The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Apple’s January 27 Event Invites Just Hit Inboxes All Over the World
- Exclusive: Guvera Raises $20M For Stealthy Brand-Supported Music And Video Service
- CrunchGear’s “Clean Out My Office” Contest
- IBM Launches LotusLive Labs; Opens Up Collaboration Platform’s API To Partners
- Hyperlocal Business Directory MerchantCircle Signs Up Millionth Merchant
- Wahanda Aims To Become Yelp-Meets-Groupon-For-Health
- Russian Online Private Sales Company KupiVIP.ru Raises $20 Million Round
- Oxford University Bans Students Using Spotify
- Baidu CTO Yinan Li Quits, Days After COO’s Departure
- With New Client, ICQ (Finally) Enters The Realtime Era
- Aol’s MediaGlow Site Mysteriously Vanishes
- Aol Quietly Launches An Expert Site Called Owl, and Feeds It Seed
- The Price Of Google In China
- BarMax: The $1,000 iPhone App That Might Actually Be Worth It
- TweeterClubs Lets You Track And Share Twitter Conversations
| Apple’s January 27 Event Invites Just Hit Inboxes All Over the World Posted: 18 Jan 2010 09:23 AM PST  Huzzahs and alarums! Apple's January 27 event has just been announced to tech journos all over the world with a new invite reading "Come see our latest creation" hitting inboxes left and right. The event will happen on January 27 at 10am PST.
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| Exclusive: Guvera Raises $20M For Stealthy Brand-Supported Music And Video Service Posted: 18 Jan 2010 08:26 AM PST
I heard the name being dropped a couple of times in 2009, but every time I visited the website I couldn’t get past the registration stage and thus quickly forgot about it afterwards. Its screaming manifesto also threw me off: declaring in large, shiny capital letters that it is going to save the music and content industry by solving all the problems in the advertising industry is quite a lofty goal, especially without anything to show for it yet. Late last year, things started moving for Guvera, with the company announcing that it had signed licensing deals with Universal Music Group, the Independent Online Distribution Alliance (IODA), EMI and other labels, with additional reports talking about millions of dollars being invested in the startup. So I set up a chat with Guvera CEO Claes Loberg, who quickly acknowledged that they secured about $10 million dollars in financing in 2009 . . . and that they’re about to collect $20 million more (all from AMMA Private Investment, an Australian consortium of private angel investors). This is what Guvera does, in a nutshell: it gives advertisers a way to set up custom branded entertainment and promotion channels where consumers can come to enjoy content for free (music now, soon movies and TV shows), without any kind of restriction. Current clients include companies like McDonalds, Johnson & Johnson, and Harley Davidson. The content gets selected by the brands (or the agencies representing them) based on “personality”; there’s an assessment tool companies can use to determine which artists or specific songs fit their brands and target audiences best. Clients gain access to a dashboard that allows them to set up channels, and run campaigns based on demographics, location, and more. Advertisers set a fee they are willing to pay per person per download or stream on their Guvera channels above a set minimum (e.g. $3 for every male between 25 and 35 years old and living in New York City). The revenue generated from the advertisers is shared between Guvera and the music rights owners. The trick, Loberg says, is that the consumer is never supposed to get the feeling that advertising is being shoved down his or her throat in exchange for free content. For now, content means music from partners only, but Guvera is talking to more labels (including Sony and Warner Music) and is also in advanced negotations with movie studios and television networks. Founded in 2008, the company has been gradually allowing a couple of thousand beta testers into the system every month, albeit at a very slow pace. The company expects to open up to more beta testers, including in the United States, before March this year. After that, it expects to attract and retain users virally, by getting big brands to lure customers to their proper Guvera channels and by offering a loyalty program that rewards heavy users. Asked who are Guvera’s closest competitors, Loberg tells me that they’re shooting for the people who are now downloading content for free on networks like Bittorrent or Limewire, and those who are tired of having to watch promo videos or see annoying display ads in order to be able to enjoy music and other content free of charge. Guvera is taking more of a feel-good engagement approach where brands house music and video on their channels and attract targeted consumers in that way. In short: Guvera’s trying a different take on advertising-supported music and has attracted tens of millions in dollars in funding to prove it can turn its concept into a viable business. The Web is littered with online music companies who have tried before and failed. Can brands buy mindshare and consumer loyalty by giving away free music and video content? Guvera and its investors will soon find out.
