Ajax Girl

Will an iPhone Blend? Find out in the video below from blender maker Blendtec. The company creates an online video show called “Will It Blend” that ranks in 5 figures on Alexa, and has already blended a range of consumer goods. It’s very clever online marketing for a kitchenware company, however iPhone fans may think otherwise.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/132522022/

As much as I would have thought such a post title would have been absurd a week ago, it could happen. According to the latest search market share figures released by Compete, MSN/ Live increased its market share by 67% from May to June 2007, putting Microsoft’s share of search at 13.2% behind Yahoo at 19.6% and Google on 62.7%. Over the year, Microsoft’s search traffic is up 47%.

Despite a $100million Crispin, Porter + Bogusky advertising campaign, Ask saw its share of the search market decrease from 3.5% to 3.3%, although to be fair to Ask, Compete recorded a 2.6% rise in traffic.

Is this a sign that Microsoft could actually overtake Yahoo to become Google’s largest competitor, or a statistical blip?

Microsoft has the advantage of having their search properties open as the default homepage on IE7, and with Vista shipping over this time frame it could be a case that some consumers are simply using the default search page or search box they are presented with. What could position Microsoft as Google’s No.1 search competitor is the continuing slide of Yahoo, who dropped 16.3% on volume and 7 percentage points on market share over the last 12 months.

Credit to Microsoft though: it looks like their search strategies may finally be starting to deliver.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/132512020/

A couple of reports across the net suggest that Seth Godin’s Squidoo is being penalized by Google, most likely due to spam on Squidoo pages.

The reports indicate that some Squidoo pages have seen a 75% drop in traffic, and in other cases have either been removed from high ranking positions on Google, or removed all together.

The service, described last year by Michael Arrington as being Godin’s Purple Albatross, has long been a favorite of black-hat SEO’s looking to drive traffic and gain Google juice for their sites. In more recent times the spam issue has been highlighted by Jason Calacanis, who has written multiple posts on the subject.

Squidoo has recently responded to the issue, however given Google’s crackdown it would appear that Squidoo’s response may be a case of too little, too late. Anyone remotely involved with, or following the SEO community for the last 12-18 months would have been fully aware of the issue (or as some see it, the potential), so if Google is punishing or removing Squidoo pages, Squidoo has no one other than themselves to blame for the situation. Squidoo may also now be on borrowed time; being removed from Google or penalized by Google kills traffic, and Squidoo as a content creator would rely heavily on traffic from Google.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/132501211/

Earlier this week, Comscore posted details about Facebook’s meteoric rise in users and their shift from posting drunken college photos to drunken post grad photos. College Humor has answered back with a study about what those people behind the statistics are doing.

They polled close to 26,000 students (1/1,000 of the users), finding out how many users actually read every book on their profile, or got laid thanks to Zuckerberg’s “social graph”. Here are some of the gems:

• 65% have checked up on an ex boyfriend or girlfriend using Facebook.
• 15.5% of men and 1.6% of women have “gratified themselves” to Facebook.
• Zuckerberg helped 19.9% of men and 11.4% of women hookup.
• 68.2% of women judged others while on Facebook. 61.9% of men cast stones.
• 36.9% of women and 36% of men have considered quiting the service.
• About 90% of men and women see using Facebook in the next year, while a third of each see themselves still using it in five

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/132493386/

Kevin Rose has announced the release of an official version of Digg for the iPhone.

The iPhone specific version supports:
* Native iPhone-like story scrolling
* Mini permalink pages with top 5 comments
* Login and Digging
* Pagination
* Jump to any topic

Top Story listings are planned for a future update.

Rose notes that users can still browse the normal Digg website on their iPhone, but the web application is lighter and faster way to visit Digg and takes advantage of some of the iPhone’s user interface features.

I have no way of testing it, but certainly mobile specific clients do tend to work better than accessing the original page directly.

Digg for iPhone can be accessed at digg.com/iphone.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/132486202/

Haute Secure launched moments ago: it’s a new browser plugin that the company says will detect and block malware before it has a chance to infect your computer. The timing couldn’t be better as news spreads of more Windows-based vulnerabilities.

Haute Secure is free and relatively non-intrusive to the browsing experience. Like Site Advisor, acquired last year by McAfee for a rumored $80 million, users will be warned about sites that may contain malware.

