Profiles on SWiK

Nrme’s Location-Based iPhone App Goes Live. But Will Anyone Use It?

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:00:01 -0700

Last June we got a sneak peek at nrme, a location-based message service for the iPhone. The service behaves like a regional Twitter, but is geared towards sharing information rather than chatting - it’s sort of like a neighborhood bulletin board in the cloud. Instead of using a follow system, nrme makes all messages public to users within a 9 block radius (users can still private message each other if they’d like).

Today, the app has finally gone live in the App Store (despite rumors to the contrary, the approval process was only a matter of a week or two, not months). After a quick test run I have a few gripes about the interface, which is still a work in progress, but my biggest concern is the absence of content that has been posted by anyone “near me”. This isn’t unexpected because the app just launched, but I worry that the service will never be able to get a meaningful amount of information. To help combat this “chicken and the egg” problem associated with a new app and its lack of users, nrme is focusing its marketing efforts in San Francisco, even though the app is available to the entire country.

I really want this service (or another one like it) to take off. The prospect of being able to let people know when a bar is full or a store has just gotten a shipment of a hot item like the iPhone 3G is very appealing - and the altruistic nature of it would build a sense of community. The fact of the matter is that there are dozens of location-based applications on the iPhone (some of which are very similar to nrme), but most of them have gone largely unnoticed and lack content. At this point, it is beginning to look like we might have to wait for an established player like Twitter or Facebook to implement geo-awareness before we’ll see a location-based app that’s actually useful.

Other geo-aware services with some similar features include GeoGraffiti and to some extent, Twinkle.

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nrme

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Songsterr: A Flash Guitar Tab Player That Might Rock, Someday

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:48:22 -0700

One of the reasons why the guitar has become a staple in pop culture is its immediate accessibility. In lieu of standard notation, guitar players have developed tablature - a more intuitive representation of a song that uses numbers to indicate which fret on a guitar each note is played. Even the most inexperienced musicians can usually learn the system in a matter of minutes.

One of the problems with tablature is that it does a poor job representing rhythm and the duration that each note is played - both of which are essential. To remedy this, most people play a recording of the original song as they examine a tab so they can figure out when to play each note. But this process is frustrating and time consuming.

Songsterr, a new startup that launched earlier this month, is looking to help guitar players skirt this issue by accompanying each song with an audio file that plays alongside it. The site’s Flash player will also automatically scroll through each tab, indicating exactly which note is being played.

While the player will be a great help to many novices, it’s lacking support for a number of techniques found in more difficult songs, like slides, bends, and vibrato. There’s also no support for multiple instruments, which are found in most popular songs, and some of the tabs are incomplete (for example, the Johnny B. Goode tab omits the song’s signature intro riff). However, the company says that it will improve on these issues within the next month.

The site is mimicking functionality that has been offered by downloadable software clients like Guitar Pro and Power Tab for years, but is doing it from within the browser - a big plus given the portable nature of the guitar, when you might not always be near your own computer. At launch, the site includes 150 songs and says that it will have 50,000 songs by the end of the month, along with support for user uploads in the Guitar Pro format.

Unfortunately, while the site is off to a good start and has a massive number of potential users, it’s likely going to get derailed by lawsuits from the record industry. Many of the web’s most popular tab sites have been waging a losing war with copyright holders for years, as even user-created tabs for songs are considered infringements. The company is based in Russia so it may be able to avoid the lawsuits for a while, but don’t expect this one to last if it can’t secure some deals with record labels.

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Songsterr

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Real Estate Sites Are Holding Up, Despite The Housing Slump. Some (Trulia) Better Than Others (Zillow).

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:42:48 -0700

The real estate slump may still be helping to drag down the economy, but real-estate sites like Trulia and Zillow seem to be holding up just fine. In fact, the number of monthly unique visitors to Trulia has more than doubled to 2.4 million over the past year, according to comScore. Zillow, in contrast, remained steady at 1.9 million U.S. uniques in July.

The strength of these real estate sites in a down market makes sense since prospective buyers (those that are left) now have more time to look around and research their dream homes. Both Trulia and Zillow do a good job of letting you slice and dice your search by any number of variables (price, location, number of bedrooms, square footage, type of home). Unfortunately, neither one offers a way to filter out homes that suck.

Both also offer market stats, and additional information about local schools and such. Zillow perhaps has a few more bells and whistles, such as its famous Zestimate, which might explain why visitors pent 41 million minutes on the site in July versus 12 million minutes for Trulia. People love doping vanity searches and checking out how much their neighbor’s houses are worth. Zillow also serves up larger photos of houses than Trulia in search results. So maybe Zillow is doing a better job with engagement.

