The wait is over. Twitter’s new Lists feature is now available to all users, project lead Nick Kallen has just confirmed through a tweet. The functionality has been in testing for weeks now with a select group of users, and a couple of weeks ago, opened to a wider audience. As recently as yesterday, only 50% of Twitter had access to Lists, but after an unrelated bug forced Twitter to briefly remove the feature, they were able to roll it out to everyone else quickly.
This means that not only can all users now finally make their own lists, but perhaps more importantly, you can now see which lists you have been included on. The latter is quickly becoming a new metric for measuring popularity on the service (which users seem divided about if that’s a good or bad thing). And everyone will now have access to the third party sites already starting to pop up around the Lists API, such as Listorious, a Lists directory. → Read More
Here’s a little heads up on Target’s upcoming Sunday circular: if you buy any two Wii games at $50 or more, each, you’ll get a third game free from “a choice of over 80 Wii titles.” The deal will start this Sunday, November 1st, and run until next Saturday. → Read More
Ever since our first Realtime Crunchup last July, the momentum behind realtime streams just keeps getting stronger. Which is why TechCrunchIT editor Steve Gillmor and I are putting together another Realtime Crunchup on November 20 in San Francisco. Tickets are on sale now (the price is $395 until the final week when they will go up to $495—there are only 500 available).
The one-day event will take place in San Francisco’s fabulous new Intercontinental Hotel. The agenda is still coming together (hey, they don’t call it realtime for nothing). But I am pleased to announce some phenomenal speakers who will be joining us. Many of the members of our Realtime Board will appear on stage, including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, FriendFeed founder (now Facebook exec) Paul Buchheit, Microsoft’s FUSE Labs chief Lili Cheng, and angel investor Ron Conway. Twitter COO Dick Costolo will also sit down with me for a conversation about the transition from RSS to Realtime, among other subjects. → Read More
As the number of apps in the App Store rapidly approaches 100,000, the fact that growth is still accelerating is pretty staggering. It’s not hard to see why when app development houses are pumping out dozens of apps in short order. But at that volume, most of those apps aren’t going to be very good. Big in Japan, a respected mobile app development house, has a plan to up the ante in terms of both quality and output.
The company has set a goal to release 100 apps before the end of 2010 for the iPhone. How are they going to do this? By pulling together a bunch of developers from around the U.S. to make an app development power house. Currently, the team has assembled 25 developers and 25 user interface guys to work towards the goal. The team members mix and match, pairing up to do one app at a time. When they complete that one, it’s on to the next one, with a new set of partners. → Read More
To repeat, do not upgrade your Apple TV to 3.0 if you’re running hacked ATV plugins like XBox Media Center or Boxee. I’m sure this will be fixed in a matter of days – if not hours – but as of right now it means a ride on the Failboat to Sad Trombone Town. That’s right: this update destroys the only thing that makes Apple TV usable and good. Also, as an added bonus, Apple TV firmware 3.0 is insignificant. It adds Internet radio to the package and improves the UI. It also adds Genius playlists. My cup, as they say, runneth over. → Read More
Over the last six months we’ve heard quite a bit about Vevo, a premium content site that’s been called a ‘Hulu for music videos’. The site was originally founded by UMG in a partnership with YouTube and has since added Sony Music Group, with negotiations onging with EMI and Warner. But while plenty has been said about its partners, we still haven’t seen much that shows what the site actually looks like.
Today it looks like Vevo decided to peek out from under the covers, though its appearance was short lived. Our tipster noticed a number of artists who had apparently been given Vevo-linked YouTube accounts, with names like EminemVEVO and DonnaSummerVEVO. Videos from these users look nearly identical to the music videos scattered throughout YouTube, but with one key difference: there’s VEVO branding on the bottom right hand side of the player. → Read More
The mobile version of Bing launched alongside the regular site this past summer worked well but lacked some of the bells and whistles that rivals like Google offer in their mobile experience. And with the mobile web becoming increasingly important, a focus on this area is crucial for a fledgling search engine. So today Bing has unveiled a new version of its mobile experience.
The main change is that Bing has been completely revamped for touchscreen smartphones and devices. Currently, this means the G1, the Verizon Imagio, the Samsung Omnia, the Zune HD, and yes, the iPhone. In its blog post, Bing even uses a picture to highlight how nice Bing Mobile looks on the Apple device. → Read More
Price: Free Requires: Friends → Read More
European startup Cloudmade, which offers data and tools to developers and OEMs for mapping and navigation applications, isn’t the only company to get hit hard by Google’s new disruptive Navigation product.
