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NSFW: Colo(u)r Me Done – I'm Going To Vegas, For Starters
Mar 27, 5:52AM
"Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard to Las Vegas..." - Hunter S. Thompson
31,000 feet on Delta flight 133 from New York to San Francisco, sandwiched between a rotund bald man and a skinny French kid in a checked shirt. I feel like the cheesy filling in an unsettlingly turbulent quiche. Still, sub-prime conditions or no, I have a column to write: I pop open my laptop and fire up a clean browser window. As a technology columnist, my craft can be distilled as follows: identify the week's hot-button topic, Google what other commentators are saying about it, pick a side, argue the opposite, get paid, don't read the comments. Piece of cake, right? And this week, the first two of those steps has been made particularly easy. For the past few days, my fellow tech writers have been working themselves into a bubbling froth about the Valley's latest app du jour: Color.
iOS 5 Likely Pushed To The Fall After A Cloud Unveiling At WWDC
Mar 27, 1:59AM
Many people (including myself) were a bit disappointed that Apple didn't devote any time during the iPad 2 unveiling to talking about iOS 5, the next major revamp of the software. But there may be a very good reason for that: it's not coming anytime soon. In fact, the plan right now is to wait to launch iOS 5 until the fall, we've heard from two solid sources. If our sources are right, this would break the pattern of Apple unveiling the latest iOS iteration in the early spring, leading up to a summer launch alongside new iPhone hardware. The spring timetable usually reserved for an iOS roadmap event is why some were hoping Apple may just rope the details into the iPad 2 event. When that didn't happen, rumors quickly spread that there may be another event in April to talk iOS 5 (and MobileMe). But it's looking like that will not be the case this year. 
Gillmor Gang 3.26.11 (TCTV)
Mar 27, 1:01AM
This week's Gillmor Gang started off with a bunch of no-shows from Mike Arrington and Robert Scoble. Don't know what happened to Mike, but @scobleizer was sandbagged by a rehearsal request for Ted X, whatever that is. So we hunkered down with Danny Sullivan, Kevin Marks, and John Taschek for a rousing trouncing of the vanishing television windowing system, as performed by NetFlix, Showtime, and various Mad Men. Showtime is mad because Netflix is closing in on its 20 million subscribers. Mad Men are mad because AMC can't close a deal for a fifth season without promising a sixth. Android is mad because it can't get no respect from anyone but @kevinmarks, and I'm mad about the iPad 2. As in nuts. Ce n'est pas un app. 
Google Doing Some Profile Unification Leading Up To… Well, Something.
Mar 27, 12:44AM
Google is still hard at work on their social strategy. You know it, I know it, we all know it. What it will actually be, remains to be seen. But there are clues related to it that have started to appear. The first was the redesign of the toolbar. While Google claimed it doesn't directly point to the social strategy (even though it looks exactly like the verified +1 leaks we've seen), it is a first step. The second was the revamping of profile pages. Also nothing particularly social about it, but again, related to the overall strategy. And now we're seeing something else: a unification of profiles across Google properties. And a big push for all of them to be public.
"Open"
Mar 26, 11:15PM
Open. Open. Open. Open. Open. Open. Open. Closed. I've never liked Google's use of the word "open" to describe the Android operating system. On one hand, the "openness" has led to situations where carriers can more easily screw consumers. On the other hand, their system is really only "open" when it's convenient to be. Wanna include Google's services on your Android device? Sure, sign this partnership agreement. Wanna check in code for Android? Do you work at Google? No. Well then you'll have to wait. Open. But still, every chance they get, we hear from Google how open Android is, as if it's the perfect answer to every question. How are you going to compete with Apple? Open. How are you going to keep the carriers in check? Open. How are you going to make money from Android? Open. Why is the Android experience sub-par? Open.
Friends Don't Let Friends Get Into Finance
Mar 26, 4:05PM
After having been a tech executive for many years, I needed to take a break, and I wanted to give back to society. Duke University engineering dean Kristina Johnson gave me a great spiel about how the school's Masters of Engineering Management program churns out great engineers, and how engineers solve the world's problems. She said that I could make a big impact by teaching engineering students about the real world and encouraging them to become entrepreneurs. I felt so excited that I joined the university without even asking for a proper salary. That was in 2005. I was shocked—and upset—when the majority of my students became investment bankers or management consultants after they graduated. Hardly any became engineers. Why would they, when they had huge student loans, and Goldman Sachs was offering them twice as much as engineering companies did? So when the investment banks tanked in 2008, I cheered because engineering had become sexy again for engineering grads (read my BusinessWeek column). But thanks to the hundred-billion-dollar taxpayer bailouts, investment banks recovered and went back to their old, greedy ways. And they began offering even more money to engineering grads (and themselves).
