Editor’s Note: The following guest post is written by a Silicon Valley CEO. Frank Dupree is a pen name
In the late 1990s, the rise of the browser was supposed to usher in an era of unprecedented opportunity for startups. A great part of that increased opportunity came as a result of the significant reduction in platform dependencies. No longer did the users’ operating system dictate their access to services or information. Even a behemoth like Microsoft was fighting hand-to-hand combat with small startups for the first time in decades. Fast forward ten years, and it’s 1985 all over again.
But even as the risks of dependencies become better understood by startups and investors, the ascent of Facebook and Twitter seem to point to an ever increasing number of startups with significant business dependencies. Recent changes to both Facebook and Twitter show that neither startups nor their investors can assume much when it comes to support for a given API in the future. Today, even the OS seems subject to dramatic shifts in record time. One only need look to Apple’s iOS to see how dramatic and unpredictable developments can change the landscape for startups, customers and investors.
Today, most startups build with significant external platform dependencies, whether it is Facebook, iOS, Google Apps or Twitter. There are a few types of dependencies. A simple distinction might be to call a dependency on a platform symbiotic or parasitic. Symbiotic dependencies are those for which both sides agree to terms of the dependency and for which both sides seem to derive a benefit. Developers on Facebook’s platform, for example. The most successful here being Zynga, which grew completely and—probably for the team and its investors—nervously within the Facebook ecosystem. → Read More
Bread and circuses, friends. Bread and circuses. → Read More
Have you ever wanted to see yourself from above? Behind? Ever wanted to see yourself as other see you? Try this Instructable that creates a 3rd person view of your own person by attaching a camera to a head mounted display. You’ll see yourself – and only yourself – as you walk across the darkling plain. → Read More
The iTunes App Store is huge. 300,000 apps huge. I’ve watched this monster start from nothing and turn into a billion-dollar industry in only a few short years. We’ve been approaching this point for some time now, but it’s more apparent than ever that app exposure is of critical importance. A healthy majority of iOS app users discover new applications directly from their device as opposed to using iTunes. If you look specifically at the iPhone, the amount of real estate for discovery is only available to a very small percentage of the total apps.
There are currently 20 overall categories, with Games offering an additional 20 subcategories. Each subcategory is broken into three lists and displays a max of 100 apps on the iPhone. Throw in a small number from the Top 25 and Featured lists and you wind up with roughly 12,000 apps being shown at one time. This works out to only about 4% of all apps that receive visibility. One can browse beyond this number on iTunes, but that quickly becomes an overwhelming, laborious task. → Read More
In Time’s Person of the Year 2010 article on Mark Zuckerberg, one fact shouts out to me above all others: 1 in 4 Web pages in the United States is now viewed behind the walls of Facebook.
I enjoy Facebook and would be happy spending a quarter of my Web life there, if I could leave Facebook for the other 75%. But even if I log out completely, most of the Web’s most popular sites are tied to Facebook, through Share or Like or Connect buttons. Facebook is not just another Web site: it is a service that “Facebookizes” every Web site it touches, making me bring all of my friends with me, like luggage. It’s disconcerting being on a Web site that I’m used to browsing anonymously, and seeing my friends’ faces there. And so I have a holiday wish: Facebook, let me dance if I want to, let me leave my friends behind.
For the last twenty years, we’ve enjoyed One Web that is united through the common policy of letting us be whoever we want to be, wherever we go. One Web allows us at times to be cooler than we are in real life, aspirational, anonymous, and/or fanatical about a particular subject. And that is why the Web is wonderful. → Read More
News aggregators and RSS feeds have been around for awhile now, but only with the rapid proliferation of touch technology on mobile devices and tablets, have we started moving closer to a truly appealing news feed experience.
For the average web user, the traditional staid design and text-and-headline-heavy interface of the RSS feed and feed aggregators have offered user experiences to be endured rather than enjoyed.
