Ajax Girl

Kara Swisher’s elves must have Mark Zuckerberg’s number. Because she is reporting details from an all-hands meeting the Facebook founder held on Thursday for employees that had an open dial-in number, in which he revealed the following financial metrics for the still-private company:

2007 Revenues: $150 million

2008 Revenues: $300 to $350 million (projected)

2007 Headcount: 450

2008 Headcount: 1,000 (projected)

2008 Capital Expenditures: $200 million (i.e., servers)

2008 EBITDA: $50 million

2008 Cash Flow (EBITDA - CapEx): negative 150 million.

If he wants to go public in 2009, he is going to have to start making some money before then.

Facebook

Loading information about Facebook…

cb_widget_report_widget(”cb_widget_1201912947″); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_0_1201912947″,”facebook”);

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/~3/227023638/

Michael Mahemoff has released an update to his JavaScript library that gives you access to play with favicons from script.

The main point of this library is to update the favicon via Javascript, but at a higher level, its main objective is to provide some support for notifying the user of events in another tab. For example, if you start playing music in another tab, you can make a one-liner call to change the favicon to a sound. Or if you really need to alert the user, you can start animating it.

The new features include:

• Scrolling title. The window/tab title scrolls. (Title blink is coming. No, really!)
• Stop functions. unanimate() and unscroll() will stop animation and scrolling, respectively. Previously you had to do stop animation indirectly, by calling change().
• Rails/Scriptaculous style options Changed config to be fn(mainarg, optionalHash). Read the library or demo source to see the details.

Usage code:

Check out a couple of demos:

• Scrolling Favicon Demo
• Scrolling Favicon Library

This also caused Michael to talk about taking tabs seriously and how:

The browser is the new operating system, the tab is the new system process, the tab bar is the new taskbar.

He gives us a slew of ways in which he would like to see tabs improved upon: notifications, hunting sound, custom favicons, summary list, smart colour, javascript events, open forms, search, virtual desktop, and auto-remove.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/227011774/favicon-access-via-javascript

Cooking and recipe sites are a dime a dozen online, but usually they often generic recipe sites tailored for people who cook regularly….and despite women’s liberation and equality of the sexes that’s still statistically women.

Culinary Seductions is billed as “the guys guide to cooking for girls” and does just that, offering recipes for men wishing to look smart by cooking for women.

The recipes are split into Dishes/ Course (including “food for the morning after”), difficulty and moods. Moods include decadent, snugly, saucy, sassy, nutty and luscious, but seems to miss out some obvious mood choices for a partner like cranky, irrational and argumentative.

The recipes on offer seem to be reasonable enough; there’s nothing ground breaking in the food but the way its split up is helpful and the instructions are fairly straight forward.

Might be worth a look if you’re a bloke looking for something to cook for your better half.

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/~3/226991404/

You can argue all you want about who won the Democratic debate tonight, but all that matters is who wins on Super Tuesday. If viral video is any indicator (and I don’t think it is), Barack Obama is already ahead. From the folks at Barely Political, now part of Next New Networks, here is latest Obama Girl video: Super Obama Girl. It just came out:

Personally, in my book, you can never top the original Obama Girl video. Let’s review (for comparison purposes only):

There’s also the whole YouBama phenomenon,which we broke, and now the Washington Post, Yahoo News, and CNN has picked up. I got an e-mail earlier tonight from YouBama co-founder Christopher Pedregal informing me that “Our servers are melting.” They seem to be back up now. I wonder how long before someone puts the Obama Girl videos on YouBama. Check out Craigslist founder Craig Newmark’s Obama video testimonial. He ain’t no Obama Girl, but he is sincere. Where are all the viral videos for Hillary or McCain?

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/226987909/

It should come as no surprise that the ad inventory on social networks like Facebook are not worth much. A new offer by Lookery, a startup that places ads on social apps inside Facebook and Bebo, is offering a guaranteed ad rate of 12.5 cents for every thousand impressions (CPM). The promotion, which runs through April is probably close to what Lookery can get for ads it places on Facebook. Add in 2 cents per thousand impressions for serving the ads and you get to about a 15 cent CPM. That is probably a good average for the bulk of inventory on Facebook, which makes up the vast majority of Lookery’s business.