Or maybe home searchers are finding what they need faster on Trulia. From my own anecdotal experience, Trulia seems to offer more comprehensive search results for specific towns and neighborhoods. One example: Trulia turns up 97 results for a house search in Chappaqua, NY; Zillow turns up only 83. (I’m sure I could come up with a counter-example for Zillow if I looked long enough). But when you are looking for a house, that is really all that matters. The real-estate search engine that captures the most listings and shows you the most relevant ones will win. For whatever reason, it looks like Trulia is winning mind- and market-share.

What’s your favorite real-estate search site?

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WSJ Creates BlackBerry App, Opens Some Previously Paid Content

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:42:48 -0700

For those of you who read WSJ for the articles, the new BlackBerry-compatible WSJ.com Mobile Reader will open up the nasty walled garden that is WSJ.com. The application will be free and most of the content will be open, although there are plans to lock it down in the near future. The application will draw in stories from WSJ.com, AllThingsD.com, and MarketWatch.com.

You can track specific companies and get 30-minute old stock quotes on the fly. Why no iPhone implementation? Until HSBC pulls the trigger on Apple, the iPhone isn’t quite WSJ’s audience.

Microspaces: Playing With Nested GUIs

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:06:44 -0700

We’re seeing a lot of desktop metaphors moving to Web interfaces in the browser. The latest example to cross our inbox is Microspaces, a service in private beta that lets you organize Web pages in folder-like Microspaces. But unlike desktop folders, the contents are made up of Web pages, so they are constantly updated. In that sense, each Microspace folder is somewhat like a browser tab, except you can collect multiple Web pages in each one. Thus the pages are nested inside one another.

Each Microspace is searchable, embeddable as a widget, and can be accessed by a unique URL. You can also put widgets and Web apps inside Microspaces, in addition to Web pages.

An example of how this works can be found at Storylinez, or you can watch the video below. (More videos are available on the Microspaces site, and you can sign up there for a private beta invite as well). It is all based on Ajax, and was designed by Mike Buchanan.

I like the fact that people are playing around with more visually rich browser interfaces, but I am not convinced that you gain more in visual information here than you give up in speed versus simpler text-heavy solutions to the same problems (RSS feeds, Netvibes, bookmarks, etc.). But it’s a step in the right direction.

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CrunchGear Featured Review: Meastro Dobel Diamond Tequila

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:06:44 -0700

We’re a gadget blog, true, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get a mean drink on when we’re cornered. Luckily, Maestro Dobel was nice enough to send us a bottle of their $74.99 Diamond Tequila, offering us entree into a world that was once reserved for Jay Z and mortgage brokers between 2002 and 2007.

Samba: Roaming and Local Profiles that Just Work

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 11:32:51 -0700

Mix profiles.. disable roaming profiles selectively by user.

No, Tim. We’re Not As Bad As The New York Times

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 11:25:33 -0700

Tim O’Reilly is tearing his hair out because he thinks that we link too much to CrunchBase, our startup database. He levels the unforgivable charge of self-linking at us, and puts us in the same company as the New York Times (which in this case is not a good thing). In his post (which I link to above), he makes the following connection between how we link to Crunchbase and how the New York Times constantly links to itself:

Now, rather than linking directly to companies covered in its stories, Techcrunch links to one of its own properties to provide additional information about them. I noticed the same behavior the other day on the New York Times, when I followed a link, and was taken to a search result for articles on the subject at the Times (with lots of ads, even if there were few results).

Tim is simply confused here. We’re not nearly as bad as the New York Times, which I agree generally does a really poor job of linking to any authority other than itself. (But it depends where you look. Some of its blogs are linking out more and more. Maybe the rest of the paper will take notice). Moreover, company links on TechCrunch are usually not the most prominent link in any given post. Most posts include other outbound links to other blogs, news articles, press releases, and the like.

As far as CrunchBase is concerned, we have no hard and fast rules for linking to company profiles there. Sometimes we link to the CrunchBase profile, sometimes we link directly to the company’s site. More often than not, we do both. Sometimes we’re lazy or pressed for time, and only link to one or (gasp) none at all. But my preferred method, for instance, is to link the company logo in a post to the CrunchBase profile and link the first mention of the company in a post to its Website.

Am I ruining the Web by doing that? I thought more information was better. Yet O’Reilly warns ominously about self-linking:

When this trend spreads (and I say “when”, not “if”), this will be a tax on the utility of the web that must be counterbalanced by the utility of the intervening pages. If they are really good, with lots of useful, curated data that you wouldn’t easily find elsewhere, this may be an acceptable tax. In fact, they may even be beneficial, and a real way to increase the value of the site to its readers.

To be fair, O’Reilly does give kudos to CrunchBase itself for linking out to other sources. And he is correct that we do try to link to CrunchBase as much as possible. But that is because we think it’s a really good resource, a place where readers can get up to speed on a company at a glance. Each company profile has a succinct description of what it does, how much money it’s raised, who are its founders and investors, who are its competitors, as well as recent posts about the company from all over the Web.

