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Citrix' First Seed Investment: Search And Backup Cloud Data With Primadesk
Feb 28, 10:55AM
Citrix Systems recently established a Silicon Valley-based seed investment vehicle dubbed Startup Accelerator. Today, the fund is announcing its first investment (PDF) - Citrix has invested an undisclosed sum in Primadesk, which will be touting its wares later today at DEMO 2011. The company basically aims to help users search, manage and backup their personal cloud data from multiple devices and browsers, using a single interface. A beta version of the Primadesk technology will be demonstrated later today, but you can sign up for access at some point in March right here.
AppBoy Releases A Check-in SDK For iOS Apps
Feb 28, 10:28AM
With the number of iOS apps now well over 300,000, app discovery is becoming an increasing frustration for users. It's also become a major challenge for developers as the increasing number of apps is making it more and more difficult for them to attain exposure for their apps. Now, straight from the "What Took So Long for Something Like This to be Released" department, mobile developer community site AppBoy has released an iOS app check-in SDK. 
Abrams Media Network Launches "The Mary Sue," New Site For Nerd Girls
Feb 28, 9:00AM
Let's just face it, being a geek girl on the internet sucks. Even if you're relatively smart and a woman your lot in life is basically relegated to this unless you're Oprah. My point is that there's never really been a successful and lasting site targeted only to nerd girls (Village Voice Media's* Heartless Doll tried to no avail until it entered the deadpool last May). Dan Abrams and the folks behind Mediaite are trying to break this curse, with today's launch of The Mary Sue. 
And The Award For The Most Dead Entertainment Medium Goes To… The Web
Feb 28, 5:22AM
You Californians sure seem obsessed with this "Oscar" thing. As I write these words, every one of my friends with a 9x zip code is dressed to the nines, snarking their way through one of the forty three billion Academy Awards parties taking place across the state. I am not amongst them: partly because I am unforgivably late with this column, partly because I haven't seen any of the movies nominated for the major categories, and partly because watching Anne Hathaway and James Franco (pictured left) being funny is like watching a Chuck Lorre remake of Joanie Loves Chachi. But that's not to say I don't love the Oscars. In fact I adore them. As an unabashed old media snob, nothing pleases me more than an annual reminder that Hollywood still exists. That, for all the ways Internet piracy has chipped away at the bottom line, billions of dollars still churn annually through an area of roughly 24 square miles. And that - forget Zuckerberg and Williams and Pincus - there is still an army of bona fide celebrities earning a crust simply from being glamourous and wonderful and radiant. You wouldn't catch Natalie Portman dead in an Addidas hoodie and a pair of flip flops.
What 'The Social Network' Won (Three Awards, But Not Best Picture) #Oscars
Feb 28, 4:03AM
Despite losing Best Picture to The King's Speech, Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher's epic Facebook creation myth The Social Network did pick up three Oscars tonight, more than any film about nerds has ever garnered, unless you count A Beautiful Mind. The Social Network won Best Film Editing (Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter), Best Original Score (Trent Reznor) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Aaron Sorkin) at tonight's 83rd Academy Awards Ceremony. The film, which picked up four awards including Best Picture at the Golden Globes and was nominated for eight Oscars, was definitely the Twitter and tech crowd favorite but apparently not the Academy's. 
AT&T Taps Placecast For Location-Based Shopping Alerts
Feb 28, 3:51AM
AT&T is betting big on location-based shopping alerts through a partnership with Placecast. AT&T is debuting a branded ShopAlerts service, which will deliver special offers and discounts to consumers via their mobile phones when they are near a participating store or brand (initial brands include HP, KMart, and JetBlue). The program is currently available to AT&T customers in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco who have opted-in to receive Shop Alerts, but AT&T plans to roll the program out nationally by summertime and increase the number of participating brands. 
