Category: Tech news

We know that Yahoo is integrating search with news, recently launching a news portal called the the Upshot, which uses search data to pick which stories to pursue. Today, Yahoo is integrating search into news content in yet another way—by suggesting search terms underneath news content on Yahoo News.

Called “Infinite Browse” internally at Yahoo, the new feature will include a box below Yahoo News articles that will suggest searches for specific terms. For example, news about Al Qaida will show links to searches for “Al-Qaida Camp” or “Al-Qaida Flags.” The idea is to allow readers to access related content they would search for without having to go to a separate search portal and type in the query.

The feature, which is only being tested for a limited group of users, apparently results in twice the amount of user engagement. An existing search feature “Trending Now” lists, which bring trending topics to your browsing experience on Yahoo sites, has been upgraded slightly with search. Now when you click on a Trending Topic, Yahoo will show you search results on Yahoo for the topic. Yahoo also are now suggesting newsworthy topics based on the type of Yahoo portal your are on (ie sports topics on Yahoo Sports.

Infinate Browsing and the search addition to Trending Topics are just additional examples of Yahoo pumping up search query volume through automated searches, like the company does with slideshows and other content. It’s designed to drive its search market share up.

To wrap up the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA, Bill Gates took the stage to talk with host Brent Schiender. A big idea of the conference was the future of technology, especially as it related to the economy. Gates talked a lot about that, but perhaps in a way you wouldn’t imagine. His mind was in the gutter. Literally.

“Latrines are fascinating,” Gates said. The way he said it was in a bit of a joking manner, but he’s not kidding. He talked about how many books he reads on the subject these days. “No one wants to read about it — it’s one of the greatest under-investments,” Gates said.

“We’re gonna have a breakthrough in the latrines,” he continued. He said that while the flushable toilet is the gold standard, it isn’t efficient at all. Someone is going to fix that, according to Gates.

So what books is he reading on the subject? He named a few. One was Water and Sanitation. “It’s quite lurid,” Gates joked. “It’s a super-important topic,” Gates reiterated. “You can visit poor-world latrines and learn from that as well,” Gates joked.

Gates really does think about this topic a lot. Later in the conversation, he returned to it when talking about investing in certain types of education. ”When it comes to things like investing in new toilets, not much money goes into that,” Gates said.

“You end up with the low IQ guy on the toilets.”

Indeed.

My mom doesn’t know smartphones, but she wants Facetime. The same woman who used a Motorola RAZR for most of the last decade now wants to drop – or, more precisely, wants me to drop – $299 for a new iPhone 4 so she can see the grandkids. Why? Because it seems like magic to her that she can see live video of the grandkids without having to make my dad hobble over to the computer and fire up Skype.

Video chat is not new and to most geeks Facetime is an affornt to the hard work and patience they put into getting video chat to work over Wi-Fi and cellular networks over the past few years. The Euros all scream “But we had video chat on our Nokias during the Clinton administration!” while streaming zealots claim they were video chatting with each other for years before Apple barged in. But with rumors that the new iPod Touch will have a front facing camera and will be launched sometime in September, I think Apple is about to own the video chat space.

Read more…

Product: IdeaCentre Q150

Manufacturer: Lenovo

Wired Rating: 7

Some people wear their technology on their sleeve, modding their desktops with Giger motifs (or worse) that are designed to stand out.

Others want technology to disappear into the ether, to be invisible.

Such is the promise of Lenovo’s IdeaCentre Q150, a PC about the size of your double-CD copy of Ummagumma,
and about as momentous, too.

The specs are modest, as one would expect from a machine that weighs all of 1.4 pounds: 1.66-GHz Intel Atom D510 CPU, 2 GB of RAM, and 802.11n Wi-Fi (plus ethernet). However, there’s no optical drive and the only video outputs are VGA and HDMI. The Q150 also adds an S/PDIF port for connecting the device to your stereo rack — with its 500-GB hard drive and ultraquiet operation, there’s a case to be made for using the Q150 as a multimedia server that can vanish into your home-theater cabinet without any effort.

Performance is roughly on par with a high-end netbook, although the addition of Nvidia’s ION graphics at least bumps its video capabilities into the acceptable range. It’s not a hard-core gaming system by any stretch, but graphics performance is passable to the point where recent games are at least within the realm of playability.