Oh yeah, and its free. There’s plenty of M&A and acquisition data in there that we are not trying to charge for. In fact, anyone can take the data in CrunchBase and repurpose it on their own Websites through the CrunchBase API.

O’Reilly ends with a suggested rule of thumb for self-linking:

Ensure that the pages you create at those destinations are truly more valuable to your readers than any other external link you might provide.

Again, I couldn’t agree with him more. And CrunchBase more than passes that test. But don’t take my word for it. Do a Google search for some of your favorite Web startups, and more often than not you will find a CrunchBase profile on the first page of results. And it’s not just little-known startups either. try searching for Twitter or Friendfeed, and you’ll see the same thing. We do have some Google juice at TechCrunch, but even we couldn’t do that on our own.

Update: Tom O’Reilly responds in comments:

Just to be clear, I like crunchbase. I think it’s a great idea. However, I’d like links to crunchbase to be marked as such. You might try using Apture to provide that visibility (as well as other cross-linking capabilities.)

Mostly, though, I was trying to point out a trend, and sensitize people to it, so that it doesn’t creep up on them. We’re all like frogs in slowly warming water. Eventually it boils. But often, we don’t notice things that we should until too late.

(Image by Dan4th Nicholas).

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EngrishFunny Is Newest Site In Lolcats Empire

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:31:40 -0700

The company behind the popular ICanHasCheezburger site has launched a new website, EngrishFunny, which makes fun of grammatically incorrect variations of English (often found in Asia). Users send in photos of poorly translated or written products, signs, instructions, etc. to the site.

This is the seventh website for parent company Pet Holdings, Inc., which bought the ICanHasCheezburger site in late 2007 for $2 million. Other sites include Ihasahotdog (dogs), Failblog (my personal favorite), Totallylookslike (celebrities), Punditkitchen (politics) and Graphjam.

I sat down with founder Ben Huh today to talk about the new site and how the company is doing in general. The family of sites is generating 3.3 million daily page views, and around 5 million unique monthly visitors. Total revenue per page is north of $0.80, he says. Watch the full interview below.

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NewsCred Goes Public With Credibility-Based News Source

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:31:38 -0700

NewsCred, the news aggregator that ranks stories by the credibility of their source, has launched to the public. Instead of relying on popularity as many social news sites do, NewsCred instead allows users to rate each story, author, and publication’s credibility, which is then plugged into an algorithm to determine the site’s prominent headlines.

We originally introduced the site last May when it launched in private alpha. Since then, NewsCred has implemented a number of new features, including a more thorough search, topic-specific pages, and a section for breaking news.

My biggest criticism when I first reviewed the site was the apparently weak implementation of the credibility algorithm, or even the viability of creating one in the first place. Credibility is very difficult to measure, and can often be misleading. News organizations that break news may be less accurate, as tips aren’t always reliable. But is a news source that simply rehashes established information really a better alternative? The site has responded to these issues, among others, by implementing its breaking news section and tweaking its algorithm, but it is still a work in progress.

Because the site has remained private until now, the credibility scores at launch aren’t particularly meaningful, which makes it hard to judge how effective the system will be. But even if the credibility rankings turn out to be ineffective, NewsCred could still be a success. The site offers a clean and intuitive news aggregator that will appeal to users who may not be fond of traditional RSS readers.

Similar offerings (that rely on different recommendation systems) include Regator and Socialmedian.

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NewsCred

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Apple Is Flailing Badly At The Edges

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:31:36 -0700

My first computer, purchased by my parents after nearly a year of begging, was an Apple II+. That was 1982. I was a Windows user for the next 20 years, but went back to Mac when they switched to Intel chips a couple of years ago. Since then I’ve bought seven Macs for myself, as well as at least one of every iPod and both iPhones. A lot of these were test devices that I’ve passed on to friends and family.

My obvious enthusiasm for Apple products is fairly evident to readers of this blog. But recently I’ve had a string of bad apples come my way, so to speak. It’s time for Apple to stop screwing around and start paying attention to product quality.

I’ll excuse the one hour of battery life I seem to be able to get out of my iPhone. An arrangement of extra power cords (USB, car, wall) and external batteries gets me through the day. I’ll also excuse the fact that iTunes seems hell bent on not syncing applications from my desktop to my iPhone, and inexplicably removing apps from my phone without any notice. I love that damn phone, and it will take a lot more than lost apps and dropped calls to get it out of my hands.

But I don’t have the same blind dedication to other Apple products, and a string of costly problems has left me more than frustrated.

