Ajax Girl

Today was Duncan Riley’s last day at TechCrunch, and he will be greatly missed.

Duncan joined us exactly one year ago and was our most prolific writer, covering tech and startup news seven days a week. He is the author of our highest trafficked post ever, and, based on TechMeme headline counts, he is the fourth most important tech blogger on the Internet (by the way, current or former TechCrunch writers take 4 of the top 5 spots). He is a giant among us, someone who’s fought in the trenches with me through some very trying times, and he will be greatly missed.

So why is he leaving? To compete with us, of course.

Duncan will shortly announce the launch of Inquisitr, a blog covering the stuff that he is passionate about: pop culture, tech stories and various oddities that he thinks people will find interesting. You can subscribe to Inquisitr in your feed reader via this URL. You can also read Duncan’s personal blog here.

The list of former TechCrunch writers grows longer. Duncan joins ex-TechCrunchers Nick Gonzalez (now at Social Media), Marshall Kirkpatrick (now at ReadWriteWeb), Natali Del Conte (now at CNET TV) and Ben Meyer (now at Facebook) who’ve left us over the years. All of them remain good friends, and I have every reason to believe Duncan will as well.

You may see the odd story from Duncan here on TechCrunch from time to time for old times sake. But to get your daily dose of his always smart, sometimes crazy ramblings, make sure to bookmark Inquisitr. My sincere hope is to have the opportunity to buy that blog some day and bring him right back into the fold.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/284395508/

Mark Zuckerberg loves to hire folks from Google. His poaching started in earnest last year, and includes Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, CFO Gideon Yu, and others. The latest is Elliot Schrage, Google’s vice president of global communications and public affairs. He will join Facebook on May 14 under the same role. Zuckerberg’s letter to the troops leaked to us:

Hey Everyone –

I’m writing from India to share with you the good news that Elliot Schrage will be joining our management team as VP Communications and Public Policy. In this role, he will be responsible for developing the key messages we want people to understand about our products, our business and the growing global importance of social networking and what we do. The goal here is to help people understand how the internet can strengthen people’s relationships. Elliot will direct our efforts to work with users, media, governments and other entities around the world to ensure that Facebook’s policies are transparent, responsive, effective and are recognized as being those things.

Elliot is joining us from Google where he has been their VP Global Communications and Public Affairs since 2005. At Google, he broadened the company’s messaging from a focus on only product PR to include all aspects of corporate, financial, policy, philanthropic and internal communications. Before that, he served as a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a public policy think tank, as a professor at Columbia Business School and as SVP at Gap. Early on, he began his career as a Harvard-trained lawyer.

This is a really important role for us and one that we’ve been trying to find the right person for a while. Elliot’s role will be critical to helping us scale based on our culture that values transparency, openness, and honest internal communications.

Elliot will be starting on May 14, although you may see him around the office before then.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/284376587/

This is my last post at TechCrunch as a full time writer (I may yet do the occasional guest post). It’s exactly 12 months to the day since I started writing here and the date seemed like a good time to go. I won’t bore you with a self indulgent retrospective; if you are interested in my reasons and thoughts I did a podcast with my old site The Blog Herald yesterday - listen to here.

We cover some amazing startups here at TechCrunch, and for every service we cover there’s probably a dozen we miss as well, given the hyper-inflated nature of the second great web boom. You can appreciate a service without ever actually going on to use it, but the better ones can change the way you interact with the web or run your working day. I thought as this is my last major post here that I’d share some of the services that I actually use. I started using most of them based on posts at TechCrunch, so if you like these turned out to be my practical standouts in the sea of noise.

Evernote

Evernote has completely changed the way I deal with paper (yes, old fashioned paper). Its been described as everything from a scrap collection through to a bookmarking service, but at its core its a database service with industrial strength OCR capabilities. To use, you can clip data or a link, type a note, add a photo (with support for webcams) or scan info in. Everything added can be tagged and indexed, and is searchable via the text within each document, for example a wine label with no other information becomes searchable by every word on the label itself. I scan every paper bill or letter I receive, allowing me to shred/ dispose of them cutting down on the need to file things manually. More importantly it cuts out the need to have to go through my filing cabinet searching for the bill later. The service has a desktop client and web interface, so you have the security of knowing that your scanned documents always have a local copy, but if you’re at another computer or on the go, you can easily access the same data.

