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  h1 a:hover {background-color:#888;color:#fff ! important;} div#emailbody table#itemcontentlist tr td div ul { list-style-type:square; padding-left:1em; } div#emailbody table#itemcontentlist tr td div blockquote { padding-left:6px; border-left: 6px solid #dadada; margin-left:1em; } div#emailbody table#itemcontentlist tr td div li { margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:1em; } table#itemcontentlist tr td a:link, table#itemcontentlist tr td a:visited, table#itemcontentlist tr td a:active { color:#000099; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:none; } img {border:none;} The Latest from TechCrunch Gizmo Finally Introduces A Browser-Based Phone And Ringing Links Posted: 16 Dec 2008 08:51 AM PST Skype competitor Gizmo is rolling out a Flash version of its SIP phone client. GizmoCall works entirely in the browser, much like other Flash-based phones from Ribbit (which was acquired by BT), TringMe, and others. In fact, Gizmo’s in-browser phone comes about a year too late. (But it still beat Skype). Like Skype, you pay really low rates for calls to regular phones, while PC calls are free. GizmoCall supports video calls as well. And one nice feature is that it can turn any phone number into a link, like this test number. Gizmo has opened up its APIs for developers to add calling features to their apps compare to the APIs from Ribbit or Ringful). GizmoCall phones are also embeddable: Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors Image Metrics Scores $6.5 Million In Funding, Makes Digital Characters Look Really Real Posted: 16 Dec 2008 07:13 AM PST Image Metrics has raised a Series B round of funding to the tune of $6.5 million, led by Saffron Hill Ventures. The extra capital will be used to advance R&D on the company’s impressive facial animation solutions, which are primarily of interest for the film and gaming industry. You might remember Image Metrics from ‘The Emily Project‘, which went viral over the Summer and made quite a few jaws drop (video below). The company provides its technology for known players like Digital Domain, Sony Computer Entertainment and Rockstar Games, which it partnered with for making Grand Theft Auto IV look more realistic than previous versions of the best-selling game. Its mission is, in essence, to create believable facial performances that emotionally connect audiences to digital characters in movies, games and other forms of entertainment. Developed over the past seven years by a team of Ph.D. physicists and experts in automated computer visioning, Image Metrics has offices in Santa Monica, California and Manchester, UK, and employs about 30 people. We’re still trying to find out how much funding they’ve raised in total so far. Emily Projectenvoyé par Gameblog CrunchBase Information Image Metrics Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors Omniture Brings Real-Time Analytics To iPhone Applications Posted: 16 Dec 2008 06:26 AM PST Omniture is extending its SiteCatalyst measurement tool to native iPhone applications, enabling developers and marketers to gain insight on how users are interacting with their iPhone apps, based on real-time information. This should allow them not only to improve the user experience based on analytics, but also make adjustement necessary to generate more revenue by enhancing ad clicks, purchasing and increasing page views. The new offer, which is basically an extension of its existing SiteCatalyst solution, is called App Measurement for iPhone and will be generally available as from January 2009. To our knowledge this is the first analytics program specifically designed for native iPhone applications, but it’s safe to say other providers will soon follow suit with similar offerings. Update: that’s why we love commenters. Venture-backed Pinch Media also offers an analytics suite for iPhone developers. In related news, Tel Aviv-based Kenshoo is taking its Search Engine Marketing campaign management solution mobile, enabling users to consult campaign statistics and reports from their iPhone browser. More information about their solution is available here, and a video demo can be viewed here.     CrunchBase Information Omniture Information provided by CrunchBase     CrunchBase Information Kenshoo Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors Aravo Raises $7 Million Series D Following World’s Largest Single SAAS Deployment Posted: 16 Dec 2008 03:08 AM PST Despite the economic downturn, companies that solve real problems are still successfully raising money. Aravo, a SAAS supplier information management tool, announced today that they closed $7 million in Series D funding. Currently, Aravo claims their GE installation is the largest single SAAS deployment. "We are now managing over 500,000 suppliers and their data in Aravo, and have just gone live in six languages," said Gary Reiner, CIO of GE. Clear2Pay Raises Another €6 Million For Payment Transaction Technology Posted: 16 Dec 2008 02:56 AM PST Clear2Pay, a provider of technology that powers advanced payment solutions used primarily by financial institutions, has raised a total of €6 million by its current investors AGF, IRIS Capital, Big Bang Ventures, GIMV, Trust Capital and management. Clear2Pay delivers globally applicable solutions for e-payments, facilitating banks and financial organizations in their provision of payments services while reducing transaction processing costs. Clear2Pay’s payment solutions offer these organizations a branded way for their customers to pay online, including trade-supporting B2B environments, e-commerce applications and remittance services. The company also offers a ‘Open Payment Framework (OPF)’, which is essentially a library of component building blocks from which payments solutions can be derived. The company has raised nearly €30 million in funding to date, so it seems like the company is simply battening down the hatches for the next years, considering the fact that the majority of its customer base of financial institutions is currently in a very deep crisis. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Twingly Debuts BlogRank, Guess Who Leads The Top 100 Posted: 16 Dec 2008 01:46 AM PST Twingly, the social blog search engine that prides itself in being completely spam-free, has launched BlogRank as a way to identify the 100 most important blogs in 12 different languages based on a proprietary ranking system. It’s very similar to what Technorati has been trying to achieve with their Authority ranking, i.e. creating a Google PageRank for blogs. The biggest difference is that Twingly breaks down the most popular blogs by language, which they claim is worth much more for local blogs than competing with others at an international level. I tend to agree with that. It’s rather similar to what Wikio is doing (disclosure: TechCrunch France writer Ouriel Ohayon is on Wikio’s board). To demonstrate the technology, Twingly is debuting its Top 100 today, taking another page from Technorati in that regard. We may be a little biased, but we like Twingly’s Top 100 better because we came out on top across all languages tracked (we also lead the English-language blog ranking). In all seriousness, the top 100 lists from Technorati and Twingly look very alike, although The Huffington Post (which is the most popular blog according to Technorati) isn’t even listed at Twingly’s. The startup says this has to do with the fact that they’re more focused on Europe right now, and that they’ve simply never bothered to ping the service anyway. You can find out who leads the top 100 per tracked language (12 so far) in Twingly’s blog post announcing the new feature. Sweden-based Twingly, not to be confused with Twing, doesn’t share much about the underlying technology and only says its ranking system focuses on ‘inlinks and likes among other things’. They also stress that it shows the blogosphere according to their data, and that it’s not necessarily 100% accurate. It’s a nice feature, but late in the game, and you’ve got to ask yourself how obsolete both Twingly’s and Technorati’s ranking would be if Google were actually the next to introduce the next ‘Google PageRank for blogs’.     CrunchBase Information Twingly Information provided by CrunchBase CrunchBase Information Technorati Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 Gaia Online Cuts 13% Of Staff Despite Claims Of Record Earnings Posted: 15 Dec 2008 11:05 PM PST Gaia Online, a social network/virtual world hybrid that includes one of the web’s most popular forums, has laid off 36 employees, or around 20% 13% of its staff. Of those laid off, 16 were full time and 20 were contractors. From what we’ve heard the layoffs were unexpected by most affected employees - the site raised $11 million in July, and has been hiring employees as recently as a month ago.Update: Gaia has written a blog post on the layoffs stating that the headcount represents 13%, not 20%, though this may discount contracted workers. Even more odd: an article printed today in the San Jose Mercury News quotes Gaia CEO Craig Sherman stating that the company is looking forward to a record month. “So far, the deepening recession has not slowed sales of virtual goods, which executives attribute to people spending more time at home. Gaia Online, a youth world with 7 million monthly visitors, sells more than $1 million a month of virtual goods and expects a record month in December, said its chief executive, Craig Sherman” Sherman’s statement seems to be misleading - we’ve heard that revenues last month were lower than expected after a product launch didn’t go as well as hoped, and today’s layoffs seem to contradict the idea that sales of virtual goods have not been affected by the recession. That said, it is possible that virtual goods sales have held steady as other streams of revenue like advertising have fallen off, or the cuts were made to preempt a forecasted (but as of yet unseen) slowdown. In any case, the article couldn’t have come at a worse time for those laid off. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 Palm Gets In On The App Store Game, Launches Palm Software Store Posted: 15 Dec 2008 09:56 PM PST With Apple and Google’s on-device application stores already peddling the wares and RIM’s BlackBerry Application Center just around the corner, Palm’s making an effort to not get left behind. This evening, Palm launched an official on-device application store for both Windows Mobile and Palm OS powered handsets. With “App Store”, “Market”, and “Application Center” all spoken for, Palm’s going with “Software Store”. With that, the store name tap is just about all dried up. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. SEC Gives Social Investing Site kaChing Green Light To Take On Mutual Funds Posted: 15 Dec 2008 09:01 PM PST Every social investing site wants to turn the insights of its trading members into financial products that people can actually link to their brokerage accounts. Finding the few brilliant stock pickers in the crowd and then letting everyone else follow their portfolios while taking a cut of the management fees is the business model. KaChing, which is the most popular investing application on Facebook (previously called FSX), just took a major step in that direction by becoming a registered investment adviser with the SEC. Sometime in the second half of next year, it will allow its members to link their brokerage accounts to the portfolios of the elite managers on the site and automatically follow their trades. The company has raised an angel round from some heavy hitters in Silicon Valley, including Marc Andreessen, OpenTable CEO Jeff Jordan, Benchmark Capital partner Andy Rachleff, and Kleiner Perkins partner Kevin Compton. Bruce Dunlevie of Benchmark, Doug Mackenzie of Kleiner, and former Opsware CEO Ben Horowitz are also investors. (All the VCs invested individually). The size of the round was not disclosed. Competing social investing sites such as Cake Financial (which launched