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Three (Lousy) Photos Look To Be The First Taken With The Nexus S
Nov 14, 1:47AM
Well looky what we have here. The other day, Engadget got the first photos of the Nexus S, Google's sequel to their Nexus One phone. Now it looks like we may have happened upon the first photos taken with the device. If you look in this Google Picasa album, you'll see three random photos that appear to be of nothing. But if you click on the photos themselves and hit the "more info" button, you'll see one very interesting thing about these lousy photos: each list the camera as "google" and the model as "Nexus S".
Photo Reveals That Google Is Still Baking Android Gingerbread — Literally
Nov 14, 1:16AM
I know, I know. The indications were that the next version of Android, 2.3, was supposed to be out already. It has been nearly a week since an OHA member tweeted that the Nexus One would be getting the Gingerbread OTA update in "the next few days". So far, nothing. But Google is doing their best to keep whetting everyones' appetite. Yesterday, the search giant sent out a tweet from their mobile account (yes, the one they paid to promote on Twitter two days ago). The tweet read, "Our cafes are baking something sweet", and contained a link to a TwitPic of dozens of gingerbread Android cookies. Cute Google, cute.
Down Goes Arrington: WordPress.com Getting Top Author Stats Shortly
Nov 14, 12:25AM
If 75 percent of my day is spent writing, the remaining 25 percent is probably going over TechCrunch stats. I'm obsessed with it. That's why I do so many posts about things like Chrome getting ready to overtake Firefox as the dominant browser among TechCrunch readers (less than 1 percent away now). So I was obviously happy when WordPress.com (which hosts us) overhauled their Stats area earlier this year. But it was always missing just one thing. WordPress.com's Stats area gives you a solid overview for how your blog is doing overall. And unlike Google Analytics, the data is up-to-the-minute fresh. You can see your top posts, top referrers, top search engine terms, top clicked links, and a few other things. One thing it doesn't have though is the ability to see how each author is doing in terms of traffic to their posts. In other words, it's lacking in the vanity department. But that's coming shortly.
You've Got FMail
Nov 13, 9:12PM
The news on Monday appears to be that Facebook will reinvent email. TechCrunch says it's the long awaited Gmail killer. Others say it's Gmail inventor Paul Buchheit's project since he came to Facebook in the FriendFeed acquisition. Paul says he hasn't been working on that, but rather the Big Freaking Zip File app where we can download all our Facebook bits. And anyway, he's gone — off to Y Combinator to continue his angel investing. And I'm gone — from email. Have been for a while now. I still use email all the time. Or rather, it uses me. I watch colleagues at work (Salesforce.com) bounce back and forth from Outlook and Gmail, selecting, reading, skimming, and oh yes, deleting, deleting, deleting. You have to do that in Outlook, to stay ahead of the Mailbox is Full message. Gmail, not really, but it's hard to break the old habit. And recently I had to start paying for that privilege, when Google stopped raising the limit and converted me to a cloud customer.
Hi, Mom. Welcome To 1995
Nov 13, 6:49PM
Hey Dad, will you please print this out for Mom? Thanks. I remember the first time I fired up Netscape on a computer in the library of the law firm I had just started working at in 1995. I think I went to Yahoo and clicked on some things, and called it a day. For the next year the Internet was mostly about receiving and forwarding email jokes. Some of my friends were really excited about being joke "hubs." Thank God that's all history. Jokes are rarely forwarded by email any more. It's been replaced with spam. Anyway, back to my mom, who occasionally shows up here in a cameo appearance. 
Social Gaming: Where We've Been, and Where We're Headed
Nov 13, 5:05PM
So there was this guy named Ken who was working a 9-to-5 at some giant software company writing tons of code for something whose importance and value was exceeded only by its monotony. Ken's wife, Roberta, had been playing some newfangled PC game and thought to herself, "Man, this game sucks! Ken and I should totally make a better one!" The husband-and-wife team then worked nights and weekends for three months building a game. The final product? Mystery House. And it was awesome. On the heels of this success, they raised money, made more hit games, and eventually sold their gaming empire for $1.5 billion. For those of you who aren't familiar with this story, it could just as well be the founding story of a Playfish or a Zynga today. But this is the story—or my version of it—of the founding of Sierra Online back in the '80s. It was an exciting time back then. Technology had enabled game developers to develop new game mechanics and immerse players in new worlds in ways that had never been imagined before. And the best part? A husband-and-wife team could work nights and weekends and knock out a meaningful and entertaining game in three months.
