Category: Tech news

Some headphones are built for kicking back on the couch and melting into the music. Others are built for the road, whether it’s a long flight or just cruising around the hood.

Sennheiser’s travel-minded MM 550 wireless Bluetooth headphones fit the latter category — they’re some street-ready cans that can handle the rigors of the road while offering solid sound quality.

The MM 550s have a closed-back design that’s light but sturdy, with a good amount of flex. They also have a slim profile and can fold up into a shape and size similar to a banana.

Unlike a banana, the Sennheisers come with 10 pages of instructions on how to operate them — I’ve rigged up A/V receivers with less verbiage. Suffice it to say, these headphones have plenty of features to maximize sound and minimize noise, depending on the listening situation, and some other handy bells and whistles.

When you put the MM 550s on, you feel their grip. These will hang on just fine on a bike ride across town. The build quality is solid, and could likely endure some abuse on far-flung travels. The earpieces are somewhat compact, so if you have large ears, it might even feel like they’re too snug for comfort.

On the right ear pad are the MM 550’s controls, including power–play–pause, track skip, volume, noise canceling, Bluetooth and the “SRS WOW HD enhancer.” On the left ear pad is a micro-USB charging port.

The wireless Bluetooth connection is simple enough to set up, and in my testing there were no hiccups or interference when pairing it with an iPhone. Using the headset to take phone calls was fairly painless, too, although I did hear some street noise while cruising down the sidewalk. Callers reported that they could hear me easily, but were also picking up ambient noises in the background. When you’re playing music and a call comes in, the MM 550s interrupt the music and return you when the call is terminated.

While some noise-canceling cans introduce hissing and other sounds, Sennheiser’s NoiseGard 2.0 technology does a fine job of blocking out external, ambient noises. The MM 550s blocked everything while I sat in a cafe and walked around outside.

However, while some other noise-canceling cans will block out 99 percent of external noise, the MM 550s only block 90 percent, which is noticeable on airplanes and other heavy-duty-noisy environments. One of the somewhat unique features is, when the noise canceling is in effect, you can press the “Talk Through” button to hear external sounds come through the cans, which saves you the trouble of taking them off to have a conversation.

The expectation has long been that you won’t get the same level of sound quality with wireless headphones as you would with wired cans, and in this case, you have the option of wiring into an audio source to compare the sound quality. In both wired and wireless modes, the MM 550s offered sharp and balanced sound, with enough bass response to handle hip-hop and other boomin’ tracks.

Since these are sealed cans, they offer some isolation from the outside world, even with the noise-canceling feature off. But as with many other “closed” headphones, they sound less lively and dynamic than most high-quality, open-air headphones. If you’re looking for more pizzazz, the SRS WOW HD enhancer delivers more in the higher frequencies and punchier bass.

At $500, the Sennheiser MM 550s are quite pricey, but if you have use for all the travel-handy features, they might fit the bill. The build quality and styling are top-notch, and the sound quality, while not superior, can be adjusted to your preferences.

WIRED Slick design. Compact and foldable. Loaded with travel features for different listening environments.

TIRED Nonstandard cord could be a hassle to replace. Closed design and tight grip may cause ear fatigue during long listening sessions. Steep price tag.

Photo by Jim Merithew/Wired.com

So do you remember about a month ago when I wrote that Uber (the order-a-car-from-your-iPhone sensation in taxi-challenged San Francisco) is coming to New York City? (Sure you do. It was a great story.) Well, that day is here. The company soft-launched its service in New York City today. If you download the Uber app, it now works in Manhattan and the outer boroughs.

I know because I just ordered an Uber car on my iPhone in midtown Manhattan in the rain, and a big black SUV picked me up in about five minutes. Same great service as in San Francisco. I watched as it located a driver and saw the car move towards me on a street map (see screenshot). My driver, Yosef, was friendly and courteous. He told me he had to pass a rigorous test on his knowledge of New York city streets to become part of the Uber fleet. Everything was charged to my Uber account, and I saw the amount pop up on my iPhone at the end of the ride. I rated Yosef as a driver, and he rated me, and my ride was over.

