Ajax Girl

The dream of free municipal WiFi refuses to die. Meraki Networks is picking up the ball that Google and Earthlink dropped, expanding its free WiFi network to cover all of San Francisco. The service will be ad-supported (ads appear in your toolbar when you are browsing through a Meraki WiFi router), and the build-out will be paid for out of a $20 million series B round the startup just raised from Sequoia Capital, DAG Ventures, Northgate Capital and other existing investors. This round is on top of $5 million Meraki raised last February from Sequoia and (ironically) Google and former Google employees.

Meanwhile, Google’s once-vaunted WiFi initiatives have dwindled down to providing free WiFi only in Mountain View, CA (where Google is headquartered). And Google’s biggest WiFi champion, Chris Sacca, is now gone. Google’s WiFi effort in San Francisco is all but dead, mostly because its partner, Earthlink, decided to get out of the municipal WiFi business.

So why does Meraki (and its new investors) think it can succeed where Google failed? Well, for one thing, it is already providing free WiFi to 40,000 people across two square miles of San Francisco. (With about 500 WiFi repeaters supporting them). It is simply expanding that program (to about 10,000 or 15,000 repeaters). Second, free municipal WiFi is not Meraki’s only business model (more on that below). It is using San Francisco basically as a giant demo for other cities. But, third and most important, its mesh technology is a cheaper way to blanket a city in wireless broadband than through standalone WiFi hotspots.

Meraki’s WiFi routers connect to each other through a mesh network, meaning that many can share a single broadband connection. They are cheap, can be placed outdoors on rooftops and balconies, and can even be solar-powered. The company expects that it will only cost a few million dollars to cover all of San Francisco, compared to the $14 to $17 million estimated for the Earthlink/Google plan. “There is a pretty drastic cost advantage,” says CEO Sanjit Biswas. “Our network will come in at the low, single-digit millions,” he predicts. Meraki will even offer residents free repeaters to amplify the WiFi signal inside their homes, and shoulder the entire cost itself rather than ask for public funds. All the routers will also be on private property, not public property, and thus avoid the politics of involving the city government.

Whether or not Meraki can prove that local ads will bring in enough money to cover its costs, though, is a different question. Meraki will show single-line text ads from Google that are localized as well as contextual ads from Yelp. Even Meraki CEO Biswas is not sure there is a big enough inventory of local ads to support an ad-driven model, but he sees the San Francisco deployment more as a showcase and as a test bed. “It helps us to have a live testbed with thousands of users,” he says, adding almost casually: “It would be cool to figure out an ad model.”

He is not being glib. Meraki’s real business opportunity is overseas with telecom companies in emerging countries like India and Brazil, who desperately want a cheap way to spread broadband and charge for it. Meraki makes a little bit of margin on its hardware (routers go from $49 to $199 each), but the real money is in managing large networks in partnership with telecom companies, where Meraki takes a 20 percent cut of the access fees they charge. The free WiFi in San Francisco might help build some buzz, but it is not going to spread anywhere else—unless those local ads start bringing in some real cash.

Meraki

Loading information about Meraki…

cb_widget_report_widget(”cb_widget_1199477235″); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_0_1199477235″,”meraki”);

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/210915632/

Tickets for the Crunchies startup awards ceremony and party, which will be held on January 18 in San Francisco, are available now for purchase. The event will be held at the Herbst Theatre at 7:30 p.m. and will be followed by a party. This event is being produced by Read/WriteWeb, Venture Beat, GigaOm and TechCrunch.

We’ve got a number of surprises that we’ll be announcing over the next couple of weeks. The first - in addition to the startup awards, Richter Scales will be singing their famous (infamous?) Here Comes Another Bubble song live at the event.

Over 45,000 votes have been cast for 100 startups in 20 award categories. Who’ll win? That will be a closely held secret until the night of the event. Voting goes through midnight pst, January 10.

Details:

• Friday, January 18, 2008 at 7:30 pm
• Herbst Theater, San Francisco
• Festive attire welcome. After-party to follow.
• Tickets are available here, hosted courtesy of amiando.

The Herbst Theater has 916 seats, so we have just 450 general admission tickets in the balcony and dress circle to release for the event. Tickets are $40, and $10 from each ticket will be contributed to the American Heart Association in honor of Om Malik and in memory of Marc Orchant. The balance of the tickets are reserved for the 100 finalist companies, press and corporate sponsors. If you are interested in orchestra seats as an event sponsor, please contact Jeannie Logozzo. Sponsorship packages range from entry-level event tickets to sponsorship of specific award categories, and all creative combinations in between.

