The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Kinect SDK Launches In Early 2012 (We Peer At Past Hacks)
- Want To Show Off Your Halloween Costume? Upload it To Costume DB
- 500 Startups Peels Back The Curtain On Its Third And Largest Batch Yet
- The Complete Guide To Disrupt Beijing (Day 1)
- Tumblr Acknowledges Its Growing Spam Problem, Says It’s Doing Everything It Can
- DeNA, GREE: Japan’s Mobile Social Gaming Giants Report Impressive Financial Numbers
- Google TV Update Rolls Out Today, Already Hitting Select Sony Internet TV Devices
- AT&T Reveals First LTE Phones: HTC Vivid and Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket
- LivingSocial’s North American Expansion Brings Deals To 20 New Markets
- Outfit7′s Talking Friends Apps Cruise Past 200 Million Downloads
- Test Page For GDrive Appearing In Google Search Results
- Amtrak Adds WiFi To 12 New East Coast Routes, California’s Up Next
- Amazon’s Shoes And Accessories E-Commerce Site, Endless, Launches iPhone App
- HTC Reports Record Q3 Numbers With 13.2 Million Handsets Shipped
- Disney-ABC Signs Streaming Deals With Amazon And Netflix
- Pre-IPO Angie’s List Is The Latest Tech Company To List On The Nasdaq
- Vodafone Launches Appia-Powered Mobile App Store In India
- Ubuntu Developer Summit Kicks Off, Mark Shuttleworth Shares Plans for Ubuntu 12.04 and Beyond
- Gulu Makes On-The-Fly Event Planning Look Good
- Video: Robot Dresses Dummy
| Kinect SDK Launches In Early 2012 (We Peer At Past Hacks) Posted: 31 Oct 2011 09:13 AM PDT Fresh on the heels of its envisioned future video, Microsoft has posted an inspiring portrayal of the Kinect to YouTube. The video outlines the somewhat unexpected uses of Kinect in its one-year history, including educational and medical applications, which is likely meant to boost awareness ahead of the commercial launch of the Kinect SDK. Developers have been hacking Kinect and creating new uses and applications for the platform since just days after its initial launch, but this marks the first time that companies will be able to profit off of their Kinect creations. According to CNET, the Kinect SDK will be available in early 2012 to anyone ready and willing. In celebration of this momentous occasion, we thought it’d be worth a look back at what developers have managed to do with Kinect. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy this view into the past as much as we did. Become The Star Wars KidMeet A Flying Kinect QuadricopterKinect-Controlled Humanoid RobotKinect-Style TetrisHome Automation A La KinectHead-Mounted Kinect = Artificial VisionMicrosoft’s Kinect-Powered ReclinerSign Language Translation Courtesy of KinectMicrosoft, founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, is a veteran software company, best known for its Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software. Starting in 1980 Microsoft formed a partnership with IBM allowing Microsoft to sell its software package with the computers IBM manufactured. Microsoft is widely used by professionals worldwide and largely dominates the American corporate market. Additionally, the company has ventured into hardware with consumer products such as the Zune and...
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| Want To Show Off Your Halloween Costume? Upload it To Costume DB Posted: 31 Oct 2011 09:12 AM PDT  Have you picked out your Halloween costume yet? Are you trying it on right now? Is it one of those Anonymous/V Is For Vendetta masks? Good, snap a picture of yourself and upload it to Costume DB, a no-frills database for costumes. You can upload your costume pictures, and they get voted up or down. Its a no-frills site, but it fills a need this time of year. It’s also a great place to show off how creepy you can dress up your kids—excellent Mini Edward Scissor Hands. Vote it up! Once enough people upload their pics, the rest of us who still don’t know what we are going to be for Halloween can get some inspiration. At some point, when they get the search feature to work, you will even be able to search fro different types of costumes.
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| 500 Startups Peels Back The Curtain On Its Third And Largest Batch Yet Posted: 31 Oct 2011 09:00 AM PDT  It’s Halloween, so it’s the perfect day to unveil the newest group of 500 Startups’ “little monsters”. Yes, this is the name that founder Dave McClure and his partner in crime Christine Tsai give to all the rock star entrepreneurs that grace the halls of their Mountain View offices. 500 Startups, as you may have heard by now, is the early-stage seed fund and incubator program founded in 2010 by the globe-trotting angel investor, which seeds between $25K to $250K in each of its startups that meet its "Three Ds" criteria: Design, data, and distribution. The fall batch kicked off on October 10 and includes 34 awesome startups, which makes this its largest roster to date (the initial batch consisted of 12 startups and the second came in at 21, bringing 500 Startups’ total to 174). The breakdown of this batch’s demographics shows this to be a diverse group of companies, as 8 of the startups have female founders: 72Lux, DressRush, Gizmo, LoveWithFood, MeMeTales, Talkdesk, Tiny Review, WeddingLovely; Fifteen of the startups have international founders (UK, Croatia, Canada, Brazil, Netherlands, Australia, Portugal, Bulgaria, Estonia, Russia, Japan). The distribution is also impressive, as the majority of the batch hails from outside of Silicon Valley, with teams from Chicago, Denver, Seattle, Los Angeles, New York City, Washington DC, Boston, and more among its ranks. Two of the companies, TinyReview and WeddingLovely, have also received investments from Designers Fund, which, for those unfamiliar, is a community of designers that invests in design-experienced founders through mentorship, angel funding, and network access. Designers can also apply for investment, much in the