Ajax Girl

Here’s another indication of the importance of the new Facebook platform: Silicon Valley VC fund Bay Partners has earmarked millions of dollars for investments in startups creating applications for Facebook. The new program, called AppFactory, will be officially launched on Tuesday.

Like the Charles River Ventures Quick Start program, the idea is to allow entrepreneurs to raise a small amount of capital with a minimum number of hurdles. Bay is promising to make a decision to invest within a couple of days of meeting the company, bypassing the normally weeks-long process of raising capital.

Unlike the CRV fund, though, AppFactory is investing only new Facebook applications. Salil Deshpande, the Bay Partner who will run the program along with senior associate Angela Strange, says that Facebook is now the Social Operating System, and that new platforms and systems historically lead to a new economy. Bay wants to be in the middle of that economy and fund as many of the “killer applications” as they are able to find.

Salil says 40,000 developers have requested keys from Facebook to create applications, and over 1,600 have already launched on Facebook.

AppFactory will be making up to fifty investments ranging from $25,000 to $250,000. Salil says that they have preferred deal terms, but are willing to consider making equity or debt investments, and will work with co-investors as well. Basically, he says, they want to help entrepreneurs build and monetize Facebook applications with a minimum of hassle.

Is the Facebook platform real? Some people question the intelligence of entrepreneurs who build their new companies entirely on the back of another startup. But in general I agree with venture capitalist Josh Kopelman - building for Facebook removes many of the risks associated with getting a startup off the ground.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/132172875/

It’s been a while since we’ve said thank you to our readers and sponsors for supporting the site.

We’d also like to remind start-ups that there are a handful of demonstration spaces still available for our “August in July” party on July 27. August Capital’s fabulous back patio creates a great environment for networking and creating buzz. Interested companies, please contact Jeanne Logozzo for sponsorship details.

Template Monster - They have oodles of website templates, flash templates, flash intros, WordPress themes, and corporate designs. As a celebration of Template Monster’s birthday TechCrunch readers get a 15% discount.

WhoLinked - Who Linked is a really useful widget for easily monitoring your latest incoming links. The widget works on any website, but is specialized for WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, and MoveableType.

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Lewis PR - A multinational public relations firm representing clients like Second Life, Citrix Systems, and St. Bernard Software. Check out their blog for a more in depth view of the company.

PageFlakes - An AJAX based start page that lets you open your browser to all the widgets and feeds you need. Pageflakes features tabbed browsing.

Sclipo - Sclipo is a website to share videos about everyday knowledge among everyday people. Content is focused on how-tos, tutorials, advice, tips & tricks.

Adicate - Time is money and Adicate has applied that to advertising by allowing advertisers to buy time slots on a publisher’s page. They manage all the headache and provide the backend support to sell the ads.

Edgeio - Classified listings have always followed the eyeballs in print. Edgeio takes the same principle to the web, letting you monetize your site by tying in relevant listings. Edgeio Marketplaces currently powers TechCrunch’s job board and have several affiliate programs going so that publishers can boost their revenues.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/132192493/

More travel startup news tonight after Sidestep’s acquisition of TripUp: Yapta, one of the many Seattle-based travel startups (see Farecast and TripHub too), is announcing its second round of venture capital - $2.3 million from First Round Capital and other investors. The company has now raised a total of $3 million.

Yapta, which launched in May, has a unique approach to saving people money on travel: The core of the Yapta service is a browser bookmarklet or addon that lets users “bookmark” fares that they find on major travel sites. Ten airline and travel sites are currently supported, and many more will be added over time. See a flight you are interested in and bookmark it. The flight and fare information is then stored in your account at Yapta.

Find a number of different flight options at different sites, and then go back to Yapta to compare them. This is particularly useful when you fly Southwest or Jetblue, which do not provide flight information to other services. If the fare increases or decreases before you make a purchase, that will be reflected on the Yapta site.

If you make a purchase by clicking through to the airline or travel site from Yapta, they’ll continue to monitor the price. If it falls, they’ll ping you and suggest you contact the airline for a refund or flight coupon. All airlines offer these on price drops but few consumers follow up. Yapta will help by reminding you.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/132186178/

Travel search company SideStep has acquired social networking site TripUp for an undisclosed sum.

TripUp is a social network focused on travel and includes user-generated travel blogs, photos, videos, maps, and travel reviews.

SideStep had previously acquired user generated hotel ratings site TravelPost.com in October 2006.

I spoke with SideStep CEO Rob Solomon prior to the announcement. Solomon sees the acquisition of TripUp as SideStep moving towards becoming a data intensive network; SideStep wants to become the leader in online travel related information.

Solomon said that SideStep has a social networking strategy in place that as well as utilizing TripUp also includes Facebook.

SideStep already has two Facebook applications. The Trips Facebook application provides a trip planning service that currently has over 150,000 users. Extended Info allows users to add fields and categories of their own choice to a Facebook profile. SideStep is already developing a Facebook App for TripUp that should be launched later in the year.

