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Future Simple Raises $1.1 Million To Further Simplify The Life Of SMBs
Feb 25, 10:14AM
For the past two years I've been holding onto the belief that Israeli entrepreneurs should devote particular focus on the opportunities available to products and services that cater to Small & Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs). Slowly but surely, more and more companies have indeed started targeting this space, the most notable being Kampyle, SohoOS, and Clarizen. Today, Chicago-based but Israeli-founded Future Simple is announcing a $1.1M round led OCA Ventures with participation by the I2A Fund, as well as angel investors.
The Post-Optical Disc Era Gets Off To A Rocky Start With The OS X Lion Beta
Feb 25, 8:26AM
If there was any doubt in peoples' minds that Apple intends to kill off the optical disc, it was put to rest today. This morning's unveiling of the OS X Lion Developer Preview came with the news that it would only be available one way: through the Mac App Store. And while Apple wouldn't say if they intended to release the final version of Lion to consumers this summer in the same way, it's pretty clear that they're going to do just that. But this important push into the post-optical disc era hasn't exactly been smooth sailing for all so far.
Google's Wizard Of Oz Search Algorithm And The Threat Of Facebook Search
Feb 25, 8:09AM
Google search is powered by algorithms. Computers slice and dice data looking for signals that a web page is more or less interesting than other web pages for a given query. PageRank is a big part of this, where Google looks at inbound links to a site as well as the text relevant to that link. But Google also uses lots of other signals to determine the relevance of a web page. They have to, because PageRank on its own is infinitely gameable. If no one ever tried to game search results PageRank would work just fine. Inbound links are simply votes for various web pages. If you take the authority of the site linking into account, it makes for really good search results. That's why Google was so great in 1999, when there was less incentive to game search results, and less expertise by the people doing it. But today all that's changed. There's a feeling that Google's algorithm is falling further and further behind the very motivated people and companies out there fighting that algorithm. It's an arms race, and Google is losing that arms race.
Wordchuck's Shelly Roche On The Challenges Of Being "RV Profitable" [TCTV]
Feb 25, 7:54AM
Offhand internationalization doesn't seem like it should be a problem for websites, or at least it should be a problem that should be easy to solve. Well not so much, at least according to Wordchuck founder Shelly Roche. We brought Roche into the newly redesigned TCTV studio to talk about her efforts at automating translation (in over 20 languages!) for the Ruby on Rails community, what its like to not win a TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon, and her future plans for the internationalization of web content, a project which evolved out of her own attempts to make localization less painful for her own personal development efforts. 
Oops, Facebook Advertiser Gets A Mysterious Bill For $8.8 Million
Feb 25, 3:33AM
Social ads on Facebook are supposed to be cheap. In fact, they are one of the cheapest ads on the Web in terms of cost per thousand impressions. So imagine Facebook advertiser Joshua Niamehr's surprise when he logged into his Facebook ad campaign and saw the following notice: There is an outstanding balance of $8,804,978.14 USD on your account. Your ads will not be displayed until your account is settled. Please enter a valid funding source. When you submit that information, we will charge your funding source for $8,804,978.14 USD.Needless to say, he did not click "Make Payment." Niamehr's credit card had expired, which is why his account was delinquent. But his actual outstanding balance was $58.07, not $8,804,978.14. (He was placing ads to market his site LaundryLocal).
Google Targets Content Farms With Major Search Algorithm Tweaks
Feb 25, 2:50AM
Google made a substantial revision to its search algorithm today, the company says. And while no one in particular is being called out, it's clear that the big losers are content farms and related spammy-content producers who have been having an absolute field day on Google over the last couple of years. 11.8% of search queries have been "noticeably" updated, says Google - meaning there have been changes in the top 2-3 results. Google is also making it clear that they have not used user data from a recent Chrome extension they released which lets users block specific sites in Google results that annoy them. Google is saying they've compared the data they've collected from that extension to the sites most impacted in the new search rollout. 84% of the most blocked sites via the Chrome extension were impacted, they say. 
Shervin Pishevar: "Twitter and Facebook are shields against future genocides" [TCTV]
Feb 25, 2:40AM
With regime change in Tunisia and Egypt, and Libya's uprising continuing apace, a growing number of commentators are hailing the influence of Facebook and Twitter in helping world-be-revolutionaries coordinate their actions. Earlier this week, SGN founder and angel investor, Shervin Pishevar tweeted that "Twitter and Facebook are shields against future genocides. Like new antibodies in the body of humanity" - which is pretty damn profound. So profound, in fact, that I brought him into the TechCrunch TV studio to explain himself. Video below.
