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LinkedIn, On The Lookout For More Stickiness, Adds Curated Content Channels On LinkedIn Today
May 07, 11:08PM
LinkedIn, now at 225 million users, continues to introduce more features to its site to keep people returning to the it and staying there for longer. Today it's the turn of LinkedIn Today, its social news page, which is getting a new feature called Channels. The feature is rolling out starting today to English-speaking users. LinkedIn says that it plans to announce the service formally on Wednesday.Cisco Meraki Launches "Presence", With Facebook Account Log-In To Wireless Networks
May 07, 10:35PM
Cisco Meraki has launched a new service called Presence that provides data about mobile behavior across location and automatic login to wireless hotspots using a person's Facebook account.Dots, Betaworks' New Super Addictive iOS Game, Nabs 1 Million Downloads In One Week
May 07, 10:33PM
Dots, a game launched just last week out of betaworks, has reached over 1 million downloads in just one week of availability. According to a blog post, the app hit number 1 in eight countries, and went into the top five in another fifteen countries. Right now, in fact, you'll find Dots as the number three free app behind Hardest Game Ever 2 and Falldown2, two worthy opponents.Yahoo Wants To Touch People's Lives "Every Day", And Is Developing For Google Glass
May 07, 10:04PM
What is Yahoo? Marissa Mayer just laid out the company's identity and future at Wired Business Conference. The key words she repeated over and over was "Every Day". That's when Yahoo wants you to use it, and it's why it's now developing for Google Glass, acquiring apps like Astrid, and relaunching products like Yahoo Weather she's sees as part of your "daily dozen" activities on mobile.TC Cribs: A Trek Through DotCloud, An Urban Jungle For Plotting World Domination
May 07, 10:00PM
It's been a while since the TechCrunch TV team has taken a tropical vacation, but we were able to take a walk on the wild side (no passports required) while shooting this latest episode of Cribs at open platform-as-a-service startup DotCloud. DotCloud's office is smack in the middle of the financial district of San Francisco, but when you step inside it feels like you're in the middle of a jungle -- albeit a very well-connected jungle with desks, computers, and intensely-focused programmers.Adobe's David Wadhwani On Subscriptions, Behance, Hardware And Piracy
May 07, 9:54PM
Earlier today, I had a chance to sit down with Adobe’s David Wadhwani, the senior vice president and general manager for Digital Media and public face of Creative Cloud at the company’s MAX conference in Los Angeles this week. Adobe announced a number of product updates this week, but the most important and wide-reaching announcement was obviously the move to subscription services with Creative Cloud and the fact that the company will stop developing its Creative Suite. While there has been some pushback against this move, Wadhwani believes that most of the community is ready for this move and that it will help Adobe innovate faster and serve its users better. Creative Cloud As Wadhwani stressed when I talked to him, the company currently plans to sell Creative Suite 6 “indefinitely.” For him, it’s important to look at where the company sees the creative evolution going. Adobe, he believes, has to look at “where do we see the creative world going and the evolution that we think is going to take place.” Adobe’s strategy, he said.” To effect and lead some of these changes, he believes, Creative Cloud is the way to go for the company. What’s often missing in the creative workflows today, he said, “is that element of connectedness. Creativity today is too often done in isolation.” Connecting you to your co-workers and a larger community on, for example, Behance, “is a very empowering thing for a lot of creators.” If that’s where creation is going, he said, “it’s become very obvious for us that the best way for doing that is to create a truly integrated experience for creatives from their tools to all of these services and communities.” Adobe, he said, wants to put its resources into where the company can add the most value. In this context, the focus on creative cloud becomes a natural step in the company’s evolution. The fact that the early reaction to Creative Cloud has been positive and that the company is seeing “good strong accelerating growth” has given Adobe the confidence “that as a whole, the creative community is open and obviously interested in moving in this direction.” He did, however, also acknowledge that not everybody will be ready to go this way and that it’s a big change that will take a bit to sink in. Adobe wants to have an open dialog with its users about thisBitTorrent Steps Up Monetization Efforts By Taking Its (Potentially Paywalled) Content Bundles Into Alpha
May 07, 9:28PM
BitTorrent is taking a new step today in its efforts to help creators make money (and make money itself) — it's releasing a new content packaging format called the BitTorrent Bundle in alpha mode. The company has already been working with different creators to launch promotional bundles. For example, author Tim Ferriss packaged chapters of his book with other supplementary media material as a way to promote sales of his newest work, while musicians like DJ Shadow have used BitTorrent to promote new tracks and albums. However, spokesperson Christian Averill told me that today's announcement signals the company's intention to move beyond one-off experiments and actually "productize" these efforts.Security Firm: "Syria Has Largely Disappeared From The Internet"
May 07, 9:13PM
