the geeky employees at Facebook were exactly that kid. Which is why I'm sort of surprised that they'd think asking people to help out Facebook friends who don't have a lot of Wall activity, or even many other friends. These people get mocked. Obviously. We've all seen the messages under Suggestions on the Facebook home page. So and so only has two friends on Facebook, suggest friends for him? Others are urged to write on the Wall of unpopular users. A reader writes to us today with a screenshot: So, apparently facebook is now suggesting you write on a friend's wall to "make facebook better for them" or "reconnect with them" if they are not getting many wall posts. It's nice to know that if I'm a facebook loser my virtual mom will call up the other kids and ask if they'll come play with me. Because that sure worked in the real world when I was 10. 
Who knows what levels Facebook will go to to ensure that your unpopularity turns into a mocking sideshow like the one above. Don't be that guy. Find some friends and convince them to leave a wall post every week or two. The last thing you want is to be a Featured Loser 
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| | Stealth Startup Zkatter To Launch Real-Time Broadcasting Site To Capture "Live Moments"
October 30, 2009 at 4:15 pm | |
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British stealth startup Zkatter is launching a real-time microblogging service in the next few months that could be a hit. Similar in theory to Twitter, Zkatter asks users "What do you see now?" vs. Twitter's "What are you doing?" The service, which has been in development since 2008, will allow anybody to broadcast and archive 'live moments' comprising location, media (image, video and text) to 'friends only' or 'the public' which can then be discovered instantly via search and friends time-lines. Zkatter's focus is towards capturing information that you physically see live which offers a interesting addition to the real-time space. Zkatter, which has received $1.5 million in Series A funding, is also developing iPhone and Android apps to work in conjunction with the standalone site, with the platform updated in real-time across all devices. So if you post an update on your iPhone, it will automatically show on the site. And Zkatter will be integrated with Facebook and Twitter, so you can publish you updates to both social networks as well. There are additional features to the site but this is the general idea of what the Zkatter will be able to do. We took a little test run of the site, and it's impressive. Not only is the user-interface easy to use, but the seamless real-time integration between mobile and the web. But Zkatter will still face competition from Twitter and the plethora of content-sharing Twitter applications, like TwitPic or TwitVid, which also let you broadcast "live moments." The site is also similar to DailyBooth. Zkatter's founder Matt Hagger tells me that there is still a good amount of development that needs to be done for the site but he's confident that Zkatter will find a place in the real-time space. There's no doubt that the rise of real-time streams is fundamentally altering the way we communicate and interact with one another, which is why we are holding our second RealTime CrunchUp on November 20th. You can buy tickets for the event here. Startups will be launching their latest real-time products and we are bringing together a host of notable panelists to share their thoughts on the realtime stream. 
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| | Check It Twice: Twitter Lists Now Open To All Users
October 30, 2009 at 3:39 pm | |
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The wait is over. Twitter's new Lists feature is now available to all users, project lead Nick Kallen has just confirmed through a tweet. The functionality has been in testing for weeks now with a select group of users, and a couple of weeks ago, opened to a wider audience. As recently as yesterday, only 50% of Twitter had access to Lists, but after an unrelated bug forced Twitter to briefly remove the feature, they were able to roll it out to everyone else quickly. This means that not only can all users now finally make their own lists, but perhaps more importantly, you can now see which lists you have been included on. The latter is quickly becoming a new metric for measuring popularity on the service (which users seem divided about if that's a good or bad thing). And everyone will now have access to the third party sites already starting to pop up around the Lists API, such as Listorious, a Lists directory. So, now that everyone can see them, be sure to check out our TechCrunch team list. Later today, we'll also share some other interesting lists that we've been working on. Update: As a side note, List descriptions should be coming in the next week or so, Twitter's Vitor Lourenco confirms. This will definitely help users tell what the list is supposed to be, rather than simply relying on the list name. 
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| | Benioff, Conway And Costolo Are Speaking At Our Realtime Crunchup. Tickets On Sale Now.
