Ajax Girl

Google’s on and off negotiations with Digg have been back on in a big way for the last six weeks, we’ve heard from multiple sources inside of Google, and the two companies are close to a deal that will bring Digg under the Google News property. The acquisition price is in the $200 million range, says one source.

We first wrote about the Google-Digg negotiations in March. Despite a vigorous denial by Digg CEO Jay Adelson the negotiations continued, although Google’s Marissa Mayer reportedly cooled on the company for a period of time.

The companies are now in final negotiations according to our sources, although it could be a couple of weeks before it closes. And while the major deal points have been agreed on, the acquisition could still fall apart. Microsoft, which was previously interested in the company, may be willing to step back in at a much lower price.

Most of Digg’s revenue comes from a three year ad deal with Microsoft, which will be terminated on a sale to Google. Digg has raised $11.3 million in venture capital.

Meanwhile, Google’s fascination with the Digg voting concept continues.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/342968698/

Apple’s App Store has seen an unprecedented amount of success and exposure since its launch, with millions of total downloads and 909 applications already available. Unfortunately, Apple has been unable to keep up with the influx of submissions from developers (each app must be approved before it appears on the store), leaving many companies frustrated and confused as their apps sit in limbo.

Adding to the frustration has been the difficulty associated with testing an application. As Craig Hockenberry, one of the people behind the popular app Twitterific explains:

The big problem here is that the only way to install software on an iPhone or iPod touch is with the App Store. There are also no provisions for beta testing… The only way to “test” a fix is to release the changes to tens of thousands of users. It’s the developer equivalent of playing Russian roulette.”

Now we’re hearing from an app developer that Apple is finally going to start rolling out a new beta program in the next few days. Details are slim, but it seems like Apple is capping the total number of beta participants at 100 per app. In order to download a beta app, users will need to submit their iPhone’s serial number to the developer, who will then need to flag its eligibility in the store itself. All betas will still be distributed through the App Store - you won’t be able to download one on an external site.

It sounds like developers that haven’t had their apps approved yet will still be able to participate in the beta program. This should alleviate some of the developers’ anxiety (at least they’ll know their app will work once it goes live), but it still doesn’t address the the delays and lack of communication that many developers are complaining about.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/342979210/

Another natural wonder. This time brought to you by ants. Trap-jaw ants use their jaws to propel themselves into the air to evade predators. They can achieve heights of just over 8cm. That translates into a 40ft vertical for an average size human.

Link stolen from Kottke.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1153-nature-is-amazing-trap-jaw-ants

Fast growing women-focused blog network Sugar Inc announced that they’ve terminated their year-old ad sales relationship with NBC. All ad sales will now be via an in-house sales team, says the company.

There was speculation that NBC’s recent investment in Blogher, arguably a competitor to Sugar, was to blame. But Sugar CEO Brian Sugar (guess where the company name came from) says this was purely an economic decision. NBC’s cut of ad sales simply got too expensive.

Comscore says the Sugar sites have 4.6 million unique visitors and 24 million page views per month. We’ve heard the company will do around $15 million in revenue this year, with 2/3 of that from advertising. Assuming NBC takes 50% of sales, that’s $5 million Sugar is paying them every year. Bringing sales in-house certainly makes sense.

Sugar is also clearly gearing up to compete with Glam Media, a company that represents other women-focused sites for ad sales. To get there, though, Sugar needs to build up their own sales force. It looks like they’re doing exactly that.

Disclosure: We partnered with Sugar for our LA party earlier this year.

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/~3/342941411/

TicketLeap, a service that helps promoters sell tickets to their events though a self-serve platform, has raised $2 million in a Series A funding round led by MentorTech Ventures and Ben Franklin Technology Partners.

TicketLeap differentiates itself from large ticket vendors by catering to small companies and events. Rather than charge event coordinators for selling their tickets, TicketLeap passes on the cost to the ticket buyer by charging a small fee along with each ticket. The Philadelphia-based company was founded in 2003 by Christopher Stanchak, who initially created the site as part of Wharton’s Venture Initiation Program.

There are a number of strong competitors in the ticket management space, most notably Eventbrite, which charges event planners a set fee of 2.5% for every ticket sold (users can also choose to pass on the fee to their customers, as they can with TicketLeap).

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/342868272/

Chad Dickerson, a long time Yahoo exec and the head of their Brickhouse special projects group, is leaving the company to become the CTO of Etsy, a a website that allows users to buy and sell handmade items. Mike Folgner, the former GM of Yahoo Video, will take Dickerson’s place at the head of Brickhouse.

We first covered Brooklyn-based Etsy, which has a cult-like following, back in 2005. Since then the company has raised over $30 million in venture capital. The most recent Comscore stats show nearly 2 million monthly visitors and 83 million page views worldwide.