The Future of Indian Technology
Nov 13, 3:59PM
The Indian technology industry got its start running call centers and doing low-level IT work for western firms. Then, in the 2000s, it started taking on higher-level IT tasks, offering management consulting services, and performing sophisticated R&D. Now there is another transition happening, one far more significant: a transition to development of innovative technology products. Instead of providing IT services as the big outsourcing companies do, a new breed of startups is developing high-value products based on intellectual property. The Indian industry group NASSCOM estimates that in 2008, the country's software product revenues totaled $1.64 billion. It forecasts that this will grow to $11 billion per year by 2015. I attended the NASSCOM Product Enclave in Bangalore, this week, and gave several talks to the 1000+ entrepreneurs in attendance. I was surprised at the changes that are powering the new transition: its tech workers are leaving high-paying jobs in IT services, and kids out of school are ignoring social taboos against failure and defying marriage customs to become entrepreneurs. A few Americans are also joining the fray, starting their ventures in India rather than in Silicon Valley. Though in China, returnees from the U.S. are fuelling the entrepreneurship boom, they aren't as important in India. Sadly for my Indian friends in Silicon Valley who are looking to return home, returnees—formerly in high demand and treated like rock stars—are out of vogue and now treated like rocks.
Dear Foursquare, Gowalla: Please Let's Stop Pretending This Is Fun
Nov 13, 3:49PM
It's a bad month to be Foursquare or Gowalla. Ten days ago, 900-pound gorilla Facebook announced Facebook Deals for Facebook Places (i,e., location-based coupons) and check-ins for third-party apps. A day later, Pew Research reported that, despite all the hype, the use of location-based services is actually declining in America, from 5% of the online population in May to 4% last month. Forget the fabled hockey stick; that's more like a broken pencil. Why? Because they're not giving us any good reason to use them. Look at their web sites. Gowalla proclaims, "Discover the extraordinary in the world around you." Foursquare says, "Unlock your city." To which I say: "Oh, come on" — and it seems I speak for approximately 96% (formerly 95%) of the population. I have no interest in enlisting in a virtual scavenger hunt, or unlocking merit badges — what is this, the Cub Scouts? — or becoming the narcissistic "Mayor" of my local coffee shop. Thanks for the offer, but I'm afraid I already have some semblance of a life.
Google Earth Adds A Panoramic Photo Layer For A 360-Degree View
Nov 13, 2:30PM
Google Earth's ability to provide a visually compelling view of the world's terrain, cities, oceans, weather data, treks, and more never ceases to amaze me. It looks like Google has added another way for users to view the world in Google Earth: panoramic photos. Google Earth now includes a Photo layer which will allow users to find 2D photos taken from Panoramio (a photo community Google acquired in 2007), as well as panoramic photos sourced from 360cities.net, which collects panoramic photography on the web. Google had previously integrated 360 Cities into Google Earth, but this appears to be a deeper integration of the photos into the viewing experience. 
Meet the New Enterprise Customer, He's a Lot Like the Old Enterprise Customer
Nov 13, 2:00PM
Every day I hear from entrepreneurs, angel investors and venture capitalists about an exciting new movement called "the consumerization of the enterprise." They tell me how the old expensive Rolex wearing sales forces are a thing of the past and, in the future, companies will "consume" enterprise products proactively like consumers pick up Twitter. But when I talk to the most successful new enterprise companies like WorkDay, Apptio, Jive, Zuora, and Cloudera, they all employ serious and large enterprise sales efforts that usually include expensive people some of who indeed wear Rolex watches. In fact, companies like Yammer who originally started with new age models have transitioned to more traditional enterprise sales approaches after experiencing the market without them. So what gives? Are all these smart people out of their minds? Has nothing changed since the early days of IBM? Some things have changed, but others are exactly as they were.
Google Trumps Facebook On List Of In Demand Employers Among College Students
Nov 13, 7:59AM
Google has had a tough time in the past month or so, being more or less being positioned by the media as a company that is in danger of losing its top talent to Facebook. Especially when the news of its 10% across the board raises comes off as reeking of desperation during one of the worst talent crunches Silicon Valley has ever seen. Wait a minute, since when is a company giving raises to employees something to disparage? Brian Heifferon, COO of Aftercollege (a site that helps connect students with the companies they want to work with after college) has shared with us some insight into how the rest of the country views Silicon Valley's current talent arms race.
