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Code In Twitter Music's Placeholder Page Shows Web Interface, Track Purchasing, Charts And Service Integrations
Apr 12, 10:03PM
Since we have nothing much to go on other than a static landing page for Twitter #music, some folks didfurther inspection within the CSS on the login page, and certain features and integrations became apparent. We’ve reached out to Twitter to confirm what we’ve seen, and we’ll update our story once we hear back. Until then, here’s what can be taken from the styling code itself, picked up on by desginer Youssef Sarhan: - Both web interface and separate downloadable app - Pull in Tracks from iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud and Rdio - YouTube and Vevo integration - We Are Hunted’s charts feature - Turn playing tracks on/off - Track purchasing - Tweet a track .iconmusic-spotify-connect-btn{background-position:-4431px -0px;height:32px;width:179px} .iconmusic-player-source-rdio{background-position:-2801px -0px;height:19px;width:30px} .iconmusic-player-source-itunes{background-position:-2751px -0px;height:19px;width:30px} .iconmusic-player-source-soundcloud{background-position:- 2851px -0px;height:14px;width:92px} .iconmusic-player-source-vevo{background-position:-2963px -0px;height:9px;width:53px} .youtube-vid player{position:absolute;padding:10px;height:200px} While this is in no way a finalized “feature set” for the Twitter #Music app, it is more information than we had before and confirmation of what we’ve seen others testing out on Twitter, which are basically embedded music players in Twitter Cards. And of course, since this is a Twitter-owned page, so the code speaks for itself. Here’s a look at what the player will look like, again referenced in the CSS for the page: Here’s that on/off switch for playing tracks: These are some random graphical elements that point to what services will be included as well: In addition to all of this, it looks like Twitter will be bringing in bios of musicians, perhaps from their Twitter profiles. All of this integration makes complete sense and perhaps the selling of music will be controlled by the artist themselves. If you’re listening to a track that someone shared from Spotify and want to purchase it immediately, it doesn’t matter which service Twitter hooks into, there’s a good chance that you’re going to follow through with your purchase. This could mean big bucks for Twitter as it marches towards going public, perhaps as early as next year. This all gives us more of a sense of what the #Music service itself might look like, even though we have no screenshots to prove it. Much in the way that Twitter set up “hashtag pages” for brands such as NASCAR, Twitter is taking all of the data that it’s currently collecting and just showing it off in a different, more consumable way. If #Music becomes a full-featured service that artists can use to sellThis Week On The TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast: Facebook Phone (Again) And Bitcoin
Apr 12, 10:00PM
This week on the TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast we talk about the launch of Facebook Fone and my own horrible attempts at becoming a bitcoin billionaire.Designer Nicholas Felton Leaves Facebook After Pioneering Timeline Overhaul
Apr 12, 9:53PM
Nicholas Felton, who came to fame through many super-detailed infographics and reports about his life as quantified through data, is leaving Facebook almost two years after being acq-hired to work on projects like Timeline. His early work, which compiled data on things like all the songs he had listened to or everywhere he had been in a single year into a “Feltron Annual Report,” became the basis for Timeline. In a sense, all the profiles of Facebook’s roughly 1 billion users are all like living, breathing annual “Feltron” reports. He posted on his page today: On April 19, 2011 I walked into the Palo Alto Facebook office and began contributing to the timeline project. Two years, many late nights and a few launch celebrations later I will be moving on. The opportunity to help mold a service of such importance to so many people has been a high point in my professional career. I’m extremely proud of the projects I worked on, grateful to the teams that built them and confident in the products to come. Facebook acq-hired Felton's startup Daytum in April of 2011 and Felton and his co-founder Ryan Case moved from New York to Palo Alto. When Facebook’s vice president of product Chris Cox unveiled Timeline, he said he was inspired by seeing Felton’s annual reports: “14 pages. One year. One book. It was hard to call it anything other than what it really was — art.” He went on, "We had one reaction: we have to try to hire this guy." There’s no word on what Felton be working on next yet.Where In The World Are The 1.2M Raspberry Pi Microcomputers? Mostly In The West - But Pi Founders Want More Spread This Year
Apr 12, 9:48PM
One to 1.2 million Raspberry Pi microcomputers have shipped since the device's launch just over a year ago but where in the world are they located? While it's impossible to say exactly where each Pi has ended up, the vast majority sold to-date have shipped to developed nations -- including the U.S. and the U.K. But the Pi Foundation wants to get more developing nations buying into Pi.Ask A VC: Javelin Venture Partners' Noah Doyle On The Next Innovations In Mapping And More
