Ajax Girl

Zoho continues to launch a new product every month or two. Next up is a way for businesses to send electronic invoices. It will join a suite of sixteen other business-focused applications, including a full “Office” suite (online clones for Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.), in the next few weeks. Most of their applications are free or significantly less expensive than competitors.

Other applications include web conferencing, and most recently a portal to manage human resources—recruiting, org charts, HR forms, etc.

This is certainly not the first online invoicing tool. But the value in Zoho is, increasingly, the fact that they have so many services under the same brand/sign on. The invoices product will be free for users who send up to five invoices per month. Paid packages range up to $35/month.

A quick way to understand which Zoho applications are free and which have a fee - the productivity applications listed on the left hand column are free, the business applications on the right will have a fee.

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Source: TechCrunch
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Who says nothing good comes from getting deadpooled?

Blake Machado was the winner of a YouTube announcement contest we held a couple weeks back. He was the first to guess correctly that YouTube would come out with some new APIs to spread its influence over the web. The prize was an iPod shuffle.

Turns out YouTube’s announcement was particularly poignant for Blake given his connection to the previous deadpooled Stage6. As he revealed to us after winning:

Ironically guessing/winning this is bitter-sweet. I was the PM of
Stage6 and this is an area where we had planned to beat YouTube to the
punch and gain some, hopefully, extremely positive results. We would
have as it was scheduled for Feb. release — oh well.

So how’d we comfort him in his time of need? Etched a reminder of that deadpooling into his “consolation” prize, of course. You’re welcome, Blake.

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If your kid’s obsessed with Webkinz and Club Penguin but you can’t get them to do their chores, you may want to take a look at a new entrant into the virtual worlds scene called Handipoints.

Founder Viva Chu started Handipoints in January 2007 with the notion that chore charts would be both more fun and more effective if they were moved online. So he created a site with two main parts: one that helped parents track how their kids helped out around the house, and another that consisted of a virtual world on par with the other pseudo-3D services kids have come to enjoy.

These two parts work closely with one another to create sufficient incentives for kids to do their work. When kids successfully complete activities (such as cleaning their room, taking out the trash, or even brushing their teeth and eating an apple), they gain either of two types of points: so-called “handipoints” that can be redeemed for real-world items such as Nerf guns and toys; and “bonus points” that can be used to buy virtual goods in the online world. Parents determine which type of point, and how many of them, is rewarded for good behavior.

Setting up a system for kids to redeem points for physical goods (or money) was easy enough; all they had to do was hook up Amazon’s APIs and create a custom storefront. But a significant effort has gone into creating an entirely new and appealing virtual world, one that’s replete with different settings, activities, items, and other users.

Like Webkinz, kids can walk around the virtual world and talk to each other using canned chat (where you pick statements from a list instead of typing them). This prevents inappropriate behavior. The graphics are impressive and the functionality is rather sophisticated. In addition to buying items and socializing, users can play in-world games and watch movies (these require points, too).

Handipoints has raised $800k from Charles River Ventures and a couple of angels - Keith Rabois and Georges Harik. It’s been in beta since November 2007 and has gained 150k users so far, with 3.5 users per family on average (that breaks down into 1 parent and about 2 kids). Most of the service’s virtual goods are free, but the company plans on making money through selling premium goods to parents who want to make them available for their kids.

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Glassdoor.com has taken $3 million Series B in a round led by Benchmark Capital.

Not a lot is known about the Sausalito, CA based company. CEO and Founder Robert Hohman was previously the President of Hotwire.com, and the team includes Richard Barton, ex CEO of Zillow and Tim Besse, previously in senior management at Expedia. PEHub suggests the company is a “social networking company focused on employment conditions in the workplace,” where as Rent Bits suggests that it may be Real Estate related.

The company is still very much in stealth mode and gives no hints on their site aside from saying that “except that we think it’s pretty unique and going to be a lot of fun to build.” The company may already be struggling with bringing the mystery product to market, with their site saying that they “expect to have something live in early 2008,” yet are still displaying a holding page.

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Source: TechCrunch
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CBS released a high definition player today in the labs area of their site, along with a few clips. They are currently streaming (not progressive download) in H.264/AVC format at 480p, with 720p and 1080p coming soon, they say.

Hulu and others are also beginning to test high definition streaming. Some shows on Hulu, for example, are optionally available in 480p format. They also have a few clips available in 720p.

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This morning, the New York Post ran a story with this headline:

M’SOFT NOT YET ON BOARD
NO NAMES LINED UP YET FOR YAHOO!

The article goes on to suggest that nobody in Silicon Valley wants to be on Microsoft’s alternate board for Yahoo for fear of “alienating both Yahoo! insiders and others who are aligned with the search giant.” This was news to us since we started gathering names of people who might be on that alternate board two weeks ago.

The sad truth is that nobody is afraid of Jerry Yang or any other Yahoo insiders (what’s left of them). While the Post may have uncovered some individuals who may have been considered for the alternate board and declined, that is not the same as evidence “that the software giant actually doesn’t have anyone lined up.” Because, in fact, Microsoft does have an alternate board lined up and the people chosen for it have agreed to serve if called upon to do so. We have confirmed this with a member of the alternate board.

