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Flicksquare Sends Your Foursquare Check-In Photos To Flickr
Dec 28, 3:16AM
Inspired by a tweet from First Round Capital VC Charlie O'Donnell ("Can someone hack a Foursquare app that cc's my checkin photos to Flickr?"), developer Benny Wong has created Flicksquare, an app that takes advantage of Foursquare's recent enabling of photo check-in features, allowing you to also send your Foursquare photos to Flickr. While Foursquare gave lip service to working on the Flickr and Facebook export capability a couple of weeks ago, Wong has beat it to the punch. 
Footage Of Android's Revamped Music Player Leaks
Dec 28, 2:55AM
Earlier this week, some folks over on the XDA developers forum got their hands on a leaked test build of a revamped Android music player. This evening the footage was spotted by Engadget, and now the word is spreading like wildfire: Android is going to get a default music player that isn't totally mediocre. Alright, maybe I'm being a little harsh — the music player that ships with the stock build of Android can play music just fine. But it's also underwhelming, especially when compared to the iPhone's much slicker music application. It's drab and there's nothing like Apple's Cover Flow — but all that's changing.
Firefox On The iPhone? No (Though It Is Being Worked On). Another Mozilla Browser? Maybe.
Dec 28, 1:41AM
Continuing today's theme of scouring Quora for interesting nuggets of information, a Q&A about Mozilla's Firefox Mobile browser is of some interest. In response to the question: Will Firefox Mobile ever be released for iOS devices?, Mobile Firefox developer, Matt Brubeck, this morning gave his answer. First, he gave the obvious and fairly well-known official answer, "We have no plans to release the full Firefox browser for Apple iOS devices," Brubeck wrote. Why? Because the current iOS SDK agreement forbids apps like Firefox from including their own compilers and interpreters, Brubeck explains.
Search Etsy Listings By Color With Glancely
Dec 28, 12:59AM
Let's say you want to find that perfect quirky little black dress for New Year's? Like a mashup of Etsy, Flickr color search, and Google Instant, Glancely lets you search Etsy visually, sorting instant results by color and by price so you can scan through multiple green knit caps or purple socks or whatever handmade items your heart desires. Hold your mouse over an item to get a closer look and click on an item to go straight to its Etsy profile.
How Much Did It Cost AOL To Send Us Those CDs In The 90s? "A Lot!," Says Steve Case
Dec 27, 11:14PM
Like most little kids, I used to love getting things in the mail. And in the 1990s, I was lucky enough to get something new every single day. Sadly, 99.9 percent of those were install discs from AOL. If you lived in the United States in the 1990s, you remember these. They started as 3.5-inch floppies and transitioned into CDs. And I'm not exaggerating. I got one just about every single day. You've got mail, indeed. If nothing else, it was ingenious marketing for AOL. While people eventually started bitching about getting spammed by the discs, most of those people probably also installed them at least once and checked out the service. So how much did that cost AOL? "A lot," says CEO at the time, Steve Case. Case himself took to Quora recently to answer the question: How much did it cost AOL to distribute all those CDs back in the 1990's?
StyleHop's Hunt For Hot Fashion Comes To An End As It Heads To The DeadPool
Dec 27, 9:57PM
Over two years ago I wrote about a startup called StyleHop that set out to identify hot fashion items through the use of casual games — instead of having to fill out a survey or poll, it would generate fashion recommendations based on how you played these games. Unfortunately, that didn't work out (nor did the startup's second business plan) and today the company is announcing that it will be shutting its doors early next month. Some of the company's struggles stem from the financial meltdown of 2008 — founder David Reinke explains that after raising some seed money, StyleHop was planning to close a Series A in October 2008, which happened to be right when Sequoia's RIP: Good Times was making the rounds. 
Moot On 4Chan User Survey: "It's Total Garbage."
