Category: Tech news

Facebook wasn’t kidding when it announced yesterday that an embeddable button allowing people to subscribe to someone’s public updates was on the way. Today it officially released the Subscribe button, noting that when clicked “The subscribe action is also shared — allowing others to subscribe directly via the News Feed stories, and further increasing viral distribution.” This gives Facebook’s button a distinct advantage over Twitter’s, as the action of following someone through Twitter’s button doesn’t appear in the main tweet stream, only a secondary stream. A “Follow” click will probably only nab you 1 follower, but a “Subscribe” click could create a viral chain that nets you many new Subscribers.

Developers can add the button to their sites via XFBML or Iframe, and choose whether to display an author’s Subscriber count and the faces of existing subscribers. Above are the 3 available designs. The button is already live on many news sites including The Daily Beast / Newsweek, The Huffington Post, TIME.com, washingtonpost.com, and some of TechCrunch’s author drop-downs. To see it in action, click the arrows beside my name at the top of this article.

For sites, the Subscribe buttons will serve as a powerful complement the Facebook’s Like Box plugin, which lets people Like a Facebook Page while on an external website. For individual content producers, it will also make the Subscribe feature a more adequate alternative  to creating a Facebook Page which must be managed separately. There’s still a major problem with Subscribe, in that you have to publish to your friends in order to reach your Subscribers, which I wrote about yesterday and outlined some possible solutions for. With any luck, a fix will be the Subscribe team’s next priority.

Facebook is now clearly looking to usurp for Twitter’s role as the place to follow public figures. By publishing news feed stories of an author’s link to the friends of those who click the button, Facebook has found a way to make promoting its button more lucrative than its competitor’s. Authors will appreciate the viral bump, though users might not necessarily want their subscription actions shared even though that info is technically public, Not only will the buttons create more interconnections on Facebook, but their presence around the web will raise awareness of the feature and get more users to opt into to allowing subscribers.

T-Mobile is unveiling a promotion with mobile payments company Square this week. Basically, T-Mobile is offering its business users an upgrade plan where they can get a 4G Pro smartphone, and an unlimited data, talk and text plan for $69.99 with a two-year contract extension.

But along with all of the above, T-Mobile is chipping in a free Square mobile payments credit card reader with a 4G smartphone upgrade. This appears to be the first promotion of Square by a carrier, which should provide nice publicity for the mobile payments startup.

Square first got a major promotion earlier this year when Apple began selling the mobile payments readers in its retail locations and e-commerce site. Now, Square is sold at 9,000 retail locations, which include Apple, Best Buy, Radio Shack, Target and Wal-Mart.

A few weeks ago, Square, which is processing $11 million in payments per day, launched its own marketing campaign to encourage existing users to give their favorite entrepreneur or small business owner a mobile payments device as a holiday gift.

For a company that generally sticks to fancy-pants Bluetooth headsets and speakers, Jawbone has done a surprisingly good job of making their UP fitness-wristband-thing into a rather trendy item. Alas, there’s another trend going around that’s not nearly as beneficial: complaining that the UP is broken.

Looking to fix things before the UP’s reputation goes down for the count, Jawbone CEO Hosain Rahman has just announced that the company is implementing a full No-Questions-Asked refund policy for anyone with a wonky wristband. They don’t even want it back.

In a letter to UP owners, Rahman says “We recognize that this product has not yet lived up to everyone’s expectations – including our own – so we’re taking action.”

Users looking to take part in the program are offered two options: cash, or Jawbone.com credit. If you take the former, they’ll give you $109.43 (if you’re in the US — it varies a bit based on currency/location); if you go for the credit, they’ll bump it up to $150.

Perhaps most (pleasantly) surprising, Jawbone isn’t making anyone actually send their wristbands back; as long as you promise that you haven’t returned your UP already and that you won’t sell it on eBay or otherwise profit from the device, they’ll cough up the dough. The program kicks off tomorrow, with a placeholder page already up here.