How Chris Sacca And J.P. Morgan Acquired 10% Of Twitter Via Huge Secret Secondary Fund
Feb 28, 3:04AM
Lots and lots of buzz today in all the major newspapers about how J.P. Morgan is trying to buy 10% or so of Twitter for $450 million. As far as I can tell, all of the stories are wrong. In particular, say my sources, Twitter isn't negotiating with anyone - J.P. Morgan or otherwise - about a new funding round. The last round with Kleiner Perkins seems to have more than satisfied their near term capital appetite. Also, J.P. Morgan isn't currently trying to buy Twitter shares through the secondary market, either, say my sources. That's because they already indirectly own 10% of Twitter. Here's what's really going on, as far as I can tell from sources: 
Comprehend Systems Wants To Make Data Analysis Less Of A Pain
Feb 28, 12:44AM
Founded by Rich Morrison and Jud Gardner, Y-Combinator backed Comprehend Systems is launching the first iteration of its comprehensible data analysis platform today, Comprehend Clinical. Comprehend Clinical's browser friendly interface allows its clients to analyze the results of clinical drug trials across multiple data sources, combining that stored in diverse data structures and databases. In the same space as Sas Institute and Pitco, Comprehend Clinical attempts to empower people bringing drugs to market to "ask as the questions they need to ask." When you're dealing with lengthly drug studies you need to know whether the drug is safe and effective, and whether people are dying as a soon as possible. "A clinical study lasts four years, who uses software that's seven years old. By default you're going to have to interface a lot of stuff," says founder Rich Morrison.
Infographics (Attempt To) Predict The Oscars
Feb 27, 11:54PM
The folks over at online analysis service Meltwater, who Wired's Epicenter hilariously called out for not doing so hot at predicting the "The Grammys," have once again tried to use "chatter in social media" or whatever the hell that means to predict who will win the 83rd Annual Academy Awards tonight. Their call? The King's Speech, followed by Inception for Best Picture, James Franco followed by Colin Firth for Best Actor and Natalie Portman by a landslide for Best Actress, trailed by Nicole Kidman. Meanwhile over at Mashable we've got another infographic bet on Inception winning for Best Picture, followed by The Social Network, James Franco as Best Actor, followed by Colin Firth, Natalie Portman (our only consensus) as leading actress followed by Nicole Kidman, Christian Bale as Supporting Actor, followed by Geoffry Rush, Helena Bonham Carter as Supporting Actress and David Fincher as Best Director for The Social Network, followed by Tom Hooper from The King's Speech. 
In Two Years, Most Of You Will Be Reading TechCrunch From An Apple Device
Feb 27, 10:56PM
In February of 2007, 83.24 percent of users visiting TechCrunch did so from a Windows machine. One year later, in February 2008, the stranglehold remained firm at 80.44 percent. In February 2009, the number was at 74.04 percent. Last year, it was 61.59 percent. And this year? The number of people visiting our site from Windows machines dipped to 53.84 percent. The writing is on the wall. Look at those numbers again for a second. In four years, Windows share among TechCrunch readers has fallen 30 percentage points. That's incredible.
Sorry Entrepreneurs: You're Probably the Rule, Not the Exception
Feb 27, 9:22PM
I was in the air an average of 30 hours a month for the last two years, so I watched a lot of movies -- typically semi-delirious on Ambien-- that I wouldn't ordinarily. One of those was the star-studded rom-com "He's Just Not That Into You." Note: You won't see this movie at the Oscars tonight, or any night, and that's not because it was cruelly overlooked. But as a plane movie, it sufficed. I'm assuming most TechCrunch readers are far to Y-chromosomey to have seen it or even admit they've seen it, so I'll fill you in on the thrust of the film. Like most things in life, the simplest explanation is usually the right one: If a guy doesn't call, he didn't lose your number, he isn't away on business in Yemin, he wasn't kidnapped and held at gunpoint-- he just didn't want to call you. All these fairy-tale stories that lonely girls thrive on about how the jerky guy one day woke up and realized how great you are may have happened to somebody, sometime, but that person was the exception, not the rule. The somewhat cold message of the film is that you shouldn't live your life assuming you are the exception. (Of course as rom-coms go, the main character does end up being the exception, undercutting the wisdom of the point. But for the purposes of real life, let's pretend she didn't and moved on to someone else.)
Believe it or not, this movie came up in conversation at a dinner party in Silicon Valley the other night.