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| CrunchGear’s “Clean Out My Office” Contest Posted: 18 Jan 2010 08:19 AM PST  This week I'll be running a "clean out my office" involving a whole bunch of stuff I can't get rid of and is too valuable to potentially throw away. Today's special treat? Lots of Plantronics Voice-Music-Gaming headsets with USB thinger for listening to stuff over USB and using Skype. I think I have like nine.
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| IBM Launches LotusLive Labs; Opens Up Collaboration Platform’s API To Partners Posted: 18 Jan 2010 07:56 AM PST At IBM’s annual conference, Lotusphere, Big Blue has announced innovations to its cloud-based collaboration platform, LotusLive. LotusLive provides enterprise users with online email, web conferencing, social network and collaboration applications within the cloud. To spur innovation around the platform, IBM is officially launching LotusLive Labs, an R&D pipeline that combines the resources of IBM Research with Lotus. The venture is kicking off with a suite of new LotusLive technologies at the conference including Slide Library, a collaborative way to build and share presentations; Collaborative Recorded Meetings, a service that records and instantly transcribes meeting presentations and audio/video for searching and tagging; Event Maps, a way to visualize and interact with conference schedules; and Composer, the ability to create LotusLive mashups through the combination of the platform’s services. Project Concord will also debut as a web-based document editor for creating and sharing documents, presentations and spreadsheets. And IBM will be adding LotusLive support for the iPhone via Labs. Big Blue is also opening up LotusLive’s API to third-party developers (who have to be an IBM business partner). Previously, the platform’s API was only available through a specific program but now all IBM partners can build upon the collaboration suite technology. For example, Salesforce.com will offer an integration of its CRM application with LotusLive and Skype will also offer the ability to integrate with LotusLive contacts. IBM will be rolling out a new version of its email offering within LotusLive, LotusLive Notes, that will have upgraded connectivity to mobile devices, data migration options, and flexible storage choices. In addition, the new client will support hybrid on-premise and public cloud deployments. LotusLive got a boost last week as Panasonic announced that it was switching over to IBM’s online collaboration suite from Microsoft Exchange. This was a significant win for IBM because the deal represented the largest enterprise cloud deployment to date, with over 100,000 Panasonic employees to use LotusLive. While this coup strengthens IBM’s place in the collaboration suite cloud, Microsoft is also aggressively pursuing the cloud, with a recent $250 million cloud computing deal with HP. And Microsoft is pushing its collaboration offerings online with Office 2010. As more and more businesses look to the cloud for collaboration and productivity suites, the landscape to provide these services is becoming extremely competitive. Google is also a strong competitor in the space with its Google Apps enterprise offering, and VMware just upped its stake with the acquisition of Zimbra from Yahoo. Startup Zoho, is also growing at a rapid pace.