War-torn Syria is reportedly experiencing massive Internet outages. Both Google’s transparency monitor and security firm Cloudflare are reporting near zero levels of traffic out of the area. This isn’t the first time the beleaguered nation has experienced Internet issues. Back in 2012, the Syrian government, in attempt to paralyze opposition rebels, cut the entire country off from the rest of the world. “Syria has largely disappeared from the Internet,” writes security firm, Umbrella, about the abrupt traffic stop today. Umbrella describes how such a cutoff is possible, “Routing on the Internet relies on the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). BGP distributes routing information and makes sure all routers on the Internet know how to get to a certain IP address.” Continuing, ” Shutting down Internet access to and from Syria is achieved by withdrawing the BGP routes from Syrian prefixes.” Last December, we interviewed Cloudflare about how exactly a government can cut off its citizens from the web. Watch the interview below: This is a breaking story and we will update readers as more information comes in.Facebook Must Make Home A Layer Atop Your Widgets And Homescreen, Not A Replacement
May 07, 9:11PM
"Where did my Android go?" is the common theme of Facebook Home reviews in Google Play. People want the widgets and old homescreen they meticulously curated. Facebook needs to preserve and offer quick access to the phone we're used to if it's going to make Home a hit. Facebook's reading the reviews too, so bet on the early Home updates to make it more of a bonus than a trade-off.Facebook Arrives On Google Glass Thanks To Unofficial Photo Sharing App
May 07, 8:37PM
As the days go by and developers get their hands on Glass, the basic apps that we need to survive in the wild and share our photos are popping up. Today, Glass To Facebook is available for those who want to post the moments captured with Glass to the social network. It’s the first third-party app that allows you The setup is similar to that of other third-party apps like GlassTweet, but requires you to give Facebook permissions to post to your timeline. It only takes a few seconds to get going: After you’ve turned on the Glass To Facebook sharing contact within MyGlass and approve the permissions on Facebook, you’re ready to start posting: Just take a photo and choose the Glass To Facebook option: The nice thing about the app is that it creates a photo album for you that will start piling up your Glass-taken photos: Your photo shows up like any other one would in your friends’ News Feed, too. This means that all of those annoying baby pictures that you see on the daily will now come from the vantage point of the parent’s face. Exciting, I know. On a serious note, it’s nice to see photos from Glass being brought to networks other than Google+, which was the only out of the box option. While we haven’t heard anything recently about an official Facebook Glass app, we’ve heard that there’s a team of four working on something. What could Facebook look like for Glass? We know that there won’t be ads, since Google isn’t allowing them on the Glass platform as of right now. Aside from that, I wouldn’t mind seeing a Poke pop up on the device. [Photo credit: Flickr]Google+ Hangouts On Air Now Process Videos During Recording, Allowing For Live Rewind And Immediate Publishing
May 07, 7:51PM
Google+ Hangouts allow for groups of friends or colleagues have an intimate face-to-face conversation, but the “On Air” feature of the service allows you to broadcast to the masses. The President Of The United States Of America has taken part in these conversations, but anyone can set up their own. Today, the Hangouts team has introduced some new functionality that make participating in a live On Air a little bit easier. Up until now you haven’t been able to do anything other than watch the live broadcast as it happens, which is nice until you have to run to the kitchen to grab a drink or pause to take a phone call. Today, viewers can now rewind your broadcast no matter where they are during the live filming process. Additionally, On Air videos will immediately be published instead of carrying the normal waiting period where you’ll get the infamous “processing…” dialogue. The only negatives that I see to this is that it slows down the ramp up time it takes to start your broadcast, so you should buffer some time in to get started before your actual scheduled “live” time: Other tweaks in this push include higher quality versions of a Hangout On Air via your mobile device, which is nice since these can be kind of grainy, depending on your connection at the time. Additionally, live broadcasts will now start without having to refresh a page, which was a real pain in the ass. Now if you visit a page that has the embedded On Air player, it will just automagically start playing. The Hangouts product has made its way into many of Google’s services, including its mobile offerings on Android and even Glass. The usecase for Hangouts widely vary, but Google has been dogfooding it way before its release. The “On Air” option has the attention of both local and national broadcasters, giving them away to connect to audiences in a way more intimate way. [Photo credit: Flickr]Microsoft's Julie Larson-Green Says Windows RT's Slow Start Is A Consumer Education Problem
May 07, 7:43PM
