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Isle Of Tune Lets You Compose Music By Um, City Planning
Dec 19, 4:03AM
Need something to do while waiting for your copy of Farmville for Dummies to arrive? Isle of Tune is the latest in viral web distraction, built on the side by London-based interactive director Jim Hall. Isle of Tune lets you create whole songs by building a little town using objects like streetlamps, houses and trees to make sounds. 
Instagram Gains Suggested Users, 7 New Languages, And Yes, 2 New Filters
Dec 19, 3:53AM
An update to Instagram, the popular photo-sharing app for the iPhone, has just hit the App Store. And while the version numbering (1.0.6) may not make it seem like a big update, there are a few notable things about the latest version. First of all, in an effort to drive more social connections for new users, they've added a suggested users list. Second, they've added seven new languages (Japanese, German, Russian, French, Chinese, Italian, and Spanish). Third, they've fixed a number of bugs and increased performance. And finally, for the first time, they've also added two new filters into the mix.
Google Quietly Kills Their Creepy Latitude Location Alerts Feature
Dec 19, 3:28AM
Back in February, we noted a sort of creepy feature of Google Latitude that was annoying some users: Location Alerts. The beta feature actually launched alongside the Location History feature the previous November, but it didn't get a lot of attention at the time. Then people started getting emails notifying them where their friends were — without asking for such emails. Yeah, a little creepy. So it shouldn't be too surprising to hear that Google has quietly killed the feature. The only place Google noted this is on this page on their support site. As they write:
Former Yahoo Engineers Shed Light On Why Delicious And Other Acquisitions Failed
Dec 19, 1:53AM
As we've written a number of times over the past few days, Yahoo appears to be in complete disarray. Following layoffs at the company this week, a leaked memo revealed that Yahoo is "sunsetting" a number of products includes Delicious (bought by Yahoo in 2005), MyBlogLog (bought by Yahoo in 2007), Yahoo! Bookmarks, Yahoo! Picks. Other products are planning to be "merged" such as Upcoming (bought by Yahoo in 2005), Fire Eagle, and others. A day later, Yahoo announced that it would be finding a new home for Delicious, passively aggressively blaming the press for the way that users found out about the news. There have been many more fumbles, which you can read here. So how did it get to this point? A Quora thread with posts by a number of former Yahoo engineers and employees sheds some light on why the acquisitions of web services startups like Delicious and Upcoming failed at the company. 
The @Mention Cloud
Dec 18, 9:40PM
Many social aggregators have mined citations to produce digests of trending stories and multimedia. Google Reader support in the new Flipboard and Delicious' apparent folding are two sides of the same coin, a last ditch effort to ignore the impact of the social stream on the InBox. Where RSS used to capture so much of the flow of information, now social signals determine not only whether but when items reach the InBox. @mentions win the race to the InBox. You might think just focusing on @mentions would produce a fatuously egocentric view of the stream. But in fact that's exactly what we all do. Techmeme, for all its technology and human editorial, is still Gabe Rivera's view of who's talking about him, his issues, his view of what constitutes interesting material. And judging by his continuing success, if it's all about Gabe, it's all about us too. Us is remarkably stable in its basic parameters of interest. So-called tech news is really about the architecture and evolution of the technology that @mentions us.
Online Video In 2011: Connected TVs, Social Recommendations, And Standards Wars
Dec 18, 8:00PM
Editor's note: Online video is going through many changes as people begin to connect their TVs to the Internet and social sharing over Facebook and Twitter influence what people watch as much as search. In this guest post, Jeremy Allaire, founder and CEO of online video platform Brightcove, gives his view of where online video is going next year. Allaire's last guest post for us was on the standards war in mobile video formats. Web video is just getting started, and 2011 promises to be yet another year of transformation in the online video landscape. The stage is set for mainstream connected TVs, Over-the-top adoption, and even more videos watched directly streamed from website. Here are the five biggest trends in online video that will play out in significant ways for end-users and publishers alike. 1. Connected TV Platform Wars The past year saw the definitive emergence of platform wars in the handheld computing landscape. This year will see those wars expand into new territory, the Connected TV platform market. Input 1 on the TV is the new homepage or start screen. We should expect that the battles will look incredibly similar to the market that emerged for smartphones over the past several years, but with some other entrenched players. Google vs. Apple vs. the dominant TV brands. In fact, these platforms will largely be based on a similar architecture, offering app and content publishers a common model for creating device-oriented applications and Web experiences. Apple will ship an iOS-based Apple TV display and will open up Apple TV to third-party apps beyond Netflix. Developers will have a common model for building apps across the phone, tablet and TV, as well as a suite of new APIs for phone and tablet apps to interact with TV apps (think remote control type activities, gestures for games, etc.). Its platform will also support HTML5 with a set of design standards for TV Web 10-foot experiences.
