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03 Nov 2009 10:23
Storage In The CloudSugarSync Sweetens File Syncing For Small Businesses »
ScamvilleRockYou Joins The No Scams Parade. But What's Facebook Up To? »
Tunes From BrandsGoogle's New Music Search Will Be Getting A Boost »on November 3, 2009
Today is the first day of PayPal’s much-hyped PayPal Innovate X 2009, the payments company’s first dedicated developer conference. PayPal, which reported strong earnings recently, is hoping to engage developers in producing applications on top of PayPal’s newly released API. We reported on parts of the open platform here and here. PayPal is already testing the platform with startups Payvment,FundRazr,LottayTwitPay. PayPal is also unveiling additional APIs at the conference and will be presenting a roadmap for its view of the future of payments.
And PayPal is even gaining traction from large tech companies to integrate the new API. This morning, Sun Microsystems a partnership with PayPal to support for-fee applications submitted by developers for distribution in the Java Store. Utilizing the new Adaptive Payment API from PayPal, consumers can authorize the Java Store to bill against their PayPal account so they can simply click the “Buy” button and never have to leave the store. In addition, when a customer makes a payment in the Java Store Beta, the application owner also gets paid at the time of the purchase. This way, the developer immediately receives the revenue and knows exactly how many people have purchased their application.
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- In The Fight Between Facebook And Twitter, Which One's The Mac And Which One's The PC?90 comments
on November 3, 2009
Collaboration on editing documents and spreadsheets is becoming a key feature in productivity suites with the emergence of Google Docs, Zoho, Etherpad and others. Even Microsoft is adding collaboration features to Excel in its new version of Office. While Microsoft is adding this limited functionality to its new version of office, DocVerse offers a plug-in for Word, PowerPoint and Excel that lets you collaborate with other users when editing a document.
Once downloaded, the DocVerse plug-in will appear on the right-hand sidebar of any Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel file. You can invite other users to collaborate with you, and once all partied have downloaded the plug-in, you can share documents with each other. Whether users are working on a document online or offline, DocVerse will track, manages and sync all changes to merge them into one updated version of the document. You can communicate with other users via an IM feature within the plug-in as well.
Robin Wauters on November 3, 2009
Two years ago, a bunch of labels affiliated to music giant EMI Group sued both MP3tunes and its infamous founder Michael Robertson – former founder and CEO of MP3.com and currently running VoIP startup Gizmo5 – over alleged copyright infringement. A year ago, a judge did the sensible thing and tossed out the part of the case that could personally bankrupt the man.Fast forward to about two weeks ago, when a new ruling gave EMI again a way to go after Robertson’s personal assets in court.
on November 3, 2009
Lawsuits can be the source of all sorts of surprising and off the wall stories and this one, filed by a Google Atlanta-based former data center employee takes the cake. In the lawsuit, which was filed on Oct. 29 in a federal court in Atlanta, the former employee, James Bara, alleges both sexual and religious discrimination from his superior.
While it doesn’t sound juicy, the stories that Bara tells are. Bara was initially a contractor for Google’s Atlanta office, working as an assistant in the Data Center. After six months, he was hired by Google as a full-time employee. According to the complaint, all was rosy for the next two years until a female transgender employee joined the group Bara worked for. Bara’s boss, a woman named Pam Sohn, allegedly made inappropriate comments about this woman, and ridiculed her sexual preference.
Robin Wauters on November 3, 2009
Following an investigation that lasted over a year, Turkish authorities are fining Internet giant Google a total of 71 million Turkish Lira (approx. €32 million or USD $47 million) for supposedly dodging the national tax system. Local mediareports (links in Turkish) teach us that the Turkish government claims it is entitled to additional taxes because of the fact Google operates its online advertising in the country and even boasts offices and a registered subsidiary there while bills and payments originate from Ireland. That latter part rings true, since the search juggernaut’s European headquarters are located in Ireland’s capital and most of its support and financial services are centralized there.
But Turkish authorities say Google is required to pay national taxes for revenue generated through its registered company based in Turkey, and asserts that an extensive audit shows that the American company owes the government nearly $50 million in unpaid taxes.
Robin Wauters on November 3, 2009
Israeli startup Soluto has closed a healthy $6.2 million second round of financing led by Bessemer Venture Partners and joined by Giza Venture Capital. This is on top of the $1.6 million round the company raised a year ago from Proxima, bringing the total amount of capital invested in the company close to $8 million.The company, which is aggressively keeping its operations hidden from the public eye for now, is only willing to describe itself as being in the ‘anti-PC frustration software’ business. Our man in Israel, Roi Carthy, says the company is one of the hottest in Israel at present day, so let’s take a closer look at what they’re building over there.