same way founders apply to AngelList. The “Demo Days” for this batch of startups has not yet been confirmed, but we do know that they will take place sometime in January 2012. It should also be noted that, in the spirit of Halloween, the third batch of 500 Startups companies is not only made up primarily of zombies, but it also appears that part of the strict regimen of business plan-building and product-honing also includes instruction in the fine art of dance. Thrilling, thrilling dance. These 34 startups will give a more complete peek into their various products and plans to take over the world at 500 Startups’ Demo Days in January, but for those of you who are too antsy to wait until then, here's a sneak preview below in alphabetical order: 300milligrams is a priority inbox for team conversations. The team hails from Estonia, which just so happens to be a country with a disproportionate number of startups per capita. 72Lux offers consumers a universal checkout and personalized BrandBoards is bringing Google Adwords simplicity and reach to live event digital advertising. BrightNest is the Mint.com for home maintenance, helping homeowners manage their most valuable asset with customized tips and reminders. Cadee helps golfers understand and improve their game. Central.ly wants to connect all of the social media profiles for small business owners. Chorus is customer feedback without the hassle. It automatically extract meaning from thousands of customer messages as they arrive in real time. ContaAzul is a web-based, SaaS accounting system for Brazilian SMBs. Contactually is a personal assistant for your professional email contacts that connects directly with your CRM. DressRush (“Gilt for Weddings”) wants to make “bridezillas” everywhere clamor to get couture without the cost. Up to 100% off retail. eSpark Learning is “Pandora for education”, creating custom playlists of fun education apps on iPads for elementary school students. Farmeron is a Croatian startup that helps farmers across the world to manage their production data online and to do automatized farm performance analysis using exciting statistics. Fileboard is a service accessed from the iPad that helps manage files and attachments across email, Dropbox, Evernote, and other cloud repositories. Fitocracy turns fitness into an addictive gaming experience where you level up in real life. (Check out TC’s early coverage of Fitocracy here.) Forrst is where developers and designers improve their craft and companies come to hire them. Gizmo is a cloud-based multichannel marketing platform for mobile, tablet, social, and the Web. GoVoluntr is a social platform that brings together volunteers, nonprofits, and businesses to solve today's social problems. Hapyrus offers the easiest way of leveraging Hadoop to make your system highly scalable. HighScore House turns a child’s chores and boring routines into a game, making the lives of families a little less hectic and a little more fun. Intercom lets web businesses build powerful, personal relationships with their users, turning them into loyal customers. LookAcross is a sales productivity tool helps you to have more conversations and up your connect rates by improving your company’s odds of connecting with people. LoveWithFood, is the easiest way to find culinary deals & samples, curated by a community of foodies for foodies. Like Tom’s shoes for food, with every deal served, LoveWithFood donates a meal. Meloncard wants to keep your personal information private and out of the hands of the companies that sell it. MeMeTales is a mobile game and reading platform for kids. “Fun like Angry Birds without the guilt”. MoPix wants to define what the movie experience can be on tablet devices and make distribution accessible to anyone with film or video content. OneSchool is a free mobile app that connects students to the people, places, and things around them. PayByGroup wants to make it so that you never have to front money for your group purchases again. The startup coordinates your friends’ payments to the merchant so you can plan activities without the hassle. Redeemr helps businesses and celebrities get un-ignored by their social media fans. Rotadosconcursos is a Brazilian test prep service designed to get users into those coveted government positions. Spinnakr simplifies website targeting and increases your click-throughs and conversions by automatically displaying the right message to the right visitor. Switchcam recreates the concert experience by combining and syncing fan-recorded videos. Talkdesk lets your company have a contact center in the browser. It provides information about the caller by integrating with services like Salesforce and Zendesk. Tiny Review is “Instagram for Yelp reviews”, or a fast and fun way to say what you think about a place. WeddingLovely is building tools and directories to promote small and independent wedding vendors. One of the best parts of becoming a 500 Startups company is its strong list of advisors and mentors, which you can check out here. Not to mention the fact that more than 50 percent of its first batch raised at least $250K, two raised a million or more, and every startup finished with some money in their pockets. For more McClure on why 500 Startups is like the Oakland A’s of seed-stage investing, compared to Sequoia as the Yankees, check out Alexia’s interview here, or for seven of the most interesting startups from the accelerator’s last batch, check out our coverage here. 500 Startups is an early-stage seed fund and incubator program located in Mountain View, CA. They invest primarily in consumer & SMB internet startups, and related web infrastructure services. Their initial investment size is typically $25K-$250K. Selected areas of interest include financial services & e-commerce, search/social/mobile platforms, personal & business productivity, education & language, family & healthcare and web infrastructure.
