Category: Tech news

“Foursquare gets all the hype.” It’s something I hear just about every day from just about every other location-based startup. And it’s true, though I would argue that it’s warranted — and investors seem to agree. But it’s also important to keep some perspective. While Foursquare is just shy of 2 million users, other services like MyTown have quickly surpassed that number. Same with Google Latitude, which is at 3 million. And you can put Loopt on that list as well, as today they’ve hit 4 million total users.

Loopt was one of the first location-based services to get a lot of hype — even getting on stage at the Apple event first talking about the App Store way back when. But as we’ve noted numerous times, they started out at a disadvantage because the iPhone didn’t allow third-party apps to run in the background. And that was Loopt’s model, continuous location updates. But with iOS 4, the iPhone does finally allow for that functionality — and specially for background location. And Loopt is benefiting from it.

Daily sessions are up 60% from just prior to iOS 4 being release, founder Sam Altman tells us. Both background location and the proximity alerts are pushing this growth — as well as the latest version of the app, 3.0, in general. Altman says that daily active users is in the hundreds of thousands.

Altman also credits Loopt’s usage surge to being featured in markets where Android phones are quickly gaining popularity. And the biggest surge is thanks to the fact that Loopt is now preloaded on almost all MetroPCS phones. “We’re finally seeing real Android growth,” Altman says.

Loopt pivoted last year to allow for check-ins when it was clear that the model was taking off. But the latest version marries the two ideas. The latest iPhone version allows you to check-in at a venue and keep your live location active for up to 24 hours so that friends can see as you move on the Loopt map. For some people that’s extremely creepy. For others, it’s the future of location.

You can find Loopt 3.0 in the App Store here as a free download. You can also search the Android Market for it.

When Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert heard that we were working on a redesign of TechCrunch, he decided to give it a go with his own sense of style. After inviting several other world-class designers to our headquarters in SF we decided to go with his vision. Voila! Say hello to the new-look TechCrunch.

Truth be told, we felt a bit bad for Gilbert. He’s had a rough 24 hours. Yesterday, at a nationally televised press conference, he found out his star player, LeBron James, was booking it to Miami to play with D-Wade and Chris Bosh — a move that left Gilbert clearly pissed off. But we’re here to offer him a consolation prize. We now have a version of TechCrunch in his favorite font, Comic Sans!

Yes, okay, Techmeme did it first, but we wanted to show our support as well.

It seems that the web can’t get enough of Comic Sans. Or at least, get enough of taking shots at the hideous font. Over 12 hours after we first wrote about it, the font is still a top trending topic on Twitter. And yes, still ahead of even “LeBron James.” Meanwhile, our post has gotten some massive mainstream media love with CNN, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and others all weighing in on the hot topic. In fact, the CNN story on the faux pas was even the most popular story on the entire site earlier today. Joked Twitter user Audrey Watter earlier, “perhaps if BP had issued press statements in Comic Sans, we’d still be talking about the oil spill, eh?“

So this is our thank you to you, Dan Gilbert. Thank you for writing your rant in a font that cannot be ignored. And we’re sorry about the LeBron thing.

P.S. Every page on TechCrunch will now work in Comic Sans if you simply append “?lebronified” to the end of the URL. Or, if you’re feeling really adventurous, try “?LEBRONIFIED”.

It’s not news that cargo planes aren’t the greenest way to transport heavy loads, but some companies are working on other ways to send goods through the air. Could blimps make a comeback as a greener cargo carrier? Speaking to an audience at the World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment in Oxford, England, scientist David King recently predicted that helium-powered ships could be carrying freight within a decade.

It is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing have been developing blimps for some time, both for cargo transport and for military operations.

Boeing is working with Canada’s SkyHook International on the JHL-40 or “Jess Heavy Lifter”, a helium-filled airship with helicopter rotor systems that will help lift up attached cargo. The blimp will be designed to carry 40 tons as far as 200 miles before needing to refuel, or 800 miles without cargo and could be in the air by 2014 (assuming it doesn’t get mothballed or canceled before then, as several similar projects have in the past).

Blimps are unlikely to replace most airships, since they travel rather slowly. They could be used, however, to help transport goods to and from remote regions. Some models could have lifts for attaching and removing cargo without touching down, which could enable them to bring goods or humanitarian aid to areas without accessible roads or airports.

Other uses for the Heavy Lifter could be slightly ironic. Boeing and SkyHook plan to target the logging, mining and energy industries, offering a way to be greener by reducing their need to build roads in isolated areas.