Gillmor Gang 12.18.10 (TCTV)
Dec 18, 8:00PM
The Gillmor Gang took advantage of the presence of multiple Android lovers to provide a visceral demonstration of the anti-Jobs reality distortion field. Namely, that no matter how many new Android phones hit the market at 2 week intervals, none is actually better than the iPhone. Michael Arrington went a step further, declaring that Android tablets were destined for instant has-been status once the next iPad ships in February or so. Robert Scoble succeeded in proving Flipboard may be Steve Jobs' favorite iPad app but still remains useless until they open up. Danny Sullivan wondered how you get into their Tech media section, but why he would care with his iPad sitting unused most of the time. Gillmor's theory is that the death of Delicious at the hands of the drowning Yahoo represents capitulation to Twitter's domination of what once was called bookmarking and now social citation. Kevin Marks saw a lineage between Delicious, Facebook, and Twitter, but Arrington was more interested in details on a story his team was writing about an alleged Salesforce investment in Seesmic. Scoble stepped in with a demo of a new app that pulled historical data from these and other social apps into a timeline. Thanks to those who showed up and especially those who didn't.
Startup Sherpa: Serving Two Masters And Changing Consumer Behavior (Part II)
Dec 18, 6:30PM
Yesterday, we debuted Part I of Startup Sherpa, a new show with angel investor (Founder Collective) and Hunch founder Chris Dixon talking to Stickybits CEO Billy Chasen about when is the right time for a startup to pivot. Today, in Part II above, Dixon and Chasen discuss how startups can serve two different masters (in Stickybits' case, consumers and advertisers). With consumer mobile apps there is always a tension between pleasing advertisers and driving away users. It is a delicate balance.
Google eBooks: Is That All There Is?
Dec 18, 5:28PM
Two weeks ago the Google eBookstore finally launched, and the world was briefly amazed. Google Editions, as it was known until launch, was the book world's Duke Nukem Forever: vaporware for seven years, depending on how you count. Its actual emergence was like the birth of a unicorn. A mewling, misshapen, half-baked unicorn. Some background: "In 2004 Google digitized the entire contents of several major US libraries, and made a lot of material available on-line, mostly in snippet form as part of its Google Book Search program. It did this without the consent of rightsholders," to quote an April 2009 email from my agents. (I'm the author of half-a-dozen books, mostly technothrillers.) The resulting legal jihad remains unresolved, and Google's dream of scanning, indexing, linking, and selling the contents of every library in the world has fragmented into a hodgepodge that includes their Book Search, Library Project, Books Partner Program, and now eBookstore, all of them semi-intermingled. Confused yet?
This Weekend: CrunchGear's Stocking Stuffer Giveaway
Dec 18, 4:00PM
If you haven't noticed, we've been away great stuff for the past few days and this weekend is no exception. Today and tomorrow we're giving away a whole slew of exciting prizes including, but not limited to, lasers, iPad gear, and assorted sundries. You will love what we have on offer this weekend. Without further ado: Check CrunchGear's Stocking Stuffer Giveaways and keep checking Saturday and Sunday.
Chile's Grand Innovation Experiment
Dec 18, 3:00PM
Regions all over the world have spent millions—sometimes billions—of dollars trying to create their own Silicon Valley. They drank the same Kool-Aid and used the same recipe: start with a research university; build a fancy tech park next it; give tax breaks to chosen companies to locate in the park; attract venture capital by offering matching investments; and watch the magic happen. Unfortunately, the magic never happened, anywhere. All government-sponsored (top-down) tech-cluster efforts—everywhere in the world—either have failed or are on life support (though some pretend they are not). That's because they all used the wrong ingredients. It isn't real estate, universities, or VCs that make innovation happen; it is entrepreneurs. To create a tech center like Silicon Valley, you need to first attract smart entrepreneurs from all over the world. Then you have to create entrepreneurial networks; instill a spirit of risk-taking and openness; and build mentoring systems. You also need to provide seed financing to startups. The money is easy; everything else requires a change in culture that usually takes decades.
(The) Greatest Thing Facebook Ever Did Was Drop The "The"
Dec 18, 3:55AM
Or so argues this music video about ex-Facebook president Sean Parker's mythical contribution to humanity. Behold as a goofily dressed and bewigged Parker sings about the apocryphal moment (as seen in The Social Network) where he convinced founder Mark Zuckerberg to drop the "the" in TheFacebook and just go with Facebook. 
