Category: Tech news

I made heavy use of Ness‘s restaurant-finding iOS app during a recent trip through the East Coast, because lots of places are still sadly short on Yelp reviews, and I wanted a quick way to find the best local spots to eat. While I got some good results, I would have been all over a new feature that Ness has just pushed out in an update today: maps.

Yeah, another restaurant app with a map. You’re not shocked, I know, but you should take a closer look because of the quality of results that Ness offers. It uses machine learning technology, deriving results from a variety of social signals that you provide it from Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter, as well as your behavior and other data, to figure out which places you’ll like the most. The result is often what you’re hoping for — suggestions for great places that you might not have seen on other restaurant discovery apps, or heard about anywhere else for that matter.

Anyway, on to the update, which builds on the socially-focused release I covered back in December. Ness already lets you select your cuisine of choice, then few a list of results based on a percentage relevance score drawn from its data analysis. The mapping feature builds on this by showing each suggested place as a pin that’s color-coded to match its percentage ranking. A flat 50% is yellow, orange is 75%, and a full 100% is pink-red. Click on any pin and you’ll see a an overlay with the percentage score, some basic details like whether it’s open or not, and whether any of your friends have reviewed it.

“We’re just getting started here — I want to make it even more at-a-glance,” says Ness designer Scott Goodson, who knows a thing or two about this because he was an original member of the iOS team at Apple, and worked on apps including Maps, Stocks, Calculator, Safari, YouTube, and Game Center. ”We chose color-blind safe colors, and a few other subtle but important features…. A lot of people need this type of mapping view to really get a lot out of this type of app. But there’s a lot more to do.”

Some of future additions, he says, could include a better way to more easily view pins for restaurants that are close together on the map, as well as include the specific ranking score on the pin for each location within the map view. Also, the company’s larger plan to is to offer its technology for other verticals besides restaurants, and I expect to see the map interface travel along with any such expansions.

So, if you’re visiting San Francisco for the first time and trying to choose from the hundreds of brunch places here, or if you’re driving through the eastern seaboard like I was and trying to find some quality soul food, or whatever else, go check the app out. You can download it here.

Hundreds of websites (TechCrunch included) have gone dark or visibly changed their appearance as a protest against the Stop Online Privacy Act and its Senate doppelganger, the PROTECT IP Act. It’s a powerful statement and many are saying that it is already producing effects: Senators are changing positions, awareness is rising, and the opposition is becoming a dinner-table topic.

But is this activism?

I’m not asking whether it’s a good thing (it certainly is) or whether it is effective in guiding policy (it certainly might be), but whether it is right to call it activism.

It’s not just a question of semantics; the distinction is material. Activism is like-minded individuals working to support or oppose a cause. What we are seeing today, in large companies and organizations acting together to sway an outcome, might better be termed collective bargaining.

It just seems a bit strange that after months of outrage by individuals, what seems to cause notice is action by larger units: Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, and the like. Although we as individuals may have contributed to their decisions, ultimately the choice was theirs. And while we are all thankful to these organizations for doing what they feel is appropriate to signal their disapproval, it’s significant that we individuals are largely without means of effectively banding together online.

I wrote before that “people, not things, are the tools of revolution.” I know this to be true. But things, and means, are also important. Do we have the means to affect our country’s policies and decisions via the internet?

One thing that this whole SOPA thing (and COICA before it, and others before that, and surely more to come) shows is the complete disconnect between the informed, online community and the legislative and governing bodies. The incredible increase in our capability to propagate and discuss issues and events has not been matched by a corresponding receptive capability on the part of our representatives and officials. This must change.

The state of feedback between the governed and the governors is deplorable. Very little of the innovation driving internet companies is being applied to this problem, and as we have seen, it is a very serious problem.

There is much to be said about the whole Washington ecosystem of lobbyists, career politicians, favors, vendettas, and all that. What is relevant to us right now, however, is not the vagaries of a representative democracy, but creating a reliable, official, and secure means for citizens to make their opinions felt by those in office. We may discuss and blog and comment and promote all we want and our senators might be none the wiser. We need something other than votes and campaign contributions that will make these people hear what their constituents are saying. The internet has very little that can be called activism.