It will be interesting to see how these blimps perform. If they succeed, some parts of the world could start looking like a more peaceful version of one of those old airship films.

What makes Apple tick? How is it that it came back from the dead to surpass both Google and Microsoft in market cap? French consulting firm faberNovel takes a stab at explaining Apple’s success and its strategy against its two main rivals in the SlideShare above. (In the past, faberNovel has created similar slideshows about Google).

The 48-slide presentation, titles “Apple: 8 Easy Steps To Beat Microsoft (And Google),” boils Apple’s strategy down to eight steps including “the arrogance of simplicity” (Step 1) to customer lock-in (Step 3), selling at a premium (Step 4), cross-selling products (Step 5), and, of course, think different (Step 7). Much of this is not new information, but seeing it all in a detailed slide presentation helps put Apple’s various moves in context.

Apple starts by stripping away complexity from computing products, paring down features in favor of making their products more effortless to master. Apple locks in customers by controlling every aspect of a product through vertical integration. For instance, it doesn’t make much money from iTunes, but that is how it keeps customers coming back. It makes its money from hardware, which it sells at a premium. It has been able to increase its gross margins from 23 percent in 2001 to 40 percent last year.

Over that time period, it went from a niche, high-end computer maker to a consumer electronics company. But its iPods, iPhones, and iPads bring new consumers into the Mac fold and drive sales of Mac computers, which of course work better with all of its other devices. The iPod, iPhone, and now the iPad are what drive mainstream adoption for Apple and have propelled it to become the powerhouse it is today.

The part of the presentation which is the most insightful is when it illustrates the thinking behind Apple’s emerging cloud strategy. While iTunes in the cloud is a foregone conclusion, that might just be the first wisp of an entirely new product strategy.

When Apple started to make other devices such as the iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV, they were designed to connect to the Mac as the digital hub syncing and managing all of these devices and others like digital cameras. These began as media creation and consumption devices, but then evolved into communications devices in their own right. Applications were the glue that connected these devices to the computer hub.

But now we are entering the post-PC era with the iPhone and the iPad, depending on the Mac as a central, orchestrating digital hub no longer makes any sense. iPhones and iPads are powerful computers in their own right. The new hub is the cloud, which can manage many more devices and offer much more powerful computing experiences (“speech recognition, unlimited storage”) than any personal computer.

Google is already all about the cloud. Microsoft is moving in that direction, and so will Apple. The new glue tying its devices to the cloud will be iTunes and MobileMe, which faberNovel predicts Apple will make free because of its strategic potential to lock customers into the Apple universe. Instead of syncing your devices to your computer, MobileMe syncs them to the cloud. And why store all of your songs and movies on your computer, when you can stream them from iTunes in the cloud? (That is why Apple bought Lala). There is unlimited storage, it is all in one place accessible from any device, and Apple can start charging subscription fees for streaming music and movies. Throw your photos up there too as an extra backup while you are at it.

Well, well, well. Blizzard has announced that real names WILL NOT be required to post on the official forums after all. Your level one alt is safe!

To show just how much Blizzard cares, the news was penned by Mike Morhaime, the company’s co-founder and current CEO.

The money:

I’d like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We’ve been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we’ve decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

Read more…

It’s been a big week for YouTube news. On Wednesday, the company launched a new HTML5-based mobile site, as well as the slick-looking YouTube Leanback. Today, during a keynote at VidCon, the site made a few more announcements: YouTube is adding support for video shot in the 4K video format — a very high resolution that clocks in at 4096 x 3072). And it’s also creating a new $5 million Partner Grants program that’s meant to help spur the creation of original content on YouTube by funding promising video ventures.

In a blog post, YouTube writes that the goal of the Grants program “is to act as a catalyst by infusing additional funds into the production budgets of a small group of YouTube partners who are at the forefront of innovation” and says that these funds will be serving as “an advance against the partner’s future revenue share”.

Here how the program works:

• YouTube is identifying eligible partners based on factors such as video views, subscribers, growth rate, audience engagement and production expertise
• Selected partners are contacted by YouTube and invited to submit a Grant proposal
• Proposals are evaluated by YouTube based on signals which include projected performance, distribution plan, marketing plan, cost requirements and appeal to advertisers
• If approved, funds are transferred to the partner so they can get started on their project

As for the 4K video resolution support, it’s really big: YouTube says that the ideal screen size for 4K video is 25 feet. Not to mention that the cameras needed to record in 4K resolution are quite expensive. So yes, this might be a little overkill for your average consumer recording, but it’s clear that it could definitely have professional applications.  YouTube also notes that if you want to watch a video shot at 4K you’ll need a very fast broadband connection.