Yahoo's Head Of Engineering For Communication Products, An 11 Year Vet, Latest To Sign Off
Dec 18, 3:31AM
At the risk of sounding like we're kicking a dead horse — then lighting it on fire — we've been able to confirm another significant departure from Yahoo this evening. Raj Vemulapalli, Yahoo's Head of Engineering for Real Time Communications, is leaving, the company has confirmed to us. Vemulapalli, amazingly, has been with Yahoo for over 11 years. Over that span he has worked his way up the engineering ranks, culminating in his position leading some of the few products that have been bright spots for Yahoo in recent years. That includes the massively-used Yahoo Messenger product, and all of the other messaging integration across the various Yahoo products.
Another Key Feature Of Google +1: Massive-Scale Social Video Conferencing
Dec 18, 2:58AM
Over the past few weeks, we've been able to dig up a bunch of details about Google's secret forthcoming social service. The service, previously codenamed "Emerald Sea" but currently being called "+1", essentially seems to be a toolbar that exists along the top of Google's various properties to allow for easy sharing. We even were able to snag a picture of it. But there's also quite a bit more to it, based on what we've been hearing. For one thing, we've been hearing a bit of talk about specific mobile applications, which may or may not be called "Loop" — after one of the key features of +1 (think: groups). But another feature of +1 is apparently large-scale video conferencing.
Don't: Parade In Front Of TechCrunch HQ Wearing A Chicken Costume
Dec 18, 2:13AM
Late last week, a handful of TechCrunch staff noticed something strange going on in front of our headquarters in San Francisco: there was giant, creepy-looking chicken pacing back and forth in the street, holding a sign over its head that said "TechCrunch Dont Be Chicken, Check Out DoDont". Laura bravely went outside to scope out the situation — she returned to say that the guy had already been out there for hours, and that this was actually the second day he'd been walking around TCHQ (nobody noticed him the first day). So, I did what any other fearless reporter would do: I grabbed my Flip camera and started talking to the giant chicken. As you'll learn in the video above, the chicken in question happens to be one of the founders of DoDont, a site that invites users to voice their recommendations on a binary scale: "Do" something, or "Don't".
Ask a VC: Kairouz on Canada, Splurging on Wine and the Surging NYC Scene (TCTV)
Dec 18, 2:03AM
Habib Kairouz of Rho Ventures was my guest on Ask a VC this week, and as I mentioned earlier this week, he's had a range of Web exits in the last ten years. He's also seen tremendous changes in his home tech market of New York. It's gone from silly Silicon Alley days to tumbleweeds and now to a thriving hub that's stolen Boston's East Coast venture thunder, at least when it comes to consumer Internet companies. In this episode we talk about what New York finally got right, why Rho has offices in Canada, the value of an incubator versus bootstrapping and why Kairouz doesn't think there's as much opportunity in online beer as there is in wine. (Note: Apologies on my audio. We had some issues, but Kairouz is the one answering the questions and his is just fine.)
Yahoo Just Killed… Consumer Confidence In Them
Dec 18, 1:41AM
It has been fairly amazing to watch this Yahoo "sunsetting" news over the past 48 hours. It seemed to go from a bad leak, to huge backlash, to PR disaster, to confusion, to worse PR disaster. Now Yahoo, by way of Delicious (the most prominent service being "sunset"), has responded by lashing out at all the press for the coverage of the fiasco. Danny Sullivan just did a great job of ripping them a new one for this nonsense misdirection. But the issue actually goes much deeper. Yahoo may not be killing Delicious, but they have killed something else: consumer confidence in them.
Zappos Expands To A San Francisco Office, Is Hiring
Dec 18, 12:32AM
Online shoes and accessories retailer Zappos announced an expansion and a move to San Francisco on its employee blog this morning, in a post called "Zappos IP, Inc. Is Looking For 'A Few Good Developers'" "We are very excited to be opening up a small San Francisco office. We're jazzed to go back to the Zappos Family's Bay Area roots and surround ourselves by the many amazing people and companies who make the world a happier place through technology, arts and culture.The San Francisco office in some ways will be a mini-start-up within the Zappos Family."
Google To Expand And Market Movie Streaming Service In 2011
Dec 17, 11:18PM
Google is expanding its feature film streaming service, says a source who's been briefed on the product. The service will likely be an expansion of the current movie rental/streaming test launched by Google earlier this year. Announcements should be made in early 2011, says our source, and will be heavily marketed. Ex-Netflix executive Robert Kyncl, who was hired by Google earlier this year, is negotiating studio deals, says our source. The service will initially focus on top tier films and to focus marketing efforts there, including pairing with Google TV. A deeper library will be added over time. Existing rental titles are certainly not new release top tier films.