Furthermore, the FAQ page reveals that Jawbone has cancelled all pending UP orders (it seems to be pulled from Amazon already, as well) and pledges to not begin taking orders again until they “have sorted out the issues with [the] UP bands.”

This is perhaps the toughest move the company could make — but given the circumstances, almost certainly the best move as well. It won’t be easy, it won’t be cheap, and Jawbone will undoubtedly pay out a ton of cash to people with fully functional devices — but in the end, the company walks away with their reputation and the opportunity to relaunch the device once the kinks are worked out.

While Twitter is already a leading platform for information distribution, a few aspects of its redesign today show how it’s strengthening itself in this area. It’s improving inline media viewing and tweet embeds to aid viewing and sharing, and adding a personalized Stories section to help users more easily explore the wide world of tweets.

The first, inline media viewing within tweets, is an adjustment from the way you could show media in the previous two-pane view. If a tweet in your home stream contains media, you can click on “View Photo” or “View Media” to reveal it without having to go to another page or pane. So, less clicking through panes, and more engagement as a result. If you share the location of your tweets, they’ll also appear here.

Most interestingly, these inline views also appear to include third-party apps like FourSquare. Any app developer should think hard about how to take advantage of this new platform real estate.

The second change is embedded tweets. While Twitter has offered a way to embed tweets for a year and a half through Blackbird Pie, the new version is more like YouTube, although more hidden in the interface. To get at it, you first click on a tweet to open it within the stream. Then you click on “Details,” the last link in the meta information in the tweet. This will take you to the landing page for the Tweet, which will then include the embed option.

Once you open it, you’ll see a YouTube-style menu that includes HTML, shortcode and the link, as well as a way to adjust the alignment and a view of of what the embed will look like. The resulting tweet contains all of the context, including the Reply, Retweet and Favorite options.

So happy to see @twitter at the top of @techmeme again techmeme.com #itsbeenawhile

—
Miguel Rios (@miguelrios) December 08, 2011

The third change is a conceptual shift: the personalized Stories section that’s the default of the new “# Discovery” page. Twitter has up until this point only shown raw streams of tweets, with the most advanced sorting mechanisms being lists. This new page is specifically designed to help users explore the world of Twitter, and it feels like a personalized newspaper. When I asked product managers at the company about how Stories are determined, the answer I got was a vague “your interests.” These interests are presumably who you follow, what you tweet about, what you click on, etc… I’m guessing they’re determined in a similar way to how Twitter figures out who-to-follow recommendations.

The examples below, like the Virginia Tech shooting and Ice Cube, appear to be popular news stories that aren’t especially tailored to my interests, so we’ll see how Twitter refines this section in the future. But even if it’s not that interesting right now, this sort of algorithmically determined feature is that Twitter can quickly adjust it from this point forward to  match users interests.

Stories feels like it could be especially useful for people who are relatively new to Twitter, who don’t fully understand all the parts of the service even if they know it’s a good place for discovering the information that matters to them.

Check out the rest of our coverage of the changes today, in the links below:

The New Twitter Brand Pages With Bold Banners And Pinned Videos

@&#!!!! Twitter Wants To Own The Symbols With New Redesign

Twitter Redesigns Around Four Concepts: Home Timeline, Connect, Discover, Me #LetsFly

Live At Twitter’s “Come See What We’re Building” Press Conference #LetsFly

Twitter unveiled a major redesign today which will be rolling out slowly. We’ve covered some of the main aspects already such as the new timeline and discover features, as well as how Twitter is trying to become more mainstreamand accessible.

One major change for brands, however, is new brand pages. Not everyone can see what these look like yet, so I’ve pasted some screenshots here from @AmericanExpress, @generalelectric, @JetBlue, and @@McDonalds. The two big changes are a new banner just below the profile information that stretches across the page and the ability to pin a tweet at the top of each brand’s stream. This will give brands a more distinctive presence on Twitter, and should roll out more widely in the first quarter of 2012.