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| Hyperlocal Business Directory MerchantCircle Signs Up Millionth Merchant Posted: 18 Jan 2010 07:55 AM PST Hyperlocal business directory MerchantCircle has been steadily growing as an online network and business directory for merchants in smaller towns to advertise to consumers. MerchantCircle has long targeted its site's features towards merchants versus catering towards the consumer, as sites like Yelp and CitySearch do. Today, the network has hit a milestone by signing up its one millionth merchant. Not too shabby for the business directory, considering there are an estimated 15 million local merchants in the U.S. today. MerchantCircle provides small businesses with a web page listing, blogging and email newsletter application, and a local business social network that focuses on connecting local businesses with each other. Since launching in 2007, the startup has gained traction in small towns where the larger sites don't have reach. For example, 50 percent of local businesses in Wasilla, Alaska are on MerchantCircle and actively engage with the site. MerchantCircle has also added features to make the site attractive with consumers, recently launching a question feature that allows consumers to enter a question to merchants about any topic on the platform. MerchantCircle has also upgraded its social features by creating a mini-social network around the site where consumers can "follow" local businesses for information on promotions, coupons and announcements. While MerchantCircle may not be as popular in larger metropolises where Yelp and Citysearch are dominant, the startup has a stronghold in the smaller towns and regions. More than 20 million local consumers discover small businesses in their area via MerchantCircle every month. Of course, MerchantCircle still doesn’t see the scale of traffic as its big city competitors, but still has a steady flow of visitors to its platform. For December, comScore reports that Merchant Circle had 5.5 million unique visitors in the U.S., whereas Yelp saw 9 million unique visits and CitySearch saw 11 million unique visitors. Of course, with its continued success, we think MerchantCircle could be on track to IPO in the coming year.
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| Wahanda Aims To Become Yelp-Meets-Groupon-For-Health Posted: 18 Jan 2010 04:39 AM PST
Today Wahanda combines this database with the fashionable-but-profitable business model of group buying power with time-limited daily offers, along the lines of Groupon.
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| Russian Online Private Sales Company KupiVIP.ru Raises $20 Million Round Posted: 18 Jan 2010 03:18 AM PST  Private online shopping clubs are springing up like mushrooms all around the world in light of the successes companies like Vente Privée has been seeing, and venture capital firms are increasingly starting to invest in companies who are bringing the concept to specific niches or introducing the private online sales model to interesting geographical markets. In the latter category falls Russian KupiVIP.ru, which has just raised a monster round of $20 million in venture funding led by Accel Partners and joined by prior investors Mangrove Capital Partners, ARLAN, Direct Group and angel Oliver Jung.
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| Oxford University Bans Students Using Spotify Posted: 18 Jan 2010 03:11 AM PST
The University’s computing services, OUCS, says the service is using too much bandwidth for their networks to handle. But no warning was given and students are understandably rather annoyed.
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| Baidu CTO Yinan Li Quits, Days After COO’s Departure Posted: 18 Jan 2010 02:15 AM PST
For personal reasons. Li was with the company only for 14 months, and his departure was announced in a two-sentence statement earlier this morning. The man’s biography page on the Baidu website still shows up when you do a search, but his picture and bio have been wiped off the site. Prior to joining Baidu in October 2008, Li served as chief telecommunications scientist and VP at telecom solutions provider Huawei Technologies. Li joined Huawei from Harbour Networks, a developer of intelligent security systems, where he served as chief executive officer. His work at Harbour Networks was preceded by various positions at Huawei Technologies, including product manager, director of research and development and president of research and development where he led a staff of over 5,000. It’s unclear what is going on at Baidu, but two senior managers resigning in ten days is undeniably a sign of trouble. It’s hard not to see this move in relation to the whole Google / China ordeal, but we should note Baidu’s COO Peng Ye quit the company before Google posted its bombshell blog post about the ‘Operation Aurora’ cyberattacks and its decision to stop censoring search results on its Chinese portal. In the wake of Google’s threat to exit China, Baidu is in an excellent position to capture even more share in a fast-growing market it already dominates. Also worth pointing out: Baidu was recently hacked by the ‘Iranian cyber army’, the same group that had previously targeted Twitter. There’s no telling if this event has anything to do with the management changes, but we’ve asked the company for more information and will update if and when we hear back.
