Orkut continues to undermine Google’s Data Liberation Front, whose singular goal is to “make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products”. Earlier this month the Orkut friend exporter, which makes it easy to export your friends’ contact information to a standard CSV file, was mysteriously broken due to a bug. The timing of the bug was more than a little suspect — Orkut has been hemorrhaging users lately in India and Brazil as people flock to Facebook, which takes advantage of Orkut’s friend export tool to help users make the switch. Now Julio Vasconcellos over at Armchairfounder has noticed how Orkut managed to fix their bug while still making it harder for members to switch to Facebook: the tool works, but it no longer includes your friends’ Email addresses. → Read More
I’ve always considered the Grooveshark web app’s UI to be quite amazing, so I was wary when I was granted preview access to the service’s new look, which the startup is presenting publicly for the first time today (at 12 AM EST). Fortunately, they somehow managed to make it even more awesome than it already was, and the makeover was more than a new lick of paint as it also included a number of performance tweaks to make it run smoother.
In case you’re not familiar with Grooveshark: it’s a great web-based music search, play and management tool that’s been around since April last year. You can use the app to instantly look for and listen to music, and there’s the quintessential social component that allows you to interact with people from its community and discover new music from others’ choices. → Read More
Well, this is a bit of a strange twist. For the first few months after launch, the development mentality surrounding Android was a developer’s dream. Huge chunks of the operating system were made open source, the development team was pleasantly transparent, and the roadmap clearly sketched out the trails ahead. Then they released Donut, and all went more-or-less mum. It was no secret that Android 2.0, codenamed Eclair was to follow – but what such updates would contain was anybody’s guess.
Well, Google’s finally ready to share the innards of Eclair with the world. And by “world”, we mean a small group of developers hand-picked to attend an invite-only, NDA-required development event. → Read More
Seriously, who doesn’t want a pet dinosaur? Sure, Jurassic Park makes it seem all dangerous and life-threatening and such. Would you really let that stop you? I think not. But until genetics research and cloning catch up to our imaginations, we’ll have to settle for robotic proxies. And everyone’s favorite little Camarasaurus just got back on the market. → Read More
Startup oDesk received rave reviews at this years TechCrunch50 conference thanks to its innovative workplace platform. The startup was voted as demopit winner with the launch of a new iPhone application that allows project administrators to monitor the work stream of their team members while they’re on the go.
Today, oDesk’s “oConomy” meter, which is the amount of money that is earned from workers on oDesk, hit $100 million. The oConomy showcases data from the work activity of 350,000+ oDesk users in over 150 countries. → Read More
Startup oDesk received rave reviews at this years TechCrunch50 conference thanks to its innovative workplace platform. The startup was voted as demopit winner with the launch of a new iPhone application that allows project administrators to monitor the work stream of their team members while they’re on the go.
Today, oDesk’s “oConomy” meter, which is the amount of money that is earned from workers on oDesk, hit $100 million. The oConomy showcases data from the work activity of 350,000+ oDesk users in over 150 countries. → Read More
Skip to 1:00 mark and prepare to be amazed at the multiplayer Excitebike Wii port. Seriously, there are people out there that will buy a Wii just for this WiiWare game and the side-scrolling retro action. I might. Click through for the awesome trailer. → Read More
In September, defense contractor Raytheon announced an agreement to purchase R&D innovator BBN Technologies, but didn’t say for how much. Today, the deal closed and the price came out. It is $350 million.
Investors Accel Partners and General Catalyst Partners, who co-led a management buyout in 2004, made out very nicely. Accel says that its cut was more than $100 million, which suggests it owned about a third of the company. (BBN was one of Accel partner Jim Breyer’s investments). Presumably, General Catalyst owned another third. The deal turned out to be more than a ten-bagger. → Read More
Google has just announced the release of a handful of major new features for its Google Custom Search products, including a new set of themes, improved use of rich snippets in custom search, and a new Wikipedia search. The announcements aren’t especially related, but they’ll be welcome news to the millions of sites that have deployed Custom Search.
