The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Bubble Motion’s Voice Blogging Service Reaches 1.2 Million Paid Subscribers In India
- Freelancer.com Acquires Freemarket, Launches Virtual Content Marketplace
- Apple, Toyota, and the Great Media Piling-on
- Compass Labs Raises $5 Million To Pinpoint Purchase Intent On Twitter
- Pre-Review Preview: Windows Phone 7
- iPad Available In Nine More Countries This Friday
- Appstream Released “Just To Get A Reaction From Apple”, Proves A Surprise Hit
- Data Center Automation Startup Puppet Labs Raises $5M From KPCB And Others
- Quicken Online Users Saw The Bait, Took The Switch To Mint.com, And Are Left With Nothing
- OpenStack.org: RackSpace Open Sources Their Cloud Services Platform, And Gets NASA On Board
- Google-Funded Pixazza Raises $12 Million For Crowdsourced ‘AdSense For Images’
- Mark Cuban Dreams Of Minority Report. So Do I. But We’re Not There Yet
- Steve Jobs Continues To Answer The Questions That AT&T Won’t
- Chump Dump: Get Rid Of “Friends” On Twitter
- Conan O’Brien’s Love/Hate Relationship with the Internet
- Brian Singerman: “If I Play Gandhi, This Shakespeare Stuff Is Done” [TechCrunch TV]
| Bubble Motion’s Voice Blogging Service Reaches 1.2 Million Paid Subscribers In India Posted: 19 Jul 2010 09:00 AM PDT
Bubbly is configured like a voice-based Twitter, using SMS alerts and dial-in codes to record and receive voice updates on mobile devices. When a users records audio messages and updates, followers can listen in whenever they want. To start voice-blogging, you enter a short code onto your phone, and start recording your messages. To follow another voice-blogger, users dial the phone number for whomever they want to follow. Whenever there's a new audio update, followers are notified via SMS with instructions on how to listen. Deployed through partnerships with mobile operators, Bubbly is an extension of BubbleTalk, a click, talk, and send' messaging service that doesn't require any calling. Bubble Motion claims that Bubbly is already bigger than Twitter in India for participating celebrities. Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan, for example, has more than 350,000 followers to his Bubbly voice-blog, compared to 250,000 on Twitter. Bubble users actually pay 30 rupees ($0.65 USD) per month to be notified in real time of voice-blog updates per celebrity they are following. It’s not surprising to see a SMS-based microblogging service gain traction in India mobile phone usage exceeds internet usage. Competitor SMS GupShup has also seen rapid growth in this market. Bubble Motion is also working on launches of Bubbly in Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia and Japan for later this year. Bubble Motion, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., has raised a total of $35 million in funding since the company’s launch in 2003.      
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| Freelancer.com Acquires Freemarket, Launches Virtual Content Marketplace Posted: 19 Jul 2010 08:24 AM PDT
Freelancer.com focuses primarily on providing a marketplace for remote workers. Freelancer.com now caters to a user base of 1.7 million small and medium-sized businesses (up from 1 million in October 2009) and says it has outsourced more than 725,000 projects to date. Now freelancers can sell their content on Freemarket’s content marketplace. The aim is for Freemarket.com to become one stop shop, an ‘iTunes for designers, content creators and programmers’.’ Users can sell a variety of content, including stock logos, website templates, stationery, images, sound clips, 3D models, themes and more. Currently, Freemarket has over five thousand items of content on the platform.      
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| Apple, Toyota, and the Great Media Piling-on Posted: 19 Jul 2010 07:56 AM PDT
Toyota’s recall frenzy really took off in the winter of 2009 as floor mats galore were sent back for a good scrubbing. Like the Grinch taking the tree and all the presents to fix one little light bulb, Toyota seemed at once haughty and suspicious until they finally threw in the towel in January and offered a number of mea culpas. You’ll also recall that last November we were in an economic doldrums, cars weren’t selling, and anything manufacturers could do to get a leg up in the auto race was fair game. Toyota’s fall, then, definitely reduced their sales and although it’s hard to assess the improvement in competitor’s numbers (almost everyone has seen year-to-year decreases in sales since 2008), it’s clear Toyota’s non-issue was the industry’s gain. Although I don’t want to belittle the lives lost in the single tragic Lexus accelerator issue, it’s abundantly clear that Toyota was unfairly blamed for a number of issues that weren’t its fault.      
