Category: Tech news

As Groupon weighs a $5 billion+ acquisition offer from Google and LivingSocial is believed to be about get a $100 Million to $150 million cash infusion from Amazon, it is instructive to look at the difference between the two companies. Hitwise looked at a 81 group-buying sites and came up with the chart above, which shows that Groupon commands 79 percent of U.S. visits to the group buying category, whereas No. 2 site LivingSocial only has an 8 percent share.

This is what market leadership looks like, and explains why Google may be willing to overpay for Groupon. In general, the Internet coalesces around market leaders for different categories—the gorillas. And the gap between No. 1 and No. 2 is usually vast. It was true in auctions (eBay), e-commerce (Amazon), search (Google), and social networking (Facebook). And it will happen in social commerce as well.

Although, earlier today, a LivingSocial executive noted at the SAI Ignition conference that LivingSocial is on track to do $500 million in revenues next year (it wasn’t clear if he was talking about the gross value of deals going through LivingSocial or the actual revenues that will be booked by LivingSocial—whereas Groupon will do well above $500 million in top-line revenues this year). What do you think? Will social commerce be yet another winner-take-most market?

UPDATE: LivingSocial just confirmed a $175 million investment from Amazon.

Google’s App Engine, a platform that helps developers build web applications by streamlining some of the work they’d typically have to do themselves, is getting a big upgrade today.

The App Engine team is calling today’s 1.4.0 release the biggest they’ve done this year, with features that include: a new Channel API that makes it much easier to build real-time Push events into your app; ‘Always On’, which lets developers pay $9 per month to keep three ‘instances’ of their application alive at all times; and Warm Up Requests, which automatically load instances of applications just before they’re needed, which helps reduce load times when users begin accessing the application.

App Engine is also increasing some of its API limits. Developers will now be able to run background tasks (like cron jobs) that have a 10 minute limit, instead of the existing 30 second limit for user-based tasks. Size limits on URLFetch, Memcache, and Image API have all been boosted from 1MB to 32MB; the Mail API limit for outgoing attachments has been boosted from 1MB to 10MB.

Finally, there’s a new ‘high replication datastore’ that’s being rolled out, that will minimize how often developers’ data is inaccessible due to scheduled downtime.

App Engine’s Technical Lead and Manager Kevin Gibbs and Product Manager Sean Lynch say that the new changes will help minimize developer headaches across the board — the previous API limits, they say, were frustrating to some developers, while scheduled downtime could draw the ire of their customers. And the new push capabilities and file size limits open the door to new kinds of apps that can be built on App Engine.

In addition to today’s new features, the App Engine team is also announcing some of its recent stats. The platform now serves 1 billion page views per day across all of its applications, and is used by 100,000 developers per month. Below is a graph showing how the number of page views has increased over time.

Chrome 8 is here! Chrome 8 is here! The latest greatest version of Chrome! Joyous day, right? Don’t tell Google that. The search giant announced the (stable) launch not on their Google blog, and not even on their Google Chrome blog, but on their Google Chrome Releases blog. And in the post, they devote a whole two sentences to it. The rest is all about bug fixes.

But to those who follow Chrome closely, this shouldn’t be a big surprise. Ever since they shifted their strategy to release a new version of the browser every six weeks or so, the version numbers have become a mere afterthought. Before today’s update, the Chrome stable build was version 7, the beta was version 8, and the dev was version 9. And I’m sure Chromium (the open source browser on which Chrome is built) will hit version 10 shortly.

Back in the day, Google used to give these Chrome launches much pomp and circumstance. Next thing you know, there will just be a tweet about it. Then just a retweet. Then maybe a Plurk update to announce Chrome 14.

Of course, all of this doesn’t mean Chrome 8 is without any new features. Google highlights the built-in PDF viewer as one. The other big one not stated is that it’s likely to be the release that makes the forthcoming Chrome Web Store possible.

And, of course, the latest version is stated to be the fastest and most stable version yet.

Here’s the meat of Google’s Chrome 8 post:

The Chrome team is happy to announce our latest Stable release, 8.0.552.215.  In addition to the over 800 bug fixes and stability improvements, Chrome 8 now contains a built in PDF viewer that is secured in Chrome’s sandbox.  As always, it also contains our latest security fixes, listed below.  This release will also be posted to the Beta Channel.

Chrome 8 is here. Shhhh.

What are the headlines people are sharing the most? A new headline aggregation site called Bitly News tries to answer that by showing the most clicked-on shortened bit.ly links on Twitter. Bitly News is not an official bit.ly product. It is an independent hack by Jeff Miller built on top of both the bit.ly and Twitter APIs. (John Borthwick, CEO of both bit.ly and betaworks, just mentioned the site on-stage at SAI’s Ignition conference as an example of somebody using bit.ly’s APIs). With billions of shared bit.ly links every month, there is a pretty broad reach of links to mine.