This is a market-share play for Lookery. By offering a guaranteed rate, it hopes to attract enough application publishers to get to a billion impressions a month, up from 170 million in December. Lookery is smaller than the other major social-app ad networks, like Slide, RockYou, and Social Media. On social networks, more so even than on the Web in general, advertising is obviously a volume game. And Lookery is trying to catch up to the larger app ad networks, which may very well have higher average CPM rates, by taking all the low-hanging penny inventory that is out there.

Find out more here.

Social Media

Loading information about Social Media…

Slide

Loading information about Slide…

RockYou

Loading information about RockYou…

cb_widget_report_widget(”cb_widget_1201892069″); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_0_1201892069″,”socialmedia”); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_1_1201892069″,”slide”); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_2_1201892069″,”rockyou”);

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/~3/226874989/

Motorola is exploring spinning off its mobile devices unit “to recapture global market leadership and to enhance shareholder value.”

The move comes in an ever increasingly tight market which has seen Apple capture 19.5% of the smartphone market in its first twelve months, a new iPhone style device announced by GPS provider Garmin, and a slew of Android powered phones coming later this year, including at least one mobile phone from computer maker Dell.

Motorola’s mobile phone market share has continued to slide in the face of existing competition with the handset unit recording a $1.2 billion loss in the 4th quarter of 2007.

Although mobile phones are still perhaps the public face of Motorola, the company is also an enterprise provider of communications tools to business, Government and the military.

We’re placing Motorola’s handset unit on Deadpool watch. Motorola has had a mixed track record of spinning off companies, having success with Freescale Semiconductor, however Iridium saw what was once the worlds leading commercial satellite network file for bankruptcy in 1999. A new company based around a business unit with a $1.2 billion loss is going to take some serious work in turning around under normal circumstances, but in a market that will see a slew of new competitors and where a new comer such as Apple can take such a big slice of the market in such a short time, it will be harder again, if not near on impossible.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/226867722/

Cornerworld has acquired social media marketing company Sway Inc for $30 million.

The OTC listed Cornerworld is a relatively unknown social service provider that “combines social networking, content-sharing and business management tools to enable independent people to profit from their original digital works;” a full profile from DemoFall 07 can be found here.

Sway offers a central control platform for administering marketing campaigns across social media and “multiple web 2.0 platforms.” Their key products offer customers real-time results tracking across HTML e-mail, podcasts, video syndication, RSS and SMS mobile phone text messaging.

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/~3/226832839/

According to Joyent’s corporate blog, the company stopped hosting Twitter late last night:

Twitter has been officially off Joyent since 10PM last night. This may come as a surprise to some after yesterday’s posts here and here regarding the two companies working together. Those of us at Joyent appreciate the opportunity we had to work with the talented folks at Twitter. It is a great service. We wish Twitter every continued success.

As I mentioned yesterday, Joyent is standing ready with excess free infrastructure to support Twitter through this transition in the event that they need it.

The news comes amidst frequent outage problems that have plagued Twitter. Just last night, Twitter went down again, this time for a “planned maintenance project” that went “far beyond [their] planned time window”. The service has also recently suffered downtime during the State of the Union and Steve Jobs’ keynote at Macworld.

Despite all of these problems, just yesterday both companies were showing strong support for each other on their respective blogs. Both wrote posts (here and here) describing how they were working together to prepare for the Super Bowl this coming Sunday.

When reached over the phone, Joyent’s CEO David Young preferred not to comment on Twitter’s stability issues in particular. He did emphasize that Joyent has free infrastructure on standby should Twitter want to use it again. He also wished Twitter the best of luck, saying the team is amazed at their “great service”.

Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, responded to an email inquiry about the situation as such:

We’re still very much engaged in our efforts to bring solid reliability to Twitter. Achieving our goals is a sustained effort, not an overnight fix. Performance is our most important measure of success and we appreciate both the patience and frustration folks are sharing with us.

With regard to discussing technical specifics about last night’s efforts, we’ll be more keen to do that once we have a chance to come up for air and cover it with some perspective.

