Author: Blancer

This is a post I’ve looked forward to writing for a long time — and I’m surprised that I’m even getting the chance. In July 2009, we broke the news that Apple had banned Google Voice from the iPhone. But it hadn’t just blocked Google’s official application — it had also removed two third-party applications that had already been live on the App Store for months: GV Mobile, which was created by Sean Kovacs; and VoiceCentral, developed by Riverturn.

Of course, Kovacs and Riverturn hadn’t done anything wrong — they’d simply gotten caught in the crossfire of the growing rivalry between Apple and Google. Fast forward to today: nearly fourteen months after it was unceremoniously removed from the App Store, Apple has finally reinstated one of the applications that started it all. You can download the new version of GV Mobile+ right here. The application has been available in Canada most of the day, but only hit the US store minutes ago.

The news is not unexpected. Earlier this month, Apple totally revamped its App Store policies: it finally released a list of guidelines to tell developers what isn’t allowed, and it began permitting developers to use whatever tools they’d like to build applications (reversing a restriction that was added earlier this year). After reading through the new guidelines, Kovacs reached out to Apple about possibility resubmitting his Google Voice application, and their response seemed to indicate that he had a good chance at getting GV Mobile back on the App Store.

The other reason this isn’t a surprise: last night Apple accepted a different third-party Google Voice application into the App Store. Talk about adding insult to injury — Apple removed GV Mobile over a year ago, then, after finally deciding to give it the green light, it approved a competitor’s application first (which got a huge amount of press coverage and is now one of the App Store’s top grossing apps). That said, GV Mobile seems to be getting plenty of attention, and will probably do just fine.

But what about VoiceCentral, the other Google Voice application that got the axe last year? Riverturn, the development house behind the application, has shifted focus to an HTML5, browser-based Google Voice client called Black Swan (it’s quite nice). Riverturn President Kevin Duerr says that the HTML5 app has actually performed better than the iPhone application did, and he notes that Riverturn can keep iterating and improving on the web app because it doesn’t have to go through Apple’s approval process. That said, he says that Riverturn will likely wind up revisiting and resubmitting its native iPhone application simply because it’s such a big market.

And what of the official Google Voice application — the one that sparked an FCC Inquiry? We’ve reached out to Google multiple times, and were given this statement:

“We currently offer Google Voice mobile apps for Blackberry and Android, and we offer an HTML5 web app for the iPhone. We have nothing further to announce at this time.”

Facebook is building a mobile phone, says a source who has knowledge of the project. Or rather, they’re building the software for the phone and working with a third party to actually build the hardware. Which is exactly what Apple and everyone else does, too.

It was a little less than a year ago that we broke the news that Google was working on a phone of its own – which was eventually revealed as the Nexus One. It was about that time, says out source, that Facebook first became concerned about the increasing power of the iPhone and Android platforms. And that awesome Facebook apps for those phones may not be enough to counter a long term competitive threat.

Specifically, Facebook wants to integrate deeply into the contacts list and other core functions of the phone. It can only do that if it controls the operating system.

Two high level Facebook employees – Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos – are said to be secretly working on the project, which is unknown even to most Facebook staff.

Both have deep operating system experience.

Hewitt helped create the Firefox browser and was working on Parakey before it was acquired by Facebook in 2007. Parakey, which never launched, was described as a “Web-based operating system.” Hewitt also created all of Facebook’s iPhone web apps and then native apps, but finally quit building for the iPhone in disgust late last year. But he knows operating systems and he knows mobile.

Papakipos also has a perfect background for this project. He was leading the Google Chrome OS project until June. He then quit and went to Facebook. Papakipos is considered a rockstar developer, and there are any number of jobs he’d be able to do at Facebook.

But that doesn’t answer the question of why he’d leave the Chrome OS project before it was finished. It would have taken something really interesting to lure him away. Something like a Facebook Phone, for example.

So what might this phone look and feel like? We don’t know yet. When will it be announced? Don’t know. But I’d speculate that it would be a lower end phone, something very affordable, that lets people fully integrate into their Facebook world. You call your friend’s name, not some ancient seven digit code, for example. I’d imagine Facebook wanting these things to get into as many hands as possible, so I’d expect a model at a less than $50 price. Pay your bill with Facebook Credits. Etc.

