Ajax Girl

The Consumer Electronics Association, which runs the CES conference each year in Las Vegas, has never had an offical blog partner. But they do now, and it’s AOL’s Engadget: “The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) selected Engadget as the Official Blog Partner of the 2009 International CES to be held January 8-11, 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada,” AOL says in a press release.

This doesn’t mean much - or anything - when it comes to covering the event. Engadget, along with all blogs and media that cover gadget-related news (see our own CrunchGear), has always had a strong presence at CES, and will do so again this year. But it is a stamp of approval for Engadget, which is the largest gadget-focused blog with 3.4 million unique monthly visitors (Comscore worldwide, August 2008).

And it’s definitely a slap to no. 2 Gizmodo, which was embroiled in controversy last year when Gizmodo blogger Richard Blakeley used a TV-B-Gone remote control to turn off exhibitor’s TVs during demos. Blakey was permanently banned from future CES events.

But whatever the reason for naming Engadget the official blog of CES, it’s certainly a sign of the increasing acceptance of blogs at mainstream events, and a recognition of the huge audience they bring.

Engadget is also launching three new international versions of its blog - Korea, Poland and Germany.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/xbSwJCYKW5E/

I had a phone call late last week with a semantic startup called Siri that was spun out of SRI International (the birthplace of the computer mouse and the LCD screen, among many other important technologies). Most startups are willing to talk about their products “off the record” but this one wouldn’t divulge much beyond the fact that they’ve raised $8.5 million in Series A funding from Menlo Ventures and Morganthaler.

What we do know is that the company was incorporated in December 2007 with the goal of commercializing aspects of the CALO cognitive learning system, which receives heavy funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a supporter of research in a broad range of technologies that could potentially benefit the Department of Defense.

From the sound of things, Siri’s 19 developers - mostly engineers who count Yahoo, Google, Apple, Xerox, Nasa, and Netscape as their former employers - have been working on a system that will use artificial intelligence to automate many of the tasks that people currently have to conduct manually online. The founders describe themselves as out to change the fundamental ways that people use the internet.

All of this sounds very high and lofty, and we won’t know for sure whether this is all hot air until we actually see a product. But the company is very concerned that existing companies (Google, Microsoft or Apple, perhaps?) might seek to copy their ideas - hence the tight-lipped secrecy, which is expected to remain the status quo until the first half of 2009.

Until then, you can check out the startup’s teaser website which, appropriately enough, is located at stealth-company.com.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/IEhoYqMFabw/

A couple days ago, we posted some leaked screenshots of Brightcove 3, the completely gutted and rebuilt Web video platform from Brightcove that is launching on Tuesday. I was able to catch up with Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire, who gave me an update on the company and took me through all the changes in the service.

Brightcove is a Web video publishing platform that has raised $91 million and boasts hundreds of major media brands as its customers, including Dow Jones, Showtime (Dexter, The Tudors), Lifetime, AMC (Mad Men), Time magazine, and the New York Times. TV networks, magazines, newspapers, and music companies all use Brightcove to distribute and manage video on their sites and across the Web. Increasingly, so do big corporations like Sun Microsystems, universities like NYU, and political organizations like the Obama campaign.

Allaire says that, collectively, his customers are distributing Web video at the rate of “several hundred million streams per month,” which would make Brightcove one of the top ten video networks. It would still be well below No. 1 YouTube, which is streaming five billion videos a month, but perhaps within spitting distance of No. 2 Fox Interactive/MySpace (446 million streams) or No. 3 Microsoft (286 million streams).

As far as Brightcove’s financial situation goes, Allaire would only say:

We are not profitable, but our burn rate continues to go down. We don’t expect to have to raise additional money based on our growth.

The Boston-based company now has 160 employees, and is spreading internationally. Europe now represents 20 percent of revenues and 34 percent of bookings, up from zero twelve months ago. And Alliare launched a separately capitalized Japanese subsidiary in May.

With Brightcove 3, the company is introducing a streamlined user interface and a whole new set of capabilities. These include a new markup language for creating video players called the Brightcove Experience Markup Language (BEML), new APIs for customers and developers, and intelligent streaming technology that dynamically changes the video quality based on the viewer’s device and bandwith limitations.