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| Compass Labs Raises $5 Million To Pinpoint Purchase Intent On Twitter Posted: 19 Jul 2010 07:39 AM PDT
Compass Labs looks at Twitter streams and tries to determine when someone has an intent to purchase a product, then it serves up related ads either through direct messages or through banner ads on third-party Twitter clients. So if you Tweet, “I’m looking for a Canon camera” it will reply in stream or on a banner with an ad from a camera retailer for that camera. Compass Labs uses natural language processing to parse out the Tweets that have serious intent versus just talking about a product generally. Campaigns can be set to target people at different parts of the purchasing cycle, from exploratory to ready to buy right now. Of course, advertising on Twitter recently came into question after Twitter revised its Terms of Service, prohibiting any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API. But Compass Labs says that it complies with Twitter’s TOS because it serves display ads, which are not in-stream and simply uses real-estate on a publisher site, much like an ad network. In fact, the startup expects that Twitter will actually embrace Compass Labs’ solution as an example of how to monetize while benefiting the entire Twitter ecosystem. Founded by Google and Yahoo veteran Dilip Venkatachari (he led Google’s mobile ad business), Compass Labs will use the funding for product development as well as bulding out sales and business development channels. The company now has a number of advertisers and publishers using its platform (Venkatachari declined name these partners) and is starting to see revenue from its network.      
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| Pre-Review Preview: Windows Phone 7 Posted: 19 Jul 2010 06:00 AM PDT
With these bits in mind along with my new personal policy of not reviewing big-ticket items until I’ve really lived with them (even if that means not being first out of the gate with a review; for logic, see here), I present our pre-review of Windows Phone 7 in its nascent state.      
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| iPad Available In Nine More Countries This Friday Posted: 19 Jul 2010 05:59 AM PDT
This availability should only add to the fast sales growth of the device. As of June, Apple had sold 3 million iPads in 80 days. At that time, the company also reported that 11,000 iPad apps were available for the device. On May 31, Apple reported that it had sold 2 million iPad, showing that the company has sold one million more tablet devices in less than a month. The company only started shipping units to customers in countries outside the United States in late May. There’s no doubt that iPads are flying off the shelves, as Apple sold a million devices in less than a month. It should be interesting to see how many iPads have been sold in the past month. These numbers are expected to be announced tomorrow when Apple posts its second quarter earnings for 2010. Apple says the iPad will roll out to additional countries later this year and will announce availability and local pricing for these additional countries at a later date.      
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| Appstream Released “Just To Get A Reaction From Apple”, Proves A Surprise Hit Posted: 19 Jul 2010 04:50 AM PDT  Appstream, a simple visualisation tool to help iPad owners discover new apps via a matrix-style wall (perhaps inspired by Apple's own efforts at its World Wide Developer Conference), appears to be resonating with users. It's currently hovering in the top 50 of free iPad apps in the U.S. App Store, while in France (the iPad's second biggest market), it's doing even better, currently sitting at number two. That's not such a big deal in itself but what makes this case study a little more interesting is that the company, also behind the much more fully blown app discovery service Appsfire, created Appstream as a sort-of side project while it grew more and more frustrated waiting for Apple to approve version 2.0 of its main app.
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| Data Center Automation Startup Puppet Labs Raises $5M From KPCB And Others Posted: 19 Jul 2010 04:50 AM PDT  Data center automation company Puppet Labs this morning announced that it has raised $5 million in funding, bringing the total amount of capital invested in the fledging startup to $7 million. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers led the Series B round, while existing investors True Ventures and Radar Partners - which participated in the Series A round back in June 2009 - also contributed to the financing round.