Five Things Facebook Should Fix Immediately
Mar 26, 3:27PM
Let me start with two questions. Why is it that such a successful company as Facebook feels like it needs to change and reinvent its interface constantly? And why are we so complacent with these changes that, quite literally, disrupt our online social lives? We have seen how social media is changing the world around us, yet we don't have a say in its progress. Undeniably, Facebook is already part of all of our lives, even for non-users. Below, I highlight 5 critical problems that Facebook needs to fix immediately:
Google's Robotic Recipe Search Favors SEO Over Good Food
Mar 26, 1:30PM
Editor's note: Guest writer Amanda Hesser is a cookbook author, co-founder of cooking community site Food52, and a food columnist for the New York Times. The entity with the greatest influence on what Americans cook is not Costco or Trader Joe's. It's not the Food Network or The New York Times. It's Google. Every month about a billion of its searches are for recipes. The dishes that its search engine turns up, particularly those on the first page of results, have a huge impact on what Americans cook. Which is why, with a recent change in its recipe search, Google has, in effect, taken sides in the food war. Unfortunately, it's taken the wrong one. In late February, when Google announced that it was adding a new kind of search, specifically for recipes, it seemed like good news for a site like ours -– at last Google was shining its searchlight on content we deeply care about. But then came the bad news: once you get your new recipe results, you can refine the results in just 3 ways: by ingredient, by cooking time and by calories. While Google was just trying to improve its algorithm, thereby making the path to recipes easier and more efficient, it inadvertently stepped into the middle of the battle between the quick-and-easy faction and the cooking-matters group.
Review: The Nintendo 3DS, The Next Step In Portable Gaming Evolution
Mar 26, 1:27PM
Nintendo has long defined the rules of childhood. In Nintendo's world, logic and whimsy are intermixed and there is always a bigger boss and another castle. We learned from Nintendo that you can always turn your enemy's weapons against them and that evolution is a fact. We learned that the best stories are played out in your head and even when you don't have a lot of friends you at least always have Mario. Nintendo also defined video gameplay. Their NES console, while seemingly underpowered, sat under millions of Christmas trees and at millions of birthday party tables for almost a decade. Their audience grew up, new members joined, and the SNES, Nintendo 64, GameCube, and Wii pushed the envelope ever so slightly with each generation. The Game Boy grew up too, morphing into the GBA, the DS, and now something else entirely. The Nintendo 3DS isn't hard to love. It's a cute little handheld aimed at an interesting demographic. Because children under 7 shouldn't use the 3D feature, it seems Nintendo has made this for tweens and, more important, early adopters in the 18-36 market.
RIM Buys Developer Of HTML5 Mobile App Testing Platform TinyHippos
Mar 26, 1:25PM
Research In Motion has made another acquisition-mobile development company TinyHippos. In an announcement on both RIM's development blog and TinyHippos blog, the BlackBerry manufacturer said that it bought the Waterloo-based development team (RIM is also based in Waterloo) for their extensive experience in web and mobile widget/web development. Terms of the deal are not disclosed. TinyHippos develops Ripple, a multi-platform mobile environment emulator that runs in a web browser and is custom-tailored to HTML5 mobile application testing (we've embedded a demo video below). It essentially allows developers to "look under the hood" of mobile applications to see how the apps are performing in a variety of mobile environments.
First Look: With Disco, Google Also Joins The Group Messaging Dance (Care Of Slide)
Mar 26, 4:08AM
As we just broke the news on, Google has a secret group messaging project that was built from within their confines: Disco. Slide, which Google bought last year, are the ones responsible for the app. And since word is that they're allowed to run autonomously within the company as their own startup of sorts, the app probably doesn't have anything to do with Google's broader social strategy. Still, it's a group messaging app that Google owns. So how is it? Well, it's very barebones right now. We've been playing around the app every since we stumbled upon it, and it's pretty safe to say at this point that it's not yet a GroupMe/Fast Society/Kik/Beluga/textPlus-killer. But it is also still in beta, and the iPhone app design implies that it will expand beyond its current shell which is little more than a way to organize group text messages.