Given that both companies are reluctant to go into details about the break-up, we’ll just have to see whether more information comes out in time.

Twitter

Loading information about Twitter…

Joyent

Loading information about Joyent…

cb_widget_report_widget(”cb_widget_1201885117″); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_0_1201885117″,”twitter”); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_1_1201885117″,”joyent”);

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/226805603/

We’ve gotten word that Yahoo will make an acquisition announcement of a video startup today or tomorrow. At first we thought the target might be Metacafe, which was almost acquired by Yahoo just following the Google/YouTube deal in 2006. Shortly after, it made a small acquisition in Jumpcut, a Web-based video editor. But It’s not a video aggregator, we’ve heard, but a platform company. And the price is north of $100 million.

The price point limits the number of candidates. Brightcove is our top guess. If it is Brightcove, the price would have to be well north of $100 million, given that investors have poured $86 million into the company so far. More as this develops.

Update: It is not Brightcove. It is Maven Networks, another Boston-based video startup, three independent sources confirm. And the price is believed to be $150 million. Maven is a video-hosting platform for media sites, including Fox News, CBS Sports, CNet, and Scripps Networks. But Yahoo would probably want it more for its video-ad network, targeting, and insertion technologies. Maven has raised $30 million to date from investors include Accel, General Catalyst, and Prism Ventures.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/226780819/

Update: Looks like some of us jumped the gun on calling this, including the New York Times. It turns out that there are still enough bidding units left in the C-Block for one or two deep-pocketed companies to still make a bid. So it is not necessarily over yet. Because of the secrecy surrounding the auctions—companies are not allowed to talk about it until it is over—we can only guess what is happening. The post below is entirely speculative.

The most closely-watched part of the wireless auction for the 700 MHz spectrum that started earlier this week appears to be over. The auction for the coveted C-block of spectrum, which is a nationwide license and is subject to special open-device/application rules, might have been won by a $4.7 billion bid—just a smidgen above the $4.6 billion minimum required by the FCC. Until the entire auction is over for the other blocks of spectrum, the FCC won’t disclose who the winner is. But the consensus is that the winner is either Google or Verizon. Update: We’ll see in the following days whether any other bids emerge.

Bits blogger Saul Hansell at the NYT has been watching the spectrum auction like a hawk. His theory, after looking at the pattern of bidding for the C-block, is that either there were two bidders playing a drawn-out game of chicken or only one bidder slowly raising its price, almost reluctantly. That one bidder could have been Google, which showed its hand earlier by publicly stating it would bid the $4.6 billion minimum to support its suggested open access rules (and stuck by that pledge even though only two of its four suggested rules were adopted ).

Verizon could have sat the auction out, deciding not to bid and instead watch Google squirm as it realized it was the only one in the game. There is a lot of skepticism about how serious Google really is in its desire to actually win the auctions as opposed to influence their outcome and the rules of the game. When it became apparent that there was only one other bidder in the early rounds of the auction, Verizon could have calculated that Google would bid just shy of the $4.6 billion if it realized it was on its own. If that had happened, the FCC would have almost certainly re-auctioned the C-block at a later date without any of those pesky open-device and open-application rules that Verizon really doesn’t like.

But somebody did make the minimum bid, and those rules will be in effect. If Google indeed was the lone bider, it might have just swallowed hard and decided to go ahead and buy the spectrum. Maybe it was worth more to Verizon to see Google pay a $4.7 billion penalty for stepping on its turf than to have the spectrum for itself. Or maybe it wanted the spectrum all along, and it waited until the last minute to put in the minimum bid, betting that Google wouldn’t respond. Either way, Verizon might feel like it snookered Google on this one.

But we’ll all be better off for it because whoever builds the next wireless network on this spectrum won’t be able to discriminate between devices or applications. And if it turns out that Google did in fact win, there would be nothing stopping it from pursuing its two other goals of opening the network up to other service providers through wholesale leasing and other networks (both wireless and wireline) as well. That would help make the wireless world less a collection of silos and more Internet-like.

So who snookered who?

(Photo by Steve Jurvetson)

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/226771024/