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Amid Privacy Concerns, Apple Has Started Rejecting Apps That Access UDIDs
Mar 25, 3:24AM
Amid extra scrutiny from Congress around privacy issues, Apple has started rejecting apps that access UDIDs, or identification numbers that are unique to every iPhone and iPad, this week. Apple had already given developers a heads-up about the change more than six months ago when it said in some iOS documentation that it was going to deprecate UDIDs. But it looks like Apple is moving ahead of schedule with pressure from lawmakers and the media. It can take more than a year to deprecate features because developers need time to adjust and change their apps. A few weeks ago, some of the bigger mobile-social developers told me that Apple had reached out and warned them to move away from UDIDs. But this is the first time they've issued outright rejections. "Everyone's scrambling to get something into place," said Victor Rubba, chief executive of Fluik, a Canadian developer that makes games like Office Jerk and Plumber Crack. "We're trying to be proactive and we've already moved to an alternative scheme."Redpoint eVentures Avoids The "Helicopter VC" Approach In Brazil, Announces New Investment
Mar 25, 2:00AM
Earlier this month, Redpoint Ventures and BV Capital's eVentures announced the formation of a new, joint firm in Brazil — called, somewhat predictably, Redpoint eVentures. Managing director Yann de Vries and founding partner Anderson Thees were in the Bay Area this week, so I had a quick talk with them about their plans. Brazil's startup ecosystem is taking off, but until now, Thees said VC firms have fallen into two camps. On the one hand, you have small, local firms, and on the other hand, you have "helicopter VCs" who have offices in Silicon Valley or elsewhere, and make their investments from afar. Redpoint eVentures, on the other hand, has the resources of an international firm, but Thees is also "Brazilian born and raised," and both he and de Devries are based out of Sao Paolo.Jobs' Rejection Of TV Designs "Isn't A Huge Deal" Says Former Apple Engineer
Mar 25, 1:03AM
It's a sin I know almost too well as a blogger. It's slow going for news on a Friday night and the pageview gods send you a reprieve in the form of a tweet. A former Apple engineer is berating the company's design ethic in the post-Jobs era in less than 140 characters? Score! Suddenly one story becomes another story then another story then another story then another story. Until it's a crisis! ZOMG! Apple is over! The company is finished! Interested in the actual story, I talked with former Apple TV engineer Mike Margolis about the tweet that launched a thousand blog posts.You Say "SoLoMo," I Say, "I Hate My Life"
Mar 25, 12:30AM
Working in tech does weird things to your vocabulary. Five years ago, if you'd told me that I'd become someone who talks about whether they have the "bandwidth" to get something done or promising to "ping" you later, I would have laughed in your face. Yet here I am, finding the bandwidth to ping people — like it or not, you adopt the language of the people around you. Still, you've got to draw the line somewhere. And for me, the phrase SoLoMo (short for social-local-mobile, if you're lucky enough to have never heard it) crosses that line and outrages all decency and common sense. When it first popped up, I assumed it was the latest feeble attempt to make "Socio Loco" take off and would die in a few weeks. But no, it seems to be catching on, and it's even crept into a couple of TechCrunch headlines."Screenshots Of Despair" Reveals The New Human Condition
Mar 24, 11:52PM
More and more of us are spending more and more of our time staring at screens; And it's amazing how emotional we've started to get about pixels. I'm pretty sure the last thing I see before I die will be one of those blasted spinning rainbow cursor balls. And I'm not alone (good call on the Morrissey, guys). The latest paean to the increasing power of online graphics, text and symbols is the fascinating Tumblr "Screenshots of Despair," a site which catalogues and re-contextualizes the sometime inadvertently depressing images we see online, along the lines of "No one likes this" or "Are you still there?"Instagram Unveils A Sign-Up Page For Android Users, Still No Launch Date
Mar 24, 10:55PM
Instagram has been iPhone-only for so long, and its executives have been so coy about their plans for other platforms, that it can be hard to believe the company will ever release an app for Android. And no, it still hasn't announced a launch date, but if you're an Android owner who wants the app, you should go to this page and sign up right now. Earlier this month, when TechCrunch's Alexia Tsotsis interviewed co-founder Kevin Systrom at South by Southwest, he teased the audience by waving around the Android app on-stage. Apparently it wasn't ready for a real demo, but he claimed that "in some ways, it's better than our iOS app."Why IT Professionals Aren't Monogamous
Mar 24, 10:12PM
Pity the enterprise software conglomerate, its salespeople abandoned at the altar, its customers fleeing from committed relationships. Shed a tear for the server maker, no longer able to lock-in long-term sales, support and service engagements. Their customers are cheating on them with sexy new startups. Today's IT professionals are veritable libertines, swapping services and systems around like priapismic satyrs at a techno-bacchanal. What's worse: management condones this kind of behavior by pouring even more money into IT budgets.The Rise Of The Explainer Video
Mar 24, 8:52PM
Two years ago, Jason Kincaid wrote a short but influential post titled "The Underutilized Power Of The Video Demo To Explain What The Hell You Actually Do." He said: During my time at TechCrunch I've seen thousands of startups and written about hundreds of them. I sure as hell don't know all the secrets to building a successful company, but there are a few things I've seen that seem like surefire ways to ever-so-slightly grease the road to success. Here's an easy one: make a video demo and prominently promote it somewhere where new visitors can find it. One that shows off the core function of your product without making people think they're watching an ad or a pitch. And answer, as thoroughly as possible in 2-3 minutes, what it is that you're bringing to the table.Jason was spot-on with his assessment.