Mac Mini, Macbook Air, Macbook Pro and Macbook, All Failed

I was pretty excited about my Macbook Air, which packs a ton of hardware into a slim and elegant case. But it was unable to stay connected to Wifi for more than a minute or so, even on the brand new Apple Time Capsule router we’re using at the office. I took it into the Apple store - they kept it for a few days and said nothing was wrong. I argued with them and they did nothing. And since I waited more than two weeks after buying it to bring it back in, I couldn’t simply return it. That $1,800 piece of hardware has now been dismantled for parts for a project we’re working on here.

A high end black Macbook made it through one meeting before having some sort of hardware problem that shut it down for good. I still have a few days left to return it for a refund.

The one year old Mac Mini I was using to drive my living room television failed a month ago. It turned itself into a brick. Parts of it are on my coffee table.

My main travel computer, a seven month old Macbook Pro, had a keyboard failure two weeks ago. Apple repaired it and I’m using it now.

That leaves three other Macs in good working order. One is a Macbook pro that my dad now uses. The other two are iMacs that have never had any problems.

But having major issues with four out of seven computers is, um, unacceptable.

MobileMe Has Screwed Up My Work Ecosystem

I have Macs in my main office and my bedroom, as well as my travel computer. I have spent years getting .Mac, which syncs calendar, contact and email data across machines and in the cloud, working properly. It tended to break a lot, but if you kept the OS constantly up to date and were willing to tinker with it, it was a great way to keep synced across any number of computers. I didn’t really care which one I picked up to access email, write a post, etc.

Then came MobileMe and the Apple’s automatic transfer of .Mac customers over to that ridiculously broken new service. I had a suspicion it wouldn’t work at first given how touchy .Mac was, and so I didn’t touch anything on my old computers. But I have never gotten it working on the new Macs I purchased, and now .Mac has failed on all of the synced machines. No more calendar access, contacts syncing, etc.

Apple keeps giving customers free time on the service as a way to apologize for the problems. But that isn’t good enough. I’m not price sensitive to the $99/year they’re charging for the service. But I need it to work, and I need it to work right now.

The failed computers could just be a coincidence, although the wifi problem with the Macbook Air is well documented. The MobileMe debacle, though, is affecting everyone. Apple shouldn’t have merged the services, at least old .Mac customers wouldn’t be enraged today. They need to get their house in order or they risk alienating all these new customers they’ve added over the last few years. The new buyers aren’t Apple fanatics and won’t sit quietly as they try to access broken services via failing hardware.

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Android Video Walk-Through

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:31:33 -0700

MobileCrunch has a fairly detailed look at the new Android emulator. We go through all the current apps—the phone, the browser, Google Maps—and even crash the OS a few times for good measure.

Android adopts a traditional desktop user interface, letting you drag icons around that launch different apps, as well as look at a full menu of apps hidden away in a tray. A small search box can also be placed right on the opening screen.

Another nice little feature is the ability to assign certain contacts different priorities. Your ex-girlfriends can all be sent to voicemail, for instance (or not, depending on your current state of desperation).

See the rest of our Android coverage here.

UPDATER - Audio has been cleaned up considerably. Thanks for your patience.

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Google Tops Website Customer Satisfaction Index

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:31:31 -0700

The University of Michigan’s quarterly customer satisfaction index came out today, and in the Website category Google came out on top with a score of 86 out of 100 (up 10 percent from last year). Yahoo slipped 3 percent to a score of 77. MSN’s score was flat at 75, and tied with NYTimes.com and ABCNews.com. AOL came in at 69, and that is 3 percent better than last year.

Here are some select scores, with the comparable 2007 numbers in parentheses:

American Customer Satisfaction Index Scores (2nd Quarter, 2008)

Google:              86 (78)
Yahoo:           77 (79)
MSNBC.com:        76 (74)
ABCNews.com:   75 (74)
MSN:                   75 (75)
NYTimes.com:    75 (73)
Ask:                    74 (75
CNN.com:            73 (73)
USAToday.com:    73 (72)
AOL:                   69 (67)

The only surprise here is Google’s massive jump. Is it really doing that much of a better job than last year, or is it just that its halo effect keeps growing?

(Photo by Bing Ramos).

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Google Sinks $10 Million Into New Geothermal Technologies

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:31:27 -0700

Google’s philanthropic arms, Google.org, is investing a little over $10 million into the development of enhanced geothermal systems (EGS). Rather than extracting heat from the ground a few hundred feet down (or less) as traditional geothermal systems do, EGS goes several kilometers deep into the hot rock under the Earth.

If we could tap just two percent of that heat under the continental United States, one MIT study estimates that would supply more than 2500 times our energy needs. But getting that hot rock cost-effectively will require new technology. (See the video above for an illustration of a 50 megawatt EGS project in Australia).