Hashable Brings It To SXSW, And The Android
Feb 25, 2:40AM
Today in SXSW jockeying ... Introduction service Hashable, which has the pretty ambitious goal of ridding the world of business cards, is announcing its Android offering and a slew of features just in time for the Interactive party event to end all Interactive party events, SXSW. In case the message wasn't loud and clear, its also got a fancy SXSW set up on its site, so I guess its hoping to win the app Super Bowl or some other stupid sports analogy pertaining to being the app with the most SXSW usage. Aside from it now being available for 
Disposables Debate: Can Recycling, Materials Innovation Make Plastic Bag Bans Obsolete?
Feb 25, 2:00AM
Single-use plastic grocery bags, and the various fees, taxes and bans proposed to curb pollution from their disposal, are causing controversy again this week. A newly surfaced study, still under peer review, suggests that disposable bags aren't as bad for the environment as re-usable cotton bags. The study — The Life Cycle Assessment of Supermarket Carrier Bags by Dr. Chris Edwards and Jonna Meyhoff Fry — was done for a government environmental agency in the UK and found... 
Apple Has Significant Head Start With Thunderbolt, But Not Exclusive
Feb 24, 11:35PM
Intel's new Thunderbolt interface, which made its debut this morning in an upgrade to Apple's MacBook Pro line, may be effectively an Apple exclusive for quite some time, according to Intel. At their press release, held shortly after Apple's update when live, Intel noted that the developer kit for the interface would be provided to other computer manufacturers this spring, and that they didn't expect OEMs to ship with Thunderbolt until 2012. It's not exactly an exclusive, but it's close. That's a pretty big coup for Apple — assuming Thunderbolt catches on faster than USB 3.0, and has no problems and plenty of applications. It's actually a lot to assume, and although Apple is definitely a winner here, there are also some risks involved. 
What Losing TechCrunch Disrupt Meant to CloudFlare: OMFG
Feb 24, 11:18PM
Editor's Note: The following guest post is by Matthew Prince, CEO of a CloudFlare, which came in as a close runner-up at the last TechCrunch Disrupt. We asked him to give us an update on the startup since Disrupt. It's hard to imagine a web performance and security service "going viral," especially one Mike Arrington described during the Disrupt awards ceremony as "Muffler Repair for the Internet," but a glance through our Twitter feed gives credence to one of Silicon Valley's axioms: if you make a great service that solves a real problem, users will come. And come they have! While I have to confess our engineering team was initially bummed about losing to a demo of a website that could read Wikipedia articles aloud, I'm happy to report that they've channeled any frustration into building an incredible service that improves the lives of millions of web users every day. A quick snapshot of the four months since our Disrupt launch:
Singing The Blues: MySpace Music Loses Nearly Half Its Audience, And Its President
Feb 24, 10:09PM
Remember MySpace Music? It was supposed to put online music streaming on the the right track. But with all the layoffs, shrinking audience and turmoil at parent MySpace, MySpace Music is singing the blues. According to comScore, only 17 million people in the U.S. visited MySpace Music in January, 2011, which is down 46 percent from the previous year. Pandora is now bigger on the Web, with an estimated 20.3 million monthly U.S. visitors. Today, MySpace Music president Courtney Holt is stepping down. He joined two years ago from MTV. But with MySpace itself on the wane and Rupert Murdoch looking to unload it, MySpace Music can no longer hold its own.
WITN: Is It Racist To Say That Chinese Manufacturing Leads To Low Quality Goods — And Fraud? [TCTV]
Feb 24, 10:07PM
Earlier this week, CrunchGear's John Biggs sparked controversy (within TechCrunch ranks at least) with a post entitled "Alibaba And The Curse Of Chinese Manufacturing". In the post Biggs wrote (amongst other things) that... "Many decry the sad state of American manufacturing but these [Chinese] companies still sell billions in janky garbage that washes up here in huge containers and is sold throughout our 50 great states and, more important, the rest of the developed and developing world."Gosh.
