Ajax Girl

Dan Greenberg took a bit of a beating in his guest post earlier this week where he revealed his strategies for taking a client’s otherwise ho-hum video and making it go viral. Readers were incensed over his almost gleeful willingness to post fake discussions on forums between fake readers, pay bloggers to post videos, and other dishonest tactics. I, for one, agreed with most of those commenters.

He’s requested that we allow a follow up so that he can rephrase and clarify some of those statements. We agreed, and his follow up is below.

At one point Dan says “The original post was framed quite differently, but after going through the TechCrunch editorial filter, it ended up sounding like a tell-all about our shady business practices.” I am not aware of the edits that were made to his original post, but we are reviewing it now to see if any changes altered the original meaning. It is a fairly serious allegation, and we will follow up appropriately.

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

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/190068184/

If you like putting yourself into movie clips with JibJab, you’ll like this new product from Gizmoz, too.

Unlike JibJab, which takes a still 2D image and moves only the mouth up and down, Gizmoz has developed proprietary technology to create a 3D facial image and includes various expression changes as well as lip syncing.

Their basic product, which allows users to create talking avatars, launched in May 2006.

Users can now take their avatar image and insert it into a number of video clips. More clips will be added over time, and Gizmoz is also in the process of licensing video from Hollywood movies and other professional content. Founder Eyal Gever actually showed me a clip over a year ago that had my face on a James Bond clip from Casino Royale. I felt pretty cool that day.

Gizmoz, which raised $6.3 million from Benchmark, is headquartered in Israel.

Gizmoz

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JibJab

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

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/189994745/

New startup Mixx, which went in to private beta just two months ago, may be finding itself with the right product at the right time. Digg users, including top contributors, are showing an increasing amount of frustration with the Digg community, and many are leaving. Conspiracy theories that Digg auto buries stories with certain topics or linking to certain sites only compounds the problem.

Some users eventually go to Reddit, Propeller or any of a number of other Digg-like sites. But a disproportionate amount of them seem to be heading to Mixx, and writing about their choice.

SEOSC gives Mixx a thumbs up and says “I have already had quite a lot of success with getting my submissions voted on, this may be partly due to the fact that many of my digg friends have joined the site.”

Vandelay Design says “Unlike 99% of the other Digg clones, I think Mixx has a real chance for success…Mixx has a much more positive audience than Digg. It always amazes me that even the most popular and highest quality articles can get so many negative and unnecessarily degrading comments on Digg. So far the users of Mixx have proven to be quite a bit more pleasant, something that I know will be welcomed by most users.”

Finally, JD Rucker notes that a lot of top Digg users are at least experimenting with Digg. And he mentions specifically that Greg Davies left Digg for Mixx.

The Mixx team is certainly aware of the fact that users are leaving Digg for their site. They’ve even set up a category in their forums called Digg Refugees for users to discuss the phenomenon and spread conspiracy theories.

Compete shows traffic rising dramatically since launch, without the usual drop off that occurs after the initial press about a site dies down. It’s still a blip compared to Digg, the fact that early adopters are leaving Digg and quite vocally telling the world about it, Mixx may be a startup to keep an eye on.

Mixx

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Digg

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

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/189733174/

The European Union may crack down on targeted advertising following concern into the personal privacy aspects of such programs.

The Article 29 working party has an ongoing investigation into privacy online, and has previously forced Google to limit its data retention of web searches in Europe to 18 months.

According to a Reuters report, Gabriele Loewnau, a senior legal adviser for the German Federal Commissioner for Data Protection said that targeted advertising was a “hot topic” that will be part of the work program for the EU next year.

Targeted advertising is this regard is different to regular contextual advertising in that it is not simply advertising that displays in context to the web site, but advertising that is displayed based on user habits, including browser habits and online purchases. Facebook’s new advertising program delivers ads based on user interests and those of their friends, potentially meaning that they may also be a target of any future EU crack down.

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

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/189683529/