In case there was still any doubt about the long-rumored “GDrive’s” existence, a page now appearing on Google’s search results offers a pretty clear indication that something is going on. On Writely.com – the online word processing service Google acquired in 2006 –  a test page is now appearing with a title that reads “test page for Platypus (GDrive).”

Well, there you have it.

Currently, the full title of the search result reads “Writely – The Web Word Processor – test page for Platypus (GDrive)” and the URL is www.writely.com/BasePage.aspx. Of course, when you click through, the link takes you to an error page of sorts, with a message reading “Unknown action. Please check the URL and try again.”

It should be noted that the www.writely.com domain itself redirects to Google Docs.

Platypus, for those unaware, was the codename for GDrive used internally at Google until it was killed off in 2008. But recent findings have hinted that Google Drive is making a return. For example, in September, MG reported that code found in Chromium (the open source Web browser which serves as the testing ground for Google Chrome) referenced the non-public URL drive.google.com.

Later that month, a screenshot from a presentation at a Google-sponsored event showed something that looks very much like Google Drive, complete with text that even reads “My Google Drive.”

From MG’s earlier reports, the forthcoming service is essentially a rebranding of Google Docs with an accompanying desktop software component, similar to Dropbox. When exactly Google will finally launch Google Drive, after years of waiting, is still unknown. But at least we know they’re working on it.

Thanks Dan Behun

If you search for “Yelp” on Google from your mobile phone the top paid result, even above the organic result to Yelp.com, takes you to Zagat.  I am only seeing this on mobile searches. While it is a common practice for companies to advertise against their competitors’ names in search advertising, in this case it is Google itself which is bidding for that search term and taking the top spot.  A classy move.

Google bought Zagat last September to shore up its local reviews for Google Places, which is its answer to Yelp.  Google Places and Yelp have a contentious history, with Google borrowing liberally from yelp to help build up its local directory.  Now with Zagat, Google finally has a large corpus if its own review, in addition to the ones people are slowly adding to Google Places.  By redirecting some of the people who are looking for Yelp to Zagat, Google is keeping up its pattern of punching Yelp in the face every chance it gets.

Remember, at one point Google almost bought Yelp back in 2009.  But that didn’t work out, and the gloves have been off ever since.  (Sound familiar, Groupon?)

Google is really hitting Yelp where it hurts.  During an antitrust hearing last September, Yelp revealed that 75 percent of its traffic comes from Google in one way or another. A big chunk of that is from organic search.  If Yelp is not the top spot when someone searches for “Yelp” that could have some impact on Yelp’s traffic.  Yelp might have to respond by bidding on its own name on AdWords.  One way or another, Google’s aggressiveness in pushing Zagat is going to cost Yelp.






Crunchbase





YELP
ZAGAT
GOOGLE






Company:
Yelp


Website:
yelp.com


Launch Date:
January 7, 2004


Funding:
$56M



Another company founded in 2004 by two former PayPal employees.

Yelp is a local reviews website covering the United States, Canada, the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands; Yelp drew an audience of more than 50 million unique visitors in March 2011.

Yelpers have written more than 18 million local reviews, making Yelp the leading local guide for real word-of-mouth on everything from boutiques and mechanics to restaurants and dentists.






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Company:
Zagat


Website:
zagat.com



ZAGAT.com features over 30,000 of the best places to eat, drink, and stay worldwide. The site is published by and based on the renowned 30 years, Zagat Survey (a survey-based restaurant guide).

ZAGAT.com provides access to ratings and reviews for restaurants, nightspots, hotels and attractions in hundreds of cities worldwide. It features menus, photos, virtual tours, updates on the latest openings and closings with ZAGAT BUZZ and connect with other ZAGAT.com members in our bustling Discussion Boards.






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Company:
Google


Website:
google.com


Launch Date:
July 9, 1998


IPO:

NASDAQ:GOOG



Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps and YouTube. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing them with a rich source of information....






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YouTube’s ambitions to challenge cable television head-on are getting a big boost tonight: the world’s largest video site is announcing that it’s lined up a slew of new content partners who will be developing shows for the site, covering everything from sports to comedy to music. The news had been rumored for some time, including a report last week in the WSJ.

In a blog post announcing the news, YouTube says its goal with these channels is to “[give] you more reasons to keep coming back again and again”. The post references the so-called “defining channels” born out of cable, like MTV, ESPN, and CNN, and says that the next generation of these will emerge on YouTube.

These channels will start coming online next month (“continuing over the next year”, so some will take a while), and will be available anywhere YouTube is.

There are some big names on the list. But there are still a lot of questions: Will this content really rival the premium production values seen on cable? Will the shows be exclusive to YouTube? And how exactly is YouTube going to tweak the site’s user experience as it looks to shift users from funny cat videos toward these shows (which advertisers will be able to more effectively monetize)?

Here’s a list of content partners that are part of this announcement:

Electus Channel – Pop Culture (name TBD)
PMC PMC Entertainment News
WWE WWE
Young Hollywood Young Hollywood Network
DanceOn DanceOn (Madonna)
Fine Brothers Films MyMusic
Everyday Health, Inc. Everyday Health TV
TakePart™ TakePart™ TV
Digital Broadcasting Group (DBG) Spaces
Uncommon Content Partners The Conversation Channel
Demand Media eHow Home
SB Nation SB Nation
Magical Elves and InStyle magazine Little Black Dress
Hearst Magazines Channel – Fashion & Beauty Channel (name TBD)
Emil Rensing International Channel – Auto (name TBD)
My Damn Channel My Damn Channel: Live
Uncommon Content Partners Taste & Access
Red Bull Media House North America Red Bull
Machinima Machinima
Katalyst Thrash Lab (Ashton Kutcher)
Steve Spangler Science The Spangler Effect
New Nation Networks New Nation Networks
Smart Girls at the Party Smart Girls at the Party (Amy Poehler)
Bedrocket Media Ventures and Full Picture Productions Look TV
BermanBraun theLOGE
The Young Turks Town Square
BermanBraun & Rodale Inc. Vigor
Electus NuevOn – Latin Channel (Sofia Vergara)
Clevver Media ClevverStyle
ModernMom.com ModernMom Channel
Brady Haran DeepSkyVideos
IconicTV 123UnoDosTres
The Wall Street Journal The Wall Street Journal
Pharrell Williams i am OTHER
SoulPancake Productions SoulPancake (Rainn Wilson)
Chopra Media/Generate The Chopra Well (Deepak Chopra)
Clevver Media ClevverNews
The Bowery Presents The Bowery Presents
Clevver Media ClevverTeVe
Seedwell American Hipster
Hearst Magazines Car and Driver Television
Alchemy Networks Alchemy Networks
CafeMom CafeMom Studios
Bedrocket Media Ventures Channel – Comedy (name TBD)
Demand Media LIVESTRONG
Bedrocket Media Ventures Channel – Action Sports (name TBD)
FremantleMedia Channel – Pets & Animal (name TBD)
Big Frame BAM
IconicTV myISH
Electus Channel – Food (name TBD)
Soccer United Marketing & Bedrocket KickTV
Lionsgate Lionsgate Fitness Channel
East of Center Productions LLC YOMYOMF
EQAL u look haute!
Philip Defranco Sourcefed
Meredith Corporation and Meredith Video Studios Digs
Vlogbrothers CrashCourse
Walter Latham Digital Walter Latham’s “Kings of Comedy”
Tony Hawk’s production company, 900 Films, Inc. RIDE Channel
JON M. CHU Channel – Dance (name TBD)
Vuguru & POW! Entertainment Stan Lee’s World of Heroes
FAWN by Michelle Phan Fawn
DECA KinCommunity
Source Interlink Media Motor Trend
The Nerdist Channel The Nerdist Channel
Comedy Shaq Network The Comedy Shaq Network (Shaquille O’Neal)
Demand Media eHow Pets & Animals
Brady Haran numberphile
Cooking Up a Story Food Farmer Earth
Bleacher Report Bleacher Report
TED Conferences TEDEducation
Intelligent Television Intelligent Channel
Pitchfork Pitchfork TV
Vlogbrothers SciShow
EYEBOOGIE POP SPOT
Roadside Entertainment/BAC The NOC
Alli Sports Alli Sports
The Onion Onion Broadcasting Company
VICE VICE
Smosh/Alloy Digital Smosh Animation (name TBD)
VICE Noisey
Knights of Good Productions Geek & Sundry
Mondo Media New Animators
BermanBraun & Rodale Inc. Taste
Varsity Pictures Awesomeness
Black Box TV Black Box TV (Anthony Zuicker, founder of CSI)
IGN Entertainment / Shine Group START
@radical.media Channel – Education (name TBD)
Frederator Networks Channel Frederator’s Cartoon Hangover
monotransistor werevertumorro
Thomson Reuters Reuters.com
Slate Slate News Channel
Maker Studios The Maker Music Network
Maker Studios The Moms’ View
Maker Studios Tutele
Noisey VICE
Iconic Life and Times (Jay-Z)

Another batch of Microsoft patent applications have trickled into public view, and these ones may be even cooler than the last bunch. They describe “flinging gestures,” interaction with 3D virtual objects, and even throw it back a bit to describe a new email view format.

Let’s take a look, shall we?

Grasp Simulation Of A Virtual Object
Applied for back in April of 2010, this patent application outlines something strikingly similar to some of the technology we saw in Microsoft’s video portraying their version of the future. It describes user input on a 2D surface, which is then simulated as direct contact with a virtual 3D object. Said virtual 3D object is meant to move or be manipulated based on the user’s physical input.

In the video from this morning, users were able to input gestures without ever touching the device, as shown when the traveling businesswoman draws a heart into thin air, which is then translated onto the screen and relayed back to her kitchen wall. Perhaps this patent is a bridge between what we have now and Microsoft’s envisioned future, but either way I hope this one makes it to reality.

Changing Power Mode Based On Sensors In A Device
The next patent application on our list was filed for much more recently — in July of this year — and is basically meant to make it easier for us to turn on handheld computing devices. You know, since pushing a button is too strenuous. The patent outlines a way to power on a device, whether it be a mobile phone or a tablet (or any computing device you can hold, really), by holding said device in portrait orientation.

The patent discusses certain specifications that must be met in order for the function to work, like the degree at which the device must be held, or the amount of time the device must be held that way before it powers on. We’re glad to see it, too, as it would be totally annoying for a tablet to turn on each time it was in portrait orientation. The patent also covers a device that can perform this magical portrait boot action, along with the method by which one would do so. Way to cover your bases, Microsoft.

Email Views
This April 2010 patent application is a bit old-school, or at least it feels that way compared to a day full of both lofty and modest future predictions. But it may make my least favorite mode of communication — and MG’s least favorite thing ever — just a bit more bearable.

The patent describes a way of formatting your email view into different categories, rather than a list of names and subjects. The system would interpret the content of emails, and filter them into certain categories, like from friends, from family, videos and images, documents, invitations, and missed IMs. From there, the user has multiple interface options through which they can view their inbox in varying layouts.

