Category: Tech news

I thought Twitter had been awfully quiet for a Friday night. It turns out that @replies appear to be very broken at the moment — and have been for a couple of hours now. Hip hop artist Soulja Boy has just confirmed the problem to his 2.5 million followers. “Show me my @replies @twitter !!!,” Boy tweets.

Neither the Twitter Status blog nor the official Twitter account seem to acknowledge this problem which makes Twitter almost useless. If you can’t communicate with people, you’re just communicating at them. The work-around hack, of course, is to do a manual search for your Twitter username, and you’ll see what you’re missing.

Hundreds of tweets each minute show that the crowd has sourced the problem. And it appears to affect twitter.com as well as all the clients. Help us Twitter, we need to know what people are saying about us! And so does Soulja Boy!

Update: Twitter is aware of the problem and is working on it. They have a status update on their Status Blog — but now Tumblr (which hosts it) is down.

Back in March 2009 I wrote about MeeHive, a service launched by Kosmix that promised to give users custom-built newspapers by piecing together stories from blogs and news sites across the web. At the time I wrote that it seemed to work pretty well, but questioned if people would actually wind up using it given the plethora of RSS aggregators available, not to mention the similar startups have tried (and often failed) to make this work. Alas, it looks like things haven’t worked out for MeeHive after all: Kosmix has emailed users to inform them that it will be shutting down later this month.

Here’s a portion of the email:

We’re planning to retire MeeHive on Oct 19 to focus on Tweetbeat, our new social media filter. This means that, as of Oct 19, the MeeHive site will no longer be available and your MeeHive account will be deleted. We want to make this transition as easy as possible for you, so we encourage you to contact us at [email protected] if you have questions or thoughts about this. We’d especially like to thank those of you who shared your ideas and feedback with us over the past months.

Kosmix offers a search engine that will dynamically build ‘topic pages’ for your query, pulling from sources like Wikipedia, blogs, and content written by the Kosmix community. MeeHive essentially took that technology and applied it to news, but it obviously it didn’t catch on. In the email announcing the closing of Meehive, Kosmix writes that it’s directing its attention to Tweetbeat, a real-time Twitter search engine that launched at TechCrunch Disrupt. The company also recently launched Tweetbeat Firsthand, a browser plugin that will let you mouse-over proper names to see that person’s recent tweets (for example, you can mouse-over President Obama’s name in a news story to see his tweets).

Update: If you’re wondering why this sort of personalized news startup so often fails, there’s an excellent thread on Quora that discusses this.

We’ve reached out to Kosmix for more details on the shutdown of Meehive.

The new MySpace logo or the new Gap logo, which do people hate more? It seems to close to call at this point. But after days of sitting back and taking a beating, Gap logo is on the offensive now — on Twitter.

“That new MySpace logo? I mean I know I have very little room to talk but holy shit,” Gap logo writes in a tweet today that is currently setting Twitter ablaze with retweets.

Them fightin’ words.

Myself, I like the comment Joey Daoud left on our MySpace post — er, My ____ post:

Only two more characters left and myspace will forever be deleted from the internet

Oh _____!

Update: Or:

(via @issaco)

Oh and:

(via Chris Dalonz)

Also, this happened:

The Verizon iPhone nears. And that’s great news. I can’t wait to get one on day one and leave AT&T far in my rearview. But wait, it’s not all peachy-keen as The Wall Street Journal reminds us today. AT&T does have two advantages over Verizon right now: its GSM technology is more widely used around the world (meaning the phone can roam around the world), and you can use data while on a call. But it sounds like the latter is about to get eliminated.

Over the last year, we’ve had to listen to Luke Wilson tell us that “the nation’s fastest 3G network” is also the one that lets you “talk and surf at the same time.” Currently, Verizon cannot do that due to a decision the people behind CDMA (the technology that Verizon uses in its phones) made to split data and voice into separate signals. But as WSJ reports:

Now, they’re working to overcome it. A solution that will allow CDMA networks to carry voice and data simultaneously will become commercially available in the first half of next year, said Brad Shewmake, spokesman for the CDMA Development Group, an industry organization.

