The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- RIM CEO Pulls an AT&T: “We Need to Conserve Bandwidth”
- Facebook Launches Zero, A Text-Only Mobile Site For Carriers
- Peanut Labs Launches Groupon-Like Deals In Virtual Currency Offers
- Social Music Player TuneWiki Gets An Infusion From NTT Docomo
- Hands-on With the HTC Desire (With Video)
- MySpace Gets The Hitler Meme Treatment
- First Round, Betaworks, And Angels Back Up Backupify With $900K
- Mint Clone Kublax Deadpools After Funding Failure
- Annoyed With Buzz In Your Gmail? Add Facebook Too!
- Sony Ericsson Drunk On ‘UGC’ After Everyone Else Has Moved On
- HTC announces the Nexus One’s slightly cooler twin, the Desire
- There’s A New Hero In Town: HTC Announces The Legend
- Man Checks-In Everywhere But Foursquare Rehab
- Swivel Adds Sharing, Becomes Google Docs For Enterprise Data
- The iPad Is Step 1 In The Future Of Computing. This Is Step 2 (Or 3).
- 20 Percent Of TechCrunch Readers Are Already Browsing With Chrome
- CloudShare Launches Lightweight Version Of Cloud-Based Demo Center
- MoLo Rewards Rolls Out Local Deals And Coupons For San Diego And Toronto
- The Importance of Fear, Risk and Hacking
- 8coupons And Yipit Are One-Stop Shops For Groupon-Like Daily Deals
- Question: Why Does The iPhone Still Have The Best Touchscreen In The Industry?
- Oh, The Humanity: My Chatroulette Experience
- Windows Phone 7 Series: Our Take
- The $1K iPhone App Took Just 3 Weeks To Scare The Crap Out Of BarBri
- Video: Microsoft Shamelessly Trashes iPhone in Windows Phone Teaser
| RIM CEO Pulls an AT&T: “We Need to Conserve Bandwidth” Posted: 16 Feb 2010 08:22 AM PST
While I agree with his sentiment – programmers need to be aware of how much bandwidth they’re sucking down – in practice the idea of “conservation” is ludicrous. We will, in the end, be using cellular networks for almost all of our connectivity. Cable and DSL companies know this and they’re running scared and AT&T already knows this simply because they’ve created a product popular with the kind of nerds carriers hate, nerds who use more than their share of bandwidth. Carriers seem to think subscribers should be corralled. Not only is this an affront to everything capitalism stands for, it is a grave miscalculation. Carriers make investments based on subscription fees. It’s not like they’re losing money by offering a public service – see the Postal Service – they are making money offering something that the government (read “we”) gave them. Mobile CEOs: hire evangelists to tell mobile programmers how to conserve bandwidth. Heck, you can even talk about bandwidth conservation at the golf games you have with each other. Do not, however, say those words out loud. It antagonizes your customers and points to a company that is out of touch with the mobile reality. Do we need another Operation Chokehold?      
