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>From The Mind Of A Chrome Designer Comes DropMocks: The Easiest Way To Share Images
Nov 23, 5:51AM
Do you ever want to share some photos, mockups or screengrabs with somebody else online quick and dirty? Go to DropMocks, drag and drop your images, and you are done. You get an instant image gallery that displays in CoverFlow style, along with a short URL to share it. For instance, here is an example of a DropMocks I put together in 5 seconds by pulling some photos from my desktop. Same here with these screengrabs. You can name your gallery and save it, and that is pretty much it. 
Display Ad Optimizer Rocket Fuel Is Taking Off With 10X Revenue Growth
Nov 23, 5:01AM
In advertising, if you deliver better results, you will get more advertising dollars thrown your way. That appears to be what is happening with Rocket Fuel, an online ad optimization startup which is showing some promising growth. The company only launched last year, but its third quarter revenues of $5 million were ten times higher than last year's, according to CEO George John. Its annualized revenue run-rate based on the past 30 days is $30 million ($20 million based on the past quarter), and the company is already profitable. 
Apple Exec Phil Schiller Now Active On Twitter — And Instagram Too!
Nov 23, 3:38AM
Two years ago, Apple executive Phil Schiller apparently signed up for Twitter and started tweeting. But he didn't tweet often, and few people followed him, probably assuming it was a fake account. But if Twitter's verification process is to be believed, the account is real. And further, Schiller has gotten a lot more active in recent weeks on the service. And he's active on the hot photo sharing app Instagram too! What's a bit odd about all of this is that Twitter had said they were suspending their account verification process while they came up with a better system. But Schiller just became verified, as 9 to 5 Mac noticed tonight. I've reached out to Twitter about it, but have yet to hear back. But I also reached out to Instagram when I noticed that a few of Schiller's tweets this month were sending out Instagram pictures. Sure enough, it's him, says co-founder Kevin Systrom.
There Goes Everything: A Handy Guide to all the Things that are "Dead"
Nov 23, 2:39AM
I'm sitting on a flight back from New York, finally catching up on my TechCrunch reading after a busy few weeks. And - my God - it's like walking through a post-genocide landscape. Everywhere I look lies the bloated corpse of another service, technology or thing that a TechCrunch writer has reported "killed" or otherwise declared "dead". For the benefit of any other TechCrunch readers who are struggling to keep up, I thought it might be useful to write a quick post aggregating all of the things that - according to us - are now officially dead. Here goes....
Why Doesn't Facebook Look Like This? Because Twitter Does.
Nov 23, 2:29AM
Back in April of this year, I put up a post with a simple question: Why Doesn't Facebook Look Like This? The post contained screenshots of a Facebook redesign that Japanese design firm iA had done for the company back in late 2006/early 2007. Facebook didn't end up using the ideas, but there's no denying that they looked great. In fact, looking over them again, they now look familiar. They look like New Twitter! Well, technically, the overall concept is a bit more like Twitter for iPad (with the three-pane view). But that shares many of the same design concepts as New Twitter, so they all sort of look alike. And if you remove the first pane on the Facebook concept, you essentially have New Twitter: a two-pane experience in which the update stream folds out into the conversation stream. It's uncanny.
Coupons.com Reaches $1 Billion In Coupons Printed, Growing At A Rate 5x That Of Newspapers
Nov 23, 2:27AM
For the first time ever in a year, digital coupon platform Coupons.com surpassed a billion dollars in printed coupon savings. A milestone for the company and the entire digital coupons industry, this growth further validates the burgeoning coupon and digital deals space which has been brought into the spotlight through the proliferation of sites like Groupon and Livingsocial.