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| The Complete Guide To Disrupt Beijing (Day 1) Posted: 31 Oct 2011 09:00 AM PDT  TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing kicked off earlier today with our own Sarah Lacy interviewing Pony Ma, founder, Executive Director, Chairman, and CEO of Chinese giant Tencent. In the first interview Ma agreed to by a foreign journalist, Lacy and Ma chatted about Tencent's past to the role China will have as the web continues to grow and mature. Next up, TechCrunch’s John Biggs took the stage to interview Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka, to chat about Rovio's plans for the future, Rovio’s desire to become more than a games company, and why Angry Birds won't end up like Pac-Man. Former Googler Kai-Fu Lee sat down for a fireside chat with Lacy to talk about the startup ecosystem in China, his incubator InnovationWorks and more. Wang Hua of Innovation Works, John Lagerling, Director of Android Global Partnerships at Google, and David Chao of DCM served on a panel discussing the Android Market in China. And YouTube founder Steve Chen sat down for a candid, founder stories interview with Lacy, where he reminisced about selling his company to Google. In the Startup Battlefield, 15 startups launched their ideas to the world including: Richi: Richi allows the consumer to merge credits from multiple programs (in the future, this will include systems like Facebook credits, airline miles, and credit card points) into one pool, opening up rewards purchases they may not otherwise be able to make. Alpha Outlook: Alpha Outlook allows for real-time social media tracking as well as improved control over reputation management and influencer monitoring Qiuqiu: Qiuqiu is an app search that offers results based on your location, the time of day, and the things you like and do. OrderWithMe: OrderWithMe is a group buying site specifically designed for the small Western businesses who are having trouble navigating the somewhat unintelligible world of Chinese manufacturers. 8Securities: 8Securities is a service that combines elements of StockTwits, E*Trade, and iGoogle's personalization to allow users to build a largely customized web interface for absorbing financial information and dealing with trades. Anquanbao: Anquanbao is a cloud-based software program that helps protect websites from security violations like malware and denial of service attacks. Yuwan: Yuwan is an application that lets TV viewers check into their favorite TV programs or even commercials and then share them on social media platforms such as Sina Weibo. UPcload: UPcload uses your computer's webcam to size you up, then recommend clothing that will fit you well. NextGoals: NextGoals is an app that actually asks you to work out and then verifies that you went to the gym. UnitedStyles: UnitedStyles is a Facebook Connect-enabled service that lets any user create customized women's apparel, allowing them sketch out, adjust and share a design via an online interface and customized 3D preview. Shakr: Shakr automatically creates video clips as the news breaks by algorithmically pulling in information, photos, and video snippets from around the web. TouchPal: TouchPal is a mobile app that helps you "keep in touch with your contacts," namely by adding social aspects to your current contact list. Huohua: Huohua uses semantic analysis to find your social circle instantly. Moglue: Moglue lets anyone create children's books, using a simple and straightforward UI. Gulu: Gulu is an event planning app that wants to fill the gap between services like Facebook Events/Plancast and those like Foursquare. Tune in for Day 2 today here at 6 pm PT!
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| Tumblr Acknowledges Its Growing Spam Problem, Says It’s Doing Everything It Can Posted: 31 Oct 2011 08:31 AM PDT  Is Tumblr facing a growing spam problem? For many regular users of the blogging platform, the answer is “yes.” Although Tumblr hasn’t taken to its own blog to provide a public update on its progress in fighting spam, it did recently address the concerns of a high-profile Tumblr user – the associate producer of NPR’s Fresh Air, Melody Kramer, who maintains a blog for the popular program hosted on the Tumblr platform. To Kramer, Tumblr acknowledged that it’s aware of a recent increase in spam blogs and is “doing everything we can to quickly suspend these blogs and to keep more of them from being created.” Last week, a post by Croatian blogger Sven Duplić about the percentage of Tumblr users that are spam bots sparked a discussion both in the comments section as well as on Hacker News. (BetaBeat has a good summary of this). The takeaway is that for some Tumblr users, the issue is worse than it is for others. But for NPR’s Fresh Air, the problem was bad enough to prompt Kramer to post a snarky message to Tumblr spammers earlier this month, perhaps as a way to get Tumblr itself to step in and address the problem:
Tumblr has now replied to the issue, essentially confirming it’s aware of the growing spam problem and is doing everything it can to fight it.
Unfortunately, for Kramer and the rest of Tumblr’s user base, the issue may not be as simple as spammers just sneaking in links to their sites via the platform’s liking system, although that’s the most visible problem. Spammers typically use the Tumblr “like” button to create backlinks to their sites by creating hundreds or thousands of fake Tumblr accounts that go around “liking” other people’s Tumblr posts. It’s not all that different from the problem where spammers infiltrate blog commenting systems to link to their sites, or the now nearly discarded system of using Trackbacks to indicate when someone else has linked to your post from theirs. (Trackbacks, popular in the early days of blogging, became so overrun by spammers, that today, most bloggers just shut them off.) Tumblr’s growth, certainly, has been remarkable. In September, it raised $85 million in new funding, bringing its total funding to over $125 million. But it’s unclear when the company talks about its “30 million blogs” with “40 million posts per day,” what percentage of those are being created by spammers. Even more importantly, perhaps, is that spammers on Tumblr aren’t just using the platform to build backlinks – it some cases, their Tumblr profiles even contain a payload, like a link to a malicious piece of malware. Here’s one example, uncovered by shortformblog, who found bit.ly links hidden in the source code of a suspect Tumblr profile which pointed to a rogue Flash file download. If clicking through to Tumblr profiles could lead to malware infections on your PC, then Tumblr has a serious problem on its hands, much worse than the annoyance of likespam and shady SEO tactics. Of course, uncovering how widespread the malware problem may be requires source code checks and analysis best left up to security researchers. That being said, it goes to follow that where there’s spam, there’s malware. Hopefully, Tumblr will use its new funding to quickly and efficiently address this issue before it becomes much worse. Image credits: shortformblog Tumblr is a re-envisioning of tumblelogging, a subset of blogging that uses quick, mixed-media posts. The service hopes to do for the tumblelog what services like LiveJournal and Blogger did for the blog. The difference is that its extreme simplicity will make luring users a far easier task than acquiring users for traditional weblogging. Anytime a user sees something interesting online, they can click a quick “Share on Tumblr” bookmarklet that then tumbles the snippet directly. The result is...