The pinned tweet is particularly effective for tweets with images or video. With the new design, videos and images can be seen inline within your stream (just click “Open” on the top right for tweets with images or videos). On brand pages, these video or photo tweets can be set to be open, adding another visually engaging element to the page.

Twitter is launching the new brand pages with 21 partners. If you have the enhanced version of Twitter enabled, you can see them here: @AmericanExpress, @BestBuy, @bing, @chevrolet, @CocaCola, @Dell, @DisneyPixar, @generalelectric, @Heineken, @HP, @intel, @JetBlue, @Kia, @McDonalds, @nikebasketball, @NYSE_Euronext, @GhostProtocol, @pepsi, @Staples, @subwayfreshbuzz, and @VerizonWireless.

You can also read about the changes on Twitter’s advertising blog.

Facebook has confirmed with me that it has undergone a corporate reorganization. ”We can confirm that in order to streamline the product development process, we have reorganized our technical teams into product groups that report into Mark. These groups will be lead by Bret Taylor, Chris Cox, Greg Badros, Mike Schroepfer, and Sam Lessin.” Though Facebook didn’t formally name the divisions headed by these company leaders, their areas of focus are CTO Taylor – mobile, VP of Product Cox – general product, Badros – ads engineering, VP of Engineering Schroepfer – engineering, and Lessin – Timeline / profile.

Rumors of the reorganization were first published by AllThingsD’s Liz Gannes last night. The company has grown quickly over the last few years, making it difficult to keep those working on related products in sync. Refocusing around these areas should help Facebook make the product development process faster and less erratic. It will also make it easier for CEO Mark Zuckerberg to communicate his vision down to those building and supporting the different facets of the service.

Facebook recently installed two Chief Privacy Officers as part of its settlement with the FTC, Erin Egan for policy and Michael Richter for product. Their roles are to oversee Facebook product development to ensure that privacy is protected and that Facebook upholds the promises it made to the FTC. The new vertically integrated structure will facilitate this oversight and help prevent the building or launch of products that could jeopardize user privacy.

Facebook had 2000 employees a year ago and is aggressively hiring as it prepares to move into its new “1 Hacker Way” 3600 person capacity headquarters (with room to build more offices). While the company has prided itself on staying lean and remaining relatively flat, the reorganization represents necessary growing pains as the company matures. “Move Fast and Break Things” was a strategy that allowed it to iterate quickly and grow a huge lead in social networking. However, with more public scrutiny and an expected $100 billion IPO, the stakes are higher now.

By creating these 5 lieutenant positions that report to Zuckerberg, Facebook will be able to marry efficiency and purpose with innovation.

Heyo! CES is right around the corner and we need some interns to work with us in Las Vegas after the holiday. If you like gadgets, think you can write/edit video, and are free January 10-13 and live in or around or can get to LV, we want to talk to you.

Email me, [email protected] with the subject line “INTERN” describing your interests, skills, and why you’d make a good intern. Eighteen and over only, please, for various, non-creepy, legal reasons.

As location gradually becomes more important to the on-the-go consumer, what with daily deals, check-in coupons, and local promotions, so that consumer’s fine location becomes more important to merchants. GPS and wi-fi can only get you so far, though, and inside a mall or airport it’s much more difficult and inefficient to narrow down a user’s location to anything approaching usability.

There are systems for tracking people and devices indoors, but Scottish startup Sensewhere (formerly Satsis) says they’ve leapfrogged existing solutions. Their new “self-correcting” location-sensing network will allow for quick and low-power situation of devices to within 5m by forming a sort of constantly updated mesh of self-aware devices.

The company, which split off from research at the University of Edinburgh and got its launch money through awards and loans, received £1.2 million in funding from private equity firms just this last August. They’re making their public launch nowish (there have been a few news items over the last week or so) and have made an app available on iOS and Android.

Their technology is similar to existing indoor-tracking systems, but the company says theirs is superior due to its self-updating nature:

If you cut through the marketing there, what you basically have is a self-updating network with devices pinging a central server with the networks they see (wi-fi, Bluetooth, RF, etc.) and their position as best they can determine, and that central server continually collates this data and updates the map, using mobile nodes as reference as well as stationary ones.