Accel Partners' Extraordinary 2005 Fund IX
Nov 23, 1:38AM
In 2005 Accel Partners closed its $440 million Accel 9 Fund. That fund may not go down in history as the most profitable venture fund ever, but it will certainly be one to remember. Why? Facebook, for the most part. It is a stunning turnaround for a firm that many whispered was pretty much done earlier in the decade. In 2005 Accel invested a small part of that fund - just $12.7 million - in Facebook. In exchange they got 11% of the company, and a lot of derision around Silicon Valley for paying such a ridiculously high valuation for the fledgling startup. Fast forward to today, though, and no one's laughing any more. The firm sold part of that investment, less than 20%, at a $35 billion valuation. That brought in half a billion dollars or so in cash, paying back the entire capital base of the fund in one transaction.
WITN: Do American Investors Care about Chinese Human Rights? And Should They?
Nov 23, 1:26AM
A slight format change for Why Is This News? this week: no guest, just the two of us discussing this week's big technology stories from outside the valley. Much to Sarah's delight, China has been making news again - for good and ill. On the one hand, the government is still clamping down on dissident opinion - sending someone to jail for a 140 character retweet - but at the same time Chinese companies are in greater demand than ever amongst American investors. How does America reconcile its stance on human rights with its desire to profit from the world's most lucrative emerging market? And should it have to reconcile it all? We discuss that question and more. Video below. 
Chrome Extension Lets You Just Add Jimmy Wales
Nov 23, 12:32AM
It's the most wonderful time of the year! Yes, Christmas has come early again this year with the release of Jimmy Wales' annual appeal for Wikimedia Foundation donations. Wales' ubiquitous banner ad is now in its seventh year now and the company is shooting for $16 million dollars to keep their collaborative encyclopedia afloat ad free. 
Today's Lesson: Make Facebook Angry, And They'll Censor You Into Oblivion
Nov 22, 11:51PM
Facebook is well on its way to becoming the most popular way that people share links, photos, and other content with their friends. For many sites it's becoming a powerful new driver of traffic — get people to 'Like' your stuff, and Facebook's network effects will expose it to dozens of their friends. Just make sure not to do something that might make Facebook angry. Otherwise it might nuke every link to your site, choking off this river of traffic that you've worked so hard to build. That's the message Facebook sent today with its censorship of links to Lamebook, a humor site that posts lewd conversations spotted on the social network.
Google Voice Goes Down Yet Again
Nov 22, 10:47PM
Let the Fail Whale jokes begin. I've been using Google Voice on a daily basis for around a year now, and the last month has been by far the worst in terms of connectivity issues. Right now, it looks like the service is having yet another outage — both Michael Arrington and I are having problems, and other users on Twitter are having them as well. Outbound calls ring endlessly (and sometimes get a "This Call Cannot Be Completed" error message); inbound calls don't get through. We've reached out to Google to find out how many people are being affected and when we can expect a fix. Update: As of 4:10 PM PST Google says the problems have been resolved. Looks like there were at least 90 minutes of downtime.
iOS 4.2 Update Wipe Out Your iPhone Music? Try This.
Nov 22, 10:27PM
As you're probably well aware by now, iOS 4.2 (technically, iOS 4.2.1) has been released by Apple today. The update unifies iOS across the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad for the first time. But it also comes with an annoying bug that some users are seeing. After you update to the new OS, if you load the iPod (Music) app, you may see a message stating that your currently have "No Content" on the device. The problem is that many people do. For example, I have 7.8 gigabytes of audio on my iPhone, but after the update, none of it could be located. Luckily, there's an easy fix. 
Badgeville Investors Now Betting $2.5 Million That You'll Want To Check In To Websites
Nov 22, 10:26PM
TechCrunch Disrupt Audience Choice winner Badgeville announces a $2.5 million Series A round today in order to apply its badge-based game mechanics across the web. Investors in the round include eBay COO Maynard Webb, Palantir founder Joe Lonsdale, Pejman Nozad and Zain Khan from Felix Investments and senior executives from Paypal, Chegg, Shopping.com, Drugstore.com and Warner Music. Publishers who use Badgeville can set up an account, offer defined rewards and track visitor behavior with realtime analytics. Badgeville works for any company that has a community on its site: Anyone from gaming to education, to retail and more can use the service to reward people for checking into a site, taking tests or simply browsing through products. Virtually anything can correspond to a badge reward.