We can consider today, with its blackouts and wide visibility, a success. But it doesn’t seem to me that we can call it activism when so much of it has to do with powers outside our own making choices that just happen to coincide with ours. The internet is a powerful tool for communication and advocacy, but right now it is divorced from the decision-making process. The best we have is things like White House petitions and automatic email systems for contacting your senators. The level of engagement is wholly inadequate. As citizens we should expect more, and as evangelists of technology we should be making the tools to take the next step.

[Hat tip to this article at GigaOm, which set me thinking)

YouTube may be best known for its viral sensations, lawn gnomes, and feline shenanigans, but the site’s massive collection of content has given rise to plenty of more benevolent — and, some might say important — trends.

Like helping non-profits including charity:water harness the power of video to connect to millions of viewers. And serving up lectures from major universities, opening the doors of learning to remote villages hundreds of miles away from the nearest school. In short, YouTube has done a lot of good so far. And it’s hoping to do a lot more.

Hunter Walk, a long-time Director of Product Management at Google who has steered YouTube’s product side for years, recently decided that he wanted to spearhead YouTube’s social good efforts. Granted, the role he wanted didn’t exactly exist yet, but he managed to convince YouTube chief Salar Kamangar to let him create it.

Walks’s new, self-appointed mission: Bake ‘good’ into any part of YouTube he can.

He explains that plenty of YouTubers have worked on projects to support social good efforts in the past, but there’s never been any consolidated effort to do so. So these days he wanders the company’s halls, asking people if they’d be interested in launching an expedited support queue for non-profits, or a new white-list feature for schools. He says he rarely gets turned down — adding that YouTubers tend to view it as pro bono work, and they’re generally happy to help.

Walk says that he views YouTube’s relationship with ‘good’ as supported by three main pillars: Causes & Non Profits; Education; and, finally, Activisim and Free Expression.

YouTube’s special relationship with non-profits goes back to 2007, when the site began giving them free access to features typically reserved for premium content partners. These include videos that are longer than fifteen minutes in length and the ability to include a special Donate button that lets users contribute money. Non-profits also have the unique ability to include links to external sites using YouTube’s annotations feature (which they can use to drive people to a petition or ‘further information’ page, for example) — no other partners are allowed to use annotations to link off-site.

And today, as one of the first fruits since Walk took on his new role, YouTube is launching a ‘Playbook’ of best practices that non-profits can use to effectively produce and distribute their YouTube videos (YouTube first launched a broader-ranging Playbook last July, and it plans to launch more vertical-specific guides in the future). Walk says that non-profits have more features coming soon as well, including the ability to live-stream video, which is currently in testing with a handful of partners.

Walk’s second pillar — Education — is also fairly well established on the site. YouTube’s Edu Portal features thousands of videos from the likes of Harvard, Yale, and online schools like the incredible Khan Academy. This educational content has been watched a whopping 22 billion times on the site already.

Walk says that up until now YouTube has been primarily focused on acquiring all of this content to build up its library. Now, it’s beginning to focus on the second, and equally-important step: curation. Teachers and scholarly institutions will increasingly be able to build out and share lists of their favorite videos, drawn from any of the site’s EDU channels.

And YouTube is also focusing on making the site more school-friendly. Historically some students have had issues watching YouTube because their school’s firewall blocks the site (apparently it’s easy to waste time on YouTube). To help remedy this, YouTube is testing a ‘YouTube for Schools’ domain that will schools will be able to whitelist. This would enable students to watch videos as they please, but only content that appears as part of the Edu part of the site.

With these additions and others, Walk says he’s hoping to make teachers’ livers easier, and to give people who don’t have classrooms the power to listen and learn about anything.

Which brings us to Walk’s third pillar, which he dubs Activism and Free Expression. This pillar has more to do with how people are using YouTube, than it does with any particular improvement the site can make.

Walk recalls an experience he had during a trip to Baghdad two years ago, when he asked a 17 year-old girl what she used YouTube for. “It allows me to understand what the world cares about”, she said. And the ability to watch a variety of camera-phone footage and news reports from various media outlets helped her arrive at her “version of the truth”.

Walk also points to 2011′s Arab Spring, when social media services helped Egyptians spread news with each other — and around the world. Despite the fact that Egypt blocked the Internet for two weeks, Walk says that the number of video uploads in that region actually shot up 2x.