News apps for both the iPhone and iPad, like Pulse and Flipboard, have garnered quite a bit of attention of late for disrupting the aggregation and RSS reader experience by offering up new, intriguing ways of representing data. But when it comes to news consumption, I’d rather look to feeds emanating from editorially directed and curated magazines and websites, rather than a template populated by Facebook and Twitter such as Flipboard—or a design and user experience that is a bit sexier than Pulse—and I’d love to have quality versions on my iPhone (that have true staying power). This is why I’ve recently become a fan of FLUD, which allows users to plug in feeds from favorite sites (like TechCrunch, ahem) and read, peruse, and share articles through a neatly-presented, tile-based interface—for free. And unlike Flipboad, FLUD is on both the iPad and iPhone—and it’s coming soon to Android and the desktop. → Read More
As every iPhone developer knows, Christmas Day is the busiest day of the year, as millions of people unwrap their shiny new iPhones and promptly go on an app download spree (I’m sure Android sees a similar phenomenon). Which means it isn’t terribly surprising when Bump, a Sequoia-backed startup that makes it easy to share data between phones, says that today is the biggest day of traffic it’s ever had. Then again, the fact that people are currently sharing 20 photos per second is quite impressive.
Bump CEO David Lieb says that Bump’s traffic is currently 2.4 times as high as it was a week ago, and that the service is on pace for 2 million shared items today, with a peak load of 30 items per second (in addition to swapping photos, you can share music, contact information, and calendar events using Bump). → Read More
Frustrated with how difficult it is to search YouTube for music videos, Argentinian web developer and Taggify.net co-founder Sebastian Vaggi has created UWall.tv. UWall.tv allows you to search by artist, song or by music category like Vevo, with the added benefit of creating a custom music video playlist based on your search.
Once you set it motion, Uwall.tv plays your search-derived playlist chronologically without you having to refresh, whether you’re in full screen mode or not. → Read More
Back in June, we reported on the departure of Kellan Elliott-McCrea from Yahoo. While not hugely known outside the developer community, we had received several tips indicating just how important Elliott-McCrea was to the Flickr team, where his role as “Architect” was supposedly “vital” to the service. So who better to answer questions about Flickr than Elliott-McCrea (who is now the VP of Engineering for Etsy), right? And that’s exactly what he’s done on Quora.
Specifically, someone asked the question: Why did Flickr miss the mobile photo opportunity that Instagram and picplz are pursuing? The mobile photo space is red-hot right now with several players beyond the two mentioned vying to become a common app on smartphones. And one of them, Instagram, was able to gain over a million users in less than three months. So why wasn’t Flickr, with all the resources of Yahoo behind them, able to dominate this space first? → Read More
So you got that new camera eh? Congrats! Now the whole family will expect you to be the camera guy at all of the get-togethers. Not only that, you’re probably trying to take pictures of the kids opening their gifts. Here are a few helpful tips on how to do it. → Read More
Good morning! Hope all is well. I’m sitting on the couch eating fake food from my daughter’s new plastic kitchen and my son is playing with a “Darda Power Loop Pyramid,” a completely mechanical race set that throws two light model cars through multiple loops. It’s actually very cool. I got a pasta maker and my wife made me labels for the wine I make. As far as I can tell, most things are right with the world. How are you guys doing? As a special bonus, I’ll send a special J-List goofy product package next week to one commenter, chosen at random. Just because we love you. → Read More
Happy holidays, dear readers! From everyone here at CrunchGear, thank you for making 2010 a blockbuster year for us. Your daily allegiance to our little site does not go unnoticed and our 12 Days of Christmas giveaways were the very least we could do. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough gear to give everyone something. Sorry. You must know that we would give everyone something if we could. Anyway, onto the winner of the big prize: A top-tier gaming system with a retail cost of nearly $2,300 from Digital Storm. We had just under 4,000 entries to win this one system, but we only have one to give away and we contacted the winner this morning via email so we’re happy to say that this one system is going to Kyle from Colorado. Congratulations, sir. We hope you enjoy it. So once again, thanks. We have the best readers on the Internet and truly hope you and your family have a safe and joyous holiday season. → Read More
How do you get more kids reading the Bible? The so-called “Jesus Phone” of course! A company called YouVersion launched a mobile, interactive version of the Bible two years ago that got some attention when it won the people’s choice DemoPit award at TechCrunch50 in 2009.
