Ajax Girl

Mobile social network Mig33 has pulled in a $13.5 million Series B round led by DCM with participation from existing Series A investors Accel, Redpoint and TVP. Mig33 will put the money toward expanding the company in the U.S. and internationally. The company was founded in Perth, Australia, but moves to the valley after their Series A. They currently have over 9 million users (up from 7.5 million last October) in their global user base across more than 200 countries. You can see an earlier roundup of mobile social networks here.

Mig33 is a downloadable mobile social networking application with a bunch of utilities mixed in. Users can not only do the usual profiles and friending, but also includes VoIP calls, instant messaging, e-mail, text messaging, picture sharing. Long distance calls can be made by using pre-paid Mig33 minutes. They have an affiliate program for selling minutes and have even launched a calling card business in South Africa. Users have been signing on for more than a total of 2 million sessions per day, sending more than 45 million messages each day, and share more than a million pictures a month.

While many of us with “valley blinders” on would look to out ultra-portable laptop or iPhone to carry out most of these tasks, the rest of the world’s 2.6 billion subscribers turn first to a basic cellphone that runs one program at a time. Mig33 wants to be that one program.

Their application will work on most phones, including a long list of Nokias, Sony Ericssons, Motorolas, Samsungs, and others. With their eyes on the U.S. market, Mig33 plans on making smartphones fun and “dumb” phones smart by adding features like email and chat. I’ll be interested to see what they come up with, considering I’ve owned both a Blackberry and iPhone which already deliver on a lot of the features Mig33 has to offer.

Mig33

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/225006981/

Ever since Google options finished vesting, people have been wondering what will become of the Xooglers after they take their money and jump into something new. Google’s former Product Management Director for AdSense, Gokul Rajaram has decided to take a position on the board of Tumri, a display advertising startup that delivers dynamically targeted ads.

Rajaram served at Google from January 2003 to November 2007 and played a major role in developing AdSense in early 2003 and on. According to his bio:

He also helped drive a number of Google’s acquisitions, including DoubleClick, AdScape, and dMarc. Earlier in his career, Rajaram worked as a technical architect at Juno Online, where he developed the back-end advertising system that drove much of Juno’s revenues and helped it go public in 1999. Rajaram has an M.B.A. from MIT Sloan, a M.S. in Computer Science from UT Austin, and a BTech in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur where he received the President’s Gold Medal for being Class Valedictorian.

No doubt Tumri is excited to have him on board. Their current products include Adpod and Publisher, which let website owners pair relevant offers with their content. Rajaram’s experience at Google couldn’t be more relevant.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/225006708/

Automattic has released Prologue, a Twitter style service for groups that is also being pitched as a distributed Twitter.

According to Automattic’s founder Matt Mullenweg, the new service is way for users to share short messages with a corporate structure, or with private messaging between different groups. Mullenweg says that although it’s not initially aimed at becoming a distributed Twitter, they are offering the template on an open source basis and that if people want to hack it for this purpose, “you’re welcome to.”

The concept of a distributed Twitter has been discussed in certain circles for the better part of the last year. The concept is to decentralize a short message service, therefore overcoming the constant issues Twitter has with service provision, or in simple terms, many people host the service across many servers, and they all talk to one and other.

Allen Stern at Centernetworks says that “With Wordpress the dominant player in blogging, this could be a game changer.” Nah. It’s a reasonable enough idea, but the key to Twitter’s success has been three fold. One is its sheer volume of users that has seen it defeat competitors such as Jaiku by providing the most active and rich user base. Secondly although the centralized service is a weakness, it’s also a strength because when you connect to others on Twitter, you connect to others on Twitter. No working out whether the server they’re on is up-to-date, live or even compatible, it just works (when it’s not down, or “temporarily overloaded”). Third is the open access to Twitter via third party tools; just ask Leah Culver from Pownce (who’s not one of my fans) about why open access is vital in building something like this. Prologue may provide some open access, but its distributed nature will mean that ultimately it will be a niche product; possibly a good niche product, but it’s not going to knock the Twitter bird of its perch any time soon.

Automattic

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Jaiku

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Twitter

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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/~3/224963683/

Jason Calacanis has announced an expansion to the Mahalo social platfrom that allows users to access most major social networking sites within Mahalo itself.