Dec 27, 8:51PM
Over the weekend, a interesting demographic survey of over 6000 4Chan users made the rounds of 4Chan, Reddit and Hacker News. While if anyone is going to skew a survey it's 4Chan users, the Google document with the responses given a lot of Internet ink, lauded for being "bracingly honest."
Many iPhone App Downloads Jumped 2-3X On Christmas
Dec 27, 7:03PM
It's beginning to look like Apple may have had a very, very merry Christmas. Not that it should surprise anyone given how many of their products were on year-end "best-of" lists. But some data that has started to come in over the past few days points to Apple's Christmas surge once again being led by the mainstays: the iPhone and iPod touch (and probably the iPad as well). Since yesterday, developers have been tweeting and messaging about huge spikes in downloads of their apps on Christmas. How huge? Just look at the chart in this post. We're talking two to three times normal numbers. That particular graph came thanks to data from MixPanel, a Y Combinator startup that specializes in iOS analytics. We've since confirmed with the company that on the apps they track, they're seeing the same "2-3x in app download/sales across the board."
EnergySavvy Raises $1.1 Million To Match Up Green Contractors, Rebates And Homeowners
Dec 27, 7:02PM
Seattle startup, EnergySavvy, closed a $1.1 million series-a investment according to the company's founder and chief executive Aaron Goldfeder. EnergySavvy's site and service motivates homeowners to reduce their power consumption through retrofit-variety improvements. NorthWest Energy Angels led the round, joined by several investors in the Pacific Northwest, including Geoff Entress, Andy Liu, and aQuantive alumni Mike Galgon and Karl Siebrecht (the latter two are on EnergySavvy's board).
Apple, Please Hurry Up And Ship Those iPhones To Verizon Already
Dec 27, 5:02PM
Like many people, I've been holding out for the iPhone to arrive on Verizon before upgrading. It's been a long wait, and now that my wife has an iPhone 4 she got for Christmas (on AT&T), my iPhone 3GS is really starting to look dated. Fortunately, it looks like Apple's component suppliers in Taiwan are gearing up to ship 5 million to 6 million CDMA iPhones to Verizon in the first quarter, according to DigitTimes. Verizon has a CDMA mobile network, as opposed to AT&T's GSM-based network. So if you know the components, you know which networks the phones will work on. We first reported last August that Apple was developing a CDMA iPhone set for a January ship-date. The DigiTimes report is the latest piece of evidence that this will indeed happen.
The Enterprise of One: How New Entrepreneurs Are Taking Advantage of the Great Reset
Dec 27, 4:02PM
While the economic climate in the United States remains uncertain, economists and pundits alike continue to define our recent fiscal crisis with words like recession, downturn and depression. But labeling America's current financial woes should not be the focus for Americans as the overall economy struggles to free itself from its malaise. What really matters is how the current circumstances affect you and what they mean to your future. In his book, The Great Reset, Richard Florida calls periods like the one currently facing the United States "Great Resets." There have been two such periods before the current one, and both of these earlier downturns changed our culture in profound ways. We all know the stories of mass unemployment and hardships suffered by American citizens during the Great Depression. But what often becomes lost in these stories is that a reset plays out as a process and not as much as an event. It represents a shift in values, economic tastes and preferences, business structures, and industries. In fact, it is a fundamental change in our culture as a whole. I like to think of it as cleaning out a closet — the world rids itself of old, outdated principles to make way for the new.