Another interesting stat: the highest usage of YouTube per capita/Internet user is in Saudi Arabia. The reason? Walk says the less diverse the media sources available to a user through traditional routes like television and print, the more important it becomes to them to find other content. Which is why Walk says YouTube is committed to providing its entire corpus of content to all of its users.

Walk didn’t have any upcoming features to discuss around this third pillar, but based on my conversation with him, it’s the one he’s most passionate about.

He made it clear that, despite plenty of forthcoming hurdles around government censorship, YouTube is committed to hosting and freely distributing footage of the demonstrations, the speeches, the atrocities, and the joyous celebrations that will shape the world in the years ahead.

Shaker’s certainly been keeping busy ever since they won our Disrupt competition back in September — not only did they win our $50,000 check, the team also closed a $15 million Series A funding round led by Shervin Pishevar of Menlo Ventures not long afterward. Now it looks like Motorola Mobility Ventures is looking to get in on the action as well, as they have recently invested in the Israeli startup.

Neither Shaker nor Motorola would comment on the amount of the investment.

If you’ve happened to miss our previous coverage of Shaker, think of it as virtual nightclub that lives inside Facebook. The team’s goal was to take a classic social paradigm — meeting people in a physical location — and translate it to work where people spend time building their social networks.

Shaker is technically still in beta (and only available in Israel), but it’s already had the chance to show off a bit. Case in point: Shaker was tapped by Dick Clark Productions to power an online social experience for New Years Rockin Eve, and while the company doesn’t have specific numbers to share, DCP was apparently “very pleased” with how the pilot event turned out.

While Shaker’s virtual club environment currently only exists on Facebook, news of Motorola Mobility’s investment points at a potential future in the mobile space as well. In a release put out by Motorola, Shaker CEO and co-founder Yonatan Maor tacitly confirms that the team has their eyes set on mobile expansion.

“As more people start using social media sites on their smart phones, Motorola Mobility offers us exciting support and expertise to expand on all platforms,” he notes. “Motorola Mobility’s support will enable Shaker to offer an amazing experience across all devices.”

Sounds pretty convincing to me, and a Shaker spokesperson has confirmed to us that a mobile push is definitely on the company’s roadmap — he said it’s not a question of “if” but a question of “when”.

Shaker’s forthcoming move into mobile is sure to be an interesting one, if only because of the problems that they’ll have to solve. Specifically, they’ll need to provide a compelling reason as to why would I want to enter a virtual nightclub on my mobile device when I could just take my mobile device to a real nightclub.

When our friends over at The Verge got wind of a price change coming to AT&T’s data plans, AT&T responded that it was “an error. There are no changes to our data plans.” What they should’ve said was “There are no changes to our data plans… yet.”

AT&T has just announced a new set of data plans for smartphones and tablets. As you’d probably guess, they’re a bit pricier than those they replace. On the upside, they’re (ever so slightly) cheaper per megabyte.

The Old Plans:

• $15 for 200MB ($0.075 per megabyte)
• $25 for 2GB ($0.012 per megabyte)
• $45 for 4GB with Tethering ($0.010 per megabyte)

The New Plans:

• $20 for 300MB ($0.06 per megabyte)
• $30 for 3GB ($0.0099 per megabyte, or slightly less than a penny)
• $50 for 5GB with Tethering ($0.0097 per megabyte)

(Note: Only the latter two in each category are available for tablets. The old $15/250MB plan for tablets will continue to exist in place of this new one.)

In the end, each plan gets bumped up $5 for a slightly larger helping of data. Current customers can keep their existing plans, though you’ll almost certainly have to pay for the pricier new option if you’re looking to enable/disable tethering on your account. I’d find some reason to be outraged — but really, when you’re already paying through the nose for data, it’s hard to be surprised when they come back around with bigger coffers.

The plans will launch for new customers this Sunday.

PayPal recently revealed that it was testing an in-store payments technology both via mobile and point of sale systems on a ‘friends and family’ basis at Home Depot. Initially, the pilot was only for 5 stores. Today, on eBay’s earnings call eBay President and CEO (and interim PayPal president) John Donahoe revealed that PayPal will be extending the pilot to 51 Home Depot stores in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Basically, via the pilot customers (for now, this only applies to PayPal employees) are able to pay for items via their PayPal account at Home Depot’s point of sale systems. They can either use a pin code via their mobile phone or a specialized PayPal credit card that can be swiped, the payment amount will be deducted from their PayPal account.