That said, the Q150 occupies a niche so narrow (literally, it’s less than an inch thick) that its purchase by anyone is going to be heavily determined by its form over its function. If you need a PC that takes up as little physical space as possible, this computer gets the job done and costs next to nothing, too.

WIRED Acceptable performance in a bare-minimum chassis. Surprisingly stable in operation.

TIRED Doesn’t sit upright without stand (included). Not quite enough graphics oomph for a multimedia system. No optical drive, somewhat glaring for an entertainment PC. Included keyboard feels cheap. An SD slot would have been a nice addition.

Last week, Twitter started testing out a “Who to follow” feature. Basically, it’s a recommendation engine for who you should follow, similar to ones that Facebook and others use. At the time, I noted it was a good idea and should bulk up their social graph. But today I actually got the feature activated on my account — I believe I vastly understated what this feature could mean.

The main way most users will interact with this new feature is in the sidebar. There, right below your tweet stats, you’ll see the two users that Twitter is suggesting that you might like to follow. How do they determine this? If you click the “view all” link (or go to the Find People area) you’ll notice this is all based on the people you’re already connected and who they follow. Again, this is like the feature Facebook has.

But I think Twitter’s implementation may be even more effective than Facebook’s.

Facebook continues to be more about people you actually know. Just because a friend of yours knows someone, it doesn’t mean you will. If it’s a lot of friends that you share in common, that’s a good indicator, but that whittles down the possibilities. With Twitter, people often follow other users they don’t know at all. In fact, I’d bet that’s the case most of the time.

That’s why this is massive. The first two user suggestions Twitter served up to me were both solid. I followed both. A page refresh brought two more. Also good. I’ve already added about 15 people — and normally I’m fairly controlled about that. These suggestions are just very good.

And the fact that you can follow the people right from this sidebar with one click is the key. Everyone is going to see these every time they hit Twitter (unless they use the awesome new Twitter User Streams clients). And it’s two new ones each time (though, obviously, they cycle through).

And if you want more that just the two suggestions, you can follow the “view all” link and find dozens of people suggested for you to follow in one list. And here you can also hide certain users you know you won’t want to follow. They will no longer appear in your suggestions.

Beginning last week around the time Twitter started testing this feature, I started to notice that I was gaining followers much more quickly than usual. I wasn’t sure, but I suspected it had to do with this feature. Now I’m almost certain that’s what it is. Again, this is going to greatly strengthen Twitter’s social graph. It’s seriously like social steroids.

But.

One problem Twitter has always had is noise. It’s easy to follow as many people as possible — until you actually see them making your stream noisy beyond use. That’s why I’ve loved tools like ManageTwitter, which make it easy to see who you should no longer follow.

So we have two forces potentially working against each other here. Luckily, Twitter now has a filter feature: Lists. They allow you to follow people without actually following them.

If Twitter included a super quick way to add certain people to lists, that would be great. Currently, you can click on their profile and add them to a list (without having to follow them) — but again, it’s all about the sidebar widget. A nice little List drop down would work nicely here, I think.

Noise or not, my bet is that this feature is going to be huge for Twitter. Most people should be seeing it now. Watch your follower counts.

What this means for third-parties doing these kind of recommendations, remains to be seen. Interestingly enough, the most popular of these, Mr. Tweet, is apparently undergoing a major overhaul which was due to be completed in July — it’s now August. And again, the main killer aspect of Twitter’s solution is that it’s on Twitter.com front and center. That will be hard to compete against.

As an interesting side note, with the Who to follow widget now placed so prominently, Twitter has shoved the small promotional ad unit to the bottom of the right sidebar. Hopefully no one is paying for those (which, as far as I know, they aren’t) because they’re about to get clicked on a lot less.

In the battle of Foursquare versus Gowalla in the location space, Gowalla is often thought of as “the pretty one.” But Foursquare has been attempting to improve their look and feel recently with a number of changes. The latest comes today with new profile pages.

As you can see, the new user pages have a much cleaner design. Just as with the recently redesigned venue pages, Tips are now more clearly labeled and To-Dos are explained better. It seems clear that Foursquare is trying to move the service beyond the check-in and attempting to provide more utility to users with their other features.