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| Quicken Online Users Saw The Bait, Took The Switch To Mint.com, And Are Left With Nothing Posted: 19 Jul 2010 01:06 AM PDT
By February that idea had been changed. The new plan was to turn Quicken Online off at a set date and then merge all those users over to Mint:
Fast forward to real life and this is what Quicken Online users are facing:
One very upset customer asked Quicken to “at least wait until the end of the year so that people can have a complete year’s worth of financial records for tax purposes? I know it’s free, and I know you don’t necessarily “owe” anyone anything, but shutting down the product before the year ends is just a really bad idea, and basically tells consumers “Our product wasn’t worth anything anyway, and you probably shouldn’t use Mint.com either, because the same thing might happen with your data.” This same user also say he’d be willing to pay a fee to keep Quicken Online going until the end of the year, to avoid reconciling two sets of data. This seems like a boneheaded move to us. A mid year move for fiscal products must have some porting feature to move accounts and data over. Otherwise you’ve just waisted all that time your users put into the product. Quicken should hold the take down of Quicken Online until end of year, or figure out how to port accounts over to Mint. Because some of these users are lawyers. And most of these users at least know a lawyer. Bad stuff happens when you annoy lawyers. They see stuff like this as a big fat class action case waiting to fall into their laps. And fall it will.      
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| OpenStack.org: RackSpace Open Sources Their Cloud Services Platform, And Gets NASA On Board Posted: 18 Jul 2010 09:01 PM PDT
NASA is also incorporating technology from the NASA Nebula Cloud Platform into the OpenStack project, says RackSpace. RackSpace says they want to drive interoperability in cloud services to avoid vendor lock-in, and help create industry standards. More than 25 companies have shown interest in the project, says RackSpace, or are actively working on the code. They include AMD, Citrix, Cloud.com, Cloudkick, CloudSwitch, Dell, enStratus, FathomDB, Limelight, Nicira, NTT DATA, Opscode, Peer 1, Puppet Labs, RightScale, Riptano, Scalr, Sonian, Spiceworks and Zuora. The code is being released under the extremely flexible Apache 2 license, meaning third parties can redistribute the code, build proprietary software around the code, and distribute it with few restrictions.      
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| Google-Funded Pixazza Raises $12 Million For Crowdsourced ‘AdSense For Images’ Posted: 18 Jul 2010 08:55 PM PDT
Pixazza allows publishers to identify, tag and match products found within online images on their sites and then link them back to the inventories of Pixazza's network of advertisers. The service, which can be integrated in a site by adding a single line of code, allows consumers to browse the photos featured on a site and mouse over it to reveal information and pricing about similar products, and if desired, click to purchase. The startup has a vast database of products to include images and tags related to the entertainment, fashion, travel, home and sports industries. Pixazza's tagging technology is also compelling; the startup crowdsources workers to list products and tag them with the appropriate link to a retailer. Additionally, Pixazza shares advertising and affiliate revenues with publishers. The company’s co-founder and CTO James Everingham thought of the idea for Pixazza after his wife was trying to find a pair of designer shoes that were worn in the movie “Sex In The City.” Upon realizing the astounding price of the shoes, Everingham’s wife ended up buying a similar-looking shoe in a store for half the cost. Everingham says that he felt that the experience of finding similar items you see in photos could be a valuable business. Turns out he’s right. The company has also announced that it reaches more than 25 million unique visitors per month through its 75-plus publishers, which include US Weekly and Access Hollywood. Of these visitors, more than 70% are based in the U.S. Additionally, Pixazza says that the startup delivers commerce-enabled photos at a rate of 8 billion image views per year, a 60% increase in the last three months.