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| Facebook Launches Zero, A Text-Only Mobile Site For Carriers Posted: 16 Feb 2010 07:56 AM PST At the Mobile World Congress 2010, Facebook’s Chamath Palihapitiya just finished a 20-minute keynote, outlining the social networking juggernaut’s mobile strategy. We’ll have a video of the full presentation up soon. There were no major announcements, but Palihapitiya did introduce something interesting that hasn’t been publicly announced yet: Facebook Zero. When you visit the URL zero.facebook.com using your mobile’s browser, you’ll see a notice that your carrier does not yet support the service – obviously because it was just launched and operators have yet to sign up. Palihapitiya only touched on it for a couple of seconds, but from what I gathered it’s basically a text-only version of the Facebook service that carriers can offer to their subscribers at no charge. If a user then decides to switch from text-only to multimedia (e.g. view photos from their friends), mobile operators can start charging them for ‘premium’ data service. This system is apparently called zero-rated pages, and allows operators to use a trimmed down version of a web application as a sort of teaser, driving the adoption of certain mobile services or apps, and more data usage revenue down the line. Presumably, Facebook will offer Facebook Zero to carriers for free, since it helps them make the social network as ubiquitous on mobile phones as possible. We have an e-mail in with Facebook PR for more information. Update: Facebook spokesperson Brandee Barker writes back:
     
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| Peanut Labs Launches Groupon-Like Deals In Virtual Currency Offers Posted: 16 Feb 2010 07:55 AM PST We recently wrote about 8Coupons and Yipit, which both aggregate Groupon-like deals. Today, Peanut Labs is launching a different twists to the crowdsourced local deal; the startup is allowing users to earn virtual currencies by buying local goods and services at huge discounts, called Cherry Deals. So when playing a game on Facebook, a user will see the option of earning points for the game is they buy a Groupon-like deal. Cherry Deals uses your IP address to figure out where you are, and then serves up both national and local deals. Once you click on a deal, you can pay with your credit card within Facebook and you will receive the virtual currency in your gaming account. Cherry Deals will also serve as a standalone Facebook app. For now all the deals are U.S. based but Cherry Deals plans to expand to the U.K. and Canada by the end of this year. The interface looks and feels just like Groupon, except that it is placed within Facebook. Ali Moiz, co-founder of Peanut Labs, says that they “felt no need to reinvent the wheel” in terms of design and the model. And Peanut Labs has already struck a few major deals for games to include the offers. Cherry Deals will be included in Facebook games produced by RockYou and TheBroth. Cherry Deals is a solid idea because of a few reasons. First, the Groupon-model allows for higher margins than simply referring customers to retailers. Second, game publishers and developers already have a base of users that will be viewing the deals, so Peanut Labs doesn’t have to worry about recruiting traffc to its deals. That being said, we’ve seen the popularity of the collective buying deals on the web so it should be interesting to see how Cherry Deals performs with consumers on Facebook.
     
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| Social Music Player TuneWiki Gets An Infusion From NTT Docomo Posted: 16 Feb 2010 07:30 AM PST
TuneWiki says it will use the investment for to build new products and expand its current mobile and web platforms.: TuneWiki is an app that brings music streaming, a lyrics database and music videos from YouTube to one social, customizable media player both on the web and to mobile devices. In the coming year, TuneWiki plans to launch a mobile game and significant feature upgrades to the TuneWiki social media player. Of course, the NTT DOCOMO investment will also mean further expansion into the Japanese mobile markets.Rani Cohen, TuneWiki’s CEO, says that because of of the popularity of Karaoke applications in Japan, TuneWiki’s lyrics to music could gain traction in the country. TuneWiki boasts apps for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Nokia handsets. TuneWiki is also appointing a new COO, Lawrence Goldberg, who was the former COO of Activision. Another Activision alum Michael Steiner, who worked on GuitarHero at the gaming company, is joining TuneWiki as director of marketing.      
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| Hands-on With the HTC Desire (With Video) Posted: 16 Feb 2010 07:22 AM PST  Considering just how similar the new HTC Desire is to the not-quite-as-new Google Nexus One (read: very, very similar), I wasn't expecting to walk away from my hands on session with my mind too blown. I mean, it's essentially just a Nexus One with HTC's Sense UI and an optical trackpad, right? Right - and that's exactly why it's amazing.
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| MySpace Gets The Hitler Meme Treatment Posted: 16 Feb 2010 07:21 AM PST This Hitler Meme video about the firing of MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta after just 9 months on the job must have been done by an insider (it was forwarded to us anonymously). News Corp Digital Chief Jon Miller and newly promoted co-presidents Jason Hirschhorn and Mike Jones are mentioned repeatedly. There’s a lot of inside baseball. But stuff like this is part of the healing process. When you’re done here, you can follow up by listening to Hitler rant about the iPad.      