The bigger vision of brick and mortar partnerships are set to include location-based offers, making payments accessible from any device and offering more payments flexibility to customers after they’ve checked out. Users will also have the ability to access realtime store inventory, receive in-store offers, and real-time location-based advertising from stores. PayPal will also help retailers use location and transaction data to improve the experience for consumers.

As PayPal’s Anuj Nayar told us recently,  the Home Depot test program was individually established between PayPal and the big-box retailer, but in the future, PayPal is partnering with point-of-sale software companies to help expand the in-store program to other brick and mortar retailers.

The assumption is that the results of the smaller test at Home Depot, which only launched a few weeks ago, must have been positive, so Home Depot is expanding the pilot program. We’re told that PayPal will be partnering with at least 20 other known top-tier retailers for the in-store payments test, which will be unveiled later this year.

When asked about the impact of PayPal point of sale integrations will have this year, Donahoe says the last year was about the planning process, this year will be getting the in-store integrations rolled out and next year will be about sale. “The goal is to get a product that will be expanded to every vertical around the world so we can build a business around the point of sale product.”

Donahoe said he tried actually the in-store integration this morning at a Home Depot in San Jose (he says he left his wallet and mobile phone in the car), and just was able to enter his mobile number and pin and was able to pay. The receipt was emailed to him.

@WalmartLabs, the digital technology division of the world’s largest retailer, is launching a contest today which uses crowdsourcing techniques to determine which items the company should stock in its stores and on its website. The contest, called Get on the Shelf, will be heavily promoted by all of Walmart’s social media presences, including Facebook, Google+ and, most importantly, Twitter.

The effort is meant to be just a “fun experiment,” but for companies itching to get their products placed on Walmart’s shelves – real or virtual – something like this could be their big break. Previously, getting products into a retail store has been at the sole discretion of the store’s buyer. This contest will eliminate that barrier by giving anyone and everyone a chance to have their products chosen through an online selection process.

For consumers, the idea is to vote on the products you would want to see sold at Walmart via the Get on the Shelf URL, which features videos of the contest applicants’ inventions. Any product in any category currently covered by Walmart is eligible. There’s also, of course, a bunch of fine print. The contest debuted a sneak peak a few weeks ago, and now already has over 60 entries, including a new hot sauce, games, an iPad pillow, pet items and more.

Videos submissions are open until Feb. 22, then the first round of voting will be March 7-April 4. Finalist voting will be April 11-April 24. From the three top contestants, a grand prize winner will be chosen. (The contest is U.S.-only.)

This sort of crowdsourced buying experiment is possible because of @WalmartLabs, which operates something like a startup within the much larger organization that is Walmart. The division is also now home to a number of acquired startups itself, including  Kosmix, OneRiot, Grabble and most recently, Small Society. Over the holidays, @WalmartLabs launched the “Shopycat” Facebook app, one of the first consumer-facing product launches from the group.

When military veterans complete their service, they shouldn’t have to struggle to find jobs. That’s why Jobvite and The White House’s Joining Forces initiative are teaming up to release “Apps For Heroes”. The new feature set allows Jobvite’s recruiting platform clients to check a box and flag the job openings they post to be automatically included in Veterans Job Bank. Clients can also easily add a Veterans Affairs Blue Button to their job application submission forms to allow vets to upload their military service history.

Apps For Heroes will be unveiled later today at a San Francisco event promoting First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden’s Joining Forces initiative to support veterans. Held at the Code For America office, Biden and US CTO Aneesh Chopra will be on hand to discuss how technology can help reduce unemployment, especially for those who’ve served their country.

Jobvite will now give its clients the option to include Apps For Heroes features on their job openings. If they check the box indicating an opportunity is targeted towards veterans, metadata will be added to the job listing so it can be scraped and syndicated on the Veterans Job Bank. Employers are incentivized to participate in Apps For Heroes, as they can receive up to $9,600 per veteran hired thanks to the Returning Heroes and Wounded Warriors Tax Credits.

