Archive for December 28th, 2007

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Digg May Land Digg Girl Record Contract

Written by on Friday, December 28th, 2007 in Ajax News.

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Kina Grannis, the girl behind the now internet famous “Digg Song” (video above) has been approached by a record company interested in discussing a possible record deal.

Artists signing deals as a result of viral videos aren’t new, but this would be a first for one that combines viral video with Digg, and about Digg.

Grannis appeared live on the Drill Team Ustream show tonight (still live at the time of writing, so no archival footage currently available). Grannis discussed the massive attention her song had gained and performed some other works live as well; great voice and undoubtedly talented. You can listen to more of Lisa’s music here.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/207891759/

20 Free Blogfuse Accounts For TechCrunch Readers

Written by on Friday, December 28th, 2007 in Ajax News.

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Kansas based Blogfuse is a Facebook application creator for bloggers that allows content from blogs to be turned into a native Facebook application.

The service is as simple to use as signing up and adding a RSS feed. Blogfuse hosts the application and it links in to Facebook functions such as share this, allowing blog posts to be easily shared within Facebook. Applications are coded in Facebook’s FBML code and not flash, delivering a visually seamless application.

Blogfuse also doesn’t believe that users should be locked into their service; should a user decide later that they want to host their Facebook application themselves, switching is simply a matter of changing the app’s Callback Url, meaning you never lose a user or have to start again.

Blogfuse offers full hosting for the app irrelevant of the traffic each app has. Packages start at $5/ month for one blog up to $30/ month for 10 blogs.

Thanks to Blogfuse we have twenty lifetime “Pro Blogger” packages (ten blogs each) to give away to TechCrunch readers. Tell us in the comments why you want your own Facebook Application (include a real email when making the comment in the email box, it won’t be published but we’ll need it to send you the code) and we’ll select twenty of the best comments for a free account.

And don’t forget, if you’re looking for invites to other services, visit InviteShare.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/207847328/

The Year in DeadPool (2007 Edition)

Written by on Friday, December 28th, 2007 in Ajax News.

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Sadly, 2007 wasn’t the best of years for many startups. Below you’ll find a list of the companies that took a swim in the TechCrunch DeadPool. Also see our Year in Deals, Year in TechCrunch Headlines, and Most Popular Posts.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/207836479/

RIAA’s Target In 2008: You

Written by on Friday, December 28th, 2007 in Ajax News.

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riaa.jpgThe RIAA has lodged documents in the ongoing case of the Record Industry vs Jeffrey Howell that argues that ripping music from legally purchased CD’s is illegal.

If the Judge rules that the RIAA is right, any person in United States who has ever ripped a legally purchased CD will become a copyright thief and a potential target of the RIAA, and that means just about every iPod owner in the country.

The case itself may not find in favor of defendant but not rule that CD ripping is illegal; Howell is accused of sharing files via Kazaa, but his sole defense is that he did not share those files and they were for personal use only, hence the RIAA’s disturbing argument.

Where do you start in arguing against the abhorrent greed of the record industry? It may be one thing for them to fight a losing war against those who don’t pay for music, but to then go one step further and suggest that people who do the right thing and buy their music are criminals because they want to play their music on an iPod is beyond sane belief. If the argument is successful the only salvation for American’s may be Congress passing laws like other countries have that makes personal copying legal, but don’t hold your breath; Congress is too busy trying to pass laws that would strengthen copyright sanctions (such as with the PRO IP Act) and copyright offenders don’t make sizable donations to election campaigns, do they -)

(via WPost, Image credit: Toothpaste for Dinner)

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/207820495/

Most Popular TechCrunch Posts of 2007

Written by on Friday, December 28th, 2007 in Ajax News.

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In addition to the Year in Headlines and Year In Deals , here are simply the 20 most popular TechCrunch posts of 2007 based on comments, trackbacks, and pingbacks (this list was generated using Alex King’s Popularity Contest plug-in for Wordpress). See also our Year of TechCrunch Headlines, Year in DeadPool, and Year in Deals.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/207812402/

The Year in TechCrunch Headlines (2007 Edition)

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Headlines can tell you a lot about what happened over the year. Below I’ve assembled some of the most telling headlines from TechCrunch posts in 2007, divided by month. The big story of the year was the battle between Facebook and Google with their competing platforms for social networking applications (and ads). But there were other interesting subplots as well, such as media companies trying to assert themselves in the digital domain with Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube, NBC and Fox launching Hulu, and NBC tangling with iTunes, not to mention the whole DRM-free drama in music. In the wireless world, we saw Google launch its Android mobile operating system and make a bid for wireless spectrum. The iPhone was another big story, as was Apple’s efforts to control how consumers were able to use (or not use) the device.