*AD HERE* TripAdvisor: Plan *AD HERE* Your Vacation *AD HERE* Here *AD HERE* Please
Nov 13, 4:06AM
So, LeWeb '10 is coming up. Let's say you're looking for some good ideas of where to stay and what to do in Paris while you're there. Where are you most likely to turn on the web? Google. A search for "paris vacation" yields TripAdvisor as the top result. You click on that link. Oh. My. God.
Why Is mail.facebook.com Pointing To An Outlook Web App Login?
Nov 13, 3:00AM
This whole Facebook Mail thing is getting curiouser and curiouser. After our post on Facebook taking control of fb.com, a number of people have reached out to say that mail.fb.com actually resolved to mail.thefacebook.com (that doesn't seem to be the case for all people). What's interesting about that is that mail.thefacebook.com (and mail.facebook.com) is live for all to see. It's an Outlook Web App with a nice big Facebook logo that asks you for a username and password.
Yep, Facebook Takes Control Of Fb.com Ahead Of Mail Launch
Nov 13, 1:05AM
Project Titan is coming. On Monday. That's what we've heard from sources with knowledge of Facebook's secret mail project. And since we broke that news, there has been a lot of speculation about what domain Facebook might use for these new email addresses. Currently, the popular choice is fb.com. But while it seemed like Facebook acquired it earlier this year, no one knew for sure. Now it looks like we do. As the site Domain Name Wire points out, the Whois record for the domain name has just been updated. While Markmonitor.com is still listed as the registrar name, Facebook is all over the records now as well. Most importantly, the domain namespace servers are now pointing to facebook.com. And Facebook is listed as both the administrative and technical contact.
Ask a VC: How Kiteboarding and Venture Capital Became Less Risky (TCTV)
Nov 13, 1:02AM
My guest on Ask A VC this week is Bill Tai of Charles River Ventures. He's also a professional kiteboarder. You may ask: Why would a guy who has been a VC since 1991 need kiteboarding sponsors? That was my first question. Generally in this video we talk about how the venture business has changed during the last 20 years and how kiteboarding has changed over the last 10 years. There are a lot of parallels. Both games have become safer and more mainstream, but does that mean they're less fun? Video below.
Coincidence? Or Has this Tiny Indonesian Company Pushed Google into the Market Faster?
Nov 13, 12:50AM
Andy Sjarif has an almost weird, man-crush on Google. No matter what crazy things Eric Schmidt may promise shareholders, Sjarif is in no doubt that the great and mighty Google can achieve them. Self-driving cars? Trips to the moon? Wind farms? All in a day's work at the Googleplex. Google with its execution, its Ph.Ds and its algorithms is Sjarif's mahaguru. But - all that said - he still wants to slaughter them in the Indonesian market. To that end, his company Sitti has indexed more than 20 terabytes of data; comprising 12 million articles, 12 million Twitter accounts, 800 million pages of websites and blogs, 10 million Facebook conversations, 20 thousand words of slang and 2.7 billion Google search terms-- all in Bahasa Indonesia and all to make mathematical sense of Bahasa language context, so that it can match ads to content better than Google.
Aol To Unveil New Aol Mail On Sunday
Nov 12, 11:33PM
Aol (err, us, I guess) will relaunch Aol Mail on Sunday afternoon, we've confirmed from sources close to Aol (hah). The company is currently the no. 4 webmail provider with around 30 million users. We'll have a chance to play with it before then and post a full review along with a conflict disclosure. Things we know now - it's completely focused on speed, there will be a variety of domain names to choose from (not just aol.com) and it will be available on phoenix.aol.com. The old Aol Mail will stay available for the foreseeable future.
Why All The Interest In Tumblr? Try 1,540 Percent Pageview Growth
Nov 12, 11:19PM
Tumblr is attracting a lot of attention right now There is talk of a big funding round in the works and it is making significant hires. Why all the interest? Sometime last June, blogging service Tumblr hit an inflection point. It's visitors and pageviews just took off. According to comScore, Tumblr served up 1.2 billion pageviews in the U.S. in October, up a mind-boggling 1,540 percent from the year before (see chart above). Unique visitors from the U.S. hit 6 million, up 150 percent (see chart below). Worldwide visitors in September were around 14 million.