The total amount from 23rd street to Grand Central Terminal, 20 blocks away, was $15—about twice as much as a regular cab ride. (Uber gave me a $10 credit, though, perhaps to ease New Yorkers into the service). The truth is that even though it was raining, I could have grabbed a cab or hopped on the subway. I saw a few free cabs. New York City doesn’t have the same scarcity issue as San Francisco when it comes to cabs or car service. But the convenience totally outweighs the expense in certain situations—when you are late for an important meeting or want to impress a date or really can’t find a cab. I have yet to test the service in rush hour when it really counts, but I think Uber will find plenty of riders willing to pay twice as much for the feeling of a private driver.

For those TechCrunch readers in New York City, don’t all order an Uber car at once. There are only a few dozen drivers currently on the service.

There’s two kinds of people in this world: Those that can sleep on buses, trains and planes, and those who can’t. If you are the former, you’re welcome – TravAlert is an GPS enabled iPhone, Blackberry and Android app that allows you to get your precious ZZZs (or read a book, or listen to music) while you travel, without having to worry about whether you’ll miss your stop.

Creator Frank Gu came up with the idea after painfully and repeatedly missing his stop on his bus commute, “It’s a huge pain to get off, reverse your route and go back to your stop, a few times it was the last bus of the day resulting in some very ‘interesting’ situations.”

TravAlert works by sending out a GPS ping every X number of seconds to figure out your location relative to your destination. Sleepy travelers can enter whether they’re on a bus or a train and their destination into the app, setting the alert for either minutes or miles away. You can also adjust the alarm’s sound, make it vibrate or even select a song from your phone’s song library.

In order to save phone battery life (the app obviously doesn’t work if your phone is dead), Gu has created an optimized algorithm to GPS ping efficiently depending on where you are in the travelling process. If you’re at the beginning of your trip the app pings slowly like every sixty seconds and but as you get closer to your stop TravAlert speeds its pings up to about ten/twenty or so. The app also speeds up after you go under bridges and tunnels in case you lose signal.

In case you travel on things other than buses and trains, Gu also has plans to create functionalities for air travel (with airport maps instead of an actual alarm) and for automobile travel, which lets users figure out if destinations like a McDonalds or an outlet mall are “on the way,” using a custom radius “bubble” of two miles.

“How many times are you going from A to B (say a roadtrip) and are craving a certain thing (certain fast food chain, gas station, etc), but not enough to drop everything you’re doing to pursue it?,” says Gu. I think he’s definitely on to something.

Last week, Bloomberg Businessweek published an article titled Do Not Anger the Alpha Android, in which it detailed the decreasing level of openness and increasing restrictions Google is placing on hardware manufacturers looking to take advantage of the hugely popular mobile OS. Despite receiving plenty of attention attention, Google has remained mum on the article — until now.

Android head Andy Rubin has just written a blog post that references “misinformation in the press about Android and Google’s role in supporting the ecosystem” and that he’s going to “attempt to set the record straight.” The gist of his post: we’re the same friendly green robot as we’ve always been. Whether or not people will buy that is another question.

The post highlights a few issues that have been raised in the press. One is the question of whether or not Honeycomb will be open sourced any time soon (Android, which gets plenty of attention for being ‘open’, still hasn’t released the Honeycomb source despite the fact that it’s been on the Xoom for over a month).

Rubin confirms that Honeycomb is in fact being held back as the team makes its features compatible with phones, but asserts that it’s still coming and that it “does not represent a change in strategy”. In other words, Android will keep open sourcing each new version (and my hunch is they’ll try to avoid similar delays in the future to avoid this kind of backlash. I also suspect that Honeycomb won’t actually be open-sourced at all, and that the version of Android that does get released will be Ice Cream Sandwich).

The second issue addressed: whether or not Google is collaborating with ARM to create a standardized Android chipset. Rubin explicitly denies this, saying “There are not, and never have been, any efforts to standardize the platform on any single chipset architecture.”

Finally, and most ambiguously, is the allegation in the Businessweek article that Google “has recently tightened its policies” over what device manufacturers wishing to feature Google apps must agree to. And that’s where things get murky.

In the post, Rubin writes that devices wishing to get the ‘Android-compatible’ stamp of approval have always had to conform with both basic compatibility requirements and anti-fragmentation agreements. Rubin writes that they’ve always been there, and that “there are no lock-downs or restrictions against customizing UIs” — in other words, HTC Sense and its ilk are still fine.