But they aren’t reeling out of control either. Cloudmade CEO Juha Christensen sent us an email that he distributed to partners yesterday. It’s clearly an advertisement for Cloudmade (the last paragraph tells new partners how to get in touch). But it is also a blueprint for how companies can carve out a competitive niche from the Navigation product. We’re posting it because it’s a good example of a measured response to a potentially company-killing development.
There are developers, device makers and carriers who strategically don’t want to let Google in, or can’t get the functionality they want from Google’s APIs. That’s where Cloudmade and others can get a foot in the door.
The email is below: → Read More
If you’re dedicated to smoking or camping (or smoking while camping), then there’s a good chance you’ve purchased a nice refillable metal lighter in the past. But the past is the past and sooner or later you’ll need to step into the future (which, coincidentally, will almost immediately become the past). Whatever happens, please take with you the knowledge that there exists a refillable metal lighter that doubles as an 8GB flash drive. → Read More
The second generation in Olympus’s retro micro four thirds line is almost here. Olympus China leaked that a few days ago. But this time around a few more leaks emerge and show that that the E-P2 might have the same body design as the E-P1, which isn’t really a bad thing, I guess. → Read More
The Le Web conference in Paris always has a surprise or two for attendees. Last year, author Paulo Coelho spoke about how he uses social networking to spread word about his books, and how he encourages people to download pirated copies of his work. This year, Her Majesty Rania Al Abdullah, Queen of Jordan, will be on stage.
We interviewed Queen Rania earlier this year.
Rania is a monarch on a mission. She focuses much of the messaging on her Twitter account towards helping women and promoting peace and education. A message earlier this week lamented the death of women and children in Pakistan. Another, yesterday, pointed to a NY Times article on the need for schools. She has become very adept at using social media, particularly Twitter and YouTube, to further her causes. And her very authentic, very human voice is doing a lot to dispel stereotypes about the Arab and Muslim worlds. → Read More
Friday, huh? Just got paid, did you? Why not divert $250 of that check toward this 11.6-inch netbook?
Come on, you’re making good money now right? When’s the last time you bought something nice for yourself? Think of this as an investment! With the portability that this netbook provides, you’ll finally be able to start up that emu farm that you’ve always been talking about. → Read More
With the Sony Ericsson Rachel (otherwise known as the XPERIA X3 or, more recently, the X10) having already made numerous unofficial appearances across the Interwebs, it seems like Sony Ericsson’s down to show their cards a bit early – or at least the back and sides of them. → Read More
We first reported on Google’s bucket testing of a new homepage that fades to nothing but its logo and the search box after receiving a tip about it at the beginning of this month. Since then, we’ve been getting more and more incoming tips from people who are starting to see this and haven’t seen our or other reports about the gimmick.
I have yet to see the experimental homepage myself, but judging from our inbox and chatter on Twitter the company does seem to be including more people in the bucket test than was the case a couple of weeks ago. Likely, they need to gain more data from actual usage to decide whether or not it can become a permanent feature or not. → Read More
Forget about updating your G1 to Motoblur, go all the way with a little Android 2.0 action. Hells yeah. The official Android update was ported to the G1 by some ambitious coders. Now, calm down until you see the video after the jump as the early build doesn’t exactly run all that well on the one year old phone. But you have to start somewhere. → Read More
“Dewey defeats Truman.” “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” “1,000-plus people crowd new Microsoft Store.” Great headlines are rarely forgotten and they are made all the greater by the their cultural import. To wit: Microsoft’s new store in Mission Viejo was a rousing success, bringing 1,000 sleepy-eyed Mission Viejoians out to see people in blue and yellow shirts. In fact, it was so popular the American Eagle Outfitters store in the Shops at Mission Viejo mall was empty. Empty, friends. Not since the great Taco Bell grease fire of ought-one has the AEO gone empty. → Read More
Question: Are standard DS & DSi games going to look pixelated and stretched on the DSi XL‘s 4.2-inch screen? Idk. But the screen is huge when compared to the standard DSi. Check out the Japanese TV debut after the jump. → Read More
For advertisers on the Web, behavioral targeting is held out as the nirvana they’ve been waiting for: the ability to show ads only to those people most likely to be interested in them based on their past behavior. The growth of this type of ad targeting also raises a host of privacy concerns, but setting those aside for a second, do these ads even work? Do they perform better than regular ads? If they did, you’d expect advertisers to pay more for them and for Website publishers to be flocking to them.
At least for Google, the answer seems to be “No.” According to estimates by Jim Brock, founder of PrivacyChoice, chairman of Attributor and a former senior VP at Yahoo, only about 25 percent of AdSense sites are serving targeted ads, which Google calls “interest-based advertising.” → Read More
