Twitter recently launched a tool called Blackbird Pie that enables anyone to easily embed single tweets on their blogs and websites. But it doesn’t offer a solution for tracking or sharing conversations between Twitter users.
Enter Bettween, which does just that, stylishly.
We’ve covered the first version of the web app, which made it easy to visualize what is being said between two specific Twitter users (e.g. @aplusk and @mrskutcher), but a recent update brings more goodies. → Read More
Bionic cat! Videos: New “Hayabusa” bullet train boasts 320km/h top speed Clean your monitor with a hamburger? Don’t forget the bacon! Your disposable wine glass, monsieur Chocri brings you CreateMyChocolate.com → Read More
Remember Steve Jobs’ advice regarding the iPhone 4′s reported reception issues – it’s all your fault – relayed via an email from the Apple CEO himself (yes, one of those emails). Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, it hasn’t gone down well with UK early adopters of the company’s latest smartphone.
That’s according to a rather opportunistic “flash” survey from rightmobilephone, which found that 63% of respondents were “particularly angered” by Jobs’ email in which he told one early iPhone 4 adopter to “avoid holding [the phone] in that way”.
The mobile phone comparison website polled 836 iPhone 4 users, 93% of whom claimed to have already been affected by a loss of signal whilst gripping the handset to make calls, whilst 78% of owners dubbed the fault “an insult”. → Read More
Editor’s note: In the following guest post, PR consultant Vijay Chattha of VSC/AppLaunchPR gives some unsolicited marketing advice to Research in Motion.
Another profitable quarter and another hit to RIM’s stock price. People are buying Blackberries, but investors are not buying RIM. Why? Short answer. No buzz. Despite continuing to reign supreme as America’s smartphone of choice, RIM’s Blackberry devices are not creating enough excitement in the market. Sure, RIM saw 20 percent profit growth in the first quarter of 2010, but they’ve also watched their market share dwindle as rivals Apple and Android grow. If there was ever a time for a change, it’s now.
BlackBerry, which is still ranked ahead of the iPhone and Android in worldwide popularity, can’t keep telling the market its working on an iPhone-killer that remains in the distant horizon. It needs a business makeover. → Read More
Opera has released its latest State of the Mobile Web report, and once again it has registered reasonable growth, with Opera Mini users increasing by 4.2% compared to April 2010. Since that month, page views have also gone up 7.7%, Opera says.
For this report, Opera analyzed one 24-hour period to see how Opera Mini is used throughout the day in the top 10 countries (Indonesia, Russia, India, China, Nigeria, Ukraine, South Africa, the United States, Vietnam and the United Kingdom). Turns out that for all of those, regardless of differences in economy, culture or location, the four hours between 8 PM and midnight apparently account for a disproportionate amount of mobile data consumption. → Read More
Elevation Partners has quietly amassed another huge chunk of Facebook shares on the secondary market, according to a recent letter to its limited partners. Elevation spent $120 million for five million more Facebook shares. This is on top of Elevation’s $90 million, 2.5 million share purchase back in November.
That November deal has already gone up 2.5 times in value in a short eight months, making Facebook one of the better performing deals in Elevation’s portfolio and an enviable holding for any firm. Even though the bulk of Elevation’s Facebook shares were purchased at the more recent price, if you blend the two deals, there’s still an on-paper gain. Blended together, Elevation’s 7.5 million shares were purchased at a $14 billion valuation, and Facebook is trading at upwards of $24 billion on the secondary market today. → Read More
Amazon just introduced a audio and video to the Kindle, but the only way to experience the new Kindle multimedia books is on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. A baker’s dozen of titles already come in multimedia editions, including Rick Steves’ travel guides, Best of the Beatles For Acoustic Guitar, and Bird Songs: 250 North American Birds In Song.
Adding music or narration to digital editions of books is fairly straightforward, and given the popularity of audio books, being able to both read and hear a book should be popular for some genres. Video can work also, but I suspect that more often than not it will be treated as something to be tacked on at the end rather than as an integral part of the original work. I guess it depends on who picks the videos: the author, or the publishing company’s marketing department. Trial and error will determine whether people really want video with their books. → Read More
Oh, you thought Verizon would let AT&T , Sprint, and T-Mobile all nab their own variants of the Android-powered Samsung Galaxy S without them getting one too?
Not a chance. → Read More
We already knew a good amount about T-mobile’s variant of the Android-powered Galaxy S superphone. We knew about its 4″ AMOLED screen; we knew about its 1 Ghz processor. We knew about the 5 megapixel camera (with HD video recording!), and its 16GB of internal memory. We even knew about the $199 price tag and July 21st launch date. What we didn’t know: when it’d be announced. Turns out, that’s tonight. T-Mobile just made this thing official, announcing that it’ll come preloaded with Sims 3 and a full copy of Avatar preloaded onto the 2GB microSD card. If you’re itchin’ for more info as soon as T-mo’s got it, you can sign up for notifications on their preview page right here. → Read More
Remember the Galaxy Pro? It popped up around the rumor mill almost immediately after the Galaxy S was announced, and was supposedly a nearly identical phone, with one major difference: a big ol’ full QWERTY physical keyboard. It disappeared for some time after its first leak, only to make another appearance last week. And now.. it’s real. It’s oh, oh-so-real. → Read More
That is all. Enjoy the rest of your day. [via reddit] → Read More
Editor’s note: The following guest post is by Krishna Subramanian, co-founder of mobile ad exchange Mobclix.