at TechCrunch 40), Covestor, and PersonalRIA (which launched at TechCrunch 50) all have the same plan. All of these sites want to disrupt the current mutual fund industry by broadening the spectrum of potential money managers. PersonalRIA sticks with professional investment advisers, whereas Cake, Covestor, and kaChing each provide a platform for talented individual investors to attract a following. In some respects, kaChing is the most extreme example of pure social investing. Cake and Covestor both track real trades in real portfolios, whereas anyone can create a fantasy portfolio on kaChing. There are absolutely no barriers to entry. CEO Dan Carroll argues this is a good thing because you could be a brilliant investor but not have the money to actually trade. KaChing levels the playing field. The counter-argument is that following people who are investing real money is less risky because at least they have something at stake. It’s not just play money. The recent returns of most professional money managers, however, doesn’t necessarily bear that out. Carroll says that risk is taken away by forcing everybody to be open about their investment strategies and showing their entire holdings and each trade as it happens. In other words, the data doesn’t lie. Carroll says: A lot of the problem is there is no transparency. We are offering complete transparency. Well, not complete transparency. He won’t say how much he raised from his angel investors, after all. But he does demand transparency from the investors who use his site. I guess that is what he meant. Carroll himself, by the way, has a pretty impressive stock-picking record. His portfolio is up 25 percent in the past six months, during a time when the S&P dropped 36 percent. Some other members on the site have done even better. Richard Jones has an eye-popping 372 percent six-month return, while Nick Kwok has a 97.8 percent six-month return. Who are these people? I have no idea. Richard Jones appears to be from the UK and uses a dog picture as his avatar. On the Internet everyone’s a dog, but would you invest your money with someone who actually presents himself as a dog? Carroll thinks it doesn’t matter. You can see his holdings and you can see his risk-adjusted returns. And the site gives you tools to evaluate whether or not Jones is good or just lucky. Carroll has some ex-Google engineers (who doesn’t these days?) cranking out algorithms like the SuperCruncher, which comes up with a skill score for each investor by comparing the source of their returns with their stated investment strategy. If your strategy is to invest in large cap value stocks, but all of your returns are in small cap growth stocks, you might just be lucky. As it turns out Richard Jones’ skill score is 0%. Maybe he lets his dog pick his stocks. Nick Kwok, in contrast, has a skill score of 100%. So at least he is accomplishing what he has set out to do, which is to make money by investing in financials and large caps. But his research score is low. (Each investor is encouraged to write out the reasons for each trade, and the research score is determined by how many other members indicting that they agree, disagree or think it is worthless). Of the 350,000 portfolios on kaChing, 1,500 have actually generated positive returns over the past seven months, which is no mean feat. The idea that a tiny percentage of kaChing’s members can beat the market is really appealing, and I hope that Carroll is right. But we need more data. How many of those 1,500 can stay in positive territory, or even just beat the market? It is quite possible the leaders will keep switching out, making it very difficult to invest in a winner over the long run. The iron law of investing is that, over time, everyone’s performance returns to the mean, or worse. Why should a bunch of investors on Facebook prove any different? Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. SlideShare Sends PowerPoint To The Cloud With New Plugin Posted: 15 Dec 2008 09:00 PM PST SlideShare, a startup that we’ve likened to a YouTube equivalent for PowerPoint presentations, has released a new plugin for Microsoft Office 2007 that allows users to edit and publish presentations directly to their SlideShare accounts. You can download the free plugin here. Beyond publishing new PowerPoint documents to the web, the SlideShare plugin can import SlideShare files from the cloud (both your own and those that are shared by others), which can then be modified on your native PowerPoint client. The plugin features an integrated search so you can browse through files from your SlideShare contacts and groups, as well as support for Twitter and FriendFeed so you can broadcast a new presentation without leaving Office, adding a social component to PowerPoint that extends beyond typical group collaboration. SlideShare’s plugin offers a peek into where cloud-based document editing is probably ultimately headed for most consumers. While most online-only services like Google Docs are free (Office isn’t), the vast majority of computer users have been using the Microsoft suite for years, and aren’t keen on learning a new interface loaded with new quirks. Even with the offline capability afforded by Google Gears, Docs still feels foreign. Expect plugins with functionality similar to SlideShare to emerge for all of Microsoft Office (Microsoft already offers its own similar service) as consumers desperately look for familiarity as they make their first steps into the cloud. Other players in this space include Scribd, DocStoc, and SlideRocket (a cloud-based PowerPoint alternative). Slideshare Ribbon Powerpoint Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. MusicBox: Visualize Your Music In Ways You Never Thought Of Posted: 15 Dec 2008 07:23 PM PST I've been looking for something like this my whole life — and of course now that I've found it, I can't have it. MusicBox is the Masters thesis project of MIT Media Lab student Anita. I've never been impressed with things like Coverflow and Genius