Bitly News is modeled on Hacker News, the headline news site for developers. The site only shows headlines and where they come from in rank order. Each headline links directly to the original story. Under each headline you can see how many times it’s been clicked on and when it was posted. You can comment on Bitly News or click through to bit.ly to see more stats for that headline.

The default view shows the most popular stories right now, but you can also see the newest stories which are trending. The stories are all over the map. Some of the top ones right now are: “Nasa Finds New Life Form” on Wired News, “Cake Wrecks: Happy Hannu…Channa…Festival of Lights” on Cake Wrecks, and “Police Investigate Murder In Disney-Developed Town.” on CNN.

It is a little too broad for my taste: the equivalent of the most popular videos on YouTube. If Bitly News could segment the top headlines by topic (politics, tech, national, world, sports, entertainment), I’d find it more useful. What do you think?

I’m the type of music listener who finds one album he likes and listens to it constantly for about 6 months. Then I move onto the next album. One that’s often old. Part of the reason for this is that I don’t have a really good way to find new music. Pandora is basically my radio and finds me good stuff some of the time, but it’s usually either old music or stuff I already own. If I want to be hip to what’s new, I rely on my social graph to recommend things. And exfm is maybe the perfect tool for that.

Previously, exfm was known as ExtensionFM, but with the latest version (version 2), they’ve changed up their branding and launched a wide range of new features. The key to the entire thing is still the Google Chrome extension. When installed, it allows you to browse the web as you normally would, but it alerts you when playable music files are on a webpage. If you find one, you can listen to it with the exfm player, or you can add it to your queue to listen to at anytime. You can even keep browsing to other sites and exfm remembers where it found the music, so it will stream continuously from there.

With the new version, you can also “note” songs. Essentially, this is a “favorite” or “like” mechanism. It allows you to tag songs to your exfm profile that anyone can then visit and see what you’re recommending. These profile pages are a new feature in the latest version of the service as well, and they make it so you can follow other users with musical tastes you enjoy. And yes, there’s an activity stream on the main page of exfm.

Of course, the most important part of a social music experience is sharing it. So exfm also allows you to tweet out songs, post them to Facebook, or create entries with them on Tumblr (and you can send song links via email too). The Twitter integration is really killer because if you have the extension installed, you can listen to music shared via exfm inline on the new twitter.com. This ability to post to Facebook and Twitter is also great because it makes these services brilliant music discovery tools. If people start sharing via exfm, you’ll have a digital jukebox made entirely from social recommendations.

So. The big question. Is all of this legal? It would seem so because exfm isn’t actually hosting any music at all. All they’ve done is create a player (by way of the extension) that allows you to find and play music hosted elsewhere. It’s a smart idea, and a great execution.

Exfm is currently a four man team based in New York City. They previously raised seed funding from Spark, Betaworks, Founder Collection, and Dave Morgan. While they remain Chrome only for now, the plan is to extend to other browsers as well with similar extensions in the near future.

Find a direct link to the Chrome extension here.

WhaleShark Media, an online coupon rollup play, launched in June 2010. It was primarily funded by Austin Ventures, which has strong experience in the home rental market with HomeAway. The general idea for WhaleShark was to copy the HomeAway model.

The company just raised a monster round of financing – some $90 million – from Austin Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners and Adam Street Partners. And they spent most or all of that round buying the largest online coupon startup on the market, Australia’s RetailMeNot. Brian Sharples, the founder and CEO of HomeAway, is also an investor in WhaleShark.

That may seem like a lot of money to pay for a coupon site. But RetailMeNot will generate about $30 million in 2010 revenue, we hear, and is growing rapidly. The best part of their model is that almost all of their revenue is profit. They get traffic from search engines, not paid ads, and just five employees are needed to run the site. By any reasonable valuation methodology WhaleShark got quite a deal it seems.

About 14 million people visit RetailMeNot each month, say cofounders Guy King and Bevan Clark. It’s just four years old.

The company sits firmly in the hot “deal” space dominated by Groupon right now. Traditionally ecommerce sites get traffic via SEO, email, coupons/deals and paid ads. After SEO and email, affiliate type deals/coupons are the most profitable way to get new customers, says WhaleShark.

WhaleShark is lead by CEO Cotter Cuningham. Austin Ventures partner Tom Ball, who sits on the WhaleShark board, has deep coupon experience as well – he founded eCoupons in the 90s and sold it to Lifeminders.

WhaleShark has previously acquired Deals2Buy, Coupon7, Cheapstingybargains and Deals.com.

