When it comes to user discovery, the best way for services to do it is to use your profile information. Basic things like your name, location, bio, and email are all helpful ways for other people to find you. The problem is that a lot of users don’t bother to fill this out when they sign up for a service. So Twitter is now prompting existing users to do so.
A new overlay has started popping up on the service called “Be found on Twitter.” This randomly appears (it did for me a few minutes ago) when you load up twitter.com. It reads, “We were hoping you could help us make it easier for people to discover their friends and colleagues on Twitter. Review your settings below to make sure the people you care about can easily find you.” It then asks for your name, bio, location, email, and phone number. If you’ve already filled these out, it includes what you previously put down. → Read More
There’s a pretty good indicator that a service is evolving from its early-adopter base to the mainstream: if there’s a rap song about the service. It’s happened numerous times with Twitter as it evolved. And now Foursquare has its own rap too.
“Badges Like Us” finds Mr. Silva (@borismsilver) and “Newby” (@thenewb) rapping about checking-in all over cities and earning badges. It also features the lyric, “I hope this hits TechCrunch or else I’ll be sad,” so of course, we had to oblige. Other choice lyrics include: → Read More
All around the world, the Symbian-loving chunk of the population is waiting on the edge of their seats for Symbian^4 (pronounced “Symbian Four”). Intended as a complete overhaul from Symbian past, it could very well slingshot the visibly aged Operating System into modern times. The first videos of Symbian^4 have just been released for public consumption, and we can’t help but notice that they seem very.. uninspired. Actually, perhaps that’s inaccurate. They’re very inspired. Directly inspired. By the competition. → Read More
Chances are that the next Samsung TV you’ll buy, if you buy a Samsung TV that is, will have DTS Surround Sound. The TV maker just signed an agreement with DTS that will place the magical sound decoders in “”virtually all Samsung digital televisions worldwide.” This is good. → Read More
Google has just turned on a nifty location feature in search. Now, you can refine search results with a “Nearby” button, which will filter your results that cater to your location. So if you do a Google search for Italian restaurants, you can click the “Show Options” button to access a “nearby” filter to see results for Italian restaurants in the city/area you live in. You’ll also be given local business results as well.
Google says that it will shows you Nearby results according to your IP address or your preferred location, if you customized your location in search settings. → Read More
Idling in the CrunchGear chatroom the other day, John says to me, that’s John Biggs, he says, “Why don’t you interview that guy from Toothpaste for Dinner?” I says to John “Why?” and John says “He seems like a nice guy.” Who am I to argue with John? Plus, the guy from Toothpaste for Dinner lives in Columbus, which is where I live, so I sent the guy an email. We had a little back and forth, and he introduced me to his wife, Natalie Dee, so I interviewed her, too. They are, in fact, nice people, and I really enjoyed interviewing them. I hope you enjoy reading my interview. → Read More
Back in October, Yahoo revealed that Yahoo Answers sees 30 million questions and answers per month, with users contributing 2.4 questions and answers per second. Although Yahoo Answers sees a significant amount of traffic, its design and layout has been outdated. Now Yahoo is rolling out a much-need upgrade and redesign to Answers, which will be implemented over the next few days.
Navigation: The homepage’s navigation bar has four new tabs: Home, Browse Categories, My Activity, and About. Each of the tabs stays on every page you visit in Yahoo Answers. “Home” brings you to the homepage which includes a rotating Best of Answers feature, the link to the Answers Blog and more. “My activity” lets you access your Answers profile, and view your activity on the site. “About” features the Community Guidelines, answers leaderboard, Suggestion Board, and links to the Answers blog. → Read More
Remember that whole porn crackdown that nobody cares about anymore? Wonder why it happened? It wasn’t the money. It wasn’t hypocritical. It wasn’t about defending the rights of women to browse the app store unflustered. It was about image. Here’s Gruber’s cogent and true argument: I think what Apple was getting squeamish about wasn’t the sexy apps themselves, but the cheesiness that the sexy apps (and their prominence in best selling lists) was bestowing upon the general feel and vibe of the App Store. One thing I wasn’t aware of before the recent crackdown was the degree to which these apps were seeping into various non-entertainment categories. E.g., like half the “new” apps in the “productivity” category featured imagery of large-breasted bikini-clad women. These apps were shut down temporarily. They will be back, and the ban wasn’t about not offending our sainted mothers. It was about making a retail experience that people want to visit and, like Chef Ramsay shutting down Casa Roma rather than serve the rest of the night’s meals in a haphazard, sloppy way, Apple decided to shut things down and make their decisions. This, in turn, forces Apple management to make a decision. → Read More
Anyone who has lived in New York, knows the hassle and stress of finding an apartment that fits within their budgets and has enough space to live in. New startup Naked Apartments attempts to ease the process by being a sort of Match.com for renters and landlords and apartment brokers. The site matches qualified renters with brokers and landlords, automating the process of finding an apartments that meet renters’ search criteria.