One Screen To Rule Them All
Mar 24, 7:00PM
While hosting this year's Academy Awards, Billy Crystal cracked, "I prefer the big screen... which is my iPad." The remark was an ironic counterpoint to the evening's theme, "Let's go to the movies," itself a half-hearted attempt to resuscitate flagging U.S. box office sales. On the heels of a year that saw the lowest movie theater attendance in almost two decades, it's clear that the silver screen feels threatened by younger, slimmer screens. Apple's new iPad is shattering sales records and quickly ushering in the post-PC era. The company sold three million tablets in the first weekend they went on sale and may sell as many as 66 million by year's end. Like the iPhone and iPod before it, the iPad is reinventing an entire technology category and bringing it to the masses.All The World's A Game
Mar 24, 6:02PM
As a lifelong gamer, I grew up fascinated with role-playing games, from pen-and-paper fantasy worlds of Dungeons & Dragons, to computer-based RPGs like Ultima and Wizardry. I've spent thousands of hours crafting and "leveling up" dozens of alternate personas, tuning their stats and experience point allocations across various character traits, and charting their virtual careers. I've always loved exploring all the different possible attributes and powers to minimize or maximize, and then mapping out how to achieve the optimal configuration for my style of play. Several years ago I started wondering, "What if real life were the ultimate role-playing game? What character class would I be, and what would my current level be? Which skills would I go deep in and master?"Gillmor Gang: Resisting the Obvious
Mar 24, 5:00PM
The Gillmor Gang — Dan Farber, Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — welcomed CBS News Online editor in chief Dan Farber back to the West Coast and the comfort of the Gang clubhouse. Dan was one of the Gang's earliest members, gracing the IT Conversations podcast number 2 or 3 or so. Now, as the Web gets overrun by a sea of apps, as @scobleizer autofilters the firehose in realtime, as we go 15 minutes before we realize @jtaschek hasn't moved a muscle (locked up), as the networks desperately stonewall live to iPad, the Gang feels like fun. I've been saying Office is dead for years; it's blindingly obvious. I like Word, using it to write this post. As we point out, collaboration is almost here as Redmond copies Google and the Sinofski fans in the chat room say social is coming in Office 15. But social is already here, and it's going to be hard to sell the inevitability of cloud just when it's already so obvious. I've kept the pro-Salesforce chatter (cough) at a low boil for as long as I can. See you on the funway.Women, Tech, And Tone
Mar 24, 4:01PM
Earlier this week a startup named Geeklist was called out on Twitter for a promotional video which apparently featured a woman dancing around in her underwear. (I say "apparently" because the video has since been made private.) The Geeklist founders acknowledged that that was problematic -- and then, inexplicably, they went right off the rails. Click through that link to see some jawdropping bad judgement verging on misogyny; they responded to the woman who complained by Twitter-cc'ing her employer(!) while calling on her to "take it offline" and explaining they "weren't cool with the angry tone." While their own haughty tone, of course, was perfectly acceptable...Why Entrepreneurs Should NOT Buy Homes
Mar 24, 3:00PM
Editor's note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur. He is Managing Director of Formula Capital and has written 6 books on investing. His latest books are I Was Blind But Now I See and FAQ ME. You can follow him @jaltucher. Many people have said to me in the past few months, "I'm going to buy a home." Or, "What do you think of the idea of me buying a home?" Everyone thinks: Well the housing crisis is now over so I should buy a home. They think: It's probably a good investment. They think: Time to put down "roots". I've owned a home. A couple of times. I bought a home once after I sold a business. I then lost that home. I then went almost completely insane trying to sell it.Get Rich or Die Trying
Mar 24, 1:00PM
"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent." President Calvin Coolidge Determination is critical to success as overnight successes actually take years to build; indeed, "overnight successes" are a myth.Pinterest Updates Terms Of Service As It Preps An API And Private Pinboards: More Copyright Friendly
Mar 24, 11:56AM