The idea of social networking site aggregation or single landing page isn’t new, we’ve covered startups aiming to provide a similar service, such as MyLifeBrand, ProfileLinker and Loopster, but none have really captured the imagination of the broader internet. Mahalo is trying to better these services by becoming the front page destination for those looking to access sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube and others.

Setup is easy enough. You simply add your user name or user ID into the boxes provided, and it then pulls your profiles from each service. It’s not perfect yet, for example you have to provide your full URL for Facebook (which they noted) and LinkedIn (which they didn’t note). From there you can visit each page via tabs on Mahalo itself. I found that maybe half of the pages I opened remembered my ID and I had immediate access to use the sites, others didn’t at first, but after logging in work fine.

I wont fully revisit the whole is Mahalo a great service debate here other than to say that someone once described Mahalo to me as search for the mentally challenged (well he used another word, use your imagination). I’ve always thought that was a little unfair, it’s perhaps search for the Google and/ or Boolean illiterate (so I’m not the target market), but there is value there for the general consumer market. I’m not about to switch to using Mahalo for search tomorrow and I’d expect most of you reading this wont, but ignore the search and take a look at Mahalo Multiprofiles.

It’s well implemented, handy, and its something I can see myself using. We still aren’t at the ultimate point of proper social networking aggregation yet (see Google Socialstream for how it will eventually work) but in the mean time Mahalo Multiprofiles may well find favor among the many who struggle to keep up with their ever growing number of social network sites.

On a related note, I cant help that wonder exactly in which direction Mahalo is heading. Mahalo offers a social networking platform that now does aggregation, and on the search side it’s starting to look more and more like Weblogs Inc than a search engine, check out the Celebrity Gossip pages as an example: that’s not search results, that looks and smells like content generation to me. Calacanis has always been good a building multiple traffic streams so it’s probably part of that strategy, but at the current rate Mahalo wont primarily be a search tool by the end of 2008.

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/~3/224949981/

You’re probably familiar with the “recommended items” lists on sites like Amazon or Barnes and Noble. They help discover things you’ll probably like based on what you buy and what you view. Redux founder Darian Shirazi wants to apply the same power of discovery to growing communities of people online. The site is launching into beta today.

This site is part social network and part quiz show with the central goal being to learn the most about what you’re like and who you’d like. You fill out a profile with all the standard questions (music, age, sex, books) with the added bonus of an optional Myers-Briggs personality test. The site also lets users post photos, list their location, or chat with each other.

However, the heart of the site is training their algorithm on what people you like. Similar to “I’m In Like With You”, users are periodically asked quiz questions by the site, such as “Do you like sports?” or “Do you have a teddy bear?”. Your answers to the questions coupled with your profile info and whose profiles you view help Redux recommend people like yourself with on a percentage compatibility score.

The algorithm isn’t “dumb” or based purely on matching up people based on answering questions the same. It actually learns what properties signify compatibility based on how people use the site and takes special care to match people up with niche interests (something Shirazi calls the “Anomaly Filter”). For instance, people who play sports will probably get along with people who watch sports. From there, the system could discover that people who play sports get along well with people who enjoy action films or any number of other attributes.

Finally, Redux closes the loop by encouraging compatible people to hang out at any of the thousands of public events they’ve pulled from sites like Upcoming.

While I have yet to make a friend through a random conversation over a website, there are clearly plenty of people who do. Members of social networking sites frequently drop a line to someone they might like to strike up a conversation. A service like Redux that matches based on personality makes the initial impetus behind the introduction more than superficial.

But Darian doesn’t think that Redux is necessarily about finding a life long friend. There has been a growing interest in personalizing the web and recommendations from real people are often the ones users trust. That’s why Redux will be distributing its service as a platform by the end of this year. Websites will be able to integrate with Redux to power all kinds of people driven recommendations. It seems like a smart move, because I can’t see most people logging on every day just to chat with friends and answer some questions. The context of another site can make the process more compelling.

Redux was created by the team behind Flick.IM and is funded by $1.65 million from investors including Peter Thiel.

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/~3/224880461/

The Hype Machine is a great music blog aggregator that we’ve somehow failed to write about until now.

The site continuously collects material, including reviews and songs, from the best music blogs on the net. Comparisons can be drawn to Techmeme, which curates a selection of the best tech news articles from the multitude published each day. The Hype Machine does the same for music, saving indie music aficionados the time it would take to scour the web for the hottest new songs.