This is a blow to Yahoo on par with the loss of Bradley Horowitz, Dickerson’s former boss, earlier this year. Dickerson ran Yahoo’s developer platform and oversaw their various internal and external Hack Days.

Dickerson joins the ranks of departed Yahoo execs, which gets larger every week. He wrote a long post on his personal blog about his reasons for leaving, but he doesn’t say the one thing that is on every Yahoo’ers mind: they crave leadership, and they aren’t getting it.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/342831828/

Backpack has always allowed you to share pages via email, but the person on the receiving end had to have a Backpack account before they could view the page. We were never really happy about how that worked. We finally did something about it. Big thanks to Jeremy for making this happen.

Now you can share Backpack pages with anyone in the world via email — even if they don’t have a Backpack account. They don’t even need to know what Backpack is.

It’s the quickest and best way we know to share a functional web page or informational page with someone (or some people). Share to-dos, photos, notes, whatever. Pages you share via email are fully functional. Multiple people can collaborate on the page together by adding new list items, checking them off, adding a note, a file, a photo, etc.

And if they do decide to sign up for Backpack, they page will be pulled right into their account as a shared page. It’s all automatic.

We hope you find this enhancement useful. If you don’t already have a Backpack account, sign up for one today.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1152-new-in-backpack-share-pages-via-email-even-if-the-other-person-doesnt-have-a-backpack-account

I heard that when asked who knew what the “Open Web” meant at a recent conference, hardly anyone put their hands up. Those that often think that they do understand it, understand it at a gut level.

Brad Neuberg has been thinking about this, and <a href=”wrote the following asking for our input:

What the Heck is the Open Web?

Do you toss the term Open Web around? Ever wonder what the heck it means? Me too.

I’m looking for a definition of the Open Web that:

• Isn’t a laundry list of bullet points
• Is one or two sentences long
• Doesn’t constrain the web from growing in the future (i.e. that it’s expansive enough that it’s not just defending the status quo but can adapt to new innovations)

I’ve got my own opinions on these but I’m interested in hearing what you think. Basically, what’s the elevator pitch for the Open Web? Its easy to talk to the Converted ™, but what about when talking to other folks that might not care as much yet?

You get bonus points if you can answer the following:

• If Adobe were to open source Flex/Flash, or Microsoft Silverlight, would that be the Open Web? If so, why? If not, why not?
• Why should developers care about the Open Web? How about users?
• How would you define the web itself, again in a way that doesn’t constrain it from future growth and development (i.e. “It’s a place to publish a bunch of documents” doesn’t allow room for deploying applications, as we are seeing with Ajax today).

We toss around the term Open Web a bunch, but I’ve never seen it succinctly defined. What is it, and why do we support it? I believe its important and worth supporting but it’s all a bit fuzzy right now.

Source: Ajaxian » Front Page
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ajaxian/~3/342757121/defining-the-open-web

I can’t get over how ugly my new running shoes are (click for larger versions):

So comfortable inside, why so ugly outside? Unfortunately, few of the other choices were much better. Apparently sneakers must be FUTURISTIC and have 593 different elements in order to prove they were DESIGNED.

So I went ahead and bought them anyway. (Function over form + I didn’t want to spend all day shopping for shoes.) Too bad. I’d prefer the minimalist look of a pair of Stan Smiths over this overproduced crap any day.

Hmm…I do want to run away from them every time I look down. So maybe it’s a motivational technique.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1151-why-are-modern-sneakers-so-ugly

Nobody can make money on social network ads. Even Google (which controls a lot of the inventory on MySpace) is having a hard time. How worthless are these ads? Lookery, an ad network for social apps on Facebook and elsewhere, is renewing a promotion, guaranteeing 15 cents per thousand page impressions to app developers who sign up. With two ads per page, that comes to 7.5 cents per thousand ad impressions (CPMs). Back in January, Lookery was offering 12.5 cents per ad impression. So that means Lookery has cut its ad rates nearly in half.

Other social app ad networks, such as Social Media, are commanding CPM ad rates of around 50 cents by focusing on higher-quality inventory. Lookery is not so picky, and thus is probably more reflective of the what the majority of Facebook apps can expect to get (85 percent of its inventory is from Facebook).

Promoting a guarantee to starving app developers who have no other options is working for Lookery. When it offered its first guarantee in January, it was serving 140 million ad impressions per month. Now it is serving about three billion per month. (Social Media serves two billion).

Lookery is hoping all of those pennies will add up, but it isn’t counting on it. CEO Scott Rafer says the ad network is running at break even in terms of gross profits. But his plan is to use it to “bootstrap a data services business.” To that end, he is beginning to collect age and gender audience metrics from all the publishers in the Lookery network. For instance, the Facebook app Friendzii (which seems like it is geared towards people with no friends who are hoping to meet some) is actually most popular among 35-to-44-year olds.

If Lookery can’t sell ads to marketers, maybe it can sell the data.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/342731314/