Here’s Kevin Bacon playing Kevin Bacon’s biggest fan in a video not so cleverly disguised as an ad spot for the Logitech Revue Google TV unit. Because if anyone could rescue Google TV from the bowels of beta testing hell, it would be Kevin Bacon. Well, maybe. Perhaps Kevin Bacon is rad and all, but personally someone with a bit of authority might be better suited for the role as the Revue’s ad man. Someone like, well, Jeremey Clarkston. “Google TV: It’s made by Google, works with your cable and is so easy even your mum could probably use it. But is it any good?”

Anyway, the Kevin Bacon video is after the jump. Enjoy, it’s probably the best thing you’ll watch on the Internet today.

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There’s several big announcements coming up later today. The biggest is probably the World Cup bids, and the tension is evident. (More on that later.) Then we’ve got UFC‘s Chael Sonnen appearing before the California State Athletic Commission to explain his elevated testosterone levels during his fight with Anderson Silva back in August. Last, Nasa. Yes, somehow Nasa has rubbed two nickels together and has very possibly found something truly exciting—a new form of life! Gather ’round, put down your copy of Angry Birds, and let’s sing a song.

Read more…

Today at the United Nations’ conference on climate change COP 16 in Cancun, Mexico Google.org introduced its latest philanthropic project, the Google Earth Engine— an analytics tool for earth scientists and conservationists especially.

Google.org dubs their product “a planetary-scale platform for environmental data & analysis.” A product web page said:

The Google Earth Engine brings together the world’s satellite imagery—trillions of scientific measurements dating back more than 25 years—and makes it available online with tools for scientists, independent researchers, and nations to mine [a] massive warehouse of data to detect changes, map trends and quantify differences to the earth’s surface…

The search leader also introduced the Google Earth Engine API— only available to approved partners at this time— to help researchers develop, access and run algorithms on the full Earth Engine data archive, using Google’s parallel processing platform.

Some early Google Earth Engine partners mapped surface water in the Congo and created a granular map of Mexico’s forest cover and water. One scientist, Carlos Souza Jr. of IMAZON, the Amazon Institute of People and the Environment, a non-profit research entity, took original satellite imagery of Surui indigenous territory in the southern Brazilian Amazon (image, above) then analyzed it using Google Earth Engine to reveal forest damage in the region (image, below).

Google envisions their Earth Engine and API advancing a number of monitoring, reporting and verification efforts. Results could be: maps that show where ecosystem services exist and gaps where they are needed, reports that find and illustrate changes in the Earth’s surface over time, and visualization of land use trends as agricultural activity shifts in response to water shortages, rising sea levels, and other problems that result from climate change.

Countries are rallying to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing nations at COP 16 this year. Healthy trees and forests abate climate change, keep the air cleaner and food supplies stronger, according to the United States Forest Service.

Developing nations are (and have already been) most negatively effected by a rise in global temperatures as Kofi Annan, the former U.N. chief and Nobel Prize winner attests here. Keeping forests healthy in these regions could have a near-term beneficial impact.

In light of the COP 16 initiative, Google plans to donate “10 million CPU-hours a year over the next 2 years on the Google Earth Engine platform, to strengthen the capacity of developing world nations to track the state of their forests,” the company announced today.

Images via Google Earth Engine

Social gaming giant Zynga has had a big week. The company launched a new game, CityVille, last night; debuted FarmVille in Japan; and teamed up with American Express to allow cardholders to exchange rewards for virtual goods. Today Zynga announced on a conference call with the media to announce that the company has acquired Texas-based gaming company Newtoy. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Updating.

Founded by brothers Paul and David Bettner, Newtoy has created a number of hit iPhone apps, including Chess With Friends, WeRule and Words With Friends. Words With Freinds has been downloaded 12 million times.

Zynga Mobile head David Ko says that Newtoy will become Zynga’s “With Friends” office in Texas. Newtoy CEO and co-founder Paul Bettner will assumes the role of VP and GM of The Zynga With Friends Studio and David Bettner will become studio director.

Ko also shared some interesting statistics on Zynga’s current mobile usage. Farmville for the iPhone has seen 7 million downloads in only five months ad 10 million people per month accesing Zynga on a mobile device.

This year alone, Zynga has bought XPD in Beijing, Unoh Games in Tokyo, Conduit Labs in Boston, Dextrose AG in Frankfurt, Germany,Challenge Games in Austin, and Bonfire Studios in Texas.

Zynga currently has 10 major games, and 320 million people have engaged with a Zynga game worldwide.

An update to our post earlier today: We’ve confirmed that local shopping startup Milo has in fact been acquired by eBay, for $75 million. Business Insider first reported on the possible deal earlier today. Milo CEO Jack Abraham confirmed the acquisition via a Tweet and eBay issued a press release.