The technology described is in no way revolutionary — Google’s been combing your email content to target ads for years, and their Priority Inbox is pretty similar, too — but it may add a little “delight” to the email experience, which is something Microsoft seems to aim for.

Throwing Gestures For Mobile Devices

Don’t let the title of this patent application fool you — there will be no phone throwing over at Microsoft, or anywhere else hopefully. Applied for in July, the “Throwing Gestures” patent describes a way of jerking your phone around to perform certain actions, including switching from one image to the next and closing applications. Like the “Changing Power Modes Based On Sensors In A Device” patent, Microsoft has also included a device which would use this technology.

Unfortunately, Microsoft didn’t include any images of the actual flinging motion in its patent application, so that’ll have to be one for our imaginations to figure out. I imagine people walking down the street waving their phones around like they’re throwing frisbies, but I guess that’s no stranger than the masses of people now having conversations with their brand new iPhones.

Note that these are only applications and have not been granted as yet.

[via Microsoft-News]






Crunchbase





MICROSOFT






Company:
Microsoft


Website:
microsoft.com


Launch Date:
April 4, 1974


IPO:

NASDAQ:MSFT



Microsoft, founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, is a veteran software company, best known for its Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software.

Starting in 1980 Microsoft formed a partnership with IBM allowing Microsoft to sell its software package with the computers IBM manufactured.

Microsoft is widely used by professionals worldwide and largely dominates the American corporate market.

Additionally, the company has ventured into hardware with consumer products such as the Zune and...






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Last August, Google asked us all to say good-bye to Google Wave. Some said Wave was ahead of its time, some said that the platform had enough features to sink the Titanic. However, Google today announced some significant updates to its social network, Google+, among them that Google Apps users can now sign up for G+ — the integration is finally live.

And one of these features launched today on Google+ seems a throwback to one now-defunct feature of Google Wave, called “Playback”. Or at least one might claim this as its genesis, with the feature having its roots in-house, as opposed to some sort of reaction to Facebook’s much bally-hooed timeline that launched this September.

Yes, today, Google launched its new Google+ Ripples, which will let users “re-live” the conversations, comments, and sharing that’s taken place over the history of their use of Google+. Check out Google’s blog post here.

In other words, Ripples is a “visualization tool for public shares and comments”, which users can access by simply selecting the “View Ripples” option in the drop down window to the right of the public post.

From there, Google+ pops open a new tab, where users can see the activity in a nifty graphical interface, zoom in on particular events — seeing the innerconnectedness of it all. The diagram shows the post spreading across the network as other users share the post, with arrows “indicating the direction of resharing” and the circles within circles representing the “resharing sequence” with the larger circles indicating the heaviest sharing (and sharers), according to the Ripples description.

Users can also see a feed of who shared the post as well as click play on a moving timeline that shows one how quickly the post spread and to what extent it has been shared over the days, months, weeks, and years.

The intention here, according to Google’s blog post, is to “rekindle that initial excitement” when one shared their post and to get a better understanding of how the post is flowing across the network and just what kind of reach and collective viewing it was (and is) getting.

Google says that Ripples is still experimental and is looking for feedback on how it can be more informative and “more awesome”. But so far, so good. And, just to make one thing clear: Yes, Google did name this feature after me. Thank you, Google.

But the interesting thing here is how similar Google Ripples is to Google Wave’s “Playback” feature, which allowed friends to get caught up on what everyone else in a wave has already been talking about. This was essentially like rewinding the wave to see what happened in the past, with the ability to watch it progress through its many changes. Playback allowed users to jump around and see all the edits sequentially as they progressed in time to take some of the confusion out of the feature-brimming communication platform.

Another notable update announced today is the so-called “Google+ Creative Kit”, which in part is a bit like a suped-up version of Instagram filters. Creative Kit allows a deeper way to edit one’s photos on G+, enabling users to sharpen their photos, add text, crop, rotate, resize, or overlay that vintage look now so often associated with Instagram and Hipstagram. (Or as one commenter and Google engineer has pointed out, Creative Kit seems to be the native integration of Picnik, a photo editing startup Google acquired last year.) According to Google, all you need to use Creative Kit is “an idea”:

In the spirit of Halloween, Google has added some limited-time, “spooky” features to Creative Kit and is launching a photo competition (through the end of October), in which users can share their frightening photos on Google+ with the hashtag “#gplushalloween”. A panel of celebrity judges will pick their favorite photos and prizes may even be awarded. Though we’re checking on that last bit.

Ripples, Creative Kit, and Google Apps integration are certainly notable enhancements to the Google+ platform, especially as the latter has been a much-called-for and needed feature for the millions of Google Apps users. Photo editing features are a bonus, too, considering Google+ users have added more than 3.4 billion photos to the platform since launch. While basic photo editing tools have been available, Creative Kit takes Google+’s editing options to the next level.

And, in terms of further narrowing the gap between itself and Facebook, Ripples is a natural addition for Google+ as a content sharing medium. Both Ripples and Facebook’s impending Timeline are both unique visual ways of presenting our social data. Timeline will essentially allow users to replace their profiles with chronological scrapbooks, tracking your “most important” photos, content shared, apps, and so on back to the day you were born (for photos), or joined Facebook for everything else.

Ripples has a slightly different use case, as it is designed to give users a visual look at the ripple effect of their content sharing, the directionality of that sharing, and the popularity of a given topic. Both are nifty visual features, but whereas Timeline seems to have the potential not only to change your Facebook and social footprint at a deep level, Ripples doesn’t quite get there. It has the potential for a nerdgasm as a cool data visualization medium, which Google rocks in spades. But, really, the question becomes: How much will you actually use Ripples? And, since, in the end, it’s all about money, which has greater value for brands and future monetization?

For more on these new Google+ features, here’s the blog post.






Crunchbase





GOOGLE
GOOGLE+
GOOGLE WAVE






Company:
Google


Website:
google.com


Launch Date:
July 9, 1998


IPO:

NASDAQ:GOOG



Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps and YouTube. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing them with a rich source of information....






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Product:
Google+


Website:
plus.google.com

Company
Google


A Google project headed by Vic Gundotra and Bradley Horowitz, Google+ is designed to be the social extension of Google.

Its features focus on making online sharing easy for users.

“Circles,” think social circles, akin to Facebook’s lists

“Sandbar,” a user-unifying toolbar

“Sparks,” a search engine for sharing content between users

“Huddle,” a group messaging app that allows users to share with certain “Circles”

“Hangouts,” group video chatting designed to allow up to 10 users video chat at once

Each Google+ user can replace his...






Learn more





Product:
Google Wave


Website:
wave.google.com

Company
Google


Google Wave is a tool for communication and collaboration on the web, launching in the second half of 2009. Google announced that they would discontinue new development on Google wave in August 2010.

In Google Wave, users create and invite other people to “waves”. Everyone on a wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing,...






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There is no way in hell this will make Techmeme.

Dancing Marissa gifs via Uncrunched. More context here.






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MARISSA MAYER






Person:
Marissa Mayer


Website:


Companies:
Google


As VP, Google, Marissa Mayer leads the product management and engineering efforts of Google’s local, mobile, and contextual discovery products including Google Maps, Google Maps for Mobile, Local Search, Google Earth, Street View, Latitude and more. At 35 years old, she is also the youngest member of Google’s executive operating committee. During her 11 years at Google, Marissa has led product management and design efforts for Google web search, images, news, books, products, toolbar, and iGoogle. She started...






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Twitter is testing out new design changes which makes the main Twitter timeline expandable so that you can see media and related information right in the timeline instead of off to the side or clicking off to another page. We’ve gotten a couple of reports about this change, which only a few people are seeing, (and Twitter confirms it is a “small test”). Patrick Bisch of Pinglio blogged about the changes and even made a screencast (which you can watch below).

The changes are subtle, but they manage to simplify an already simple service. You can “open” up a tweet to see how many people retweeted it, the threaded conversation related to that tweet, or related photos and videos. For instance, here is a screenshot of a reply tweet along with the original tweet. (Hat tip also to tipster Paul Dufour)

You will notice that the star, retweet, and reply buttons have also been moved to the top right. And you can close the tweet to go back to the main timeline view. Many Twitter clients have long included inline media, and it is encouraging to see Twitter trying to figure out how to make it part of the official experience. Every time I have to click off to another page to see a picture or to figure out the context around a tweet is a waste of time (these clicks add up, especially if you spend as much time on Twitter as I do).

You can get a sense of the new experience by watching the video below.






Crunchbase





TWITTER






Company:
Twitter


Website:
twitter.com


Funding:
$1.16B



Twitter, founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 (launched publicly in July 2006), is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to post their latest updates. An update is limited by 140 characters and can be posted through three methods: web form, text message, or instant message. The company has been busy adding features to the product like Gmail import and search. They recently launched a new site section called “Explore” for...






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Scrappy outsider startup Unthink.com, which bills itself as the “anti-Facebook,” is opening up its doors today, allowing in its first round of beta testers. The Tampa-based company with $2.5 million in funding from DouglasBay Capital sees itself as a more open, more honest form of social networking – one where its users are the owners of their data, and not the product being sold to advertisers.

Unthink is the kind of startup that could only come from outside of traditional tech hotspots like Silicon Valley or New York, as there’s a certain level of audacity, and perhaps even ignorance, that you need in order to think you have a shot at displacing social networking giant Facebook and all of its 800 million users.

And taking down Facebook is the core of Unthink’s marketing campaign. In fact, the majority of Unthink’s message is about what it is not: it’s not another social network, it’s a social revolution. Unthinkers are not users, they’re owners. Unthink is not in control, you are. And so on. It even has its own manifesto, deeds and covenants.

“If we want to be free, we have to control our own communications…we have to claim that power,” CEO Natasha Dedis shouted with vitriol to the crowd at September’s Tampa Bay Barcamp (the un-conference), before delving into all the ways that Facebook does its users wrong.

She explained that the idea for Unthink came to her when her son wanted to sign up for Facebook and she read the terms of service. They were not something she wanted to agree to because they could change at any time. But for her son, that decision was met with a lot of anxiety. “He was really stressed about it, like he didn’t have a choice – he had to be on Facebook.” It was either be on Facebook, or be a pariah in school, she said. Whichever decision Dedis made, she felt like she was being bad mother.

(Above: a profile after sign-up)

On Facebook, your personal data, your posts, your likes – in short, all your social networking activity – is used to provide advertisers with a way to directly target precise demographics. Some may call it genius, but for others like Dedis, it feels exploitive.

“The number one thing that had to be ‘un-thought’ about social media, is who does it belong to? We need to own everything that we put on our page. We can be as private or as public as we want, as long as it’s our choice,” she said.

On Unthink, user data isn’t sold to brands. Instead, users choose a brand to sponsor their page, by way of an ad dubbed “iEndorse.” The idea is that a user will select a brand they feel some affinity with, and will then become an advocate for that brand. Users who don’t want to select a brand have the option to pay for the service instead ($2/year).