because they seem so shallow; there's so much metadata in and around our music libraries that something more robust should certainly be possible, I always thought. And look, someone like-minded but far more capable than myself has created a powerful, intuitive, and attractive tool for visualizing, sorting, and playing your music. Yamli’s Powerful Arabic Search Engine Continues To Innovate Posted: 15 Dec 2008 07:00 PM PST Yamli, the Arabic transliteration search engine that allows users to easily search for Arabic phrases using their Latin keyboards, has launched a revamped version of its site that introduces a number of enhancements, including a way to automatically search for phonetically similar words that are spelled differently - a significant feature that could further bolster Yamli’s position in this still-fledgling space. Because there is no ‘correct’ way to convert Arabic to Latin text, most words have multiple possible spellings (a fact readily visible on most major news networks). In the past Yamli has tried to automatically pick the best possible spelling, but these searches often missed out on possible relevant matches that used alternate spellings. Yamli co-founder Habib Haddad says that search engines like Google can already correct for this for popular queries (especially names) using databases of alternative spellings, but that these are generally determined by human linguists and don’t work on less common or more generic words. Haddad says that using the millions of search queries that have been conducted on Yamli since its launch, the site can automatically determine synonymous words without any human intervention. The new version of Yamli also introduces image search powered through Microsoft’s Live Search API, video search from YouTube, and Wikipedia search (the main text search is still powered by Google). Yamli has also added a two-column view that presents English and Arabic matches simultaneously (the two languages are separated because they are read in opposite directions). There are a few other players in this space, including Onkosh and Google’s own competing service. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 Bush Shoe-Dodging Video Already Watched More Than 5 Million Times On YouTube. Posted: 15 Dec 2008 05:40 PM PST The video above of a man throwing his shoes at President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad on Saturday is sure to live on in infamy for many reasons: the sheer brazenness of the act, the incredible lack of adequate security surrounding the President of the United States (a journalist had to take the shoe tosser down), and the sad commentary on the President’s standing in the world during his waning days in office. It is already infamous on the Web, having gone viral through YouTube. The YouTube video has been seen more than 5.5 million times across at least 640 sites where it has been embedded, according to Visible Measures. The chart at left shows teh number of views between 7 AM and 5 PM on Monday. In less than 12 hours the video went from 2 million to 5.5 million views, and may be on track to beat the Obama victory speech video in terms of viral reach in a 48-hour period. Is that how Bush will be remembered? Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em. Movable Type’s Motion is Microblogging In a Box Posted: 15 Dec 2008 04:50 PM PST Six Apart, the company behind blogging platform Movable Type, has just announced a new social application called Motion that integrates social network-like activity streams, microblogging support, and dead simple login functionality for visitors that allows them to quickly leave comments and even tie in their own activity feeds to your site. The new application will be free for all users of Moveable Type Pro, the site’s premium service, once it leaves beta in 2009. For now, you can sign up for a free demo of the Beta version here. Motion is build around open standards, allowing users to create their own microblogs that pull in events (in a manner similar to FriendFeed) from over 150 other sites supported by Six Apart’s Action Streams, which launched earlier this year. The service also offers full support for OpenID, allowing users to login with their Google accounts, Facebook Connect, AOL screen names, and Yahoo IDs. Six Apart says that Motion isn’t just a set of social features - rather, it’s a flexible suite that you can customize to suit your needs. Among the possible applications: * Create a private, custom action aggregator to track sentiment and glean intelligence from conversations around the web through action streams. * Provide a private microblog community for simple internal employee or team collaboration. * Publish a public microblog to nurture and grow your community while increasing your page views. * Create a public social network to connect to your community across the web instead of competing against other social networks. At this point there aren’t any sites that have actually implemented Motion so its hard to get a feel for how well it works, but Six Apart says that they’ll have a demo live some time this evening (we’ll update the post once they do). You can read more about Motion on the application’s product page here. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 Get Yer Crunchies Tickets Right This Second Posted: 15 Dec 2008 04:29 PM PST Tickets for the one and only Crunchies, which honors the best products, startups and founders from around the tech world, are now on sale at Amiando. The event is being held on Friday, January 9 at the beautiful Herbst Theater in San Francisco. And we’re also holding an extravagant (read: free drinks and cool music from MySpace) after party across the street at City Hall’s Rotunda from 9 - midnight. MySpace is bringing a celebrity DJ, and we will also feature a gaming room with a variety of online and offline games (if you are interested in demo’ing, contact jlogo at earthlink.net or heather at techcrunch.com). Among other surprises at the event, you’ll see the famous Richter Scales make a return performance. We’ve commissioned them to write a special song just for the Crunchies. You can also buy tickets through our awesome blog co-hosts GigaOm, Silicon Alley Insider and VentureBeat. Thank you to the following companies who have stepped up to help sponsor the 2008 Crunchies Awards: Amiando, Charles River Ventures, Mayfield, Microsoft, MySpace, Media Temple and UStream. If you would like to add your name to that list and be part of something special, contact jlogo at earthlink.net or heather attechcrunch.com. There are many creative ways to show your support and help us recognize innovation and entrepreneurship in tech. Look for final nominations later this week. See you all soon! Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors Twilight And PostSecret Top MySpace Lists For 2008. (Taylor Swift and Mobsters Do Okay Too). Posted: 15 Dec 2008 03:09 PM PST Following in the tradition of Google’s Zeitgeist and Yahoo’s list of top searches, MySpace has put together its “Top 8’s of 2008″, detailing some of the most popular artists, songs, searches, performers, and blogs on the social network in the last year. The biggest winner overall seems to be Twilight - the vampire flick that took the world by storm earlier this winter ranked highest in terms of overall searches on MySpace as well as for the movie trailer category. Other popular search terms are unsurprisingly entertainment oriented (and stand in contrast to popular searches on Google and Yahoo, many of which were focused on the election and the Olympics). The report also indicates which songs have fared best on MySpace’s massively popular music streaming service, which has streamed billions of songs in few months since it launched. Oddly enough, only two of the most searched-for artists on MySpace Music were in the top 8 for songs streamed, which means that some of these artists aren’t converting their popularity into listeners as well as they could be. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. Twitter Humiliates MySpace Posted: 15 Dec 2008 02:24 PM PST Google Friend Connect launched with Twitter this morning, a big win for Google in the fight for control over user logins on third party sites. Recent speculation was that Twitter would be partnering with Facebook to integrate Connect first. Twitter quickly corrected stories, telling reporters that they’ll soon integrate with Facebook Connect, too. Twitter CEO Evan Williams even Tweeted about it, saying “For the record: Twitter did not “choose Google, not Facebook.” We’re working with both. We have more to do on the FB side before launch.” But, er, hey Twitter, what about MySpace? You know, the company that you agreed to launch with back in May? Here, this screen shot may jog your memory. But Twitter is dead silent on their MySpace relationship. No mention of it in Evan’s twitter message. No response to my email asking for their current position on MySpace. Just silence. MySpace isn’t much help either. All they’ll say is “Twitter has been a valuable strategic partner in defining the MySpaceID program. We continue to work collaboratively with Twitter and will share more news on MySpaceID implementation specifics when we have it.” Which is sort of like saying nothing at all. Update: Twitter’s Evan Williams responds “Yes, [we are integrating with MySpace]. The onus is on us currently to apply the engineering resources.” He actually said “Yes, all of the above. The onus is on us currently to apply the engineering resources.” But I take that to mean he’s integrating with MySpace given my question. Update 2: Biz Stone made it even clearer on the Twitter blog that the company is working on its MySpace integration as well. In a post titled “Let’s All Be Friends,” he explains: Twitter plans to integrate with the open initiatives offered by our friends at MySpace, Facebook, and Google. We officially announced our intent to work with MySpace back in May because we believe strongly in offering the exchange of public information between our complimentary services. Yesterday, Google included Twitter in their Friend Connect program which means folks can stay connected with their Twitter network on web sites that have activated the service. This particular integration did not require effort on our part so it was a quick win for folks who use Twitter and want to connect on participating web sites. Integrating with MySpace as well as Facebook Connect will require some development effort on our part. Now that we have 13 software engineers working at Twitter and our reliability continues to improve we’re getting closer to integrating with your favorite social networks. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors Tales From The Deadpool: Wallop Comes Back As Coveroo Posted: 15 Dec 2008 02:16 PM PST For some startups, there is life after the deadpool. Take Wallop, a social-network-turned-social-app company that dove under in September, only to now arise again as Coveroo. Wallop still had some money from the $13 million it raised in 2005 and 2006, but its business wasn’t working. It’s original idea was to sell virtual “self expression” items through its own social network. It ended up creating animated greeting card and party invite apps for Facebook. Rest in peace. CEO Karl Jacob isn’t giving up, though. He is just moving in a different direction, away from virtual goods and towards customizing real consumer devices. Using mostly its stock, Wallop acquired Etchstar, a custom engraver that specializes in laptops, iPods, and cell phones. And now it is relaunching as Coveroo, which is making it even easier to personalize your digital devices. All you do is order a back cover to your existing cell phone, pick a design, and they send it to you. If you want to pimp your cell phone cover this Christmas, check out the designs at Coveroo. Starting at about $20, you can order a cell phone cover for your Blackberry, Motorola, Samsung, or LG engraved with one of 250 different designs. These range from tattoo-like patterns and silhouettes to comic characters and brand logos. (Sorry iPhone owners: No cover, no Coveroo). At least Coveroo now has a clear business model, and a pretty cool product. Coveroo is taking submissions from artists and also does corporate logos. The five best ideas for new designs or new product extensions in comments will get a Coveroo with a TechCrunch logo. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors Yahoo Mail’s New App Platform: A Boon for Xoopit and Other Productivity Add-Ons Posted: 15 Dec 2008 12:57 PM PST Xoopit, the email-enhancement service that helps you locate files, images and videos in your inbox, is getting a potentially big shot in the arm with the launch of Yahoo Mail’s application platform today. Previously, Xoopit was only available to Gmail users who were proactive enough to install a Firefox plugin. But with the opening up of Yahoo Mail, Xoopit will now have more immediate access that webmail service’s 275 million monthly global users. And the company won’t have to hijack Yahoo Mail to do it, as it has essentially done with Gmail - Xoopit will be presented nicely in a Yahoo application gallery for easy installation. This may be the opportunity for Xoopit to transform itself from a neat plugin into a widely-used tool that many people learn they can’t live their digital lives without. And we can expect many other productivity tools to follow suit, since Yahoo Mail’s application platform is focused more on serious tasks than finding better ways to poke your friends, which is often the case on social networks like Facebook. WordPress is another example of a productivity tool that hopes that to spur more usage by grabbing users’ attention during their daily (or hourly) email routine. Xoopit is still exploring paths to profitability but says that Yahoo is exceedingly open to discussing ways that developers can monetize its platform. Details aren’t available yet on how Yahoo plans to do this exactly, but Yahoo may allow developers to display advertisements within Yahoo Mail and even offer to split revenue on their own advertisements somewhere down the road. Google has yet to open Gmail to developers, although its Gmail Labs platform suggests that it will get there in time. AOL has also begun to open up. On the flip side, startups like Zenbe and Postbox should be getting worried right about now. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. The Extraordinary Happenings At BitTorrent Posted: 15 Dec 2008 12:56 PM PST “I have never seen anything like this” said a corporate law partner at a large silicon valley law firm. He was referring to the undoing of a $17 million venture round at BitTorrent and subsequent recapitalization that we reported yesterday. In one board action, $10 million was removed from the company’s bank account and the valuation slashed from $177 million to just $35 million. Recapitalizations, where existing stockholders are crammed down to near zero equity in anticipation of a new round of financing at a lower valuation, are common. Particularly in down markets. Old investors are forced to put in new capital to maintain their ownership. New stock options are awarded to current employees. Anyone who’s left the company, even founders, are left with nothing. Even though they’ve often paid hard cash to exercise stock options. Recaps are the only way to make bloated startups that have run out of cash healthy again. But they only happen when a company is desperate for cash and has no other options. The reason is clear - the board of directors has a fiduciary duty to protect stockholders. Recapitalizations are not good for existing stockholders, and can only be approved when the company has no other choice. But what happened at BitTorrent wasn’t a standard recapitalization. Nothing about the BitTorrent reorganization was standard, in fact. The company, which laid off more than 2/3 of staff (65 to 19 employees), had over $20 million in the bank before this transaction, says a source close to the company. They weren’t generating much revenue from toolbar and device installations - just $5 million or so annually - but at least the company had plenty of runway left. In other words, the fiduciary duty of the board of directors to the stockholders of BitTorrent was almost certainly disregarded. The letter to stockholders said that “DAG claimed that the Series C financing should be substantially renegotiated.” But our sources say that Accel was the firm to insist on the change, forced the decision on everyone else, and let DAG take the fall. Why did DAG allow that to happen? The firm’s whole investment thesis is to follow top tier firms like Accel and Sequoia, investing in later rounds at higher valuations. They have to keep these top firms happy. As a result, they are effectively a whipping boy when someone has to be held publicly responsible for unpopular actions. But the real question about the recap is why the board of directors let it happen. The board has a strict fiduciary duty to protect stockholders. That didn’t happen here, since all existing stockholders were effectively wiped out by the recap. So why did the board vote for this extraordinary transaction? Two of the board members, Ping Li (Accel) and David Chao (DCM), are investors in the company and stood to gain financially from the rescission and recap. CEO Erik Klinker is an Accel man, having previously worked at Accel-funded Internap. That leaves founder Bram Cohen, founder Ashwin Navin and outside director Brad Templeton. Navin voted against the transaction. Templeton voted for it, but refused to comment when I asked him why he felt this was in the best interest of the company and it’s stockholders. Cohen also voted for the transaction, and as the majority holder of common stock he was a necessary vote. Without him, the transaction would not have happened. So why did Cohen agree to vote for the transaction? Speculation abounds, but one aspect of the transaction is suspicious. The term sheet calls for $750,000 to be spent buying