Glam Media To Launch Third Content Vertical, Health And Wellness Channel Bliss.com
Feb 24, 8:59PM
Glam Media, one of the largest publishing and advertising networks on the Web, is revealing its third branded content channel today: health-focused Bliss. Bliss, which will be a content hub of health and wellness sites, joins male-focused vertical Brash and womens entertainment, style and fashion channel Glam.com. Glam's networks currently have a total reach of 90 million people a month in the U.S and 200 million monthly visitors globally. Glam says that traditional health and wellness sites (i.e. WebMD) have more narrowly focused on more medical and condition-related topics and are missing the opportunity to reach a wider audience with the prevention and wellness angle. Bliss' content will include information about diet and nutrition, empowerment, alternative healing, green living, exercise, fitness, parenting, pregnancy and more. 
Instagram Unveils Realtime API With Foodspotting, Fancy, Momento, Flipboard, About.me And Others
Feb 24, 8:56PM
It really is kind of amazing that Instagram has shot past two million users in just a few months with only an iPhone app. No Android app, no website, no real third-party support. But starting today, that changes as they're finally ready to unveil their API. And they already have some pretty nice implementations right off the bat to show what it can do. Co-founder Kevin Systrom says that it would have been easy enough for them to implement a simple API early on, but they didn't want to do that (that's why you may have heard about one developer getting unofficial access shut off). Instead, Instagram decided they wanted to make an API that was both massively scalable and provided a realtime feed of everything going on across the service. Today, they're unveiling this realtime API for four different elements of Instagram: user photos, tags, locations, and geographies.
Mark Cuban-backed 140Fire Lets You Create Real-time Overlay Ads For Your Video Content
Feb 24, 8:49PM
Launching today is 140Fire.com, a Y Combinator-backed platform that allows advertisers, publishers, and media buyers to create interactive ad content and polls to overlay on streaming or pre-recorded video. What does this mean? As you can see in the image above, 140Fire's real-time editor allows BMW (in this case) to create and serve questions based on what's happening in the video. Here, in the depths of March Madness, Brian Zoubek has just stepped to the line to shoot a few free throws, so the ad asks viewers "how many free throws will he make?" Like most video ads, the ads will appear as a small bar on the bottom of the screen, but unlike those of its ilk, they allow viewers to remain in the content, answering polls while continuing to watch the video. According to Founder Jason Wilk, this allows brands to collect data on what viewers are thinking in real-time and monetize those high-interest points in video content. 140Fire can then serve up post-roll ads based on viewers' responses to the polls. 
PayPal On Cutting Off Courage To Resist: "This Has Nothing To Do With WikiLeaks"
Feb 24, 8:20PM
Last time we checked in with PayPal, it, along with MasterCard, Visa and others had blocked its services with regards to donations to WikiLeaks foundation. Today it is being reported that PayPal has taken further action against another WikiLeaks-related fund, in freezing the account of the Courage To Resist foundation which, in conjunction with the Bradley Manning Support Network, gives donations to the Bradley Manning legal defense fund. In a phone call earlier today, PayPal representative Anuj Nayar told me that this action is not WikiLeaks related and that PayPal has only temporarily restricted the fund, "This has nothing to do with WikiLeaks."
CrunchBoard Jobs: TechCrunch Is Hiring
Feb 24, 8:01PM
Would you like to be a Product Lead for TechCrunch? How about a Sales Marketing Manager? Maybe an Executive Assistant? We have positions open and we are currently looking for qualified applicants. If you would like to work for TechCrunch, please find current job listings below:
What Do You Want To Know About The Xoom? Ask Me Tomorrow Live
Feb 24, 7:34PM
I have the Motorola Xoom here in my hot little hands and I put it through its paces over the past few days and I'd love to demonstrate and explore the device with your questions in mind. What I'm planning is a 12pm Eastern/9am Pacific LIVE STREAM for one hour TOMORROW Friday, February 24, answering the questions you have about the device and going through some of the screens. You'll also be able to ask me questions via chat and Twitter.