But the Businessweek article includes some allegations that Rubin doesn’t really address, like these:

There will be no more willy-nilly tweaks to the software. No more partnerships formed outside of Google’s purview. From now on, companies hoping to receive early access to Google’s most up-to-date software will need approval of their plans. And they will seek that approval from Andy Rubin, the head of Google’s Android group.

The key words here are “early access”. Yes, as Rubin says, manufacturers can still access the Android code once it’s released and the same old rules apply, but there’s no doubt that Google is giving preferential treatment to certain carriers and hardware manufacturers in return for their cooperation.

And, as the Businessweek article points out, there’s a strong incentive to get first dibs on a new version of Android. You’re first to market, you get loads of press coverage, and so on. Google can dangle this carrot, and then ask for restrictions that go well beyond what it typically requires. Presumably Google uses its own apps, like Maps and Gmail, as a similar (albeit smaller) carrot.

Of course, Google has almost certainly been negotiating such deals since Android first launched. It’s entirely possible given the success of the platform that Google can afford to be more aggressive when it makes its requests to carriers and OEMs — which would explain why they’re upset. Then again, if that means fewer carrier-bundled apps and useless skins, I don’t think users are going to be complaining much.

Video on the web may be ubiquitous these days, but while uploading a few amateur clips to YouTube is a cinch, things get hairy fast as soon as you start encoding and managing your own video content. From codecs to huge file sizes to actually putting that content in a playable form, handling a lot of video footage requires plenty of processing power and advanced software.

One company that’s long been involved in this space is Sorenson Media, which offers cloud-based services at an enterprise scale and also develops desktop encoding software like Squeeze. And this week the company has some big news: Technicolor will be using Sorenson’s ‘Squeeze Solution Pack’ to help power a new cloud-based system for motion picture and television dailies.

Dailies, for those of us outside of show biz, are the tapes of rough footage produced and distributed as a film or TV shoot is ongoing — allowing people involved with the production to stay abreast of its progress. And, as Sorenson CEO Peter Csathy explains in the video above, the security of these dailies is of the utmost importance — to the point that some studios still distribute them by hand.

Csathy says that the new solution that Technicolor is developing using Sorenson’s technology will give studios a more efficient way to manage this content that doesn’t require sending interns across town. For more details, check out the video.

Bizness Apps, a startup that gives small businesses the tools to quickly and easily build mobile apps, has a bit of a Zuckerberg-ian early history. Well, admittedly the Facebook comparison is a bit tenuous, because Bizness Apps’ story is likely akin to what a much larger percentage of entrepreneurs actually experience. Really, few are lucky enough to turn down multi-million dollar funding or acquisition offers. And, no, the startup probably won’t attract 600 million users, but, at the very least, it’s a useful example for young (specifically, college-aged) entrepreneurs.

The startup was founded by Andrew Gazdecki, who was, at the time of the company’s founding in 2010, a junior at California State University. Less than four months after launch, the startup raised a $50K round of seed funding from two angel investors, namely Build.com CEO Chris Friedland (see his reasons for investing here) and founder and CEO of Collegescheduler.com Robert Strazzarino.

How Gazdecki raised the funding is a good example for young entrepreneurs and CEOs raising capital: if you believe in your business, don’t settle. In the fall of last year, Gazdecki won a business competition at California State and, as a result, was introduced to Chris Friedland after the event. Friedland took the young entrepreneur out for lunch and whipped out his checkbook in the process, offering to write Gazdecki a check for $25K in return for 20 percent of the company.

“As a kid in college, you can imagine how fast my heart was racing”, the founder said of his experience. But, knowing that he was onto something with Bizness Apps, he declined the investor’s offer — checkbook and all. Friedland stayed after him, though, and a week later brought the college student into his office and offered him $50K for 20 percent. Again, Gazdecki politely refused, and walked out of his office. But the investor went after him, waved him back, and eventually talked him to $50K for 13 percent.