back shares from common stock holders. That mostly means Cohen, who is reportedly getting the lion’s share of the 30% of the company put aside for current employees. Cohen, who has recently had highly publicized financial troubles, may have simply been bought off. There’s no other reason for the stock buyback. If the company is in a dire enough financial situation to warrant an unprecedented rescission of a $17 million financing, then money that’s left sure as hell shouldn’t be spent in payouts to founders. BitTorrent and Accel will not respond to requests for comment. Everyone is keeping quiet. For now. CrunchBase Information BitTorrent Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 What Holiday TV Show Will You Turn Off? Win a TV-B-Gone Posted: 15 Dec 2008 12:33 PM PST I'm not suggesting we turn off old Rudolph here, but which holiday TV show or movie would you turn off at your next holiday get-together? The Charlie Brown special? That very special Christmas episode of Scrubs? Fox News? Answer and win a TV-B-Gone just in time for CES. Yahoo Announces Next Steps in Open Strategy Posted: 15 Dec 2008 10:59 AM PST Yahoo has invited the press to an event in San Francisco today where it will announce the next steps in its open strategy (details found here). As GigaOm speculated over the weekend, we should be hearing details about the deployment of applications on Yahoo Mail. We’ll post the details here as they become available, starting within the next few minutes. WordPress CEO Toni Schneider is here, along with someone from Xoopit, which suggests that both companies will have integrations to announce. The event has begun. We’re told that today’s announcements will be primarily about how the open strategy adds value for the end consumer, with a focus on several product launches (from both Yahoo and its developer partners). Yahoo Mail, My Yahoo, Yahoo Toolbar and Yahoo’s media properties will all benefit from “openness” enhancements today. Yahoo Mail will get a new open, social inbox. My Yahoo will receive an upgrade. And the media properties to become more open include Yahoo Music. Yahoo Mail Yahoo Mail has 275 million montly global users worldwide according to ComScore. It pulls together email, instant messaging, and SMS. The new, smarter inbox will help users prioritize the email messages that matter the most to them. It will also help users perform tasks without pulling them out of Yahoo Mail (such as viewing photos and invitations from non-Yahoo services). The two key buzzwords Yahoo is using are “social” and “open” to describe their overall strategy with Mail. Yahoo is showing us a demo. There are applications in the sidebar for Flixster, Flickr, Photos by Xoopit, Family Journal, and WordPress. The “Welcome” dashboard shows messages, invitations, and “updates” from the people that matter to users most. The dashboard also displays “invitations to connect” (evidently, once connected with someone, their actions will begin showing up on your dashboard because they will have deemed important to you). When you view your inbox, you can choose to view messages from just your “connections”, letting you filter out all of the email that ostensibly means less to you. Contacts (which includes everyone in your address book) are different than connections, which are suggested by Yahoo’s algorithm and explicitly identified by users. Invitations to connect are either generated by Yahoo’s algorithm or sent manually by your contacts. Connections appear to be like “friendships” on social networks like MySpace and Facebook, but Yahoo is insisting that the relationships will be used in a variety of ways not found on traditional social networks (such as this mail filtering). Six applications for Yahoo Mail are launching today. Four are from third-party developers (Flixster, Xoopit, Flickr, and WordPress) and two are from Yahoo (Yahoo Greetings and Family Journal). We’re going to get a demo of three of these applications. If you click on the Flickr application, you’ll see all of your Flickr photos, which can then be easily dropped into a new email message. The Xoopit applications will “mine” all of your photos in Yahoo Mail (back from when the service began) and surface them in an easily browsable interface. The photos include not only the photos that have been attached explicitly to your archived email messages; Xoopit also follows links to galleries hosted elsewhere and brings them in as well. These photos, as with Flickr, can be shared easily by entering an email address and message. Xoopit was the Yahoo Open Hack winner. With the WordPress application, you can easily convert an email message into a blog post. Just drag the message onto the WordPress icon and it will convert the email subject line and body into a blog post title and content. Yahoo says that its efforts in opening up Mail have been influenced by Zimbra’s philosophy but is not necessarily based on Zimbra code. Certain social features (welcome tab enhancements related to Connections and Updates) launch in the United States and Australia today. US users are required to have a new profile. The open applications will begin limited beta testing in the United States today at beta.mail.yahoo.com (Note: that address will only work for users who have been explicitly asked to participate in the testing). Yahoo plans to fully integrate all of these social and open features in the first half of 2009. Yahoo Homepage Yahoo is now discussing changes to so-called “front doors” to its services, such as the homepage, toolbar and My Yahoo. These front doors are being made personalizable to become “more relevant” to users. The bottom third of the homepage has been “lopped off” because Yahoo wants to focus on the few tasks that users commonly perform on a daily basis. The left sidebar aggregates things like email, stocks, weather, and eBay listings. In the future, this area might show updates from places like Twitter and Facebook, viewable inline. The sidebar is the “centerpiece” of what is being done on Yahoo. Yahoo