Verizon won’t commit to a date for such a feature, but they are working on it. From the story:

Verizon Wireless is working on providing that capability, said Verizon executive Brian Higgins. He wouldn’t say when it will be ready, but played down the need for handling voice and data at the same time.

But the last part is important. I’ve had an iPhone for over three years now and I can only recall a handful of times when I needed/wanted to use data while on a call. And almost all of those times have been when I was on hold. And probably half of those were when I was on hold with AT&T.

AT&T touts the feature, but it’s simply not that important. Certainly, it’s not important enough to stop me from switching from a service that has poor coverage in some big cities, to one that has great coverage in those same cities. Coverage is a much more important feature.

But I’ll admit that the global roaming ability is nice. I was in Japan earlier this year and was able to buy a (ridiculously expensive) plan from AT&T so my phone would work there. With a CDMA phone, I would have likely be out of luck. But again, a small price to pay for my phone to work 99 percent of the rest of the time.

So, for an encore, let’s enjoy one of Luke Wilson’s lovely AT&T commercials below. You’ll note that instead of being 4 to 1 in favor of AT&T, come next year, it looks like it will be more like 1 to 1 (and I’m sure Verizon would argue that they have the fastest 3G network — there are only about a billion studies that say different things).

Earlier this week Sarah met not one but two Adam Rifkins – the first Adam Rifkin is based in Silicon Valley and organizes a networking group for entrepreneurial engineers called 106 Miles; the second Adam Rifkin is a (quoting from the video below) “big time Hollywood big shot”, responsible for family-friendly movie romps including Mousehunt, Small Soldiers and Bikini Squad. Together the Rifkins (who aren’t related) have developed LOOK, a drama for Showtime about the thoroughly modern world of hidden cameras.

Hollywood Adam Rifkin is this week’s guest on Why Is This News, where we discuss the democratisation of filmmaking and the growing supremacy of raw talent over financial resources. Also Sarah calls Paul a snob and Paul accuses Sarah of being the new Christine O’Donnell.  

Video below.

If you’ve been following the news lately, you’ve probably realized that logo redesigns are a kind of a big deal. Today at the Warm Gun Design conference in San Francisco, butt of too many design/user experience jokes to mention social networking site MySpace unveils their new logo which is, get this, the word “my” in Helvetica and then a symbol delineating a space.

MySpace VP of User Experience Mike Macadaan explains the philosophy behind it, “MySpace is a platform for people to be whatever they want, so we’ve decided to give them the space to do it.” Apparently the blank space to the left will be filled with user generated artwork when users hover over it on the redesigned site, like this:

If the iTunes 10 logo and Gap logo fiascos have taught us anything, it’s that people hate logo change, so people are inevitably going to hate this (I can’t wait for the comments section of this post).

But, in all fairness, the new logo’s art school abstractness and UGC element is better than the human centipede + Arial “myspace” blandness of the old logo (see above), and from Macadaan’s presentation it looks like it will have some Google Doodle-like interactive features once the MySpace redesign launches as the end of this year.

In any case, please put your inevitable redesign suggestions the comments, or on Dribbble if you prefer.

As promised, here is the second part of my interview with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. In the last clip we talked about how Hasting navigated the company through huge changes in technology, a revolution in online video, and two formidable competitors in Wal-Mart and Blockbuster.

In this clip, we talk about Hasting’s vision for the future, including what life will be like when TV-as-we-know-it is gone, Netflix’s plans for international expansion and life amid two new formidable online video entrants, Apple and Google.

For the whole video go here, or go here for a podcast of the entire talk.

As Facebook expands its territory and allows for more and richer content, its responsibilities towards that content (and their users, and the law, etc.) become deeper and more complicated. While the structure of Facebook isn’t nearly as permissive as, say, a private message board or tracker site, the sheer amount of activity produced by hundreds of millions of users demands a level of vigilance matchable only perhaps by that exerted by YouTube administrators.