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| With New Client, ICQ (Finally) Enters The Realtime Era Posted: 18 Jan 2010 01:42 AM PST
After a decade of barely remembering it exists, I reinstalled the ICQ client on my computer this morning. The reason isn’t nostalgia: more than 13 years after its first release, and nearly 12 years after Aol bought the company behind ICQ (Mirabilis) for a whopping $407 million, there is an updated client available for download that finally brings the product into the era of the realtime web and social networking craze. The question is: is it too little, too late? ICQ7, the latest iteration of the Internet communication product, is now a desktop client that does much more than instant messaging, and in fact will compete with the likes of Seesmic and TweetDeck as well as web-based aggregators like Meebo and eBuddy. The new ICQ7 adds a familiar social layer to the messaging service, offering integration with Facebook and Twitter, as well as a number of content networks like YouTube and Flickr. Aol’s sister service AIM went through a similar social transformation last year. New tabs brings streams from these networks to the messenger client, and you can interact with your friends and content from inside the client to boot. Furthermore, status updates shared on ICQ can now be pushed to a wide variety of networks, in essence replicating functionality we know from Ping.fm (recently acquired by Seesmic) and HelloTxT. The ICQ client, which is only available for Windows for now, has also been given a new lick of paint and is supposed to take less space and run much faster. The new version also includes a couple of new options aside from the social network integration, such as advanced picture-sharing functionality and the ability to extend your user profile. Frankly, I think all these features are long overdue, and I doubt there’s any compelling reason for people to switch back to ICQ if they’re already happily using alternative aggregators or content with updating each social network individually. That said, the additions are nice for existing ICQ users, of which there are currently 42 million worldwide according to the press release (although I don’t know a soul who’s still on it). ICQ has been rumored to be up for sale for a while now, and we heard Aol has been talking to Google, Facebook investor Digital Sky Technologies and Naspers recently.
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| Aol’s MediaGlow Site Mysteriously Vanishes Posted: 18 Jan 2010 12:55 AM PST
The unit included all of Aol’s content sites, including the aol.com home page and dozens of sub brands like Engadget and TMZ. All those sites are still there, of course, but Aol seems to be killing off the MediaGlow brand itself. Last June the company issued a press release boasting 76.3 million unique monthly visitors to MediaGlow sites (the majority of which are from aol.com. And the business unit has been hiring journalists en masse – Aol now probably has the largest news room in the world. Wilson’s corporate bio still says he runs MediaGlow. We’ve reached out to AOL for comment.
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| Aol Quietly Launches An Expert Site Called Owl, and Feeds It Seed Posted: 17 Jan 2010 10:51 PM PST Aol’s answer to Wikipedia is Owl, a new site described as “a living, breathing library where useful knowledge, opinions and images are posted from experts the world over.” Owl seems more of a testbed for Seed than anything else. Seed, of course, is Aol’s new An “expert” is anyone who gets approved through Seed. Contributers get paid a little bit and the articles tend to be more how-to advice such as “How To Survive A Long Flight”, “The Right Way To Pop a Zit,” and “Top 5 Ways To Score Free Food.” It’s all very search-engine friendly. Actually, Owl is less like Wikipedia than it is like Helium, which also pays for expert articles and has been around for more than three-years. Right now, Owl is rather spare. Most of the articles still seem to be written by Owl/Aol staff instead of contributors. That should change once more people find out about it. Owl fits neatly into Aol’s plan to create as much content as possible on current topics or evergreen interests so that it can throw more ads against those Web pages. Even if Owl is way late to the game (see About.com, Helium, eHow, wikiHow, HowStuffWorks, Instructables, Expert Village, and so on), AOL operates a big enough network that it can just cross-promote Owl from its own sites. And, as I mentioned, search engines love that type of content. The only question is whether or not Seed can feed Owl with enough articles to keep it healthy. Update: An Aol insider reveals, “Owl was developed last year as one site that could publish content from Seed on a wide range of topics. It is not currently being used, however.” That explains why it is so light on articles. Aol is currently using Seed to assign and publish stories across its 80 existing sites. But it is also developing new sites like Owl which will be fed by Seed. Owl has been up for more than a month and appears to be more of a design concept than anything else. But if it is not being used, why is it live?