Social Fundraising Site Fundly Raises $2 Million of its Own
Feb 24, 7:11PM
Today, social fundraising platform Fundly announced that it had closed a $2 million seed funding round led by a group of Silicon Valley investors. Using AngelList, a marketplace that makes it easy for startups to connect with angels, Fundly assembled a laundry list of reputable investors, including Mitch Kapor and Stephen DeBerry of Kapor Capital, Trevor Kienzle of Correlation Ventures, George Zachary of Charles River Ventures, and Jeff Fluhr of AngelHub. Fundly, formerly known as BlueSwarm, adds to the $800,000 it raised back in July from a group of individual investors, including Harvard Business professor Clayton Christensen. You can read our coverage of the initiation of the first round (and watch TC's interview with CEO Dave Boyce) here.
Android Market's Web Store Gets Bookish
Feb 24, 6:59PM
Earlier this month Google launched the web version of Android Market, which lets you purchase applications from your web browser and have them beamed directly to your phone or tablet (it's very slick). Now, Google has some good news for you bibliophiles out there: The Xoom's Android Market application includes Google Books, and now the web version does too. You can find it right here. Buying a book on Android Market works just the same as buying an app — you click on the price (or the 'free' label), choose a method of payment, and your new book will show up the next time you fire up the Books application on your Android device. 
Can America Function More Like a Fiscally Responsible Company? It's up to Us, the Shareholders
Feb 24, 6:45PM
We expect perfection from companies in Silicon Valley. The general consensus is that Yahoo is one of the worst run tech companies in the world, never mind it's still profitable, cash-rich, and one of the largest media assets in the world. We get outraged and hit the BUBBLE! panic button when valuations of startups like Facebook, Zynga and Twitter get in the double digit billions, never mind their growth rates, user engagement and (in the case of Zynga an Facebook) actual revenues. So how can we be so apathetic when we see true abysmal fiscal neglect, especially when it's that of a pseudo-company in which we all essentially own shares? That pseudo-company is the United States government and in a thorough report issued today, Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker has taken all emotions, politics, spin and manipulation out of the issues, to present a steely-eyed view of just how hosed our financial situation is. Spoiler alert: It's not pretty. America is gripped by a new red menace and this time, it's not the commies-- it's a sea of red ink.If politicians reported to voters the way management reports to shareholders, no one would finish out their terms.
What Is Thunderbolt And Will It Change Your Life?
Feb 24, 6:12PM
Though you're probably hearing about it for the first time now, Intel's been working on a new interconnection technology for the last few years. "Light Peak", as it was called up until it was rebranded "Thunderbolt" today, promises a new world of screaming-fast data transfers. The claims are spectacular: 10 gigabit per second transfers (both upload and download!), dual protocol support, and power over the cable. Light Peak… excuse me, Thunderbolt, is truly the interconnect of the future. The technology launched today on Apple's latest MacBook Pros, but Apple is just one of a bunch of companies with plans to support Intel's technology. Thunderbolt devices will slowly trickle out of major industry players over the coming year. It's going to be an uphill battle for the standard — the USB horde won't go without a fight. If you're going to throw your support behind just one camp in this silly battle (first person to get a Thunderbolt tattoo wins!), you may want to give Thunderbolt a long look. It's good.
AOL To Restructure Media Group Around Huffington Post – Here's The Internal Email
Feb 24, 5:23PM
Earlier this morning AOL President Media David Eun resigned, leaving us wondering who we at TechCrunch work for now (I mean besides you, dear readers). Now we know. In an email to all staff except us (I love writing that), CEO Tim Armstrong outlines his plan for AOL's content business going forward. The bottom line is this: Arianna Huffington is leading editorial, and AOL exec Jon Brod will become COO of the group. This is largely the same message Armstrong sent when announcing the Huffington Post acquisition. Here's the email. There are other executive shifts happening as well. I really need to meet some of these people.
Room 77′s Hotel Database Wants To Make Sure You Book A Room With A View
Feb 24, 5:14PM
When researching hotels for a vacation or business trip, a visit to TripAdvisor to check out reviews of a resort are a must. Pictures of rooms on hotel websites often misrepresent the exact size or luxury of a room and betting on hotels can be a bit of a gamble. But TripAdvisor reviews encompass all aspects of a hotel, including food, grounds, views, service and more. Today, Room 77 is launching as a comprehensive search engine and review site focused exclusively on hotel rooms. The hotel room database and search engine has collected and indexed data on more than 425,000 hotel rooms in 2,500 properties and is also crowdsourcing reviews and ratings from travelers. For now, Room 77 focuses on three star hotels and above and features information on hotels in North America and the UK (but plans to expand to other markets in the future).
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