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| DeNA, GREE: Japan’s Mobile Social Gaming Giants Report Impressive Financial Numbers Posted: 31 Oct 2011 08:16 AM PDT  GREE and Mobage are brand names that don’t ring a bell with too many people (yet) as far as markets like the US or Europe are concerned, but these mobile social gaming platforms are hugely successful in Japan. The Tokyo-based companies behind these homegrown gaming networks, GREE and DeNA, reported some big financial numbers today. DeNA (current market cap: US$6.4 billion) today announced sales reached US$457 million for the second quarter of this fiscal (through the end of September 2011), while operating income hit a mind-boggling US$203 million. That translates into 28% and 13% year-on-year growth, respectively. While these numbers are impressive (especially because about 90% of sales come from game-related transactions), DeNA isn’t as strong on a quarter-by-quarter basis: from Q1 to Q2, sales have been flat (+/-0%), while operating income dropped 3%. Their financial report can be downloaded in English from here. Competitor GREE didn’t have quarterly results to report, but they didn’t want to let DeNA steal the show: the company (current market cap: US$7.3 billion) has radically revised their earnings estimates for the fiscal year (which ends in June 2012). GREE is now expecting sales to hit US$1.67 billion to US$1.8 billion for the current fiscal (up 40-44.4% from the previous forecast), while operating profit is expected to land somewhere between US$770 million and US$900 million (up 40-50%). All of GREE’s new numbers in English can be found here. What’s impressive is that DeNA and GREE still make almost all of their money in Japan, on cell phones, and with games (avatar-related sales, in-game virtual items) only. Both companies started offering mobile games embedded in a social networking platform for Japanese feature phones around 2006/2007, with DeNA now boasting 32 million registered users in Japan, while GREE has over 26 million. The social networks are in the process of internationalizing heavily and acquired or set up subsidiaries throughout the world. In the US, for example, DeNA acquired ngmoco last year for US$400 million (and set up Mobage in English on Android as a beta in summer), while GREE acquired Openfeint in April this year for over US$100 million.
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| Google TV Update Rolls Out Today, Already Hitting Select Sony Internet TV Devices Posted: 31 Oct 2011 07:47 AM PDT  The much-anticipated Google TV update is systematically rolling out today. Sony Internet TV devices are first in line followed by Logitech Revue units shortly thereafter. But wait patiently. As with most major updates, the OTA update will not hit all the boxes at once, but rather at a selective pace. You can initiate a manual check under the About section in the Settings menu, but a notification should pop-up when your box’s number has been called. It’s still not available on my Sony Internet TV but the update is already in the wild per a screenshot from AndroidCentral. Google announced the big update last week. It brings to Google TV the Android Market along with a totally new user interface. Plus, the system is now built on the newer Android 3.1 release, which should make for a much smoother experience. Google TV has always shown so much promise and this latest coat of paint improves its draw even more. But only the consumer marketplace will decide if the overhaul ultimately spurs a GTV revival.
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| AT&T Reveals First LTE Phones: HTC Vivid and Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket Posted: 31 Oct 2011 07:32 AM PDT  For a few months now AT&T has had an LTE network, but no phones that could take advantage of it. Well, that all changes today — AT&T has just announced that the Android-powered HTC Vivid and the Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket will be the first to run on their LTE network, and will hit store shelves on November 6. The HTC Vivid packs a 1.2GHz dual-core processor under the proverbial hood, and a 4.5-inch qHD display graces its face. A 8-megapixel camera capable of shooting 1080p video occupies the Vivid’s rear end, and 16GB of internal storage (expandable up to 32GB with the right microSD cards) rounds out the package. HTC has kept mum on the specific version of Android the Vivid runs, but it does indeed sport HTC’s Sense UI. HTC fans can pick up the Vivid for $199 on a two-year contract. Meanwhile, the Skyrocket takes a familiar package and plays with the internals. Instead of the 1.2GHz Exynos processor as seen in AT&T’s original GSII, the Skyrocket features a 1.5GHz dual-core processor. It also swaps the original version’s 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus display for a 4.5-inch variant. The Skyrocket does however stick with an 8-megapixel rear camera, 16GB of built-in flash storage, and Android 2.3.5. If the Skyrocket has piqued your interest, expect to shell out $249 for it later this week. Of course, you’ll need some LTE-friendly data plans to get the most out of these bad boys. Much like Verizon, AT&T has chosen to carry over their existing data plans, so $15 will net casual users 200MB of high-speed LTE access while $25 yields 2GB. Right now, LTE coverage is only available in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio, but AT&T is getting ready to fire up Boston, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Athens, Georgia on the 6th. Long story short, most Vivid and Skyrocket owners won’t even be able to use LTE for a while, but they’ll at least have some impressive hardware to tide them over until AT&T lights up their neck of the woods.
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| LivingSocial’s North American Expansion Brings Deals To 20 New Markets Posted: 31 Oct 2011 07:12 AM PDT  Daily deal outfit LivingSocial has just announced an expansion to 20 additional markets in North America, mainly U.S. cities, plus one town in Ontario, Canada. In some cases, the new cities are getting access to LivingSocial’s core Daily Deals product, while in other cases, the addition brings the company’s family deals service, LivingSocial Families, to the area. With today’s addition, LivingSocial Families is now live in 189 markets, which now includes the following:
Unlike daily deals, family deals are available for a week, in order to give families more time to prepare, plan and coordinate with family and friends. On the daily deals front, LivingSocial Daily Deals is now available in:
This brings LivingSocial Daily Deals to 608 markets in total. LivingSocial is the social commerce leader behind LivingSocial Deals, a group buying program that invites people and their friends to save up to 90 percent each day at their favorite restaurants, spas, sporting events, hotels and other local attractions in major cities. LivingSocial has an extensive user base of more than 85 million, and is headquartered in Washington, D.C.