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| First Round, Betaworks, And Angels Back Up Backupify With $900K Posted: 16 Feb 2010 05:00 AM PST You backup the data on your computer. Why not backup your data on the Web? That’s the basic premise of Backupify, a startup based in Louisville, Kentucky that backs up all your data on services like Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Flickr, WordPress, Blogger, and YouTube. Backupify, which was launched last June, just closed a $900,000 seed round of funding led by First Round Capital. Other investors included General Catalyst, Betaworks, as well as angel investors Chris Sacca, Jason Calacanis, Andy Swan, and Bob Saunders. (Disclosure: Calacanis is our partner in putting together TechCrunch50). Prior to this round, the company raised $125,000 in seed capital last summer from HubSpot co-founder Darmesh Shah (who is also a co-founder of Backupify) and other angels. The service itself all runs on Amazon Web services and is free for up to one gigabyte of data. In other words, Backupify is a cloud computing service that backs up other cloud computing services. About 60,000 consumers have signed up so far through word of mouth. Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail are the three most popular services customers choose to backup. It keeps all the raw data for you and creates a downloadable PDF with, for instance, all your Tweets, direct messages, followers, people you follow, and profile info. CEO Rob May, who is a former blogger (he started the Business Pundit before selling it in 2008), plans to charge consumers $5/month or $50/year for up to 10 GB of data backup. He also wants to get into backups for businesses, and will charge them different rates. Corporations that need email backups for compliance reasons now also need backups of Twitter and Facebook accounts if they are used for marketing, recruiting or other business purposes. He is also going to add more business-oriented services such as online accounting apps to Backupify’s menu of options. It offers Google Docs and Gmail today. The company probably will be moving soon from Kentucky, says May.      
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| Mint Clone Kublax Deadpools After Funding Failure Posted: 16 Feb 2010 03:56 AM PST
In an email to the customers of its beta site, founders Sridhar Sethuraman and CEO Tom Symonds wrote: “Over the course of the last 6 months we have been trying hard to raise funding which would have allowed us to launch our enhanced new product and develop our offering further. Unfortunately we now have to admit defeat.”      
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| Annoyed With Buzz In Your Gmail? Add Facebook Too! Posted: 16 Feb 2010 03:51 AM PST Like me, you’re probably going a little insane with all the Google Buzz noise in your Gmail inbox. Never fear, we’ve got a solution: Add a lot more noise to your inbox by adding your Facebook News Feed, too. David Mulder has created a Google Chrome extension that adds Facebook into the left sidebar of Gmail, right under Google Buzz. Install the extension, sign in via Facebook Connect, and voila, you’ve got your Facebook News Feed right there with your Gmail inbox and Google Buzz. The extension doesn’t fold the Facebook stuff into your inbox like Buzz. But, frankly, it’s a lot better that way. I had some problems getting it to work properly on Chrome for Mac, but after a few restarts of the browser everything settled down and it works fine. You can also post status updates directly to Facebook via the extension as well.      
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| Sony Ericsson Drunk On ‘UGC’ After Everyone Else Has Moved On Posted: 16 Feb 2010 03:50 AM PST
The handset maker has announced a new web service called Creations, its “vision for the future of mobile entertainment”, based on something the company is calling 'co-creation'. Basically, it’s a content sharing site – sorry, a “movement” (I kid you not, this is their word) – in which users can upload, “remix” and publish content to and from their mobile phones and the desktop, all distributed under a Creative Commons license. It’s an idea that might have seemed credible a few years ago but in 2010 it appears as if Sony Ericsson has got a little too drunk on the web 2.0 cool aid after just about everybody else has left the party. Either that or the company’s leadership have turned to the scriptures of Lawrence Lessig in the hope of clawing back marketshare.      