Meet 'Disco', The Group Texting App Built Secretly Inside Google
Mar 26, 3:39AM
It seems like Google has made a foray into the group messaging space today with Disco, a new iPhone app and website. Well, they sort of have. The service utilizes the Disco.com domain that Google bought at Domainfest last year for $255K. The Disco.com site went up today and the beta app hit the App Store yesterday, but no one noticed it — until now. And here's the thing: it was made by Slide.
Dwolla's FiSync Lets You Instantly Access Cash, Eliminates ACH Wait Times For Banks
Mar 26, 2:21AM
Innovative web and mobile payments platform Dwolla is announcing today its FiSync integration for financial institutions, a technology which lets users of participating banks integrate with with the Dwolla platform. FiSync will let members of partner financial institutions to send and receive money via phone, web, Twitter and Facebook as well as at real life stores instantly. Because of a technology partnership with The Members Group, a full Dwolla FiSync core integration will eliminate the 2-3 day wait times associated with Automated Clearing House transactions and will allow users to directly send and receive funds from their bank accounts, with out the need for a pre-loaded Dwolla account. 
OS X Lion Already Nearing "Golden Master" — Release Around WWDC?
Mar 26, 1:30AM
It has been one month since Apple unveiled a developer preview of their latest operating system, OS X Lion. And while the initial deployment was a bit rocky, Apple appears to have worked through their initial Mac App Store distribution issues. And now another update looms — and it's potentially a big one. Specifically, Apple is gearing up to deploy an OS X Lion update to developers that they may be classifying as the "GM1" release, we've heard. "GM" or "Golden Master" is a title reserved for software that is complete. But from what we've heard, this is only the initial Golden Master candidate. In other words, don't get too excited just yet.
Color's Totally Public Photo Swapping Service Has A Public Office To Match
Mar 25, 11:34PM
Stroll through downtown Palo Alto right now, and there's a chance you'll pass by one of the most buzzed-about startups in the Valley: Color, the new photo-swapping service that raised $41 million pre-launch and has been met with waves of hype and backlash. Color's office is pretty nondescript from the outside — that is, until you notice the handwritten note that's hanging on the door. Color CEO Bill Nguyen, who sold Lala to Apple in 2009 before starting Color, has written a letter to passersby inviting them to come inside and check out the office — where they'll actually be able to submit ideas for the product. Here's the full text: "What is Color? We are an open social network for your iPhone and Android.
The Color Of Envy And Rooting Against Goliath
Mar 25, 9:27PM
We're now two days into to the life of Color, and it's still the tech story that everyone in the blogosphere wants to talk about. Yesterday, I detailed why so much of that talk is directly related to the massive funding they were able to secure, rather than the product itself. And I wondered why so many people seemed to be rooting for it to fail spectacularly rather than succeed? The answer, it seems, may be quite simple. There were some great discussions in the comment section (can you believe I'm saying that?) of yesterday's post and a number of people reached out to weigh in as well. Of those, the most interesting perspectives were from entrepreneurs. A common refrain among them points to a simple reason for the Color backlash beyond the larger "bubble" talk: no one wants to root for Goliath.
Internet's Influence On Language Reinforced By OED Changes, Google In Cherokee
Mar 25, 9:02PM
"Technology has been one of the biggest drivers of new vocabulary for centuries" -- Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large for the O.E.D.The Internet's importance as a preserver and driver of language use has been reinforced this week with two key symbolic developments. The first is the news that the Internet-isms OMG, LOL and the usage of "heart" as a verb have made the Oxford English dictionary, throwing purists into a tizzy, because basically people generally hate change (it took about fifteen years for people to finally accept that the doubled-up adjectival noun "web site" would inevitably become the all inclusive noun "website." And it took the AP Stylebook about twenty to eventually join the two).