As for timing, the holiday season is always a good time to launch new products. But that may be too soon.

Or who knows, the whole project might get killed before it sees light. All we know for sure is that Hewitt and Papakipos are working on something very stealthy together. And we have a source that tells us that stealthy thing is a Facebook phone.

We’re also not discounting possible partnerships around this. Spotify was said to be working on a phone with INQ last year based on a shared investor, Li Ka-Shing. It turns out Li Ka-Shing is also a sizeable investor in Facebook. So an INQ/Facebook partnership on a phone certainly wouldn’t be a surprise.

If you bought a janky Compaq at Best Buy recently you may have been offered a $50 “upgrade” card that allows you to download software that will unlock threads and cache on the Pentium G6951 inside your PC. That’s right: they are selling an upgrade that is actually a key to unlock performance that your PC already has. Internet firestorm in 3…2…1…

The chip in question has 1MB of cache and is fairly underpowered in the first place. As Engadget notes, the process of locking portions of a chip is fairly common but it usually happens because that area is defective on manufacture. This, however, is something completely different: you are paying an extra half a c-note to use the full power of your processor unhindered by what amounts to DRM.

Read more…

Six months ago, Google launched its very own app store for enterprise apps, the Google Apps Marketplace, at the search giant’s Campfire One event. The idea behind the marketplace was fairly simple—using a set of APIs, third-party apps could deeply integrate their products within Google Apps and offer these free or paid apps to the productivity suite’s users. At launch, Google partnered with 50 startups and companies to provide these apps, including Zoho, Socialwok, Aviary, and more.

Since March, Google has been steadily adding additional apps to the store, including Bantam Live and Bill.com, and now counts more than 200 installable apps available in the Marketplace. Google says that there are 4 million Google Apps users (out of over 25 million users) with Marketplace apps installed on their domain. The Marketplace itself is a big venture for Google; not only is it a way to provide more functionality for Apps (and draw more users) but it’s also a monetization channel (Google takes a 20 percent cut of each sale). Google has been actively trying to get more developers to add their apps to the platform, even posting glowing testimonials from developers who offer apps on the marketplace. To see how representative these testimonials are, we decided to speak with a number of developers to see how their apps are actually performing on the Marketplace.

Socialwok, a collaboration product that adds a social layer to Google products and Microsoft Outlook, launched as a pilot partner for the Google Apps marketplace in March. Socialwok’s founder Ming Yong says that the startup was able to sign up 4,000 businesses in the two weeks following the launch of their app. After this huge spike, says Yong, downloads of the app went down by half. Socialwok, which is the third top rated app in the store, is now seeing 600 to 800 businesses adding the app per week.

Yong pointed out that via the App Marketplace, the startup was able to sign a big deal with a hotel chain to use Socialwok as a separate application across its business (not just within Google Apps). Apparently, the company saw Socialwok on the App Marketplace and became interested in using the full platform.

But one drawback, says Ming, is the vast amount of noise on the Marketplace and that it can be difficult for users to separate the wheat from the chafe. “There are some developers who just want to have a little Google dust on their brands and have zero-integration with Google’s actual product,” he explains. “There seems to be a more the merrier attitude when it comes to accepting apps in the Marketplace; Google needs to do a better job with regard to discriminating which apps are integrated.”

Currently, Google lists the top five rated apps, the top five downloaded apps, suggestions of popular and notable apps, and a few featured apps on the front page of the Marketplace. You can also search for apps generally by functionality (i.e. accounting, workflow) or by name.

Productivity suite Zoho (which actually competes against Google on a number of products) launched two apps, CRM (which is the fifth top installed app on the marketplace) and Projects, in March and added two other apps, Invoice and Helpdesk, a few months later. Zoho evangelist Raju Vegesna tells me that shortly following the launch of the Marketplace, Zoho saw a few hundred downloads a day, but growth leveled off within a month, and now the company sees less than 500 installs total of its apps per week.

