As Mike Arrington wrote back in April, it can sometimes feel like certain photo-sharing websites have more of a hostage-taking approach to their business models than a “lets-please-the-customer” model. The photo-sharing experience then effectively becomes synonymous with platform lock-in — if you try to leave, you may not be able to take your images with you. Or, if you do, you’ll have to pay the price, Budnick. (But, wait, whose photos are they again? Oh, right.)
It’s for this reason that Jaisen Mathai is building an open source photo-sharing service called, you bet, OpenPhoto. → Read More
While the nuances of this enormous, enormous business deal are certainly lost on this poor tech blogger, I thought it worthwhile to mention that three major Japanese tech companies are considering merging their LCD production divisions, presumably to compete more effectively against major rivals like Samsung, Panasonic, Sharp, and big Chinese OEMs. What would the result be? Probably even more price-fixing. But the Japanese government would be investing a lot, so maybe that would add a bit of trustworthiness to the new company. Maybe. → Read More
Back in March, Google officially started rolling out the +1 Button in its search results, allowing users to vote up the pages they found most useful. Two months later, on June 1, it launched a widget that lets website owners integrate the button into their pages, just like they do with Facebook’s ‘Like’ and Twitter’s ‘Tweet’ buttons.
But, err, it wasn’t really clear what the point was. People kept clicking the button, but the effect — better search results for our friends — isn’t really tangible. And it isn’t really clear to site owners how much of an impact the button’s having, either.
Today, that changes: Google has just announced that +1 data will be displayed in Google’s Webmaster tools, allowing site owners to see exactly how much of an effect +1 is having. → Read More
Andreessen Horowitz is announcing today that economist, former US Treasury Secretary and former President of Harvard Larry Summers is joining the firm as a special advisor.
Beyond his well known academic and political credentials, Marc Andreessen was quick to point out that Summers has nerd cred too: He was admitted at MIT at the age of 16 to study physics. → Read More
Who said Japanese players don’t appreciate video games made outside their home country? I just went out to buy the newest issue of the Famitsu, Japan’s leading video game magazine (which came out about 3 hours ago/it’s currently 3am Thursday over here), and saw what you see above: L.A. Noire, one of the biggest game titles this year, missed the perfect review score by just one point. → Read More
You know what isn’t cool? $35 million isn’t cool … So in a move that makes truth stranger than fiction, Justin Timberlake, who played Facebook president Sean Parker in a movie called The Social Network, has taken an ownership stake in a real life social network as part of the Myspace sale. → Read More
The fact that HP is considering licensing webOS isn’t exactly news — HP head honcho Leo Apotheker said as much in an interview weeks ago. What is news, however, is that such licensing deals might already be in their early stages. At least, that’s what we’re gathering from this Bloomberg piece, where Apotheker is quoted as saying HP is already in talks with “a number of companies” regarding putting webOS on their devices. My only question: Why the heck would anyone want to? → Read More
If the road is smooth enough, you can hear birds chirping while you’re going 35 mph. With the windows up. The Nissan Leaf is that quiet. When going less than 30 mph there’s just a slight electric whine from the powertrain and above 45 mph the wheels produces a steady hum. But there’s this special spot between 30 and 45 where the two combine in a way that they cancel each other out and you find yourself moving along listening to Mother Nature’s soundtrack. The Nissan Leaf has been in my life for the past week. I’ve put hundreds of miles on the tires and ate several meals behind the wheel while trying to figure her out. You see, as much as this pains me to say (more on that later) the Leaf is a real car. It doesn’t feel like a glorified golf cart or tool used just for transportation. It’s a car and with this comes quirks, flaws, but most importantly, a personality and soul. → Read More
Behold, the winner of the Linux Foundation‘s “20 Years of Linux” t-shirt contest! “After twenty years of hard work, this penguin has managed to take off,” says artist Kim Blanche, creator of the winning image. “Tux is now sailing smoothly above the competition into a very bright future.” Kim has won a free trip to Vancouver to attend LinuxCon in August. Her design, aptly entitled “Flying Penguins”, will be the basis for the official LinuxCon t-shirt and will soon be available for purchase from the Linux.com store. Congratulations, Kim! → Read More
If you are part of the Tumblr Nation, and a growing number of you are, then you will want to download Tumblr’s new iPhone app, redesigned from the ground up with a new interface. It loads up your Tumblr Dashboard stream, but the post button brings up six simple icons for each post type: text, photo, link, quote, audio, and video.And then, of course, you can post photos or videos right from your phone.
New features include support for multiple Tumblogs, landscape editing, replying to messages, and saving drafts. It also taps into your address book on your phone to help you find other people to follow on Tumblr. And new users can sign up right from the mobile app. → Read More
Due to a sales tax measure recently passed in CA state legislature and on its way to be signed by Governor Jerry Brown, Amazon has sent all participants in its California Amazon Associates program the below email, warning of the termination of the program.