Carl's Jr. and Hardee's Lead The Way In Interactive iPhone Check-In Social Rewards
Dec 27, 3:51PM
Although I would rather die in a pit, bitten by rats and my flesh taken by necrosis than eat at Hardee's or Carl's Jr, you have to admit that they do have a compelling social media marketing plan. CKE Restaurants, owners of Carl's Jr and Hardee's and famous for making food that is less popular than McDonalds, have created a location-based "coupon game" that allows you to spin a wheel to win valuable food prizes and potentially life-saving antibiotics for after the meal. Here's what Brad Haley, marketing head of CKE, has to say: "In a nutshell, what we're doing is dragging the antiquated punch-card type of loyalty programs into the 21st century," said Brad Haley, executive vice president of marketing for Carl's Jr. and Hardee's. "We are not only offering a GPS-driven check-in app to keep track of customer visits digitally, but we are offering guaranteed rewards, a restaurant locator, a social media interface, streaming videos, menus, nutritional information and more."Considering the closest Burger King ever got to a digital plan was Subservient Chicken, this is pretty heady stuff for the fast food industry.
East Coast Blizzard Could Boost Online Spending While Brick And Mortar Stores Suffer
Dec 27, 3:03PM
By now many of you may have heard about the massive blizzard that is hitting the Northeast region of the United States over the next few days, bringing as much as two feet of snow to some areas. This, of course, is bad news for brick and mortar retailers, who have been advertising after-Christmas sales for some time now. The post-holiday shopping period has become as popular for massive discounts and sales for both online retailers and in-stores, similar to the period after Thanksgiving. The NPD Group's retail analyst Marshal Cohen said today that it will take two to three weeks longer for retailers to recover from the loss of sales thanks to the snowstorm. He adds that with next weekend marking New Year's day, more consumers are likely to be distracted from in-store shopping, also possibly causing a loss in sales. The silver lining to all of this is that online retailers could see a significant boost in sales thanks to the snowstorm. Home-bound consumers who are still looking for post-holiday deals can access them on retailers online sites or on e-commerce platforms like Amazon or eBay.
What People Searched For On BitTorrent In 2010: Mostly Movies, Porn
Dec 27, 2:59PM
TorrentFreak has released the BitTorrent Zeitgeist 2010, a list of the 100 most searched-for phrases and keywords in 2010 on one of the most popular public BitTorrent indexes, KickassTorrents.com. Movies are super popular of course, with "Inception" topping the overall ranking. Also in the top 10: "Iron Man 2″, "Avatar", "Despicable Me" and "Clash of the Titans". According to TorrentFreak, "Avatar" was also the most-pirated movie in 2010. And evidently also in the top 10 of the BitTorrent Zeitgeist 2010: searches for "xxx" and "porn".
On Cyber Monday, Amazon Sold 158 Items Per Second (13.7 Million In Total)
Dec 27, 2:12PM
Amazon this morning announced that on its peak day for this year, November 29, customers ordered more than 13.7 million items worldwide across all product categories, which translates to a - self-proclaimed - record-breaking 158 items per second. November 29 was, of course, Cyber Monday in the United States, the Monday immediately following Black Friday.
Kindle 3 Beats Harry Potter Book As Bestselling Product In Amazon's History
Dec 27, 2:08PM
This isn't a big surprise. Amazon has just released a statement reporting that the new, third-generation Kindle has now surpassed 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' as the best-selling product in Amazon's history. Of course, Amazon doesn't reveal the total number of Kindles sold (Bloomberg recently reported that 8 million Kindles will be sold this year compared to 2.4 million units sold in 2009). On Christmas Day, Amazon says that more people turned on new Kindles for the first time, downloaded more Kindle Buy Once, Read Everywhere apps, and purchased more Kindle books than on any other day in history. And Amazon's worldwide fulfillment network shipped over 9 million units across all product categories.
IncrediMail Inks New Two Year Deal With Google, But Are They Too Dependent?
Dec 27, 1:58PM
IncrediMail, an Israel-based, NASDAQ-listed company that develops email clients and desktop software, has inked a new 2-year agreement with Google, which will go into effect January 1, 2011. This is good news for the software company - the partnership between the two firms is quite crucial for IncrediMail's bottom line. The relationship between Incredimail and Google has always been a little rocky, to say the least. Three years ago, Google terminated its AdSense partnership with the company, sending IncrediMail's shares down more than 45 percent.