Badges and mayorships are also now look much nicer in the sidebar. And the key stats: Days Out, Check-Ins, and Things Done have been moved into a profile card that’s front and center.

Previously, profiles showed “Total Nights Out”, “Total Checkins”, “To-Dos Now Done”, and “Total Things Done.” This has been simplified to the new metrics, and each of those would come into play in a revamped Foursquare game.

The “Things Done” aspect is particularly intersting. It would seem that this could be a key new metric in the upcoming Foursquare 2.0 gaming features. We already know that part of that will likely include a “choose-your-own-adventure” aspect. Getting things done may be a part of that.

Of course, Gowalla also just recently revamped their profile pages, and now allows users to customize them.

Foursquare’s director of business development Tristan Walker credits developer Mike Singleton with this profile work.

Below, find the new Foursquare profile. And below that, find what Gowalla’s currently look like.

Zynga just officially confirmed their buy of Tokyo-based startup Unoh , which we reported on yesterday. Japanese business publication The Nikkei estimated the price at several billion yen. When contacted, Zynga representatives declined to comment on financial details.

The Unoh offices in Tokyo will be the base of Zynga Japan’s mobile  initiatives, which will be a joint venture between Zynga and SoftBank Group which recently invested $150 million into the social gaming company.

Former Unoh CEO Shintaro Yamada will helm Zynga’s foray into the Japanese social gaming market. Zynga has yet to confirm a reported $150 million investment by Google. Most recent press release below:

ZYNGA ACQUIRES LEADING SOCIAL GAME DEVELOPER UNOH,

ACCELERATING ZYNGA JAPAN’S MOBILE GAME DEVELOPMENT

SAN FRANCISCO and TOKYO – Aug. 5, 2010 – Zynga today announced that it has acquired Tokyo-based Unoh, one of Japan’s leading social games companies.  Unoh will be part of the foundation of Zynga Japan’s mobile product efforts, which will be a joint venture between SoftBank Group and Zynga, accelerating Zynga Japan’s entry into the Japanese social gaming market.

Unoh is one of Japan’s pioneering social game companies, founded in 2001, with top hits Machitsuku!, Band Yarouyo!, and Kaizoku Chronicle.  In addition to maintaining Unoh’s games on mixi, Mobage-town, and GREE, Zynga Japan will also localize Zynga games and develop new games targeted at the Japanese market.

“Zynga is delighted to welcome the Unoh team, one of the pioneer Japanese social game developers, to the Zynga family,” said Mark Pincus, CEO and Founder, Zynga.  “They have a great track record of producing innovative, successful games and are a perfect complement to the top-notch team we have already begun to assemble in Japan.”

“We’re very excited to join Zynga to help extend its reach to Japanese consumers,” said Shintaro Yamada, founder and CEO, Unoh.  “We’re looking forward to being an integral part of Zynga Japan’s leadership and growth, and are happy to support bringing the best social games to Japan’s cutting edge mobile and web technologies.”

Yamada will help lead Zynga Japan’s mobile efforts.

About Zynga Japan

Zynga Japan is a joint venture between SoftBank Group and Zynga to develop, distribute and support social games in Japan. It plans to bring together the worldwide leader in social gaming and the mobile technology visionary of Japan.

About SoftBank

SoftBank is a leading technology company connecting consumers through its broadband infrastructure, fixed-line telecommunications, and mobile communications services.  SoftBank has invested in overseas companies with high potential to provide next generation services using the internet, including Oak Pacific Interactive (which operates China’s largest SNS site), and Ustream, Inc. (which is the operator of the Ustream.TV website), a broadcast platform offering live video distribution service via the Internet (video streaming service). By leveraging this investment in Zynga and through its other efforts, SoftBank continuously aims to generate synergies among various content and services within its group. For more information, visit http://www.softbank.co.jp/en/

About Zynga
Zynga is the world’s largest social game developer. More than 230 million monthly active users play its games.  Zynga’s games include FarmVille, Treasure Isle, Zynga Poker, Mafia Wars, YoVille, Café World, FishVille, PetVille and FrontierVille.  Zynga games are available on Facebook, MySpace and the iPhone.  Through Zynga.org, Zynga players have raised over $3 million for world social causes.  Zynga is headquartered in Potrero Hill in San Francisco.  For more information, visit www.Zynga.com or www.Zynga.org.