Brands also have a different way to communicate with fans than they do on Facebook, where messages are spliced into a users’ News Feed. On Unthink, there’s a separate section on users’ profile pages just for communicating with businesses. Users decide what companies they want to communicate with, what type of messages they want to receive and how often they want to receive them. Then, when they choose to interact with a brand, they’re rewarded for their engagement with points that can be used towards discounts and offers from the brand in question.

Upon signing up for Unthink, as I did today, you’re offered an app that will export your photos and videos from Facebook. You’re also asked to fill out the standard social networking questions (name, date of birth, gender, etc.) and are then directed to your own personal profile page.

These pages are split into sections, each with a dedicated purpose and easy-to-customize privacy controls. The top section, “iUnthink” is your public microblog, the middle, your social section, the third, your lifestyle section for connecting with brands (this part will launch in a few weeks), and the bottom, your professional section for connecting with business colleagues.

Oh, that’s right. Did I forget to mention?

Despite its anti-Facebook manifesto, Unthink actually wants to displace Twitter, Groupon and LinkedIn, too. If anything, however, it’s Diaspora done right. Hey, if you’re going to appeal to the “I don’t want corporate control of my data!” crowd, you may as well go all in.

Will Unthink take down Facebook? Not likely. But it’s fascinating to watch someone try on this scale.

Unthink is launching into a limited beta today. If you know someone who’s in, they can send you an invite. TechCrunch readers can email techcrunch@unthink.com to get to the head of the list.

(Above: full-page profile. Note that ticker would normally be at bottom)






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:



Website:










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President Obama has added a new web service to his repertoire: Tumblr, the hot blogging service that just raised another $85 million in funding. You can find the new blog right here.

The site was set up by the 2012 Obama/Biden campaign, which also runs his Facebook page and Twitter account (The White House also recently launched an account on Foursquare).

Tumblr is generally known for having a youngish audience (particularly teens), and its reblog feature will help anything the campaign posts spread like wildfire across the service. The folks at Tumblr are undoubtedly smiling — the President’s presence can be worn as a badge of honor, and also generally leads to plenty of free mainstream press coverage.

In the first post on his blog, Obama’s team writes that they want Tumblr to “be a huge collaborative storytelling effort—a place for people across the country to share what’s going on in our respective corners of it and how we’re getting involved in this campaign to keep making it better.”

To do this, the site will be accepting submissions via the Tumblr submission feature. Fortunately the campaign isn’t being naive — they’ve preemptively asked submitters to think of their mothers before they send anything nasty.

There will be trolls among you: this we know. We ask only that you remember that we’re people—fairly nice ones—and that your mother would want you to be polite.






Crunchbase





TUMBLR






Company:
Tumblr


Website:
tumblr.com


Funding:
$125M



Tumblr is a re-envisioning of tumblelogging, a subset of blogging that uses quick, mixed-media posts. The service hopes to do for the tumblelog what services like LiveJournal and Blogger did for the blog. The difference is that its extreme simplicity will make luring users a far easier task than acquiring users for traditional weblogging. Anytime a user sees something interesting online, they can click a quick “Share on Tumblr” bookmarklet that then tumbles the snippet directly. The result is...






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Wikileaks is running out of cash. Or, rather, it can’t get its cash because of an economic blockade by Visa, Mastercard, Paypal and other financial institutions. The credit card companies started blocking payments to Wikileaks last year, and the inability to collect donations from the public via credit cards and other electronic transfers is taking its toll on the organization.

In a message on its website, Wikileaks announces that it will cease publishing new leaks until it gets its finances in order:

We are forced to temporarily suspend publishing whilst we secure our economic survival. For almost a year we have been fighting an unlawful financial blockade. We cannot allow giant US finance companies to decide how the whole world votes with its pocket. Our battles are costly.

Then it asks for a donation to help fight the evil banks. Of course, most people will find it difficult to donate if Wikileaks cannot accept credit cards. But there are other ways to get money to the leak-gathering organization, including bitcoin, Flattr, and, of course, direct deposit. Only about 5 percent of donations come through these alternate means.

Below is Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in a smart-looking sweater explaining the dire financial situation Wikileaks is facing (and, of course, asking for money).






Crunchbase





WIKILEAKS






Company:
WikiLeaks


Website:
wikileaks.ch


Launch Date:
October 24, 2011



WikiLeaks is a not-for-profit media organization. Their goal is to bring important news and information to the public. They provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for sources to leak information to our journalists (our electronic drop box).

WikiLeaks has sustained and triumphed against legal and political attacks designed to silence their publishing organisation, journalists and anonymous sources. The broader principles on which their work is based are the defence of freedom of speech and media publishing, the improvement...






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Is this a contrarian view? I can’t even tell any more. On one hand, Google Plus now has 40 million users, it’s the fastest-growing social-networking site in history, and its users have uploaded 3.4 billion photos. On the other, Google is mum about how many of those users are actually active; some say that its traffic has declined significantly from its peak; Google’s own management didn’t much use it, until recently; and many agreed with Google engineer Steve Yegge’s lengthy and viral rant about how they have screwed up Plus.

Not me. I think Google+ is a hit in the making. I hardly use it myself any more — indeed, my last post there, more than a month ago, was “Sadly, it seems G+ has degenerated in my mind into little more than the place I go to complain that Twitter seems to be down” — but I’m no representative sample. Heck, I don’t really use Facebook either, except to mindlessly echo my Twitter stream.

(We pause here briefly so that bloggers everywhere can recover from their exposure to the mindblowing notion that perhaps one should not treat one’s own anecdotal experiences as universal truths.)

When Sean Parker pointed out that all your friends are already on Facebook, Vic Gundotra retorted, “Your mom and friends, guess what, they are already on Google.” As MG said some time ago, that little black bar on top of their home page and search results is their secret weapon. It gives Google an unparalleled ability to lead horses to their water. But can they make them drink?

I think they can.

Think long term. Google does. When Google initiatives flop, they’re usually pretty much dead within a month of arrival, a la Buzz or Wave. But when they get any traction, Google is excellent at pushing them uphill, bit by bit, year by year, with a relentless tide of data-driven iterations, all the way to the top of the mountain. When Chrome launched, a lot of people (including me) were bemused: why a new browser? Weren’t Firefox, Opera, and Safari more than good enough? Now it’s on track to overtake Firefox, and maybe one day even IE. When you consider the commitment Google has made to Plus, you have to figure that G+ today is a mere crude and clumsy approximation of what it will be a year from now.

And what it is today is pretty damn good. (Especially now that they’ve (more or less) stopped machine-gunning themselves in the foot, by publicly backing down from their stupid and ham-handed real-name policy.) There are already a bunch of things G+ does better than Facebook. Photo sharing. Group video chat. Allocating people to Circles. Sharing Circles with others.

…Wait, there’s sort of a theme, isn’t there? Groups. Circles. Handcrafted subsets of your friends, your acquaintances, and the people you follow. Videoconferencing with a group of your co-workers; literary discussions with the members of your book club; debates about the price of a new roof with the other members of your local community center; ongoing scheduling of your World of Warcraft guild; news from the leading lights of the political party of your choice; any of the hundreds of kinds of little or large groups of people that form and dissolve all the time. That’s what Google Plus is good at, and Facebook isn’t.

Mark Zuckerberg famously said, “Guess What? Nobody Wants To Make Lists” — but everyone lists and subdivides the people they know all the time: in their head, or on paper, or in the To:  and CC: fields of their emails, for innumerable social reasons. They’ll do so online, too, if it’s easier and a more core part of the experience than it is at Facebook. I believe people want to connect to both broad-brush swathes of people — everyone they know, everyone they work with, everyone they went to school with, friends of friends — and more carefully defined groups, with finer control over identity and membership.

Can Facebook seamlessly do both, and be all things to all people? Maybe, but that’s not the direction they’re going. Ironically, they’re doing things “the Google way,” betting on sweeping algorithmic solutions with their Smart Lists and Top Stories, while Google seems to be building G+ “the Facebook way,” around personal curation and social selection. The key difference is that, as moot aka Christopher Poole said the other day, our identities — and our relationships — are prisms rather than mirrors, multi-faceted rather than black & white. Google Plus acknowledges this in a way Facebook doesn’t, and that’s a big part of why I believe it will ultimately succeed.

Slowly but surely, Google is finding more and more ways to integrate Google+ into all of their other products. The latest tweak: a one-click button, smack dab in the middle of your search results, for adding the author of the relative content to a Google+ circle.

Google has been fiddling with the integration of Google+ into search results for weeks. It began with the integration of public Google+ postings into search results, and later grew to include blogger/author headshots (complete with links to their Plus profiles) next to relevant items.

This latest tweak is really just the evolution of the aforementioned addition of author bios. By removing that one step (having to click into the author’s profile to add them), adding someone on Google+ becomes less of a deliberate decision and more of an impulse move. It’s just further proof that, in the Battle of Facebook vs. Google+, Google is playing an entirely different game.

Most of Google’s tweaks regarding Plus in results seem to focus on drawing attention to bloggers/writers/online personalities — which, while I’m obviously a bit subjective here, is a rather keen move. While we’re but a drop in the hat in the grand scheme of things, writers do have a notable degree of influence (whether they intentionally utilize that influence or not) over the public’s perception of a product. Funneling followers to writers could easily give them the perception that a product is more lively than it actually is, which may in turn spin their writings on the product in a more positive way. Clever, Google.

Not seeing the changes? Don’t worry: like most things Google does, it appears that they’re testing this one on a small handful of users first.

[Thanks Muneer!]






Crunchbase





GOOGLE






Company:
Google


Website:
google.com


Launch Date:
July 9, 1998


IPO:

NASDAQ:GOOG



Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps and YouTube. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing them with a rich source of information....






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“With funding from dozens of news outlets and media companies, the groundbreaking Outkube.com launched this week, providing an online destination where pandering and incendiary content is used to lure moronic Internet commenters away from all other websites.”

While you guys have been pretty awesome lately (part of me thinks you’re being especially nice so no one else leaves TC for VC), the scourge of terrible Internet commenters continues to plague other, less sophisticated sites. In its typical brilliant fashion, the Onion has come up with a hypothetical solution, Outkube – a site developed specifically to bait all web trolls.

“Sources confirmed that each day Outkube’s software produces dozens of new pop-culture rankings, such as “The 10 Most Underrated Bands” or “The 15 Best Sci-Fi Movies Of All Time,” which have been shown to occupy some of the Internet’s most obnoxious commenters indefinitely, freeing the remainder of the web for actual rational discourse. The new site also caters to its target demographic with a corps of full-time bloggers including Geraldo Rivera, Rosie O’Donnell, and Spencer Pratt.”

Hmmm … Is it just me or does this sort of sound like the Huffington Post?