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| Outfit7′s Talking Friends Apps Cruise Past 200 Million Downloads Posted: 31 Oct 2011 07:09 AM PDT  Regardless of how you may feel about their anthropomorphic cast of characters, Outfit7 just keeps picking up steam. Today the company has announced that their Talking Friends series of apps have just bounded over the 200 million download mark. What’s more impressive is how quickly Outfit7 managed to hit this new milestone — while it took 9 months for the company to break 100 million downloads, the next 100 million came after only 5. Outfit7 owes much of their growth to the rapid expansion of their Talking Friends cast — since Talking Tom Cat was released in June 2010, the company has added ten new characters (and a few spinoffs) to the lineup. That the franchise has gained footholds on both the iOS and Android has certainly helped, but the company seems hesistant to expand into other mobile platforms. According to their official Facebook account for example, Outfit7 won’t be releasing Windows Phone versions of their apps anytime soon. Last time we heard from the folks at Outfit7, they had just installed a new executive chairman and announced that their apps sport 60 million active users per month. Today’s announcement signals an uptick in momentum for the company, but they’re still looking at an uphill battle when it comes to competing with Rovio’s multimedia giant Angry Birds. Rovio CEO Peter Vesterbacka just recently made an appearance at out Disrupt Beijing conference, and casually mentioned that the Angry Birds series is approaching half a billion downloads worldwide after less than two years on the market.
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| Test Page For GDrive Appearing In Google Search Results Posted: 31 Oct 2011 06:53 AM PDT  In case there was still any doubt about the long-rumored “GDrive’s” existence, a page now appearing on Google’s search results offers a pretty clear indication that something is going on. On Writely.com – the online word processing service Google acquired in 2006 – a test page is now appearing with a title that reads “test page for Platypus (GDrive).” Well, there you have it. Currently, the full title of the search result reads “Writely – The Web Word Processor – test page for Platypus (GDrive)” and the URL is www.writely.com/BasePage.aspx. Of course, when you click through, the link takes you to an error page of sorts, with a message reading “Unknown action. Please check the URL and try again.” It should be noted that the www.writely.com domain itself redirects to Google Docs. Platypus, for those unaware, was the codename for GDrive used internally at Google until it was killed off in 2008. But recent findings have hinted that Google Drive is making a return. For example, in September, MG reported that code found in Chromium (the open source Web browser which serves as the testing ground for Google Chrome) referenced the non-public URL drive.google.com. Later that month, a screenshot from a presentation at a Google-sponsored event showed something that looks very much like Google Drive, complete with text that even reads “My Google Drive.” From MG’s earlier reports, the forthcoming service is essentially a rebranding of Google Docs with an accompanying desktop software component, similar to Dropbox. When exactly Google will finally launch Google Drive, after years of waiting, is still unknown. But at least we know they’re working on it. Thanks Dan Behun
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| Amtrak Adds WiFi To 12 New East Coast Routes, California’s Up Next Posted: 31 Oct 2011 06:52 AM PDT  Attention workaholics: your business trip a la rail was just made more efficient, if you’re using Amtrak, of course. The nation’s intercity railway has just added Wi-Fi service to 12 new East Coast routes, bringing the interwebs to almost 60 percent of all Amtrak passengers. Among the freshly connected routes, major lines include the Northeast Regional (between Virginia and Boston), Keystone Service (New York, Philadelphia and Harrisburg), and Empire Service (New York, Albany and Buffalo). Other routes to receive the service are the Carolinian, Downeaster, Ethan Allen Express, the New Haven-Springfield Shuttle and the Vermonter. Four other routes will also have access to WiFi — Adirondack, Maple Leaf, Palmetto, and Pennsylvanian — however service on those routes will be limited to specific cars marked with WiFi hotspot stickers. The difficulty with train WiFi is limited bandwidth along most routes, but Amtrak is working with cellular companies to try and boost coverage. The next phase of WiFi expansion will occur in California. The Capitol Corridor, Pacific Surfliner and San Joaquin trains will all receive WiFi service by the end of 2011, bringing the total of internet-connected Amtrak passengers to 75 percent.
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| Amazon’s Shoes And Accessories E-Commerce Site, Endless, Launches iPhone App Posted: 31 Oct 2011 06:22 AM PDT  Mobile shopping started to gain steam during last year’s holiday shopping season, and this year is also expected to be a big year for m-commerce. Endless.com, the shoe and accessories website built and launched by e-commerce giant Amazon back in 2006, is debuting a free iPhone app to allow shoppers to purchase any item on the go. Via the app, users can access and shop thousands of shoe, handbag, jewelry, sunglasses and watch styles; discover new arrivals, trends and editor picks, and access ratings and reviews for all styles. Endless.com offers free two-day shipping and free return shipping on U.S. orders and free shipping for international customers on orders of $100 or more. As more and more holiday shoppers flock to mobile phones this season, Amazon needs to be able to compete with other e-commerce companies such as eBay, and Wal-Mart. Last year, Amazon launched comparison shopping app Price Check and iPad shopping app Windowshop. And Amazon-owned Zappos offers its mobile apps as well.
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| HTC Reports Record Q3 Numbers With 13.2 Million Handsets Shipped Posted: 31 Oct 2011 06:21 AM PDT  While Samsung’s somewhat disputed earnings report has left it on top for the third quarter this year, HTC has also announced record numbers in its Q3 earnings report. In its sixth consecutive quarter of revenue growth, the company reported 13.2 million handsets shipped — a 93 percent increase from last year — which resulted in profit growth of 68 percent. In total, HTC reported NT$18.68 billion in profits (US$624 million) and revenue of NT$135.82 billion (US$4.5 billion), a 79 percent year-over-year increase. Comparatively, Samsung shipped an estimated 28 million handsets in the third quarter, while Apple sold 17 million. Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S II shipments were included in their numbers, while the iPhone 4S just barely missed the mark. HTC has the Vigor smartphone on the way, which should be a boost for the Taiwanese phone maker, but there’s no telling what the Q4 reports will look like once the new iPhone is in the mix. HTC Corp, (TAIEX: 2498) produces smartphones running the Android and Windows Phone 7 operating systems for themselves and as an OEM to other manufacturers. Since launching its own brand in late 2006, the company has introduced dozens of HTC-branded products around the world. The company recently introduced the HTC diamond to compete with Apple’s iPhone. Founded in 1997 by Cher Wang, Chairwoman, and Peter Chou, President and CEO, HTC made its name as the company behind many of the...