October 30, 2009 at 3:16 pm | |
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Ever since our first Realtime Crunchup last July, the momentum behind realtime streams just keeps getting stronger. Which is why TechCrunchIT editor Steve Gillmor and I are putting together another Realtime Crunchup on November 20 in San Francisco. Tickets are on sale now (the price is $395 until the final week when they will go up to $495—there are only 500 available). The one-day event will take place in San Francisco's fabulous new Intercontinental Hotel. The agenda is still coming together (hey, they don't call it realtime for nothing). But I am pleased to announce some phenomenal speakers who will be joining us. Many of the members of our Realtime Board will appear on stage, including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, FriendFeed founder (now Facebook exec) Paul Buchheit, Microsoft's FUSE Labs chief Lili Cheng, and angel investor Ron Conway. Twitter COO Dick Costolo will also sit down with me for a conversation about the transition from RSS to Realtime, among other subjects. The CrunchUp will explore different aspects of the realtime stream, including it's rise as a new communications backbone, the different stream platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Google Wave) and how to navigate between them, and the business opportunities that the realtime stream presents. Is the realtime stream the ultimate marketing vehicle, or just another spammer's paradise? What are the new streams that are emerging? For instance, we will have one panel focusing on just geo streams and how that ties into emerging mobile apps. Another panel will explore how private and public messaging systems are becoming one and the same. I think I'll put Gmail creator Buchheit on that one, along with the CEO of TC50 startup Threadsy, who has also agreed to attend. We'll be sharing a fuller agenda next week. What is really exciting for me, though, is the incredible response from startups who want to launch at the CrunchUp, such as Brooklyn's sorta-stealth Hot Potato, which is doing some very innovative things around geo-location, mobile apps, and events. Some established startups will also launch new products. There are still a couple slots left. If you want to launch a realtime product at the CrunchUp or have an eye-opening demo, please contact us at realtime [at] techcrunch [dot] com. The CrunchUp also gives us a great sponsorship platform for start-ups and brands to reach both conference and networking attendees. Please contact Heather Harde to learn more about sponsorship packages and custom opportunities. 
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| | Big In Japan Has A Massive Goal: 100 iPhone Apps In A Year
October 30, 2009 at 3:08 pm | |
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As the number of apps in the App Store rapidly approaches 100,000, the fact that growth is still accelerating is pretty staggering. It's not hard to see why when app development houses are pumping out dozens of apps in short order. But at that volume, most of those apps aren't going to be very good. Big in Japan, a respected mobile app development house, has a plan to up the ante in terms of both quality and output. The company has set a goal to release 100 apps before the end of 2010 for the iPhone. How are they going to do this? By pulling together a bunch of developers from around the U.S. to make an app development power house. Currently, the team has assembled 25 developers and 25 user interface guys to work towards the goal. The team members mix and match, pairing up to do one app at a time. When they complete that one, it's on to the next one, with a new set of partners. The concept is actually much more straightforward than pulling new app ideas out of the blue and making them. The reason Big in Japan decided to do this was because they were being approached by so many brands and companies to help them build iPhone apps, that there was no way Big in Japan could keep up with the demand the way the team was previously structured. So now, when a new app request comes in, Big in Japan looks it over, decides if they think its a good fit for their large team to do, and then pass it along to the app developers. And it's a good deal for the developers because they are all working together towards a common goal: Money. The way the model works is that this pool of developers collectively own half of the company (which is a sub-division of Big in Japan). As such, they get half of the revenue from the company to split up between them. So the better each of them do, the better they all do. And it's based on a country club model, Big in Japan co-founder Alexander Muse tells us. Basically, these developers buy their seat, but if they decide they want to move on, they can sell it to someone else. Muse expects that 25 apps will be launched this quarter from the project. And he hopes to continue that pace through the end of 2010. Realistically, he admit that maybe only 80 or so apps will actually be available when all is said and done in the App Store. He, like everyone else, realizes that it can be tricky to get apps approved at times by Apple, and he suspects that some developers will get fed up and simply stop working on those apps. Still, 80 apps in a year from one house would be very impressive. Big in Japan made a name for itself with its ShopSavvy application, which won the Android Developer Challenge last year. ShopSavvy still has yet to launch for the iPhone, but Muse recently wrote that it will be launching very soon. 