Update: Okay wow, someone did make it. The Internet is a very special, magical place. http://www.outkube.com






Crunchbase





THE ONION






Company:
The Onion


Website:
theonion.com



The Onion is an American “fake news” organization. It features satirical articles reporting on international, national, and local news as well as an entertainment newspaper and website.






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I wrote a while back about the eventual necessity for the internet to become beautiful. The trouble is that the things in the world we consider beautiful in an informational context — magazine and book layouts, typography, etc. — are necessarily limited in the information they have to present. It’s this limitation, the known quantity aspect, that lets designers work effectively.

How should you design something, then, that presents effectively limitless information (say, all the world’s books) through a fairly limited medium (say, a web browser)? Google has one idea. Put them on a gigantic helix.

As you can see, they’ve got this WebGL-based demo up and running with about 10,000 titles that have been indexed by Google Books. It’s separated by genre, and you can zoom between genres with a thrilling effect. Makes me think of the Tower of Babel:

But is this really something people will want to navigate? Probably not. People like analogs in their digital catalogs, and this one seems a little bit too off the wall. Sure, there are books in rows. But it’s also a corkscrew extending to the sky. And people are used to seeing their books arranged spine out — which isn’t necessarily the best thing in the world, but it is a superior information density. And I wonder if it might be better to put people inside instead of outside?

Anyway, it’s a fun little experiment you can try out here. Note to Mac Laptop users: be careful how you swipe or you may accidentally navigate off the page or invoke some arcane gesture.

Speaking today at Web 2.0, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was boisterous as usual. In a rousing talk with John Batelle, Ballmer talked about how, since last being on stage at Web 2.0 three years ago, Bing has doubled its market share, Microsoft hasn’t completely given up on competing with Google+ and social, the tech giant bought Skype for a boatload, among other topics of interest for Microsofties and Windows aficionados.

In what was both a stroll down memory lane, and a calibration of Microsoft’s roadmap going forward, Batelle raised the question of whether or not Ballmer was glad that Microsoft didn’t buy Yahoo for $44 billion back in 2008.

“Times change”, the CEO said. “You ask any CEO who didn’t buy something big before the market crashed [in 2008, they'll probably say], ‘Hallelujah!’”. But, in a twist of fate, the U.S. economy dipped into one of the biggest recessions in history in 2008, and had Yahoo accepted Microsoft’s terms, perhaps ironically, the deal would have been settled right around the time that Lehman collapsed, he said.

“Sometimes you are lucky”, Ballmer admitted, grinning.

When asked if Microsoft is punting on social, Ballmer said that Skype and Xbox “seem social” to him and likely represent entry points into the broadly “social” market, and that, going forward, Microsoft is looking to add connectivity into its core products, specifically as its Skype product integration continues.

Then, regarding Microsoft’s play in apps in the cloud?

Ballmer, channelling Charlie Sheen, chanted: “We’re winning, winning, winning”.

When asked who Microsoft is beating?

Google.

Lastly, all those gathered couldn’t let Ballmer go without asking about mobile. In reference to how Microsoft is competing with Android, the skyrocketing young upstart in the mobile market, Ballmer seemed optimistic about the prospect of Windows tablets, and phones specifically.

Windows Phones have a leg up from the average consumer’s perspective, he said, because “you don’t need to be a computer scientist to use a Windows phone”, the CEO quipped.

Zing!






Crunchbase





MICROSOFT
STEVE BALLMER






Company:
Microsoft


Website:
microsoft.com


Launch Date:
April 4, 1974


IPO:

NASDAQ:MSFT



Microsoft, founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, is a veteran software company, best known for its Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software.

Starting in 1980 Microsoft formed a partnership with IBM allowing Microsoft to sell its software package with the computers IBM manufactured.

Microsoft is widely used by professionals worldwide and largely dominates the American corporate market.

Additionally, the company has ventured into hardware with consumer products such as the Zune and...






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Person:
Steve Ballmer


Website:


Companies:
Microsoft


Steven A. Ballmer is Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft. Ballmer joined Microsoft in 1980 and was the first business manager hired by Bill Gates. Since then, Ballmer’s leadership and passion have become hallmarks of his tenure at the company.

During the past 20 years, Ballmer has headed several Microsoft divisions, including operations, operating systems development, and sales and support. In July 1998, he was promoted to President, a role that gave him day-to-day responsibility for running Microsoft. He was named...






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Today, at the Web 2.0 Summit, Ben Horowitz, the former co-founder and CEO of Opsware and founding partner of well-known venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, took to the stage today to speak to John Heilemann of New York Magazine. Horowitz spoke to his history with his founding partner as well as what the two tech veterans look for in the companies they invest in and mentor.

Interestingly, at the end of the talk, Heilemann played a word association game with Horowitz, asking him what he thought about Facebook (among other big tech companies). Horowitz said frankly that he thought the social networking giant is the best run company in Silicon Valley — and the tech industry.

When asked whether that was a product of CEO Mark Zuckerberg or the people around him, Horowitz said, of course, that he thought it was a product of both. “I pay a lot of attention young CEOs, and I think Mark is one of the best young CEOs in the business”. The reason for this? Zuckerberg is incredibly thoughtful about product strategy, Horowitz said.

He cited the example of how, when new hires arrive at Facebook, they are often forced to take lower titles than what they’re used to. Zuckerberg established this precedent because he wants people coming to Facebook not to be focused on their title, but instead on what kind of awesome products they’re going to build. He wants to make sure they’re at Facebook for the right reasons — not because the’ve seen The Social Network, for example.

Zuck is extremely focused on the little things, Horowitz said, which is what will make him successful in the long run. And it’s this attention to detail, and staying focused on the long-term roadmap that has pushed the young CEO and the people installed around him, that has pushed them to have the same onboarding process for people at all levels of the company.

“If you’re not interested in building products, you’re not going to play at Facebook”, the investor said.

Horowitz’s words are slightly surprising in light of the heat that the young CEO has taken over the years for being an uncomfortable presence on stage, lacking in charisma, among other things. While Andreessen Horowitz hasn’t invested officially in Facebook, Marc Andreessen does sit on the board of directors. And since Horowitz admitted that he and Andreessen are “best friends” and like an “old married couple”, obviously the young company is something both investors are well familiar with.

Horowitz also shared his thoughts on some other technology industry notables like Groupon and Zynga. He called Groupon “the fastest growing company in the world”, said that Twitter is “changing the world”, and was unable to say much more about Zynga (with its IPO looming) other than “I love it”. In relation to Steve Jobs, the investor said “it’s just so spectacular what he did in the world and with his life. I like how many people he proved wrong over and over again”.






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BEN HOROWITZ
ANDREESSEN HOROWITZ






Person:
Ben Horowitz


Website:


Companies:
Andreessen Horowitz, Asana, Nicira Networks, Proferi


Ben Horowitz is a co-founder and general partner of the venture capital fund, Andreessen Horowitz.

Horowitz was a co-founder and CEO of Opsware (formerly Loudcloud), which was acquired by HP in 2007, and Horowitz was appointed vice president and general manager of Business Technology Optimization for Software at HP. Earlier, he was vice president and general manager of America Online’s E-commerce Platform division, where he oversaw development of the company’s flagship Shop@AOL service
Previously, Horowitz ran several product divisions at...






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Financial-organization:
Andreessen Horowitz


Website:
a16z.com


Launch Date:
June 7, 2009



Andreessen Horowitz is a $950 million venture capital firm that was launched on July 6, 2009. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz are the general partners of the firm.






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Well it would seem that NTT DoCoMo, one of the largest wireless carriers in Japan, has let slip the Samsung Galaxy Nexus announcement just a couple hours early.

According to a tweet, “the latest Android OS smartphone with Google and Samsung Electronics [will be] announced on October 19 in Hong Kong tomorrow. DoCoMo is almost equivalent to the fastest in the world, scheduled for release in November. More later.” (Anyone who’s fluent in Japanese, please feel free to add clarity that Google Translate can’t.)

Although we’re still waiting to confirm specs that have already been leaked, an Italian blog called Android HDBlog seems to have an official image (full-size version after the break).

We’re not sure that this is 100 percent the real deal since we’d expect text in the image to be in Chinese. (The official announcement will be in Hong Kong.) Still, the blog claims that this comes straight out of Japan where what they call “the Japanese operator” has confirmed availability for November 20.

According to Android HDBlog, these are the specs we’ll be seeing on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus:

Dimensions: 5.4in x 2.7in x .35in (which is insanely thin, however the blog also mentions that its .45 inches at its thickest part)
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
1.2GHz dual-core TI OMAP 4460 processor
4.65-inch 720×1280 AMOLED HD display (which may just be the Italian translation for Super AMOLED Plus)
5-megapixel CMOS rear camera with LED flash, capable of video capture in 1080p
1.3-megapixel CMOS front-facing camera
NFC!!
1GB of RAM, 16/32 GB of on-board storage

We’re still unsure whether or not there’s support for a microSD card, but I would be kind of shocked if there wasn’t.

Developing…

[First image via Ameblo.jp]






Crunchbase





GOOGLE







Company:
Google


Website:
google.com


Launch Date:
July 9, 1998


IPO:

NASDAQ:GOOG



Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps and YouTube. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing them with a rich source of information....






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:



Website:










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Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has just dropped some numbers at a speaker dinner here at Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Costolo revealed that the company has gone from 90 million tweets per day in September of 2010 to 100 million at the beginning of this year to 1/4 billion tweets per day as of today, a 177% percent change.  Twitter is now serving up a billion tweets every 4-5 days, Costolo said.

The company has gone from having 30% of its 100 million users active every day in January 2011 to over 50% active daily users today. The recent iOS 5 Twitter integration has notably increased signups 3x.

Costolo said that those 250 million tweets mean that there’s enough content on the site that a new user should be able to find something relevant to them, “We’ve got to figure out how to capture the volume at the same time as separating the signal from the noise.”

Costolo has ambitious plans for scale, “We think that we can be on 2 billion devices around the world, and reach every person on the planet, and the way to do that is through simplifying.”






Crunchbase





TWITTER






Company:
Twitter


Website:
twitter.com


Funding:
$1.16B



Twitter, founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 (launched publicly in July 2006), is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to post their latest updates. An update is limited by 140 characters and can be posted through three methods: web form, text message, or instant message. The company has been busy adding features to the product like Gmail import and search. They recently launched a new site section called “Explore” for...






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Over the weekend, Nokia launched a suite of casual games developed at Nokia Research Center which are meant to demonstrate how NFC can enable new forms of mobile gaming. The three new games include Nokia World Flags, Nokia Shakespeare Shuffle and Nokia Nursery Rhyme Shuffle. All can be played now on any Nokia Symbian NFC-enabled phone including the Nokia C7 Astound, C7-00, 600, 603, 700 and 701.

Nokia calls the games “tangible” mobile games because of the way they interact with physical objects in the real world using NFC tags. The games don’t have to read or write to the tags in order to work – they only need to detect the tags’ presence. That means they will work with blank NFC tags or even “contactless” credit cards, transit cards or ID cards, the company explains.