But like YouTube, they must also work within the law, and while the right to make a fan page for someone else’s work isn’t the most critical example of free speech, it serves for a quick lesson in DMCA compliance.

Continue reading…

I seem to be finding myself writing about education a lot lately, whether it’s the latest round of elearning startups, innovative solutions that use technology to solve education problems in the developing world, or the wave of powerful figures in technology who are galvanizing around the new film “Waiting for Superman” and throwing huge sums of money towards either fixing public schools or starting a new with better, entrepreneurial Charter Schools.

There’s clearly a groundswell happening in our industry around this issue, which is surprising because education is typically a vertical startups and investors avoid, and let’s face it– most of the people funding these efforts have the resources to send their kids to private schools. It seems less about personal needs and more about a cause, the way the Valley swelled around global warming a few years ago.

A fad? Maybe. But like the whole green-fad, if it’s a fad that helps the world, there’s nothing wrong with trendiness. If you’ve seen the film and want to get more involved, you may want to join an online town hall happening tonight with Ariana Huffington, director of “Superman” Davis Guggenheim, producer Lesley Chilcott and New York City Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein. There will be a group specifically set up for TechCrunch readers here.

For businesses both big and small, planning for the future is integral to a company’s success financially. There are a number of software applications that help companies create forward looking profit and loss statements and more, but 60mo is hoping to disrupt this space by offering a dead simple web-based application for both small businesses and enterprise companies.

The tool, which launched at TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Alley, allows you to import your financials from a number of accounting software programs including QuickBooks and FreshBooks, as well as directly from financial institutions, including Bank of America, Chase and American Express. The startup will also ask new users a set of questions regarding their industry, business model, office location(s), staff, shareholders, and accounting system. 60mo will then create an optimal account structure with built in projection trends, reports, and more for each company.

Of course, the ability to share this information within a company (i.e. with accountants, shareholders, lawyers, payroll companies etc.) is also integral to any application that automates financial forecasting. 60mo will allow users to give service providers controlled access to financial projections, profit and loss rollups, HR data, cap tables, and more.

In terms of pricing, 60mo seems fairly affordable at $19 per month for an unlimited amount of users.

60m is sort of like a Mint.com for small businesses. It’s similar in some ways to recently launched Indinero.

Poor Andy Rubin. As the head of Android development for Google he has what seems to be the best job in the world and the worst job in the world at the same time. It’s the best job because Android is exploding in popularity and he can leverage the power of Google to do some really great things in the mobile space. But at the same time, it’s the worst job because all that innovation he comes up with is clearly under the thumb of the carriers and OEMs that Google has partnered with for Android. Don’t believe me? Just read Rubin breathlessly apologizing for the carriers and OEMs in his interview with PC Magazine.

When asked why some OEMs are still releasing phones with Android 1.6 on them, Rubin says:

I think the OEMs seem to learn pretty quickly what sells and what doesn’t sell. I’m pretty happy with the pace at which we’re innovating. If we come out with a 2.3 or a 3.0, that’s going to be state of the art, because it’s going to have new functionality and new innovations that all the OEMs are going to want to adopt.

Okay, Android has been out for two years now. When exactly are the OEMs going to get that message? Is that really them learning “pretty quickly”? Hasn’t the same things been said about all the previous versions of Android? I mean, people tend to want whatever is the latest and greatest — why is that difficult to understand? And why do consumers have to demand it for the OEMs to do it?

When asked about Android’s openness actually meaning it’s open for the carriers to screw customers (an idea near and dear to my heart), Rubin responds with:

If I were to release an operating system that I claimed was open and that forced everybody to make [phones] all look the same and all support very narrow features and functionality, the platform wouldn’t win. It wouldn’t win because the OEMs have a lot of value to bring and the carriers have a lot of value to bring, and they need a vehicle by which to put their interesting differentiating features on these things.