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| | We Catch Our First, Fleeting Glimpse Of VEVO On YouTube
October 30, 2009 at 2:56 pm | |
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Over the last six months we've heard quite a bit about Vevo, a premium content site that's been called a 'Hulu for music videos'. The site was originally founded by UMG in a partnership with YouTube and has since added Sony Music Group, with negotiations onging with EMI and Warner. But while plenty has been said about its partners, we still haven't seen much that shows what the site actually looks like. Today it looks like Vevo decided to peek out from under the covers, though its appearance was short lived. Our tipster noticed a number of artists who had apparently been given Vevo-linked YouTube accounts, with names like EminemVEVO and DonnaSummerVEVO. Videos from these users look nearly identical to the music videos scattered throughout YouTube, but with one key difference: there's VEVO branding on the bottom right hand side of the player. Clicking the VEVO logo attempts to kick you to a page hosted on VEVO.com, though the links are all broken. At least, they were. As I wrote this post, YouTube has apparently noticed the videos and taken them down. So does this mean that the VEVO launch is imminent? Probably not. A source we've spoken to says that this probably isn't part of a large roll-out or launch, but that's it's more likely that someone stumbled across a video they weren't supposed to see. The site is reportedly shooting for a December launch. And of course, this doesn't really give an idea of what VEVO proper will look like, but it may give us some idea of what VEVO content will look like when it's watched on YouTube. So far, the branding seems to be pretty minimal, though we may well see more skinning and ads on these clips once VEVO actually goes live.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| | Microsoft Makes It Easier To Bing Tom Brady On The Go. Especially On The iPhone.
October 30, 2009 at 2:33 pm | |
| |  The mobile version of Bing launched alongside the regular site this past summer worked well but lacked some of the bells and whistles that rivals like Google offer in their mobile experience. And with the mobile web becoming increasingly important, a focus on this area is crucial for a fledgling search engine. So today Bing has unveiled a new version of its mobile experience.
The main change is that Bing has been completely revamped for touchscreen smartphones and devices. Currently, this means the G1, the Verizon Imagio, the Samsung Omnia, the Zune HD, and yes, the iPhone. In its blog post, Bing even uses a picture to highlight how nice Bing Mobile looks on the Apple device. The new interface is easy to navigate, offering tabs for different types of searches, and an easy way to clear old searches and start fresh. It also offers a nice, visual way of looking up movies. Visual search is one of the key things Bing has been focusing on to differentiate itself from Google. For those users without these touch devices, Bing Mobile has some new features you can use as well. An easy-to-use flight status checker is nice, but the key new feature is the NFL search results. Now, with Bing Mobile, if you do a search for "Tom Brady," you'll get a player card at the top of the results with his picture, season stats, and previous and upcoming games this season. This is a nice feature for football season, and could actually drive some usage of Bing Mobile on Sundays 
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| | How Cloudmade Will Deal With Google Navigation Monster
October 30, 2009 at 2:25 pm | |
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European startup Cloudmade, which offers data and tools to developers and OEMs for mapping and navigation applications, isn't the only company to get hit hard by Google's new disruptive Navigation product. But they aren't reeling out of control either. Cloudmade CEO Juha Christensen sent us an email that he distributed to partners yesterday. It's clearly an advertisement for Cloudmade (the last paragraph tells new partners how to get in touch). But it is also a blueprint for how companies can carve out a competitive niche from the Navigation product. We're posting it because it's a good example of a measured response to a potentially company-killing development. There are developers, device makers and carriers who strategically don't want to let Google in, or can't get the functionality they want from Google's APIs. That's where Cloudmade and others can get a foot in the door. The email is below: Earlier on this year a smart VC, who multiple times has competed successfully against Google, told me that Google is generally willing to act as an "irrational economic player". It's willing to destroy value just so others can't get at it, even if it means destroying value for itself. Google just announced that it will offer navigation. Navigation has so far captured 70%+ of the $2 billion mapping market. The bad news for established navigation players like Tele Atlas and Navteq is that this will erode the value of navigation, just like the value of maps have been eroded. The good news for those players is that Google has now tipped its hand and shown that it's willing to compete against the very ecosystem that it has been nurturing over the past couple of years. Google's strategy is to leverage maps, including navigation, to extend its current search franchise into local search. We've believed from day one of CloudMade that contextual search, using location data and some knowledge about the user (for example which app he/she is using) creates much more valuable CPM/CPC/CPAs. If you're an advertiser or a merchant, you will pay more per impression if you know someone is a mountain biker and is near the bicycle mega store you own. Google betting on one-size-fits all model