Launch partner LivingSocial will be one of the first companies to flag openings for vets through Apps For Heroes. Beth Mensinger, Head of Global Recruiting for LivingSocial tell me veterans make great employees because they’re “fast-acting, quick on their feet, strong, and dedicated.”

Apps For Heroes is great example of how the tech industry is banding together help the US bounce back from the recession. Today’s event at Code For America follows yesterday’s event with CTO Chopra at Twilio, where Codecademy and Mitch Kapor announced new and expanded programs to teach kids engineering and entrepreneurship.

The Playstation Vita handheld system, unveiled at E3 last year, went on sale just before the holidays in Japan. It saw serious sales: around 325,000 units (500,000 by Sony’s reckoning) were sold in its opening week. Naturally numbers tend to drop after the initial rush, and the next week saw healthy sales of around 72,000. But The numbers kept decreasing, and it is now reported that for the week ending January 15, the new device sold only 18,361 units, not including online sales. That’s less than the PSP.

Other games systems like the 3DS and Wii also saw big drops in the post-holiday season, but for a brand new system like the Vita to drop to sub-20,000 numbers so quickly isn’t a good sign.

Could it be a lack of quality games, something that hamstrung the 3DS’s early days? Or perhaps people are waiting on the inevitable bundles when the device makes its debut in the US with high-profile titles like Uncharted?

Whatever the case is, it’s still too early to be calling the Vita a loser. The fact is it has a lot going for it, and it’s a long play by Sony, not a cash-in. The PS3 was slow to take off, and is now intermittently leading console sales. In two years, will the Vita be topping the 3DS? Or will it have the same fate as the PSP, simply not recognized as a mainstream gaming machine? I hope that’s not the case, because the Vita has more potential than the 3DS to be a mainstream gaming device.

February 22nd is the date to look forward to. It may be that the US launch will reinvigorate the flagging handheld, but really it won’t be until later in the year when buying habits have returned to normal that we can draw any conclusions.

eBay just reported fourth quarter and fiscal year 2011 earnings today, which were above analysts expectations. eBay posted revenue of $3.4 billion, up 35 percent from the same quarter in 2010. The company reported fourth quarter net income on a GAAP basis of $2.0 billion, or $1.51 per diluted share, and non-GAAP net income of $788.6 million, or $0.60 per diluted share. Net income was up 15 percent to $789 million. Analysts expected earnings per share of $0.57 on revenue of $3.32 billion.

eBay says the year-over-year increase in the fourth quarter GAAP earnings per diluted share was driven primarily by a gain on the sale of the company’s remaining investment in Skype. The year-over-year increase in the fourth quarter non-GAAP earnings per diluted share was driven primarily by strong top-line growth and improved productivity partially offset by a higher tax rate.

For the full year, revenue increased 27% to $11.7 billion, compared to 2010. The company generated net income on a GAAP basis of $3.2 billion, or $2.46 per diluted share, and non-GAAP net income of $2.7 billion, or $2.03 per diluted share.

eBay President and CEO (and interim PayPal president) John Donahoe said this of the quarter: “We had a strong fourth quarter finish to an excellent year, increasing our confidence in our three-year outlook…Across eBay, PayPal, GSI and X.commerce, we have a robust portfolio of global commerce platforms and innovative mobile, local and social commerce technology assets. We are well-positioned to compete in the emerging new retail environment, and to help retailers of all sizes grow and engage their customers anytime, anywhere. We are a different eBay today, no longer just an ecommerce leader but a stronger, more diverse global commerce company shaping the future of shopping and payments.”

The company’s PayPal business continued to be the crown jewel in eBay’s earnings. PayPal ended the year with 106.3 million active registered accounts, a 13% increase year over year. On average, PayPal added a million new accounts every month in 2011.

PayPal revenue for the quarter increased 28% year over year driven primarily by continued merchant and consumer adoption as well as increased penetration on eBay. In the fourth quarter, revenue from PayPal’s international markets exceeded revenue from the U.S. for the first time. PayPal’s net total payment volume (TPV) grew 24% to $33.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011. PayPal brought in $1.2 billion for the quarter, up 29 percent.