Mobile search is still one of the big unclaimed prizes on the mobile web. Everyone from Google and Yahoo to Apple is going after it, but Microsoft’s Bing may stealthily become the king of the castle by aggressively promoting Bing through mobile apps. Let’s look at each player’s mobile search strategy.
During the Apple keynote in April, Steve Jobs announced the new iPhone 4.0, iAd and a few other features even he didn’t seem too excited about. Out of the many mediocre features, Mr. Jobs happened to squeeze in a declaration that, “ On mobile, search hasn’t happened. People aren’t searching on their phones.” During the keynote at WWDC this month, Mr. Jobs declared that iPhone 4 users would have the opportunity to select their search engine from among Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Out of the three, Bing got a special endorsement from Mr. Jobs.
Is Mr. Jobs trying to blindside the other players in this space by making them think he is not concerned about search? I’m sure all of the search traffic he is sending to Google is driving him nuts. Meanwhile, Google has happily—and quite beautifully—optimized their search results page on the iPhone to make it extremely convenient for local searches by incorporating phone numbers, maps and more within the Safari window. → Read More
Short version: The H30 represents the final and most refined form of the traditional family camcorder. But with HD cameras appearing on every device, is a traditional camcorder something you need? → Read More
Dear Fifa, Please wake up and smell the coffee: we need goal line technology, and we need it now. England’s Frank Lampard just had a 100 percent legitimate goal stricken from the record by some dunderhead linesman. DOES HE EVEN HAVE EYES? The integrity of the sport is at stake here. I’m not asking for instant replays for outfield play or anything, but we need a camera on that goal line, or a chip/sensor in the ball, and we need it now. And look at that: Fifa supremo Sepp Blatter is on Twitter. Maybe we should let him know how we feel about goal line technology? → Read More
This is a guest post by Gang Lu, a Shanghai-based blogger and consultant. His blog mobinode.com covers the Chinese and Asian Web industry, and he also co-founded OpenWeb.Asia workgroup and KUUKIE.com.
Twitter hit $1 billion valuation within 3 years. Facebook reached equal valuation with 2 years. It only took Groupon a year and a half. In April, a consortium led by Russian investment company DST invested $135 million on Groupon, making the valuation of Groupon shoot up to $1.35 billion.
The excitement has lead to many Groupon-clones in China. This market is already overheated and much crazier than people expected. Reports say there are between 100 and 200 Groupon-clones in the market already. Some of them already raised a large bucket of money, and several deals are around $5 million. RenRen, the leading Chinese social network, launched its own group purchase site called Nuomi, and it only took hours for 152,095 users to buy an offer for 2 movie tickets, 2 cokes, 1 box of popcorn and 1 Häagen-Dazs ice cream.
But what are the odds of survival for the Chinese clones? → Read More
Like most of you, I too LIKE Facebook, and ever since my last TechCrunch post (How to Build Engaging One-of-Kind Facebook Fan Pages), I’ve been exploring and trying to find new ways to improve the creation process of a Page. This time, I’d like to focus on a how-to for the musicians among you. → Read More
I turned 40 in March. I didn’t think of it much, and I don’t plan on buying a convertible sports car or otherwise engaging in a mid life crisis. These age milestones just aren’t as meaningful for most men as they are for some women. Besides, I still have the maturity level of an average teenager.
But one thing I am very aware of is my growing skepticism of some of the crazy startup ideas I see. Five years ago when I started TechCrunch I still had real enthusiasm for any entrepreneur trying to build a company. I know from experience that starting companies is psychologically hard, even in the U.S. There are always lots of critics to tear you down. Sometimes all an entrepreneur needs is a few credulous people willing to say that they have a chance. That gives them the psychological boost they need to fight on for another day.
I have always been that guy, looking for the positive in any startup situation. Even if you fail you’ve just had the best on the job training possible. Paul Graham says it best: “So, paradoxically, if you’re too inexperienced to start a startup, what you should do is start one. That’s a way more efficient cure for inexperience than a normal job. In fact, getting a normal job may actually make you less able to start a startup, by turning you into a tame animal who thinks he needs an office to work in and a product manager to tell him what software to write.” → Read More
Nearly everyone has something to say about BP’s oil spill, and from a public relations perspective, the company is floundering. Both its stock price and brand value have taken a deepwater dive, and it is struggling to make its own voice heard.
When you Google “BP PR” or “BP public relations,” the top organic result is @BPGlobalPR, a parody account on Twitter with more than 175,000 followers. In contrast, BP’s official account, @BP_America, has only 15,000 followers. The satirical @BPGlobalPR is dominating the online conversation. It is an object lesson in how social media can shape and control a company’s message during a crisis. The fake account has gone viral for its scathing impersonations of the company with tweets like: → Read More
Strikeforce, the mixed martial arts promotion that’s the focus of the upcoming EA Sports MMA video game, has an event tonight headlined by Fedor Emelianenko vs. Fabricio Werdum. Normally I wouldn’t mention that here on CG, but there’s a fairly neat tech angle that’s worth mentioning. Not only is there an Internet pay-per-view option at $24.95 (the event otherwise airs on Showtime here in the U.S.), which, in and of itself isn’t exactly breaking news (WWE, the world’s most technophobic company, has been running Internet pay-per-views for some time now, and even smaller promotions like Ring of Honor have jumped aboard the iPPV bandwagon), but there’s a clever “choose you own camera angle” gimmick that may interest you. → Read More
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