A lot of startups gained some major traction during the year, including Digg, Joost, Ning, and Slide. The notion of paying consumers who help to build popular sites also gained traction, with Revver doling out more than $1 million to its top contributors, and YouTube following suit by opening up its own partner program. In Web apps, online spreadsheets, word processors, and presentation suites came together and both Zoho and Google made strides towards taking those apps offline, representing an important shift in consumer software.

Below is a set of the most topical posts from TechCrunch in 2007 that I hope gives you a flavor of the year that’s passed. See also our Year in Deals, Year in DeadPool, and Most Popular Posts.


December

20: Google-DoubleClick Deal Passes FTC Hurdle. Now Comes the Hard Part: Europe

20: Fair Use Vs. Free Speech in the Internet Age: The Lane Hartwell Problem

12: Bebo Embraces Facebook Apps With Its “Open Applications Platform”

3: More Facebook Advertisers Bail From Beacon. Plus, New Concerns.

November

29: Google To Announce Wireless Spectrum Bid Friday

18: Amazon Kindle To Debut On Monday - Ugly But Impressive

6: Liveblogging Facebook Advertising Announcement (Social Ads + Beacon + Insights)

5: Breaking: Google Announces Android and Open Handset Alliance

October

30: Details Revealed: Google OpenSocial To Launch Thursday

28: Hulu Launches Private Beta, Makes Very Good First Impressions

4: The Inevitable March of Recorded Music Towards Free

1: Skype: CEO Zennstrom Steps Down; Only 1/3 of Earnout Paid

September

28: Note to Apple: Stop Thinking Like a Phone Company

27: AOL Is Gussying Itself Up for an Advertising IPO

23: Ning Milestone: 100k Social Networks

21: Google To “Out Open” Facebook On November 5

12: Revver: $1 Million In User Payouts In First 12 Months

August

30: NBC Bails on iTunes

28: Slide Users Adding One Million New Widgets Daily: That’s a Lot Of Widgets

21: Zoho Goes Offline (in a good way)

July

25: Joost Says They Have 1 million Beta Users; Launch By Year End

25: Microsoft Now Selling Digg’s Ads, July 25

25: The FCC Needs To Listen To Google, July 22

15: Ron Paul: A Distributed Web 2.0 Campaign

June

27: MySpace Videos To Become MySpace TV, YouTube Competitor

2: Amp’d Mobile Implodes: Burns $360 million, Declares Bankruptcy

May

30: Google Gears Lets Developers Take Apps Offline

24: Facebook Launches Facebook Platform; They are the Anti-MySpace

22: Silicon Valley Could Use A Downturn Right About Now

3: Breaking: Yahoo To Shut Down Yahoo Photos In Favor Of Flickr

April

30: Silverlight: The Web Just Got Richer

17: Google’s Office Suite Complete: Google “PowerPoint” Confirmed

10: PhotoBucket Videos Blocked on MySpace

4: Forget YouTube: Go To These Sites If You Want Hard Core Copyright Infringing Content

March

23: Dear Clown Co.: Name This Thing Fast Before It’s Too Late

13: Viacom Drops a $1 Billion Nuke on Google.

7: Digg Hits 1 Million Registered Users.

February

PowerHype At Powerset, February 12

Apple Openly Supports Death of DRM. February 6

January

It’s Official - eBay is Buying StubHub For $310 million. January 10

Bubble, Bubble, Bubble, January 7, 2007

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/207812403/

The Year In Deals (2007 Edition)

Written by on Friday, December 28th, 2007 in Ajax News.

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We covered a lot of financial deals at TechCrunch in 2007, including both venture fundings and acquisitions. The list is not meant to be comprehensive, but rather to give a flavor for the deals that went down in 2007. The year started out with eBay’s acquisition of StubHub and rumors of its StumbleUpon deal. Google agreed to buy DoubleClick fopr $3.1 billion, but has yet to consummate the deal. Meanwhile, Microsoft bought aQuantive, Yahoo bought RightMedia, and AOL bought a bunch of ad networks. Cisco bought WebEx for $3.2 billion. CBS bought Last.fm and Wallstrip, among other deals. Facebook raised $240 million from Microsoft. And in venture funding, everyone from Joost and Meebo to Revsion3 and Twitter were able to dip their hands in the honey pot. Below are some of the Web 2.0 and tech deals that stood out in 2007. See also our Most Popular Posts, Year in DeadPool, and Year in TechCrunch Headlines.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/207806020/

Amazon’s Kindle Knows Where You Are

Written by on Friday, December 28th, 2007 in Ajax News.