Frankly, the user interfaces for the games are only so-so, but to be fair, these are more akin to demo apps than “real” games meant to attract thousands of users. Instead, it’s the idea behind these games that’s meant to be the focus of this news.

For example, one game involves NFC-tagged playing cards which are used to play a digitized version of a child’s simple matching game. Traditionally, you would play this game by flipping over cards to find the matched pairs. With the NFC game, however, you tap the card with your phone. While I’m not sure if a game like this is screaming out for NFC, the concept of combining playing cards with NFC in new ways has some appeal. Imagine playing a NFC-enabled version of one of those “Magic: The Gathering” type games where with a tap you could actually see the battles between wizards animated on your phone’s screen, while the mobile app also kept score for you. That might be cool (well, for nerds, wink wink).

The two other Nokia games now available involve tapping cards to mix up either nursery rhymes or Shakespeare quotes. They look pretty boring.

In a video, Nokia shows off a fourth concept (not available) where you tap different parts of a stuffed animal with an NFC phone to launch different games. That could provide toy makers a new avenue for upselling that was previously limited to ads that appear on their toys’ boxes and in their instruction manuals. Still, as much as I personally love technology, the idea that my child’s teddy would simply serve as an avenue to toddler’s first gaming addiction kind of makes me sad. Whatever happened to actually playing with your toys? (Maybe I’m just getting old.)

Nokia, it should be noted, is not the first to have ideas about NFC-enabled gaming. One high-profile example comes from Rovio, which, launched an NFC-enabled version of Angry Birds called Angry Birds Magic earlier this year. That game also works on Symbian.

Widespread NFC adoption is several years out, and is still waiting on Apple’s participation. That means opportunities for NFC-enabled gaming are few and far between today.

Nokia is often early to the smartphone space with innovative concepts, but it’s not until Apple executives upon them do they really reach the mainstream. Something tells me that NFC mobile gaming will be just another example of this ongoing trend.






Crunchbase





NOKIA






Company:
Nokia


Website:
nokia.com


IPO:

NYSE:NOK



Nokia is a Finnish multinational communications corporation. It is primarily engaged in the manufacturing of mobile devices and in converging Internet and communications industries.

They make a wide range of mobile devices with services and software that enable people to experience music, navigation, video, television, imaging, games, business mobility and more.

Nokia is the owner of Symbian operation system and partially owns MeeGo operating system.






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Oh Yahoo!, you silly ol’ thing! According to an email that just came in from Yahoo’s digital marketing agency Something Massive, the struggling content company (platform company? advertising company?) wants us to talk about, tweet about and Facebook about their Yahoo! News Activity feature, and in return the company is promising lots of links and SEO juice. In case we forgot what Yahoo! News is, they helpfully linked to a TechCrunch post detailing the service’s social upgrade in September.

Well, here you go, Yahoo. You’re welcome. Can you please send over those half a million impressions you promised now? (P.S. By the way, “TechCrunch” is all one word.)

Dear Sarah,

My name is [redacted] and I work for Yahoo!’s digital marketing agency. We’ve been tasked with finding influencers to feature in a campaign around an announcement made at F8 a few weeks ago. We think you’re writing on Tech Crunch is great and that you reach an audience with a natural tendency to share and discover new things with their friends.

The F8 announcement was about a new product from Yahoo and Facebook called Yahoo! News Activity. For the next couple of weeks we will be featuring prominent bloggers as a part of our new “Featured Reader” campaign. We want to be able to show the feature in action by featuring one of your contributors!

Here’s how it works. As a “Featured Reader” in the campaign, you would receive:

-Prominent placement on the Yahoo! News Facebook (1.3+ million fans) including a photo, description, and quote.
-A featured placement for your blog and one blog post in rotation on the Yahoo! News site – the #1 news site on the web –  gaining you approximately 500,000 impressions
-Links back to your site

In exchange, we would ask that you:

-Try out our product, which enables Facebook friends to share and discover articles they read on Yahoo! News
-Talk about your participation as a post on your blog (could also be a badge or a link)
-Tweet and/or post to Facebook about your participation on the day you are a Featured Reader

You can check out the Facebook campaign we launched here: http://www.facebook.com/yahoonews?sk=app_137925272967648. It includes influencers like Andrew Gibbs of The Dieline and Matt Mullenweg who created WordPress.

You can learn more about the feature and read coverage about the announcement here:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/22/yahoo-news-teams-up-with-facebook-to-curate-content-from-your-friends/






Crunchbase





YAHOO!






Company:
Yahoo!


Website:
yahoo.com


Launch Date:
January 1, 1994


IPO:

December 4, 1996, Nasdaq:YHOO



Yahoo was founded in 1994 by Stanford Ph.D. students David Filo and Jerry Yang. It has since evolved into a major internet brand with search, content verticals, and other web services.

Yahoo! Inc. (Yahoo!), incorporated in 1995, is a global Internet brand. To users, the Company provides owned and operated online properties and services (Yahoo! Properties, Offerings, or Owned and Operated sites). Yahoo! also extends its marketing platform and access to Internet users beyond Yahoo! Properties through its distribution network...






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Sony is suffering from yet another hack attempt on its networks. But this time, the company seems to be better prepared, and apparently all credit card information is safe. Philip Reitinger, Sony’s Chief Information Security Officer, has posted an article on the official PlayStation blog explaining the incident.

According to Reitinger, the Sony Entertainment Network, PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment Network were affected. The company halted about 93,000 user accounts across these networks and warned users to secure log-in details via e-mail.

Details are scarce at this point, but a Sony spokesman is quoted as saying that his company observed attempts to hack into 35,000 accounts in the US and another 24,000 in Europe between October 7 and 10. Again, Sony is claiming that “if you have a credit card associated with your account, your credit card number is not at risk.”.

In July, Japan was the last country to resume PlayStation Network services after Sony reported a severe data breach in April.

Realtime search and analytics platform company Topsy Labs this morning announced that it has added Google+ as a source in its index.

A dedicated search engine for public Google+ posts, available here in beta, lets users search and access realtime and historical conversations occurring within the social network.

Topsy emphasizes that posts are ranked by the startup’s proprietary relevance and influence-ranking technology. You can find some screenshots below or give it a whirl right now.

Topsy’s algorithms calculate who the experts are for specific keywords, terms and links, updating influence graphs based upon the attention generated from Google+ and Twitter posts.

Says Vipul Ved Prakash, cofounder and CEO of Topsy Labs:

“We are proud to be the first search engine to provide comprehensive search over public Google+ posts. Beyond the 220 million daily tweets we are currently indexing, with the addition of Google+, we’ve extended our search technology to deeply index and rank long-form social conversations.

On Topsy, people can now search Google+ and Twitter for realtime, relevance-ranked results, and businesses can be better informed about what¹s important by using our APIs to mine the collective intelligence of posters on both Twitter and Google+.”

Headquartered in San Francisco and founded in 2006, Topsy has raised about $30 million from BlueRun Ventures, Ignition Partners, Founders Fund and Scott Banister.






Crunchbase





GOOGLE+
TOPSY






Product:
Google+


Website:
plus.google.com

Company
Google


A Google project headed by Vic Gundotra and Bradley Horowitz, Google+ is designed to be the social extension of Google.

Its features focus on making online sharing easy for users.

“Circles,” think social circles, akin to Facebook’s lists

“Sandbar,” a user-unifying toolbar

“Sparks,” a search engine for sharing content between users

“Huddle,” a group messaging app that allows users to share with certain “Circles”

“Hangouts,” group video chatting designed to allow up to 10 users video chat at once

Each Google+ user can replace his...






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Company:
Topsy


Website:
topsy.com


Funding:
$29.9M



Topsy, which launched on May 26, 2009, is a real-time search engine, with a focus on social media sites like Twitter. The site’s underlying technology examines popular links as well as the influence of each person citing a link. Topsy augments traditional search engines by finding information that people are talking about.






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I caught up with Peter Vesterbacka, Mighty Eagle at Rovio, the creators of the successful Angry Birds franchise, yesterday at the Planet Of The Apps conference in London.

It wasn’t a huge secret, but I certainly didn’t know this: Vesterbacka tells me you will soon be able to buy Angry Birds-themed cookbooks; actual physical books and ebooks for Kindle, Nook and iPad.

Full disclosure: I got one of these limited-edition Angry Birds cookbooks for free (hence the pictures above and below). Also, I’m not much of a cook (hence why I accepted the book in the first place).

In all seriousness, Vesterbacka tells me there have been 400 million downloads of the Angry Birds apps to date, and that its merchandising business is chugging along nicely as well, with about 10 million plush toys having gone over the counter already. I also bought two for our baby boy recently.

Rovio is on a mission to turn Angry Birds into a brand as iconic as Nintendo’s Mario and Mickey Mouse, Vesterbacka adds. Gotta love ambitious (European) startups.

Enjoy the interview:






Crunchbase





ROVIO MOBILE
ANGRY BIRDS






Company:
Rovio Mobile


Website:
rovio.com


Funding:
$42M



Rovio is one of Europe’s leading independent developers of wireless games with an ever-growing portfolio of award-winning titles spanning many genres from casual to core next-gen console IP. Their studio has developed games for some of the biggest names in the mobile space, including Electronic Arts, Nokia, Vivendi, Namco Bandai and Mr. Goodliving/Real Networks.

The seeds of Rovio were sown in 2003 when Helsinki University of Technology students Niklas Hed, Jarno Väkeväinen, and Kim Dikert participated in a mobile game...






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Product:
Angry Birds


Website:
rovio.com

Company
Rovio Mobile


Angry Birds is a puzzle video game developed by Rovio, a developer based in Finland. Since its release for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch devices, over 6.5 million copies of the game have been purchased, and versions have appeared for other touchscreen-based smartphones.

In Angry Birds, players take control of a flock of birds that are attempting to retrieve eggs that have been stolen by a group of evil pigs. The pigs have taken refuge on or within structures made...






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Well now. Samsung’s teaser video hinted at something big making its debut on October 11, but a new leak may have blown the whole thing wide open. BGR claims to have received the full spec sheet for Samsung’s long-awaited Galaxy Nexus (nee Nexus Prime), and if true, it’s a sight to behold.

Before we go forward, I should caution you to have your grains of salt at the ready. We’re about to step into some murky territory.

The spec listing confirms a few things we were already expecting to see, like the inclusion of Ice Cream Sandwich and a huge 4.65-inch display. BGR’s sources go on to say that the Galaxy Nexus will sport a TI OMAP 4460 processor, which clocks in at 1.2 GHz, and 1 GB of RAM. It also packs a 5MP camera (with support for recording 1080p video), 32 GB of internal storage, an NFC chip, and an LTE or HSPA radio into a body that’s only 9mm thick.