Amazon’s Associates program allows site owners to monetize off of referral links to Amazon, paying Affiliates if readers click on a link and subsequently buy an Amazon product. If the law passes, California will treat Amazon Affiliates the same as retailers with brick and mortar stores, and impose sales tax. → Read More
The next phase of growth for local deals will be mobile. Groupon knows this, and so does Yelp, which today is rolling out Yelp Deals to its iPhone and Android apps. An update to its mobile apps that is getting pushed out today will add a new deals icon to the app. When you click on it you can see a list of nearby Yelp Deals for discounts at restaurants, spas, and other businesses. (These are in addition to Yelp Special Offers and Check-In Offers, which already appear on mobile).
With Yelp Deals on mobile, you can search for nearby deals when you are walking around, and they are instantly redeemable. You get a redemption code that you can show the merchant right from your mobile phone. This is similar to what Groupon is trying to do with its Groupon Now mobile app, which is only available in a handful of cities (fewer than Yelp Mobile has out of the gate). → Read More
GateGuru, the iPhone app that’s been called the Yelp for Airports, is expanding to Android phones today with the launch of a new app.
The company is also announcing that it has raised $800,000 in funding from Brad Harrison, Allen Morgan, Chamath Palihapitiya, Tom Glocer, Thomas Lehrman, and Matt Daimler. → Read More
Myspace CEO Mike Jones just sent out this mass internal email and press release confirming the company’s sale to Specific Media earlier this morning. Kara Swisher is reporting that the sale was for $35 million.
From what I’m hearing it’s been a rocky morning at the social network, which was bought by Newscorp in 2005 for $580 million. → Read More
Zynga and AT&T have just announced a strategic partnership, in which the social gaming giant will bring customized games and content to the carrier’s customers. Financial terms of the agreement, which is the first of its kind for Zynga and a U.S. carrier, were not disclosed.
According to the release, mobile games such as Words with Friends and Zynga Poker as well as customized content will be featured for download on AT&T’s shelf in Android Market later this year. AT&T customers will also receive free credits in select games and Zynga giveaways at AT&T sponsored events. → Read More
As he told me when he came into our San Francisco studio earlier this week, Reputation.com CEO & Founder Michael Fertik is “ecstatic” about our new reputation economy. In today’s Web 3.0 personal data rich economy, reputation is replacing cash, Fertik believes. And he is confident that his company, Reputation.com, is well placed to become the new rating index of this digital ecosystem.
But Fertik isn’t ecstatic about the way in which new online products, such as facial recognition technology, are exploiting the privacy of online consumers. Arguing that “data is the new oil,” Fertik believes that the only people not benefitting from today’s social economy are consumers themselves. Rather than government legislation, however, the solution, Fertik told me, are more start-up entrepreneurs like himself providing paid products that empower consumers in our Web 3.0 world of pervasive personalized data. → Read More
Microsoft loves them some Android. Google’s mobile OS is turning into a major cash source as Microsoft convinces more Android OEM makers to hand over royalties concerning some of Microsoft’s patents. A recent report states that Microsoft has made five times more from Android than their own Windows Phone 7 — without building, supporting, or developing a single Android device.
Both Velocity Micro and General Dynamics just entered into such an agreement where both will pay an undisclosed royalty to Microsoft. HTC signed one of these patent-protection deals with Microsoft back in 2010 and reportedly pays Microsoft $5 for each handset it sells. → Read More
We’ve covered the HTC ChaCha’s journey to the States pretty exhaustively, from its debut at Mobile World Congress, to the rumors that it was heading for AT&T, to the last-minute name change from ChaCha to Status (presumably as a result of this lawsuit filed by ChaCha. As in the company, not the phone. A phone can’t file a lawsuit, silly; it doesn’t even have hands.) Well, the journey’s pretty much over: this morning, AT&T threw up a Facebook fanpage for the Status, pretty much confirming everything. As usual, they’re keepin’ mum on the price/release date for now. I don’t often play prophet, though the birds-eye-view this job provides would allow me to. I don’t think I’d be going out on a limb in saying this, though: this phone.. won’t be a raging success. Between the antiquated-looking form factor, the odd screen size, and the gimmicky Facebook button, people just don’t seem interested. → Read More
We’ve written extensively about the vacuum created on the iPad by the lack of an official native Facebook application. That may change soon — there are reports that an official app is finally on the way — but there are already a handful of companies that have been able to take advantage of the opportunity, to the tune of millions of users. One of these apps is MyPad (formerly known as Facepad), which has now been downloaded nearly 10 million times since it launched five months ago.
This week, the company is launching an updated version of its application, which includes improvements to some of the core Facebook features you’d expect — chat, photos, News Feed, and so on. But this update also introduces a new component: games. You can download the free version of the app here. → Read More
Customer Relationship Management is an old business. There are tons of CRM solutions, both generic and industry specific. Mobile development shop MConcierge has recently announced a new solution for CRM in the hospitality industry that they’re calling GRM: Guest Relationship Management. According to MConcierge, the point of GRM is to provide a top quality experience for guests that goes beyond just an average hotel stay. “Guests aren’t simply buying a room but an experience. By building more unique preferences the hotel brand can better customize the stay,” says Anthony Zebrowski-Rubin, CEO of MConcierge. “By building a profile of a guest based on onsite transactions, on and offsite interests, hotel preferences, and real time social profiled preferences contextualized to the type of property, the guest profile arms the hotel with information to action real positive communication with the guests.” → Read More