Custora Helps Online Businesses Improve Customer Retention
Feb 27, 9:00PM
For any retailer that is selling goods online, it is incredibly important to be able to retain customers and identify when purchasers are about to leave a site. While many online retailers and companies develop these analytics in house, there is a need for a simple application that smaller shops can use to determine behavior of visitors. Today, Y Combinator-backed Custora is launching a SaaS that tells online retailers and web apps which of their customers are most valuable, and suggests actions to keep them. The startup is best described by its tagline: "Google brings you customers. We keep them around." For retailers, the software can analyze order logs and distinguish between customers that simply haven't ordered anything for a while, and customers who have left the site. The application also manages and optimizes email campaigns to keep customers engaged.
What is Your Real Name?
Feb 27, 6:15PM
What is your real name? That's my new favorite comment on TechCrunch, where many of its readers hide behind phony names and email addresses. Apparently it's not considered appropriate to challenge such geniuses about their real identity. Could be similar to talking about "open" and "Web" as though they have magical properties of goodness and well-being. Or not. Nasty comments and identity baiting are in and of themselves minor irritations, best left to swift deletes or just plain not caring. Facebook and even Twitter mostly get around this problem by requiring a registration to play along, but the earlier generation of blog posts and even RSS encourage anonymity in reading mode. No reason why we should be forced to identify ourselves in order to consume a page; the problem comes if we want to respond on a level playing field in comments. But take "what is your real name?" and apply it to other things besides blog posts. Say you're in a meeting and the guy to your right has been verbose but unintelligible for over an hour. You ask: "What is your real name?" This will be viewed as a hostile interruption if taken literally, so it's important to smile broadly and giggle in an "I'm laughing with you, not at you" posture. If the question is treated as a non sequitur, you need to drop the smile and look earnest with a hint of stupidity. After all, adopting comment dynamics to the real world is a complicated strategy.
SwipeGood Gives Its Start Fund Cash To Charity
Feb 27, 6:00PM
Y Combinator-incubated SwipeGood, a startup that allows you to donate to charity each time you buy, is using its Start Fund money to benefit others. In case you didn't catch this bit of news, DST's Yuri Milner and SV Angel have teamed up to launch the Start Fund, which gives all Y Combinator startups a $150,000 investment in the form of a convertible note with no cap and no discount. Launched in November, SwipeGood is giving the $150,000 to charity. Here's how SwipeGood works. Once you enroll your credit/debit card with SwipeGood, every purchase you make gets rounded up to the nearest dollar. So for a $50.50 purchase of groceries, $0.50 will be given to charity. At the end of the month, SwipeGood will send your total donation amount to the charity or cause of your choice. To participate in SwipeGood, consumers have to enroll their credit card and the service will track your purchases, similar to the way Blippy works.
The Haves and Have-Nots: The True Story of a Reader Suddenly De-Invited from TED
Feb 27, 5:36PM
I was determined never to write another negative post about TED. Really. I feel like my views on the conference's smug-tendencies have been well-stated. And, as I said in this article in Fast Company, I think the TED Fellows program and the TEDx program have gone a long way towards fulfilling the stated mission of TED, doing actual outreach into places the conference long professed to care about. Beyond that, I'm just hearing of a lot of Valley people who aren't going anymore after the move to Long Beach, making the conference less of an annual to-do for the tech community. But then I got this email below, and all the reasons I wrote the original BusinessWeek column came flooding back. If TED would just own up to being about making the wealthy, famous and powerful feel comfortable--like other clubby, high level affairs like Sun Valley or the World Economic Forum-- I wouldn't have an issue with it. Business conferences have good reasons to be elitist; deals are getting done and high-level conversations need to be private sometimes. But when credentials are revoked at the last minute based purely on the whim of a more important member of the TED community, the inner workings are just too much like a country club for an organization whose stellar content is all about pluralism and uplift. It's the Sarah Silverman incident all over again. Oh you made one of the more important people feel uncomfortable? Then you're out of here. 