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| Posted: 17 Jan 2010 10:36 PM PST
There are just so many angles to this story, and nearly everyone seems to have an opinion. Two of those we covered earlier in the week included Sarah’s take that Google’s actions were more about business (or a lack thereof) for the company in China. Paul, meanwhile, was quick to dampen the cheers from Silicon Valley that Google was doing the right thing, arguing they’re four years too late for this new stance to have any moral weight. Mike followed this up with a comment on the post, “The problem with un-censoring now is that it further reinforces that the decision was the wrong one from the beginning, and that they knew full well it was wrong even when they made it.” All of that rings true. But I disagree. My position is a simple one that is twofold: it’s never too late to do the right thing. And it’s never wrong to do the right thing. The people hooting and hollering immediately following Google’s post on the matter may have been being a bit naive about some of the causes behind this move, but that doesn’t make their immediate reaction that this is great news, any less true. Should Google have made concessions to China four years ago, veering off from their “don’t be evil” philosophy? No. But that’s easy to say when you’re not trying to run a company that grew from a project in a garage to a multi-billion dollar business with users all over the world and public shareholders looking at the bottom line. Many accounts have Google’s initial China decision boiling down to CEO Eric Schmidt convincing co-founder Sergey Brin that it was the right thing to do for the business. Further, there was apparently talk that with a foothold in China, Google would be in a better position to change things from the outside in. That argument, along with point 8 in Google’s “Ten Things Philosophy” (The need for information crosses all borders), may have convinced him to cede points one (Focus on the user and all else will follow.), four (Democracy on the web works.), and six (You can make money without doing evil.) Without making the filtering concessions, Google simply would have never have been allowed to operate in China. Obviously, the outside in approach to changing things didn’t work as well as Google may have hoped, but it may not have been a total disaster either. After all, while Google may not have had a strong foothold in the Chinese search market from an overall perspective, indications are that they did have a very solid hold of the better educated, young elite class in China. Those are the same users that are likely to one day be running some of the most powerful technology companies in the country. And they’re apparently not happy about the prospect of losing the ability to use Google. Are they going to overthrown the Communist government? Not likely. But they could add significant pressure in the push to open things up more. The sad fact of the matter is that while Google may have wrongly bent to China, so too have many companies in the past. And those companies are still doing it. And many more will in the future. Google no longer is, and assuming they stick to their word, no longer will. Again, no matter the reason, and no matter the timing, that means something. And it especially means something coming from a company as big and as powerful as Google. Rival Yahoo has already come out in support of Google’s new stance, and that’s despite their substantial ownership in the large Chinese Internet company Alibaba (which criticized Yahoo’s praise of Google). And so has no less than the White House. It’d be nice to see Microsoft come out in support as well (especially since their software is apparently to blame for the hacking), but they’re not doing that. But thanks to Google’s new stance on the matter, they’ll be criticized for it more than they would have been in the past. Google’s position may not hold the moral high ground, but it is shaking things up, and that matters more. Also, I don’t care who you are or what your current market share is, it takes balls to walk away from China’s 1.3 billion potential customers and fast-moving economy. With technology, and the Internet in particular, becoming more integral in all of our daily lives, this entire situation could be just a sliver of what’s to come. One blog post from one Internet company has ignited a debate that’s really one we should have never stopped having. And it’s now being played out in a type of information warfare ranging from China all the way to the White House (think it’s any coincidence that China restored text messaging service in Xinjiang today after some six months of blackouts). Google did the right thing. And as long as they keep doing the right thing, the “why” will continue to matter less. And hopefully it will send the more important message to other companies: it’s never too late to do the right thing. [photo: flickr/pamhule]
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| BarMax: The $1,000 iPhone App That Might Actually Be Worth It Posted: 17 Jan 2010 12:48 PM PST
But there’s a big difference with this app; BarMax CA actually does something. And to the people it’s aimed towards, it’s likely to be very useful. And quite possibly worth the $1,000 price tag. BarMax CA is an application to help law students preparing for the bar exam. The reason the price is justified is because the company that is synonymous with this type of test prep, BarBri, typically offers it for $3,000 to $4,000. BarMax CA believes it can get away with the lower price because it’s just an app, there is no in-class element. Also, there has been some questions about BarBri’s pricing structure and anti-competitive behavior, which has been the subject of multiple class action lawsuits (hardly surprising when you’re selling these packages to future lawyers). BarBri also offers an iPhone application, and it’s free, but you need to enroll in their program to access it otherwise it’s useless.