The money will be broken up in the following way: $6.25 million will go to AltaRock Energy, another $4 million will go to Potter Drilling, and a $500,000 grant will go to a geothermal lab at Southern Methodist University.

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Yahoo Buzz Opens Doors To Everyone

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:10:47 -0700

Buzz, Yahoo’s Digg-like effort to leverage reader gestures and third party content in determining the most popular news, removes it’s barriers to entry tonight.

Until now only a hundred or so invited publishers could post news to Buzz. This was a big plug - Yahoo pushes a few Yahoo Buzz stories to their home page every day, resulting in huge, server-melting traffic surges to the lucky third party sites. Starting tonight, the invitation requirement is gone, and anyone can submit their stories to Buzz.

It’s hard to compare Buzz to Digg. Like AOL’s Propeller, they chose to add editorial discretion in determining headlines to reduce gaming. That also seems to make users less interested in participating, though. In Yahoo’s case the fact that they promote headline stories on the home page of Yahoo gives them a huge traffic boost, which skews results.

Stories can be submitted here once it goes live in a few hours.

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Yahoo! Buzz

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3Jam Offers Refuge For Abandoned Twitter Users

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:10:45 -0700

Last week Twitter announced that it had disabled outbound SMS updates for nearly all of its international users because it has been unable to negotiate favorable deals with cellular carriers. Up until this point, Twitter has allowed users to receive incoming SMS messages free of charge, footing a bill that it says amounted to up to $1000 per user, per year. The service will continue operating in the US, India, and Canada (where Twitter has forged deals with carriers), but many international users are being left in the cold.

3Jam, a company that offers a number of SMS-related services, is looking to mimic Twitter’s lost functionality. The site has launched a new Twitter service that will deliver direct messages to users as SMS messages. Note: The link doesn’t work yet, but the company says it will go live some time tonight. At launch, the site will also offer local numbers for users in Australia, Sweden and Germany to respond to.

Unfortunately, the service has a few drawbacks. In order to take advantage of it, users will need to establish 3Jam accounts and maintain a positive balance on the site - you’re paying a small fee to restore something that used to be free. Twitter has considered offering a similar for-pay option to help offset its steep costs, but says it is currently uncomfortable offering a paid service that is notoriously unreliable.

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3Jam

Twitter

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Friendster Launches Support For OpenSocial Apps

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:48:42 -0700

Friendster, the social network that has seen explosive growth in Asia but continues to lag behind Facebook and MySpace elsewhere, has launched support for OpenSocial apps on its development platform. Friendster initially launched its platform last October, but has restricted available applications to those developed especially for Friendster’s API (much as a developer would have to develop specifically for Facebook).

Beginning today, Friendster will allow developers to submit OpenSocial compliant apps (up to the .7 release of the API). These applications will all be screened and then entered into the network’s application directory (again, similar to Facebook’s). Friendster says that there will be no apparent difference to users between an OpenSocial and Friendster application.

Friendster is one of the web’s older social networks, and was once a leading player in the space, turning down an acquisition offer from Google for $30 million in 2003. Since then the company has been unable to keep up in American markets, but has done very well in Asia, with a reported 55 million users spanning the continent (they also make up 70% of the site’s registered users).

Google’s OpenSocial platform allows developers to create a a single application that will work across multiple social newtorks that support the platform’s API. Along with Friendster, other major sites that have pledged support to the platform include MySpace, Bebo, and Six Apart.

While Friendster may not be nearly as big a player as MySpace or Facebook in the United States, it still has a vast audience in Asia. Because of the minimal amount of overlap seen between Asian and American markets (Facebook and MySpace have had difficulty expanding in some portions of Asia), the site offers developers a large number of potential new users. Its addition to the OpenSocial platform puts increasing pressure on Facebook to adopt some kind of open application standard, as developers will dislike having to reprogram their applications just to run on Facebook’s closed platform.

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Friendster

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Poll Everywhere Asks The Crowd To Spice Up PowerPoint Presentations

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:07:41 -0700

Despite using a plethora of flashy graphics and professionally designed templates, many lecturers have to grapple with one common dilemma: PowerPoint presentations are usually pretty boring.

One common way in increase engagement, especially in a large group setting, is to encourage audience participation using a polling service. Unfortunately, many of these systems use proprietary devices and software which make them both inconvenient and unnecessarily expensive.

Poll Everywhere, a Y Combinator company that launched last Fall, is a service that allows presenters to sidestep these obstacles by taking polls with mobile phones. Instead of using a proprietary device, users simply send a SMS message to a specified number. This data can then be displayed on a dynamic PowerPoint slide, allowing users to watch the results change on the fly.

Today the site is announcing beta support for a number of international markets, including Australia and countries in Europe and Asia. Poll Everywhere is also announcing that it will release its own shortcode in the United States next week, which will allow users to manually assign certain keywords to their polls (in the past the service has relied on another company’s shortcode). In order to take advantage of these custom keywords, users will need to be part of a paid service plan, as the free version only offers randomly assigned words.