Yesterday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt sat down with a group of reporters after his panel at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA. He said he was open to taking any questions, so I decided to ask him about Foursquare.

It’s a particularly interesting question for Schmidt because back in 2005, Google bought Dodgeball, the company Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley previously started that was similar to Foursquare. Crowley and Dodgeball co-founder Alex Rainert famously left Google in a huff in 2007. A couple years later, Foursquare was born.

“Yes, I remember it quite well,” Schmidt said of Dodgeball with a smile. “Shockingly, founded by the same two people [as Foursquare],” he continued. That’s not technically true, Crowley co-founded both, but he started Foursquare with Naveen Selvadurai, who wasn’t involved in Dodgeball. That said, Rainert is now with Foursquare as well and was a seed investor, so we’ll cut Schmidt some slack there.

“Dodgeball was a good company,” Schmidt said defending Google’s purchase. He also praised the co-founders, saying that “the market proves how clever they are.”

“Would Google have built Foursquare earlier? I don’t know. Those are always sort of missed opportunities,” Schmidt continued.

“Foursquare and Gowalla are pretty impressive. They show you the power of mobile/social/local,” Schmidt said. “Google will play in that market in a lot of ways.”

That’s a particularly interesting comment when you look back at the note Crowley left on his 2007 Flickr picture when he and Rainert quit Google:

It’s no real secret that Google wasn’t supporting dodgeball the way we expected. The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us – especially as we couldn’t convince them that dodgeball was worth engineering resources, leaving us to watch as other startups got to innovate in the mobile + social space.

So, if Crowley is to be believed, he tried to convince Google about the importance of that same mobile/social/local space back in 2005. But they wouldn’t listen.

“I think it’s going to be a very large business for us,” Schmidt said yesterday referring to the space. Perhaps it could have already been.

Schmidt affirmed Google’s strong commitment to both Places and Latitude. And he noted that the location capabilities built into Google’s website on smartphones such as Android phones and the iPhone “will freak you out. That’s how accurate it is.”

He also said that thanks to the success of Foursquare and Gowalla there will be 20 new similar companies that get venture funding. And I’m going to bet Google is a big player in snatching up some of those. Foursquare seems off the table given the Dodgeball history. But I’m going to go on record here with a prediction:

I bet Google is going to buy Gowalla at some point in the future. This isn’t based on anything concrete (well, I guess other than Schmidt bringing it up a few times). But that team’s commitment to design, gaming, and location seems to be a great fit for what Google is looking for.

Expect a lot of gloating if I’m right, and no further mention if I’m wrong.

Below, find the full video of Schmidt talking Dodgeball/Foursquare.

More from Schmidt:

• Google’s Schmidt Doubts Company Will Get Into “Significant” Gaming
• Schmidt: Google Now Activating 200,000 Android Units A Day [Video]
• Schmidt Talks Wave’s Death: “We Celebrate Our Failures.” [Video]
• Eric Schmidt: Every 2 Days We Create As Much Information As We Did Up To 2003

Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are creating immediate, unfiltered connections between celebrities and their fans, but where do celebrities (or aspiring celebrities) go when they want to connect with talent agents or other people in the entertainment industry? Facebook is for fans. LinkedIn doesn’t really let them showcase their talents. And niche sites for models, actors, and musicians like ReverbNation or NewFaces are too limited (every model or musician thinks they can act).

Talent Maven, which is launching publicly today after a few months in private beta, wants to become the social network for the entertainment industry. “We try to fill the void between Facebook and LinkedIn for talent,” says co-founder and CEO Jeremy Levanthal. A former investment banker with Morgan Stanley, Leventhal and his co-founders started the company almost two years ago in New York City with a $250,000 seed investment from their own pockets.

Like any social network, Talent Maven lets embers set up profiles, make connections with other members, upload photos, and videos, and share updates through a news stream. The design borrows many elements from Facebook. It is clean and well-organized. There are tabs for managing media, upcoming events like music performances, and opportunities to find other talent (auditions, vocalists needed, etc.). But there is one main difference: exclusivity is built in.