Thank you to the sponsors of the 207 Crunchies who are underwriting the event and making it possible to recognize outstanding contributions in our industry. Award Benefactors: Adobe, Charles River Ventures, The Mayfield Fund, Microsoft, Our Stage and Sun Microsystems. Thank you also to our Program Sponsors, including amiando our official ticketing sponsor, WeBreakStuff for design and MediaTemple for hosting.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/210885088/

China has moved to censor and control online video websites under new measures that could block YouTube and other services in China.

Under the new regulations that will be in place starting January 31, sites that provide video programming or allow users to upload video must have a permit and be either state-owned or state-controlled. Permits for video hosting sites will be subject to renewal every three years and operators who commit violations may be banned for up to 5 years.

Chinafilm.com, a site run by the state-run China Film Group said that the majority of online video providers in China are currently privately owned.

To be forbidden specifically under the new regulations (although most are banned already) are videos that involve national secrets, hurt the reputation of China, disrupts social stability or promote pornography. Providers will be required to delete such content if it is uploaded and to report each incident to the State.

A spokesman for YouTube told the Sydney Morning Herald that the new regulations “could be a cause for concern, depending on the interpretation.”

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/~3/210891034/

Oversee.net has acquired domain registration and auction powerhouse Moniker for what is believed to be $65 million.

Oversee.net previously purchased Snapnames in May for $35 million and will integrate Moniker into its Snapnames Live service.

Moniker has become a leader in the continually growing second domain names market. We’ve covered Moniker auctions twice before (here and here); they may not have the volume of some of their competitors but they had carved out a strong niche at the top of the market.

Both parties said that the acquisition would strength their positions in a highly competitive market.

(in part via Domaintools)

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/210830600/

Open source CRM software provider SugarCRM has closed $14.5 million Series D in a round that included original investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson, New Enterprise Associates and Walden International.

SugarCRM started as open source project on Sourceforge, and the company still maintains a fully open source version. Its revenue relies on professional editions and through the provision of support. Total funding to date for SugarCRM now stands at approx. $41 million.

Online jewelry store Ice.com has raised $47 million in “new venture capital” from Polaris Venture Partners. The online retailer opened its doors at the tail of the original web boom in 2001 and has grown to annual sales of $83.4 million.

Under the deal, Polaris managing general partner Alan Spoon will take a seat on the Ice.com board.

(via PEHub/ Internetretailer)

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/~3/210817681/

HaloScan, a company that provides easily deployable commenting systems for over 489,300 sites, has partnered with JavaScript module provider JS-Kit to provide its user base with “one-click” deployment of JS-Kit’s ratings widget.

HaloScan users can now go into their regular commenting system control panel and check a box to show JS-Kit’s ratings widget alongside their comments. JS-Kit provides a number of widgets including its own commenting system, reviewed quite awhile ago, that will complement, not replace, the system offered by HaloScan.

While the ratings widget now comes as an optional feature alongside HaloScan comments, it does not have anything to do with the rating of user comments (as is the case with several commenting systems like SezWho). Rather, users are supposed to click on JS-Kit’s 5-star ratings badge to rate the content of the page, which probably displays a news article given the typical HaloScan-enabled site (DailyNews of Los Angeles and The Olympian are a couple of the bigger ones).

JS-Kit CEO Khris Loux is emboldened by this partnership because he believes that scale and prevalence are very important for startups that provide extra functionality for existing websites. He also expects a shakeout in 2008 among such service providers as those that fail to gain traction die off. We’ll just have to see how much room the market has for multiple providers of commenting, rating, review, and polling widgets (I imagine quite a lot). But if he is right, this could very well prove to be an important first distribution deal for his company to make.

JS Kit

Loading information about JS Kit…

cb_widget_report_widget(”cb_widget_1199472053″); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_0_1199472053″,”jskit”);

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/210804923/

It’s the last week before CES and everyone’s scrambling to reveal or hint at their hot new products without showing their whole hand.

LG and Motorola will both be showing new mobile TV products, LG’s in HD. LG is also set to unveil their new high-res e-paper. Asus is releasing a laptop with a terabyte of RAID storage, which is awesome but kind of nuts. Olevia’s 120Hz, 1080p HDTV will be a marvel to behold, and Westinghouse has convenience in mind with its wireless HDMI-based HDTV. We had some CG predictions on what to expect this year, including lots of streaming and wireless solutions.

On a non-CES tip, the most controversial story this week has to be the purported new notebook from Apple, despite the photo totally being fake and despite us totally calling something like it last summer. Lastly, drop us a line if you other CES-goers want to throw down on some wings and beer.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/210793208/

Next2Friends, a new pivately-backed mobile social network, just came out of a short private beta to launch a ranges of mobile applications - including streaming video - which look like they will take on a number of startups including Seesmic, Qik, Kyte, Loopt and even Twitter. How have they stayed under the radar? By launching very quietly in the UK/Europe first, and over the holidays.