Unfortunately, the Galaxy Nexus is said to be a Verizon exclusive at least for the time being. With their data caps firmly in place, it may be a good thing that Ice Cream Sandwich is reportedly able to track data use on an app-by-app basis. It’s also worth mentioning that the Galaxy Nexus is a pure Google Experience device, so users won’t have to deal with carrier or manufacturer tweaks.

Skeptic though I may be, these specs seem just average enough to be legit. It doesn’t pack a stupid fast processor, nor a crazy camera, nor anything that at first glance seems to good to be true. Even the design may be more sober than first anticipated.

An enterprising Redditor named Greyhaven7 (a.k.a. Eric Hedden in real life) took a still from yesterday’s teaser video and cleaned it up substantially. The end result looks less like a phone that was bent in half, and more like a subtle evolution of the Nexus S’s design language.

Either way, the official reveal is coming in less than a week.

Groupon this morning announced that it re-branded its India business from SoSasta.com (which it acquired earlier this year) to … not Groupon India but Crazeal.com.

(It probably has something to do with the fact that Groupon.in was squatted by some Indian company.)

Currently in beta, Crazeal.com will roll out in and partner with local merchants in 11 cities (Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi/NCR, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Mumbai, Nagpur and Pune).

Groupon has named Ankur Warikoo as CEO of Crazeal.com; he will be responsible for growing the business in India. An alumnus of the Indian School of Business, Ankur co-founded Accentium Web and served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Rocket Internet (the early investor in CityDeal, which was acquired by Groupon in May 2010).

Crazeal has also appointed Bharath Devanathan (previously at Yahoo and Booz & Company) as COO and Sachin Kapur (formerly at BigRock and InfoEdge India) as Head of Marketing.






Crunchbase





GROUPON






Company:
Groupon


Website:
groupon.com


Launch Date:
November 11, 2008


Funding:
$1.14B



Groupon features a daily deal on the best stuff to do, see, eat, and buy in more than 565 cities around the world. By promising businesses a minimum number of customers, Groupon can offer deals that aren’t available elsewhere.

Groupon brings buyers and sellers together in a fun and collaborative way that offers the consumer an unbeatable deal, and businesses a large number of new customers. To date, it has saved consumers more than $300 million and claims it...






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This is a morbid topic to think about, but now that we have so many email, social media and other password-protected accounts, what happens to the access to this accounts when you pass away? Enter PassMyWill, which launched a few weeks ago at TechCrunch Disrupt’s hackathon. PassMyWill is basically a will for your online assets. The site distributes your social network passwords to your trusted loved ones after you die.

Here’s how it works. On the site you create an account with your name and enter who your next of kin is and their email address. You also enter an encryption key that the recipient would know (i.e. the last four digits of your social security number). And then you enter the data, passwords and more that you want your next of kin to takeover once you pass. When you die, this information will be passed on to the recipient.

So how does PassMyWill figure out when you are actually dead? You connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts on the site, and the startup will monitor how often you are posting and what is being posted on your wall. Once PassMyWill is convinced you may be gone, your next of kin receives the ‘Dead Man’s Switch’ e-mail.

Founder Danil Kozyatnikov, who traveled to Disrupt from Siberia, Russia; assures that all data stored on PassMyWill is completely encrypted. Check out our video with Kozyatnikov (whose Startup Alley company Quest.li was chosen as an audience choice winner) below.






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Website:










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Today at the China 2.0 conference at Stanford, Alibaba Groups’s Jack Ma replied to a pointed question about buying Yahoo with, “We are very interested in Yahoo. Our Alibaba group is important to Yahoo and Yahoo is important to us … All the serious buyers interested in Yahoo have talked to us.”

Those “serious buyers” most likely include Alibaba Group investor Silver Lake Partners, Microsoft, Hellman & Friedman and Andreesen Horowitz, who have all reportedly reached out to Yahoo’s board.

Is Ma’s interest enough to spark consumer and shareholder interest in Yahoo? “Any and all interest [is] welcome,” one shareholder told me, “but Ma has real smarts.”

On the surface Ma is certainly the type of CEO that Yahoo needs post-Bartz, diplomatic, cunning, and a man of (relatively) few words. But would the deal make sense financially?

Alibaba Group’s recent funding from Silver Lake valued it at $32 billion, while Yahoo is at a 16 billion market cap. With Yahoo’s 40% stake in Alibaba Group valued at $12.8 billion, it seems like 80% of the company’s value is based on its Asian assets. Ma has apparently made it clear that he would like to buy back Yahoo’s stake in his own company, and now he can for a bargain basement $3 billion premium –with hundreds of millions of US users thrown in for good measure.

Is the rest of Yahoo worth $3 billion? Probably. Plus Ma has an additional incentive to buy Yahoo because getting all those shares back frees him from his largest albatross shareholder. It’s a no brainer for Alibaba.

Would the Yahoo board take an offer from Ma? That remains to be seen, as the relationship between the two companies has been notoriously strained, most recently suffering because of accusations of unfair play on the part of Yahoo when Ma transferred ownership of Alipay to a separate company.

The sentiment among the former Yahoo employees I spoke to seems to be that Yahoo is so dysfunctional that they can’t see anything like this happening. And then there’s stigma; the general idea is to sell to someone you’re proud of like Google and Microsoft, not someone you used to own. The cultural fit between the Chinese and American companies is also quite awkward, as Sarah Lacy has documented comprehensively.

Despite this, many shareholders are just hoping for a decent price to exit their long-held positions, and Ma might be the company’s only hope for survival intact, as he is interested in Yahoo in its entirety. This is surprising: Yahoo is the type of company that Richard Gere in Pretty Woman would buy, and then break up — the individual pieces are more valuable than the sum of the parts.

Related: Looking up that YHOO ticker on Yahoo Finance is just depressing.

Image: Mick Orlosky






Crunchbase





YAHOO!
ALIBABA






Company:
Yahoo!


Website:
yahoo.com


Launch Date:
January 1, 1994


IPO:

December 4, 1996, Nasdaq:YHOO



Yahoo was founded in 1994 by Stanford Ph.D. students David Filo and Jerry Yang. It has since evolved into a major internet brand with search, content verticals, and other web services.

Yahoo! Inc. (Yahoo!), incorporated in 1995, is a global Internet brand. To users, the Company provides owned and operated online properties and services (Yahoo! Properties, Offerings, or Owned and Operated sites). Yahoo! also extends its marketing platform and access to Internet users beyond Yahoo! Properties through its distribution network...






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Company:
Alibaba


Website:
alibaba.com


Launch Date:
January 6, 1999


IPO:

June 11, 2007, HKSE:1688.HK



Alibaba.com is a B2B e-commerce company. Alibaba’s primary business is to serve as a directory of Chinese manufacturers connecting them to other companies around the world looking for suppliers. According to iResearch, it was the largest online B2B company in China in 2006 based on the number of registered users and market share in China by revenue. Yahoo is currently a 40% share holder in the parent Alibaba Group.

They operate two marketplaces; the first is an international marketplace based...






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Oh, Microsoft! You are so cunning. With IE market share plummeting and many users opting for “alternative” web browsers like Firefox and Chrome, your base of power is crumbling. We thought you would succumb to melancholy and accept your fate. But you had a plan all along. Clever girl.

Yes, Microsoft has found a way to stanch the hemorrhaging of its users to other browsers: label them as malware in the built-in Security Essentials suite!

Okay, I kid. It was just a minor mistake, and they corrected it immediately: “On September 30th, 2011, an incorrect detection for PWS:Win32/Zbot was identified. On September 30th, 2011, Microsoft released an update that addresses the issue.” The incorrect detection led to Chrome being removed and reinstall prohibited.

It actually brings up an interesting point, though. Seamless updates like Chrome’s are growing more popular, especially since many apps are essentially web services, and changes (mostly innocent) happen behind the curtain all the time. When it’s a local app, though, the process for authentication becomes more complicated.

Google shouldn’t have to wait for Microsoft to approve all its updates. But Microsoft needs to be vigilant and watch for unauthorized changes that may negatively affect the user. And while malicious programs are important to watch for, poorly secured ones can be just as dangerous.

Security was never simple, but it’s getting more complicated by the day and users have more choices and more exposure. Luckily, snafus like this one are pretty harmless and Microsoft, though I give them a hard time, is actually very responsive on this front.

Update: Google has some more information on their Chrome blog.

Timelines Inc., a small venture capital-backed Chicago company that operates the Timelines.com website, has launched a trademark-infringement suit against Facebook on Thursday, claiming that the latter’s recently announced Timeline feature could “quite possibly eliminate” its entire business.

Timelines.com is a website that basically allows people to record and share personal or historic events, and contribute descriptions, links, photos and videos related to those events, people, companies, bands and whatnot (i.e. Cuban Missile Crisis, Al Capone and Pink Floyd).

The suit essentially claims that Facebook’s Timeline service (see their blog post announcing the feature) has the potential to put Timelines Inc. straight out of Compton business.

From the complaint (also embedded below):

This matter seeks to protect Timelines, a small company headquartered in Chicago, that has been in business for almost five years, from being rolled over and quite possibly eliminated by the unlawful action by the world’s largest and most powerful social media company, Facebook.

Facebook has announced its intention to use and, indeed has already begun to re-direct Internet traffic, using Timelines’ federally registered “TIMELINES” trademark as the centerpiece of Facebook’s new product offering going forward, a move that, given the size and reach of Facebook, will essentially eliminate Timelines and leave the public with the confusing impression that plaintiff Timelines is somehow affiliated with Facebook.

In the event that Facebook is permitted to move forward with release of its “Timeline” product offering, consumer confusion with Timelines’ existing “Timelines” website will invariably result.

The suit also claims that Facebook hijacked the URL Facebook.com/timelines, which used to lead to Timelines’ Facebook page (and is, ironically, still linked to at the top of the Timelines.com website):

Facebook’s “Timeline” offering and its misdirection of users attempting to access Timelines’ offering is intended to prevent Internet users from accessing information about Timelines.com and to allow users to instead use Facebook’s “Timeline” offering.

Timelines is the owner of the registered trademarks “Timelines” (U.S. Reg. No. 3,684,074), “Timelines.com” (U.S. Reg. No. 3,764,134), and “Timelines & design” (U.S. Reg. No. 3,784,720).

We’ve reached out to Facebook for a response to Timelines’ allegations.

View this document on Scribd






Crunchbase





TIMELINES
FACEBOOK






Company:
Timelines


Website:
timelines.com


Funding:
$3M



Timelines, Inc. provides services that enable people and entities to discover, record and share history using the web. The company’s platform is uniquely built to chronicle events (using descriptions, photos, videos, and locations contributed by multiple users), and then enables people to relate these events to each other based on time, place or topic.

Timelines offers three services:

Timelines.com, for individuals and entities that want to reach and interact with a broad audience about publicly shared events;
Timelines...






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Company:
Facebook


Website:
facebook.com


Launch Date:
January 2, 2004


Funding:
$2.34B



Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users.

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks.

The original idea for the term...