Assuming the system works, it could be a great add-on for megastructures like department stores and airports, with tons of device traffic and square footage. While I’m sure it falls short of the idea right now, one imagines the endpoint: get a promo deal when you walk into a store that expires when you walk out – that sort of thing.

Right now it’s available as an app, but it seems unlikely that they’ll see uptake in that form. They’ll have to go white-label and market themselves as a customizable solution for individual locations – that or talk with mapping or deal companies and get themselves integrated at a lower level. No hardware is required for setup at your local mall, but places will still have to tie in and do setup – there’s a lot of low-level work to be done there interfacing with small stores, corporate offices, and so on. Retail is a nightmare but they are always up for new marketing opportunities.

The Sensewhere site is pretty spartan at the moment, but you can get more info on the apps into which the service is integrated through them. The system is described in more detail in their press release and at Crowdsourcing.

Editor’s note: Ben Tseitlin is an entrepreneur who has worked for several startups doing web design and marketing. He also indulges his entrepreneurial urges throught running a startup chocolate company called Benchic Chocolate. He is working with TechCrunch TV as a contributor.

Zerply co-founder Christofer Karltorp believes there’s a creative class (think designers, writers, photographers) that doesn’t think LinkedIn adequately meets their needs. They want to display their professional work in a more creative way. And more importantly, Christofer points out a trend that people of all industries are switching jobs faster than ever.  Many have moved to shorter term projects instead of long-term jobs.  Zerply helps these people showcase their portfolios and projects they’ve worked on.

Zerply also takes a shot at being a part of your reputation graph. It wants you to endorse people based on skills that you vouch for. Plenty of startups have tried to build a reputation graph before or are currently working on it, such as RG Labs.

With its well-designed profile pages and ability to link to your other personal/professional sites (Twitter, your blog, sites like Dribbble that showcase work) Zerply feels like something between LinkedIn and About.me. The important question is: are any of these features enough to make people want to use this over their existing LinkedIn or About.me (or similar) pages? In the interview, Christofer explains why he thinks people will choose to create a Zerply page.

Zerply is a 500 Startups funded company. It has also attracted quite a few notable people to create profiles: Evan Williams, Dave Morin, & Mint.com lead designer Jason Putori.

Space heaters have always struck me as inherently — how shall I put it? — low-echelon devices. They seem best suited to college dorm rooms, along with Simpsons VHS tapes and a Costco-sized box of ramen noodles. Relying on one is maybe one small step above warming your cold-water flat with the gas oven.

In other words, the thought of a “Cadillac of space heaters” seems a bit of an oxymoron.

But the Dyson of space heaters?

Having tackled vacuum cleaners, hand dryers and artificial summer breezes, Dyson is once again taking a mundane home appliance to task.

Meet the Dyson Hot. It is, of course, a thing of beauty. Like Dyson’s Air Multiplier fan and its Stick mini-vac, the Hot is something you wouldn’t mind leaving out to impress your party guests. It costs $400, so there is the hint that part of what you are buying is cachet — even if company founder and product designer Sir James Dyson insists that what he’s selling is the technology, not the cool factor.

Space heaters aim to be economical. You pay only for the power needed to keep a small space comfy, as opposed to paying to “heat the entire house,” as my father used to say when I turned up the thermostat. They are the descendants of the fireplace (and the fire pit, if you want to go back that far), though these days we are less likely to gather around heaters than we are the screens in our living rooms.

I’ve owned several space heaters, mostly to keep pets warm in the hide-aways where they like to hole up. They are expected to heat up quickly, maintain a steady temperature, operate with a reasonable level of power efficiency and, above all, be safe. Heaters that use fossil fuels are non-starters (no pun intended) but even most electric-coil models don’t instill enough confidence that you’d feel comfortable leaving them unattended.