“Unlike Facebook, you can prevent people from contacting you,” notes Leventhal. That is actually very appealing to all the agents and other industry professionals who feel too exposed to every model with an Internet connection looking for an acting job. Members can become fans of other members, but they only get to see public updates and media. To connect to a member you need to know somebody who knows that person and get an introduction. And in your privacy settings, you can specify which groups have access to your feed.

People who work in the industry are verified as industry professionals through their work email. Particularly well-connected or well-known members can be designated “mavens,” which is the highest class. Members can set their profiles to private, but only let verified members see it, or mavens. Talent Maven is all about access, just like Hollywood.

The site is really built for talent agents. Already about 1,000 industry people have been testing the site, including 30 agents at William Morris alone and the head of casting at MTV. Already, rapper Timbaland’s production company is in discussions to sign two new singers discovered on the site.

Aspiring actors and musicians can upload their headshots, photo spreads, music mixes, videos, or other examples of their work to the site and create an online portfolio, or electronic press kit. When somebody gets a recommendation, it comes with a link to their profile where the talent agents can quickly check them out before deciding how, or if, to respond. Hey, it’s a Darwinian world out there, the Web is only making it more efficient.

The only way Talent Maven will survive is if it somehow attracts the right talent, and the people who want to employ them.

Well here’s a first; the creative folks at Plannr have come up with this hypothetical “What would the world be like if the cast of MTV’s Jersey Shore used our mobile scheduling product?” promotional video, above. Suspend your disbelief about the Jersey Shore crew caring about schedule management and login to Plannr as Snooki (password: “abc”) , join Ronnie and Sammi as they “discuss things” and get roped in with “The Situation,” DJ Pauly D, and Vinny as they “be single” (Note: Enlarge video to full screen for full effect).

The boot-strapped Plannr hard launches this week, and is aiming for a small but crowded niche, attempting to trump email, SMS, and phone calls as existing but somewhat disorganized scheduling tools. Plannr founders and former Microsoft employees Ben Eidelson and Jason Prado are targeting plans made specifically within small groups of friends, less than 10 people. Plannr for the iPhone can sync geo-locational data simultaneously with your calendar software, and is compatible with iCal, Outlook, etc.

While there is some overlap between Plannr and Google Calendar, Tungle.me, and Doodle, it might be the perfect substitute for those rambling plan related email threads between friends, the ones that people are too lazy to post to Facebook. Eidelson and Prado provide a solution to a personal pet peeve, “If you’re making plans with a group over email, you can forward or CC us the email. Plannr will email everyone involved with a link to the new plan, and even try to parse out the time.”

Plannr suffers from the same chicken egg problem as all services that necessitate multiple connections and user adoption, plus people tend to be more rigid about organizing business planning as opposed to social (why corporate planning tools like Microsoft Exchange work in the first place). I could easily see this as a useful addition to an existing service and the heavy Google Maps and Yelp integration hearkens to this aspiration.

Like RULE.fm the spare app interface is specifically appealing to those with hipper sensibilities. And like the RULE.fm guys, they sent us a picture of themselves, below.

Plannr is available in the App Store and on the web here.

It’s funny — I know Twitter is down. I know it has been down for about an hour now. And yet, I can’t stop visiting the site to see if just maybe it’s back up. And I’m hardly alone.

I’m sitting here at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA and Twitter’s current downtime seems to be what a huge number of people are talking about. And they’re talking about it in person, because they can’t on Twitter.

The problem is that there is no good substitute. We used to have FriendFeed back in the day which was essentially a conversation layer over tweets, but with its own independent messaging capabilities. This kept the conversation going if Twitter went down (which it often did back in the day). Now we have Buzz, Facebook, and a few other things. But no one seems to use them in the same way.

We need a backup plan. One we can all agree on.

I’m perfectly fine with it being the TechCrunch comment area. But it needs to be some place where everyone will gather. Maybe Google Wave?

Oh. Shit.

Seriously though, it’s not just about killing time. Twitter is increasingly a way many of us consume news and media. And just in the past hour I wanted to go to Twitter to find out why I was getting so many Quora follow notifications recently. I also wanted to know what people thought of the latest Techonomy panels. And I just can’t. And there’s nowhere else I can turn for that type of information.

It sucks. It’s annoying.