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| Disney-ABC Signs Streaming Deals With Amazon And Netflix Posted: 31 Oct 2011 06:15 AM PDT  Mark one up for Amazon…and mark one up for Netflix. The two companies just announced separate streaming deals with the Walt Disney Co. that will provide subscribers with even more content from Mickey & Co. Under these agreements, both streaming services will see even more Disney/ABC content, expanding their respective libraries with current and past TV programming. The Netflix deal allows the company continued access to hundreds of episodes. It also adds episodes from Switched at Birth, prior season episodes of Kick Buttowski, and Alias in its entirety. If this deal had failed to be signed, such titles as Lost, Brothers & Sisters, & Grey’s Anatomy would have disappeared from Netflix’s lineup, potentially signing the death notice for the company. The bad press alone might had done it. The deal inked by Amazon and Disney adds 800 titles to its Prime Instant Video lineup. The content is sourced from ABC Studio, The Disney Channel, ABC Family, and Marvel including Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, Phineas & Ferb and Marvel’s X-Men Evolution. This deal comes just weeks after a major deals with FOX and CBS. The additional content put’s Amazon’s library of instant streaming video at 13,000 TV shows and movies, a fact that Amazon is proudly proclaiming on its front page today. Financial terms were not released for either deal. These streaming deals are increasing becoming important as both services attempt to bolster its library. Netflix, in a free fall, needs the deals to hold on to subscribers while Amazon is attempting to kick out a foothold. Amazon’s library is still less than that of Netflix’s, but is on a tear lately, seemingly signing on content providers at a rapid pace. The two company’s are currently in a heated footrace, but this isn’t a sprint. With more than 23.3 million members in the United States and Canada, Netflix, Inc. is the world's leading Internet subscription service for enjoying movies and TV shows. For $7.99 a month, Netflix members in the U.S. can instantly watch unlimited movies and TV episodes streaming right to their TVs and computers and can receive unlimited DVDs delivered quickly to their homes. In Canada, streaming unlimited movies and TV shows from Netflix is available for $7.99 a month. There are...
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| Pre-IPO Angie’s List Is The Latest Tech Company To List On The Nasdaq Posted: 31 Oct 2011 06:02 AM PDT  Angie’s List is the latest tech company to list in the Nasdaq, instead of the NYSE. This follows Groupon, Jive and Zynga both choosing the Nasdaq. Angie’s List will be traded under the symbol "ANGI." Angie's List, which offers consumers a way to review and rate doctors, contractors and service companies on the Web, wants to raises as much as $75 million in its offering. The company launched in 1995 with a focus on local home, yard and car services, sits at the intersection of local search, user-generated content and subscription-based services. To date, Angie's List has raised nearly $100 million from Battery Ventures, T. Rowe Price, City Investment Group, Cardinal Ventures and others. The company also updated its S-1 to reflect Q3 revenue and data. As of September 30, 2011, the company offered its service to paying members in 175 local markets in the United States (compared to 170 as of August). Angie's List now has more than 1 million (up from 820,000) paid memberships. Angie’s List incurred marketing expenses of $30.2 million and $48 million in 2010 and the nine months ended September 30, 2011, respectively. In 2010 and the nine months ended September 30, 2011, the company’s revenue was $59.0 million and $62.6 million, respectively. In the same periods, Angie’s net loss was $27.2 million and $43.2 million. Angie’s List has incurred net losses its start and had an accumulated deficit of $160.6 million as of September 30, 2011. While Groupon and Zynga are more high-profile offerings, this is still another win for Nasdaq in the war over the tech IPO listings. Many of the early 2010 tech IPOs went to the NYSE, including LinkedIn, Pandora, Fusion-IO, Bankrate, Demand Media, and RenRen. But Nasdaq was able to grab Yandex, HomeAway and Zillow. And with the new Fall listings on board, it looks like Nasdaq may now be the frontrunner in the battle for technology IPO listings. Disclosure: My husband is an employee of Groupon. Angie’s List, Inc. provides consumer reviews of local services across the U.S. and parts of Canada. Reviews are based on first-hand experiences consumers have with doctors, contractors and other local professionals, covering more than 500 categories of service. Companies are encouraged to respond to reviews. The company also offers group coupons in about 30 U.S. markets, conflict resolution service, a monthly magazine and information via e-newsletters and the company’s Web site. Membership requires a monthly or annual fee, but...
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| Vodafone Launches Appia-Powered Mobile App Store In India Posted: 31 Oct 2011 06:00 AM PDT  Appia, a startup that powers a white-label content and commerce platform for everyone and anyone who needs a mobile app store, has partnered with Vodafone India to launch a new mobile app store for the carrier’s 145 million subscribers in India. For background, the company powers mobile app storefronts for more than 40 partners, including four of the world’s top five handset manufacturers (Samsung, T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon Wireless). The bonus of using Appia's white-label offering is that it enables its partners to deliver apps to more than 3,200 different mobile device makes and models. And company powers an App Stores for Opera Software and Telcel, Mexico's largest operator. The Vodafone Application Store includes over 10,000 app titles for a variety of smartphone platforms including Android, Java, Symbian and Blackberry. The catalog also includes an extensive collection of content from local providers, including Hungama, India Games, Nazara, Spice, and Vodafone-branded apps like Portfolio Tracker, Vodafone TV, and Chhota Comics. The store will include both free and paid apps. Appia is seeing downloads from over 200 countries and 3,500 different handsets, and across all of its app stores, is averaging around 1 million app downloads a day. The company also recently took an investment from DCM’s $100 million A-Fund. Appia is the world’s largest open app marketplace and white label storefront platform, supporting all operating systems and handsets. Ranked #15 on the Wall Street Journal's 2011 list of Top 50 Venture-backed companies, Appia powers app storefronts for more than 40 partners reaching more than 200 million mobile subscribers in 200 countries and counting. Customers include four of the world’s top five handset manufacturers, three of the top four mobile operators in the US, three of the top ten...