Investors in the company certainly did well. They raised just $5 million in venture capital. We’ve heard that True Ventures, which led the Series A round, owns some 25% of the company prior to acquisition. If accurate, they just pocketed nearly $20 million, a 10x or more return on an investment made a year ago.

So what is Milo? Essentially the site lists real-time in-store product inventory for over 50,000 stores accross the country; featuring over 3 million products from Target, Macy’s, Best Buy, Crate & Barrel and more.

The one problem Milo faces is that Google has started playing in the same space. Earlier this year, Google Product Search launched Blue Dot, on mobile search. Similar to Milo, Blue Dot allowed users within search to see if a product is in-stock at nearby stores. However, Milo countered back then that Google doesn’t have the inventory reach that Milo has. A few weeks ago, Google unleashed a new version of Product Search, with more inventory listings from 70 popular retail brands, many of whom also list with Milo.

Milo struck back with a coupon feature and also previously launched an Android app, but having Google as a competitor is no doubt daunting for any bootstrapped startup. Especially in the search game.

For eBay, Milo represents just another way to get into the $917 billion market of online research to offline buying. And Forrester estimates that this will eventually reach $1.3 trillion and account for nearly 50% of total retail sales by 2013.

eBay plans to bring the inventories of its sellers to Milo. The company will also integrate Milo’s local product feeds into both its online marketplace and mobile applications. eBay’s barcode-scanning iPhone application RedLaser will also feature Milo local results.

And Abraham did add this via a Tweet: “Within eBay we will complete our mission of bringing every product, on every shelf, of every store in the physical world onto the internet.”

Mingleverse, which operates an online voice and video chat platform, this morning announced that it has raised $1.4 million in seed financing from Yaletown Venture Partners, unnamed angel investors and Mingleverse CEO Ron Stevens.

Mingleverse plans to use the capital to ramp up marketing efforts for its mobile offering and move forward with integration into social networking platforms to help meet the needs of cellular carriers.

Mingleverse’s communication service, which the startup says now boasts users in 196 countries, allows people to engage in conversations and share media in virtual 3D meeting rooms dubbed MingleRooms, designed to resemble real life meetings within the browser window.

This makes Mingleverse a combination of WebEx, Skype and Second Life, only better.
Says the press release, at least.

Mingleverse works with cellular carriers and handset makers to deliver a so-called “Live Social Network service” they can customize and offer to their subscribers.

The company had earlier raised $440,000 in seed funding.

Big Apple business leaders are at it again—trying to make New York City as sweet a home as can be for tech startups, this time with a 12-week bootcamp-type program, called the FinTech Innovation Lab. The lab is geared for entrepreneurs with skills and concepts that could benefit Wall Street.

According to a statement from the New York City Investment Fund, the U.S. financial services industry employs nearly 233,000 technology workers, including approximately 25,000 in New York City.

The FinTech Innovation Lab is accepting proposals through January 31, 2011. Applicants are required to have at least a working alpha version of their technology ready to be tested for either the institutional or retail financial services market.

The six (or fewer) companies accepted will get work space, partial funding for expenses, and mentorship from the participating financial firms over the course of 12 weeks. There is no cash component to the prizes.

Chief technology officers and senior technology executives of Bank of America, Barclays Capital, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, State Street and UBS will determine which proposals win.

The annual program is run by the New York City Investment Fund, the economic development arm of the nonprofit Partnership for New York City, and Accenture.

Venture funds supporting the FinTech Innovation Lab, include: Contour Venture Partners, Polaris Venture Partners, Rho Ventures, RRE Ventures, Village Ventures and Warburg Pincus.

Winners will be notified by mid-March 2011. The program begins in early May and concludes with presentations to investors in late July. Finalists must reside in New York City for the duration of the program.

Back in September, we uncovered that ngmoco, a smashingly successful app development house that had long worked exclusively on iOS, was working on Android tools and games. We couldn’t get official confirmation from the company right off the bat (they decided signing off of AIM and ignoring my emails would be a better idea), but they went ahead and announced it three days later.

At the time, they announced that their popular game We Rule would be the first to make the jump from iOS-land; turns out, that’s not the case. Swooping in and snagging the title of ngmoco’s first Android app? Pocket God.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

After a slightly rocky (but still crazy fruitful) U.S. launch and a seemingly less painful debut in the U.K., SkyFire for iPhone is continuing its international roll out today.

Best known for being that browser that offers up Flash Video playback support on iOS by way of some monkey-in-the-middle proxy magic, SkyFire has been surrounded by its fair share of hype & controversy. Now, everyone in France, Germany, and Italy gets to join in on the fun!

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>