See Erick’s review here.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/284375419/

Tomorrow Yahoo will launch a partnership with McAfee and will integrate their Site Advisor malware scanning product into Yahoo search.

The most dangerous websites are simply being removed from search results. Yahoo is also flagging less dangerous offending sites to warn users of specific problems that have been reported from those sites. Example warning messages include “Warning: Unsolicited E-mails” and “Warning: Dangerous Downloads.”

Site Advisor’s core product is a Firefox Add On that provides similar warnings to users. It’s similar to Haute Secure, which we have covered in the past.

The new feature is optional for Yahoo search users, although the default is set to on.

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/~3/284372255/

“I’m extremely disappointed in Jerry Yang. I think he overplayed a weak hand. And I’m even more disappointed in the independent directors who were not responsive to the needs of independent shareholders.”
- Gordon Crawford of Capital Research, which owns 6% of Yahoo’s shares

The lawsuits are rolling in, and Yahoo’s biggest shareholders (see quote above) aren’t being shy about what they think of Jerry Yang and the Yahoo board of directors.

My guess is that Microsoft still very much wants Yahoo, they’re just trying really, really hard to make it look like they don’t. Now is their time to strike (again) as Yahoo’s shareholders are driven to make public comments like the one above out of sheer frustration.

If I were Microsoft, I’d place a new bid for Yahoo at $33 per share, and let the offer stand for three days. Yahoo’s shareholders are speaking quite publicly now that they think $33 is just fine, thank you. Yahoo’s board would have very little standing at this point to oppose it, with their stockholders making their position so clear.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/284348381/

Digg competitor Mixx landed another big distribution deal. CNN.com will be adding a “Mixx It” button after every article on the site. This will be right next to the “e-mail” and “share” buttons. Last March, the Mixx bookmark button was adopted by the New York Times, but only as one of many options. Similarly, when CNN.com readers click on the “share” button, they have the option to send the story to Digg, Facebook, del.icio.us, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. But Mixx will be highlighted as a separate button, apart from the regular share options.

The deal with CNN could give a huge boost to Mixx’s small-but-growing membership base of 500,000 registered users (and between 70,000 and 180,000 monthly unique visitors, depending on which measurement service you look at). CNN.com has 22 million monthly uniques in the U.S., according to comScore (and 30 million worldwide). CNN.com readers who decide to Mixx their stories will be able to bypass Mixx’s registration process when they get taken to the site so that they can browse immediately. They will still have to register, however, to save a story or set up a personal Mixx page.

For CNN, the appeal of Mixx might have something to do with the fact that Mixx really lets readers get extremely granular in their interests. Categories are based on tags, with already 300,000 different tags on Mixx. So if you are interested in Alzheimer’s, for instance, you can add that tag to your personalized Mixx page or search for stories explicitly categorized with that tag. On Digg and other social news sites, you can search for stories about Alzheimer’s also, but there is no Alzheimer’s category. Notes Mixx CEO Chris McGill:

When you are looking at Yahoo Buzz or Redditt or Digg, they are really playing a one-size fits all game. All the stories are just shooting for the popular board.

Mixx, he thinks, can do a better job to help you find and share stories around your particular interests, no matter how obscure they may be. Of course, to gain all the benefits of such a system, you have to be willing to do a little more work in setting up your preferences. And, ultimately, the quality of the stories you find on Mixx will depend on the quality (and number) of submissions. With 13.3 million monthly visitors adding and voting stories on Digg, that is going to be a very difficult network effect to overcome. But if Mixx can convince enough CNN readers to join its bookmarking club, it could survive become a solid Digg alternative, or at least survive long enough to get bought.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/284355298/

How’s this for some fun: We’re planning a CG/TC meet-up in Berlin to match the one we’re having in Prague and I’d like to get some tentative numbers for attendance. Head over to to Facebook or email john@crunchgear.com with the subject line “BERLIN ME” if you’re interested.