Not interested on keeping tabs on the music scene on a daily basis? You’re in luck - The Hype Machine just released its 2007 Music Blog Zeitgeist, a collection of the best songs, albums, and bands of 2007. CEO Anthony Volodkin says that the year’s picks were made through extensive analysis of the data collected throughout 2007. The song picks are broken down into months so you can see what was popular in, say, January of last year. The site’s built-in player also lets you play the year’s songs back-to-back and instantaneously.

The Hype Machine was originally started in 2005. The site generates revenue through both on-site advertisements and music sales leads. Version 2 of the site was released just this past fall and featured greater personalization capabilities, such as favoriting and customized feed creation.

HypeMachine

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/224868524/

This is being covered to death elsewhere, so I won’t spend too much time on it. But if a startup is going to spend nearly $1 million announcing a new digital music service claiming more than 25 million free legal song downloads, it might want to coordinate its announcement with the music labels it is supposedly partnering with.

In what may be the dumbest business move of the year so far, Qtrax announced its free music download service this weekend before bothering to sign contracts with three of the four major labels. Now the music companies are saying, “Wait a second, there is no deal yet. We’re just talking to Qtrax.” Without the labels on board, there is no service.

We jumped on this story just like many other blogs and media outlets. Michael got a little excited about the prospect of ad-supported music downloads, and threw up a post while changing planes on his way back to the U.S. from Davos. The Times of London and many others bought the story as well. Maybe it was because the company’s CEO, with a straight face, told an audience at a music conference in Cannes and members of the press that all the major labels had signed on. That was clearly a misrepresentation, possibly a fraudulent one. Hyping your product is one thing. Telling an outright lie is another.

Qtrax is a subsidiary of Brilliant Technologies Corporation, which trades as penny stock, has not filed a 10Q with the SEC since last May), and has raised $30 million to launch this service. Its next move had better be more brilliant than its last one.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/224858575/

After a tough year in which partner Earthlink pulled back from its commitment to Helio, the virtual mobile carrier is now losing its CEO, Sky Dayton. (Dayton was also the founder of Earthlink). Although Dayton will remain as chairman, Helio’s remaining corporate partner, Korea’s SK Telecom, appears to be consolidating its control over the company (perhaps in an attempt to stymie its losses). Dayton will be succeeded by Helio’s current president and COO Wonhee Sull, a former executive at SK Telecom.

Running a mobile service on another company’s network is difficult to pull off financially because the operation is always at a cost disadvantage to the big mobile carriers that own the networks that the MVNO’s (mobile virtual network operators) are leasing—in this case Sprint’s. The company claims 200,000 subscribers, paying an average of $85 a month, and is among the leaders in getting subscribers to use data services. (Helio users, on average, send 550 text messages a month; 95 percent access the Web on their phones versus a 13 percent industry average; and 60 percent use their phones to access MySpace alone). But it is still not making money. That is with revenues of about $20 million a month, according to the company (a $240 million run-rate). In the mobile world, you need a much higher number of subscribers to hit critical mass, even if you don’t have to spend billions of dollars on building out networks.

The short history of MVNOs is already littered with failed companies. The most inglorious of these was Amp’d, which went bankrupt after going through $360 million in capital, some of which went to buying ads on MTV and distributing promotional condoms. Hopefully, Helio won’t suffer the same fate.

Helio

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/224820585/

A couple Fridays ago, Carlos Segura, Jason Fried, Jim Coudal, and Edward Lifson (from left to right below) put on the second SEED Conference in frigid Chicago.

Sandy Weisz took some great photos of the event.

A bunch of folks blogged reviews: What I Learned at the SEED Conference | DK Design Studio SEED review | Visual Rinse SEED review | Fishsuit review (with 7-page PDF) | Giant Robots SEED review.

We’re looking forward to SEED III. When we have a date we’ll let everyone know. Thanks again to everyone who attended. We hope you found the conference valuable.

P.S. Special thanks to Sarah for handing registration and administrative details. She made it look easy all while handling a full load of 37signals customer support on a particularly heavy day.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/820-seed-ii-photos-and-reviews

Carlos at Cartype is putting together a gallery of car cut-away diagrams. I’m ever fascinated by how many parts go into making a car. Every little tiny piece has to be designed by someone and manufactured by someone. The precision required to make everything fit and function together reliably blows my mind.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/819-car-cut-away-gallery