I pushed Solomon on the question of what SideStep gets out of Facebook, given the still lingering questions over many Facebook apps that seemingly lack any coherent business model. SideStep sees Facebook as a customer acquisition vehicle. Solomon noted that although it is still early days in terms of what they are doing on Facebook, the company had already had over 1000 solid leads from their two Facebook apps, and expect this figure to rise rapidly as they improve their cross promotion strategies.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/132169320/

Online ecommerce was over $100 billion last year. That consists of everything from Amazon.com to the knick knacks people sell on eBay. Last year, PayPal processed about 6% of all online payments worldwide ($11.36 billion). 40% of those sales originated outside of eBay properties, which often requires some kind of online shopping cart to manage the transactions.

PayPal has 133 million account holders and Google Checkout handles one transaction for every 70 that PayPal does, according to Hitwise. EJunkie has a simple free cut and paste solution to this problem for small sellers called FatFreeCart. It lets anyone easily put a shopping cart on their site. PayPal has their own cart creator, but FatFreeCart gives users more choice: both PayPal and Google Checkout can be used.

To install the cart on your site, you just need to cut and paste this code to your page and change the text in red, filling in details like merchant id, product description, and taxes. Customers can add and subtract items from their carts and commit to a final checkout by being taken to a prefilled order form on either of the services. When the order is completed, the merchant is notified of the purchase via email and can fulfill the order.

Readers interested in other simple web solutions should check out JS Kit’s website widgets.

Demo Cart

S
M

Orange
Black

Enter your slogan:

Buy my CD

(Ship to USA)

(International Shipping)

View Cart

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/132152913/

This is just a rumor at this point, and I haven’t confirmed it with the company, but I’m hearing that Ning has closed a very large round of financing, led by Legg Mason - $44 million total on a $170 million pre-money valuation. That puts the current value of Ning at $211 million.

The company previously raised an undisclosed amount from co-founder Marc Andreessen.

It sounds like things have been going very well for the company since their February relaunch.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/132111279/

More updates from our post yesterday on Mosh, Yahoo’s new social networking initiative. One reader has sent in what could very well be a screen shot of the service. It could also easily be a quickly mocked up fake, but I don’t care because Darth Vader holding a banana and a guitar is something that I feel compelled to put up on TechCrunch.

If it’s real, my guess is the Mosh team is located in Building 2 in the Sunnyvale offices. Hi guys.

Two readers have told us about Nokia Mosh, which appears to be a completely separate product with no connection to Yahoo Mosh. Screen shot of that is below also, and a screencast of the password-protected site is here.

Thanks for all the tips, everyone. This is what’s fun about blogging.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/132039922/

Yelp, a user generated review site that continues to do very well with traffic growth, was still a bit boring in my opinion. Reviews of the local restaurants and flower shops are useful for some people, but it isn’t exactly as sexy as hanging out in MySpace.

Perhaps I’m wrong though…some of the bored housewives in silicon valley may want to check out this review of Jose’s Landscaping in Menlo Park. Seems like a full service operation.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/132038092/

Highrise allows you to create tasks via email. The iPhone (and most smart phones, for that matter) allow you to send email. This is a good fit.

Here’s how I’ve set up my Address Book and iPhone to make this process as easy as possible.

Set up the Address Book

On my Mac I set up a group in the Address Book called “Highrise.” In that group I add individual entries for all my Highrise Task dropboxes.

Sync the “Highrise” group

In iTunes you can sync all your contacts or just sync specific groups. I have my set up just to sync specific groups. The “Highrise” group is one of them.

Check the iPhone Contacts app

If you’ve synced Address Book Groups you’ll see a “Groups” button in the top left corner of your iPhone Contacts App. Click it to get to the list of your groups. Then click the “Highrise” group to see the entries you just synced.

Select the task dropbox

Click one of the Highrise Task dropbox contacts. Then click the email address that shows up.

Send your task via email

The iPhone email app opens up. Enter your task on the subject and click Send.

Your Task is now in Highrise

And there it is. You can edit it if you want to change the text, add a time, add a category, or assign it to someone else in your company.

I’ve been using this all the time and it’s worked great for me. I hope you find it useful as well. You can also create tasks by forwarding emails by using the dropbox+slot email address format instead of the task+slot format.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/506-iphone-highrise-a-quick-email-a-task-tip

TUN3R.com is an internet radio search engine targeted at “the Web 2.0 generation.”

TUN3R departs from traditional radio portals by greeting users with “The Dial”: a grid containing top-rated internet radio stations. By simply dragging the needle around The Dial, listeners can hear audio samples streamed from stations, as well as browse through an abridged version of the broadcaster’s recent playlist.

Users can search stations’ playlists for artists and songs they are interested in hearing, with results appearing on “The Dial.”

The index includes 1,400 stations covering over 40 languages and 25 different musical genres. TUN3R earns revenue by providing value added services to stations shown on its Dial including custom color Dial graphics for improved visibility, more frequent playlist sampling and real-time audio sampling.

Interface wise it feels a little like a $1 pixel advertising page mated with an AM radio, and yet there is definitely something cool with the layout and idea. The database is extensive and the ability to view playlists as well as sample audio refines the internet radio search experience. Definitely a site that’s worth visiting if you’re searching for an online radio station.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/132021396/