Today it runs on eight platforms, is in the top ten iTunes apps overall and has more than 12 million users across eight mobile platforms. It was bigger than Angry Birds at the time we shot the video below, and then Angry Birds had a great December. But hey, close to Angry Birds is still pretty good. → Read More
British defense company BAE Systems recently unveiled a concept vehicle whose design it says was inspired by the Batmobile (The Tumbler) from “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight”. The world’s second largest defense company is thinking about using the so-called “The Raider” design for “a small, highly agile autonomous reconnaissance and attack vehicle which can carry a variety of payloads.” → Read More
Recently acquired mobile ad exchange Mobclix is releasing its 2010 report, which takes a look at the top trend in the mobile advertising space. 2010 has been a big year for mobile advertising companies and startups, with the Google-AdMob deal approved, Apple’s Quattro buy and iAds launch, Millennial’s fast growth and more. Unsurprisingly, the trend that tops Mobclix’s report is the platform war between Apple and Google over the iPhone versus Android. Mobclix says that impressions on Android phones via Mobclix’s platform grew by 420 percent over the past year whereas iPhone impressions grew by 347 percent for the same 12 month period.
Another interesting trend highlighted by the report is that real-time bidding for mobile ad space is becoming more widely adopted by publishers and developers as the optimal way to fill space. Mobclix says that real time bidding inventory is expected to make up 10% – 15% of total ad buys for 2011. In fact, 50% of all targeted online ad display platforms will be powered through real time platforms by 2015. → Read More
This is kind of a cool technology Nikon is patenting here. I personally like to do the manual zoom thing when shooting DSLR video, but the slow creeping zoom or quick min-max possible with an electronic zoom rocker are both also valuable tools. As far as I know, there aren’t any consumer cameras that implement both, though I could be wrong about that. At any rate, Nikon is looking into it. → Read More
The Crunchie Awards, which are co-hosted by TechCrunch, GigaOm and VentureBeat, are pretty much my favorite part about TechCrunch. That being said, today is everyone’s last day to nominate your favorite companies, products and people (yourself included) for one of the 20 different awards categories.
Act fast, because at 11:59PM PST on Christmas Eve (tonight) our developer Vineet Thandar is going to flip the switch from his makeshift office in Lake Tahoe and you’ll miss your chance to have a say in who deserves to be celebrated for the best tech accomplishments of 2010. → Read More
With Theopeninter.net, web designer Michael Ciarlo has given you the holiday gift of being able to explain to the less web savvy members of your friends and family what net neutrality means (basically) and why exactly laymen should care about the FCC’s recent attempts to create “enforcable” Internet regulations.
And while granted there’s a lot more complexity surrounding the issue than “All ISPs are inherently evil and want to charge you for Skype.” Theopeninter.net does, as Reddit commenter lolinyerface (yeah I know) put it, “The job of showing how things we get for free now, could one day be per item additional cost.” → Read More
It was exactly one year ago today that Foodspotting sent out the first test build of their app to a few iPhone users. Today they’re finally doing the same for Android — and they’re opening the beta up to everyone.
Yes, the application which allows you to take pictures of your favorite foods and share them with a community of foodies is finally moving beyond the iPhone. When we first wrote about the app last March, people were already asking for an Android version in the comments. But the small team had their hands full developing the iPhone version and working on their website. But this past August, when announcing their new round of seed funding, Foodspotting revealed that work had begun on the Android version. And now here it is. → Read More