One feature that is missing from the Marketplace, says Vegesna, is the ability to test out apps before installing them (Vegesna didn’t know the exact uninstall rate but we heard from one developer who preferred to remain anonymous that the uninstall rate of Apps on the Marketplace is around 20 percent). Vegesna agreed with Yong that there is a lot of noise on the marketplace but said that it’s not nearly as tough to differentiate as it is on Apple’s App Store.

Aviary, which offers a suite of design tools within an App on the Marketplace, also launched as a pilot partner in March and has risen to the second most installed app on the platform. Aviary founder Avi Muchnick declined to give us specific numbers but said right after launch there was a huge insurgence of traffic, but downloads have since dropped to a steady pace.

Aviary is not seeing a large amount of web referrals to its site from the marketplace. But one of the major benefits of being on the App marketplace, rather than downloads, he says, is brand awareness of being associated with Google. Echoing Yong and Vesegna’s criticisms, Muchnik adds that the app marketplace is not ideal for users to discover applications

It’s important to note that Aviary, Socialwok and Zoho all debuted their apps at the launch of the Marketplace, when buzz and downloads were high. I bet that apps that launched a few months after March aren’t seeing nearly as much traffic as these apps did in March. Bantam Live’s CEO John Rourke, who launched his CRM app in the Marketplace in June, said he’s pleased with the performance of his app (he declined to give us numbers). Google says that CRM is a top search term for the Marketplace, so it seems that those types of apps are seeing success on the Marketplace (Bantam Live is currently a featured app).

Even looking from the testimonials Google has published, as a whole developers seem to be pleased with the traffic post launch. For example, productivity and task management app Manymoon claims that it is adding 1,000 new sign-ups per week. And it is the top installed app on the marketplace so that should probably give developers a benchmark of how the most popular app in the marketplace is faring.

Of course, Manymoon is also free, which probably makes it more appealing than some of its paid competitors. In fact, all the top five installed apps are completely free for users except for Zoho, which is free for only three users.

One well-known technology company (which asked to be anonymous), which launched its app on in conjunction with the roll out of the marketplace in March, said that while the number of apps being downloaded is lower than they initially expected. But the app has been able to draw a wide variety of customers, including educational institutions and local and state governments.

The complaint this particular company had was around the marketing of the service to the millions of Google Apps domain administrators. According to the startup, Google seems to be marketing the platform mainly to new companies that join Google Apps. Another way the service could improve, says this company, is to provide a way for Apps administrators to notify users that a new App has been deployed.

As a company spokesperson says, “We understand that Google wants to be sure to protect businesses from having their employees heavily marketed to, and that’s the dilemma of a marketplace like this – it’s massive, but you have to exercise restraint in how you market to it. There’s no easy answer, but anything that helps apps raise awareness among end users in a tactful, responsible way, would be very helpful.”

Another issue that I heard from a number of developers was how Google will integrate its other marketplaces (Android, Chrome) into the App Store. Many of the developers who offer apps in the Marketplace also have Chrome plug-ins and Android apps. Socialwok’s Yong pointed out that it would be helpful to be able to cross-promote apps from each Marketplace.

One developer I spoke to was concerned over the upcoming change in the payment structure for App developers. Currently, users who download apps pay the developers directly. He says that by the end of the year Google plans to take over the payments process and will collect all the payments from users and will distribute payments to developers accordingly. He says that not only will this new payments integration will involve an adjustment of his product but he hopes that Google will offer a payment system that can be integrated in the same way for the Chrome web store and the Android Marketplace (he thinks that each integration will have to be separate and won’t be unified).

As you can see from these anecdotes, developers and startups seem generally happy with their app’s performance on the Marketplace. But clearly Google has some improvements to make, particularly in the area of filtering out apps, marketing and app discovery. Another observation—if all of the most popular apps are free, I am left wondering how many of the 4 million users who use apps are actually paying for their apps.

It seems more likely that for now, the Google Apps Marketplace is good exposure for business apps, as Muchnick says. It can only help to be associated with Google Apps, a product that Google has very high hopes for as a viable cloud-based alternative to Microsoft Office.