Google is betting on building a horizontal, local search franchise. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but please read on, it gets clearer. Google is building a one-size-fits-all set of services around mapping, and will serve the masses with those. Think about Google Maps, Latitude or Earth. They are horizontal one-size-fits-all web apps with little or no segmentation. Everyone uses the same app. Meanwhile, in the process of building out end-user applications rather than sticking to being a platform player, Google is causing considerable collateral damage. Its move into the territory normally occupied by mobile operators, OEMs and small, medium and large developers is turning the marketplace against itself. The honeymoon is over and the do-no-evil days have ended. Google has declared any monetizable pocket in tech a target, including the key franchises of Apple, Microsoft, the mobile operators and now also mobile application developers. The problem with Google's approach is, the value is not in horizontal services, but in leveraging the democratizing effect of the app stores to use the 100,000+ vertical apps as a way to divide the market into tiny segments and let them flourish and gain traction. CloudMade believes vertical apps will inherently nano-segment the market
Most of the impressions that will hit consumers, and most searches that are contextually and location oriented, will occur through vertical apps. Take the mountain biker example. Where will I be more likely to respond if I want to a) navigate my mountain bike though a new trail and b) click on that ad from the bicycle mega store? A horizontal Google app, or a well crafted, vertical app written by a focused developer who understands my special interests? We believe the latter. We believe the mountain biking savvy, app developing expert who knows the hidden trails in his/her community will be better at providing relevance to local mountain bikers. As I speak to mobile operators and handset manufacturers about the CloudMade business, it's clear that most of the players understand the value of their immense reach, and want to pick long-term partners with whom they can build a franchise in local search, local advertising and local geo services. It's clear that Google's latest move has served as a lighting rod for clarity in the value chain. Over the past days I have spoken to people throughout the ecosystem. So far, the uncertainty about what Google was doing has actually caused a lot of mobile operators, handset manufacturers and app developers to take a wait-and-see attitude. Now, with Google showing their hand, and making it clear that it's willing to compete directly with substantial parts of the eco system to get at the local search market, we're seeing that the wait-and-see is over. With Google choosing to go it alone rather than cooperate with the ecosystem, the ground rules have been laid down, and the competitive landscape is clear. So what are we doing at CloudMade?
We're building out our traction in the vertical mobile application area, signing developers within key categories that we believe will drive massive volume. This is a real micro-segmented approach, aimed at driving traffic to thousands of narrow verticals. We're already seeing this scale. Local, relevant ads: We're jumping the learning curve on Location Based Advertising and Sponsored POIs. We'll shortly be offering developers, mobile operators and handset manufacturers a revenue share on Sponsored POIs and ads that they include in their apps. This is big news to developers, who so far have had to depend on the modest revenues from selling apps at $0.99, $1.99 etc. Data Marketplace: We're building a massive marketplace for geo data. In fact, in a few weeks we have our "opening day" at the CloudMade Data Marketplace, the Turkish Bazar from which developers can choose a variety of content that they can mash into their maps. This will result in more app diversity, deeper functionality and even completely new types of vertical apps. Offering for operators and handset manufacturers: CloudMade has created a super interesting set of propositions for mobile operators and handset manufacturers. We're doing rev share deals with them where we work side-by-side to build franchises in the local geo spatial arena. We offer them onboard maps (built into their devices) and offboard maps (loaded from our servers), we offer them navigation jointly with our navigation partners and we offer up relationships with our many vertical app developers. For Tier 1, 2 and 3 operators and handset manufacturers this is turning out to be very compelling. The big differentiator is that the operators get to decide what the services look like, they get to brand them and they get to make money from them. That is as opposed to the alternative, which is to take someone else's services, accept that they are all branded by someone else, who also pockets the ad revenues from them. We're focusing on making maps look the way the merchants and developers want them to look. Through CloudMade's Style Editor anyone, even non-technical people, can produce advanced, custom maps that reflect the brand and identity of