Skype's Christmas Present: A Patent Infringement Lawsuit
Dec 27, 10:27AM
Poor Skype. A mere day after its key consumer service suffered a major outage, affecting tens of millions of users for hours on end, a patent infringement lawsuit against the company was filed in the United States. Plaintiff is the obscure Gradient Enterprises, a non-practicing entity (also lovingly known as an "obnoxious patent troll" in some parts). The patent-in-suit is U.S. patent no. 7,669,207, entitled "METHOD FOR DETECTING, REPORTING AND RESPONDING TO NETWORK NODE-LEVEL EVENTS AND A SYSTEM THEREOF". 
All Household Appliances Should Be Made By Apple
Dec 27, 7:15AM
Like many of you, I am visiting family this holiday season and nowhere does gadget snobbery become more apparent than during gatherings with loved ones. Aside from the ubiquitous "Whose phone is faster?" question, which in my case led to an email race at Christmas dinner, there is endless potential for the marginally tech savvy to show off during the holidays. But all the superiority gleaned from being able to load non-iTunes purchases into your mom's iPod is tossed out the window when faced with a relative's overly complex coffee machine, an arbitrarily complicated alarm clock and two separate indecipherable TV remotes for one TV.
2011: The Year Android Explodes! Killing Innocent Women, Children, And iPhone Users
Dec 27, 2:35AM
The top headlines today got me thinking back to 2008. Back then, I was writing for VentureBeat, and we used to talk quite a bit internally about iPhone versus Android. Yes, even back then it was a hot debate. And yes, back then, I was obviously in the iPhone camp. And this annoyed those who saw the promise of Android. "But Android will eventually become much larger than the iPhone," was the basic argument used against me. But it wasn't really against me. Even back then, I would openly acknowledge that Android would eventually far surpass the iPhone in terms of units shipped. I mean, how could it not? And so Fortune's headline today that "2011 will be the year Android explodes", has been a long time coming. In his article, Seth Weintraub brings up a number of excellent points about how exactly Android is poised to grow even faster in 2011 than it already did in 2010. Though I suspect a number of his points paint too rosy a picture in terms of the outcome of such downward pressures on costs. I find it very hard to believe, for example, that the carriers (in the U.S., in particular) won't find a way to screw us in 2011. It's an artform they've perfected over the past two decades. But on paper, at least, it all sounds great.
The Unwelcome Return of Platform Dependencies
Dec 26, 7:01PM
Editor's Note: The following guest post is written by a Silicon Valley CEO. Frank Dupree is a pen name In the late 1990s, the rise of the browser was supposed to usher in an era of unprecedented opportunity for startups. A great part of that increased opportunity came as a result of the significant reduction in platform dependencies. No longer did the users' operating system dictate their access to services or information. Even a behemoth like Microsoft was fighting hand-to-hand combat with small startups for the first time in decades. Fast forward ten years, and it's 1985 all over again. But even as the risks of dependencies become better understood by startups and investors, the ascent of Facebook and Twitter seem to point to an ever increasing number of startups with significant business dependencies. Recent changes to both Facebook and Twitter show that neither startups nor their investors can assume much when it comes to support for a given API in the future. Today, even the OS seems subject to dramatic shifts in record time. One only need look to Apple's iOS to see how dramatic and unpredictable developments can change the landscape for startups, customers and investors. Today, most startups build with significant external platform dependencies, whether it is Facebook, iOS, Google Apps or Twitter. There are a few types of dependencies. A simple distinction might be to call a dependency on a platform symbiotic or parasitic. Symbiotic dependencies are those for which both sides agree to terms of the dependency and for which both sides seem to derive a benefit. Developers on Facebook's platform, for example. The most successful here being Zynga, which grew completely and—probably for the team and its investors—nervously within the Facebook ecosystem.