The marketplace business also grew in the fourth quarter, up 16 percent year over year to $1.77 billion, due primarily to increased buying and selling on the platform as well as growth from acquisitions. Gross merchandise volume (GMV), excluding vehicles, increased 10 percent to $16.5 billion with sold items up 11% globally year over year. U.S. GMV, excluding vehicles, increased 10 percent year over year. International GMV, excluding vehicles, increased 9 percent year over year, driven primarily by growth in Europe and in Asia. The company’s GSI business contributed $363.6 million in revenue for the fourth quarter.

In terms of expectations, eBay expects net revenues in the range of $3.05 to $3.15 billion with GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $0.37 – $0.38 and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $0.50 – $0.51 for the first quarter 2012.

For eBay, 2011 was really the year of mobile and local. Via both acquisitions and strategic product launches, the company pushed mobile payments in both its marketplaces and PayPal businesses. PayPal surpassed its expectation of $3.5 billion in mobile payments in 2011, reaching $4 billion for the year. And eBay reached $5 billion in mobile GMV (gross merchandise volume) in 2011.

The company is projecting that eBay would reach $8 billion in mobile GMV in 2012, and PayPal will reach $7 billion in transactions in 2012.

With Donahoe at the helm of both eBay and PayPal, it should be interesting to see how 2012 shapes up for the e-commerce giant. We know that PayPal is debuting an in-store payments technology both via mobile and point of sale systems that is currently being tested on a ‘friends and family’ basis at Home Depot. And we could also see a new PayPal CEO as well.

We’ll be covering the earnings call below, so stay tuned.

EARNINGS CALL:

Donahoe says that the company has a strong fourth quarter. “2011 marked an inflection point for shopping; Online and offline retail are rapidly blending into a seamless multichannel world.”

PayPal is generating excitement about it’s in-store offerings. For retailers, this will give them opportunities to not only engage consumers at checkout but throughout the shopping experience. We will be launching a pilot to 50 Home Depot Stores in San Francisco this week.

Donahoe: We’ve added more new users to eBay in the fourth quarter than we’ve had in the past few years.

In light of Scott Thompson’s recent departure, Donahoe says the PayPal management team has never been stronger. He says Thompson’s departure was a surprise, but he wishes him well. “I feel better about this leadership team than any time in the company’s history.”

Regardless of where you stand on the SOPA battle, you’ve got to agree: seeing what seems to be the entire Internet come together to stand against something is incredible. Each company has a different approach, but their goal is the same: make sure everyone goes to sleep knowing what SOPA is.

While I don’t want to turn today’s protests into a who-did-it-best battle (that’s not at all the point), I’ve got to highlight Turntable.fm’s approach. It’s about as simple as could be, but it just oozes with symbolism.

If the goal is to raise awareness, the most effective form of peaceful protest is the one that spreads your message without inconveniencing those you’re trying to inform. Wikipedia’s approach, as a counter-example, brings a ton of attention to the issue — but it also pisses a lot of people off. It’s a hugely powerful move, but it taints the message for the huge chunk of people who just leave angry and confused.

Now, take a look at the screenshot above. Notice the anti-SOPA/PIPA stickers on each DJ’s laptop lid? That’s Turntable’s approach.

“Wait, what? That’s it?”

Yep, that’s it.

Here’s the thing: on any other day of the year, each DJ’s laptop generally represents which OS they’re using. On a Windows machine? It’ll have a Windows flag. Mac? It’ll have an Apple. Ubuntu? It’ll show Ubuntu’s… logo… thing. It actually becomes something of a point of contention, with OS flamewars breaking out on the regular and “Of COURSE a platform-X user would play this song” stereotyping abound.

Today, everyone playing music on Turntable stands behind the same message: Stop SOPA/PIPA. It’s the very first thing you notice when you enter the room — and if you don’t already know what SOPA/PIPA are, curiosity will almost certainly make you turn to Google, where the information is quite literally front and center. There’s no inconvenience introduced, no damning of the user experience… and yet, it spreads the message just as well as anything else. Add in the headbobbing of the crowd and the inherent power of music, and it comes together into something not only powerful, but also positive. Good job, Turntable.

SOPA protests are everywhere today. The Internet is collectively up in arms about the proposed legislation. Major sites are shut down, banners are everywhere, but that’s online. Boxee is taking the fight to living rooms.