So why hasn’t Microsoft released its proposed slate? It is not because it cannot find anyone to serve on it. More likely, the reason that Microsoft has gone dark is because it is deep in negotiations with Yahoo to close the deal. The expectation for a revised bid of $34 a share or more is well-founded. If a deal is imminent, there is no point in doing something hostile like propose a new slate of directors. The absence of a slate actually means the chances of the deal going through are high. If Microsoft does decide to reveal the slate in the next few days, then you’ll know the negotiations aren’t going well.

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What’s another $40 million to a billionaire? Hong Kong’s Li Ka-shing, chairman of telecom giant Hutchison Whampoa, revealed during a conference call that he has raised his stake in Facebook by another $40 million or more. This is on top of the $60 million he previously invested.

That brings his total personal investment in the U.S. social networking site to at least $100 million. No word on whether Facebook’s $15 billion valuation has changed from when Ka-shing first joined Microsoft in putting money into the company. We’re guessing not.

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In honor of Linux week at CrunchGear we sat down with Charles Ogilvie, Director of In-Flight Entertainment, to talk about how this start-up airline made Tux fly.

CG: Why did you pick linux picked for RED?

CO: Linux is very stable and agile. We were able to pare down the embedded seat-back side to only the libraries we need, license a container app and then write the code needed to tie everything together

Which distribution are you using?
Flavors of Red Hat & Fedora (we have embedded seat-back units, seat & distribution boxes and a head-end that consists of some file servers)

How long was it in testing?
We’ve been developing it for 4 years and it has gone through numerous iterations. Before a new version is released, it is tested on a simulation rack

Did Microsoft approach you about running Windows on the back end?
We’ve talked with a lot of software vendors.

What was the hardest part about creating the system? Was it the software? The hardware?
The hardest part is maintaining agility. The beauty of the architecture is that we can continue to move forward, innovate and constantly look for additional areas to add new, unprecedented functionality like our inflight food ordering system or seat-to-seat chat.

Why don’t more people use Linux in high traffic situations like this?
I don’t know. They should.

How often does it crash? The Linux machines, not the planes…
Resets or reboots occur in different areas. Because we are trying different open source games, we do notice issues with porting them for example. Over time, we work through those issues. Our inflight team members (flight attendants) have the ability to reboot seats. The seat units also monitor themselves and can reset themselves if they freeze or lose connectivity (a heart-beat) with the head-end.

What’s the deal with the in-flight chat? Why was that included? Have people connected through that?
Seat-to-seat chat and TV-Chat are some of the most fun features we have. We’ve had everything from people striking up great conversations with other guests in chats to groups using it laugh and have fun while watching the same program. The whole idea behind it is to allow a sense of community to take place in a typically confined, airborne environment. I cannot wait for broadband and the chance for our passengers to chat with the ground

What’s in store for the future besides in-flight Wi-Fi?
The ability to compose a music-video playlist is pretty cool and on the horizon. The READ section is also awesome in that it takes what is typically a bunch of wasted trees (excess newspapers, periodicals) and allows us to be more environmentally friendly and timely with things like news/event info/sports/entertainment etc.

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Source: TechCrunch
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“Machine Listening” is the idea that computers can be programmed to interpret audio signals the same way humans do. This means that they can tell when a song belongs to the blues genre rather than techno. And they can detect musical characteristics like tempos, transition types, and harmonies.

The technology has some obvious practical uses. It could be used to compile collections of music with the same sound or with similarities to the music someone already knows they like. Applications could also be designed to create the perfect mixtapes, with songs picked and ordered in just the right ways.

The Echo Nest is a company that’s bringing machine listening to Web 2.0. It was founded by two MIT PhD students and is supported by a government grant. Today, the company releases the first of several “Musical Brain” APIs intended to improve three main aspects of music-related web services: search, recommendations, and interactivity.

The first API, which focuses on signature analysis and is being released through Mashery, can be used to retrieve an XML file with information about a particular song. A proof of concept website called This is my jam has been set up to demonstrate its capabilities. Load up a few of your favorite artists and it will automatically arrange songs from them in an order deemed most suitable given their audio characteristics.

The Echo Nest will lend all of its APIs to non-commercial projects for free, but it will charge commercial sites with a usage fee. The company plans on showcasing a website for each of its APIs, but it doesn’t currently have any plans to create a consumer destination of its own with the tech.

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A few weeks ago I had the chance to check out an upcoming Los Angeles-based startup called Intent, which should launch publicly this summer. And while Intent is a for profit startup, the founders say their goal, like Causes, is to help people along the road to making money.

The intent founders, which include Deepak Chopra’s daughter Mallika Chopra as well as Sarah Ross and Sal Taylor Kydd, will aim to fill a niche between lifestyle sites and medical properties - a destination for wellness content, a syndication platform, and a branded hub for people seeking to share their intentions (personal, social, spiritual and environmental). The site will include original content from wellness category luminaries, medical professionals, media personalities, and pop culture icons. They aren’t willing to disclose much more for now.

The company has raised under “less than $1 million” in an angel round of financing that included Richard Wolpert and other unnamed investors. The Intent blog is here.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/259108817/