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Reputation on the Internet is a tricky thing to measure. But with the rise of social media—with its retweets, likes, +1s, replies, and followers counts—companies are trying to keep score. If you are a big user of Twitter, you have probably checked out your Klout score or at least heard of it. Well, soon Klout will have a competitor called Kred. It is currently accepting sign-ups for a gradual rollout starting next week.

Kred is the latest product from social data mining startup PeopleBrowsr. “We have been receiving the firehose since 2008,” says CEO Jodee Rich, referring to the full Twitter firehose, “indexing it since then. We have sorted it by community and topic. We look for small close networks of people and look for how they can be just as influential as rockstars.”

Every person or account on Twitter has a Kred score, which is made up of two parts: the influence score and the outreach score. Your influence score is a measure of your ability to inspire others. It is a number on a scale from 1 to 1,000, and is based on how often your tweets are retweeted, how many new followers you are gaining, and how many replies you generate. (Kred also looks at Facebook likes and Google +1s, but Twitter is the main source of data). It is very much like your Klout score. The Outreach score is measured in levels and is a reflection of how generous you are with retweeting and replying to others.

Kred also figures out which of 200 communities you belong to based on the information in your Twitter bio (which is not always a great description of who you are). It can show you the influence of your whole community and how you rank in that community. “Everyone is an influencer somewhere,” says Jodee. “Our job with Kred is to show you where you have influence.” Brand managers will be able to define their own communities (for a fee), which they will then be able to track.

So how is this different from Klout? The main difference is Kred’s transparency. It shows you exactly how you got your score and lets you drill down to every retweet to see how many points it was worth. A normal retweet might be worth 10 points, but one from somebody with high Kred might be worth 50. A mention is worth more than follow, and so on. Since Kred is calculating everyone’s scores in realtime, it normalizes your score against the average.

Kred also lets you incorporate your real-world accomplishments like degrees, honors, awards, and certificates. You will be able to send Kred a PDF proving an offline achievement, and they will add it to your Kred.






Crunchbase





KRED

KLOUT






Product:
Kred


Website:
Kred.ly

Company
PeopleBrowsr









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:



Website:










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Company:
Klout


Website:
klout.com


Funding:
$10M



Klout measures influence across the social web.

Klout allows users to track the impact of their opinions, links and recommendations across your social graph. Data is collected about the content users create, how people interact with that content and the size and composition of their networks. Klout identifies influencers and provides tools for influencers to monitor their influence.






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Microsoft’s search service Bing is today announcing the launch of airport maps for 42 major airports across the U.S., with plans to expand to other airports over time. The new feature is available now in Bing Maps on the desktop (some airport maps were previously available on mobile).

With this, you can see inside airports in order to locate terminals, check-in counters, restrooms, shops, restaurants, baggage claim areas, information desks and more.

You can find the new maps by searching for the airport name on Bing, the airport’s city or its code, or you can search for a flight number and click on the included “map” link. A link on the airport maps page also lets you send the map to your mobile device for later access.

The addition comes shortly after Google’s release of its new Google Flight Search feature, made possible through its acquisition of flight data company ITA – a move that Microsoft and others had fought. Flight and travel-related search had been one of Bing’s advantages, thanks to earlier integrations from travel price finder Farecast, acquired back in 2008.

Google offers its own airport maps (for example: my local airport here), but the maps are limited to airport layout in some cases, not what’s inside. For example, the interior of my airport shows just a couple of businesses, like Starbucks and car rental stations, but not check-in counters or restaurants. For larger airports, like LAX, Google may show a bit more data, but it’s still incomplete. However, with Google’s launch of Google Travel, it’s only a matter of time before Google’s own airport mapping offerings are filled out even more than they are today.

In addition, Google has been moving into the indoor mapping space, even going so far as to provide Street View shots inside businesses for Google Business Photos.  That it would soon start providing a version of Street View for airports would not be surprising.






Crunchbase





GOOGLE






Company:
Google


Website:
google.com


Launch Date:
July 9, 1998


IPO:

NASDAQ:GOOG



Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps and YouTube. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing them with a rich source of information....






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Lego (or LEGO if you’re adamant about trademarks) has just dipped another toe into electronic gaming with their clever “Life Of George” iOS title. The game uses 144 pieces and a piece of cardboard covered in a dotted pattern. The game is simple: George shows you a picture from his travels and asks you to recreate it using Legos. You have to dig around in your box of pieces to recreate the image and then take a picture of it on the Playmat. Using a brick recognition system from Eye-Cue, the game awards you points for speed and accuracy.

The game is oddly addicting and great for kids. The pieces are bit small so it’s aimed at ages 12 and up but it’s also a great way to build teamwork with one player – maybe a parent – calling out the pieces and the other player putting the object together.

The game marks Lego’s further attempts at capitalizing on its strong lead in children’s toys into new markets. The impetus for Life Of George is based on the success of the Lego series of video games (Lego Harry Potter, Lego Indiana Jones, Lego My Dinner With Andre) as well as its quiet but apparently popular Lego Universe, a brick-based MMO. By adding a casual game like Life of George, with it’s candy-coated graphics and clever gameplay, you grab the kids who may not want to bring their entire Lego collection to Grandma’s but still want to play with their blocks. As a parent, I find that the game is also helpful in teaching counting and hand-eye coordination as you need to find blocks as quickly as possible and then smoosh them together.

Naysayers will note that George does not offer much in the way of imaginative play and I’d agree. But, as we all know, making the thing on the Lego box is often far more exciting than making another “car” using the big green board and a bunch of bricks. There’s a reason behemoths like the 1200-piece Millennium Falcon exists: people love to build things with Lego, but they don’t always want to be structural engineers.

To be clear, Life Of George is a casual game in the vein of Cut The Rope or Angry Birds. You play it for a while, maybe forget about it, maybe dump all of the pieces into the main Lego box down the line. However, at $29 plus a free iOS download (a price I suspect will go down over time) it’s a fun way to interact with your Lego using electronics.

Click to view slideshow.
Herr George has a Facebook page and his game is available on October 1st.

AVOS has been getting a whole lot of criticism by former Delicious users and fans – and even original founder Joshua Schachter – after the recent launch of the all-new Delicious. And granted, perhaps they would have been better off waiting a couple more months before launching.

But AVOS quickly moved to fix some issues, and announced that it was working on fixing others.

In a new post on the ‘Delicious beta status blog’, AVOS has just announced that is has now fixed a problem with Firefox extensions, and more importantly, started a ‘bookmark rescue operation’ to appease former users who’ve lost their old Delicious bookmarks:

For those of you missed the opt-in warnings that Yahoo! has been sending out over the past few months, we are working on a solution to rescue your bookmarks. We have designed a crafty solution and should have more news tomorrow. Stay tuned…

As I wrote when the new Delicious launched, it doesn’t really matter whether the tech crowd falls in love with the service (again), but rather whether it can appeal to a mass audience.

That said, I think it’s probably a good idea for AVOS to demonstrate that they care and that they are willing to address old users’ concerns all the same.






Crunchbase





DELICIOUS
AVOS






Company:
delicious


Website:
delicious.com


Launch Date:
January 11, 2003



Delicious is a social bookmarking website – the primary use of Delicious is to store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too. On Delicious, you can use tags to organize and remember your bookmarks, which is a much more flexible system than folders.

You can also use del.icio.us to see the interesting links that your friends and other people bookmark, and share links with them in return....






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Company:
AVOS


Website:
avos.com


Launch Date:
September 29, 2011



AVOS is a new Internet company, led by the founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. AVOS recently acquired Delicious.com, the leading bookmarking service. Previously, they co-founded YouTube, the world’s largest video site in 2005, which was acquired by Google 18 months later for $1.76B. Hurley and Chen were early employees at PayPal, a leading online payment service which is now part of eBay. AVOS is located in San Mateo, California.






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It looks like the wait for the elusive Nexus Prime may soon be over. Samsung has just started sending out invites for a special Samsung/Google event that’s being held on October 11 at 11:30 AM in San Diego. The topic isn’t listed, but the invitation says we’ll see “what’s new from Android”.

The Prime, which has been rumored for months but is still unconfirmed, is expected to be the first device running Ice Cream Sandwich — the next major Android update, which will unify for ‘mobile’ Gingerbread OS with ‘Tablet’ Honeycomb.

It’s also expected to be a beast specs-wise, with a dual-core processor, 4.5″ or 4.65″ screen, and 4G. Oh, and my favorite rumor: it’s supposed to be running on Verizon’s top-notch 4G network.

Google’s Nexus line of phones, which have included the Nexus One and Nexus S before now, are unique in that they come with ‘Vanilla’ Android, without any carrier or OEM modifications. They’re also typically the very first devices to get updates as they’re released by the Android team.

I’ve been using a Nexus One as my primary phone for nearly two years now and have also used the Nexus S extensively — both of them have been excellent, and I’m not expecting the Prime to disappoint (though I am a bit concerned by the rumored huge screen size).

Aside from the Nexus Prime, the event may well feature other Samsung-made Android devices — perhaps we’ll see a Nexus tablet as well.






Crunchbase





GOOGLE







Company:
Google


Website:
google.com


Launch Date:
July 9, 1998


IPO:

NASDAQ:GOOG



Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps and YouTube. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing them with a rich source of information....






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:



Website:










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Earlier today, Microsoft and Samsung disclosed that they reached a cross-licensing agreement over patents. The key point: it’s a bad blow to the notion that Android is free. Instead, it’s more like “free” with huge Android OEM partners like HTC and now Samsung agreeing to pay Microsoft to use Android. Google must be pissed off.

And they are. Here’s their statement:

“This is the same tactic we’ve seen time and again from Microsoft. Failing to succeed in the smartphone market, they are resorting to legal measures to extort profit from others’ achievements and hinder the pace of innovation. We remain focused on building new technology and supporting Android partners.”

Yes, they used the word “extort”. Wow.

Today’s maneuver is only the latest in a series of moves by Microsoft to destroy Android, or get paid trying. CEO Steve Ballmer is on record as saying that Android isn’t free, you have to pay Microsoft for the patents it violates. And Microsoft has gone out of their way to ensure they maintain the patent upper hand. It’s either evil, or evil genius.

Google’s move to buy Motorola gives them some leverage, but clearly not enough if Samsung is still willing to enter into an agreement like this. You have to wonder if there is something else Microsoft is throwing in to sweeten the deal.

This back and forth will not be over anytime soon.

Update: Microsoft Responds To Google’s Extortion Claim: “Waaaah.”






Crunchbase





MICROSOFT
GOOGLE






Company:
Microsoft


Website:
microsoft.com


Launch Date:
April 4, 1974


IPO:

NASDAQ:MSFT



Microsoft, founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, is a veteran software company, best known for its Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software.

Starting in 1980 Microsoft formed a partnership with IBM allowing Microsoft to sell its software package with the computers IBM manufactured.

Microsoft is widely used by professionals worldwide and largely dominates the American corporate market.