Matt Burns on November 3, 2009
Remember the Twitter Peek thingie Peter Ha spotted last week? Yeah, it’s official now and is actually a neat little device if you Twitter a whole lot and don’t carry a smartphone.
Wait, what?
Robin Wauters on November 3, 2009
University of Southern California (USC) will be sharing some numbers about its startup funding activities at First Look L.A. tomorrow, an invitation-only event it’s organizing in partnership with UCLA and CalTech. These numbers are nothing to sneeze at: in less than two years, USC has managed to raise an impressive $115 million in funding for 15 startups.For your background: the University of Southern California, to be more precise its Stevens Institute for Innovation, helps USC spin-offs manage intellectual property, regularly incubates and showcases new high-tech ventures and connects promising young teams to appropriate investors for follow-up financing.
on November 3, 2009
[Finland] Last week marked the end for Nokia’s unsuccessful games service N-Gage. Nokia announced that they will be closing down the service at the end of September 2010. About four hardcore fans protested mildly in the N-Gage blog as the rest of the world yawned. Seems like N-Gage was a project doomed to fail. Who was the target audience again? Oh who cares.The service was launched in 2003 as an attempt to tap into a growing games market. Anyone remember the clumsy N-Gage phone? Didn’t think so. Although maybe its hideousness and general usability difficulties probably stuck on your mind.
on November 3, 2009
It’s no surprise that Animoto’s new video product is a hit. Upload a few short videos and images, add a song, click a button and bam, you’ve got a very high quality souvenir of your recent holiday or other event. Here’s one I put together for Foo Camp in August. More examples are here.So far it’s a one-size-fits-all product. And since it’s such a good one no one is complaining. But there have been requests for holiday themed platforms, says CEO Brad Jefferson. And so on December 1 they’ll release themed templates for various holidays. The new product will be called Animoto Originals, and the video below is an example.
Look for holiday and life event themed templates (Christmas, weddings, etc.). Short videos are free. Full length videos (the length of a song) are $3 each, or you can buy a yearly subscription. My parents loved one holiday video I made so much that I had a DVD of it sent to them for $20 – which is another revenue source for the company.
Sample video is below.
on November 3, 2009
With close to 100,000 iPhone applications now available on the App Store, finding the ones the ones that you will actually enjoy and use can be difficult. There are other apps and sites that offer a resource for you to find and share popular apps, and even present customized recommendations, such as AppsFire,16 Apps or Sidebar, which we recently wrote about here. But what about tapping into your social graph to help find the apps that are popular amongst your friends? Enter Chorus— a free iPhone app that helps you discover apps with the people you trust most – your friends.
Chorus, which is developed by envIO Networks, is sort of like a mobile social network based around the apps that your friends have downloaded. The app features real-time feeds from your designated friends (those who have also downloaded Chorus and whom you have friended) displaying the apps they are downloading, and what they are saying about them in the app.
Leena Rao on November 3, 2009
Sharpcast’sSugarSync, an application that synchronizes data across desktop computers, laptops, mobile phones, and even televisions, is rolling out a service designed specifically for businesses. As people split up their digital lives across devices and the Web, allows you to back-up any kind of digital file, including videos, spreadsheets, photos and documents, in the cloud and access it from virtually anywhere via a variety of devices. You can read our past reviews of SugarSync herehere.
SugarSync for Business, which is specifically designed for small businesses, lets enterprise users sync data across computers and smartphones syncing capabilities, share folders and collaborate with employees within its platform. The version allows administrators to create account for many users, where employees share the storage amount, but each employee has a separate user account (the employee’s data is not shared with other employees). Admins can set storage limits for each user and also receives alerts when user is near limit. And it’s easy to delete a user account without losing the data that’s in the account.
Leena Rao on November 3, 2009
GSI Commerce, a company that powers e-commerce platforms for major brands, recently made headline with the acquisition of Retail Convergence, which operates RueLaLa.com, a private sale site and SmartBargains.com, an off-price e-commerce marketplace, in a deal valued as high as $350 million. GSI is now rebranding its digital marketing agency that caters to fashion and retail brands, formerly known as gsi interactive, to TrueAction.