their company or their customers company. We've found that many, especially those with no yellow in their corporate identity, prefer this to a one-size-fits-all yellow map. Navigation: We're continuing to ramp up our work with key players in the turn-by-turn navigation field to increase the scope for navigation solutions. We are building assets to help drive the verticalization of the field, so we see custom navigation for different verticals. Again, CloudMade doesn't believe in one-size-fits-all. We think different types of navigation will require different types of apps. For example, if I'm hiking in the mountains I don't care about roads. I want to navigate hiking trails, be directed to places where I can fill my water bottle, and I want to know where the vista points are. Last, but not least, the most important component of CloudMade' approach. Tools, tools, tools: CloudMade is focusing a lot of effort on the tools side. We believe that the best way we can serve the community of mappers and developers is to put all the control in their hands. We've demonstrated this through our efforts already, for example with our iPhone libraries. We're similarly putting the control of Location Based Ads and Sponsored POIs into the hands of developers. Put yourself in the shoes of the vertical app developer. You know better than anyone else how your constituents want to be advertised to, what ads they want (and don't want) to see and how to place those apps in your app. Similarly, we're readying a suite of tools that makes mapping easier, faster and more powerful. CloudMade's web based Mapzen tool (http://bit.ly/1MRz8U), and Mapzen POI Collector for iPhone will be available shortly. This suite of tools enables us to further serve the 180,000 person large OpenStreetMap community that is building the most detailed, finely textured and accurate map of the world. The community was founded by the founders of CloudMade, and most members of the CloudMade team are active members of the OpenStreetMap community. The map we're building in the community is stunning in it's detail. It's essentially the Wikipedia of maps. After all, who knows better how to map a community than people who live in the community. Just look at this Stanford example: http://bit.ly/3HJiRh vs. http://bit.ly/1i2N8m. The Mapzen suite enables us to bridge the needs of app developers, who serve as a proxy for consumers in a given vertical segment, and the mappers, who are members of local communities or specialists in a certain type of mapping (e.g. mountain biking trails). Bridging the consumers needs for maps and the mappers' desire to create maps that truly reflect their local community will result in mobile and web applications that both feature better maps and be more attractive to users. So what's the bottom line?
Over the next twelve months, we will see hundreds of thousands of vertical apps use maps and location services to better serve consumers with data about where they are, where they are going, how they get there and what is surrounding them at their location. We will see mappers collect map data that is highly relevant to local, narrow communities. We will see owners of diverse datasets make their data available though the Data Marketplace. In turn, we will see app developers jump on the opportunity and leverage the map data and Data Marketplace datasets into highly targeted, compelling and enchanting apps. Many will choose to monetize the apps through a combination of app store revenues as well as carefully selected Location Based Advertising and Sponsored POIs. If you are a developer that has yet to use our platform, get started here: http://bit.ly/Vjdcp (or if you're an iPhone developer, go here: http://bit.ly/2IRZA3)." If you are with a larger company with a need for a mapping provider that does not compete with you email me at juha@cloudmade.com. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| | Actual Royalty To Join Social Media Royalty At Le Web 2009
October 30, 2009 at 1:25 pm | |
| |  The Le Web conference in Paris always has a surprise or two for attendees. Last year, author Paulo Coelho spoke about how he uses social networking to spread word about his books, and how he encourages people to download pirated copies of his work. This year, Her Majesty Rania Al Abdullah, Queen of Jordan, will be on stage.
We interviewed Queen Rania earlier this year. Rania is a monarch on a mission. She focuses much of the messaging on her Twitter account towards helping women and promoting peace and education. A message earlier this week lamented the death of women and children in Pakistan. Another, yesterday, pointed to a NY Times article on the need for schools. She has become very adept at using social media, particularly Twitter and YouTube, to further her causes. And her very authentic, very human voice is doing a lot to dispel stereotypes about the Arab and Muslim worlds. Her presence is more than enough reason to attend, even though the conference is in France in December. Despite popular opinion I'll be back this year – TechCrunch Europe is partnering with Le Web on a startup competition. And eagerly awaiting Rania's time on stage. Le Web is offering TechCrunch readers a 10% discount on tickets. Just use this link. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| | Google Makes Fading Homepage A Little Less Confusing For Unaware Searchers
October 30, 2009 at 12:43 pm | |