While Poll Everywhere originally launched last September, the company’s founders say it wasn’t until they secured Y Combinator funding that they began taking the project more seriously (all of them have since quit their jobs or dropped out of school). And while the company will be taking on some well established players in this space, particularly in academic environments, its simplicity and relatively low cost make it a viable alternative (and it’s already profitable).

There are a number of sites that allow users to create their own SMS campaigns, including Mozes and Tagga, which we covered last month. Poll Everywhere differentiates itself by adapting the technology to produce dynamic PowerPoint slides, though these other companies could conceivably integrate this functionality without too much difficulty.

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Poll Everywhere

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In Anticipation Of An Actual Phone, Android Releases A New SDK

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:07:24 -0700

Now that the first Android phone has been approved by the FCC, Google figured it might be a good time to update the software development kit for the mobile OS. There were hints that this would happen earlier today, but now it is official. According to the Android Developer’s Blog, here is what is new:

* First and most obviously, the new Home screen is included, along with a ton of UI changes for 1.0.
* Some new applications are included: an Alarm Clock, Calculator, Camera, Music player, Picture viewer, and Messaging (for SMS/MMS conversations.)
* Several new development tools were added, such as a graphical preview for XML layouts for users of Eclipse, and a tool for constructing 9-patch images.
* Since we’ve got a new Home screen application now, we thought the now-obsolete version from the M5 early-look SDK might be helpful to developers, so its source is included as a sample.
* A number of new APIs are fleshed out and improved, and others are now close to their final forms for 1.0.
* Tons of bugs were fixed, of course. (If you had problems with the MediaPlayer, try it now!)

This SDK is still not the 1.0 release. (It is version 0.9). There are still bugs and some features that had to be removed because of security reasons, such as support for GTalk and Bluetooth. (That won’t do). But those should return once the bugs are fixed, hopefully by the time the 1.0 version is available in September.

This release has been long overdue, but now that it is out may begin to appease many of the mobile app developers out there who have been frustrated by the general lack of access to the latest SDK. But with T-Mobile’s Android phone only two or three months away, it doesn’t give them a lot of time to create jaw-dropping apps. The new SDK can be downloaded here. (And screen shots can be found at Hello Android).

MobileCrunch has a cavalcade of screenshots showing the actual browser interface.

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Japan’s Kao Chekki (Face Check) Proves That Vanity Apps Know No Boundaries

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 13:07:51 -0700

On Facebook, there is no shortage of apps that tell you what celebrity you look like based on your photo (FaceDouble is the most popular), but in Japan we like our vanity apps on our mobile phones. After all, the camera is built in. Take the case of Kao Chekki (Face Check) by J-Magic, a web company that was totally unknown until the end of April 2007, when it caused a Japan-wide frenzy with its free Kao Chekki service. By June 2007, the mobile site had registered an incredible 20 million requests, and continues to be popular to this day.

The service is quite simple and cleverly plays with human vanity: People submit their photograph from their cell phones to check which (Japanese and international) celebrities they resemble the most. Kao Chekki scans the pictures and emails back the top three celebrity matches, including percentage match, a few moments later.

Kao Chekki works very well with Japanese faces (trustme on that one), but seems to have slight problems with foreigners. Michael and Erick really don’t resemble Gori-san and Kiyokiba-san, respectively, do they? Although, Gori-san is known as a cut-up.

The site’s overwhelming success spawned a number of copycats, including a rather bizarre service called Koe Chekki (Voice Check): Here, users call a phone number, leave a short message and are then emailed back to their cell phones with a list of celebrities with similar voices. Okay, maybe that one won’t translate overseas.

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FCC Greenlights First Android Phone (HTC Dream)

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:07:51 -0700

The only thing holding back the launch of the first Android-powered phone, the HTC Dream, was approval from the Federal Communications Commission. That approval has now come through, and T-Mobile can launch the phone. The filing asks for a November 10 release date, but (as Matt Marshall at VentureBeat points out) T-Mobile could launch it earlier.

This means that Android will be on track to debut before the holiday shopping season. The device is expected to have a touch screen, WiFi, a “jogball” (like on a Blackberry), a full Web browser based on the same WebKit as Safari on the iPhone, and Google apps like Gmail, Maps, and YouTube. It should be fab.

But don’t expect it to catch up to the iPhone anytime soon. At least Android will finally be in the game, though, and the other Android phone manufacturers and carriers will be able to learn from any missteps that the HTC Dream makes. On the other hand, if the Dream lives up to its name other Android partners might hurry up and launch their devices as well.