Photo credit/IMDB

Among companies I loathe, Comcast is right up there. Alongside Expedia and AT&T, they share the common thread of having typically poor service, and even worse customer service. But I’m a forgiving guy. I’m willing to give Comcast a second chance. Well, for 6 months at least.

I’ve been a Comcast customer a few different times at various points of my life. Each time I’ve had an awful experience. My favorite was two years ago when I was continually getting billed for services I didn’t have (nor had I ever had, actually). Each month I was told it was resolved, and each month it was right back on my bill. It took me bitching up a storm on Twitter to get it actually resolved by the higher-ups at the company. And I know my situation wasn’t unique — and sadly, many people have an even bigger nightmare resolving things.

After that incident, I cancelled my cable television service from Comcast. Unfortunately, I couldn’t completely sever the tie, because they were the only high-speed Internet provider in my area. Still, it was kind of wonderful, I used a combination of iTunes, Hulu, and Xbox Live to get all my content over Comcast’s dumb pipe. But something was still missing.

When I moved last year, I was in an area where Comcast didn’t reign supreme, so I decided to get cable television again. I just wanted to see if I really had missed it. It turns out I sort of had — mainly because of sports. So now I have a difficult choice. I’ve just moved again and sadly, once again, only Comcast is available in my area. I have to get Internet from them, so I’ve decided to sign up for one of their special packages that is discounted for 6 months.

I don’t particularly want to do this, but it’s also football season, and I really don’t feel like having to go to a bar every time I want to see a game. More importantly, the new Apple TV and Google TV are on the verge of launching. And there are even more potentially interesting things on the horizon. The assault is underway.

I think we’re getting closer and closer to the point where completely cutting the cord is not just viable, but a savvy move. And while some of my counterparts like Nick Bilton have been able to cut the cord already, others, like Dan Frommer, reattached it. We’re not there just yet. But in 6 months…

As everyone is well aware, Apple TV hasn’t been a success up to now. I like mine, but the content model on it is flawed. The move to TV show rentals is definitely a welcome one. But with only content from ABC and some content from Fox, the selection isn’t good enough. My hope is that this model proves to be a success and the other networks/stations get on board quickly. (Though it doesn’t look too promising right now.)

More interesting about the new Apple TV is the AirPlay functionality that is going to allow you to push almost any video content from any iOS device right to your Apple TV (and soon other devices that have this built-in). Yes, that includes Netflix and the MLB app.

Sports remain an issue in general, but some are supposedly coming to Xbox Live compliments of ESPN shortly. And there is ESPN 3, the online component of the network that allows you to watch games live online — if your provider has a deal with them to carry it (Comcast does).

Meanwhile, Google TV is set to launch as soon as next month. It’s a little bit different because it seems to be a layer that will exist on top of current television offerings. But it will also be pushing online video as well. That could definitely help change the stigma that is still associated with online video versus television.

And then there’s that new Mac mini with an HDMI output.

All of this stuff is chipping away at the cable television stronghold. There isn’t going to be one “killer”, but all of these combined are slowly doing the job. And they’ll continue to get better at it.

I fully understand that the vast majority of people are not going to cut the cable anytime soon. This smorgasbord of services is way too complicated for the average consumers to deal with. But I think it’s foolish if these companies believe that people never will (especially if cable keeps offering a user experience that is utter garbage).

Eventually, everything, including all video content, is going to be served over one pipe — the Internet. And, as is always the case, young people are going to lead this revolution. The excuse that, “my parents are never going to cancel their cable” isn’t a valid one. This is about the future.

So, I’m giving Comcast 6 months to live, then I’m likely cutting off its head and going Internet-only. The timing seems right.

Humorously, Comcast isn’t making this particularly easy. I was on the web yesterday looking at my options, and I found one I think I liked. But I couldn’t find a way to add all the options I wanted (like a DVR), so I called customer support. After about six steps where I basically had to prove I wasn’t already a customer (I mean, seriously?), I got through to an actual human being.