But Haute Secure is also different from Site Advisor, and can provide more protection to users. Site Advisor focuses only on entire sites, labeling them good or bad. That works for some sites, but not for, say, MySpace, where hackers have been able to take over accounts and add malware to popular pages. Haute Secure looks at each page on a site individually and blocks those pages which are bad. Site Advisor also doesn’t try to block malware, just warn the user of it. Haute Secure blocks it.

Haute Secure is also a P2P solution, and the detection software is included in the plugin (Site Advisor does not use its plugin to detect malware). As soon as you locate new malware code, the plugin notifies the Haute Secure servers, which then send the information out to all other plugin users. This effectively increases the amount of web space the service can analyze quickly, adding more protection to users.

Haute Secure also analyzes advertisements, a common vehicle for delivering adware. This triggers warnings on a number of sites that include ads from networks known to carry malware.

Here’s a good example of Haute Secure in action: a malware site at lindsay-lohan.org (do not go to that site) pops up on yahoo search as the third result for a search on that popular actress. Site Advisor gives it a “green” rating, meaning they think it’s clean. But Haute Secure has detected malware on the site and blocks it.

The founding team includes Steve Anderson (acting CEO), Frank Swiderski, Iain Mulholland and Rob Vucic. They’ve raised just $500,000 in funding from Baseline Ventures and Ron Conway.

For a deeper dive on the technology side by a security and kernel expert, see Alex Ionescu’s beta review

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/~3/132452235/

For developers designing for the other 99.9 percent of the web not running solely on Facebook, Gigya offers Wildfire, a simple interface for spreading, tracking, and monetizing your widget across 12 social sites. They’ve been chosen to handle distribution and tracking for 6 of the top 10 Widget properties (RockYou!, PictureTrail, BunnyHeroLabs, BlingyBlob.com, POQbum and Projectplaylist.com), as categorized by ComScore’s Widget Metrix. Combined, the 6 partners have a total audience of 193 million unique visitors.

Gigya’s “embed this” widget is a simple tabbed menu of social sites that lets anyone post your embed code to their page by just entering their credentials. It even works with Facebook applications. You can see the full list of partners here.

It’s a distinctly different strategy than what other widget tool startups are doing. We reported on another company, ClearSpring, which similarly helped developers track and spread their application. However, in contrast to Gigya, ClearSpring is open to any developer and focuses on widgetizing content, not easily posting them to social sites. Gigya is aimed at enabling large widget publishers low friction adoption on social sites.

Gigya recently closed a round of funding with Benchmark and First Round Capital $2.4 million on June 25th.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/132456715/

Paris based DailyMotion has always been available in the US, but today they’re launching a US based operation headed up by Joy Marcus, former senior vice president of global marketing at Time Warner. Dailymotion is one of the largest social video sites jockying for the distant second position after YouTube, with 4.7 million unique streamers in April (YouTube did 53.5 in March) according to Comscore. According to Comscore, however, DailyMotion users spend 4 times as much time on videos as MetaCafe users. However, MetaCafe’s downloadable player can skew the data.

The move makes sense for the site, since the US is DailyMotion’s second largest market outside of France. To differentiate they are planning on nailing a social video trifecta: offering professional content, contextual advertising, and paying top content producers (companies or individuals) through their MotionMaker program.

There’s no word on the specific premium content offerings, but they are forming a specialized creative and programming team. Danny Passman, formerly of MTV Networks and a development executive at fuse and VH1 will head up this team. They have also brought several other MTV executives on board. Catherine Mullen, former General Manager of MTV UK and Ireland and executive vice president of fuse, will be leading international content acquisition and development initiatives. Head of their German operations, Werner Brell, also previously worked for MTV Networks.

DailyMotion says they plan on monetizing the videos through banner and “innovative forms” of in-video advertising. They also say they will have “contextual in-stream ads”, which makes me suspect they will use interstitial video ads. Implementing an advertising platform into their site is not trivial. Determining a video’s content in order to link ads to it is a complex problem we looked at in our roundup of startups taking on the video advertising problem. There is no word on how DailyMotion will split the revenue with producers, but they may follow MetaCafe’s lead and only dole out cash to the top producers (which pays $100/20,000 views).

Although social video sites like DailyMotion are running a distant second to YouTube, the fight for second place is still important. These sites offer an important opportunity for content publishers to hedge their bets against YouTube and make sure Google doesn’t dominate all of their online distribution.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/132405591/

Just in time for the San Diego Comic-Con, DC is starting up a new comic website, Zuda Comics, to search for and buy the greatest web comics. Artists are able to submit up to an eight panel comic to be judged by DC’s band of editors. It’s similar to the comic creator community DrunkDuck, but is higher profile, and pays it’s users.

