Ajax Girl

A tip came in this weekend from someone with a fleet of new MacBooks. His complaint? Every 50 or so clicks and the trackpad butto freezes for 5 to 10 clicks and then wakes back up. The tipster writes:

So we’ve bought about 10 of them, all of them have awful problems recognizing clicks. The trackpad has a bug where it does not click about 60% of the time.

Anyone else having this issue? It seems posters at the Apple Discussion board are experiencing it fairly consistently.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/WDX0hj07riw/

I would have expected the Death Star to lay off people before EA would. I guess the Empire had a pretty solid economy, though. It seems that although EA is doing well in the long term, it’s cautious of incurring too much in costs during the downturn. Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll be having Maddens for years to come, but a 6 percent reduction in headcount at something like EA is a serious move. I hope they don’t have make any more like that.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/mXetfqHmi8Y/

We’ve received a couple of anonymous tips that DirectTV, a $24 billion satellite TV provider, may be entering the online TV wars with a new site called DirectTV Web On Demand. The site would compete with startups like Hulu, Joost, Fancast, Sling.com, etc.

We don’t know much about the service, or even if its real. One of the tipsters says they’ve worked on the project and supplied us with the mockup screen shot above, which could quite possibly be real. On the other hand, we’ve spoken with industry insiders and they say they’ve heard nothing about the project.

The screen shot shows Heroes, which is an NBC show. The only way for Fox and NBC shows to be syndicated on the web is via a deal with Hulu. For CBS shows, they have to go through the CBS Audience Network.

That means it’s either very, very early in the development process or it doesn’t exist at all. We have an email in to DirectTV for comment.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/fWxdGYVw6mE/

Sun Microsystems is on the ropes. The New York Times says so, the hallway conversation starts and ends with “too bad”, and the wagons appear to be circling around, or rather, behind Jonathan Schwartz, leaving him outside the fort as the gates are closed.

Much of this capitulation to a situation Sun has been in for some time could come from the lessons of this long struggle in our country’s political and economic systems, which have become inextricably intertwined to the point where it apparently matters not at all what either candidate does or proposes. Instead, the public intuition is that change in management is less risky then standing pat.

With all this pressure on Schwartz, perhaps the best way to view the situation is to determine a so-called Failsafe deadline, so described as the point in time beyond which nuclear bombers can not turn back from their missions. In Sun’s case, what difference would a change in leadership make, and at what point?

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/EIvXfUjHw9g/

We’ve been getting a lot of tips from people who have been having problems reaching the Revver website lately, getting videos uploaded or playing the ones already hosted on the platform. We haven’t paid much attention to them so far, because every time we check, the site appears to be running smoothly and we experience no trouble playing videos.

But a quick glance on Twitter shows something is definitely up.

What’s worse than uptime issues, though, is that the company apparently has some trouble meeting payments. Rumors are circulating that employees haven’t been getting their paychecks on time either, adding to the assumption that Revver is now on its last legs.

Revver, founded in 2004, was one of the first video sharing sites to start sharing revenue with content creators. In September 2007, everything looked rosy when the company said it had managed to pay $1 million to video producers and their affiliates over a period of one year. By February 2008, the company was collecting debt, laying off staff and reportedly put itself up for sale.

Revver was in fact acquired nearly two weeks after our post, by MySpace founder Brad Greenspan’s LiveUniverse for “about $5 million“. Revver had raised a total of $12.7 million in two rounds from Comcast, Turner, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Richards and William Randolph Hearst III.

But now it seems Revver is on the ropes once again, and may be headed for the deadpool soon. I also can’t help but notice that the LiveUniverse website doesn’t even mention the social video property anywhere, not even in its media kit.

We have an e-mail in with Greenspan asking for more information and will update the post if necessary.

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/nvEEt3BgvIw/

It’s Elevator Pitch Friday Saturday, which means another startup has created a video that’s worth showing you. This week’s presentation comes from Scour.com, a meta social search engine.

Scour searches and displays results from Google, Yahoo and Live Search all at once and enables each of its members to vote each listing up or down based on its relevance to their keyword as well as comment on their experiences with the site. In addition to the combined results Scour offers a kind of get-paid-to-search scheme based on points in a way similar to Microsoft SearchPerks. Users earn a point for each search, vote or comment they make and can claim a $25 Visa card when they’ve reached 6,500 points.

Founded in 2007, Scour was originally named Aftervote.com. Almost exactly 1 year later, Aftervote was acquired by Internext media, owner and operator of the ABCSearch Network and re-branded to Scour.com.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/VuBgbiI-1rg/

If you have kids and Nickelodeon (or Nickelodeon.com) just doesn’t cut it for you all the time, tune into Totlol. It’s children’s Web video for the children of the YouTube generation. In fact, Totlol was built by one developer in Vancouver, B.C. (Ron Ilan, father of two) entirely on the YouTube platform. It is a collection of thousands of child-appropriate video clips from YouTube, chosen by parents, and rated by toddlers.