Microsoft’s Corporate VP for Windows Julie Larson-Green was at WIRED’s Business Conference today, and she was put on the spot when asked by interviewer and WIRED Senior Editor Michael V. Copeland about the apparently sluggish start for Windows RT. RT’s failure is a consumer education problem, according to Larson-Green, since it’s very different from what’s come before. Windows RT, for those unfamiliar or confused by the new familial breakdown of Windows following the introduction of version 8, is a lightweight version designed for ARM-powered devices (vs. x86, the architecture which full Windows OS runs on), which doesn’t offer access to the full suite of Windows software. According to our own Matt Burns, that has resulted in a big app gap, and made the Surface RT essentially a glorified web browsing tablet, which sounds like something different from a simple matter of properly framing the product. “I think we have some work to do on explaining it to people because it’s different,” Larson-Green said. “They’re just so used to Windows meaning backward compatibility in all the programs that you use today. I use Surface RT as my main computing device, I connect to a corporate network using my virtual smart card and VPN when I need to, Office is already on there [...] it’s just a simpler experience and then the Surface Pro has the flexibility if you want to work on the details.” “I love my Surface RT,” was a common refrain from Larson-Green even into the Q&A, who later characterized it as a device for casual consumption mostly, especially filling a niche for “weekend” use. Even the dual nature of her defense of the Microsoft tablet shows that it still needs work at Microsoft itself in terms of fleshing out its role in the consumer ecosystem, which probably isn’t helping the company properly explain its purpose to the buying public. The Surface RT is estimated to have sold only around 1 million units total since its launch late in 2012, far under its reported initial estimates of 3 million or so. Other OEMs have balked at the RT line in the meantime, with Acer waiting on launching its RT slate until at least Q2 of this year.Microsoft Confirms It Will Offer Users Their First Taste Of Windows Blue In Late June
May 07, 7:36PM
Windows 8 launched to mixed reviews just over half a year ago, and Microsoft has dutifully pushed out nearly 740 tweaks and updates over the intervening months. Even so, rumblings of a sizeable update (codenamed "Windows Blue") have been making the rounds for months now, and we've finally got a firm idea of when to expect the first public preview. Microsoft Windows chief Julie Larson-Green confirmed at the Wired Business Conference today that developers would be able to download and install the Windows Blue update preview in late June to coincide with the company's BUILD developer conference.Nest Acquires MyEnergy To Boost Its Home Energy Management Tools
May 07, 7:01PM
Nest proved that energy monitoring can be tantalizing. And it's about to get even better. The company just announced that it has acquired MyEnergy to further enhance its suite of monitoring tools. Terms of deal were not released.Google Forms Finally Become Useful Thanks To Properly Formatted Date And Time Fields
May 07, 7:00PM
Google Docs, now Drive, have always had an option to create forms that would drop data right into a spreadsheet. This is super handy until you tried to do something like…collect date and time information. For whatever reason, those structured fields were never an option with Forms, but the team has finally added both as an option today. The product has always been “there,” but not heavily promoted by Google. Mostly because of these types of limitations. Asking a simple question like when someone’s birthday was a nightmare, as you couldn’t normalize and structure being dropped into the spreadsheet, making the form pretty useless. It’s good to see the option when creating a form now: For dates, people filling out your form will now get a proper calendar picker: The folks in your office who have to actually use the data that you collect with a survey can now breathe a sigh of release with properly formatted dates and times. It’s the little things that matter. Or in this case, the big things that made the product pretty useless until now. [Photo credit: Flickr]Developing For Android Is Much Easier Now, Animoca Claims
May 07, 6:59PM
Software quality assurance testing on Android devices is far easier than it was just a year ago, at least according to one of Asia’s largest mobile app developers, Animoca. The Hong Kong company has produced over 300 apps since it started two years ago, and just shot past 150 million downloads collectively. It produces mainly Android apps. Last year, Animoca’s testing process for its apps covered a whopping 400 Android devices. Today, this number has been slashed to just a quarter of that, largely because of standardization in the Android handset industry. According to Yat Siu, CEO of Animoca’s parent company Outblaze, most phones have become standardized on Samsung’s base hardware, thanks to the Korean manufacturer’s cornering of the component market. Besides making its own branded devices, Samsung provides parts for a huge array of other devices. In 2012, Samsung was the world’s biggest manufacturer of NAND Flash (31 percent), DRAM (38 percent), and display components (25 percent). The evolution of Android’s platform over the years has also made it a lot more flexible for app developers on the software side of things, with fewer variants of Jelly Bean than Gingerbread, he added. Together with hardware standardization, this has really eased the amount of testing that Animoca has to do today. “Japan is the outlier in all of this—they have the strangest phones, and each one is a little different from the other. The rest of the world is mainly quite similar, based on Samsung hardware,” said Yat. Phones are also getting better. He said that the 400 testing devices from 2012 were mainly made up of low-end handsets. “You have to cater to low-end devices because otherwise, you cancel out your biggest audience. But all the new hardware is pretty kickass, and more and more devices are getting very capable,” he said. Animoca employs about 100 people working just on its apps, and has operations in Korea, the Philippines, the US and China. Its strategy is to flood the market with apps hitting different niche markets, rather than try to create a “Supercell-style or Angry Birds blockbuster” hit, said Yat. Some of its titles, Star Girl and Pretty Pet Salon have pretty much reached hit status, but the company is focused on churning out a higher volume of app varieties, in the hopes of casting a wider net for loyal fans. “Those become paying audiences,” he said. While StarGoogle Reminds iOS Developers That They Can Easily Integrate Chrome With Their Apps