In the big picture, $50K is not a lot of money, but for a 20-year-old to show that kind of poise is impressive. I would’ve sold for $500 and a grilled cheese. What’s more, Gazdecki tells me that, since November, the team (he added three more CSU seniors) has been growing the company primarily based on internal revenue and hopes to avoid further outside investment. That might be possible. In February, Bizness Apps revenue grew 400 percent, and by 100 percent in March. The CEO said that he thinks that the team can build a $20 million company in a year or two. That’s great and all, but you know what’s cool? A $200 million company.

As to where that revenue is coming from? Bizness Apps makes money from monthly support and maintenance fees, but a large portion of the startup’s revenue emanates from its work building an international network of app resellers.

In other words, for companies looking to produce more than 10 apps per month, the startup offers a complete white label solution — for a competitive price. This allows, say, regular marketing firms to provide in-house mobile app development for their multiple clients using the startup’s DIY mobile app platform. And Gazdecki is bullish about the prospective international market, telling me that the startup has already worked with businesses in 10 different countries.

As my colleague Robin Wauters pointed out in his post in November, whether or not you believe that every business needs its own app, at $39 Bizness Apps is very affordable for SMBs that don’t want to shell out the big bucks.

What’s more, up to this point, Bizness Apps has only offered the tools to create iOS apps, but beginning today, the startup adds Android to the list. As before, Bizness allows small business (restaurants, bars, realtors, etc.) to simultaneously create, edit, and manage app creation and development online — without any programming knowledge needed. And now businesses can hit both Android and iOS users.

The price for using a single platform will remain at $39, and those that want to create both Android and iOS apps will pay $59.

Considering how cheap the service is — and that apps are custom-made for each business, submitted to the App Store and Marketplace, and regularly updated with new features and improvements by the Bizness Apps team — I think Bizness Apps has great potential. Sure, the apps the team is making won’t be akin to the best native apps on the market, but you can make apps in 5 minutes, and there aren’t any setup fees.

Gazdecki told me that, in spite of his company’s growth and appealing prospects, both he and the team will be graduating from California State in May. So, for you slackers out there, it is indeed possible to build a successful company and get the requisite amount of book learnin’. Gazdecki said he isn’t sure how they’ve managed to both, but it is possible. Now, imagine if Zuckerberg and Moskowitz had stayed at Harvard.

It’s not for everyone, but getting your diploma, while hustling to grow your business, is worth it. Don’t settle for less, and use your failures to make your business — or your next ventures — better.

I’d be lying if I said that I haven’t taken some delight in watching the complete and utter collapse of Blockbuster.

You see, back when I was a child, our community had a couple of thriving local video stores that were the source of pretty much endless enjoyment for me. Then Blockbuster came along. By then, the company was already a mega-chain of blue and gold awnings that decorated much of the country. They had inventory that simply could not be matched. Unsurprisingly, they crushed the local video stores.

This happened all over the country for years. Goliath didn’t just beat David, he obliterated him simply by showing up — and then danced on his grave while entertaining his children.

You’d think the sheer momentum of such a behemoth would make them unbeatable. And yet, here we are. Earlier today came word that Dish Network was buying Blockbuster’s assets out of bankruptcy court for around $230 million — in cash. This is the same company that Viacom once paid $8.4 billion for (and later spun them off in their own multi-billion dollar IPO). The fall from grace is almost unbelievable.

But it’s actually not if you’ve been following Blockbuster over the past several years. And their tale could end up being a great cautionary one for today’s current crop of giants. And more importantly, it might serve as a point of inspiration for startups going up against a seemingly unbeatable giant.

Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc. All of these guys may seem unbeatable. If they’re investing resources into a space, you might as well not even try, right? But that’s exactly what Reed Hastings did in 1998 when he started Netflix. He was simply a disgruntled Blockbuster customers who was sick of the ridiculous late fees and thought he could do better with a new approach to movie rentals.

Blockbuster undoubtedly laughed at Netflix at the time. In fact, two years later, Blockbuster could have bought Netflix for just $50 million — quite literally pocket change for a company that had held a $5 billion IPO the year prior. Blockbuster refused all such offers, as Fast Company’s excellent rundown of the best Blockbuster gaffes reminds us.

Instead, Blockbuster put a huge investment into Enron (their broadband services subsidiary). You can’t make this stuff up.

