We grabbed Google’s Marissa Mayer backstage just after her launch of Fast Flip. Michael asked her about that name change, Google’s on going innovation with news online, and whether any big players did not want Google using their content with this new product.
Her product manager was also on camera. Mike’s question to him? Rate Mayer as a boss on a scale of one to ten. It’s just not TC50 until we get someone in trouble with his or her boss.
The video is on the jump. → Read More
Yext, a popular local business search engine that for some reason managed to stay under the radar so far, is launching a new product dubbed Yext Calls at the TechCrunch50 event today that’s bound to raise some eyebrows.
Local businesses can use the Yext Calls software to process incoming phone calls and organize them based on semantic analysis of what was said during the conversation, providing them with an easy way of searching or browsing through them at any point. Based on keywords that occurred in the call, the software can detect that e.g. price estimates were requested for a car repair or which part of what type of vehicle the caller was having problems with exactly. → Read More
The web is loaded with sites offering listings and reviews for local services, with mainstays like Yelp and Craigslist leading the pack. But when it comes to actually executing a transaction with one of these service providers — establishing details like establishing a price and timing — most people still turn to their phone books to call the service. RedBeacon is a new service making its public debut today at TechCrunch50 that further streamlines this process by bringing the OpenTable model of online transactions to much broader spectrum of services.
Using the site will be easy for anyone who has used a local review service like Yelp. Simply type whatever service you’re looking for (be it plumber, gardener, or hair stylist), and the site will present a list of recommended service providers in your area. RedBeacon also employes natural language processing so it can figure out exactly what you’re looking for (for example, “Cupcake maker” would search for any bakers in the area). The site will then present a list of proviles for each match, featuring reviews and comments from other users, basic information like their hours, and star reviews imported from Yelp. → Read More
One of the cooler iPhone apps to launch last year was SGN’s iFun, which let you use your iPhone or iPod touch to control games on your computer screen. But iFun only works with SGN’s own games like iGolf, a new startup, iMo, launching today at TechCrunch50, expands the ability to all PC games.
Most PC games are still played using the mouse+keyboard combination. A lot of hardcore gamers like this experience, but more casual users prefer controllers like you find on consoles. The most popular of those out there right now is the Nintendo Wii, undoubtedly thanks to its motion-based control system. With iMo, you can bring a similar experience to all PC games thanks to the iPhone and iPod touch’s accelerometer. → Read More
Billed by its founders as a ‘visual endorsement engine’, Udorse is launching today at the TechCrunch50 conference a couple of months after word got out that the startup raised half a million dollars in seed funding from The Founders Fund and convinced Peter Thiel to join its board of directors.
So what the heck is a visual endorsement engine and why on earth would anyone need it? → Read More
Leveraging the power of the Web, behavioral economics and an applied branch of game theory called auction theory, Rackup is surfacing today at TechCrunch50 with a bold play on online auction platforms and the audacious goal to disrupt the $100 billion gift card market with it.
Unlike most web services in this field, Rackup isn’t about offering a trade or resale platform for gift cards but does something unique, basically offering the auction winners a way to always get more value than they pay for no matter what.
The goal: bringing the ‘Black Friday’ feel into people’s lives online, every day. → Read More
I grabbed Ross Levinsohn after the advertising panel to conduct a very serious interview with the former president of Fox Interactive Media and now VC at Fuse Capital about how FIM is faring these days and the state of online advertising generally.
Then Arrington decided to Segway over and interrupt it.
Video on the jump. → Read More
Healthcare is one of the top social and economic problems facing Americans today, as the rising cost of medical care and health insurance in the United States continues to significantly impact the livelihood of many of its citizens in one way or another. America spends a dazzling $2.4 trillion annually on healthcare, 75% of which is estimated to go to chronic, largely preventable diseases like obesity, diabetes, smoking-related diseases, sleep disorders, stress and so on.
So what would happen if individuals were offered a financial incentive to improve their health, driving down the immense cost of the system down the line? HealthyWage is launching at TechCrunch50 today a way for people to take ownership over their own health and get rewarded up to $1000 for it in the process. → Read More
Lots of people purchase tickets for events like sports games, rock concerts, etc. on secondary markets like eBay or StubHub, where they can often be picked up at huge discounts. Of course, it’s a bit of a challenge to know when to make a move and buy tickets exactly.
The main problem with buying tickets on secondary markets is that you have no clue if they reached their lowest price already or if you should be well off exercising some patience and let the price drop a bit more. Enter SeatGeek, launching at the TechCrunch50 conference today, which offers a service that basically forecasts ticket prices on secondary markets so you can make educated decisions on when to break out your wallet. → Read More
So former Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone is starting a new company, Clicker. It’s like a TV guide for online video, and the experts named it as one of their favorite companies they saw today. I like Lanzone, but I had to ask: Does a company with a well-known CEO and $8 million already in the bank really need to win our $50,000 prize?
His answer and more about why he’s jumping back into the start-up fray and his “divorce” from Barry Diller on the video clip on the jump. → Read More
DataXu is a Boston-based startup founded by a couple of tech entrepreneurs and MIT alums who are committed to making waves in the online advertising landscape by debuting the first real-time ad optimization system working across exchange platforms from the likes of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.
Essentially, the aim is to bring more power to advertisers – rather than publishers – who are looking to increase the ROI of their online ad campaigns by making it easier for them to make fast decisions based on qualitative data and act on them virtually in real-time. → Read More
Remainder aka remnant advertising are not exactly widely known terms, but the average person browsing the web for content knows perfectly well what it is. Anyone who’s ever browsed their favorite news site and has been exposed to advertising units that seem totally off base with the publisher brand, or even completely – even if unintentionally – juxtaposed to the content that’s being viewed has been a ‘victim’ of ads that were placed just to fill up unsold ad inventory, which is what remnant advertising comes down to.