Apr 12, 9:45PM
In this week's Ask A VC show, Javelin Venture Partners' Managing Director Noah Doyle sat down to talk with us about why he started a venture firm, where the next innovations in mapping are coming from and more. Doyle has extensive experience in the online mapping world—he directed the enterprise product line for Google's geospatial products, including Google Earth and Google Maps. Prior to Google, Noah managed the Marketing Strategy and Corporate Development functions at Keyhole, a company that created the first Web-hosted digital earth model and was acquired by Google in 2004. Doyle explains to us that some of the new technologies he's excited about include layering social data across maps.Y Combinator Grad ReelSurfer Gets A Makeover, Now Lets You Clip & Share Any ESPN Or New York Times Video
Apr 12, 9:22PM
Y Combinator grad ReelSurfer is an instant video editor, born out of its founders frustration of trying to find clips, quotes and scenes from their favorite movies on YouTube and other video sites. The process is probably familiar to you: Search for clip, don't find it; if you do find it, it's part of a larger clip, so you have to download, convert and clip the video yourself.Dish Network Chairman Said To Be Seeking A Merger With T-Mobile USA
Apr 12, 9:06PM
Say what you will about Dish Networks, but the Colorado company's brass has some moxie. The satellite media service provider has been trying for years now to link up with notable national wireless carrier to help operate a mobile service to sell alongside its current offerings, and according to a recent report from Bloomberg, Dish Network chairman Charlie Ergen has approached T-Mobile parent company Deutsche Telekom about the possibility of a Dish/T-Mobile merger.Hey, Hardware Makers: No One In The World Wants Videos That Auto-Pause When We Look Away
Apr 12, 8:58PM
This week, word leaked out that Microsoft is purportedly working on a feature for the next Xbox that can automatically pause videos when it detects that your eyes are no longer on the screen. Just weeks ago, Samsung announced a similar feature for the Galaxy S4. No. No, No, No, No. No one in the world wants this.Hackers Point Large Botnet At WordPress Sites To Steal Admin Passwords And Gain Server Access
Apr 12, 8:33PM
If you’re running a WordPress site, now would be a good time to ensure you are using very strong passwords. According to reports from HostGator and CloudFlare, there is currently a significant attack being launched at WordPress blogs across the Internet. For the most part, this is a brute-force dictionary-based attack that aim to find the password for the ‘admin’ account that every WordPress site sets up by default. HostGator’s analysis found that this is a well-organized and very distributed attack. The company believes that about 90,000 IP addresses are currently involved. CloudFlare, its founder and CEO Matthew Prince told me earlier today, thinks the hackers control about 100,000 bots. As for the scope of the attack, Prince says that CloudFlare saw attacks on virtually every WordPress site on its network. If somebody guesses your WordPress password, that’s obviously a big problem, but attacks like this then open up ways for the hackers to take over your server – and that’s what whoever is behind this attack is clearly after. The CloudFlare team believes that the attacker is currently using a network of relatively low-powered home PCs, but the aim is “to build a much larger botnet of beefy servers in preparation for a future attack.” Home PCs can be the staging ground for a large denial-of-service attack, but servers have access to far more bandwidth and can hence push out far larger amounts of traffic. This currently attack is similar to an attack in 2012 that was also aimed at WordPress sites. That attack, however, was looking for outdated versions of TimThumb, a popular PHP-based image resizer that is often used as the default by many WordPress templates. Both CloudFlare and HostGator, as well as a number of other hosting providers, have taken measures to protect their customers. Besides choosing a very strong password – which is always a good idea – you can also install a number of WordPress plugins that limit the number of login attempts from the same IP address or network to put a stop to these brute-force attacks.Gillmor Gang Live 04.12.13 (TCTV)
Apr 12, 8:12PM
Gillmor Gang - Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor. Recording for today has concluded.Bake Sale 2.0: PledgeCents Launches A Crowdfunding Platform To Help Underfunded Schools Raise Money
Apr 12, 8:07PM