Update: There are also some signs that Google may be getting ready to release an updated software development kit so that apps can actually be made for the device. (That would be a good idea).

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Google Uses YouTube To Try To Rally Public Support For WiFi 2.0

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 09:07:39 -0700

The fate of an important chunk of wireless spectrum in the U.S. is being decided by the FCC, and Google wants to rally public support for turning this spectrum over to unlicensed uses, just like we do today with WiFi. The spectrum in question is the “white spaces” in the analog TV broadcast signal that will no longer be needed once all TV broadcasters shift to digital signals. The white spaces could form the basis for WiFi 2.0, a longer-range wireless technology that wouldn’t be owned by any one company.

Before that can happen, though, Google and other proponents of WiFi 2.0 must prove that they can get around some of the interference issues that may result if the spectrum in question is turned over to unlicensed use. So the FCC has been running some field tests to see what the impact may be. (The results so far are inconclusive). The biggest complainers are companies that make wireless microphones for live events such as concerts and football games.

Google doesn’t want to lose this policy debate to its opponents, who are positioning the proposal as something that will not only interfere with existing licensed wireless devices (something nobody really cares about), but will interfere with the officiating of football games. In other words, it would interfere with America itself.

Well, Google is having none of it. And it’s fighting back with something equally American: YouTube. In a direct appeal to geeks everywhere, it is urging people to upload their own video testimonials to YouTube to show their support for “Free The Airwaves.”

I’m not sure how much good this campaign will do, but there is much to be said about the benefits of creating a new swath of unlicensed spectrum. Look at the success of WiFi, a technology with its own interference issues that is now a basic part of our everyday lives. WiFi has expanded the Internet beyond the reach of an Ethernet cable. WiFi 2.0 could expand it beyond the office or the home. It’s a good idea, and in the grand scheme of things would create a greater public good than any harm it would cause.

And it’s really not an either/or choice anyway. You can have both your wireless referee mics and your Wifi 2.0 because you can always block the unlicensed use in stadiums and other areas.

Here’s Google product manager Minnie Ingersoll explaining what is at stake here:

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Del.izzy Does What Del.icio.us Won’t: Search The Full Text Of Your Bookmarks

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:07:41 -0700

When you search your bookmarks on del.icio.us, all you are searching is the tags, titles, and descriptions. If you want to search the full text of the underlying bookmarked pages themselves, you have to go to Del.izzy, a site out of Melbourne, Australia that was hacked together in three days. Del.izzy takes each page that you’ve bookmarked and puts it through a Google custom search to bring back results for the search terms you enter.

It is a pretty obvious feature, and there is no reason why del.icio.us, which is owned by Yahoo, can’t do this itself. And perhaps it was simply a design decision. You could argue that searching only through tags, titles, and descriptions returns better results because all of the words in those elements are essentially explicit, higher-level categorizations of the content being bookmarked. And the nice thing about searching on del.cio.us is that you can get results for everyone’s bookmarks, not just your own.

But by searching the actual text of the pages themselves, you can catch keywords that were not captured elsewhere. And in this case, more results are better, because any one person’s set of bookmarks is going to be a relatively limited set of pages.

The problem with Del.izzy is that it doesn’t search the tags, titles, or descriptions. It only searches the text of the underlying pages. What you want is a bookmark search that does both.

A search for “video advertising,” for instance, turned up the same top result, but the rest were all different (see screen shots below). Are the Del.izzy results better? Not really. But they show you what you is missing from a standard del.icio.us search.

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Jitterbit: An Open Source Project That Bridges Data Gaps

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 06:07:21 -0700

Jitterbit, a service that helps companies bridge and integrate data from different sources, has released a new 2.0 version of its software along with a new pricing model that it hopes will make it more appealing to businesses and consumers alike.

Jitterbit is an open source project that allows users to efficiently use and modify data from multiple sources that may not typically communicate directly. While the company is partially targeted towards the enterprise market (which often handles such issues when dealing with SaaS applications like Salesforce), it also strives to appeal to smaller scale, consumer operations.

The new version of the software allows users to utilize a drag-and-drop interface to generate functions that will collect data from one input and modify it elsewhere, without having to enter any code. For example, I could use Jitterbit to collect the average price of an iPhone on eBay, and then automatically adjust the price on my own webstore to be 2% less than that figure in order to keep my online storefront competitive.

The new release coincides with a shift in the company’s monetization strategy. In the past, Jitterbit attempted to provide support for both standard releases and “bleeding-edge” nightly builds from the open-source project, which are often prone to bugs because they haven’t been thoroughly tested. From now on the company will no longer support these nightly builds, but will instead offer a for-pay “rock solid” version that includes support (adventurous users can still download the untested version without support for free).

There are a number of similar services in this space, including Talend and SnapLogic.