The Top 40 iPhone Apps of 2010
Dec 26, 2:30PM
The iTunes App Store is huge. 300,000 apps huge. I've watched this monster start from nothing and turn into a billion-dollar industry in only a few short years. We've been approaching this point for some time now, but it's more apparent than ever that app exposure is of critical importance. A healthy majority of iOS app users discover new applications directly from their device as opposed to using iTunes. If you look specifically at the iPhone, the amount of real estate for discovery is only available to a very small percentage of the total apps. There are currently 20 overall categories, with Games offering an additional 20 subcategories. Each subcategory is broken into three lists and displays a max of 100 apps on the iPhone. Throw in a small number from the Top 25 and Featured lists and you wind up with roughly 12,000 apps being shown at one time. This works out to only about 4% of all apps that receive visibility. One can browse beyond this number on iTunes, but that quickly becomes an overwhelming, laborious task. 
What Facebook Can Give Back To The Web
Dec 26, 4:28AM
In Time's Person of the Year 2010 article on Mark Zuckerberg, one fact shouts out to me above all others: 1 in 4 Web pages in the United States is now viewed behind the walls of Facebook. I enjoy Facebook and would be happy spending a quarter of my Web life there, if I could leave Facebook for the other 75%. But even if I log out completely, most of the Web's most popular sites are tied to Facebook, through Share or Like or Connect buttons. Facebook is not just another Web site: it is a service that "Facebookizes" every Web site it touches, making me bring all of my friends with me, like luggage. It's disconcerting being on a Web site that I'm used to browsing anonymously, and seeing my friends' faces there. And so I have a holiday wish: Facebook, let me dance if I want to, let me leave my friends behind. For the last twenty years, we've enjoyed One Web that is united through the common policy of letting us be whoever we want to be, wherever we go. One Web allows us at times to be cooler than we are in real life, aspirational, anonymous, and/or fanatical about a particular subject. And that is why the Web is wonderful.
With a New Version, FLUD Hopes to Take on Pulse And Flipboard as Your iPad News Reader
Dec 26, 3:40AM
News aggregators and RSS feeds have been around for awhile now, but only with the rapid proliferation of touch technology on mobile devices and tablets, have we started moving closer to a truly appealing news feed experience. For the average web user, the traditional staid design and text-and-headline-heavy interface of the RSS feed and feed aggregators have offered user experiences to be endured rather than enjoyed. News apps for both the iPhone and iPad, like Pulse and Flipboard, have garnered quite a bit of attention of late for disrupting the aggregation and RSS reader experience by offering up new, intriguing ways of representing data. But when it comes to news consumption, I'd rather look to feeds emanating from editorially directed and curated magazines and websites, rather than a template populated by Facebook and Twitter such as Flipboard—or a design and user experience that is a bit sexier than Pulse—and I'd love to have quality versions on my iPhone (that have true staying power). This is why I've recently become a fan of FLUD, which allows users to plug in feeds from favorite sites (like TechCrunch, ahem) and read, peruse, and share articles through a neatly-presented, tile-based interface—for free. And unlike Flipboad, FLUD is on both the iPad and iPhone—and it's coming soon to Android and the desktop.
Santa Brings Bump Its Biggest Day Of Sharing Ever, Swapping 20 Photos A Second
Dec 26, 3:36AM
As every iPhone developer knows, Christmas Day is the busiest day of the year, as millions of people unwrap their shiny new iPhones and promptly go on an app download spree (I'm sure Android sees a similar phenomenon). Which means it isn't terribly surprising when Bump, a Sequoia-backed startup that makes it easy to share data between phones, says that today is the biggest day of traffic it's ever had. Then again, the fact that people are currently sharing 20 photos per second is quite impressive. Bump CEO David Lieb says that Bump's traffic is currently 2.4 times as high as it was a week ago, and that the service is on pace for 2 million shared items today, with a peak load of 30 items per second (in addition to swapping photos, you can share music, contact information, and calendar events using Bump).
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