5to1, a startup with a high-profile founding team that includes former Fox Interactive execs Jim Heckman and Ross Levinsohn, has raised $4.5 million in seed funding to work on a solution that can turn remnant advertising into premium advertising. → Read More
In between startup sessions at TechCrunch50, we are hosting a number of heavy hitters in a panel titled ‘Creating scarcity, value and brand protection as we face limitless ad inventory” in collaboration with AdMeld. On the panel we have Michael Barrett from AdMeld, Kenneth Fuchs from Sports Illustrated, Kal Patel from Best Buy, Peter Foster from Hi5, Jim Heckman and Ross Levinsohn from 5to1 and Aaron Broder from Gorilla Nation.
Talking about the dilemma that remnant ads pose to quality publishers, Ross Levinsohn cautions: “In many ways I think the Internet has killed itself to a degree because there was a notion that I will just add another page without maximizing the premium spots.”
Live blog after the jump. → Read More
More and more television content is making its way online. But because of different deals by various networks, it’s all over the place. Even the huge sites like Hulu, only skim the surface in showing what is out there. Clicker, a service launching today at TechCrunch50, wants to be the most comprehensive way to find the video content you’re looking for on the web.
While there are no shortage of video search engines out there, Clicker believes its offering is superior because it creates a structured database of programming, organizing shows by things like network, genre, and show name. This type of data not only allows for better search results, but it allows you to browse content without having to do text-based searches, which you probably won’t be doing when television and future web-enabled tablets start to serve up this content. Clicker already has a deal with Boxee. → Read More
Slingbox owners love their devices. They allow you to watch your home television content anywhere you are in the world with an Internet connection. A new startup, Spawn Labs, launching today at TechCrunch50 wants to extend that concept to video games.
But Spawn Labs offering is actually a bit more robust because it includes a social element as well. A key part to playing video games is playing them against other people. And with the Spawn HD Pro appliance, you’ll be able to do just that. Say a friend has an Xbox 360 in California and wants to play a game against you, but you’re in New York. From New York, you would simply install the Spawn Player application on your computer, and you could remotely connect to their system, to play a game. → Read More
Eventually, it’s probably safe to assume that all electronics will be in some way connected to the Internet. As long as you’re not worried about a Skynet-style Terminator apocalyptic future, that’s probably a good thing. With that in mind, the online gaming network SGN began working on a secret project to connect children’s toys to the Internet. Today, ToyBots is being unveiled at TechCrunch50.
Basically, the ToyBots’ vision is to be the platform that any toy maker can use to make sure their devices have a portal to the Internet, and all the data potential that comes with it. SGN and ToyBots founder Shervin Pishevar describes the key idea as a “Kindle of toys” or an “iPhone inside of a toy.” The thought there being that the Kindle works so well because of the network behind it that allows the device to seamlessly connect to Amazon’s extensive collection of books. Likewise, ToyBots is announcing a partnership with a major telecom provider (they’ll announce in the next week or so) that will allow toy makers to set up pre-paid service for their toys (that is, have wireless costs baked into the product, like the Kindle, rather than making customers pay a monthly fee). → Read More
Adobe’s Flash product has obviously been an integral part of the web for many years now. But it still has a major weakness when it comes search engines and complexity. While Adobe and others have been working on solutions to make Flash-based website more Google-friendly, they’re still nowhere near as crawl-able as regular HTML-based pages. FluidHTML or “Fhtml” is a new server-side markup language that hopes to merge Flash-like functionality with the easier-to-use HTML language.
Obviously, trying to create what would essentially have to be a new web standard is no small task. But the group behind Fhtml thinks they have a shot to do it because Flash is so widely used by millions of sites on the web who want a better visual appearance than HTML can offer. Aside from just Flash, Fhtml is also going up against Silverlight another Adobe framework, Flex. But Fhtml claims to be not only simpler than both Flash and Silverlight, but more powerful than Flex. → Read More
Remotely connecting two computers is still a pretty big pain. It usually requires two parties jumping through a bunch of hoops to get things working. This includes each computer having the same software, using various passwords, and waiting on a connection. iTwin, a new startup launching today at TechCrunch50 aims to make the process entirely plug and play.
iTwin takes the idea of remote connection and transfers it to hardware. A simple two-part USB drive allows one user to plug it in to one computer and then snap off and hand the second part to someone else with another computer. They will then have instant access to the other computer. It’s as if there was a hard line cable connecting two computers anywhere in the world, but there is no cable, just the USB drives and the Internet. As iTwin puts it, they’re the “cable-less cable.” → Read More
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand keywords. Today at TechCrunch50, Microsoft senior vice president Yusuf Mehdi announced a new visual search feature on Bing which returns results as an interactive gallery of images.
For instance, if you type in “dog breeds,” it organizes them for you in a grid of images that you can scroll through using a slider on the right. When you hover over a particular image, it enters the name of that dog breed in the search box. And you can re-order the image results by size, breed, exercise needs, and Bing popularity. → Read More
Seems I’ve also been roped in by Sarah Lacy to act as gopher and occasional co-host for her backstage interviews with some of the event’s more interesting experts and pitchers.
First up was Penn Jillette, fresh off stage from pitching the Penn and Teller iPhone app. The application essentially lets you text Penn & Teller after which they’ll perform some magic over the air. The way they do it is by fooling users into thinking they’re using iPhone applications to contact the magicians, but what it really uses is an overlay that mimics the iPhone interface. Nifty, ey? → Read More
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