Humans Are The Routers
Feb 27, 3:30PM
On January 7, 2010 I was ushered into a small private dinner with Secretary Hillary Clinton at the State Department along with the inventor of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google and a few others. We were there to talk about technology and 21st Century Diplomacy. As we mingled I noticed next to me the small table that Thomas Jefferson wrote the first drafts of the Declaration of Independence. I was inspired by the history around us as we discussed the unfolding history before us. I was sitting in front of Secretary Clinton and when she asked me a question I said, "Secretary Clinton, the last bastion of dictatorship is the router." That night seeded some of the ideas that were core to Secretary Clinton's important Internet Freedoms Speech on January 21, 2010. Fast forward almost exactly one year later to January 25, 2011—a day that shall live in history in the company of dates like July 4, 1776. Egypt's decision to block the entire Internet and mobile telecommunications network was one of the first salvos in a war of electronic munitions. In this new frontier humans are the routers and armed with new technologies they can never be blocked or silenced again. I was staying up for days sharing and tweeting information as they happened. I had two close personal friends of mine in Egypt who were passing me information when they could. The day Egypt blocked the internet and mobile networks my mind went back to what I had said to Secretary Clinton. The only line of defense against government filtering and blocking their citizens from freely communicating and coordinating via communication networks was to create a new line of communications technologies that governments would find hard to block: Ad hoc wireless mesh networks. I called the idea OpenMesh and tweeted it. Within hours through crowdsourced volunteer efforts the OpenMesh Project was alive complete with domain name, website and forum.
Burning Chrome
Feb 27, 3:23PM
"A good player goes where the puck is. A great player goes where the puck is going to be"—The Great One Google made a few interesting announcements this week. First, Google Docs Viewer support for a sheaf of new document types, including Excel, Powerpoint, Photoshop and PostScript. Second, Chrome's new ability to run background apps that run seamlessly and invisibly behind the browser. Third, they released Google Cloud Connect, which lets Windows users sync Office documents to Google Docs. They also announced the Android 3.0 SDK - but despite the ongoing tablet hysteria, in the long run, the first three are more important. Little by little, iteration by iteration, the Chrome browser is quietly morphing into a full-fledged multitasking operating system in its own right. Oh, sure, technically it's actually running on another OS, but you increasingly never need to launch anything else. View and edit documents in Google Docs, watch and listen to HTML5 video and audio, communicate via Gmail and its Google Voice plugin, use Google Docs as a file system - and the line between "Chrome OS" and "Chrome on any other OS" suddenly grows very fine.
Memes Could Hit The Silver Screen In "The Chronicles of Rick Roll"
Feb 27, 4:38AM
Move over, Chronicles of Narnia, there's a new dreamworld of magic in town. That's right. Andrew Fischer, CEO of Colorado-based marketing company NURV, has recruited a stellar cast of Meme-lebrities, including Antoine Dodson of Hide Yo Wife, Hide Yo Kids fame, Double Rainbow videographer Paul Vasquez, Brian Collins (the "Boom goes the dynamite" kid), and "Numa Numa" vocalist Gary Brolsma, for a feature-length film entitled "The Chronicles of Rick Roll". The title, as you probably know, is derived from the meme to rule them all: the music video for Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up", which became the source of a viral prank, called "Rick Rolling". Thanks to Rick Rolling, never again will you be able to say to your friend, "hey, you should check out this amazing video of Steve Jobs singing karaoke," without being suspected of collusion with Rick Astley.
The Separation of Church And Zynga: Wedding Chapels Stripped From CityVille
Feb 27, 12:40AM
Zynga made a small but fascinating change to its young-yet-ubiquitous game CityVille over the weekend. Players could previously buy "Wedding Chapels," which looked like small country churches but without a cross or other religious symbols, to add to their city. But the virtual item has been removed and replaced with the more secular and nondescript "Wedding Hall." With two gold ring things that somehow makes me think only of McDonalds. Err, ok. I asked Zynga if this was in response to complaints, or otherwise why they did this. No comment from them so far. They could, of course, simply add other icons for other religions, and let people choose. But perhaps even that would be too insensitive. Players who had previously purchased the Wedding Chapel still have it, but it's also been renamed to "Wedding Hall." Presumably friends visiting the city might get offended.
What's The Real Deal With AngelList?