With the passage of the JOBS Act, the Crowdfunding Era began and since then these fund-raising platforms have been sprouting in every vertical — even education. Just two weeks ago, we announced the launch of AlumniFunder, which “gives alumni a platform by which they can invest in innovative projects created by students at their alma mater.” Today, we have another entry into the education crowdfunding set — Houston-based startup, PledgeCents. But, rather than going after higher education, PledgeCents is launching today to help K-12, public schools raise the funding they need to survive as federal and state funding continue to dry up. To do this, the startup wants to connect investors and corporations with schools that have exhausted traditional fundraising channels and are looking for alternative ways to offset funding reductions. The idea, PledgeCents co-founder Ricky Johnson said, is to allow public schools to keep the programs, supplies and services they need to maintain educational standards for their students amidst a slow economic recovery (and the thing that no one talks about in polite company in education, the unsustainable spending). So, PledgeCents allows any K-12 school with funding needs (so, every school in America) to raise funding — for any type of project, resource or program. In canvassing schools to find out what their most pressing needs are, they naturally found that schools have a variety of micro-projects they’re interested in funding, particularly equipment, field trips, school security and supplies for science labs, art and theater. The platform enables teachers to create projects, while administrators can oversee the process to ensure the funds are used in appropriate ways, and PledgeCents even sends out bracelets that students can wear (in school colors) to help promote the campaigns among their friends. The platform will also dole out rewards to the school campaigns that raise the most funds. But, perhaps the biggest difference from other crowdfunding sites? The funds raised on the platform will be distributed to schools regardless of whether they hit their fundraising targets. In terms of differentiation from other fundraising startups out there like AlumniFunder, EverTrue, Donorschoose or AdoptAClassroom (and even Chalkfly, with its charitable spin or Crowdtilt) is that they tend to focus on alumni or raising funds for supplies, the co-founder says. Instead, PledgeCents wants to go broader to include supplies, teacher salaries and general education-related activities like field trips and band equipment. “School funding in Texas hasDuedil Raises $5M For Open Data Platform To Conduct The Due Diligence Companies Need
Apr 12, 7:55PM
Duedil has raised $5 million for its platform that uses open data to help companies conduct due diligence. The Series A round was led by Notion Capital. Also participating were Oak Investment Partners as well as Passion Capital and Spotify investor Shakil Khan. With the funding, Duedil is hiring data scientists and beefing up its resources for expansion. Duedil is a company that shows what innovation can come when governments open their data. That’s what has happened with Duedil, which directly benefits from open data policies in the United Kingdom and those emerging in the European Union. With open data, Duedil can link data from different sources, aggregate it and provide it free or soon to come, on a subscription basis. At its core, Duedil offers a data analytics and visualization engine. Using the service, for example, a corporate lawyer can research a company’s corporate structure. The lawyer can visualize in a mind-map the company’s shareholders and investments. Last fall, Mike Butcher wrote about Duedil opening its API. Developed with Mashery, Duedil offers up to 20 years of information on all companies registered in the UK and Ireland. With the EU opening its data, Duedil will extend its network across the continent. This is some pretty cool stuff. The data analysis is detailed and the visuals bring the information to life. Just take a look at this blog post about how it developed its new credit rating service. It draws from GitHub’s Histogram and the colored bands resistors to show data in a new dimension. This is not your old school credit score. This is something to marvel at both in terms of the analysis it provides and the elegance of the design.Travis Kalanick Says 'It Doesn't Bother Me' If Ridesharing Takes Customers From Uber's Other Services
Apr 12, 7:21PM
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick just wrapped up a press phone call where he discussed the policy paper that the company released earlier this morning. The apper stated that Uber would be rolling out ridesharing services in cities where it had received "tacit approval" in the sense that regulators didn't crack down on other services. To kick things off, Kalanick noted that ridesharing is kind of a loose term, so he specified that he means "non-licensed drivers who are providing transportation services for compensation." He said Uber has been staying away from that business, because of the "extreme regulatory risk": "Believe it or not, that was at a level that we were just not comfortable with." (The "believe or not" refers to the fact that Uber has certainly seemed willing to fight other regulatory battles.)Pebble Watchface SDK Now Available, Let's See What This Smart Watch Can Do
Apr 12, 6:42PM
Pebble has officially released its SDK, after promising to deliver it during the second week of April. This qualifies, if only just, and arrives alongside firmware update version 1.1 for PebbleOS. The new software update for the hardware brings support for custom watch faces built using the SDK, as well as new options for disabling backlighting and vibrations, as well as fixes for iOS bugs.Instructure Launches App Center To Let Teachers, Students Install Third-Party Apps Across Learning Platforms
Apr 12, 6:36PM