It wasn’t until 2004 — six years after Netflix launched — that Blockbuster realized it needed to enter the online DVD rental-by-mail space. By then, Netflix was already turning a profit and Redbox had just launched. Blockbuster was already dead — they just didn’t realize it yet.

It’s such a great example of a company resting on its laurels and getting blindsided. But it’s hardly even fair to call it a “blindsiding”. Blockbuster probably could have done dozens of things to counter the rise of Netflix in that initial six year space. They were either simply too arrogant, too slow, too stupid, or all of the above to make a move.

That’s why it’s impressive that Google is making such big changes to the company right now, when they’re arguably at the peak of their power. Their not resting on their laurels. Hundreds of challengers are gunning for them in a number of areas, and the co-founders apparently saw the company slipping a bit — as did some of the rest of us — and decided to proactively make some bold moves, all of which we haven’t likely seen yet.

That’s pretty much the opposite of Blockbuster towards the end of their run. You had a CEO defiantly declaring that Netflix was no real threat. The best quote: ”I’ve been frankly confused by this fascination that everybody has with Netflix …Netflix doesn’t really have or do anything that we can’t or don’t already do ourselves.”

This was a guy, Jim Keyes, who had just attempted to take over Circuit City, thinking that would solve Blockbuster’s problems — more retail stores. A few months later, Circuit City went belly up. The fact that Blockbuster didn’t end up buying them probably saved them from the same fate for the remaining two years of life.

Later, Blockbuster’s head of digital strategy had another money quote in a sit-down with Fast Company. “We’re strategically better positioned than almost anybody out there. Never in my wildest dreams would I have aimed this high,” he said indicating that they could still beat Netflix.

The famed former Iraqi Information Minister couldn’t say this stuff with a straight face.

So if you’re out there working on a startup in a space owned by a giant, just remember that nothing lasts forever. Even the biggest companies eventually grow complacent and get taken down. There are angles and new ideas all over the place that they simply cannot (or will not) see around their egos and wads of cash.

They will snooze and they will lose. Every night used to be a great night to make it a Blockbuster night.

[top photo: flickr/trebomb]

The battle for the in-dash system is just starting to heat up, as we leave the era of half-hearted in-house interfaces and enter a period where your car will be as powerful and accessible as your smartphone. Ford’s been leading this charge with Sync, and Tesla has a new approach as well, and now Microsoft and Toyota are putting their heads together to make a new platform, and like everything else these days, it’s in the cloud.

The announcement is a bit short on details, but it’s clear that this isn’t just a new GPS system using Bing. Microsoft is hoping to position itself as the connective tissue between people and their cars.

Continue reading…

Since the first quarter just ended, Twitter’s PR team decided to tweet updates stats regarding the state of Twitter today. Of them, the biggest is that Twitter saw a 41 percent increase in tweets per day (and a 38 percent increase in the U.S.) for the quarter.

But the biggest single number isn’t pertaining to Q1 at all, it’s live. Twitter is now seeing 155 million tweets a day. That’s up from just 55 million a year ago, the company says. It’s also up from 140 million just a few weeks ago.

The full stats:

@twitterglobalpr
Twitter Comms

Been playing with numbers. Big Q1 for Twitter… 41% increase in Tweets per day. 38% increase in Tweets per day in US. [1/5]

about 3 hours ago via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@twitterglobalpr
Twitter Comms

There was a 52% increase in monthly Twitter account signups from December to March — with 57% increase in the US. [2/5]

about 3 hours ago via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@twitterglobalpr
Twitter Comms

Mobile growth on Twitter was big. There was a 50% increase in monthly unique mobile signups. [3/5]

about 3 hours ago via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@twitterglobalpr
Twitter Comms

Q1 increase in Twitter app monthly users – 104% Android, 72% iPad, 55% iPhone, 51% Blackberry [4/5]

about 3 hours ago via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@twitterglobalpr
Twitter Comms

Oh and – not a Q1 stat – but noticed that we're now at 155 million Tweets per day, up from 55 million at this time last year. [5/5]

about 3 hours ago via webReplyRetweetFavorite

Google may have paid as much as $150 million in stock grants to retain key product employees Sundar Pichai and Neal Mohan, say multiple sources. Both were offered the chief product role at Twitter earlier this year (cofounder Jack Dorsey eventually filled the position), but Google offered Pichai $50 million and Mohan $100 million, respectively, to stay, say multiple sources. In what could be called an IQ test, both accepted Google’s offer.