We’d hold the event on Monday, June 9 at about 7pm at a location to be announced. Let me know what you all think.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/284346448/

ThoughtFarmer from Vancover based OpenRoad Communications offers an enterprise focused intranet service built around wikis.

Billed as “a knowledge sharing solution for the new enterprise” ThoughtFarmer can be used as a standalone intranet or extranet, a collaboration hub or “the knowledge-sharing component of an existing intranet.”

Like others in the space, ThoughtFarmer embraces the Wiki model, offering an open and democratic authoring environment with no barriers to content creation. The service then adds structure and social networking to the wiki core.

It’s a solid service, but the standout has been in the marketing campaign. References to a mysterious Canadian company Tubetastic started appearing online in the last couple of months. The site is accessible via login only, and no one was really sure exactly what it was (Tubetastic’s motto is “we make tubes, a whole series of them.) I received my Tubetastic employees package today, complete with employee badge, company organization chart, letter welcoming me to the company as a “sales associate” and login details to the site. The TubeTastic site turns out to be a demonstration of ThoughtFarmer in a fun and engaging way. Demo video of the service is above.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/284338121/

WidgetBucks has announced the expansion of its ad widget network through agreements with BlueLithium and Marchex. The two deals touch on key growth areas for WidgetBucks: premium CPM display advertising to its publisher base and expanding distribution of CPC product ad widgets.

BlueLithium will be integrated WidgetBucks’ Alternative Display Advertising program (ADA), resulting in an increased widget ad inventory. The first advertiser is Microsoft Live Search, with display ads that will run as part of WidgetBucks’ hybrid ad widgets, delivering two different types of revenue within the same widget instance and ad space.

The deal with Marchex sees WidgetBucks powering local, debt/ finance, and pay-per-call advertising across Marchex’s local content network. WidgetBucks’ ad widgets is integrated into hundreds of sites across Marchex’s content network.

Since launching in October 2007, WidgetBucks has been delivering some amazing growth rates. The service is now delivering over 700 million impressions per month and is projected to grow to 2 billion a month by the end of the year. Since launching, WidgetBucks has served over 3.5 billion impressions from 20,000 active publishers. According to comScore, 70 million unique users saw WidgetBucks ads in March 2008, and as we’ve previously noted, WidgetBucks is now ranking in the Top 10 list for niche ad networks.

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/~3/284316746/

Natuba is a new photo sharing site that targets iPhone users with an emphasis on mobile uploading. It comes from Richard Yoo, a former CEO of Rackspace and Serverbeach.

iPhone users with Natuba accounts can add their snapshots to the site by emailing them to a special address. Descriptions can be included in the subject line and all photos are injected into a public activity stream. They are also included on one’s profile page and are candidates for the “Surprise Me!” page that randomly displays one photo at a time from the site.

The idea and execution are simple, perhaps a bit too simple. There’s no tagging, not to mention no geotagging (which would be a natural feature for such a service, if only iPhones had GPS already). I’d like to see the site add rating capabilities so the community can surface the best snapshots. After all, highlighting the coolest little encounters from daily life should be the site’s main thrust; no one wants to sift through the mundane.

I’d also like the ability to track my friends’ contributions. And why not throw in a Facebook application for good measure; that way I could display my photos on my social networking page. Oh, and Twitter integration so my contributions automatically get tweeted. Ok, so obviously there’s a lot of room for improvement.

Flickr and other photos services, of course, already have mobile upload capabilities via email. And there’s no reason why this site can’t take uploads from non-iPhone devices (you can upload directly to the site anyway). So in the long run it needs to come up with some really cool features or doom itself as just a photo sharing site with marketing spin.

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/~3/284302511/