TrueAction’s new brand identity is focused on helping retail brands turn the transaction experience into a revenue builder for e-commerce platforms. TrueAction is launching Usability Lab, a marketing tool that utilizes a live focus group where real consumers can provide detailed feedback on aspects including digital marketing, design, and functionality. The agency is also focusing on creating technologies for brands to help deepen relationships with consumers. This includes mobile apps, store locators, catalog services, and customer service integration.
A large number of customers of Rackspace Cloud, including Techcrunch, have been experiencing downtime for the past 1h 20m or so. The status blog reports that the service was degraded, and other reports state that it is due to a power outage at the Dallas network operations center. Customers of both Rackspace Cloud and Slicehost are affected, putting services such as Posterous, Dailybooth and others out of commission.
It’s been about two months since Opera introduced the non-beta version of its Opera 10 desktop browser, and today the Norwegian software developer is following up on that release with that of the latest beta buildOpera Mobile, a custom browser specifically built to give Symbian and Windows Mobile equipped handset users a (much) more pleasant Web browsing experience. The company’s latest ‘State of the Mobile Web’ report, which was based on usage data from their other mobile browser product, the popularOpera Mini, suggests that mobile web usage is still increasing at a rapid pace.
Zynga changed their lead gen scam policy this morning (the whole Scamville background is here, see updates at bottom as well). And now RockYou is taking steps to clean up their act to, according to an email we’ve been forwarded.In an email to RockYou’s publishers, they say that they will begin complying with Facebook’s rules on offer scams (and like you, we’re not sure why they haven’t been complying all along, but lax enforcement is likely the cause).
Two interesting nuggets from the email though. First, RockYou says that from now on you’ll only see “clean, safe surveys from top tier brands advertisers.” All of the surveys we’ve seen are mobile subscription scams, so I’m not sure there’s such a thing as a clean, safe survey.
Second, the email says “the Facebook compliance team will be keeping a very close eye on offer walls starting tonight.” We’d heard that Facebook is coming down hard on app developers around scams right now, but Facebook won’t comment about it other than to say that they have always been monitoring application offers and enforcing the rules. From what we’ve seen, that enforcement didn’t bring much in the way of results, but perhaps they’re more serious about the situation now.
The full email:
Break Media, a social video site for guys, is launching a new branded content project, called the “Social Sportz Net,” created in partnership with liquor brand Southern Comfort. The videos will consist of an original series of webisodes designed around the “uniqueness and versatility” of the popular spirit.
The “Social Sportz Net” channel will cover information that most fratastic guys want: how to throw a perfect party. For example, a webisode will feature everything guys need to know to host a killer house party, including the right music, required dress, games and entertainment, and drinks ideas.
If you’ve been on Twitter for a while, there’s a good chance you’ve come across a tweet that asked you to retweet something (usually a link to a spammy-looking site) for the chance to enter a contest. Of course, these are typically bogus, leading many people to simply ignore them. And that poses a problem to the companies who really are trying to run sweepstakes on Twitter, who can have a hard time proving their legitimacy. Wildfire, a platform for building viral marketing campaigns, is looking to help: the company has just launched support for sweepstakes on Twitter, allowing brands to now manage campaigns across their websites, Facebook, and Twitter simultaneously.Wildfire hasn’t been around very long, but it’s already accomplished quite a bit: it won last year’s fbFund, and has built up a very impressive roster of clients, including Pepsi, Sony, CNN, Universal, AT&T, VIctoria’s Secret and even Facebook itself, which has used the service for multiple campaigns. But until now, it hasn’t been available for Twitter.
A couple weeks ago, a friend of mine came to me with a problem. The British distribution company handling his music video was shockingly backwards in its formatting, and was asking for a Real Media encode of the video. They didn’t specify bitrate, resolution, where it would be shown, or anything like that. Quicktime was being a bother, and we needed to use my PC to do a few encodes at this or that specification. We ended up running it through in Vegas, and going to grab a coffee while it churned out the frames.Now, the point is not that you need a PC to encode heinous old formats, but rather that digital distribution is a weird, complex process that could use a bit of simplification. Sorenson’s Squeeze 6 appears to go to some lengths to make this happen. It’s far from the only encoding platform out there, but I think they’re moving the right direction with this version, which not only integrates tightly with your Mac, but also with SMS, Twitter, and other popular services. After all, there’s no guarantee that you’re going to be working in the same office, or even the same country, as people who need to be informed every step of the way. (link fixed)
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