The stock grants are significantly higher than what we’ve unearthed previously, but the model is the same. Google grants restricted stock to the employee that vests over time (two years in the case of Sundar and 3 or 4 years with Neal, says one source). An engineer last year was offered $3.5 million in stock to stay. At the time it seemed outrageous.

There’s lots to say about the statement Google is making with these counteroffers. “Don’t mess with us,” comes to mind. As well as “If you’re a Google employee and you aren’t out interviewing at Facebook, Twitter or Zynga you are a moron.” Regardless, the fact that large fortunes are being handed out to mid level technical managers is somewhat of a red flag in general. That kind of money is usually reserved for founders of companies that make it to IPO. Actually, most IPO founders make substantially less than that.

What’s more fascinating is this. In at least one of the cases Google is said to have made a counteroffer before the employee even told Google they were considering an offer from Twitter.

We previously reported that Google had set up a special group to respond to these situations quickly, sometimes overnight. But we’ve never heard of Google making counter offers prior to the actual offer from Facebook or Twitter being made.

Multiple sources close to Twitter have said that someone with access to Twitter’s most confidential information, such as who they are interviewing for key executive spots, may be leaking that information directly to Google. In this case, Google may have acted on that information too quickly. And people at Twitter, say these sources, are steaming mad.

I spoke to Twitter PR earlier today about this story and they declined to comment. I’ve been unable to reach Google for comment.

Ever since Qwiki won the last TechCrunch Disrupt in September, it’s been working on an iPad app. In fact, one of its overexcited developers showed me a peek back then. Well, it’s come along way since then, and Qwiki is currently working on the finishing touches before submitting a real app to the iTunes store sometime in the next few weeks.

Qwiki founder and CEO Doug Imbruce dropped by my office today to give me a preview. Of course, I tried to get it on video, but he wouldn’t show me a demo on camera. But he did talk about it, and you can see what the main screen looks like in the video above.

In many ways, Qwiki was built for the iPad. It is an information consumption service that animates Wikipedia text-to-speech summaries with images and photos from across the Web. The user interface naturally lends itself to swiping through the animated Qwikis and taking “information consumption off the desktop.”

The iPad app will also have “a very interesting geography feature,” Imbruce hints. I’ll let you guess what it is. But Imbruce is a big believer that “location is one of the most important signals of the next decade.” Given the recent $1 million investment in the company by the founders of Groupon (estranged Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin is also an investor), perhaps Qwiki can find a way to tap into its rich database of local businesses and local Groupons. (Wait, is that the beginnings of a business model I see?) Imbruce also talks about why he moved the company from New York City to San Francisco (recruiting engineers).

And just for fun, let’s see that backstage video from Disrupt of the original iPad prototype.

Earlier today, I dropped by the TechStars NY office to check out some of the startups in its inaugural class in New York City before they do their big Demo Day next week. The place was buzzing, and the startups I saw were all way more polished than I expected. I wasn’t the only one there to get an early peek. Rich Miner of Google Ventures and Mark Suster of GRP (and also a regular TechCrunch contributor) were there mentoring some of the startups, but also—let’s be honest—getting an early look before the throngs of other investors descend upon Demo Day next week.

The activity and interest you see on the West Coast with Y Combinator startups, which now have an open offer to get funded sight unseen by Yuri Milner’s and Ron Conway’s Start Fund, is starting to show up on the the East Coast. It’s not quite as crazy yet, but it’s getting there.

While I was at TechStars, I shot the video above of founders Brad Feld, David Cohen and New York managing director David Tisch. (Some of the audio is a little soft, so turn up the volume).

Feld doesn’t think that valuations are out of whack, or that the supposed $4 million line is even a rational way to look at it. But there definitely is a rise in interest from follow-on investors. One startup, OnSwipe, already raised $1 million. (They are building awesome tablet-ready publishing tools for mobile Websites).

Cohen gives props to Paul Graham and what he started with Y Combinator, but explains how TechStars is taking a slightly different approach. TechStars is all about inundating each startup with tons of advice and mentors—up to ten world-class mentors for each startup, packed into a three-month period. From what I saw, this approach seems to be working.