Naturally, he tried to get me to sign up for a significantly more expensive package (more than double the price) and tried to get me to agree to a 2-year contract. When I told him that was silly because the lease on my apartment is only for one year — what if I move again? He said I could easily transfer my plan. Okay, but what if I move to a place that doesn’t offer Comcast as an option, like my last apartment? Silence.

Moving on, I told him I knew the package I wanted. Guess what? He said he couldn’t help me get it because it was online-only. “Are you serious?” “Yes. How about we sign you up for the package I told you about so you can try it out?”

This is going to be a fun 6 months. I’m already sharpening my sword.

[images: Warner Brothers]

Email is taking up too much time in our lives.

Do yourself and your recipients a favor by making your emails 3 sentences or less.

If we all do it, imagine the time we’ll have to do other things.

If this was an actual email reply and not a blog post, it would have ended before this sentence started. I’ve been trying a new solution to email overload by limiting emails to 3 sentences or less. You can learn the details in just 5 sentences at three.sentenc.es. The basic concept is to treat all email replies like SMS messages. I take this one step further and try to write initial emails in 3 sentences or less whenever possible.

I first learned about 3 sentence emails from a post by Kevin Rose, where he lists 5 good email time saving tips.

The inbox has become the “dreaded inbox” for so many people. A recent study by Xobni claimed 1 in 5 Americans check email either as the first thing they do in the morning or the last thing at night. 26% of Americans feel they can’t handle or feel overwhelmed by the number of emails they receive during vacation. Another report [PDF] by The Radicati Group says the typical corporate user sends 36 emails and receives 61 legitimate emails during the average day. An IDC study estimates email consumes an average of 13 hours per week per information worker.

Since starting at TechCrunch TV, I get about 100 to 200 emails a day which require action or a response. The newly launched Google Priority Inbox, which is getting postive reviews, helps. Although venture investor Jeff Clavier discovered it can make some mistakes. Google decided his wife’s emails weren’t important. Not good.

Even with Priority Inbox, staying up to 2am and working on emails 2 to 3 hours a day during my commute, I still can’t keep up with the email avalanche and get my inbox to zero.

My inbox problems are nothing compared to the TechCrunch writers. Or, to my boss Michael Arrington. Two years ago, when he wrote a post about email overload and a crisis in communication, he had 2,433 unread messages sitting in his inbox. Today, the count is 8 times higher: 20,131 unread messages. And this doesn’t include additional inbox items from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, voicemail, text messages, Skype, etc.

Let’s assume Mike did nothing else but read emails 24/7 – no writing posts, no talking on the phone, no eating, and no sleeping – well, that one might be accurate. It would take him 1 week to just read his email, assuming each email takes an average of 30 seconds to read and digest.

Now, let’s say all of his emails were 3 sentences or less. The average time to read them would be drop to about 10 seconds. He could get through them all in a little more than 2 days.

I’ll admit the 3 sentence email isn’t going to solve the email problem completely. In Mike’s email post two years ago, he wrote “The long term answer is that someone needs to create a new technology that allows us to enjoy our life but not miss important messages.” He said if he had the right solution, he would quit his job and go do it. Since then, there have been some minor solutions, but the email giant seems to grow just like Moore’s law.

The new version of Twitter.com released this week might provide some relief. MG Siegler has been using the new service for a few days now. He told me he switched some email communication to Twitter Direct Message (or “DM”), which is now cleaner and easier. And Twitter DM forces you to keep things short.

While more communication is being done by social media networks, email usage is still expected[pdf] to rise in the coming years. A Wall Street Journal article one year ago declared “Email has had a good run as king of communications. But its reign is over.” I’d say not quite yet.

Mike’s growing email overload creates problems for himself and the sender. He admitted to me, once an email comes in and doesn’t get acted on immediately, it enters the black hole. Even if he wanted to reply, it’s now out of sight and unlikely to surface again. For the sender, you don’t know whether the lack of reply is really a ‘no’, a never got read, or a just wait some more time for an answer.