Last year, I made the humorous list of alternative things to do when Twitter is down. Things like “go outside” or “think about Twitter being down.” But we really do need a backup alternative we can rely on.

Update: Here’s Twitter’s statement on the matter:

Twitter is currently down; the site has been down for approximately an hour. This outage is due to an internal failure; it is not a capacity issue. Our team is working on a fix now. We will update Twitter’s Status blog soon with more specific info.

Update 2: Twitter is currently in the process of getting back up to speed and Twitter says it should be within the hour. That said, it’s still mostly down.

The Japanese gaming company DeNA, which is traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, reported robust first quarter earnings today.

For its fiscal first quarter DeNA’s revenue reached $279 million, up 175% compared to the same quarter last year. Its operating profit increased by 282% to about $138 million over the first quarter of 2009 (according to the company’s own currency conversion from yen to U.S. dollars).

Of total revenue, 84% was derived from social games which the company defines as games that have social sharing, leaderboard and related features, including those that are played over mobile phones. (DeNA did not break out revenue from sales of in-game advertising, ad-supported games and paid game sales.)

By comparison, a top competitor to DeNA in the U.S., Zynga is rumored to have first half of 2010 revenue of $350 million (half of which is operating profit) and projected revenue of at least $1.0 billion for 2011.

DeNA has plans to introduce games for PC use via its partnership with Yahoo! in Japan.

Its Yahoo! Mobage (pronounced yahoo moe-buh-gay) games channel is due for release on October 1st. But the company plans to focus on sales of games for smartphones, including via its MiniNation store and the iPhone in the U.S. in the near-term. It has not struck a partnership with Yahoo! in the U.S. (yet).

DeNA’s first quarter earnings were fueled by its entry into the American market and debut on iPhones in 2010, an increase in the number of social and mobile game titles it sold, and ongoing growth in its sales of social and mobile games and avatars in Japan.

Last year (fiscal 2009) DeNA reported revenues of $517 million and operating profits of $228 million. If the company’s 2010 first quarter results are any indication, it is on target to become a billion dollar revenue (or more) mobile and social gaming business.

Preparing to sell its games in the U.S. this year, the company took a 20% stake in the gaming platform company Aurora Feint in 2009 to prepare to do so, and speed distribution.

Aurora Feint’s OpenFeint platform, a DeNA spokesperson explained, is almost like an X-box live for phones. The company created a mobile community of gamers in North America that resembled gamer communities DeNA previously created in Japan.

DeNA also acquired IceBreaker, a U.S. game developer and publisher in 2009.

Competitors to DeNA in the U.S. include Zynga, and the mobile and social gaming divisions of technology, entertainment and gaming giants.

In the past year, Google, Disney and Electronic Arts, respectively, acquired social gaming companies Slide, Playdom and Playfish.

In a company earnings statement, Tomoko Namba, the chief executive of DeNA said, “Becoming the premier [global] social gaming company appears extremely feasible,” lauding the company’s duality as a game developer and platform operator.

DeNA also plans to promote mergers and acquisitions, and make investments through its approximately $27.5 million Incubate Fund No.1 Limited Partnership, a venture capital fund focused on social gaming.

DeNA’s most popular game titles in the U.S. are all free mobile games: Bandit Nation, MiniNation BalloonHunt, Mini Solitaire and Mini NumberPlace.

Google Books is one of the most straightforward projects in the Google meta-project of cataloguing and indexing every piece of data in the world. The human race has, after all, only been literate for around five or six thousand years, which makes the task measurable, if not easy. The project is also interesting for many other reasons — social, technological, and logistical. The impact of all of the world’s literature being searchable online is incalculable, but the methods being used by Google to accomplish that are a fascinating convergence of legacy and high tech systems.

The project blog has just put up a fascinating (to me, at least) post about the way in which they’ve calculated what they believe is a reasonably accurate count of every book in the world. The number is 129,864,880 — until a few more get added, or an obscure library’s records are merged, or what have you. It’s a bit awe-inspiring to be confronted with a number like that — a number far more comprehensible than yesterday’s deceptively complex statement about the amount of data we’re producing daily. I have another post percolating on that subject (working title: Get Thee Behind Me, Data) but the Google Books thing has a much more immediate and understandable interest.

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