For those that don’t know it, Wikipedia’s search is powered by Google Custom Search behind the scenes. Update: Google says that Custom search is actually only used if you install the Google Custom search skin. The new Wikipedia skin that they’re launching today is quite slick — it’s inline so you won’t have to leave the page, and it allows you to restrict your search to pages that are linked to from whatever Wikipedia entry you’re reading. → Read More
To paraphrase the great Joe Rogan, from last Saturday’s UFC 104, I don’t watch much TV, maybe the Discovery Channel here and there to see a documentary or two. I bring this up because I’ve been told to write about some TV show called “V,” and the beauty is that I have no idea what it’s about! My first thought was, “V For Vendetta? Oh, no? Oh, well, then yeah, not a clue.” Apparently it’s a re-make of an old sci-fi show. Thankfully, though, ABC, the network where this show will air here in the U.S., has just posted the first seven minutes online. Let’s watch it, together! → Read More
Today marks the death of an internet giant. One of the first, one of the best. Oh GeoCities. What would we have done without you? Where would we have put our brightly colored, constantly flashing backgrounds? Who else had rotating .gifs for links and neon green page hit counters? There is no substitute for your plethora of font colors and sizes, for your broken HTML codes and page badges, for your MIDI synth-horns. We will sorely miss your animated “Under Construction” signs we came to know and love. → Read More
While scores of parents the world over may worry endlessly about the distinct possibility of their children growing up nerdly, I say get ‘em started early with stuff like these Star Trek onesies. → Read More
This past weekend, Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone spoke at Startup School. Before they took the stage, they met up with Y Combinator’s Paul Graham and came up with a great idea: A deal to ensure that Y Combinator startups working on Twitter-related projects have priority access to the tweet stream, as well as access to Twitter’s team.
The idea led Graham to delay the application deadline for YC Winter 2010 startups for two days, so they could release two new Requests For Startups (RFS), YC’s recently announced program that gives applicants basic big picture ideas from which to form startups around. One of these new RFSes is obviously to build something on top of Twitter. Here’s the description: → Read More
The Tokyo Polytechnic University has showcased c-loc at this year’s Digital Contents Expo, a spectacular mapping software for “time and space” that runs on a touch screen. The technology looks super-futuristic, and it not only works but is actually useful, too. → Read More
Nothing says “please rob me blind” like riding a foot-powered scooter and housing your iPhone in a dedicated quiver-like sash that exposes the top-most part of the device, logo and all. → Read More
Rumors are abound that Nokia may be looking to release a new version of its Booklet 3G netbook sometime next year. → Read More
Last week at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Google’s Marissa Mayer took the stage for two reasons. The first was to formally announce the Google/Twitter search deal, but the second was the show off a new product: Google Social Search. The on-stage demonstration was interesting, but left a lot of questions unanswered. Today, the Google Labs experiment goes live, and we’ll get those answers.
Social Search essentially pulls in information from social networks to augment Google search results. But a major question is: What social networks get pulled it? While the experiment isn’t quite live yet, it would seem that from the video below made by Google’s Matt Cutts, Social Search, at least at first, will be able to include results from Twitter, FriendFeed, Picasa, Blogger, and Google Reader. → Read More
AOL is losing another longtime executive, David Liu. He is the senior vice president in charge of Global Messaging, which includes AIM, ICQ, and AOL’s more recent Lifestreaming products. Liu spearheaded the transformation of AIM into a lifestreaming client that mixes private and public messages from Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere.
When CEO Tim Armstrong was looking for someone to head up AOL’s overall Internet and mobile communications, which also includes email, Liu was the strongest internal candidate. But Armstrong decided to go outside the company and hired Brad Garlinghouse, who used to be in charge of all of Yahoo’s communications products. → Read More
Late last night, I spent 1,500 words explaining why Verizon’s Droid, like the dozens of competitors before it, is not the ever-sought-after “iPhone killer.” I really should have just waited until this morning and listened to Verizon’s earnings call. After all, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg more or less said it himself.
When asked about a possible partnership with Apple in the future with the iPhone, Seidenberg had this to say, “We obviously would be interested at any point in the future that they would be interested in having us as a partner. … This is a decision that is exclusively in Apple’s court.” → Read More
Over the weekend we wrote about Bump Technologies’ recent funding round led by Sequoia Capital, which was revealed (perhaps accidentally) during Sequoia Partner Greg McAdoo’s presentation at Y Combinator‘s Startup School. Bump declined to comment on the round on Saturday, but they’ve now confirmed that the round has just closed. They still wouldn’t confirm the exact amount of the round, but we’ve heard it’s over $3 million.
Bump did disclose the angel investors joining the round, and they’ve got some impressive names on board:
Ram Shriram (Sherpalo Ventures; founding board member at Google)
Ron Conway (SV Angel LLC)
Joshua Schachter (founder, Delicious)
Aydin Senkut (Felicis Ventures) → Read More