Pinterest is growing up fast: just days ago the image-based social network rolled out redesigned profile pages, and now it's following that up with an updated Terms of Service, Acceptable Use Policy and Privacy Policy that sharpen how the company interfaces on a number of commercial points as it rides its wave of growth as it rapidly reaches and passes 12 million users. "We think that the updated Terms of Service, Acceptable Use Policy, and Privacy Policy are easier to understand and better reflect the direction our company is headed in the future," CEO Ben Silbermann wrote in an email to Pinterest users informing them of the changes, due to take effect on April 6. From the looks of it, that future direction involves not just more private experiences on Pinterest but also a much stronger push to get Pinterest working in a whole lot more places.Forget Today's Drama, Dustin Curtis' Svbtle Is About Pushing Blogging Forward
Mar 24, 9:45AM
Widely read designer Dustin Curtis has come up with a new blogging platform called Svbtle, that's meant to help you take blog posts from ideas to well-presented articles. At first, it looks like a better Tumblr, based on the work he showed off on Thursday. And in fact it looks so good that a couple developers forked it within hours, and offered new versions for the world to install. Which, in turn, sparked a big debate about the rights that creatives have over their work... I'm going to skip over all that because it's not a new topic, and it misses the point.Pair Is A Path For The Two Of Us
Mar 24, 1:03AM
Let's say you're in a serious relationship, but you work all the time and you're long-distance. How do you stay close to the other person? I've personally had this situation for the last year and a half. My girlfriend and I use Skype, email, our phones, Facebook, and everything else we can to stay connected. We've even been using Instagram as a two-person social network to share photos about what we're up to each day. But now there's an app to solve this exact problem. It's called Pair, and it's packed with the features you see in private social networks like Path, but designed for two people.Inside The NewMe Accelerator 2012 Startup House [TCTV]
Mar 24, 12:06AM
The NewMe Accelerator, a startup incubator program focused on underrepresented minorities in the tech industry, assembles a select group of tech entrepreneurs from all over the United States to participate in its 12-week Silicon Valley accelerator. NewMe is a residential program, meaning that the entrepreneurs all live together in a house for three months to brainstorm and hack on their respective projects -- "eating, sleeping and drinking our startups," as NewMe puts it. Along the way, mentors such as Mitch Kapor, Vivek Wadwha, Ben Horowitz and others stop by the NewMe house to provide advice, insight and inspiration. Sounds pretty intense, right? So of course, we at TechCrunch TV were keen to check it out. At the moment, NewMe is smack in the middle of its 2012 program, so we made a visit to its house in San Francisco to see how things are shaping up so far.FCC Documents Show Sony Chromebook, Potentially Running On ARM
Mar 23, 11:25PM
Google's Chromebooks haven't exactly made a splash, but apparently not everyone has been scared off. Sony seems to think there's gold in them thar laptops, and they're making their own. For now it's known as the VCC111 (probably shorthand for "Vaio Chromebook Computer, series one, 11-inch display"), according to documents and pictures from FCC testing. The understated look continues with these Vaio Chromebooks, even as far as what appears to be a matte black unbranded shell. A white version is also shown in the test setup photos. But the most interesting thing is the processor, which is listed simply as T25, and may in fact be Nvidia's Tegra 2 chip by that name. An ARM laptop? Hey, if Microsoft can do it, why not Google and Sony?6waves Lolapps' CTO Rue and Chief Product Officer Sethi Step Down
Mar 23, 11:01PM
Just a few days after social gaming company 6waves Lolapps said it was laying off most of its development staff to focus on publishing, its chief product officer Arjun Sethi and chief technology officer Brian Rue have stepped down. 6waves Lolapps was born last July out of a merger between a Facebook game developer Lolapps and a publisher 6waves. The publisher had been instrumental to the success of Lolapps' hit Ravenwood Fair, which was considered one of the best games on the platform in late 2010 and early last year. Clearly, the merger didn't work exactly as intended. But with the deal, 6waves Lolapps picked up some valuable technology that helped boost revenue per day from players across the publisher's network of titles. Sethi said his resignation after more than four years at the company was planned ahead of the layoffs.If at any time you'd like to stop receiving these messages, just send an email to feeds_feedburner_com_techcrunch+unsubscribe-hmdtechnology=gmail.com@mail.feed2email.net.
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