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We first reported on Google's bucket testing of a new homepage that fades to nothing but its logo and the search box after receiving a tip about it at the beginning of this month. Since then, we've been getting more and more incoming tips from people who are starting to see this and haven't seen our or other reports about the gimmick. I have yet to see the experimental homepage myself, but judging from our inbox and chatter on Twitter the company does seem to be including more people in the bucket test than was the case a couple of weeks ago. Likely, they need to gain more data from actual usage to decide whether or not it can become a permanent feature or not. One new change to the fading homepage is the fact that there's now a short sentence that appears under the search box when the rest of the page fades out. The line, which reads "This space intentionally left blank" was seemingly added because too many unaware users were confused by the fade effect and frantically started disassembling their computers in search of a solution (at least that's what they do in my imagination). If the point is to remove all extraneous text, adding that message seems like the equivalent of explaining the punchline of a joke. It ruins the effect. Besides sowing confusion, it is also creating a minor backlash. People who are seeing the fade-out are apparently not big fans of it either. Some choice tweets: - < google! "this space left intentionally blank"? what is that crap?" > (@adibiase) - < ..... This space intentionally left blank #google #fail > (@geekant) - < google is doing strange things right now "this space intentionally left blank" ...odd > (@rpmteacher) < Am I the only one who sees the "This space left intentionally blank" thing on Google? I think it's creepy. > (@TheJuanReyes) This is what it looks like now: And this is the test they ran earlier this month: 
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| | CrunchGear PSA: If You Run XBMC Or Boxee On Your Apple TV, Do Not Upgrade To 3.0
October 30, 2009 at 12:12 pm | |
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To repeat, do not upgrade your Apple TV to 3.0 if you're running hacked ATV plugins like XBox Media Center or Boxee. I'm sure this will be fixed in a matter of days - if not hours - but as of right now it means a ride on the Failboat to Sad Trombone Town. That's right: this update destroys the only thing that makes Apple TV usable and good. Also, as an added bonus, Apple TV firmware 3.0 is insignificant. It adds Internet radio to the package and improves the UI. It also adds Genius playlists. My cup, as they say, runneth over. You can pop through to see a video of me trying to hack my 3.0 Apple TV or you can just take this as a word of warning. More info on hacking Apple TV after the jump. 
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| | Is Google's Behavioral Targeting A Bust? Only 25 Percent Of AdSense Publishers Use It
October 30, 2009 at 11:47 am | |
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For advertisers on the Web, behavioral targeting is held out as the nirvana they've been waiting for: the ability to show ads only to those people most likely to be interested in them based on their past behavior. The growth of this type of ad targeting also raises a host of privacy concerns, but setting those aside for a second, do these ads even work? Do they perform better than regular ads? If they did, you'd expect advertisers to pay more for them and for Website publishers to be flocking to them. At least for Google, the answer seems to be "No." According to estimates by Jim Brock, chairman of Attributor and a former senior VP at Yahoo, only about 25 percent of AdSense sites are serving targeted ads, which Google calls "interest-based advertising." Brock comes to this figure by counting the links to Google's privacy policy, which is a requirement of the program. Google counts 277,000 links, and Yahoo counts 224,000 links, so he splits the difference and divides it by the one million AdSense publishers Google recently disclosed in its latest earnings call to come up with 25 percent. Google actually said there are more than one million AdSense publishers, so the percentage using interest-based advertising is probably lower. Google started behavioral targeting last March. It tries to determine your interests by placing cookies in your browser and tracking what types of sites you visit. You can see what interest Google has assigned to you and even change your interests by visiting Google's Ad Preference Manager. You can also opt out of the program entirely. So why isn't there a higher adoption of this type of advertising among publishers? One answer could be that they don't want to wade into controversial waters. But that's never stopped Websites or advertisers before. If these ads were performing significantly better than regular AdSense ads, there would be a stampede to adopt them more broadly. Brock suspects Google's interest-based ads aren't working so great because Google doesn't actually know most people's interests. He's trying to get some more data on this. You can help him by using this survey tool which lets him count how many people have their interests mapped by Google. So far, based on a very small sample, only one in four do. And of those who can be targeted, the average number of interests is only five, which isn't a lot. I guess I'm the exception, because Google has my interests down pat. It shows ten different interests, including technology news, business news, mobile phones, blogging services, advertising, and air travel. Am I really so transparent? 