TechCrunch UK has the scoop on the Next2Friends Bluetooth application (a Java app) which allows you to match your profile against another Next2Friends user within range of your Bluetooth enabled phone. So far so familiar. A number of startups (especially in Europe, as I detail here) are trying to crack this nut. However, Next2Friends co-founder and CTO Anthony Nystrom has since passed me more detail of their other applications which are released as of now. Ask-a-Friend will be a twitter-like live ‘rich-media’ private and public polling. The Real-time Live application will turn your mobile into a Qik-like live streaming webcam, with later online video editing available. This will work over WiFi, GPRS and UMTS. Plus, a video messaging app will turn Next2Friends into a Seesmic-like system. All of these apps are wrapped into a social network which is now ready to receive new users. The initial launch will be limited to 250,000 users with a full site launch on 25th March.

The most interesting app is probably going to be their live video one, since this is clearly creating a lot of buzz for Qik and others. It’s the emergence of apps like this that make me think Apple should seriously consider putting a camera on the front of the iPhone as well as on the back.

seesmic

Loading information about seesmic…

Qik

Loading information about Qik…

Kyte

Loading information about Kyte…

Loopt

Loading information about Loopt…

Twitter

Loading information about Twitter…

cb_widget_report_widget(”cb_widget_1199467977″); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_0_1199467977″,”seesmic”); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_1_1199467977″,”qik”); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_2_1199467977″,”kyte”); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_3_1199467977″,”loopt”); cb_widget_report_element(”cb_widget_4_1199467977″,”twitter”);

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/210760419/

GigaOm founder Om Malik had a heart attack last week, but now is thankfully recovering. He is only 41. This blogging thing is stressful (and the stogies don’t help either). It is always shocking when someone you know has a heart attack, but when you have as big a following as he does, those shock waves multiply.

On a personal note, Om and I wrote many stories together during our Business 2.0 days, and he is partnering with TechCrunch on the Crunchies. We need you back in the saddle, Om. Get well soon.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/210775982/

Nick Bouton has released Protagonize, an
online writers’ community dedicated to the (nearly) lost art of the adventure, a type of collaborative fiction. Once an author writes a story, others can post branches to that story in different directions.

We chatted with Nick about the new site:

What was your inspiration?

Early forms of this on the web date back over a decade, when Snoot.com popularized a site called “Choose Your Own Schizophrenia”, an collaborative fiction site popular in the mid-to-late ’90s. Of course, this all dates back to the old Choose Your Own Adventure™ series that started back in 1979 and ran until 1998, published by Bantam Books.

I developed Protagonize as an attempt to modernize the collaborative creative writing arena a bit and inject a little Web 2.0 love to produce a better interface. So far, so good.

How did you use Ajax?

The site uses the Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) library quite extensively.

Here’s a brief overview of the features that use AJAX calls (thus far — still adding more):

• Commenting (add/delete)
• Add & remove favourites & page markers (like a bookshelf)
• Story ratings
• Modal dialogs (login)
• Send to a friend
• Contact author
• Report an item

All of the AJAX calls I’ve written return JSON objects as results, so the transactions are quite lightweight. We also use JavaScript pretty heavily throughout the rest of the site — for example, branch previewing is all JS, and the YUI TabView control is used for managing your favourites / page markers / top rated listings; the lists are each loaded once and reformatted into different sorted views via JS.

The site also uses FCKEditor for content editing, which is a pretty JS-heavy component on its own.

What features are you proud of?

The ease of use of the interface. The TabViews were a lot of work to get working nicely and I’m pretty happy with those, too. My AJAX calls are pretty snappy (particularly managing your favourites and page markers), and I really liked using the YUI Animation effects to do fade-ins and fade-outs when showing/hiding dialogs and deleting items. Makes the whole app feel nice and smooth.
The toughest parts were probably securing the AJAX/JSON calls and dealing with user input validation gracefully (I can still work on that a bit — not very happy with the built-in ASP.NET client-side validation scripts). I’ve also had some minor layout problems with smaller-market
browsers (specifically Opera) that are a pain in butt to track down.

I’d also like to make user profiles feel a bit more personal; they’re a little cold right now without any way to put in your own image, but I think the profile blurb and quote helps people customize it a bit so far.

Future plans?

Future plans - the main large feature I’m I’m going to be adding in the next month or two is user-created and controlled group functionality. Groups will be either be open or closed membership, where closed groups would require an invitation and optionally not be displayed on the front end of the site (i.e. public/private), and open groups would allow people to join in at will. That way we could cater to your usage, private & closed groups, and allow others to use the feature in a different way, maybe for close circles of friends who don’t want other people participating in their stories.

Nick has some more cool projects coming over at Taunt Media too.

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/210670335/protagonize-choose-your-own-web-20-adventure