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kindlemaps.jpgAmazon’s Kindle ebook reader an has unpublicized feature: it can tell you where you are via Google Maps and mobile phone based location finding.

Discovered by Interface, the feature uses the Kindle’s built in CDMA mobile coverage to triangulate your location on Google Maps, delivering a similar experience to a GPS unit, complete with the ability to locate nearby gas stations and restaurants. Other hidden features in the Kindle include a hidden picture viewer, support for screenshots and even Minesweeper.

For those who have already purchased a Kindle, these hidden features are an added bonus, but are unlikely to create new demand for the device, after all it still doesn’t offer color and is a touch big to be mounted on a car dashboard for directions. GPS units have also come down a long way in the last two years, I purchased one as a gift for someone this year for $130; sure, it doesn’t read books but it looked prettier and I’m betting is easier to use.

(via Engadget)

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/207797235/

Gene Lee says goodbye

Written by on Friday, December 28th, 2007 in Ajax News.

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Gene Lee
Photo Credit: Jasmined

Anyone who spent time in Chicago’s Wicker Park over the last few years probably ran into Gene Lee “the dancing Asian guy.” Insert “weird” or “questionable fashion sense” at your discretion. Sadly, Gene recently passed away.

Gene was important because he represented an increasingly elusive burst of color and character. As our cities homogenize, our street corners fill with banks, and our old buildings are replaced by cookie cutter replicas of the uninspired cinderblock box next door, we’re reminded that it’s the people – especially the local characters – that flavor the city. Gene was one of those people.

Wicker Park has its share of street people and neighborhood fixtures. But most of them are ignored and fade into the chaos of cars, commuters, and city bustle. Gene, however, was impossible to ignore. It was fun to just watch people react to him. They didn’t look down, they didn’t just walk by, they didn’t ignore him—they smiled. They pointed and laughed too, but usually in a “hey, good for that guy!” kinda way. He cheered people up.

It’s so easy to go through your daily routine and never look at what’s going on around you. Gene snapped you out of that funk.

According to his brother, Gene was haunted by addiction and bipolar disorder. When he was dancing it was hard to tell if he was happy, miserable, or like most of us, somewhere in between. But he definitely made a lot of people smile. I hope that’s how he’s remembered.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/754-gene-lee-says-goodbye

PlayboyU: All Tease and No Action

Written by on Friday, December 28th, 2007 in Ajax News.

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I was skeptical when Playboy launched its exclusive social network for college students in August called PlayboyU, mostly because Hef’s adult entertainment empire had chosen merely to brand a standard Ning website. While it’s questionable to me whether a corporate brand can ever sustain a large and active social network, it just didn’t seem like the company was trying very hard to leverage its assets and create a uniquely Playboy social networking experience.

In apparent response to disappointing engagement levels (PlayboyU had about 5,000 members in early November and, as of writing, only 12 “site activity” items in the last 12 hours), Playboy is pushing a fairly lengthy survey on its “charter members” through email and on-site ads. It asks questions about social network usage, Playboy brand perceptions and, most importantly, the appeal of integrating magazine content into the social network (although with little emphasis on nudity, suggesting that Playboy is still wary of turning PlayboyU into an outlet for soft pornography).

Among the types of content considered by the survey are cartoons, music picks, advice from Playboy experts, behind the scenes footage of Playboy events, Playmate and “Girls of” profiles, excerpts from “The Girls Next Door” show, fashion pages, and party jokes. Playboy is also apparently weighing the option of creating a “public” site for college age adults that would provide not only traditional Playboy content but serve as a resource like Princeton Review with guides to campus life and ranking systems, as well as “original editorial and video segments related to college life.” This second site would probably not replace PlayboyU, since the registration requirement of a “.edu” email address is one - if not the - selling point of the current social network (see the video created by a site representative below).

It’s too early to tell whether this survey will amount to any real changes to PlayboyU, although the company is obviously exploring ways to improve the social network by taking it in new directions. We’ll just have to see what Playboy comes up with in 2008, and whether it finds Ning to be flexible enough for its attempts at differentiation.

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/~3/207750000/

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