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| HTC announces the Nexus One’s slightly cooler twin, the Desire Posted: 16 Feb 2010 02:30 AM PST What’s in a name? Would a Nexus One by any other name still be as sweet? Yep. In fact, it might just be a bit sweeter. Though it lacks almost any indication as such, Google’s Nexus One is actually made by HTC. HTC reserved the rights to the hardware design, and today they’re making good use of that decision with the announcement of the HTC Desire. It’s essentially the Nexus One reflavored to HTC’s liking Read the rest of this post at MobileCrunch >>      
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| There’s A New Hero In Town: HTC Announces The Legend Posted: 16 Feb 2010 02:30 AM PST As we expected after the leaks we reported on MobileCrunch yesterday, HTC has just dropped the good word on three brand new handsets at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The first up is the Android 2.1-powered HTC Legend, which is essentially a spiritual successor to the much-loved HTC Hero. Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>      
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| Man Checks-In Everywhere But Foursquare Rehab Posted: 16 Feb 2010 01:53 AM PST
To be clear, anyone who has used Foursquare quite a bit is likely well aware of these holes. For example, there is nothing to stop you from checking-in anywhere in the world you want except that it’s easier to do it at a venue close by that automatically shows up on your list. But this guy, KrazyDad, used Foursquare’s API and some scripts to do his dirty work. In the end, he had captured dozens of mayorships across a range of fake Foursquare accounts. In the past, cheating hasn’t been that big of a issue on Foursquare because, well, who cares? The only thing you’re doing by cheating is exposing to those who catch you that you’re pathetic. But increasingly, Foursquare is gaining special deals that reward heavy participation. For example, a pizza place in San Francisco will give you a free pizza if you’re the mayor of that venue on Foursquare. It’d be a lot easier to cheat to become the mayor there rather than go there several times. It’s not unlike the “douchebag” problem that Foursquare is facing. That is, early-on, the first adopters of the service didn’t mind that there’s a badge called the “douchebag” badge. In fact, it added a funny element to the game. But now, as Foursquare moves more mainstream, some users are starting to complain about it. Likewise, more users are starting to complain about cheating. So what can they do? Well, at least as long as I’ve been using the service (about a year now), Foursquare has been thinking about the cheating issue. The problem, with regard to false check-ins, is that the only solid way to do this is to a check-in to your actual GPS coordinates. The problem with this, as Gowalla knows all-too-well, is that it can be hard (and in some cases impossible) to get GPS data while users are indoors. This is a major issue if you’re meant to check-in at a venue, obviously. Gowalla has actually had to ease up on its GPS check-in restrictions, to ensure more people could use the service. One thing Foursquare used to do (though I’m not sure if it’s still in place) is watch the rate of check-ins. If you do two or more too quickly, they would warn you to slow down (and even call you out for cheating). Still, that isn’t much of a deterrent if someone really wants to cheat. Those of you who follow Mike on Twitter may have noticed that he’s constantly checking-in at places like Israel one minute, and the Burbank airport literally the next. He’s been basically playing the same cheating game that KrazyDad has, but he’s been doing it for months (where’s the post, Mike?). Frankly, I’m not sure how concerned Foursquare has been about the cheating aspect. I’m sure they’ll say that they are, but really, these cheaters are just heavy users pushing others to care about the game more. When I saw the guy had ousted me as the mayor of the Googleplex, my immediate response was to want to go there and reclaim it. I’m hardly alone in this. That said, with the growing number of actual revenue-making business deals, Foursquare will have to address this sooner rather than later. The point of every game is to win it. And sadly, where there’s a game, there’s a person willing to cheat at it.      
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| Swivel Adds Sharing, Becomes Google Docs For Enterprise Data Posted: 16 Feb 2010 01:39 AM PST We’ve long been fans of Swivel, a service that lets users upload, manipulate, chart and share data. Our first post about them, in 2006, was titled Swivel Aims To Become The Internet Archive For Data. But with their newly launched groups feature, Swivel can now be the data archive and metrics dashboard for the enterprise, too. Before groups data uploads were either private (in draft mode) or public. A big use for Swivel was embedded charts of publicly available data, particularly for press and media (we’ve used Swivel charts often). With the new groups feature, data can be shared among small groups of people, like office documents in Google docs. And Swivel is also adding the ability for users to automatically upload data feeds from Google Analytics, Google Docs (spreadsheets), and Salesforce. Integration with Intuit Quickbooks is coming soon. By adding data feeds to private groups, businesses can create customized metric dashboards that can be shared within the organization. Website metrics, sales pipelines and other data can be shared on a single dashboard and updated constantly via data feeds. And it takes just a few minutes to set something like that up. This isn’t free, though. After a fifteen day trial period Swivel begins to charge for groups. The number of users isn’t a factor in the fee, but the number of reports, spreadsheets and charts are. Fees range from $12/month to $96/month, based on usage. There’s still some work to be done with the user interface to make things more intuitive, but Swivel does provide overview videos of the various features that help users get a feel for how to get things done. This is the kind of thing that Google Apps should have built already to help companies see what’s going on with their business based on a variety of data sources. I won’t be surprised to see Google buy or clone Swivel sometimes in the future.      