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| Ubuntu Developer Summit Kicks Off, Mark Shuttleworth Shares Plans for Ubuntu 12.04 and Beyond Posted: 31 Oct 2011 05:30 AM PDT  The Ubuntu Developer Summit, starting today in Florida, is a gathering of Canonical employees, industry partners and Ubuntu community members to “define the focus and plans for [the] up-coming version of Ubuntu”. That version, 12.04 codenamed “Precise Pangolin”, will be released in April of 2012 and will be the next Long Term Support (LTS) release of the distribution. The changes scheduled for 12.04 are interesting, and simultaneously represent the current state of the art of the Ubuntu distribution as well as represent the foundation on which future developments will be built. I spoke with Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu’s Benevolent Dictator For Life, about what to expect in Ubuntu 12.04 and beyond. First and foremost, Shuttleworth pointed out that the support schedule for 12.04 has been extended from three to five years on the desktop. Ubuntu LTS releases have historically provided three years of support on the desktop (five on the server), with new LTS versions coming out every two years. With 12.04, desktop users will enjoy support through 2017, which is a pretty long time to offer support for a desktop operating system. I asked Shuttleworth what the motivation was for extending the 12.04 support offering on the desktop and he immediately responded “corporate deployments.” There are a number of companies standardizing on Ubuntu for their desktop computing needs, and the three year support from prior LTS releases was proving inadequate. Large corporations don’t adopt the latest and greatest technologies quickly, and they often have long QA processes to ensure that new desktop operating systems will properly function with their fleet of legacy applications. (Just look at how many companies are still in the transition process from Windows XP to Windows 7!) Shuttleworth pointed out that there’s a growing change in attitude toward corporate computing. As more and more applications move “to the cloud”, IT departments are seeing that there’s less and less need for expensive desktop lock-in. Something like Ubuntu provides sufficient computing resources for a great many environments, and is free from licensing fees. Ubuntu 12.04 will be the conclusion of the current two year LTS cycle, which will include four total releases: Maverick Meerkat (10.10), Natty Narwhal (11.04), Oneiric Ocelot (11.10). After the release of Precise Panglon, Shuttleworth and Canonical plan to get cracking on 14.04, the next LTS version (not yet codenamed). The work building up to 14.04 will, according to Shuttleworth, challenge the Ubuntu community and Canonical’s partners to exceed the status quo. In the meantime, the conversations at the Ubuntu Developer Summit this week will be the beginning of public conversations around the notion of “Ubuntu on devices”. There’s already been a lot of internal conversation on this subject, and some engagement with industry partners (witness the recently launched Ubuntu webbook in South Africa), but UDS will really open these conversations up for community participation. Shuttleworth reminded me that the Ubuntu tagline has always been “Linux for human beings.” He went on to note, though, that human beings computing — and will continue to compute — using a lot more than the legacy PC. Webbooks are just one small subset of devices on which Shuttleworth has his eye. There’s also phones, tablets, and “smart screens” — intelligent devices with limited input mechanisms like televisions, in-dash automotive displays, and more. Unity, the user interface rolled out in Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition and officially adopted as the default desktop interface in Ubuntu 11.04, lays the foundation for future development of Ubuntu on devices. One of the major thrusts of Unity was to embrace alternate computing form factors while still presenting a reasonably consistent user interface. Unity was refined in Ubuntu 11.10, and will continue to be refined in 12.04 and beyond. The lens framework will grow, and presumably third-party lens contributions will make the Unity experience smoother for all Ubuntu users. It’s almost impossible to talk about Unity without hearing some vocal body of people complain about it. As a long-time Ubuntu user, I admit I found the transition a little challenging and I still experience some frustrations with it today. I asked Shuttleworth about this, specifically looking to learn what Canonical might know about user feedback that doesn’t get heavy publicity. Shuttleworth was obviously prepared for this kind of question because he started his response by saying “We don’t know exactly how many people are using Ubuntu, but we have a pretty good estimate based on download numbers and watching browser user agent strings. I can tell you that Ubuntu 11.04, the first to offer Unity, was the fastest adopted version of Ubuntu to date.” Whether this was simply a natural growth in the Ubuntu user base, or people being curious about the new interface, is hard to tell. Shuttleworth went on to describe the user testing that Canonical performs on each version of Ubuntu. They do real-world performance testing using randomly selected focus groups: people who may or may not be comfortable doing any number of computing tasks. Canonical asks these folks to perform a variety of real-world things (get photos off a digital camera and posted to Facebook, for example) and watches their performance. With each successive iteration of Ubuntu, they’re able to document how much easier these tasks are (or are not) and adjust their development priorities accordingly. All key design issues are evaluated in the context of these tests. According to Shuttleworth, “people get much more done, from scratch, when presented with 11.10 versus 11.04 or any prior release of Ubuntu.” The obvious goal is to continue that trend into 12.04 and beyond. “Ease of use is not incompatible with power users,” he went on, noting that some of the most vocal complaints against Unity come from the most technical of users: people who consider “computing” to be having a dozen terminal windows open across multiple virtual desktops. Shuttleworth acknowledged that Unity in its current form might not be ideal for those kinds of users, but noted that it’s not impossible to reconcile the two. As an example, he pointed out that a great many Linux developers are today using Macs running OSX. Clearly OSX has staked its livelihood on “ease of use”, and has been remarkably successful. And yet power users are using it more and more. Shuttleworth is sure that the Linux desktop can strike a similar balance. Expect to hear more about this from UDS this week. One of the big features introduced in 11.10 was the Ubuntu Software Center. Of particular interest