Google: Chrome OS Still Coming This Year (It Just Might Be In Beta Form)
Nov 22, 9:53PM
There's a lot of hoopla right now that Google's Chrome OS has been delayed and will miss the stated release date of "this year". Much of this is based off of the comment that Google CEO Eric Schmidt made last week at Web 2.0 Summit, in which he said that Chrome OS would be available sometime in "the next few months". So I asked Google today if they were still sticking with the "later this year" availability of Chrome OS — the answer I got? An enthusiastic "yep!" But just in case, I decided to follow up and ask if that meant an actual shipping product was coming or some test version of the OS? The answer there was much more murky. "We're not going into details at this point," is what I was told.
HP Beats The Street; Q4 Revenue Up 8 Percent To $33.3 Billion
Nov 22, 9:23PM
HP narrowly beat analyst expectations for Q4 earnings today, posting net revenue of $33.3 billion, up $2.5 billion or 8% from a year earlier. Non-GAAP diluted EPS was $1.33, up 17% from $1.14 in the prior-year period. Analysts expected revenue of $32.75 billion and earnings of $1.27 a share. For the quarter, non-GAAP operating profit was up 10% to $4.0 billion. For the 2010 fiscal year, net revenue came in at $126 billion, up 10% or $11.5 billion. The company said the yearly increase in revenue was spurred by growth in the commercial PC Clients and Printers segments of 20% and 22%, respectively, in the fourth quarter.
WordPress.com Rolls Out "Top Authors" Stats With A Bonus
Nov 22, 8:46PM
A couple weeks ago, we noted that Automattic was testing out a new Top Author stat area on the Site Stats page found on WordPress.com blogs. Today, they've rolled out the feature with a couple little bonuses. First of all, the widget itself has been prettied-up quite a bit from the one we shared. You'll now see author icons next to the author names. More importantly, you'll see a plus sign, which, when clicked, presents a drop down that shows you exactly what stories by that author are brining in traffic on any given day. WordPress.com also removed the number of posts area, after that caused some confusion. "the top spot is not about who wrote the most posts, it's about which author wrote the posts that got the most visits," they note.
9 Great Gifts For The Media Pirate In Your Life
Nov 22, 8:35PM
More and more households are cutting the cord and opting for legally or otherwise obtained content. This opens up a whole new world of potential holiday gifts! You could get your significant other any number of available media streamers to fancy HTPC remotes to even a subscription to various media services. But there's no need to aimlessly wander the aisles of Amazon in search of the perfect gift. We're rounded up the best in this category for you. Consider it one of your stocking stuffers from us.
Facebook Tries To Silence Lamebook: Removes Its Page, Blocks Links And Likes
Nov 22, 7:45PM
Another chapter in the Facebook vs. Lamebook, errmm, book: the social networking giant has confirmed to us that it has moved to diligently block all outgoing links to Lamebook.com, shut down the two-person company's Facebook Page (previously at facebook.com/thelamebook), and blocks visitors of the funny site from 'liking' posts to boot. For your background: Facebook wants the Austin startup to quit using the name Lamebook, deeming its activities under that name an "improper attempt to build a brand that trades off Facebook's popularity and fame", and filed a trademark infringement lawsuit last week. 
Foursquare Makes Its West Coast Office Official, Is Hiring
Nov 22, 6:54PM
Foursquare, which has famously worked out of the Square offices here in San Francisco for quite sometime, has finally bit the bullet and made its West Coast dalliance official today with a "We're heading west!" blog post. The location based startup will not be moving from San Francisco Chronicle Building where it's set up defacto shop since summer, and Square will be freeing up more room for the company to hire a full team of West Coast engineers in addition to its 35 current employees. With $21.4M in funding led by Andreesen, Foursquare has definitely got room to grow.