Boxcar 4.0 Pushes iPhone Notifications To The Next Level
Nov 12, 10:51PM
People say that I never say anything bad about the iPhone. Here's something: its notification system is awful. In particular, I'm talking about the way notifications are managed. They aren't. Any Push Notification that comes in overrides another one. Apps can get badged with updates, but you'll have no idea what's new. That's why Boxcar is a vital app. We've written about Boxcar a number of times over the past year or so. They're now launching version 4.0 of the app, and it's by far the best yet. The entire app has been overhauled from the ground up. The result is a killer management system for Push Notifications. Apple needs to buy this company.
Hunter Walk On YouTube By The Numbers And More (TCTV)
Nov 12, 9:41PM
We had the chance to interview YouTube Product Manager Hunter Walk at Gigaom's NewTeeVee conference and talk to him about some of the milestones YouTube has reached since it was founded in 2005 (Warning: My voice is LOUD). Along with the impressive statistic that there are now 50,000 hours of new video uploaded daily (35 hours of video uploaded every minute, up from 24 hours a minute a few months ago), Walk revealed that YouTube now boasts over 2 billion video playbacks a day, 150 million of those being on mobile devices.<
Founder Buys Free Gifts Back from SGN for Less than 10% of the Purchase Price [TCTV]
Nov 12, 9:07PM
Zachary Allia is just 26 years old. He's either really lucky, is a negotiating savant or a combination of both. Back in 2007 when Facebook first opened their platform, Allia and a graphic designer pal came up with the Free Gifts app-- mostly because he was a poor college kid and paying $1 to send someone a picture of a cake seemed exorbitant. He launched it and woke up the next morning to find it had 1 million users. It soared to ten million before he sold it to SGN in 2008. Three things are notable about that deal: It was for a small undisclosed amount but Allia owned 100% of the company at the time, so it was likely a life changing amount of money; he chose selling to SGN over selling to Zynga (doh!); and he came to regret the deal once SGN abandoned the product to move more towards games. When Facebook abdicated its own virtual gifts product last summer, Allia decided he wanted the company back. Getting it took some doing, as he explains in the exclusive interview with TechCrunchTV below.
How To Mass Export All Of Your Facebook Friends' Private Email Addresses
Nov 12, 8:42PM
A few days ago I requested that Facebook finally allow us to download email addresses for all of our friends. Facebook says this isn't allowed because you only own the data you add to Facebook, not data that your friends add. Their statement was, in part (entire statement here): 
At Least It's Not Facebook: A Google Director Departs To Become Loopt Exec
Nov 12, 8:19PM
Google is bleeding talent. As companies mature, that tends to happen. But the fact that a large number are defecting to rival Facebook clearly has Google worried — enough to offer massive retention bonuses and across-the-board salary increases. But it's not totally stopping the talent drain, as another Director of Engineering has left. But Google can relax a bit as at least he's not going to Facebook. Location-based service Loopt has hired Aditya Palande to be their new Vice President of Engineering. He's leaving Google after just about three and a half years there. Most recently, he was in charge of the entire portfolio of applications in the CRM space for the search giant. In total, he has about 20 years of engineering experience at various companies.
'Angry Birds' Toys, A Photo Essay Part 2 (Pig Edition)
Nov 12, 8:17PM
Hey it's Friday, and usually Fridays are when people send out the "more fun" press releases. Like the one we just got from Commonwealth Toys about the preorder release of Angry Birds plush toys at Shopangrybirds.com and Toywiz.com. The release said that industrious fans of the worlds #1 selling mobile game might be able to buy the birds in limited quantities at Suncoast and FYE retailers in "just a few days," whatever that means. Almost forgot the most important part! The email also included the first photos of the 'Angry Birds' pig characters. Behold the pigs, available in early 2011, below.
Pud Revisits His Past, Launches An Email Newsletter Platform With TinyLetter
Nov 12, 8:12PM
Email newsletters may be ready for a comeback. The fact is that despite the communications mechanism being old-school, publishers can put in less effort to get more views in an inbox than on a blog. AOL exec Bob Pittman has bet big on email newsletters, funding a number of media startups built around the form of communication. Philip Kaplan (a.k.a. Pud), the founder of FuckedCompany, AdBrite and Blippy, has created his own email newsletter platform called TinyLetter. TinyLetter is a dead simple way to create email newsletters. You pick out a name for your newsletter, and TinyLetter will create a URL to send to contacts via email, Facebook, Twitter and more so they can sign-up. You can then write your newsletter, customize your newsletters by design, add subscribers, read replies from subscribers and track old newsletters. You can also turn on the option to charge per month for your newsletter.
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