All of this is clearly meant to help YouTube boost the amount of original, high-quality content on the site (in other words, it is growing beyond the 10 minute clips of cats on Roombas that are its bread-and-butter).  According to a report in AdAge, YouTube “envisions someone directing the money toward a short film or to increase their current level of production on YouTube”.  It sounds like the only restriction is that the primary mode of distribution for these videos has to be YouTube.

In it’s seemingly never ending quest to slash public spending and bring down the deficit the UK government is resorting to increasingly bizarre stunts to whip the public up into a frenzy of “slash and burn”.

One of the most recent was the YourFreedom campaign which is trying to get the public to suggest which “red tape” inducing laws they want slashed (we’d like the repeal of the badly drafted and rushed-through Digital Economy Act, thanks very much). The latest is a clearly staged video chat between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Prime Minister David Cameron, now released below, about what to do about deficit. Huh, Mark? Huh? Come on then, let’s hear your ideas…

Quite why Mark chose to “meet” the PM in what looks like his spare bedroom in a T-shirt is something there will perhaps be PHDs written about. Or perhaps not.

Next time you’re running low on toothpaste, switch to solar power. The Soladey-3 ionic toothbrush from Japan apparently busts plaque with electrons that work with saliva to remove it from your teeth. A solar panel attached to the handle absorbs electrons from light and transmits them to your teeth through ionized water and a titanium oxide semiconductor in the upper shaft of the toothbrush.

According to the Website, “This reaction is not felt by you, but it makes the plaque unstable and easy to remove.” That is reassuring.

It’s different from most electric toothbrushes, which vibrate and sometimes shoot water at your teeth, but still rely on toothpaste to help remove plaque. You could still use toothpaste, but Soladey claims it loosens plaque effectively using only electrons. And don’t worry, night owls – it works with artificial light, too.

Note: Some people think that the health benefits of ionized water is nothing more than “Snake oil on tap.” Anyone have experience with one of these?

Digital commerce giant eBay announced this morning the international releases of its eBay Selling application and its eBay for iPad application. The free Selling application is now available in Germany and the UK, and the eBay for iPad application is now translated into French, Italian, German and Spanish and currently available through Apple’s 77 iTunes App Stores.

In a separate release, eBay also announced that its Android app is now available for free download in the Android Market in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.

Micropayments startup PlaySpan has primarily focused on powering transactions for virtual goods, but today the startup is moving onto videos. PlaySpan is launching its PriceYourVideo Platform which essentially allows video producers to sell views via a micropayments model.

Any video content producer can sell their videos on PlaySpan’s marketplace and can price their uploads accordingly. Producers can also donate proceeds to charity for videos that are available free elsewhere. It’s fairly simple and similar in theory to news organizations that are charging micropayments for viewing articles.

Playspan has already signed up a popular premium content publisher, Revision 3. Web shows like Diggnation, Chad Vader, and Turbo Dates are all being sold on PlaySpan’s platform. For example, you can preview an episode of Diggnation for 3 minutes but after that time period you need to pay 10 UPoints (the marketplace’s virtual currency) to view the remainder of the video. To give you a sense of the pricing, 1,000 UPoints costs $10 on PlaySpan.

Playspan also plans to allow publishers to integrate the video monetization into their own sites. The idea of micropayments for videos isn’t new; YouTube has been experimenting with this And PlaySpan will face the challenge of bringing traffic to its marketplace to actually generate views and payments for producer videos.

While PlaySpan has been steadily growing the reach of it marketplace through licensing deals with social networks, game developers, media companies and gaming platforms, it’s nice to see the startup innovating and adding new features to its platform.

Twitter has made another key hire today: former Google vet and White House and State Department staffer Katie Jacobs Stanton. According to Stanton’s Tweet stream, she will be leaving her role at the State Department for greener pastures at Twitter. She will be based out of the company’s California office.

At first I thought Stanton would be taking on Twitter’s newly announced role of government liaison, but according to Stanton, she’ll be working on international and business strategy. Stanton joined Google in 2003 and was the Product Manager of Google Finance. She was one of the first Googlers to join the Obama Administration, as the “Director of Citizen Participation,” in which she helped develop of online tools that help Americans get move involved with White House.

She then moved to the State Department early this year as the Special Adviser to the Office of Innovation, where she worked on projects related to Twitter. Stanton seems to have the perfect blend of government and technology experience, which makes this a big win for Twitter.