Previously, Pixazza was working on a client basis with its service. But today, the self-service platform, which is still in private beta, helps make Pixazza even more like an ‘AdSense for Images.’ Publishers can identify, tag and match products within the body of online images and immediately link them to Pixazza advertisers' product inventories. Pixazza's platform will aggregate datafeeds from merchants into a catalog of more than ten million apparel, home, electronic, sports, travel and automotive products. Pixazza also provides full text search to find similar products to those in the images on publishers' sites. There’s no doubt that interactive advertising technologies like Pixazza are catching on and even attracting the attention of search and advertising giant Google. Everingham declined to name exact numbers but says that click through rates are significantly higher than regular banner ads. Everingham says that Pixazza is only at the beginning of what could be a very successful and profitable experience. “There’s currently three trillion images on the internet,” he sad. “We want to turn every one into an interactive experience.” Pixazza faces competition from Like.com, Image Space Media, GumGum and others.      
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| Mark Cuban Dreams Of Minority Report. So Do I. But We’re Not There Yet Posted: 18 Jul 2010 04:55 PM PDT
I absolutely agree. But I think we’re ten years away from that happening. And maybe more. If you’ve seen the Steven Spielberg movie Minority Report, it has a similar technology to what Cuban envisions. At a few points, main character John Anderton (Tom Cruise) is walking through a public place and a retina scanner picks up his unique eye signature and offers up customized advertisements and specials for him. “John Anderton, you could use a Guinness right about now!” American Express recognizes that Anderton has been a card member since 2037. Even more in line with Cuban’s vision is when Anderton (now with another person’s set of eyes — long story) walks into the Gap and the eye scan allows the virtual greeter to ask how the last purchase he made has been treating him. To most people, this will sound extremely creepy and invasive. To me (and I suspect Cuban), this sounds fantastic. It sounds like the future we’re inevitably headed toward. But it is still the future. Minority Report takes place in 2054. Sure, that’s just a random date picked out by the filmmakers, but Spielberg actually hired a team of consultants — so-called futurists — to come up with technology that is likely to be in place all those years from now. They’re trying to be as realistic as possible. Yes, the retina scanning in the movie is more advanced than the facial recognition stuff Cuban is talking about. But I’d argue that it’s not really a matter of technology advancement that will hinder such things. Instead, it’s society being ready for these new forms of technology. Think about the location space right now. Foursquare, the current company getting most of the buzz, is hardly the first player in the space. Not even close. But they came along at the right time with the right method. When Foursquare launched in 2009, it was actually co-founder Dennis Crowley’s second location-based service. The first was the similar Dodgeball, which was purchased by Google in 2005, but never really took off. Part of the reason is that application development on smartphones was basically non-existent before 2008 when Apple’s App Store came along. So Dodgeball was done through SMS. It was clunky. Mainstream adoption would have been very difficult to achieve. The new wave of smartphones brought with them GPS and Wi-Fi triangulation. Location was now easily accessible — it no longer had to be manually input. And this is part of what Cuban is talking about when he takes the idea a step further by saying his facial recognition tech will replace the check-in because it will make it so “Individuals never do any of the work.” I agree that next step is coming. But before we get to facial recognition, things such as background location with geofencing will come into play first. And those are still a little bit away from happening. The fact of the matter is that one of the key reasons Foursquare took off and quickly stole the buzz from services that were earlier in the space like Loopt and Whrrl is because of the check-in. It helped ease users into location because they were in control of it (and the game elements certainly helped as well). Next, users will need an app to ease them into using background location and geofencing (which allows you to be checked-in to places automatically). It could be one of the current players, or it could be someone new. But that concept, which will have to be opt-in by virtue of installing an application, will be needed to pave the way for what Cuban is taking about farther down the line. Cuban sees the future where this facial recognition accesses Facebook’s name/profile picture database to pull information. If you thought Facebook’s current privacy issues are a nightmare, this would be Armageddon. But again, that’s just looking at it right now. Down the line, people will grow more and more accustomed to this type of stuff. And perhaps the scenario Cuban lays out will be the norm. But to say that the check-in is 2010 implies that 2011 is going to be the year this stuff starts coming into play. I say no way. We’ll be lucky if we see that kind of stuff in play in 2020. Not because the technology isn’t there — it definitely will be, and probably already is — it’s because we’re just not there yet as a society. But hopefully posts like Cuban’s which bring up the topic and dream of the future will help get us there quicker.      