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| The iPad Is Step 1 In The Future Of Computing. This Is Step 2 (Or 3). Posted: 16 Feb 2010 12:28 AM PST
While we may not have been at this year’s TED conference, apparently, Oblong was. And apparently, it wowed the crowd. And it should have. If you’ve seen the movie Minority Report, you’ve seen the system they’re building. No, really. The co-founder of Oblong, John Underkoffler, is the man who came up with the gesture-based interface used in the Steven Spielberg movie. And now he’s building it in real life. The demo I saw a couple years ago was stunning, but it was still just a video. Apparently, at TED, the audience got to see it in action. NYT’s Bits blog detailed some of it in a post yesterday. For those not at TED, Oblong has also made a few demo videos in the past, which I’ll embed below. Again, this is Minority Report. Oblong’s coming out party couldn’t come at a better time. Following the unveiling of Apple’s iPad, there has been a lot of talk about the future of computing at a fundamental level. That is to say, after decades of dominance by the keyboard and mouse, we’re finally talking about other, more natural, methods of input. The iPad is one step to a multi-touch gesture system (as is this 10/GUI awesome demo), but this Oblong system is the next step beyond that. Other systems, including Microsoft’s Project Natal for Xbox, are promising similar types of gesture interaction as soon as this year. But the reality is that a system anywhere near this solid is probably still years out. Minority Report, the movie, takes place in 2054, for example. And while that is just a movie, Spielberg instructed the people working on the tech for it to really try to come up with what they thought we’d be using in that time. That said, Underkoffler told Bits that “I think in five years' time, when you buy a computer, you'll get this.” Of course, that’s the entrepreneur talking. For now, I’ll just have to continue to dream about using a computer like they do in Minority Report. But the dream is getting closer, it seems.
     
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| 20 Percent Of TechCrunch Readers Are Already Browsing With Chrome Posted: 16 Feb 2010 12:21 AM PST Google’s Chrome browser is quickly gaining market share, with one estimate putting it at about 5 percent of total usage, while Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is seeing a drop in overall share. But among TechCrunch readers Chrome is already beating every browser except for Firefox. A look at our Google Analytics numbers for the past 30 days shows that 20 percent of TechCrunch visitors are using the Chrome browser. Just on TechCrunch, we’ve seen Chrome’s share almost double since October. Firefox is still the most popular browser among readers, with 38.6 percent share, and Safari is a close third with 19.5 percent. Internet Explorer comes in fourth with 17.3 percent. TechCrunch readers are definitely early adopters, but if your Web surfing habits are an early indicator of how average users will browse the Web, Chrome could be in for some major market share gains. On the other hand, if it’s just a geek thing Chrome’s share might stay around 5 percent for the general population. So which one is it: are one fifth of TechCrunch readers simply attracted to anything shiny and new, or are you the vanguard showing everyone else the way forward? That’s what I thought.      
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| CloudShare Launches Lightweight Version Of Cloud-Based Demo Center Posted: 15 Feb 2010 10:59 PM PST
CloudShare is essentially a collaborative tool for IT environments, allowing users to share, interact and collaborate in enterprise IT environments, for any length of time. CloudShare Pro’s environments are pre-configured to include servers, networking, storage and pre-installed operating systems and application licenses, including those forsoftware vendors like SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft. The new offering also promises speed, scalability, and ROI. The starup says that its enterprise customers have seen sales cycles accelerated, and costs reduced by 30-50 percent, tracked via CloudShare's analytics dashboard. After the success CloudShare has seen with its enterprise customers, it makes sense for the startup to extend its offerings to SMBs and individuals. CloudShare has raised $16 million in funding from from Sequoia Capital, Gemini Capital, and Charles River Ventures in December. CloudShare’s products are being used by VMware, Cisco, and SAP and has already delivered over one million demos, proofs of concepts and software training hours to date.      