Here’s how it works. Renters sign up, creating anonymous profiles that feature key statistics such as annual income, desired monthly rent, their desired apartment size, location and move-in date. Naked Apartments will also supplement that information with a free credit check, which means that the completed profile includes a renter’s credit score range. Brokers and landlords can get access to the anonymous profiles and choose to contact the renters that meet their financial requirements and have matching interests in their rental properties. → Read More
Corsair isn’t a new player in the SSD game, but it has some new entries for your consideration. The Reactor and Nova series are both solid performers, but offer slightly different benefits for different users. While the speedy Nova series zips files along at 270MB/s (read) and 195MB/s (write) thanks to the Indilinx Bareboot controller, the Reactor models have slightly slower speeds of 250/170MB/s but has a USB 2.0 connector built-in for added connectivity. → Read More
Adeo Ressi’s Founder Institute San Diego outpost has graduated 12 startups in its inaugural program. Announced in March 2009, the Founder Institute offers entrepreneurs and very early stage startups an environment designed to help foster their growth and education. The program, which is now active in nine cities worldwide, holds two four-month long sessions annually in each location, which include mentorship sessions from experienced tech entrepreneurs. The program also has a unique structure that allocates some equity to each of the founders involved, so that they have an incentive to work together.
The Fall 2009 San Diego semester has just graduated 12 startups. Mentors for the semester included Trip Adler, CEO, Scribd; Philip Kaplan, Cofounder, Blippy; and Peter Pham, CEO, BillShrink. The new startups include: → Read More
Sometime today, Feburary 26, 2010, Sprint Pre and Pixi owners should get a nice little surprise on their handsets. It seems like Sprint and Palm are ready to deliver the latest webOS update, which should bring the aforementioned updates along with a bunch of other enhancements conveniently listed for your perusal after the jump. → Read More
Poor Jon Rubinstein. After a strong, early push, Palm’s sales have slowed and revenue has dried up with $300-$320 million in Q3. Their “guidance” to Wall Street AKA how much they expected to make? $1.6-1.8 billion. Bloops.
The letter is over at WSJ but here’s an excerpt.
This morning we announced preliminary results for our 2010 third quarter. Since the quarter has not yet closed, it is too soon to offer exact numbers, but we stated that we expect to report revenues for Q3 between $300 and $320 million. We also announced that we expect our revenue for this fiscal year to fall below the guidance we gave to Wall Street, which ranged from $1.6 to $1.8 billion. As we mentioned in our press release, our softer than expected performance is due to slower than expected customer adoption of our products, which in turn has prompted our U.S. carrier partners to put additional orders on hold for the time being. On a positive note, we expect to exit the quarter with over $500 million in cash on our balance sheet. We’re scheduled to announce our full financial results in March.
Hulu investor Providence Equity Partners is pumping $50 million into a new online video company set up by Chinese Internet search giant Baidu.
The news comes roughly 7 weeks after Baidu confirmed plans to established a new independent company to provide licensed, advertising-supported online video content to Chinese Internet users. → Read More
Be aware of your digital footprint New helicopter blades not only look cool but are way more quiet Gloves with LEDs in them. You know whether you need these or not TV antenna disguised as picture frame Nikon teasing an EVIL camera? → Read More
Raidon showed off their new HyBrid drive enclosure recently, a strange combination of an SSD drive enclosure and a SATA enclosure. It’s not an external device mind you, but rather an internal drive cage that will read and write to the SSD, and then mirror the process to the SATA drive. → Read More
Super-angel Ron Conway, who is one of the most prolific and successful investors in Silicon Valley, is expanding his SV Angel fund to include outside investors (recently he has invested only his own capital in startups). He is raising a new fund of around $10 million, we’ve confirmed.
Conway, who was called the “Godfather of Silicon Valley” in a book by Gary Rivlin, is considered by many to be the most important angel investor in technology. He sees most new startups before anyone else, and an investment by his firm is a serious milestone. His deep ties to most top tier venture capital firms also ensure quick introductions and a long look when the time comes to raise a second and larger round of capital.
He was one of the first investors in Google, and has, he says, invested in hundreds of startups over the last twenty years. His current investments include Facebook Twitter, Digg and just about every other startup of note you’ve heard about.
In other words, he isn’t going to have any trouble finding takers for this $10 million fund. → Read More
FriendFeed is down right now. It has been down for the past 30 minutes or so. Sadly, that’s not news anymore. Not because, like Twitter of old, it’s down all the time, but rather, because it seems like no one really uses it anymore. Case in point, it’s been down for over 30 minutes and there are maybe 50 total tweets about it (and several are from the same users).
That means that of all the tens of millions of people around the world on Twitter, a full 50 of them care enough to tweet when FriendFeed is down. It’s hard to imagine any other service that got to the size FriendFeed did (which, granted, wasn’t huge), only getting 50 tweets if it goes down. → Read More