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| Steve Jobs Continues To Answer The Questions That AT&T Won’t Posted: 18 Jul 2010 04:03 PM PDT
What’s interesting is that neither Apple nor AT&T have brought this up before. I’ve talked to AT&T on a dozen or so occasions about the horrible service in San Francisco. When I ask why it’s so bad, most of the time I simply get vague statements about how hard AT&T is working on it, and that things will be getting better soon. Soon. This conversation has been going on for three years now. I’ve never gotten anything from AT&T nearly as specific as the answer Jobs gave in his offhanded remark on Friday. Perhaps that’s because AT&T is scared shitless to say anything even remotely specific about the iPhone, even if it’s about their own network. That’s been my read on AT&T’s responses for these past few years; they’re scared to death of Apple. Even to the point where they wouldn’t defend themselves against allegations that they were the ones behind the Google Voice app block last Summer. It could also be because it’s better to string people along, telling them that things are always just about to get better, rather than give the reality that a fix is three years out. Had I known from the get go that AT&T would not be able to fix their network for three years in San Francisco, I may not have stuck around. Of course, the three year statement is an interesting one to make right now. This year marks the three year anniversary of the first iPhone. So if AT&T started asking the city of San Francisco for new tower approvals starting back then, they should be ready to go this Summer. Perhaps that’s why Jobs said earlier this year that he expects AT&T’s service to improve by the end of this Summer. Of course, the amount of new towers AT&T thought it might need in 2007 is probably far below what they actually need now, in 2010. The iPhone has exploded in popularity since then. And cellular consumption is undoubtedly higher than it ever has been. So a true fix may not be in place until 2011 or 2012. And even then, AT&T may always be one step behind. Well, unless Verizon gets the iPhone and alleviates the strain on AT&T. Jobs also noted at the press conference that it takes “about three weeks” to add a new cell tower in Texas. Perhaps that’s why AT&T was able to fix the service in Austin, Texas for the SXSW festival this year, but still can’t do anything in San Francisco. Yes, a lot of the Austin fix involved brings in temporary “cows” (basically, mobile cell stations), but they also had temporary antennas put up in downtown. AT&T just rolled out network upgrades in New York City — a city which, in my experience, actually had worse service than San Francisco previously. But the situation in San Francisco actually seems to be getting worse. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber stopped by our office in the city last week and had this to say: “I've been working here at TechCrunch's SOMA office all afternoon and evening, and I must say, they truly get the shittiest AT&T reception I've ever seen, even by San Francisco standards. Place is like a Faraday cage.“ We agree. Here’s hoping that any moves AT&T made three years ago come in to place this Summer. [photo: flickr/ben miller]      
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| Chump Dump: Get Rid Of “Friends” On Twitter Posted: 18 Jul 2010 01:03 PM PDT
The somewhat irreverent concept is both funny and serious; gain points for ceasing to follow people on twitter. The app recalls Crispin Porter’s Whopper Sacrifice campaign for unfriending people on Facebook, but has a much purer and utilitarian result in mind—clean up the list of people you follow on Twitter using game mechanics, actual metrics and crowdsourced conversation. As funny or rebellious as the app seems on the surface, when you get down to it, its goal is functionally sound and it gets people to ask the real question “why am I following this chump on Twitter?”      