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Redesigning For A Reason: Towards Better Conversion Rates

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 05:07:20 -0700

Mint, an online personal finance site, has gotten a facelift. The new site sports a much cleaner design than the previous iteration, and appears to be focused on describing what Mint actually does rather than presenting pretty (but somewhat overwhelming) graphics. For now the improvements are mainly on the external portion of the site (for non-members), with the members’ portion switching to the new design in the next few weeks.

That normally isn’t big news, but what caught my attention is that Mint has been bucket testing various redesign formats with some users and is seeing conversion rates increase by 20% over the current site.

That equals “hundreds of thousands” of more registered users over the course of a year given their current growth rates, says CEO Aaron Patzer. When we last checked in with them, they had 350,000 registered users and were tracking $11 billion in assets. Those numbers are likely substantially higher now.

Most startups have very limited resources and are so busy building and maintaining core features that they can’t spend too much time doing user testing on various concepts. Sometimes it makes sense to just take a step back and think about usability, though. It can pay off in the end.

Since the site’s launch last year, it has added a number of new features including loan tracking and investment tracking. However, most of these functions haven’t been readily apparent to most users - something the new design is looking to remedy.

Mint allows users to keep track of their finances, presenting spending history with attractive graphs and typically requiring much less effort compared to programs like Quicken. Unfortunately, while the site serves its purpose well, it is currently unable to actually transfer any funds to pay bills - you’ll have to go to your bank’s website to do that.

As part of the update, Mint is also releasing a handful of new guides to personal finance, ranging from “reducing credit card debt” to the seemingly obvious “saving money while dining out”.

Mint, which has now raised $17 million in venture capital, was the overall winner of the TechCrunch40 event in 2007.

The new designs are below. In the first image the old is on left, new is on right.

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Pouring Our Heart Into TechCrunch50

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 03:07:09 -0700

TechCrunch50, where fifty new startups (give or take) will launch, is less than a month away. The conference team is fried after reviewing over 1,000 applications from companies preparing to launch. We’ve been interviewing these startups for weeks, often scheduling calls in the middle of the night because there just weren’t enough business hours to schedule everyone in.

The NYTimes is featuring the conference in today’s paper. They’re focusing on the tension between our conference and DEMO, which charges companies to present. We’re happy for the coverage, but what the article doesn’t talk about is just how excited we are about the event and what is going to happen there.

We are down to the last few slots, and most companies have been notified one way or the other. Based on our experience from last year, these last ten or so companies are the hardest because there are at least 40 more that are perfectly qualified to be at the event. Each of us interviews the companies, sometimes multiple times. Over the weekend I had eight of them come to my house and do in person demos as well.

The event itself is going to be a bit of a spectacle. We expect anywhere up to 1,500 people to be in the audience, which is much larger than last year’s event which we had to cut off at 900 (we have a bigger venue this year). There will be a lot going on - venture capitalists perusing the companies, demopit startups vying for attention, big companies scoping out possible acquisitions, and even a couple of mega-parties being put on by sponsors.

But at the core of it all are 50 very special companies who are gathering together to launch their products. Engineering teams will be working until the last minute to finish products. Ops teams will worry about launch day traffic spikes and keeping their sites up. CEOs, many of whom have never been on stage in front of that many people, will be sweating and praying that they are able to communicate their core message to a diverse audience.

That’s the sweet spot for me. The birth of a company is the culmination of dreams, prayers and a lot of hard work. A year or more has gone into creating a business plan, hiring the first group of employees, figuring out how to build whatever it is they’ve built, pitching investors (and us) and generally putting aside their normal life to pursue a passion that drives them forward.

It is an honor to host these startups as they launch. And we are so grateful to our panel of experts for spending their time thinking and talking about the demos as they occur.

So let’s put aside all the drama around the event as the old payola way of putting on conferences goes through its death throes. Instead, let’s focus on the the startup community and the amazing things that it creates.

Thanks to all the blogs that have written posts competing for a free ticket to the event (some links below). We’re going to let as many as we can of you into the event with press passes (and we’re giving deep discounts to students as well). See you all at TechCrunch50 soon. We’ll network in the halls until we have no more business cards, eat lots of crappy-yet-exorbitantly-expensive food and party all night thanks to our sponsors. And most importantly we’ll see fifty very special startups launch, too. This event is about them and for them, and I can’t wait.

Some recent blog posts about the event:

Cyan Banister, ButtonAll, Infinitely Meta, Interesting Things, Learnanyway, Zemote, Adam Fisk, Webalytics, Rob Blatt, Andrew Fielding, uLiken Media and Brad Hill (let me know in the comments if I’ve missed any).

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Salmon Run: A Maven2 multi-environment filter setup

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 02:05:57 -0700

Blog post on how to do profile-specific filtering in Maven -- not something covered well in other Maven docs