Gary Vaynerchuk, Thank You For Ignoring My Calls
Mar 25, 8:41PM
Gary Vaynerchuk is a busy guy. I don't expect him to pick up the phone every time I call. After all, he's on a book tour or something, and busy tweeting, and drinking wine. But then I saw the picture above. Yup, that's Gary V on his cell phone in front of a poster advertising his new book, The Thank You Economy. The poster lists a phone number, (646) 401-0368, and asks prospective readers to:
Call now and the author Gary Vaynerchuk will answer this or any other question about The Thank You Economy.* *Unless he's in a plane or meeting
Groupon's "Real" U.S. Revenue Numbers For February
Mar 25, 5:52PM
Two days ago, I published the chart below with monthly estimates of Groupon's U.S. revenues. The chart shows a startling 30 percent falloff in February from the month before. As I noted in the post:
Again, these are just estimates based on the equivalent of scraping Groupon's site, and thus could be missing something.Well, at least for February, it looks like those numbers are way off. The post obviously caused some ripple effects to the extent that Groupon had to start addressing the issue with potential hires. As a result, it knocked loose the real revenue numbers for February and January. Groupon wouldn't comment on the revenue numbers when I asked them about it, but according to a source, Groupon is now privately countering the numbers in my post: instead of $62 million in U.S. revenues, the company did $103 million in February. And that is up from $92 million in January (compared to the $89 million in the original data).
NYT Updates Its iPhone App With Push Alerts For Breaking News, New Subscription Plan
Mar 25, 5:43PM
The New York Times, struggling to find its place digitally, has just released an iPhone update today, three days before its paywall plan is put into action. Well what's new? In addition to an interface touch up and the option to swipe between stories, the app now has Recently Viewed items at the top of it's Sections section, followed in order by Photos and Video, which were not at the top before. The update purportedly will add more videos and slideshows to the app, so the re-prioritization of these options makes sense (and also cents, as these two content types have proven to be the most addicting for readers). The NYT Blogs like Dealbook and Media Decoder have (finally) been relegated to their own section, at the bottom of the app.
A Look At The Uptime Of 50 Popular APIs
Mar 25, 5:35PM
APIs are like websites: they are available most of the time, but unfortunately not all the time. Website and application performance monitoring startup WatchMouse monitored the uptime of 50 of the most popular APIs (as ranked by ProgrammableWeb) for a month to see which are the most reliable - and which ones are rather flaky. WatchMouse, which also publishes API statuses in real time at API-Status.com, found that ten of them performed without a single hitch between February 16th to March 17th, including goo.gl, Quora, eBay, Google Maps and Basecamp.
LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman Personally Thanks First Million Members For Being Early Adopters
Mar 25, 5:30PM
As you may have heard, professional social network LinkedIn passed 100 million members this past week. Amid an upcoming IPO, this was a pretty significant milestone for the social network. And today, LinkedIn co-founder and chairman Reid Hoffman has sent the first million members an email, personally thanking them for joining the network in its early days. TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld received a note (he is member #261,186), which we've embedded in the post. The note reads: I want to personally thank you because you were one of LinkedIn's first million members (member number [ ] in fact!*). In any technology adoption lifecycle, there are the early adopters, those who help lead the way. That was you.
TechCrunch Giveaway: Xbox Kinect Package #TechCrunch
Mar 25, 5:27PM
For today's giveaway, we are giving a Xbox Kinect package away to one lucky reader. This package comes with the Xbox 360, a Kinect, and a game. Microsoft broke records by selling 8 million Kinects in 60 days and the Kinect has become the world's fastest growing game console. Want it? Just follow these steps to enter.
Facebook Gives Seedcamp Startups Similar VIP Access As Y Combinator's
Mar 25, 4:33PM
Last year Facebook announced that it will be working to help Y Combinator companies create "transformative social experiences", giving them preferential treatment and access to company resources. By no means a guarantee for success, but still a big deal. Today Facebook is announcing a partnership with European startup accelerator and fund Seedcamp. Seedcamp startups will receive product, technical, and design support as well as early access to beta products and programs on the Facebook Platform.
Pulse Updates iPhone And Android Apps With Social Feeds, Improved Sharing, More Sources
Mar 25, 3:44PM
Pulse, an innovative news reading app for mobile devices, has updated its iPhone and Android apps with a number of new features including new content sources and improved sharing with social feeds and news discovery features. Pulse, which is developed by Alphonso Labs, launched last year via an iPad app as a more seamless (and visually appealing) way to read your RSS feeds. But recently, Pulse ditched RSS in favor of hooking up with APIs to access content. Pulse's home screen renders stories from your feeds on a dynamic mosaic interface and via a touch interface, allows you to swipe up and down to see headlines from various sources, and right and left to browse stories from a particular source.
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