Here is a summary of the new features in Brightcove 3:

1. Custom Players. New APIs allow deeper customization of the Brightcove video players and viewing experience.  The Brightcove Experience Markup Language makes it easy for any Web developer who knows HTML to create sophisticated stylings, social tools, and video-player navigation options.
2. Pricing.  Brightcove is going from one flat-rate pricing to three different tiers (basic, professional, and enterprise).  Subscriptions start at thousands of dollars per year and go up to hundreds of thousands for enterprise customers.
3. Dynamic Delivery. Each video stream is optimized on the fly, based on a viewer’s bandwidth and factors such as the size of the player. Brightcove 3 automatically creates multiple renditions of each video appropriate for everything from mobile to HD viewing.
4. More APIs.  Brightcove already has APIs that let developers customize its video player.  Now it is opening that up to developers who want to write plug-ins for social commentary tools (JS-KIT did this), contextual advertising, or analytics.  The company is also releasing syndication APIs for conrolling the advertising for eahc video no matter where it appears. And its Brightcove Media APIs will make each video visible to search engines and make it easier to add related videos, and other contextual information. Each Brightcove video will now have its own unique URL.  The Media API will allow publishers to extact programming information from the videos so they can insert it into the HTML of each page.

On this last point, Allaire says:

YouTube has taught us all this lesson. Every video has its own page that has 20 different ways to the next video.

And in the face of the overwhelming dominance of YouTube, how do you see Brightcove videos there? Allaire’s answer:

You don’t and you don’t need to. You find it in Google. Video is a media type. It is a powerful medium for communications. Broadband internet will drive video. Traffic will flow across Websites.

Maybe some day, but right now it still looks like a winner-take-all game. Allaire thinks he can change that.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/OROjemxu6ug/

Meebo has disclosed that 11 more sites have committed themselves to integrating Community IM, its forthcoming out-of-the-box service that adds Facebook Chat-like instant messaging capabilities to the bottom of any website.

The newest enlistements include Bleacher Report, Dhingana, Fanpop, GlobalGrind, IBeatYou, OrangeShark, PerfSpot, UGAME.net, Yaari, Zinch, and Zorpia. These join a set of previously announced partners that includes DanceJam, Flixster, myYearbook, Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Group’s AddictingGames, Piczo, SparkArt, Sugar Publishing and Tagged. That’s a grand total of 19 companies that believe instant messaging within the browser will make their sites stickier.

Meebo is touting these partners as collectively providing the service with over 70 million new users. Obviously, that’s stretching the truth a bit. None of the integrations has launched yet (the first will be Flixster, probably within the next few weeks) and even when all of them do launch, only a small fraction of their visitors can be expected to use Community IM.

Check a demo of the product below, at least as it stood in September.

Meebo Community IM on Flickr from Meebo on Vimeo.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/y1hxKDc-q78/

There ain’t no rules around here. We’re trying to accomplish something.

—Thomas Edison

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1306-there-aint-no-rules-around-here-were-try

Microsoft has announced that the latest version of Windows, due in the next couple of years, will be called - drumroll please - Windows 7. It’s about time Microsoft adopted a naming system that might actually make some sense to users, but I can’t wait for hordes of customers to start asking if they somehow missed Windows 1 through 6.

Windows has had one of the most ridiculous naming schemes in the history of software. First there were logical (but ugly) version numbers, like the once commonplace “Windows 3.1″. Then with the release of the overhauled Windows 95 the company adopted a naming system based on the year of release, which it continued until Windows 98.

Windows Me (perhaps the worst operating system I’ve ever used), sacrificed the scheme for a chance to be clever (it stood for “me” and the millennium at the same time!) Next up we hit Windows XP, which has served most of us reasonably well since 2001. It sounds sort of cool, it’s catchy, and we have no idea what it means. Fine.

Finally we had Windows Vista, which seemed to stick with the naming convention of “something that sounds sort of cool” but didn’t really mean anything. It had been more than five years since the release of XP, so there was little chance of confusion.

Microsoft is now in a hurry to push out its next operating system after the generally dismal response to Vista. And so we’ve come to Windows 7, which is apparently tied to the build numbers and not the actual releases.

The new naming scheme lends itself well to faster, more incremental releases similar to what we’ve seen from Apple (about once every 18 months), but it’s probably going to confuse everyone and couldn’t be more bland.