TechStars recently raised another $8 million to expand its seed accelerator programs from Boulder to New York, Seattle, and Boston, and is working create affiliated accelerators throughout the country through its TechStars Network. (Stay tuned next week, for more details on the graduating startups from the NYC program).

There’s no doubt that politicians and political campaigns need to engage with the web, whether it be for fundraising, event outreach, news, debates and more. While Presidential and other heavily funded campaigns can afford to hire digital consultants like Blue State Digital to coordinate their online efforts, many current and potential candidates simply don’t have the resources and funds to build a fancy platform from scratchEnter NationBuilder, a SaaS platform that allows political candidates to build a sleek website in minutes that supports fundraising efforts, a blog, volunteer outreach, payment processing, calendars and more.

NationBuilder includes the ability for non-techies to create a branded website, blog as well as import contact lists and send email blasts directly from the site. In terms of social media NationBuilder allows you to have integrate multiple Facebook and Twitter accounts and Tweet and Facebook Message from these accounts. Even the ability to send mass text messages is fully baked into the platform.

One of the most useful features of NationBuilder is a finances dashboard that will track the number of donors, average donation per supporter, amount raised in the day, the month, the year, the primary to the entire election cycle. Users can set a goal for the amount of money to raise or number of donors and a prominent thermometer displays the progress to your supporters. And NationBuilder hooks directly into Authorize.net, PayFlow Pro, and other payment processors.

Other features include event management with ticketing, volunteer organization, maps, calendars and uch more. It is essentially a one stop shop for creating a website for a political campaign. Pricing ranges from $20 per month to $500 per month. Email and text blasts are extra and the startup allows users to try out the platform for free for two weeks.

NationBuilder was founded by Jim Gilliam, a documentary film producer who also has significant web experience. He helped launch Business.com as its Chief Technology Officer, and worked at Lycos back in the day. Gilliam founded NationBuilder as a passion project and quickly realized the need for an inexpensive, easy to use platform to help political candidates (and nonprofits) build a presence on the web. He experimented with an early version of the site last Fall with a few candidates and campaigns, and is now opening NationBuilder up to the public today. With the 2012 election season ramping up, I’d say it’s pretty good timing.

Making babies is hard work. First you’ve got to find someone to make the baby with — which, depending on the status of your face and how often you do Borat impressions, might be the hardest part. Then you’ve got to spend the next 9 months eating right, avoiding illness, picking names, and remembering to not go skydiving. I’ve yet to have a kid (mainly because I’m still pretty young and I saw enough after-school specials as a lad to scare me away until I’m at least 70), but it seems pretty much impossible.

Fortunately, we live in the future. We’ve got friggin’ supercomputers in our pockets. Surely, these things can make the baby-making process easier? So far, most of the apps out there have been targeted at just half of the baby-building duo; they’re either built for Mom, or they’re built for Dad. A new release this week, Baby Connection, aims to bring both parents into the picture with a rather clever idea: a two-part app.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

Over the past year or so, we’ve seen a major push by a few of the large Internet companies to move towards SSL encryption — that is, HTTPS instead of the standard old HTTP. Undoubtedly spurred on by tools like Firesheep, this is slowly but surely making the web more secure. And today Foursquare is the latest to make the move.

As they tweeted out this morning, all of Foursquare now defaults to HTTPS. The company tells us that this means not only the main website (which is less important for Foursquare usage), but also the mobile site and most importantly, the clients. “We’re moving to HTTPS proactively to increase the security of all Foursquare accounts,” PR Manager Erin Gleason says.

Again, solid move. And not the easiest one to make. One of the main reasons that every site/service doesn’t turn it on is a simple one: it means a performance hit. While Google began defaulting to HTTPS last year for Gmail, they only did so after the China hacking incident. And they still haven’t done it for Google.com — though they have been testing it. Facebook only began defaulting to it this year after hesitating because of yes, the performance hit it brings. Twitter also still doesn’t default to it, but added it as an option last month.

It’s good to see Foursquare making this move across the board in the name of security. Remember, they had issues of their own once.

@foursquare
 

Good news: all of foursquare is now https! (For non-nerds: this means foursquare is even more secure)

about 11 hours ago via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite