From Wikipedia: A tributary is a stream or river which flows into a main stem (or parent) river. Facebook wants every site on the web to be a tributary. And it wants to be the main river.
Today, amid the hoopla that Facebook was once again making changes to its site which may or may not make things more difficult for developers, something big was largely overlooked. To me, the more interesting thing was the new API Facebook briefly unveiled: The Open Graph API.
To say details are vague at this point is being overly generous. But, the key idea is in place, and was presented today. Basically, the Open Graph API is a way for Facebook to allow other companies, sites, services, etc to interact with Facebook without having to create a dedicated Facebook Page. Big deal, you might think — isn’t that what Connect is? Yes, to an extent, but it would seem that the idea here is to go way past that. → Read More
Designed to work without a dedicated PC, the new Astak Mole was announced today. The Mole is a wireless webcam that can upload video directly to such sites as YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter. It can also record directly to an SD card in the camera. → Read More
Ethanol fuel was always a mystery to me. Really, I never took the time to learn about it until I watched this 3:31 video that shows how a Pennsylvania company, Coskata, converts anything that contains carbon into fuel. Yeah, it’s an infomercial for GM, but it always quickly explains the whole waste to fuel conversion process and so it might be worth your time. → Read More
Zong has seen tremendous growth over the past year from when the company debuted its mobile payments service from the TechCrunch50 demo pit. Zong’s model of billing micropayments to your cell phone bill caught our eye and sure enough, less than one year later, the startup is picking up serious traction, including a partnership with Facebook to power the purchase of the social network’s new currency. And in 2009 alone, Zong has processed mobile payments for over 10 million unique users worldwide. Today, Zong is launching a new feature that not only expands its payment services, but could make a lasting impact on the micropayments field.
Zong is launching Zong+, a extension of the mobile payment startup which lets users bill microtransactions to credit, debit and prepaid cards. We have an exclusive demo of Zong+ by the startup’s founder and CEO, David Marcus, below. So in addition to making online purchases through their cell phone bill, Zong customers will also be able to link any type of payment card to their Zong account through a one-time entry process and continue to purchase goods by simply entering their mobile number and confirming the security transaction code sent to their phone. → Read More
One CD-ROM drive: $18.99
Some wire and electrical tape: $2.50
Installing a CD-ROM drive to use as a CD player in your car: priceless. → Read More
Toshiba just announced their latest advancement in CMOS technology, the BSI (back-side illumination) sensor. The BSI sensor is designed to improve high ISO (or low light) photography by decreasing the amount of noise that appears on images taken under these conditions. → Read More
Initial reports said that hundreds of thousands of people watched YouTube’s Live U2 concert on Sunday night. Then reports yesterday raised the estimate to 2.5 million. Double that, and then double it again. 10 million is the real number of live streams that YouTube did that night, according to Variety.
That’s massive, and it’s obviously the biggest live streaming event YouTube has ever done. But even more impressive is just how smoothly it went. I watched about half of the two and a half hour show, and if there were any interruptions, I didn’t see any. I didn’t even see any hiccups, it was that good. I had the show running full screen on my desktop computer, and it was pretty great picture quality for live streaming video. → Read More
After a decade in Silicon Valley, I’ve learned there’s a difference between what some VCs say and what they do. For instance, there’s the well-worn phrase that nearly every venture firm utters: “We believe downturns are the best time to invest.” And yet, somehow, the investment numbers always go down in recessions.
But University of San Francisco associate professor of entrepreneurship Mark Cannice puts a bit more stock in what VCs say. And to be fair, he’s got some data to prove it. While there are tons of studies that track what VCs did in a quarter, for the last six years Cannice has polled nearly 40 local VCs to ask how confident they feel about the high growth industry in the next six to 18 months. And interestingly, the results almost always presage an upturn or a downturn in exits by a quarter.
USF just released the third quarter numbers and for the first time since Cannice started the survey the measure of confidence was exactly the same as the previous quarter—down to the hundredth decimal place. → Read More
There was one race conspicuously missing from the J.J. Abrams Star Trek film: the Klingons. They were filmed, but the scene with them questioning Nero was cut for whatever reason. The good news is, in this day and age deleted scenes rarely stay deleted for long. Case in point, SpikeTV just revealed a deleted scene where we do get to see the Klingons, and they ain’t happy with Nero. This is of course a marketing ploy, since there’s a special edition coming out on two DVD’s and Blu-ray this November 17th. → Read More
I was sorting through my notes and video footage of the Google press event around the launch of Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0 and saw this gem. It’s a minute or so of footage of Google CEO Eric Schmidt talking about the potential of today’s mobile platforms when combined with the cloud. → Read More
I was sorting through my notes and video footage of the Google press event around the launch of Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0 and saw this gem. It’s a minute or so of footage of Google CEO Eric Schmidt talking about the potential of today’s mobile platforms when combined with the cloud.