Toolbar Yahoo’s new toolbar displays which Yahoo applications you use wherever you go on the web. The applications are listed in a dropdown menu called “My Apps”. A “My Notifications” area displays the activity of all your friends on Yahoo. And a “Mail Boxes” tab shows your mail from any service you use (Yahoo Mail, Gmail, etc). The search box now has Inquisitor-like suggestions and allows you to do specified searches, like all “Barack Obama” searches on Flickr. Code from Inquisitor (which Yahoo acquired in May) is being used here. The new toolbar will be available in beta within the week. My Yahoo Today, application integration and a new theme API will be released for My Yahoo. You will also be able to view your friends’ activity across Yahoo’s property. The new applications will be listed under “Add Content” in a section called Open Apps (there appear to be eleven of these apps available right now). One such application is “Addicted to House” from app developer Watercooler that shows a quote of the day and trivia of the day. You can also view a full-length episode of House from within the application. The theme API lets you and your friends create new themes and then send them to each other. Yahoo TV and Yahoo Music You can now see updates from your friends on Yahoo TV. If someone you know comments or rates a movie, you’ll see it in a panel on the Yahoo TV homepage. It’s like a news feed for a particular subject. The same thing is happening to Yahoo Music, letting you see the music-related activity of your friends. Other services will get the same social feature later down the road. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Beta Launch Invites: Kwyno Brings The Web Into Your IM And (Soon) SMS Inboxes Posted: 15 Dec 2008 10:58 AM PST For people who live inside their instant messenger clients and SMS text messages on their mobile phones, Kwyno wants to help bridge those worlds with the Web. Kwyno is a simple service developed by Raphael Caixeta out of Boca Raton, Florida that launches in private beta today. We have 200 invites here. Kwyno is very raw at the edges, and needs a lot more feedback before it becomes anywhere near useful, but it points in an interesting direction. You enter commands like “check techcrunch” or “check twitter,” and it returns the latest feed headlines or Twitter stream (after you’ve given the service your Twitter credentials). You can add your own RSS feed here if Kwyno doesn’t support it, but Caixeta is also adding them as fast as he can. (This is a side project for him). The service can seem a bit pointless at Kwyno itself. After all, it is just bringing in data from other Websites that you could just as easily visit yourself or add to your RSS feed or lifestreaming service. But all the commands also work in IM and, soon, SMS. Kwyno currently supports AIM and Yahoo IM. You add Kwyno as an IM buddy and can bring back headlines and tiny URLs from your favorite feeds and your Twitter account. Its a quick way to check what’s going on without leaving IM. This will be even better via SMS. Besides checking for updates across the Web, Kwyno also supports a dozen other commands, including the ability to search Google, Digg, YouTube, images, and local listings. You can also send Twitter messages from inside Kwyono, use it as a calculator, look up the weather, or add a task to a Wipee to-do list. The possibilities are pretty much endless. Caixeta can keep adding commands as he dreams them up. But there is a limit to how many commands most normal humans can remember. Kwyono would be better off concentrating on a few key commands and expanding their applicability. The “check” command is the most important one, for instance, and Kwyno would be much more useful if it supported a much larger list of feeds from the get-go. (Some of the sites it supports now include CNN, ESPN, TechCrunch, LifeHacker, Gizmodo, Joystiq, and DownloadSquad). Also, when headlines are returned in IM, it would be nice if there was a “more” command to get the next batch. If you have more suggestions for how Caixeta can improve this service, leave them in comments. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. CrunchGear’s Best of 2008: Vote Now Posted: 15 Dec 2008 10:41 AM PST This Friday, we the editors of CrunchGear will be hosting our Gala Online Awards Ceremony complete with dancing bears, punch, and whirling mirror balls. Until then, we invite you, the reading public, to select your favorite - and least favorite - gear of 2008 in our 2008 People's Choice Awards. Click through to make your end-of-year picks. You are subscribed to email updates from TechCrunch To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.Email delivery powered by Google Inbox too full? Subscribe to the feed version of TechCrunch in a feed reader. If you prefer to unsubscribe via postal mail, write to: TechCrunch, c/o Google, 20 W Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

  • Photo of JPTechcrunch

    Twing: Accoona藩の最後の落城

    http://jp.techcrunch.com/archives/20081201twing-accoonas-fin...
    37 days ago in TechCrunch Japan · Authority: 1,266

    ニュージャージーで検索サイトや電子製品の小売りをやっていた、とてもアヤシイ会社Accoonaが、とどめのパンチを食らったようだ。最後のビジネスであるTwingを、閉店したのだ。 同社は検索製品を提供していたが、話題は豊富だった。ファウンダMarc Armand Roussoにはアヤシイ過去があり、株で不正をしたり、前大統領ビル・クリントンを同社のスポークスマンに起用したりした。 Accoonaの$137M（1億3700万ドル）の年商の多くは、ブルックリンでリテイラーをいくつも買収した結果としての電子製品の売り上げだ。2007年には、予定していたIPOを中止した。その理由は？ 引受人がこう言って降りたのだ：“われわれのデューディリジェンス評価を完了した結果として、われわれは同社との関係を絶つことを選択した。” 最近（先月）Accoonaは検索ビジネスをデンマークのMasterseekに売った。 同社は4月に、Twing（フォーラム用の検索エンジン）以外のすべてのビジネスを非優先化すると言われていた。しかしTwingのWebサイトは今ではオフラインになっているし、その筋の情報では、すでにその技術を売ってしまったそうだ。 TwingはAccoonaとは別の企業実体と見られていたが、ここ数か月、$8M（800万ドル）の評価額で小規模な資金調達に努力していたようだ。 Competeによれば、このサービスは今年の春にはピーク時の月間ユニークビジター数150万という盛況を見せていた。しかし情報筋によると、トラフィックの多く（またはすべて）は広告支出によるものであり、リピーターを得ることは困難だった。 われわれはAccoonaとTwingにコンタクトし、応答を待っている。彼らからの別の言明がなければ、同社はデッドプール行きだ。 CrunchBase Information Twing Accoona Information provided by CrunchBase [原文へ] （翻訳：hiwa）

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