So, Google is a vehicle for the carriers? Great.

And, um, what exactly is the value that the carriers bring? Their bloatware? Their rip-off self-serving apps? This sounds like it was written by the carriers for Rubin to read. I don’t think that anyone can argue that if Google had absolute power and held the carriers in check, the world would be a better place. For a while, it seemed like they were going to try to do that — then they folded (which was a smart business decision, but a bad decision for consumers).

When PC Magazine points out that it’s not like Google is taking a fully open approach with Android — they still have minimum standards for phones that will have their branding — and asks why they don’t simply say that the only app store should be the official Android one, Rubin says:

Well, it’s tough to draw the line, and we think about that a lot. First of all, we don’t like drawing lines. We like making exceptions, and we learn a lot in the process. … The point of being open is that I’ve given up control of what can be put on phones, and put it in the hands of everybody in the community.

Okay, but when Verizon and Sprint load up Android devices with pre-installed apps that can’t be deleted, how exactly is that in the hand of the community? Unless, of course, he means the carrier community. In which case, ugh.

And that’s actually exactly how PC Magazine read that response too. “But when you say ‘you’ve put it in the hands of the community,” what people in the U.S. frequently hear is ‘you’ve put it in the hands of the wireless carriers.’” is their response. Rubin’s response to that:

Yes and no. It’s always going to be like that. I’m not trying to be a wireless carrier, I’m not trying to assert authority over the wireless operators, but I think it’s kind of like that 1.5 and 1.6 versus 2.2 scenario. I think over time they’ll learn what is good business and what is bad business.

Sure they will Andy, sure they will. What are we at now, twenty years of this carrier bullshit and counting?

PC Magazine then goes into the fact that when the Nexus One was announced, it was being billed as the device that could change the way carriers have a stranglehold on consumers in the U.S. market. Then Google backed away from that plan. Rubin is vaguely optimistic here about how Google can get back to selling an unlocked phone:

Making unlocked phones available in the U.S. is still a possibility. Whether that’s simply acquired only online or through traditional retail channels – that’s what got canceled. So we have to decide how to make unlocked phones available in the U.S.

Translation: we have to figure out how to do this without pissing off our carrier partners.

PC Magazine then goes into the possibility that Android could get native VoIP capabilities by way of Google Voice and the Gizmo5 acquisition. That would be awesome. But what does Rubin say to that?

Today what Google Voice is, it’s a front end for your existing phone number, and it’s also an optimized voicemail system … whether we actually become a voice service provider, that’s probably a question for the Google Voice team, but also I’d have to think carefully about what that means for the wireless operators, who are our partners. You wouldn’t expect us to be a voice service provider for wireless.

Because, you know, that might actually be the best thing ever for consumers and would royally screw the carriers. Nope, don’t want to do that, they’re our buddies.

At that point, PC Magazine switched gears and went into Windows Phone 7. I think they were just as tired as we are of hearing how great the carriers are.

When we first wrote about Spotify’s arrogance there was at least some cause behind it. The company had built a beautiful online music service that early adopters were swooning over. The founders had invested a huge chunk of their own money in the company– something we always respect, especially in a category as dangerous as online music. And– so the company told us– they were about to launch in the US at any moment and nearing profitability.

So what if the company lied to us several times and exaggerated their success? Ambitious startups always stretch the truth right? And so what of all those reports of talks with potential partners– from MySpace to Facebook to Google– who were interested in helping bring Spotify to the US, but were also put off by the company’s arrogance?

A lot of our startup heros have an arrogant swagger: Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs. (Some would even venture to say Michael Arrington…) Arrogance may even be a good thing. A grounded, humble company would never think it could beat huge, well-funded competitors.

But here’s the thing: When you’re going to be this arrogant for this long, you have to, at some point, show something to back it up. Just read the comments on every Spotify post we’ve done over time to see how weary even the fans are getting of the endless promises of a US launch and the blase downplaying that the labels may have an issue with, oh, say, giving away music for free. And, yet, we get this Tweet today announcing the company’s impending world domination.