His words echo Arthur C. Clarke’s famous quote “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Schmidt says that today’s mobile platforms are so powerful that when combined with a robust cloud service they can do “magical things.” And he encourages people not to limit their imaginations when thinking of new applications to serve people.
Inspiring stuff for people out there thinking up the future. Full video is below: → Read More
TechCrunch writer Jason Kincaid traveled down to Los Angeles earlier today to cover the launch of Google Music Onebox. In addition to his live notes from the event and the panel, he managed to point his camera at just about everyone involved in the new service: Google Director Product Management Search R.J. Pittman, MySpace Music President Courtney Holt and LaLa founder Bill Nguyen. Jason also recorded his own first demo of the product, which didn’t go so well based on the mouse and browser setup.
Key takeaways – Google will integrate new partners as it makes sense. And while MySpace knew about the negotiations between iLike and Google prior to announcing their acquisition of iLike in August, the deal was far from certain. More on that in a subsequent post.
All are below: → Read More
Everyone knows that we here at CrunchGear love Logitech’s Harmory remotes. Normally though, they are really expensive and perhaps out of the reach of the casual buyer. Good news though, Tiger Direct has one hell of a deal on the 670, a IR remote designed to work with pretty much everything out there. → Read More
In an ironic twist, it’s coming to light that computers purchased from the Microsoft retail stores will not contain the ‘trialware’ that was typically included in new PC’s. This answers one of the criticisms that Apple users typically had about new PC’s. This has been confirmed by both employees and witnesses. Microsoft has stated that the machines sold in their stores will be considered to be part of their signature line, and therefore will not include any unnecessary third party software. They will come preloaded with the optional Windows Live Essentials pack, Bing 3D Maps, Security Essentials, and the Zune client. Previously, the only PC manufacturer that has promised ‘craplet’ free systems has been Toshiba, however Sony and Dell have made such configurations available as an option. [via electronista] → Read More
Just an interesting visualization of the broadband situation out there. Statistics get a bad rap, probably because they’re always in spreadsheet form when they should be in an infographic. Click away for the full-size version. → Read More
I’ve always felt bad for fish. Not just in that they’re fish, but that all those in captivity (and many in the wild) just spend all day swimming in circles. Take that great video of the enormous aquarium in Okinawa — there’s a freaking whale shark in there, used to cruising the ocean; now, even in the second-biggest aqua-enclosure in the world, it’s essentially doing laps. If only they had made a gigantic labyrinth aquarium like this one, the whale shark and its weird-looking friends might actually have somewhere to go. → Read More
Last March I wrote a preview post showing off Lala’s upcoming iPhone app, which gives users the ability to stream their entire music collection from the cloud, without having to worry about syncing their files. At the time Lala wasn’t ready to give a release date for the app, but our impression was that it was due out fairly soon. Obviously that wasn’t the case. But now we’ve gotten our hands on the latest version of Lala for the iPhone, which was just submitted to Apple for approval. And it’s safe to say that it was worth the wait.
For those that haven’t used Lala before, here’s a quick overview of the service: Lala revolves around the concept of the ‘web song’ — you’re allowed to listen to any song you want totally free exactly once. If you like it, you can then pay 10 cents for the right to stream it as many times as you’d like from then on. This means that you can ‘purchase’ and entire album for around a dollar. You can also use Lala’s Music Mover tool to upload your entire library of MP3s to the cloud free of charge. This is all built on top of a very slick interface, but so far it has come with one downside: because all of the songs are streamed, users didn’t have a way to access them when they weren’t at a computer. Lala’s iPhone app changes that. → Read More
It’s the end of an era. MSN Direct has announced that their wireless data service will be shut off on January 1st, 2012. The service supplies a data feed to wristwatches, GPS units, and other portable devices.
But if you’ve got an MSN Direct device, don’t worry. You’ve got two years to replace it before they shut off the service. → Read More
Yes~! I’m rooting for the Phillies over the Yankees this World Season because I’m a Mets fan, and I’d sooner root for Team Mars in an Earth vs. Mars Loser Leaves The Galaxy Match than root for the Yankees. HopefullyMLB 09 The Show‘s prediction pans out, because it has Philadelphia beating The Bronx Bums in seven games. → Read More
Netvibes, original widget homepage, is morphing into something much more interesting. The next version of the service, dubbed Wasabi, is a potent stream reader which consolidates news feeds, blogs, Twitter and Facebook streams, email, and much more in an extremely manageable interface. Wasabi will become available early next week in a private beta, but you can start signing up for it now.
CEO Freddy Mini demonstrated parts of Wasabi at our first Realtime CrunchUp in July. In addition to the traditional widget view, which breaks up your feeds and applications into a grid of boxes on your Netvibes homepage, Wasabi now also has a “smart reader” view. The smart reader borrows from traditional RSS readers in that all the feeds and widgets you subscribe to are presented together in one column, updated in reverse chronological order. → Read More