Totlol uses the YouTube API and reskins all the videos with its own player (much like we do with Elevator Pitches). Viewers can rate and collect videos. Collections act like playlists. Plop your child in front of the computer, and it plays all the way through (not that I would ever do that, of course).

So why not just watch these videos on YouTube? Totlol acts as a filter for these videos and presents them in a more child-friendly format. Every video on the site has been vetted at least once by a parent (hopefully). Ilan explains what he hopes to achieve with Totlol:

How do you take those lousy clips form YouTube and make them beter than any DVD collection you have?

Those who sign up as members are given extensive parental controls. You can block individual videos, and set time limits, for instance. Totlol launched last May, but Ilan just recently added Totlol a full-screen player for members that makes the whole experience more like TV. And he is adding more features all the time, such as an AgeOptimizer that “algorithmically optimizes the site content to a requested age group.”

For a video site built by one person, Totlol is impressive. And it shows how YouTube could give rise to hundreds of niche video sites with their own features and communities. Although, what Totlol is missing is a channel on YouTube itself, which would probably be the best way to recruit more toddlers and their parents to Totlol itself.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/_PSL3uh02OU/

WorldFriends, a social network with a focus on connecting internationally-minded people, was established as early as 2003 but has flown under the radar of the American blogosphere since then. The Tokyo- and Shanghai-based site, which now has nearly 2 million users from all over the world, did a soft (re)launch last week, mainly enhancing a number of networking features.

WorldFriends is walking a fine line between being a platform for dating, language exchange and making international friends. At first sight, WorldFriends actually looks much like a heavily internationalized version of your average dating site. The profile page, for example, features a member slide show (showing only female users if that is what you said you are interested in when signing up), a “New photos”-container (again girls only) and an “Your Ideal Match”-list.

But WorldFriends CEO Dominic Penaloza says the focus lies on cross-cultural networking, finding international penpals, getting travel tips and learning foreign languages (yeah, right). The site, which is available in English, Japanese, Korean and Chinese, boasts over 110,000 language teachers among its registered members. About 65% of total message traffic between members is cross-border.

Perhaps WorldFriends’ most interesting aspect is the business model, which isn’t solely based upon selling advertising space. The site charges users via three different kinds of upgrades that essentially enables members to interact with each other in various modes. For example, users have to pay $24.95 per month to be able to initiate contact (emails, instant messages, voice chat or video chat) to all members (initiating contact with friends and friends of friends is free of charge). It costs $244.95 a year to be able to initiate contact with all members and enable all members to initiate contact with you free of charge. By way of comparison, business network LinkedIn charges $199.95 a year for its so-called Business and $500 for its Business Plus premium accounts. Premium members of Germany’s business platform Xing have to pay about $90 annually.

Penaloza says about 4% of WorldFriends members are paying for services, which certainly helped the site to reach profitability 3 years after launch. Currently the company is particularly active in Japan, where 33% of paid members are from. Penaloza says his price system is fair, particularly considering the $25 to $80 people in this country have to pay for a 60-minute English lesson.

Consequently WorldFriends runs an office in Tokyo, which in July, almost unnoticed by Asian media, managed to close a significant partnership deal: Yahoo Japan agreed to become the first partner worldwide to adopt the new WorldFriends API (the site already has secured partnerships with over 200 websites, mostly through white label partnerships). Registered users of Nippon’s biggest web company can log into WorldFriends via their Yahoo Japan IDs and subscribe by using the Yahoo Japan Wallet payment service.

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/TUCFL5O7Uwo/

Since our last update a week ago, we’ve added 18,885 job eliminations at tech and media companies to our Layoff Tracker. That brings the total to 38,538 layoffs across 108 companies over the past two months.

Some of the bigger reductions this week came from Motorola (3,000), Qwest (1,200), and Electronic Arts (600).  Among startups, there were job cuts at Revision3 (10), Emusic (10), Sugar Publishing (9), Aliph/Jawbone (25), matchmine (42, deadpool), and Gizmos (10).  We’ve also started adding media companies facing disruption from the Internet, including Gannett (3,000), Time Inc. (600), and Conde Nast (32), whose Portfolio magazine laid off nearly all of its Website staff.

If you know of any layoffs at a tech company, please submit a tip with the name of the company and number of layoffs. If it’s been covered, also send a link to the blog post or news article.  (For those more interested in who is hiring, check out our job board).

Here is the full list of layoffs from the past week:

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

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/MYOqZd9cTp0/