May 07, 6:32PM
Google just reminded developers that they can use Chrome as the default browser for their apps and easily switch back and forth between app and browser. With x-callback, Google says, developers can open links in Chrome and once the page has loaded, Chrome will show a link back to the original app in the top left corner of the screen. This should make it much easier for developers to allow users to support Chrome in their apps. Currently, Google says, developers have two options when they want to access web content from their apps: they can create their own in-app web browser frame – using Apple’s own WebKit browser, of course – or by sending users away from their apps to a browser. Once users are in the browser, though, chances are, they won’t come back, so Google’s scheme will surely help to ensure that users remember what app they were coming from in the first place. To get started, developers have to download the OpenInChromeControllerClass and add it to their projects. The class will check if Chrome is installed and, if that’s the case, you can start sending links to Chrome with x-callback enabled. Given that Chrome is essentially just an app on iOS, it can’t be set as the default on Apple’s operating system. That’s obviously a problem for Google, because apps will always open links in Safari by default. Because of this, users have little incentive to switch to Chrome because they’ll always be forced back into Safari anyway.File Transfer And Sync Service Pi.pe Launches Pi.pe Prints, Offering Photo Printing Options For Over A Dozen Cloud Services
May 07, 6:22PM
Pi.pe, the file transfer and synchronization service which emerged from San Francisco-based Pixelpipe, has previously served as one of the only serious utilities to move photos and other media files between all the various cloud services. Since its launch a little over a year ago, Pi.pe’s focus has been primarily on backup and sharing. But it was missing an option for ordering prints – something which most services focused on photo management today offer. Today, that changes. The company is now launching Pi.pe Prints, which allows users to print photos hosted all over the cloud to locations like Walgreens, CVS, and soon Shutterfly, Tesco, and Fuji Film, too – the latter likely in about a month’s time. Pricing for Walgreens and CVS is the same as is listed on their own websites (e.g. 4×6 is $0.19), but through the integrations Pi.pe will earn 10 to 15 percent of the sale price from its printing partners. At launch, the new printing service includes support for images stored on Facebook and Facebook Pages, 500px, Flickr, Google Drive (soon), Instagram, Mixi (Japan), MySpace, Trovebox (OpenPhoto), Picasa, Shutterfly, SmugMug, and VK (Russia). And as before, photos and videos can also be exported to other cloud services including 500px, Amazon Glacier, Box, CX, Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, Facebook Pages, Flickr, Google Drive, Mixi, MySpace, Orkut, Photobucket, Picasa, Shutterfly, Smugmug, Sugarsync, Trovebox, VK, Walgreens, YouSendIt, and YouTube. This new printing option places Pi.pe into a different category of services. Before, the startup’s primary competitor was something like IFTTT, as it too allows users to copy and automate the moving of photos from one service to the next. But unlike IFTTT, which offers ways to automate a wide variety of web-based tasks, Pi.pe has been singularly focused on moving and syncing files, generally photos. The company still has plans to merge its earlier photo-only uploader service Pixelpipe into Pi.pe, to reflect its growth beyond “just pixels,” but that hasn’t yet come to pass. Pixelpipe and its accompanying mobile application lineup still operate independently. But CEO Brett Butterfield tells us the new Pi.pe Android and iOS applications are now just about completed, and both will include printing support at launch. From the apps, users will be able to print from their phone’s photos, as well as the third-party services Pi.pe supports. That will make it one of the more robust options in terms of ordering prints from your mobile, as currentTheFind Draws From Facebook Likes And Past Shopping History To Personalize Product Search
May 07, 6:00PM
Shopping search engine TheFind is debuting a more personalized search feature today. Personalized search sifts through the millions of online products available to give you personal results based on a combination of both your Facebook "Likes" and past shopping searches and clicks on TheFind.com.Identity Platform about.me Buys Wefollow To Boost "Interest" Search
May 07, 5:59PM
Startups of a feather flock together. Wefollow, a company that was spun out of Digg, has been acquired by About.me, a company that was spun out of Aol. And get this, there's more: Lead About.me investor Kevin Rose was also a co-founder of Wefollow, and About.me co-founder Tony Conrad was the lead investor in Kevin Rose's Milk which sold to Google and eventually staffed up Google Ventures. No conflict, no interest.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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