Additionally, the company has ventured into hardware with consumer products such as the Zune and...






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Company:
Google


Website:
google.com


Launch Date:
July 9, 1998


IPO:

NASDAQ:GOOG



Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps and YouTube. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing them with a rich source of information....






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Pandora, LinkedIn, Box.net and many others are moving to HTML5 to give users a cross-platform, rich media experience. The latest to participate in this tend is SlideShare, a sharing platform for business documents, videos and presentations.

SlideShare lets anyone share presentations and video and also serves as a social discovery platform for users to find relevant content and connect with other members who share similar interests. The company also has a huge enterprise following, and companies like IBM and others use the platform to curate content from all of their employees and partners on a branded page.

Considering the trend towards content discovery on mobile platforms, it would make sense for SlideShare to have mobile offerings. But the startup has not offered any native apps and until today had a flash-based site that could be reached via the browser. Co-founder Jonathan Boutelle tells us that using the Flash-based site was a barrier for users accessing SlideShare from iOS sites. And when determining whether to build a native app for go HTML5, Boutelle said that building a mobile optimized site made the most sense because of the cross-platform capabilities to work on iPads, iPhones and Android devices.

The new HTML5 SlideShare site now renders 30 percent faster and users can view, share, and interact with presentations. Boutelle says the latest version of the SlideShare site uses a patent-pending document conversion technology that renders all the details of a PowerPoint or Word document using nothing but HTML5.

The site also allows visitors to take advantage several features that were previously available only on the desktop version of the site including the ability to copy and paste text; keyboard navigation; full-screen view; and the ability to view embedded documents. Registered users can also view private content, to view content from friends, and favorite content. Any user viewing a slide view page now has visibility into metadata such as the number of views, embeds, and favorites for each presentation, as well as related content and content by the same author. And the homepage now displays a list of featured presentations.

Boutelle says SlideShare continues to see growing engagement, and expects the HTML5 platform to increase usage as well. He explains that HTML5 made sense because the company wanted a lightweight experience for users and wanted documents, fonts, and more to look the same on various browser types. As we mentioned above, this is SlideShare’s first mobile presence and currently the startup doesn’t have any plans to expand to native apps. “We’re doubling down on HTML5 and making this better and bette so it works for everybody,” says Boutelle.

Currently, the site’s 60 million users upload tens of thousands professional presentations every day. SlideShare has raised $3 million in funding from Jonathan Abrams, Mark Cuban, Dave McClure, and Venrock.






Crunchbase





SLIDESHARE






Company:
SlideShare


Website:
slideshare.net


Funding:
$3M



SlideShare is a community for sharing presentations. Individuals or organizations can upload and share PowerPoint, PDF, or OpenOffice presentations. Anyone can find presentations on their topic of interest. Users can tag presentation, and download or embed them into their own websites or blogs. Users can also share their documents privately. SlideShare lets its users to join groups to connect with SlideShare members who share similar interests. Business presentations make the most of...






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I could swear that I’ve had a dream about this before, or at least written about it*, but it looks like Microsoft beat me to the patent office. On September 22, Microsoft filed the “Mobile Communication Device Having Multiple, Interchangeable Second Devices” patent, which basically describes a slider-style phone that has replacement components to swap in for the slider keyboard.

What’s cool is that the mobile phone should be able to communicate with any of the secondary devices, whether they’re docked in the phone’s little slide-out drawer or not. Within the picture, you can see a QWERTY keyboard, an Xperia Play-style gaming controller, an extra battery, and an alternate screen. Though they aren’t included in the drawings, Microsoft also included “expansion storage devices, solar panels for charging a battery of the first device, or for directly powering the first device, or medical sensors (surface thermometers etc.)”

The patent goes on to say that “the game controller and keyboard can each comprise a speaker and a microphone to enable mobile phone handset operation. The first device can simultaneously communicate with one or more of the multiple second devices.”

In other words, Microsoft wants to make your phone a Swiss army knife. And the possible implementations of this are pretty far reaching. The game controller is an obvious choice — throw a kickstand on the phone and you have yourself a nice little portable gaming station. And with the Xbox Live integration baked into Windows Phone Mango, it’ll definitely be worthwhile. But something as simple as an extra battery (or possibly solar panels) can make a huge difference in the way we use our devices.

Granted, lots of phones allow for interchangeable batteries, but none let you pop ‘em in to the slider dock. Most of the time you’re trying to get into that back panel while you’re on the go, and the process becomes super tedious. So much so that you, like myself, may actually use the phone less just to avoid it. This technology has the potential to make one of the bigger problems in the mobile world (battery life) a little less difficult.

Of course, Microsoft and others apply for patents all the time, and many of them sit untouched in a vault unless some competitor brings the technology/design to market. However, I’ve been keeping up with some of the latest Microsoft patents and it’s become clear that this detachable dual-screen slider dream is obviously a focus over at Redmond. We’ve already heard about a patent that improves the design of a slider phone to make the keyboard and screen sit evenly. But past that, Microsoft also filed a patent* in July that again describes a mobile phone with a detachable second screen, wherein both components can communicate with each other, detached or not. In fact, some of the same drawings are duplicated within that patent and this most recent one (like the image displayed on the right).

This obviously isn’t proof of anything, but it’s surely a sign that Microsoft is thinking long and hard about this idea.

[via Joystiq]






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MICROSOFT






Company:
Microsoft


Website:
microsoft.com


Launch Date:
April 4, 1974


IPO:

NASDAQ:MSFT



Microsoft, founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, is a veteran software company, best known for its Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software.

Starting in 1980 Microsoft formed a partnership with IBM allowing Microsoft to sell its software package with the computers IBM manufactured.

Microsoft is widely used by professionals worldwide and largely dominates the American corporate market.

Additionally, the company has ventured into hardware with consumer products such as the Zune and...






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TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, who recently left the company he founded over six years ago, is back in action. Or at least, he has proven that he still knows how to set up a WordPress blog.

Arrington just tweeted a link to Uncrunched, which will be his personal blog from here on out. There isn’t really much there yet, save for his first post titled, ‘Here I Am’. That’s it — the post consists of just the title — but presumably his later posts will be a little more content-heavy (fingers crossed that this new role as General Partner at CrunchFund is just a ploy to unearth all of Silicon Valley’s dark secrets).

Which brings us to the comments.

Arrington has apparently decided to use the basic WordPress commenting system. It’s a brave move (you may remember the TechCrunch comments of yore), but the trolls haven’t overwhelmed the blog just yet.

In keeping with time-honored Internet tradition, the first comment on the blog is “omg. first.” — congratulations to former TC developer and Cake Health cofounder Andy Brett for claiming the top spot. And an ‘A’ for effort to Philip Kaplan, who wrote “first” despite being the blog’s twelfth comment. The remainder of the comments are generally positive, though there are a few outliers, like the one embedded below.

Disclosure: Arrington was my boss for a long time and I ate a lot of his cereal when TC was still based out of his house.






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MICHAEL ARRINGTON






Person:
Michael Arrington


Website:
techcrunch.com

Companies:
TechCrunch, Edgeio, Achex, i/o Ventures, SoftTech VC, Benchmark Capital, SV Angel, CrunchFund, ZocDoc


J. Michael Arrington (born March 13, 1970 in Huntington Beach, California) is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of TechCrunch, a blog covering startups and technology news.

Arrington attended Claremont McKenna College (BA Economics, 1992) and Stanford Law School (JD, 1995), and practiced as a corporate and securities lawyer at two law firms: O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. His clients included idealab, Netscape, Pixar, Apple and a number of startups, venture funds and investment banks. He...






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After last year’s f8 keynote, my initial thought was pretty straightforward: I Think Facebook Just Seized Control Of The Internet. Between the Like Button, the Open Graph, and the Open Graph API, I felt like we were shifting from Google being the fabric of the web, to Facebook taking over. A few days later, a now unpaid blogger declared it: The Age of Facebook.

Both of these declarations pissed a lot of people off.

Facebook is the new AOL! Walled garden! The end of open! Blah. Blah. Blah. While everyone else has been busy whining — including plenty of competitors — Facebook has been kicking ass and taking names. And today is proof of that.

For the past year, Facebook has been working on the beautiful re-imagining of the Profile, which they call “Timeline“. I just got it enabled on my account. Going back in time and seeing the past several years of my life displayed in this way is nothing short of profound. Facebook has used software to make something meaningful. Something emotionally powerful.

Because of this impact, some people will undoubtedly hate it. But more will love it. It’s incredible: Facebook has become a tool that’s a reflection of who we are. Just in case it wasn’t painfully obvious already, they’re far more than just another web startup that will flame out in a few years. They are the real deal.

And they just made their competition look rather foolish.

All we’ve heard about in the blogosphere the past few months is how Google+ could take down Facebook. How Google actually did something halfway decent in the social space — watch out Facebook! And look — now Facebook is even copying them!

Please.

I have no doubt that some of Facebook’s little moves over the past few months have been in reaction to Google+. But focusing on that is silly. Those are tiny features compared to what Facebook just unveiled today. They weren’t even worthy of being on stage at f8.

While Google was busy rushing to get a social network that could compete with Facebook out the door, Facebook was thinking about the next phase of social networking. They were building the next Facebook! Google+ does compete with Facebook — the old Facebook. It does not compete with what Facebook launched today.

In that regard, Facebook pulled an Apple. Apple releases something, and everyone in their space rushes to do the same thing. But they never realize that it’s a losing position. They’re skating to where the puck has been. Apple skates to where the puck is going to be. Facebook is skating to where the puck is going to be.

Also reminiscent of Apple: when Facebook unveiled the Like button last year, they were hardly the first to do a button. But they were the first to do a button in the correct way. One click. Done. Suddenly, everyone needed this one-click button.

But while all the competitors were busy making that button, Facebook was busy making the button obsolete. Today’s Open Graph changes represent a world where the button isn’t needed. Sure, it will continue to exist for certain types of content. But it will be more like an on/off switch.

With the new Open Graph, you’re sharing stuff as you do it. You don’t have to think about it. You’re listening to music on Spotify and it’s being shared with your friends automatically in the Facebook Ticker. The only button you hit is “play”.

Obviously, that’s not ideal for all content. But for some of the best content, it’s beyond ideal. The idea of hitting a share button to push your favorite song to Facebook is stupid. Enjoy the music, don’t worry about having to remember to share it. That’s how this should work.

There’s one massive problem in the social space: everyone is competing for the same user time. But most services compete by piling on features that erode that time even quicker. They’re offering up services that if I use, it means I’ll have even less time to actually enjoy life. That’s not a sustainable model. Being “social” online has become far too much work.

Facebook has clearly been thinking about this problem. And now they have a way to tap the power of social without thinking about it. That’s the future of the space. It’s not about needing a share button. It’s about not needing a share button.






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FACEBOOK






Company:
Facebook


Website:
facebook.com


Launch Date:
January 2, 2004


Funding:
$2.34B



Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users.

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks.

The original idea for the term...






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