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| Conan O’Brien’s Love/Hate Relationship with the Internet Posted: 18 Jul 2010 11:26 AM PDT
"Those men behind the curtain—the great and powerful Oz—are scared shitless right now," O'Brien said, adding that the chaos is so high that anyone in the audience could just as likely be running a major network in a few years. O'Brien opened by saying he was choosing to see opportunity in the volatility in his business, but over the next few hours it was clear that it wasn't that simple. What O'Brien went through with NBC was a more public version of hundreds of conversations I've had over the last ten years with people in old-media, music, independent book stores, and travel agencies—especially people who are mid-career and young enough to want to disrupt things, but old enough and have paid enough dues that it somehow feels unfair when the industry is ripped out from under their feet. To me, this three-hour out-pouring of enthusiasm for the future mixed with nostalgia of the past was like any conversation I used to have when I still worked in old media newsrooms. I wish he'd been this frank in his network interview—because this is the everyman story of the Web's disruption. If it hasn't happened to your industry yet—wait. It will. If I could just embed a raw bootleg video, I'd end this post here. But given the theme of the evening, it was sad but somehow not surprising that SF Sketchfest emphasized several times that no video or photos were allowed—a contrast to O'Brien's comedy tour when he welcomed fans to record and do whatever they wanted with the footage. That means these raw, authentic confessions and advice to the younger creative generation can't run on the platforms where audiences would most appreciate them. So here are my highlights instead. (I wasn't taking notes, so I'm paraphrasing here.) Just How Much Has Changed: O'Brien talked about when he got the Late Night Show job in 1993. He was so unknown that no one could find a photo of him to run with the news story. Imagine: No TwitPic, no Facebook profile image, no Flickr—nothing. Newspapers ran a gritty image they snapped from the television screen instead. And it took him several days to get a photo together to send out. Today, anyone with his level of experience at the time would have thousands of clips from YouTube, from tried-and-failed cable shows, live video from standup gigs, maybe an appearance from a Funny or Die skit, not to mention thousands of images online. On the one hand, he said it had opened up opportunity for funny people everywhere, especially women, African Americans and other minorities that don't get as many plum jobs in the entertainment world. But on the other hand, if he were up for that job today, he admits there's so much competition he probably wouldn't have been given a shot. Cream Rises…or Does It? O'Brien made the point repeatedly that "cream rises to the top" online and that if you consistently put out funny stuff, you'll start getting paid to write or perform funny stuff. But he also talked about how the Web and the reality TV/ Paris Hilton generation had set a precedent that you could be famous not for any talent, but just for making a spectacle of yourself. He cut himself off talking about the latter, saying he was trying hard not to be judgmental—but this is clearly an idea with which he struggles. He talked about kids coming up to him and saying they were going to be on his show one day and when he asked what they did they said "nothing," but they were "going to be huge." He said a few decades ago if someone had said that to David Letterman or Johnny Carson the answer would have been that they sing, dance, act or something. Success Was Being Left Alone. When O'Brien first took over Late Night the network wanted to put him on a week-to-week contract. He fought back and got a series of 13-week contracts. He and his staff did their job with the feeling that the anvil could fall at any moment. But because no one had much hope pinned on the show, they were largely ignored and allowed to do whatever they wanted. They'd throw stuff out there, and if it worked it did, if not, they'd throw more stuff out the next day. The contrast to his practically non-existent honeymoon period on the Tonight Show is obvious. Here's the good thing about a Web-distributed entertainment world—there's a lot more of the former because the gate keepers are disrupted. It's no longer an age where there are only three networks. If you want to entertain people and do good work, there a million steps in between all and nothing. Developing a Thick Skin Is Bullshit. O'Brien said the biggest thing that held him back from both writing and performing was a fear of being criticized because he's incredibly sensitive. He punched a big hole in one of the biggest clichés in fame—that you just have to develop a thick skin. He says he's still just as sensitive and criticism still hurts just as much. The secret is to just keep going anyway, because you will get criticized no matter how brilliant you are. This is clearly something that's gotten more pronounced in a Web age, but there may be a silver lining to that. In a time when every video, photo, blog post and Tweet can easily be trashed by others, people learn that criticism is inevitable early on. Longevity Is the Most Overrated Thing on TV. O'Brien talked about how people on TV measure success in how many years their show runs, and that he thinks that's the wrong metric. It's not about how many people watch you for how long, it's about the connection you have with those people, he said. To anyone in the room, this was clearly heartfelt. I've heard O'Brien in interviews before the Tonight Show debacle, and he always seemed glib and jokey—almost to the point of insincere. But last night—and I've heard during his comedy tour—he was raw, clearly shaken by what happened with NBC and clearly touched by the outpouring of support he got from fans, enabled largely by social media. He said several times how much people loving his work enough to support him – even if that support was a mere two-second Tweet for "Team Coco"—meant to him and how it kept him going. He clearly didn't want to leave the stage. He threw the clock off the table when he sat down asking why there was a time limit, and towards the end sat on the edge of the stage taking questions from the audience long after they'd said they would take "just one more question." The evening was billed as a tribute to O’Brien, but he turned it into a tribute to his fans connected around the world by social media instead.      