You can read more at the company’s blog post here.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/CLIhmN9kEbU/

RjDj, a new iPhone application that was released earlier this week, is one of the coolest things I’ve seen released on the still fledgling platform. Download it now, if only to try it for a few minutes. You can download the full version for $2.99 here, or you can try out the free version (which only has one ’scene’).

The application is difficult to describe and on paper it sounds sort of silly (see the video below for a convincing demonstration). Using the iPhone’s built in microphone, the application listens for ambient noise which it then modifies and infuses into an automatically generated dynamic soundtrack. Each of the application’s six different “scenes” has a different feel to it, with options like a trance-like beat that might fit in at a club and a track that is based entirely on percussion. Each track also treats the incoming audio differently - some tracks loop the input, while others distort it.

For some tracks the end result is incredibly trippy, to the point that I don’t think I’d be able to run the app for more than a few minutes at a time. Others, like “Gridwalker” are more serene, and would be a relaxing accompaniment for a morning commute. And some of the tracks lend themselves to creativity - the application allows users to record their dynamic soundtracks, so you can save any cool effects you come up with.

There are some high quality and useful applications available on Apple’s App Store, but most innovation has been restricted to making use of the phone’s built-in accelerometer (and that loses its ‘wow’ factor after a while). RjDj is venturing into exciting new territory, where music is no longer a purely passive form of media - I won’t be surprised if we see an onslaught of similar (and hopefully improved) applications in the near future.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/WdvJ3aIjQf4/

We’ve run out of our 500 pre-allotted beta invites for MashLogic, a new Firefox plugin that puts users in control of website links. But you can get one by putting your name down on InviteShare, where current MashLogic users are encouraged invite up to two people each.

Also check out David Cowan’s post on the release of MashLogic. Cowan, a partner at Bessemer, describes the plugin as important for restoring Tim Berners-Lee’s original vision for the web.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/EU7WGFMDAtI/

Are you an American Express card holder? Then your vote can help provide supplies to 100,000 school children in the U.S. American Express is giving away $2.5 million to the top charities its members vote for, and DonorsChoose right now is in third place for the top $1.5 million prize. And it is only about 1,000 votes away from second place. There are about six hours left to vote. You can vote here for DonorsChoose, or go here to see all top 25 contenders. (Only AmEx members can vote).

We are participating in this year’s DonorsChoose Blogger’s Challenge, and the top three TechCrunch donors who give at least $1,000 will receive tickets to every TechCrunch event for the next year and a chance at a pitch session with angel investor Ron Conway. (More details here). But if you are have an AmEx account, you might do more good by simply voting.

DonorsChoose is an educational charity that lets you find and fund specific teacher’s projects. If you want to fund a project directly, you can do so here through TechCrunch. For instance, for only $153 you can buy some Flip video cameras for a class of underprivileged students in Virginia. If you made money in today’s market rally, you can afford it. And it is tax deductible.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/rDK4YpxZudI/

Last year we ran a post introducing the idea of Twitter as a conduit for fiction when we wrote about Twittories, a series of crowdsourced stories comprised of 140 Twitter messages from up to 140 different people.

Now it seems that some individual authors are exploring using Twitter as an alternative to the traditional novel. Professional author and freelance writer Nikki Katz has launched her own story called MyLifeIn140 - the tale of a “sixteen-year-old fictional character who learns that she can change her world around her, all by editing photos in her Yearbook room.”

The story takes the form of frequently updated tweets, which relate the main character’s thoughts and the events around her. Because the story only started a few days ago most of the tweets are related to character development and could have come from any angsty teenager, but the seeds of a story have been planted.

To be honest, there’s no way I’d ever want to follow MyLifeIn140 for any length of time, especially with tweets like:
“Doing the layout of the page with Caleb’s pic. Swoon. He looks hot! White shirt sets off his tan and his green eyes pop. And that hair…”.

But I’m not the target audience. I could see MyLifeIn140 and similar stories taking off at high schools, with the same kind of virality seen by the fictional LonelyGirl15 video series that managed to amass a huge following and spawned several spinoffs. And periodically updated text stories have been very popular abroad, where a significant number of best selling books were written from mobile phones.

That said, Twitter may wind up being too restrictive to tell an engrossing story - it’s far easier to identify and feel for characters when you can see them expressing their thoughts. And the barrier to entry to starting a new Twitter story is very low, which could well lead to a flood of knockoffs that may lead people to write off the format entirely.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/3pUeQ-plQOQ/