Confirmed: Tumblr Raises $30 Million
Dec 17, 10:47PM
For the past several weeks there's been reports of Tumblr raising a boatload of money. That culminated today in an a SEC filing with numbers on the round. $25 million to be exact. It look like Spark Capital, Sequoia, Union Square Ventures, and Next New Network's Fred Seibert participated in the round according to the filing.
Dropbox Hits 1.0, Adds Features
Dec 17, 9:57PM
I'd like to extend hearty congratulations to the Dropbox team for doing what many web-based companies might avoid for years on end: putting out a 1.0 product. It's a bit arbitrary, of course — this useful and popular service has been running great for quite a long time now, and the "beta" tag has always seemed mysterious to me. But they've done what they felt needed to be done to justify dropping it, and the improvements are substantial. The most important new feature is probably the selective syncing: you can now select which computers sync with which folders, so you don't need to worry about your off-site HD footage backup saturating the shabby wi-fi at a coffee shop.
Seesmic: From Near Death to Enterprise Chat Spoiler?
Dec 17, 9:56PM
We're hearing that Salesforce is investing in Seesmic's next round of venture funding, along with other investors. We don't yet know how much or at what valuation but the tie up is interesting. Just a few months ago Mike was saying Twitter deciding to compete with developers had essentially killed Seesmic. That may be true for consumer chats, but enterprise is another matter. And between Yammer's new round of funding and Salesforce's Chatter product, enterprise chat is heating up. Might Seesmic be a spoiler? The two have already been chummy, with Seesmic integrating into Chatter and Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff appearing on stage together multiple times. We'll post more details when we hear them. (Disclosure: This may come as a surprise since Mike is so hard on Loic, Seesmic and the French generally, but he was an early investor in the company.)
Google Takes Another Big Step to Retain Employees: Autonomous Business Units
Dec 17, 9:22PM
There's a lie that companies and entrepreneurs tell themselves in order to commit to an acquisition. Oh, we're not going to change anything! We're just going to give you more resources to do what you've been doing even better! Yeah! They bought us for a reason, why would they ruin things? It usually works for a little while, but big company bureaucracy-- whether it's HR, politics or just endless meetings-- almost always creeps in. It's a law of nature: Big companies just need certain processes to run and entrepreneurs hate those processes because they stifle nimble innovation. Google has a new policy to fight it, according to several sources close to the company. A memo was reportedly sent out a few weeks ago to certain Google business and country heads talking about a new policy of "autonomous units" within the company. It's being referred to in parts of the company as the "NYT effect," a reference to this New York Times article that criticized how bloated and bureaucratic Google had become, citing it as a big reason Google was losing employees to smaller companies.
TC Disrupt People's Choice Winner Miso Media Raises Funding From Google Ventures
Dec 17, 9:19PM
At this year's TechCrunch Disrupt SF event, a small startup called Miso Media won the People's Choice award for one of the niftiest iPad apps I've seen: it turns your iOS device into a guitar teacher. And it apparently wowed a lot of other people too, because today the startup is announcing that it's closed a $600K seed funding round led by Google Ventures, with participation from angel investors including Keith Rabois and Laura Ziskin. One cool thing to note: Rabois was actually one of the judges when Miso Media presented on stage at Disrupt. Miso's app, which is called Miso Music, still isn't out yet — CEO Aviv Grill says that it was submitted to the App Store earlier this month and it should be coming soon. But I got to try it briefly at Disrupt, and it definitely impressed me. Unlike most guitar tablature applications, which simply display the song you're playing and play it back in a MIDI format, Miso's application will actually listen to the notes you're playing and scroll the music accordingly. It's really slick.
TechCrunch Surges To Lead In UCSF Challenge, Crushes Hopes Of Twelve Year Old
Dec 17, 9:06PM
This whole UCSF Children's Hospital challenge with Causes got kind of rough in the end. A bunch of individuals and organizations have been competing to raise donations - whoever got the most individual donors gets to name a room in the new hospital. Things got so heated, for example, that we sort of lashed out at HP. For that I'm sorry. But you should have seen the ribbing going on via email. Zynga came in and crushed everyone with, um, more than 160,000 individual donations. Everyone else was in the hundred donation range, so the hospital decided to name two winners to keep things going. Until yesterday we were a distant 12th on the list with 74 donations. But we asked everyone attending our two TRON screenings last night to make a donation to the hospital as well, bringing in an additional 784 new donors and $7,030. That brings us nicely to the lead, crushing the hopes of Paddy O'Brien, a 12-year-old bone cancer patient now in remission (pictured above), who would have otherwise won. He has 425 total donations, meaning we've beat him and now get to name the room whatever we want. Victory is sweet. 
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