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| Brian Singerman: “If I Play Gandhi, This Shakespeare Stuff Is Done” [TechCrunch TV] Posted: 17 Jul 2010 06:17 PM PDT This week’s episode of Speaking Of… (video below) features venture capitalist Brian Singerman from Founders Fund. What I find fascinating about Brian’s journey is the cross over from being an engineer (There.com and creator of iGoogle) to being involved in advising and investing in businesses. There are a few VCs with engineering backgrounds, but Brian’s from a new wave of social.com engineers crossing over into the business world. Just like the various investment and entrepreneurial “mafias” from PayPal, etc., we’re going to start seeing more ex-Google, Facebook, Zynga and Twitter business success stories in the years to come, and I think Brian is living the dream of many engineers who are toiling away at their investment egg as we speak. I believe Brian can provide inspiration for all of them, giving them ideas for a few options as to what to do next. Brian has a passion for all types of gaming, especially strategy board games. Games such as The Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride and Through the Ages are starting to penetrate the entrepreneurial world due to people like Singerman, Reid Hoffman and David Hornick. I have some theories forming about gaming and business, but the most common theme I’ve seen is the love for the common framework that everyone shares with these games. Perhaps, in a world of subjectivity, there’s comfort in determining winners by purely objective standards. There’s only one thing Brian loves more than gaming and that’s discovering and funding companies focused on health. He believes the only market bigger than the Internet is our longevity and that tech entrepreneurs should do more in this space. And he’s not the only one – as Steven Levy explains in Wired Magazine:
As for Gandhi, well, you’ll have to watch the video to see what he has to do with all of this. (Previous episodes of Speaking Of… here)      
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Online marketplace for outsourcing 
Remember back when people thought their Toyotas were trying to kill them? And then the company issued huge recalls after a bunch of people peeled into traffic, blaming stuck accelerators, floor-mats, and computers? And then, quietly, the 
Well, that was fast. Only two months after 
To make a short story shorter: for the last three days, I’ve been one of but a handful of people carrying around a handset running Microsoft’s unreleased Windows Phone 7 operating system. This specific handset isn’t one that’s ever intended for release, and, while it’s looking pretty close to done, the build running on the handset is by no means finalized.
In a release issued today, Apple has 
Quicken Online users have known for some time that the product they love would be terminated this year. With the shiny 
Hosting company RackSpace is open sourcing the software behind its cloud storage and computing 
Pixazza plans to use its new fund fuel product growth and expand to international markets. Already Pixazza has been launching new products in the past year to help make its technology more interactive. For example, Pixazza just launched Shopdot, a service for creating branded, hosted storefronts for publisher websites. And today, the company has announced the availability of a new self-serve publishing tool that allows anyone to turn static images into more interactive ones.
“Location Check in is so 2010,” 
During Q&A session after 
You never know where you are going to see something innovative—even right here the heart of the “Sili-corn Valley” that is Central Ohio. This week, I met a gentleman by the name of 
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