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| | Bling Nation Raises $20 Million For Cell Phone Payment System
October 30, 2009 at 9:30 am | |
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What recession? Startup Bling Nation just raised $20 million in Series B funding from Balderton Capital for a new cell phone payment system. This brings the startup's total funding to $33 million since its launch in 2007. Bling Nation's ambitions are to establish a revolutionary and comprehensive payments system for physical goods. Here's how it works. The company partners with local banks in super small communities in the U.S. (where the prominent bank isn't Citibank or Bank of America). Banks will then offer the consumers who use their services a Bling Nation and "Bank" branded chip that can be stuck onto any cell phone device. The chip will allow any user to make a payment directly out of their checking account similar to a debit payment. Bling Nation also partners with all of the local merchants in given town, to give them special "Bling Nation" credit card machines that will scan the chips. The payment device will calculate the number of times a payee has made a transaction and as an added bonus, will automatically award the user with coupons, points or discounts, which the merchant determines. The device will read the chip and deduct the money for a purchase out of the payee's bank account. Bling Nation even allows merchants to implement a security feature, in which upon purchase, the customer will have to enter a PIN code for larger transactions. Currently, Bling Nation is being used in two communities in Colorado, including La Junta and Woodland Park, which are both small towns outside of Colorado Springs. Bling's CEO Wences Casares tells me that the device will be implemented soon in towns in the Northwest and Southeast U.S. And Bling is in talks with universities and military bases to implement its system. Bling monetizes the payment network by taking a cut of each transaction, which Casares says is very small. The reason Bling's device is attractive to merchants, says Casares, is because they can avoid costly transaction fees associated with credit card purchases. Even with the debit fees and the Bling's cut, merchants end up paying 50 percent less in transaction fees than if the purchase was through a credit card system. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it's time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| | Apple, AT&T Hit With Another iPhone MMS Class Action
October 30, 2009 at 8:35 am | |
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It isn't the first, and I assume it's not going to be the last either. Apple and AT&T are facing a new putative class action from an iPhone user who alleges that the companies misrepresented the phone's MMS (multimedia messaging service) capabilities. Clyde Bernard Franklin filed the complaint (case 1:2009cv00704) in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama on behalf of all Alabama residents last Wednesday. I don't have proper access to the court documents at this point so it's a bit unclear what the allegations in this particular case are exactly, but there should be more information about the details available shortly. While iPhone OS 3.0 included support for MMS from the start, AT&T took quite some time to enable the feature, which prompted iPhone owners to initiate two separate class action lawsuits against the carrier and Apple last August. On September 25, AT&T finally rolled out the service for iPhone owners in the United States, so it's safe to say that the delay isn't why Franklin is taking Apple and AT&T to court. We'll update when we learn more.
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| | ICANN Moves Ahead With Non-Latin Web Addresses (Video)
October 30, 2009 at 7:37 am | |
| | As expected, regulatory body ICANN has approved plans to let web addresses be written in non-Latin characters in a move that it calls the "biggest technical change" to how the Internet works since its invention four decades ago. The vote was announced at the last day of the non-profit group's Seoul conference. The proposal means domain names could be written in languages such as Greek, Chinese, Arabic, Hindu or Cyrillic and be understood natively by the machines that connect computers together over the web. The organization will launch a fast-track process for approving the Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) scheme on 16 November, and the first IDN-compliant addresses should be in operation by the middle of next year, said ICANN President Rod Beckstrom. From the statement: It will allow nations and territories to apply for Internet extensions reflecting their name – and made up of characters from their national language. If the applications meet criteria that includes government and community support and a stability evaluation, the applicants will be approved to start accepting registrations. In the fairly cheese video above, Beckstrom says over half of Internet users from all over the world will finally be able to write web address in the "100,000 characters of world languages" that so far were not supported. 
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| | Microsoft Tortures Little Kids With Bing Jingle
October 30, 2009 at 4:31 am | |
| |  Maybe you'll recall when I ripped apart the Bing jingle winner back in August. It was bad — real bad. But its creator, Jonathan Mann is a talented guy, and even made a jingle ripping me, which was both better than the Bing one, and funny. Sadly, Microsoft now controls his Bing jingle and is subjecting little children to it.
As you can see in the video below, Microsoft has forced a bunch of middle schoolers in Pennsylvania to learn and perform Mann's Bing song. The horror. It's hard to watch this without immediately thinking about parents who accept money to allow their child to be sponsored. Is this the future of branding? Mann actually sent us the video along with the following note: I literally cried a little bit when I saw this video. On the one hand I'm happy I was able to provide some kids with an excuse not to do school work for a few hours. On the other hand, not sure how I feel about these kids being indoctrinated into the cult of, well, whatever. It's kinda creepy. But on the other-other hand, the kids do look damn happy. So…oh well? It is kind of creepy. Actually, it's terrifying. Hopefully these kids at least got free copies of some Microsoft product that they won't be able to use on their Apple computers. 
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Japan went crazy over the iPhone when it made 
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