The editorial panel will consist of Ron Perazza, DC Comics Director of Creative Services and Kwanza Johnson, DC Comics Online Editor, and overseen by DC Comics SVP-Creative Director, Richard Bruning.

Every month, starting when they launch in October, Zuda’s editors will select 10 entries for the community to vote on. Each monthly winner will be awarded a one-year contract (52 issues) to produce their comic. Editors also have the option of selecting 6 instant winners each year. The winner’s contract will also include an upfront fee and any royalties from a possible print edition.

There are a lot of great web comics out there already making a tidy profit off of traffic and swag, like PennyArcade and the venerable Dilbert. Zuda’s offering a way to skirt the normal hustle that goes into building a brand by giving exposure to a select group of artists.

Comic book geeks should also check out ComicVine

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/~3/132400462/

Hollywood lesson: Focus on niche groups over "the people"

“It turns out that not caring about ‘the people’ is liberating. It frees you to care about your people — the 2 or 5 or 10 million who are passionate about Friday Night Lights or Rescue Me or The Wire or Battlestar Galactica or The Office, who will stay with your show for as long as it’s good, whose enthusiasms and high standards and judgments may even help, indirectly, to make it better.”

Lessons from Steve Jobs' “greatest presentation”

“If you believe that your particular product or service will change the world, then say so. Have fun with the content. During the iPhone launch, Jobs uses many adjectives to describe the new product, including ‘remarkable,’ ‘revolutionary,’ and ‘cool.’ He jokes that the touch-screen features of the phone ‘work like magic…and boy have we patented it.’ I think speakers are so afraid of over-hyping a product that they go to the opposite extreme and make their presentations boring. If you’re passionate about a product, service, or company, let your listeners know.”

A look at three redesigned mainstream news sites

“I thought it might be interesting to compare three big media sites that have launched new versions of their web news properties in 2007: CNN (redesigned this weekend), USA Today (redesigned in March), and AOL News (redesigned last week). I’ll look at the different approaches each news outlet took, and what cues they took from web 2.0.”

Megan Jaegerman's news graphics

Tufte: “Megan Jaegerman produced some of the best news graphics ever done while working at The New York Times from 1990 to 1998.” [via JK]

Why Verizon turned down the iPhone

“No is the default answer. The spreadsheets and the marketing team and the CFO and the lawyers have no trouble at all defending the status quo, because, it’s their status quo. They created it and they like it that way. Bizdev deals like this almost always fail because the potential for upside seems too small compared to the mammoth disruption that organizations imagine will beset them.”

Marc Hedlund: “The iPhone keyboard blows”

“Let’s not mince words, here: text input was better on a Newton. The keys are way too close together, full stop. The auto-suggestion works okay if you’re typing dictionary words (and not, say, street names, as in the Google Maps app) and if you’re in a context where typing space to accept is useful (in URLs, for instance, there is no space bar). The amazing thing to watch is everyone blogging about how they “need to get better at typing”—that’s the drugs talking. The iPhone needs to get better at typing, not you…The first iPhone software update really, really, really needs to enable landscape keyboarding for all apps. That one, over-the-wire, software-only update would by itself vastly improve the experience overall.”

Loud cellphone talkers go unpunished

“Rather than say anything, most people do nothing when confronted with blatant displays of digital rudeness. Only 10 percent of those responding said they would say something to the offender; 26 percent said they would shoot the offender a dirty look or a ‘harrumph,’ or express disapproval in another indirect way; 36 percent ignore the behavior entirely; 14 percent walk away — if they can.”

Century of the Self

“If you have an interest in mass psychology and the power of advertising, this is a remarkably eloquent and epic 4 part series from BBC 4 and director Adam Curtis which explores the influence of Freudian psychoanalysis and Edward Bernays’ PR techniques in shaping western mass media, politics and consumer culture.”

Q&A with Conan O'Brien

“O’Brien talks about how he got the Simpsons job, what it was like to work on the show, and why Mr. Burns was his favorite character to write for.”

Hollywood's phony hackers

Funny IM chat reveals why the hacker caricature in movies is played out.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/508-sunspots-the-enthusiasm-edition