Turn on a Boxee Box today and you’ll be greeted with three large black boxes that clearly state STOP SOPA. There’s no way to miss them. Featured videos generally occupy the prime real estate on the home screen. But not today. Today they direct viewers to a Vimeo video (embedded below) explaining the downfalls of Protect-IP.

Boxee would be uniquely affected by the proposed legislation. The company is built around the idea of open video sharing. SOPA and PIPA could utterly disrupt this practice. Most of Boxee’s video sources are legitimate but many of the service’s apps would no doubt fall victim the purposed legislation’s murky wording.

Boxee’s message is mostly preaching to the choir at this point. Chances are owners of Boxee Boxes are well aware of the horrors of SOPA. But it shows the sheer depth of today’s movement. The message is everywhere: Stop SOPA.

This is a public service announcement to all four of you that visited http://technews.techcrunch.com today and were confused by the jazzy Black Oak Asset Management splash page above; No we have not been hacked. And, no, this is not some kind of elaborate and arcane SOPA/PIPA protest. And while it would be amazing if we did offer complimentary services from the top attorneys & CPA’s [sic] in the area, we don’t. I barely know what a 401K is. 

Our long suffering lead developer Vineet Thanedar explains what’s up:

“In the past, we had our own test server on this IP (hosted at MediaTemple) for those subdomains (technews, primaries and so on). We have long stopped using MT as our hosting provider. It seems that the IP is now used by someone else, Black Oak in this case. I believe this is what happened since the subdomains have existed for a long time and no one likely noticed the change of IP ownership.

I have deleted the DNS mappings for the subdomains in question.”

Yeah, at some point in Mike’s illustrious career he flirted with the idea of a Reddit clone. Eventually we forgot about it and so did MediaTemple until some industrious person who was clearly in a Deep Internet K-hole came across it this morning.

Yes, I get paid modestly to write this stuff. Rimshot. 

FixYa, a product Q&A site, took a look at its own holiday stats to collect some facts about many major cell phones and tablets including iOS and Android devices. The conclusion? iPhone owners tend to be most interested in fixing battery and call quality problems on Android users found a number of screen issues including freezing and problematic interfaces.

They also found that the iPad had far fewer support questions than the aggregate number of Android tablets. Obviously the cohort they surveyed isn’t very statistically useful, but they were able to grab quite a few percentages based on page views of various support questions.

On the gaming front, users overwhelmingly had the most questions about the Xbox 360 and PS3. Coming in third was the Wii and the DS Lite saw the least activity.

Out of all devices, the Xbox 360 saw the most “visits per device” at 188,342 while the iPhone saw 99,000. Oddly, Nokia and Blackberry devices also so a bit of traction as well. Windows itself came in at #4 behind the Wii.

The Coby Kryos was the most problematic tablet followed by the Galaxy Tab.

These sorts of stats are interesting because they offer a window onto what users are thinking about after unboxing their holiday gadgets and finding them lacking or problematic in some respect.

It’s a story that’s all too common these days — once you purchase and activate a shiny new iPhone (and it seems more people are doing this lately), the old one is unceremoniously shoved in a drawer never to be heard from again. Most of the time though the device is still good, and with a little help from Team Whited00r, it could be even better.

Long story short, Whited00r is a custom version of iOS 3.1.3 meant for old-school iDevices: think 2G/3G iPhones and the original iPod Touches.

Despite being based on a very old version of iOS, the team beind the project managed to pack in many of iOS 5′s flourishes and features, from app folders and video recording to multitasking and reminders. Whited00r has been kicking around for a while as a beta, but a stable release was recently pushed out for Apple anoraks to play around with.

Sounds like a pretty good deal, no? Well, there are a few caveats that old-school iPhone owners will need to put up with, like the exclusion of notifications. Also missing is direct access to Apple’s App Store, although the Whited00r team has whipped up a few workarounds for that. Users can jump into the old jailbreak standby Cydia, although the community also has a curated portal of of apps known to work under Whited00r.

Installing Whited00r doesn’t require the iDevice in question to be previously jailbroken as it’ll do all the heavy lifting in that regard, but having previous jailbreak experience makes the process even easier. All it takes to get up and running is to sideload the custom firmware while in iTunes (much easier than it sounds), and that original iPhone of yours will be off to the races.