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| MoLo Rewards Rolls Out Local Deals And Coupons For San Diego And Toronto Posted: 15 Feb 2010 10:45 PM PST Startup MoLo Rewards is a mobile software that allows you to scan your phone at the point of sale to automatically redeem all your coupons or loyalty rewards using the company’s Near Field Communication (NFC) or Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). Today, the startup is launching time-sensitive deals for 50 percent or greater in savings at local businesses and retailers to promote the adoption of the company’s point of sale technology. MoLo Rewards has launched its deals in San Diego and Toronto, and expects to expand into three more cities by the end of the year. Similar to the model that is currently used by Groupon, MoLo Rewards showcases one deal per city and shoppers then have a limited period of time to purchase the deal. Each deal must be sold to a minimum number of people in order for the deal to “on.” MoLo Rewards’ branded RFID tag allows users to redeem their coupons from their mobile phones at the point of sale and requires RFID equipped terminals in store. So far, only 150,000 businesses are equipped with RFID terminals. Once the transaction is complete MoLo Rewards issues loyalty rewards which accrue allowing for the end user to obtain various goods and or services. And MoLo Rewards also provides loyalty points to users for every dollar they spend which can in turn be used for tangible "rewards" such as a flat screen TV or The key to MoLo Rewards is the ability to completely eliminate paper, SMS, bar codes or other clumsy coupon solutions. A graduate of the Founder Institute, MoLo Rewards presented at the DEMO conference last fall. In terms of the group-buying side of things, MoLo will face competition from Groupon, LivingSocial, and the many other identical collective buying sites that have popped up recently to serve local deals to consumers. Molo’s advantage is its mobile access and portability but it is only a matter of time before other collective buying sites develop mobile technologies and apps to equip consumers with coupons on the go.
     
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| The Importance of Fear, Risk and Hacking Posted: 15 Feb 2010 09:40 PM PST
He talked about the decrease in "tinkering" in America and linked it to Americans seeking an appearance of affluence, i.e. only poor people would try to fix their own sink, anyone else would call a plumber. Tulley is a big believer that this is bad for kids and by extension the country. I'll take it a step further—I think it's bad for American entrepreneurship. There's something about that tinkering, playing, hacking ethos that is core to what makes Silicon Valley, and entrepreneurship in general, exist. Nearly every tech visionary landed in trouble at some point for hacking, cracking video game codes, or phreaking– everyone from Steve Wozniak to Max Levchin. It's the same mischievous curiosity that gets so many people excited about each year's Maker's Faire and the same desire that causes someone to jail-break a several-hundred-dollar device to see what's inside or even toss one in a blender. It's a core curiosity that adults have or they don't, but almost all kids naturally have it. It can have risks, sure. But it also encourages creative problem solving, how to work within constraints and what rules can be broken and which shouldn't. I met Tulley because he was a guest on NBC's Press:Here yesterday. He found it a nice change from The BBC, where interviewers excoriated him for encouraging kids to do something that could hurt them. And, well, that's not surprising when you consider the British stereotype of restraint and aversion to risk and failure. Similarly, last November, when I was in India several Indians told me a big advantage the United States has enjoyed in business is that parents let their children fall down when they were young, encouraging an acceptance of set-backs and failure. In India there are protective bubbles of parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles who keep any harm from coming to kids. Clearly, the important thing here is the line. There's a difference between doing something unethical or harmful to another person and (literally) playing with fire because you wonder how quickly something might burn. But in an America that's increasingly fear-based and protectionist a little danger, risk and failure might be just the thing the younger generation needs. Tulley himself seems to practice what he preaches. He showed up to the set on crutches. How'd he hurt himself? Not skydiving or running with the bulls—he was just walking down the street.      