Let’s ignore for a moment how few people actually pay for the service in Europe. Spotify, how about a single US deal before you spike the football?

After hounding them left and right, the folks at Google did us a solid and sent us an email confirming their acquisition of “Outlook for hipsters” startup Plannr.

The story is bigger than what we orginally wrote apparently, as the search company today has acquired all assets of the Ben Eidelson and Jason Prado run “Everything Is the Best LLC,” a Seattle based holding company which builds mobile clients, including Plannr and a couple of other mobile applications including ridepenguin, LoveTap and SheetIt.

From a Google spokesperson this morning:

“We’re excited to welcome Ben and Jason to Google. They have built several innovative mobile applications, and we believe they can help us make a better and more useful mobile experience for our users.”

So as of today, Google is a (slightly) hipper and more mobile place. Having met at Stanford, Eidelson will be Product Manager and Prado will be Software Engineer of a new project they declined to mention at Google. And while the two wouldn’t disclose an acquisition price, I’m guessing it was around $6 million.

Well, I guess all I had to do was ask. After my mopey post Monday I got flooded with questions for Chris Dixon, and the nature of the questions has taken a decidedly “Dear Abby” spin. Dozens of you asked for Dixon’s advice on specific problems, but at the same time problems that many entrepreneurs face. Questions ranged from the tactical– how to use online marketing to get more contributors to a UGC site?– to the strategic– how scared should an entrepreneur with a great idea be about a potential partner stealing it? We also talk about where Dixon sees his company Hunch in five years.

And, as promised, I asked about why Dixon got a Harvard MBA and if it was a waste of money. He tries to justify it, but admits that, like me, his parents “were horrified.”

Dixon isn’t one of those guys who gives a pat answer to an entrepreneur’s problem. So we didn’t get to very many questions before we had to go, but I’ll roll some of them over to next week’s guest, tentatively Reid Hoffman. (Note: I haven’t really confirmed that with him, but since asking for more questions in a post got me a flood of questions this week, testing whether just writing that Hoffman is the guest in a post will make it happen. If the guest isn’t Hoffman we’ll have our answer. If the guest is Hoffman expect a forthcoming post about a pony.)

As always send questions to askavc(at)techcrunch(dot)com.

PC Magazine has posted a very interesting interview with Android chief Andy Rubin today. In it, he talks about their relationship with the carriers, the next version of Android, and of course, the Android rivals. While he never mentions the iPhone by name, he does speak to Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Phone 7. Of it, he says: “the world doesn’t need another platform.”

Rubin says that based on the screen shots he’s seen (which is funny — I’d say there’s no way he hasn’t actually seen a device itself, just about everyone in Silicon Valley has at this point), he thinks Windows Phone 7 looks “interesting” but he doesn’t see the value of it when Android is already out there. “Android is free and open; I think the only reason you create another platform is for political reasons,” Rubin says.

Of course, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has already given his stance on Android being free — that stance being: it’s not free, you have to pay patent fees for it, notably, to Microsoft.

Rubin expands his thoughts on Android versus Windows Phone 7:

I encourage everybody to use it, but I’m also not under the impression that everybody will use it, which is a good thing, because competition is good for the consumer and if somebody has an an idea for a feature or a piece of functionality in their platform and Android doesn’t do it, great. I think it’s good to have the benefit of choice, but in the end I don’t think the world needs another platform.

He notes that the key strength of Android lies in Google’s ability to create mashups of a bunch of service — meaning, thanks to their cloud computing expertise. Rubin notes that Google has been in this business “since day zero” — a clear shot at Microsoft lack of success transitioning to the web so far. “The cloud is humming away with unlimited bandwidth, acting on your behalf,” Rubin concludes.

More: Android Chief Likely Out Of Breath After Non-Stop Excuses For Carriers In Interview