Feb 26, 11:09PM
Editor's Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster), a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable There's lots of discussion out there about a new and much-loved service called AngelList that connects entrepreneurs to angel investors. I was reluctant to write about AngelList because the debate on pros / cons is pretty nuanced. But with some heat flying I felt it worthwhile to give anybody on the sidelines a better understanding of the issues.
Apple's iPad Still Has No Competition
Feb 26, 8:00PM
Editor's Note: Jim Dalrymple has been writing about Apple for more than 15 years. You can follow him on Twitter @jdalrymple and on his Web site at The Loop. It's been almost a year since Apple released the iPad and we're less than a week away from the unveiling of the iPad 2, and still there's no competition. There are a few very good reasons for Apple's success and why its competitors are finding it difficult to gain any traction against the king of digital devices. There's the infrastructure, the combination of hardware and software, and the fact that its competitors are content to settle for second best. 
Fly Or Die (Tablet Edition): The Motorola Xoom And The Kno
Feb 26, 6:00PM
In this week's episode of Fly or Die, CrunchGear editor John Biggs and I do a special tablet edition where we take on the new Motorola Xoom and the Kno. (Watch the video above). The Xoom is the first tablet to come out with the Android Honeycomb operating system, which is optimized for tablets. So you can basically forget about all of those other Android tablets that came out in January at CES. Those run the Android OS built for phones. What you want is Honeycomb, and the Xoom is your first chance to get it. Still, with the iPad 2 set to be announced next week, you might want to wait to see if there is anything the Xoom will still have over the next-gen iPad. Check out John's in-depth review and the video below, which shows its speed and what it looks like in action.
Gillmor Gang 2.26.11 (TCTV)
Feb 26, 5:30PM
Every Gillmor Gang begins with a mysterious blend of serendipity and confusion. This episode is no exception, as Robert Scoble attempts to discuss the Motorola VaVaVoom or somesuch. The only problem with that (or any other Android tablet) is that Gillmor himself could care less about anything other than waiting for next Wednesday's rollout of the iPad II. John Taschek is an Android fanboy, and Kevin Marks used to work for Google and has not yet shaken the mindset off. I am trying to think of things to keep me occupied until Wednesday.
Let's Calm Down On The Google-ITA Deal
Feb 26, 4:30PM
This guest post is written by Daniel A. Crane, who is Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. He is an expert in antitrust law. Google's proposed acquisition of ITA Software, which provides a management system for airfare pricing and shopping services, has become ground zero for the burgeoning coalition of interests intent on stopping Google's perceived dominance in Internet search. The Justice Department is reviewing the deal and is reportedly preparing to block it if Google does not agree to substantial concessions. Meanwhile, an anti-Google coalition has made stopping the acquisition its Maginot line. The "FairSearch" coalition, consisting of a host of anti-Google forces including Microsoft, TripAdvisor, Expedia, Kayak, and Hotwire, presents the ITA deal as Exhibit A on its website, warning that the deal will bring "consumers higher prices and less choice in travel." These claims are overblown. Google's competitors naturally fear Google's emergence as a formidable rival in travel search, but that is hardly a reason to block the transaction. Indeed, it's a reason to approve the deal. The most likely scenario is that Google's acquisition of ITA would allow Google a quick and efficient entry point into travel search that would expand consumer options and increase rather than decrease competition.
My Message To Google: Stop Cheating
Feb 26, 4:03PM
In mid February, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt expressed pride in Google employee Wael Ghonim's brave struggle against the autocratic Mubarak regime to establish political transparency in Egypt. "We are very, very proud of what Wael and that group was able to do in Egypt," Schmidt said in Barcelona. But what Schmidt needs to do now is apply Ghonim's views about political transparency to Google's own search business. With its 70% control of the global online search market, Google's power to make and break online businesses is unrivalled. So it's not surprising that website owners want more transparency over the reasons why the often autocratic Google sometimes impose penalties on their businesses. But a report issued last week by the newsnavigator OneNewsPage found a distinct lack of transparency in the search business with 88% of respondents saying that paid search advertising costs lacked transparency, while 24% said that they had experienced large, unexplained falls in site traffic as a consequence of changes in their search engine status. 
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