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| 8coupons And Yipit Are One-Stop Shops For Groupon-Like Daily Deals Posted: 15 Feb 2010 07:08 PM PST
8coupons is a pretty straightforward site: it uses your IP address to figure out where you are, and then serves up both national and local deals — the same kind you’d find in your local newspaper. Now, it also features a section for Groupon-like “Deals of the Day”. The feed for San Francisco currently includes a handful of deals from Groupon, including 50% off a sightseeing tour, and there are also some deals from competitors including Townhog, Group Swoop, and Bloomspot. 8coupons says that there are actually around 30 different companies across the United States offering similar kinds of deals (Groupon is the largest), and they’re new aggregating them for 10 markets in the US, including New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Yipit is very similar, and it also allows you to get daily Email digests showcasing deals from these Groupon-like services. I actually like the UI for Yipit better (it’s much more polished), but the service is currently only serving five cities, compared to 8coupons’s ten. Yipit has some other services too, including Spotter, which is a deal-finder that learns about your interests and habits to suggest deals that will best match you. But that’s NYC only for now. 8coupons has been around for much longer than Yipit: it launched in August 2007 as a mobile coupon service. After signing up with your phone number, you can receive regular coupons and offers from local businesses via SMS. The company has since branched beyond just SMS (though it’s still offered) to include a website full of aggregated deals. 8coupons has 150,000 users and sees around 1 million uniques a month.      
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| Question: Why Does The iPhone Still Have The Best Touchscreen In The Industry? Posted: 15 Feb 2010 05:33 PM PST
Now, I’ve had my share of touchscreens of all sizes and shapes. I’ve demoed phones and devices of varying quality for years. And somehow, Apple got themselves a better touchscreen in 2007 than any other company in the world has been able to buy or develop in the succeeding three years. Are you kidding me? Read the rest of this post at CrunchGear…      
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| Oh, The Humanity: My Chatroulette Experience Posted: 15 Feb 2010 04:33 PM PST
Harkening back to the days of A/S/L, the random vidchat service Chatroulette is one of those online arenas where not being a white male looking to get off puts you in a definite minority. Founded by a 17 year-old Russian high school student named Andrew Ternovskiy, the service is a more successful Omegle, combining elements of the MTV show "Next" with vidchat capabilities. Aspiring chatees click to play and as an escape latch you or your partner can hit "Next" anytime if you get bored, scared, or have to get back to work. The “Report video as inappropriate” button also seems to provide some comfort, but by judging by the nsfw fare served to me last night, doesn't provide much of a threat. I pressed "play" last night at around 3:00 am PST and after about 45 clicks on "Next" encountered 5 straight up penis shots, a lot of “camera disabled" chats, two women who automatically clicked "Next" once they figured out that I too was a female, and a lot of very grateful looking guys, including a Chinese "fan of Google" and a French guy in indoor sunglasses, who asked me whether "I was a more dominate lady or submissive woman" in the hope that I would be the former. Out of the 10,920 of my fellow Chatroulette participants, my "Roulettees" were a good cross section of Internet humanity. And while I did not encounter the "suicide" hanging videos alluded to in many of the chats, things like "did you hear the one about the guy who shot himself in the bath tub," were brought up in conversation quite a few times, as examples of just how crazy Chatroulette can get. Anywhere you get a mass of people communicating uncensored (and yes much like 4chan.org, China has not yet blocked Chatroulette) will be subject to typical groupthink behavior like urban myths and requests for interaction better left to the casual encounters section of Craigslist. Nonetheless, the service's potential for more substantial acts of communication is formidable. Chatroulette is what you'd expect it to be, micro-interactive reality TV with a large heaping of cybersex. While most people are (whether they admit it or not) voyeurs – the fact that Chatroulette lets both participants see each other limits the site’s potential user base to the weirdos – and despite piquing VC Fred Wilson’s interest it doesn’t seem like there’s currently enough weirdos to turn the humble startup into something mainstream. One "Roulettee,” when asked what he thought the service was most useful for, responded, "connecting with people around the world." Yeah, and asking them to show you their boobs.
