[UK] A-B-C. Always. Be. Closing. That’s about as far as my sales knowledge goes and it’s lifted directly from a Hollywood movie. But now London-based WeCanDo.BIZ offers a different approach. “Always. Be. Tweeting.” – my words not their’s – with the launch of a Twitter-based sales tool that lets small businesses generate leads through the microblogging service.
At its most basic, Twitter Sales Leads is a Twitter-based search engine that enables users to search Twitter for keywords describing specific products or services. However, where things get a little more interesting is that the service claims to be able to filter results to include only those tweets that indicate intent: “an expressed need, request for a product or service recommendation.” This potentially pits it against search engines like Google. → Read More
[France] A commercial court in Paris has fined eBay €1.7 million euros (roughly £1.6 million) for allegedly not sticking to an injunction banning users from selling on products of luxury goods conglomerate Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH in short).
Allowing the LVMH perfumes and cosmetics to be purchased by Frenchmen on its French and UK website according to the ruling violated a prior court order to remove all such postings (June 2008), part of a €38 million verdict saying eBay had not done enough to stop the sale of counterfeited LVMH items. → Read More
For the last six months, you may have noticed that some of your favorite apps on Facebook Platform carried a special badge deeming them to be “Facebook Verified”. These apps “passed Facebook’s review for trustworthy user experiences”, and were given both greater exposure in the App Directory and less restrictive limits on the number of messages they could send to users. And tomorrow, just over six months after the program launched, Facebook is killing off Verified Apps for good.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise: Facebook announced plans to end the program in late October, and has been Emailing developers about it for weeks. But now that Verified Apps are going away, it’s a good time to look back at the long, convoluted road Facebook took to a program that was ultimately very shortlived. → Read More
Amazon is unloading Activision’s new-ish DJ Hero package for $85 across all current-generation systems – that’s down from $100+ elsewhere. The bundle is also available on PlayStation 2, although it’s priced at $98.99. That’s “whack” as most popular DJ’s might say. That’s a thing, right? Whack? The standard bundle includes the DJ Hero game with over 100 songs and the turntable controller. DJ Hero Bundle with Turntable [Amazon via dealnews] → Read More
We get a lot of e-mail at the MobileCrunch tips line. Really, a whole friggin’ lot. About 2% of them are worthwhile tips. The remaining 98% is made up of other bloggers highlighting their stories for linkage (which we don’t mind a bit), Nigerian princes asking for our bank account details (which we do mind), and a surprising number of emails that say nothing but “Sent from my iPhone.” Every once in a while, a real gem comes along. It’s not a gem in the “Oh wow, this is going to be great for traffic!” sense — no, no, nothing like that. It’s a gem in the “Why the hell did they send us this?” sense. It’s not spam, and it’s not gibberish. In fact, it makes perfect sense – just not in the context. → Read More
Today is Cyber Monday, a fact you may have already noticed. Oh, and tomorrow, I hereby declare, is Awesome Tuesday. Because if you look at the history of Cyber Monday, then you realize that my creating Awesome Tuesday two seconds ago is just as valid and authentic as the existence of Cyber Monday. → Read More
With the rise of Twitter, we’ve also seen the rise of link shorteners (standard URLS take up too many characters). The king of the link shorteners right now is bit.ly, which is the default shortener on Twitter and accounts for more than 75 percent of all short URLs on the service. Every month, bit.ly shortens about 1 billion links. For spammers, that’s one huge honey jar.
The flip side of a short link like this one—http://bit.ly/6PwhcP—is that you can’t tell by looking at it what website it redirects to. It could be a TechCrunch post, or it could be a spam site. There’s no way to tell the difference when you see the link in a Tweet. (Don’t worry, it’s a TechCrunch post).
The spam problem is getting worse, which is why bit.ly is taking more serious measures to sniff out spam behind its short links. Today it announced it is working with three new services to fight spam and malware: VeriSign’s iDefense, Websense Threatseeker Cloud, and Sophos. → Read More
[UK] If the rumours prove true then Apple is on the verge of releasing its own Internet tablet – and a big part of its appeal will be news consumption. Some have even proclaimed that the device could save the newspaper industry. That’s bound to be music to media tycoon Rupert Murdoch’s ears, but one of his many media outlets, the UK’s The Sun newspaper, may have beaten Apple to the punch.
Described as the “must have handheld accessory of 2009″, the device features a 26 inch full panoramic colour ‘screen’ and 3D photo realistic graphics. No squinting at pages. No need to turn the device on its side for better reading. Sharing content is also possible, and to add to the fun factor, there’s 7 built in pen-friendly games. But perhaps best of all there’s “no waiting for downloads” in order to get your daily news fix either. Sounds too good to be true, right?
Check out the video promo after the jump. → Read More
Want a nice mic for recording your podcast? Talking on Skype? Laying down tracks for your magnum opus, Concerto for Swine and Dancing Girls? Get you a Go Mic. We’re giving one of these mics away to one lucky commenter. → Read More
My first experience with solar energy was in Cub Scouts, when we made a solar-powered hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, solar technology hasn’t advanced terribly much in the intervening decades. At the consumer level, solar power still isn’t particularly useful for very much outside of a few niche markets. i.Tech has a couple of products that make a real effort to bring usefulness to solar power for the average user: the SolarVoice 908 Bluetooth headset and the SolarCharger 906 multi-device charger. → Read More
So this is funny. Yes, Twitter is having downtime issues right now. Yes, again. But that’s nothing new, obviously. What is new is that Twitter being down has also apparently borked the site many people use to check if Twitter is down, downforeveryoneorjustme.