Track Consumer Opinions On Cars, Movies, Phones, and Vegetables On Amplicate
Nov 22, 6:16PM
There are a lot of sentiment analysis tools out there to track how people feel about any given topic under the Facebook/Twitter Sun. Newly-launched Amplicate bills itself as an opinion engine for consumers—a place where they can learn what other people really think about products, brands, people, places, and anything else. You can find out in realtime what are the top movies, car brands, mobile phones, tech blogs, or even vegetables people are talking about on Twitter and Facebook. (Blogs and other opionionated data sources will be added soon). People apparently love pumpkins right now (I wonder why). You can also add your own opinion to the site and vote up the best opinions, and chart the sentiment of any give keyword against the average for that topic.
NAVTEQ Study: Worst Traffic In U.S. On New York City Freeways
Nov 22, 5:09PM
NAVTEQ— the digital map, traffic and location data company— released a study today via its Traffic.com site and service naming New York City and its freeways as the most congested and traffic-delayed in North America. Freeways in Montreal, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Boston and Toronto cracked the top ten on this dubious list as well. Following New York on NAVTEQ Traffic.com's ranking of cities with the worst rush hour are: Washington D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Atlanta, Houston and Denver. This Thanksgiving holiday (Wednesday, November 24th to Sunday, November 28th) the American Automobile Association (AAA) and IHS Global Insight predict...
Google Launches Plugin That Fuses Microsoft Office With Google Docs
Nov 22, 5:00PM
For years, we've been hearing that the future of productivity is in the cloud. But while visions of real-time collaboration leave technophiles like me starry-eyed, it's a prospect that means one thing to millions of people: leaving the familiar turf of Microsoft Office 2003 or 2007 so that they can learn their way around yet another application, not to mention some pricey upgrades. But Google wants to let you have it both ways. Today, Google is launching a new plugin for Microsoft Office called Cloud Connect, which will tie Google Docs directly into the ubiquitous productivity suite, free of charge. Editing a document in Word? It'll automatically sync to your Google Docs account each time you hit 'Save'. Want to share a preview of your document without worrying about what file format your coworkers can open? Just send them a link to the Google Docs file. The plugin supports Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, and it's a big deal for Google's strategy with Docs. The new product is going live for Apps for Business customers today as part of a preview program (sign up here); everyone else will get it soon.
Is It Time To Start Thinking About the iPad 2?
Nov 22, 4:28PM
Spoiler Alert: Probably not, but rumors are already floating so let's see what we can make of them. With folks like TJ Maxx selling the cheapest iPad for $100 off, it seems like we're right at the edge of the next iPad iteration, probably occurring after CES in January. Apple obviously wants to milk holiday sales from her until after Kwanzaa, so there will be no new iPad before Q1 of 2011.
Google Will Delete UK Wi-Fi Data It 'Accidentally' Collected
Nov 22, 4:02PM
Google has taken the very brave decision to delete all the Wi-Fi data it had accidentally collected in the UK. The move signals the end to the long-running feud between Google and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The BBC notes that not all people will be happy with the decision, particularly those who wanted to see Google punished for collecting the data. Maybe a fine, maybe something more than this public embarrassment. But no, Google essentially gets off clean as a whistle, excepting the possible damage to its public image. You'll recall that Google has maintained since the very beginning that the data was collected accidentally.
Fangirl Oprah Says The iPad Is Her All-Time "Favorite Thing"
Nov 22, 3:31PM
For those of you who have never watched Oprah's "favorite things" episodes of her show, the talk show host airs an annual segment each holiday where she lists her most desired products and subsequently gifts these things to her studio audience. As this is the last season for her show, this year's segment (she held two in honor of the occasion), Oprah has made this year's "favorite things" one to remember. First off, she announced that the iPad is her "number one favorite thing ever." She says about the device, "words cannot describe how I feel for this device." She added that one her favorite apps for the iPad (besides her own app of course) is Scrabble. She then gifted each member of the audience an iPad (it's unclear how many people were in the audience but it is generally in the hundreds). We're also not sure what type of iPad she's giving her audience but because Oprah's such a generous gal, we're assuming it's the $829 64GB with Wifi and 3G).
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