The bar exam consists of three main parts: Multiple choice, essays, and a performance test. There is also an ethics exam you have to take. As you can probably tell by the name, BarMax CA is meant for the California bar exam. But by the end of 2010, the company expects to have apps available for New York, and the five other most popular states for the exam as well. There will also be a multi-state version since much of the test (the multiple choice part, for example) doesn’t vary state to state. Each of these apps would cost the same $999.99 but there is also a plan to make an app with just the multiple choice part for $500. Mike Ghaffary came up with the idea when he himself was preparing for the bar exam. He could not believe BarBri charged the $4,000 to send him an iPod with audio notes on it, and that there was no real competition in the space. So he got in touch with some successful iPhone app developers in Los Angeles, as well as some fellow Harvard Law graduates to create the app. Ghaffary, who is the director of business development at TrialPay by day, is serving as an advisor now to the team.
Ghaffary notes that while Apple was extra careful in checking BarExam CA out due to the high price, they had no problems getting it approved, and Apple generally seemed pleased with the idea. Still, the thought of being able to spend $1,000 with one click on your iPhone remains a little terrifying. Find the app here.
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| TweeterClubs Lets You Track And Share Twitter Conversations Posted: 17 Jan 2010 11:30 AM PST While Twitter is an incredible platform for tapping into the conversations that are taking place on the web, the real-time stream can be crowded. It's hard to keep track of back-and-forth communication between users or to keep track of subject-related Tweets based on hashtags. Recently launched TweeterClubs aims to create a real-time conversation around the Tweets that are broadcast to the web. Once you log into the site with your Twitter account, you can enter the tweet on the TweetUp tab. Your tweet will appear in both the club and on Twitter automatically. TweeterClubs will only show the tweets that come from the club members and when you log in, you are automatically a member. At the moment, the site only shows one club, the “Tweetheart Club,” which includes the Tweets of the six women profiled in the controversial Vanity Fair article. But TweeterClubs’ founder Jeff Whitehead says the site is planning to open up so allow anyone to create their own clubs. Those who are participating in clubs who Tweet with a club-specific hashtag can Tweet from any third party Twitter client, and their Tweets will be aggregated into their Tweeter Club. Users will be able to manage specific clubs by banning members, deleting messages and also seeing statistics on clubs, including the number of members and number tweets per day. Whitehead says that TweeterClubs will also offer an Android app and will open up its API for Twitter clients to incorporate its functionality into their own platforms. Of course, users can also participate in conversations on Twitter by just adding a specific hashtag to Tweets and then searching for that hashtag. Other startups that help make sense of specific conversations on the web are TweetGrid, and TweetConvo and Bettween.
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Australia-based 
We first covered 
Oxford University has taken a fairly drastic measure against music startup 
There’s something going on over at 
I had just turned sixteen when instant messaging client 
A year ago Aol trumpeted the 
The news this past week that 
In August 2008, Apple approved an application in the App Store called I Am Rich. The app did nothing beyond show a picture of a red gem. So why was it notable? Because 
So what do you get for your $1,000 BarMax CA app? A lot, actually. The app is over 1 gigabyte in size, which is the largest application I’ve ever seen. It includes thousands of pages of materials as well as hundreds of hours of audio lectures. It’s all the information you could ever want for the two-month course. And again, it can be done all on your iPhone. That said, if you do want some more tangible paperwork for certain sections, BarMax will send you that electronically as well.
How this app sells will be interesting to say the least. Ghaffary confirmed that it is the most expensive app in the App Store, surpassing a home security app that sells for $899. Many iPhone developers have complained about a race to the bottom for app prices, but a few have tried to sell more expensive applications, such as Wolfram Alpha. But that $50 app 
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