with this is the proliferation of proprietary, closed source software. I asked Shuttleworth about this. “We celebrate freedom!” was his immediate response. Users are free to get stuff done, and free to get it done using the software they want to run. According to Shuttleworth, it is not Canonical’s place to enforce their software morality onto their users. Sure, they’d love to see everyone being successful with exclusively free software, but on the whole they’re pragmatic enough to know that their users may want — indeed, demand — something else. According to Shuttleworth this stance is the result of many heated discussions inside Canonical, and not everyone is happy with it. Nonetheless, Shuttleworth is very proud of the fact that many commercial developers are working to run their software atop Ubuntu, and Canonical wants to support them as much as possible, with the Software Center and the developer.ubuntu.com portal. After talking about desktops for a bit, I shifted the conversation to servers, virtualization and cloud computing. I noted that Ubuntu and Canonical don’t seem to be as aggressively pursuing virtualization as Red Hat, who is making a big push with their Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization product and the oVirt project. Shuttleworth pointed out that Ubuntu was the first major distribution to make KVM a core part of their distribution. With that said, however, he acknowledged that they’re largely favoring cloud over virtualization. Shuttleworth observed that Ubuntu is the most popular guest OS across all public cloud environments. Canonical wants to extend that to be the most popular base OS for cloud servers as well. HP’s recent decision to use Ubuntu as their preferred host distribution is one small step toward that goal. He identifies Amazon Web Services as the de facto standard for cloud solutions: anyone looking to deploy a cloud offering today must be API compatible with Amazon. AWS controls much of the conversation simply by enjoying “first mover” status. Despite much effort by other proprietary companies like Oracle and VMware, Shuttleworth doesn’t think any of these others have any chance of significantly influencing the cloud conversation. Canonical is pushing “cloud by default” by providing all the necessary features to run a cloud infrastructure with their core server offering. Canonical has thrown their weight behind OpenStack, which Shuttleworth identifies as the clear leader in open source cloud solutions. OpenStack was distributed as a component of Ubuntu 11.10 and according to Shuttleworth you should be able to deploy an N-node cloud in 15 minutes using just the core Ubuntu Server download. Cloud is just a flattening of infrastructure, says Shuttleworth: “it’s just compute, storage, network and credentials.” In his mind, “building 50 servers is pretty much the same as building a 50-node cloud.” That is to say, it’s not really hard — or all that time consuming — today to provision 50 physical servers. Rolling out a cloud infrastructure should be as easy. He expects to see this made even easier with Ubuntu 12.04. This raises some questions, though, as to how Canonical will reconcile the rapid advancements in cloud technologies with the five year support cycle of Ubuntu 12.04. LTS versions of Ubuntu get support for the software distributed with it, but don’t usually get new feature additions. As cloud technologies advance, 12.04 users may be left behind. Shuttleworth observed two possible solutions. The first is that folks interested in more closely tracking cloud (or other technology) advances could easily switch to the non-LTS versions of Ubuntu, updated every six months. Another possible solution would be to make available accelerated cloud feature additions to 12.04 users via an optional software repository. There’s some precedent for this within Ubuntu for other fast-moving infrastructure components, so this might well be something to expect with Ubuntu 12.04. Ubuntu has been a remarkably successful Linux distribution. It started out exclusively as an easy-to-use desktop distribution, but has since added advanced server functionality, pioneering cloud computing integration, and sponsored an awful lot of terrific open source software development. This week’s UDS will likely produce some interesting developments. Mark Shuttleworth, as Benevolent Dictator For Life of Ubuntu, told me “change is a fact of life, usually for the better.” Keep an eye on Canonical and the Ubuntu community to see how they aim to make Ubuntu better.
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| Gulu Makes On-The-Fly Event Planning Look Good Posted: 31 Oct 2011 04:17 AM PDT
“Shaker wants to take something you do, the act of hanging out, and make it something you can do in your pajamas from the comfort of your own home. This. Is. Disturbing. We are the co-founders of Gulu.com, and we want you to hang out.” Gulu wants to fill the gap between services like Facebook Events/Plancast and those like Foursquare. Where the former let you plan far ahead and Foursquare lets your broadcast where you’re at when you’re there, Gulu focuses on spur-of-the-moment event planning with what they call “intention broadcasting”. The idea is pretty simple: you say what you want to do, and your friends tap the button that reads “Me too!”. All willing/hopeful participants are automatically wrangled up into a chat group, allowing the event to be planned on the fly. And if none of your friends are up to do what you want to do right this second? All of your pending “I want to”s are added to a ToDo list, which your friends can peruse at their leisure. Once you’ve got a satisfactory number of attendees onboard, you can get your event underway. Is it a strikingly new idea? Eh, perhaps not — a Facebook status update may work just as well. Of course, you could say the same thing about most social planning services, so we look forward to watching how this one grows.
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| Posted: 31 Oct 2011 03:49 AM PDT  And we’re another step closer to Robocalypse: researchers at the Nara Institute Of Science And Technology (NAIST) in Tokyo are working on a robot that’s supposed to one day dress humans autonomously. The current prototype, which NAIST says is the world’s first robot of its kind, can help to put a T-shirt on a dummy in about 10 seconds. What’s interesting is that for the arms, NAIST uses WAM, robots arms with 7 joints that are made by MIT spin off Barrett. According to the institute, the robot comes with 10 high-precision cameras to perform the (for a robot) difficult task and will be improved in the next few years. This video shows the robot, which is supposed to help make life easier for the elderly or handicapped people, in action: Please click here [JP] for another (non-embeddable) video. Via Robonable [JP]
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