When Mike does reply, he has mastered the art of the short reply. Most of his replies are just 1 sentence or 1 word. ‘Fine’, ‘Yes’, ‘No’ and an occasional ‘Awesome’. Usually, it’s the folks who are higher up in the organization who have perfected the terse reply. Just yesterday, we reported on unconfirmed 2 and 3 sentence Steve Jobs emails. He allegedly emailed a journalism student that “Our goals do not include helping you get a good grade. Sorry.” Here’s another 3 sentence Jobs email reply to a customer with a water damaged MacBook Pro, upset that Apple would charge $300 to look into repairing it:

This is what happens when your MacBook Pro sustains water damage. They are pro machines and they don’t like water. It sounds like you’re just looking for someone to get mad at other than yourself.
Steve

Jobs is well known for his short replies. A study of 30,000 corporate emails found that high-status employees “tended to send short, curt messages.” That study includes some other tips on ‘How to E-Mail Like a C.E.O.’

But, a short response still requires clarity and some extra thought. A long, detailed email getting a reply like ‘fix it’ or ‘change it’, may not help unless both parties know what ‘it’ is.

Critics may say this could lead to over-simplification or a dumbing down of communication. But, emails are not the place to write War & Peace (1,475 pages.) Email has come a long way since 1971 when Ray Tomlinson typed an “insignificant and forgetable” message. It’s a great way to get asynchronous feedback. I’ll admit some emails shouldn’t be condensed, especially if they involve a lot of details or you just want to share some thoughts with friends. But those should be the exception.

Many business emails I read and yes, I write, would benefit from trimming. The next time you sit down to write or reply to an email, think about keeping it short. The three.sentenc.es site recommends you add this to your email signature to help spread the word.

——————————————–
Q: Why is this email three sentences or less?
A: http://three.sentenc.es

According to Media Culpa a blog that apparently obsessively tracks these things, photo-sharing site Flickr has hit the 5 billionth photo milestone today with the above, uploaded  by Flickr user yeoaaron. Media culpa blogger Hans Kullin also points out that Flickr has been growing at about 1 billion photos per year, over the past 3 years, eclipsed in market share by social giant Facebook which hit 15 billion photos uploaded in April of 2009.

As Facebook claims it was uploading over 2.5 billion photos a month in February of 2010, we’re loosely guestimating there are somewhere between 30 and 50 billion photo uploads on the site currently. I’ve contacted both Flickr and Facebook for more info and will update as soon as they respond.

In the meantime sit back and enjoy Aaron Yeo’s artistic interpretation of the view of the Woodward’s Building in Vancouver.

Update: Kullin shares some of the methodology behind tracking the milestones.

Flickr gives each photo a serial number and they have previously officially confirmed that for example the photo with the ID 3 billion is actually the 3 billionth photo: http://blog.flickr.net/en/2008/11/03/3-billion/ Date and serial number of a photo can be found via Exif daya: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lenglengtan/250000000/meta/.

Thanks: Media Culpa

Google Instant is great — but I rarely use it. Why? Because I simply don’t go to google.com that often. That’s not to say I don’t search Google a lot — I do — I just use the Omnibox in Chrome for almost all of my searches. When Google launched Instant, they noted that it would be added to browser for people like me “in the next few months“. Well, guess what? It only took them 9 days.

Granted, Google has only enabled Instant as a Chrome Labs, and they have only enabled it for Chromium, the open source browser that Chrome is based on. But most features that come to Chromium, usually find their way to Chrome in relatively short order — though they have to then travel through the different levels of Chrome itself (dev then beta then stable). Sadly, this feature is Windows-only for the time being as well.

To activate Instant in Chrome Labs in Chromium, simply type “about:labs” into the Omnibox (the URL area) and hit enter. You’ll then have to click the link to “Enable” the feature, which will require a browser restart. Once you do that, you should be off and running. GoogleWatchBlog took a video of it in action below — it looks great, though I wonder if it will be slightly annoying if I really am just trying to type a URL.

It’s worth noting that this is actually Google Instant, unlike the instant search workaround in Chrome that was reported last week. That uses a different feature called “match preview” to mimick what Instant does, but it’s not exactly the same.