In the latest chapter of the great Ebook Wars of 2010, Borders is attempting to drive more downloads for its free mobile applications for Android, iPad, iPhone and BlackBerry as well as its equally gratis desktop applications by offering five free books – valued at more than $40 – and content exclusive to the company.

Beginning today, Friday, July 9 through Wednesday, July 14, Borders is offerings titles like Dean Koontz’s “Frankenstein: Prodigal Son” and”The Alchemyst” by Michael Scott, along with exclusive content in the form of chapter 6 of Danielle Steel’s upcoming novel “Legacy,” which goes on sale September 28.

The promotion comes right off the heels of the launch of the Borders-branded eBook store and the release of BlackBerry, Android, iPad and iPhone eReading applications, all powered by Kobo. Question is if all this is too little, too late.

Has the Kindle already won?

NTP, which claims to have founded the technology of which wireless emails are based, has filed lawsuits against Apple, Google, HTC Corp, LG Electronics, Microsoft Corporation, and Motorola, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia for allegedly infringing NTP’s eight patents related to the delivery of electronic mail over wireless communications systems.

As you may have noticed, each of the companies who are being sued manufacture or develop wireless handheld devices or software used to deliver email on mobile devices.

NTP has a reputation for being a patent troll. NTP is known for its patent litigation and eventual settlement with Research in Motion over similar wireless email patents. RIM agreed to pay NTP $612 million to settle all pending claims in 2005.

Founded in 1992 by the late inventor Thomas J. Campana Jr. and Donald E. Stout, NTP has a a portfolio of 50 US patents that mainly relate to the areas of wireless email and RF Antenna design. While the company has apparently licensed its mobile email patents to Visto, Nokia, Good Technology and RIM, NTP has also filed filed patent infringement lawsuits against AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless, which seem to still be pending.

The lawsuit draws comparisons to Wi-LAN’s suit against every major mobile device manufacturer over blue tooth technology. Of course, NTP’s lawsuit will just be added to the growing stack of patent suits that companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft face from patent trolls.

Photo credit/Flickr/Bloomsberries

Ericsson, which provides technology and services to telecom operators around the globe, estimates we’ve hit another milestone in the Internet becoming increasingly mobile. The company claims, based on estimates based on industry information, that the 5 billionth mobile subscription was accounted for on Thursday, July 8.

The 5 billion mark was hit largely thanks to a surge in mobile subscriptions in emerging markets like China and India, the company says. In the year 2000, about 720 million people had mobile subscriptions, less than the amount of users China alone has today, still according to Ericsson.

Mobile broadband subscriptions are growing at similar pace and are expected to amount to more than 3.4 billion by 2015 (from 360 million in 2009).

Furthermore, Ericsson estimates, 2 million mobile subscriptions are added on a daily basis, and the number of 3G subscriptions has now exceeded 500 million worldwide. The company also posits we’ll be at no less than 50 billion connected devices by the year 2020.

(Photo via Ericsson)

Back in January 2010, Google declared that it was no longer willing to continue censoring search results on Google.cn, and that it would possibly shut down the Chinese search page, and potentially even its offices in China. In March, Google backed that talk up by redirecting Google.cn to Google.com.hk, a move that enabled it to keep providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese but from Hong-Kong.

At the end of last month, the Chinese government made it clear to the company that it wasn’t happy with the redirect, and that its Internet Content Provider license would not be renewed if they would keep up this “unacceptable” behavior.

Google flinched, and set up a landing page on the Google.cn domain that took all visitors of that site who clicked anywhere on said page to the Hong Kong-based search page, enabling users to conduct Web search or continue to use Google.cn services like music and text translation, which Google can provide locally without filtering.

Google submitted its ICP license renewal application around the same time, hoped for the best, and CEO Eric Schmidt just yesterday said he was confident the Chinese government would renew its license to operate a website. He was right.

Google told Reuters on Friday that Beijing had indeed renewed the license, thus averting a potential shutdown of its search page in the fast-growing Internet market, the world’s biggest with over 400 million estimated users.

The renewal of the license had been in doubt due to the tension between Google and Chinese authorities over alleged hacking of Gmail accounts and censorship of Google search results.

But as you can tell from the update in the earlier blog post about its China stance, things seem to have cooled down, at least for now:

We are very pleased that the government has renewed our ICP license and we look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China.

End of story, or just the beginning of a new chapter? Time will tell.