Props are owed to companies like Blackboard and Moodle for being early movers in the educational software space, particularly in helping catalyze innovation in learning management systems (LMS). The problem is, of course, they began over a decade ago and there haven't exactly been a flurry of raving reviews since. The Salt Lake City-based Instructure launched Canvas in 2011 to give colleges and universities an alternative.Today Is The Last Day To Get Early Bird Disrupt NY Tickets For $1,000 Off
Apr 12, 6:30PM
Surprise! You have a bit more time to snag Disrupt NY tickets with the early bird discount. We extended the sale an extra 24 hours. Tonight tickets to Disrupt NYC jump from $1,995 to $2,995. That means you have about ten hours to take advantage of our super-duper early bird deal that entitles you to three days of fun in the NYC sun, parties and chats with VCs, and some amazing Battlefield participants and exhibitors. You can buy tickets right here.Knight Foundation-Backed Mobile Sensor Startup Behavio Shuts Down As Founders Join Google
Apr 12, 6:13PM
The team behind the Knight Foundation-backed mobile sensor startup Behavio today announced that it is joining Google. We have learned that this is not an acquisition or an acqui-hire, however. The company, which was founded by a group of MIT Media Lab alums, was working on Funf, an open-source “extensible sensing and data processing framework for mobile devices.” The project, the Behavio team writes in an announcement on its website, will continue and be maintained by the Behavio team. In the coming days, however, Behavio will shut down its closed alpha program, and the team says it is “looking forward to working on exciting things within Google.” The general idea behind Behavio – which was built on top of the Funf project – was to develop apps that would detect social and behavioral trends in communities. "When you leave the house, the three things you usually take with you are your keys, your wallet, and your phone," Behavio co-founder Nadav Aharony told Nieman Journalism Lab’s Andrew Phelps when the project received its Knight Foundation grant in 2012. Because your smartphone is basically a “sensing and processing machine,” the team wanted to look into how it could use all of this metadata about you and your location to create “meaningful stories.” Besides getting the prestigious Knight Foundation grant, Behavio also won the 2012 SXSW Accelerator competition. Here is how our own Greg Ferenstein described what Behavio was planning to do with its $355,000 Knight Foundation grant: Instead of intentional online connections, [...] Behavio, looks at how peoples' location, network of phone contacts, physical proximity, and movement throughout the day can help us predict range of behaviors — anything from fitness to app downloads to mass protests. The entire big-data mobile smorgasbord is based on an open source project [Aharony] helped built at the MIT Media Lab, Funf, a public database of android-friendly software for turning cell phone toting-humans into willing lab rats of social experimentation. This definitely sounds like a technology Google would be interested in for both Android and the Google Glass project. Here is the full announcement from Behavio: The Behavio Team is Now Part of Google! We are very excited to announce that the Behavio team is now a part of Google! At Behavio, we have always been passionate about helping people better understand the world around them. We believe that our digital experiences should be better connected withInside SF's New Exploratorium, The Hands-On Museum Beloved By Techies [TCTV]
Apr 12, 6:05PM
The Exploratorium, San Francisco's hands-on science and technology learning museum, is set to open up next week in its brand new location at Pier 15 right on the Bay, and we got the chance to head inside a few days early and take a look at the new digs. Many cities have science museums, but this one has an extra dose of tech cred...Tito.io Opens Up Public Beta For Ticketing Platform, Integrating iOS Passbook
Apr 12, 5:56PM
We have not seen a hell of a lot of innovation in the ticketing space for a while. Granted, Eventbrite has done some great things in this arena, but Amiando, for instance, seems to be withering on the vine now that the founders have long gone. So it's interesting to see brand new start-up Tito.io have a crack at this issue after a stealth/private beta in which it claims to have already processed over $1 million in ticket sales. It now moves into public beta.Twitter's Music Site Is Up, And It's - Wait, You Can't Use It Yet
Apr 12, 5:51PM
As we wait for Twitter’s music app to be launched, the company has put up a site at http://music.twitter.com giving you the chance to sign in. Some outlets reported it would launch today, but then updated to say that the weekend was the target to tie-in with Coachella. We’ll be watching. The site itself? It’s very exciting It just loops you back to the same page, so nothing is going on there yet. This will most likely be the landing page for the app, however. It’s not known if there will be a web component to the app, but it would make sense — at least a mobile web version anyways. As we know, only “cool” people like Ryan Seacrest are able to access the app, as the company is clearly placing it with celebrities who can help with an orchestrated launch. Twitter #music in out. UPDATE: The page has now gotten the all-important “coming soon” added: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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