While the site, made by Ryan King, is working for every other site on the web, the image below shows what is returned when you put in twitter.com now. Did I mention King is now a Twitter employee? Beyond meta. → Read More
[Finland/Sweden] Last week was somewhat of a roller-coaster ride for the Nordic mobile phone companies. It started with a hurricane of tweets and blogposts as Spotify was launched for Nokia phones with Symbian. There was also some confusion about whether or not Nokia would continue using Symbian or switch to Linux based Maemo. Nokia later denied that they are abandoning Symbian for Maemo. → Read More
What we have here is somewhat self-explanatory. The two new Oregon Scientific weather stations provide clock functions along with weather info and are solar powered. Both models feature atomic clocks and a detachable solar panel that recharges the battery. This way, you can know what the weather will be like for your daily tree hugging. → Read More
Short Version $219.94. The price says it all. The TomTom Car Kit is great; it works perfectly, and I loved using it. In fact, I wish I could keep the review unit that TomTom sent me. That said, would I ever spend 2 bills and change on it? Mayyyybe, but it’s unlikely. A standalone TomTom GPS unit can be as cheap as $100, which is half the price of the TomTom Car Kit ($119.95) + TomTom GPS App ($99.99) for the iPhone. Furthermore, it’s hard to justify buying both the hardware and the software when there are cheaper options for both (more on that later). Of course, the product does serve multiple purposes as an in-car iPhone charger, Bluetooth speakerphone and GPS unit. All in all, I was fairly impressed with the device and think those that aren’t turned off by the price might consider its purchase. The convenience of an all-in-one device is compelling. Hit the jump to read on… → Read More
Apparently, like everyone else, the Seattle Times is very interested in trying to figure out what to actually use Google Wave for. But while most are trying to use it for either fun, realtime chats, movie reenactments, or inner-business workings, the Seattle Times have tasked Wave with a larger goal: Catching a killer.
This public Google Wave has been set up to involve the community by offering realtime information that anyone may know about the location of a man suspected of killing four Seattle police officers. A search of a Seattle-area home this morning turned up nothing, but various reports of sightings are coming in, and the Times is opening a Wave to help with the flow of information. → Read More
[Croatia] Shout’Em, a startup from Croatia that lets you create your own microblogging network, has just launched their official iPhone app. While the Shout’Em platform was first intended to enable mobile social networking, the founders have since decided to ride the “microblogging wave” created by Twitter. With the launch of the Shout’Em iPhone and Java apps, they’re returning to their original focus on mobile.
The iPhone app has all the usual microblogging features, letting you update your status, add photos as well as add your location. The most important feature, however, is the support for multiple microblogging networks: Shout’Em, Twitter and StatusNet. For users that use two or more of these networks, the iPhone application could prove to be very useful. → Read More
What is the allure of cheating in video games online? Who takes team deathmatches so seriously that he needs unlimited ammo, no clipping, infinite life, and other assorted nonsense? It’s stupid, and if you try to cheat online you deserve to be banned. So forgive me for not giving a damn about the 2,500 people that were just banned from non-dedicated servers for cheating in Modern Warfare 2. → Read More
Damn it, Canada. As an inhabitant of another country on the same continent, it is my duty to highlight all of the things we have that you don’t. I mean, who needs universal health care when you’ve got truck nuts? Every time someone would bring up the US’ lack of Poutine, I’d counter with the fact that Canada still didn’t have the MiFi hotspot. Alas, I can no longer do so. I’m running out of stuff. → Read More
San Francisco based Eventbrite went prime time earlier this month when they raised $6.5 million from Sequoia Capital, and added partner Roelof Botha to their board of directors. We had a chance to sit down with Botha as well as founders Kevin Hartz and Julia Hartz and talk to them about their business and the fundraising.
We were supposed to talk for just ten minutes, but the interview went on for a solid 25 minutes before we were done. Julia and Kevin talked about Eventbrite’s growth to ten million registered users based only on word of mouth advertising. The company lets people sell (or give away) tickets to events – something only the big venues could do previously through companies like TicketMaster.
The service is free for people who give away tickets, and they charge a small percentage on non-free sales. The free tickets spread the word to new users, who often come back to sell tickets to their own events. This year, Eventbrite will rack up $100 million in gross ticket sales, says the company. The average ticket price, not factoring in the free tickets, is $60. → Read More
As online retailers are witnessed strong Black Friday results, Google is reporting that there was a surge in online shopping searches with “Black Friday” on Thanksgiving day and the Friday after the holiday. Searches with the term “Black Friday” were up by more than 20%, year over year, according to Google. Searches for “black friday sales” and “black friday ads” were both up by more than 50%, year over year.
This data indicates that consumers match deals around this time of the year with Black Friday and that these deals are increasingly displayed online versus on TV or in newspapers. The most fast growing store-specific search terms were “Walmart Black Friday”, “Kohls Black Friday Ad”, “Sears Black Friday Sales” and “Target Black Friday Deals Online.” → Read More
San Francisco, CA