     
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| Windows Phone 7 Series: Our Take Posted: 15 Feb 2010 12:45 PM PST
Read the rest of this post at CrunchGear…      
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| The $1K iPhone App Took Just 3 Weeks To Scare The Crap Out Of BarBri Posted: 15 Feb 2010 12:42 PM PST
BarBri, which typically costs between $3,000 and $4,000, has long had a complete stranglehold over this particular kind of exam prep. Because of that, it was able to charge whatever it wanted. Thanks at least partially to this, it has been subject to multiple class-action lawsuits (again, hardly surprising when you’re pulling this kind of stuff with future lawyers) saying the service was using anti-competitive tactics to maintain their dominance, among other things. But by leveraging the wide reach of the App Store, it seems that BarMax has found a way around some of this anti-competitive behavior. And BarBri is clearly threatened. The company has begun circulating fliers on law school campuses proclaiming two new “enhancements” for the Summer 2010 classes. The first will grant BarBri participants unlimited online access to course materials with their standard fee. It’s pretty funny this wasn’t included in the several thousand dollar price tag before since it likely costs BarBri next to nothing to grant this access. The second new “enhancement” is even more indicative of how scared BarBri is of BarMax. For as long as the service has existed in its current states (several decades) BarBri has been using the model where a student pays for the course and if they don’t pass the bar and want additional help, they must pay an additional huge fee (recently, $2,000) to re-enroll in the class. But the new BarBri policy starting this summer will allow students that previously paid, to re-take the course. This seems to be a direct response to BarMax which allowed you to keep the material forever once you pay the one-time $1,000 app price. This is a great example of why competition in any market is a good thing. BarBri has gone on for decades without bending its offering that students often feel is ridiculously priced. Now, in just three weeks, an app has come along and forced it to do just that. In response, the man behind the BarMax app idea, Mike Ghaffary, writes, “We are very relieved for the repeater students that can save some money and take advantage of this!” He goes on to note that, “Additionally, they are offering free access to their online lectures for students who pay their exorbitant tuition, but that part is too little too late.“ I asked Ghaffary how the $1,000 app was doing in terms of sales. He wouldn’t give specific numbers but writes, “Sales are doing pretty well actually! I thought most recruiting would have to happen one student at a time on campus (and BarMax has campus reps just starting now at various campuses to give info to students), but I am impressed that total strangers are buying this thing on their phones for $1,000–it goes to show you the amazing reach of the App Store. People are very happy with it too, which is awesome.“ Looking at the App Store page for BarMax, there are 6 reviews of the app. While that might not seem like a lot, it’s usually a small percentage of users who actually review apps. Also remember, the app is only going to interest a very small percentage of the population (currently it’s meant for students taking the California bar exam — other states are coming soon). Also remember, it’s $1,000 dollars. All six reviews give it the maximum 5 stars. BarMax has also started offering a MPRE app, which students use to prep for a mandatory ethics exam, for free (you can find that here). [image: paramount pictures]      
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| Video: Microsoft Shamelessly Trashes iPhone in Windows Phone Teaser Posted: 15 Feb 2010 12:14 PM PST Microsoft showed off its upcoming Windows Phone OS at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain today, and showed the video teaser above onstage. Without ever mentioning the iPhone, it completely trashes it and all the other copycat touch phones that are following in its wake. The narrator laments the “Sea of Sameness” that smartphones have fallen into, with each new phone “‘just a slightly better version than the one before it.” Then it tries to undermine the iPhone’s greatest strength: the 150,000 apps on its platform. The video positions the problem as a “focus on apps over the phone experience itself” and points out how “current smartphones make you to use them one at a time—in and out, and onto the next app, then the next, and the next, rarely working together.” It illustrates this with a woman in a labyrinth opening up doors labeled with different app icons (can you find the Foursquare check mark?). Of course, the iPhone the major smartphone that still doesn’t run multiple apps in the background—Android and Palm, for instance, do. It’s easy to talk trash when you are losing market share. But will Windows Phone turn things around for Microsoft on the mobile front? Here’s another video MobileCrunch editor Greg Kumparak took of a Windows Phone in action.      
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