None of these concerns exist with the Dyson Hot. It heats up quickly and runs quietly compared to the other forced-air space heaters I’ve owned.

You’d have no qualms leaving it in a room with pets or children. The heating plates are fully enclosed — they run vertically along the flattened sides of the oval. It’s tough to knock it over, since it’s bottom-heavy. But, like most space heaters if it does fall over, it shuts off.

And — it oscillates! And tilts forward and back! Which means the whole room will get heat, not just the narrow area at which it’s pointed. It’s still remarkably efficient even without the oscillation in smaller rooms. In an overnight test with the oscillator off, it kept an 8×10 room warm despite an open window (about 50 degrees Fahrenheit outside).

A couple other small usability features worth noting: The remote is the familiar, slightly arched variety that ships with Dyson’s air multiplier fans. This one, however, can be attached to the unit by a magnet at the very top.

Dyson also claims the Hot doesn’t stink up your abode with a burning smell. I didn’t use the review unit long enough to determine if this was true or not, but since the heating elements are vertical and encased, the chance it would collect dust does seem minimal.

As usual, there’s really nothing to complain about with a Dyson product — except the price. There are plenty of options priced at one tenth the cost. And even though the Dyson Hot doubles as a cool air fan in the summer months, the “total cost of ownership” argument is still a stretch.

Dyson is free to charge whatever the market will bear, of course, which is usually a hefty premium above both the “good enough” alternatives and the luxe competitors. Because you’re paying a premium for the design, the company is often compared to Apple, an association which quickly becomes tiring. But there it is. And it’s hard to argue with success. Vive le capitalism!

WIRED Compact and stylish. Safety features are comforting. Doubles as a cool air fan in the warmer months. Remote’s design is the best use of a magnet since the iPad 2’s Smart Cover.

TIRED I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Price.

Company CEO James Dyson indicates the Dyson Hot’s general position in space and time.

Photos courtesy of Dyson

This trainer was designed specifically for Windows Phone 7, and it shows. Track your duration, distance, pace, and more with easy-to-read type. Swipe to chart your speed and altitude or view your route on a map. Set a goal and the app delivers voice reports on your progress.

Marathon

WIRED Mile-by-mile training details. Works for running, biking, skiing, and hiking. Competition mode lets you race against your previous times.

TIRED Busy background image detracts from the otherwise clean look.

Are you a bargain hunter? Then download this app, which catalogs Amazon’s complete inventory. Next time you’re in a brick-and-mortar store, use the snappy barcode search (iPhone and Android only) to search for better prices. Add an item to your wish list or buy it on the spot with a few taps.

WIRED Search results update as fast as you can type. Offers links to track outstanding orders.

TIRED No way to sort search results by price — pretty lame, given that discounts are Amazon’s big sell.

Zipcar’s 9,000-plus fleet of vehicles has brought the car-share model of urban transport to 15 metropolitan areas in the US, Canada, and the UK. A $60 annual fee gets you in, and rates start at $7.75 an hour (gas included). Tell the app where and when you need a ride, and use the virtual key fob to unlock the car when you arrive.

WIRED Search by vehicle type. Cheaper than car insurance.

TIRED Limited geographic availability. App is slow to load.

Backgrounds offers hi-res downloadable wallpapers ranging from photos (landscapes, cars, puppies) to swirling psychedelic abstractions. Browse recent additions or dig in by category.

WIRED Updated frequently. Android version has convenient Set as Wallpaper button (iOS users must save to a library first).

TIRED Not curated — at least not by anyone with taste. You have to wade through horrible kitsch to find the good stuff. Banner ads obscure images on iPhone and iPad versions.

Ever had your phone swiped? This mobile security guard lets you track your device on a web-based map, set it on lockdown, and even wipe out its data to make sure the thievery goes no further. Not sure whether it’s been stolen or just gone missing in your own home? You can sound off an alarm, even if the phone’s set to vibrate.

SeekDroid

WIRED Easy setup requires only a username and password.

TIRED Doesn’t offer SMS-based tracking.