So when can Mac user expect to see the feature? “We’re waiting to iron out the kinks on windows first,” a team member writes on the Chromium Code Reviews page. Oh well, at least we have the Tab Overview lab — which is awesome (and already in Chrome proper — the dev build).

[thanks Pascal]

All day, the Internet has been erupting with news that the age of notebook and netbooks is over, and the age of tablets — specifically, the iPad, of course — has begun. One of the main catalysts of this eruption was Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn who supposedly told the Wall Street Journal that the iPad is cannibalizing laptop sales, especially netbook sales. Or did he?

Here’s the blurb from the WSJ story this morning:

Mr. Dunn also said internal estimates showed that the iPad had cannibalized sales from laptop PCs, especially netbooks, by as much as 50%.

Now, that’s obviously not a direct quote, but it is a very clear statement directly attributed to him. And it’s a huge statement as Best Buy is the nation’s leading consumer electronics giant. It’s basically saying that not only is the iPad winning, it is ushering in a new era of computing. In other words, Microsoft and all the PC incumbents are screwed.

But wait.

This afternoon, amid the uproar of this statement, Best Buy issued a press release backtracking from the claim. Give Dunn credit, he attempts to use humor to cool down the situation (borrowing a phrase from Mark Twain). “The reports of the demise of these devices are grossly exaggerated,” Dunn says in the release. So is he saying the Journal misquoted him? No — instead he’s doing the classic old non-denial denial:

While they were fueled in part by a comment in the Wall Street Journal that was attributed to me, they are not an accurate depiction of what we’re currently seeing.

Notice that he’s not saying he didn’t say that, he’s just trying to make you infer that he might not have said that. In other words, he probably did say that. Perhaps he was just wrong, or maybe he was feeling some pressure from important PC partners to backtrack from the statement — who knows.

Regardless of the reason for the backtrack, iPads aren’t notebook-killers in his mind anymore. Now, that’s just a “rumor“. Instead, tablets are an “incremental opportunity.” That’s quite a flip-flop.

Microsoft’s official Twitter account immediately retweeted the statement and even tipped Techmeme — though someone else actually beat them to tipping Techmeme. Another Microsoft employee. Just sayin’.

Meanwhile, no word yet from NPD and Morgan Stanley Research if they’re also going to be backtracking from their numbers that notebook sales are going the wrong way.

[image via]

Started as a way for University of Michigan students to gossip during class, founder Dan Rich says he was inspired by the simplicity of sites like Texts From Last Night and FML when he built Syncronizer, a community where you can follow chat conversations about anything from “Jersey Shore” to “Econ 503.” In fact Rich brings up stealth startup BNTER, started by Texts From Last Night founders Lauren Leto and Patrick Moberg, as a possible competitor.

Here’s what I like about Syncronizer: Like Facebook, it’s another socializing platform germinating from hotbed of all social interactions, a college campus, and despite the fact a lot of the conversations degenerate into the usual fratty deliberations on boobs and beer, it seems as though there is something unique happening here.

The idea of following group chats instead of people is also novel, and socializing becomes more about tracking interests and less about individual personal nodes. You now have the ability to communicate with friends and strangers in both visible and invisible modes, and, in the case of “Econ 503″ some rooms are closed to non-members. The site bridges the gap between public and private so users can pick and choose which conversations to track through your dashboard.

The main difference between a Syncronizer chat and a normal group chat room is that Syncronizer chats stick around for a long time. That and simplicity of use, say Rich, “Everything on the site works with a single click- visibility/anonymity, tracking a room, restricting a room, etc.”

Rich says he was attempting to flip the Twitter model of following people on its axis, so instead of broadcasting updates to anybody and everybody, the conversation becomes the focus of the follow.

“So, for example, you might want a place to discuss plans or stories with a large group of friends you know very well. You could create a room and invite your friends, and restrict access so that only your friends can view it. But at the same time, you may want to also remain engaged in a public conversation about your favorite tv show.”

Self-funded, Rich’s future plans include improving the chat aggregator’s search functionality so users can better find rooms of interest to them, and developing ways that Syncronizer can further connect people with conversations that are relevant.