Blancer.com Tutorials and projects

Three weeks into his job, Facebook Director of Gaming Partnerships Sean Ryan made bold advances to developers during the M&A panel at Inside Social Apps. When discussing what games should be built on what platforms, Ryan said, referring to Facebook, “Well if you’re building social I can’t image you not building on the world’s best social network” a statement which made some noise in the crowd.

Ryan went on to say that single player games like the immensely popular Angry Birds “wouldn’t make a lot of sense” on the social network, as building on the almost 600M strong Facebook platform isn’t just about an endless supply of users but about games that highlight interactions.

When asked to explain further about ‘Angry Birds’ versus a game like ‘CityVille,’ Ryan said,

“We don’t bring anything to the table but it’s still a great game. If you have a social game, we believe you should build it for us, that’s what we do. If you have a single player game, it’s not clear why you should build it for us, you should probably build it for other people. Folks like PopCap have been able to brilliantly take a downloadable game, which was Bejeweled and after a lot of work turned it into a social game. So you can do it, but there’s not much point.”

When asked if there was a game that wasn’t on Facebook that he thinks should be Ryan said “‘Civilization’  … it’s one of the best multiplayer games ever, and it’s not yet on Facebook. Whenever there’s a true multiplayer game that involves a lot of social interaction it arguably should be on our platform, because that’s what we do.”

When asked if Facebook would ever acquire a gaming company or go into the content business themselves Ryan said no, “That’s not our gig.”

Abound Solar, which makes thin-film cadmium telluride solar panels, has attained certifications that will allow the company to receive feed-in tariffs in the U.K. and pursue sales there aggressively.

With a feed-in tariff, utilities agree to pay a premium, but stable, rate for power generated from renewable sources, both as the utility uses the power, or as it is fed back through the grid to be redistributed and sold elsewhere.

Often controversial, feed-in tariff are meant to drive the rapid adoption of clean energy by homeowners and utilities alike. Critics believe they give a better payout to utilities, and hurt consumers, or that they tip the scales in favor of one technology (like solar) over others (such as wind, or geothermal) unfairly.

Solar subsidies in France, Bloomberg reported last week, led to an all-out boom in the installation of residential solar systems, and then to government debt. The agency that guaranteed premium rates for solar generated power can’t cover as much as installed systems have begun to produce at the locked-in, higher-than-market rates according to the report. As a result, the country is cutting the incentives, and that could hurt solar companies that have heavily invested, there.

A similar thing happened to the solar market in Spain around 2008, according to a report by analyst Stephen Marcus for Cleantech Group. Japan is currently considering cutting down its solar feed-in tarrifs now, too PV-Tech reported today. A decision there is due in February.

Abound Solar’s modules previously received certifications from Underwriters Laboratories (UL) and the California Energy Commission (CEC) which helped the company to gather momentum, domestically. The company manufactures its technology in Indiana, having recently secured a federal loan guarantee of $400 million to build its operations there in a facility that once made auto transmissions.

To date, Abound Solar (formerly known as AVA Solar) has raised $150 million from private investors and institutions, including: Invus Group, DCM, Bohemian Companies, Technology Partners, GLG Partners, and the Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Program.

Mark Chen, a director of marketing and product manager at Abound Solar, said on Tuesday:

“We have no immediate projects in the pipeline in the U.K. but are optimistic about our market potential there, as the government is highly supportive of solar. We will follow some of our existing customers there from Germany, Italy and the U.S. including probably Juwi Solar and WirSol both German companies.”

We’ve all walked down the street and seen someone with a weird tattoo and thought, “they’re going to regret that later”. What may seem cool at the time, might not seem so cool years from now. Is it possible that the current crop of mobile photo filters will lead to the same type of regret? PicPlz clearly thinks it’s possible.

A new feature the service announced today is Dropbox integration. This nifty ability has been turned on from the backend, so iPhone, Android, and web users can use it immediately. And if you do use it, you’ll be able to automatically save both your original photo and your filtered photo to your Dropbox account in the cloud.

It’s a cool integration that’s a good idea. I’m sure we’ll see more mobile services utilize it.

But the reasoning behind PicPlz’s move here is just as interesting. As they write:

This way, you can use picplz to post images with filter effects and not worry about:

Permanently and irreversibly altering your valuable pictures

Leaving the unfiltered version of the picture trapped on your phone

While PicPlz, like rivals Instagram and Hipstamatic, is built around the idea of taking and sharing photos that have been altered using filters, they’re also clearly aware that some users are hesitant to do this. In fact, there’s no shortage of people who think this type of behavior is simple a fad that will pass. And then we’ll all be longing for our original, unfiltered pictures — we’ll want to remove the tattoos.

Whether that’s true or not remains to be seen. Plus, both PicPlz and Instagram have already allowed you to save both the original version of a picture and the filtered version. But this new integration does make it a bit easier  to not think about.

Never before has an electric vehicle been named European Car of the Year, but this year that honor falls to the Nissan Leaf. Similar to the North American Car of the Year, which the Chevrolet Volt won, the European COTY is chosen by auto journalists: 58 of them from 23 European countries. So why did the Nissan Leaf win?

When you look at just how efficient the Nissan Leaf is you begin to understand just why EVs will become a part of our everyday life. The award jury seems to have been motivated by a distinctly forward-looking philosophy this year.

Continue reading…

Earlier today, we reported on a lot of chatter that Twitter was being blocked in Egypt amid rising protests. We can now confirm that they are being blocked. Two tweets from the service tonight confirm it.

“We can confirm that Twitter was blocked in Egypt around 8am PT today. It is impacting both Twitter.com & applications,” Twitter communications head Sean Garrett just tweeted out via their new PR account. “We believe that the open exchange of info & views benefits societies & helps govts better connect w/ their people,” he continued in a second tweet.

The protests began happening in Cairo this morning after people rallied together using services like Facebook and Twitter, and after seeing similar protests in Tunisia about corruption.

@twitterglobalpr
Twitter Comms

We can confirm that Twitter was blocked in Egypt around 8am PT today. It is impacting both Twitter.com & applications. (1/2)

about 3 hours ago via webRetweetReply

@twitterglobalpr
Twitter Comms

Re Egypt block: We believe that the open exchange of info & views benefits societies & helps govts better connect w/ their people. (2/2)

about 3 hours ago via webRetweetReply

Hey, if I dish it out, I have to be able to take it, too. And take it today I have. We’ve put up this ridiculous interstitial ad here on TechCrunch that appears the first time you visit the site.

It’s an ad for Dell. I like Dell, and before I went to Macs I mostly bought their computers. But the ad sucks.

Anecdotally I’ve heard that interstitial ads perform well because they don’t give the visitor any choice. They view the ad, then they get on the site. Lots of impressions and clicks and stuff that the sales guys love.

But like you I don’t like them. I tend to stop visiting sites that show them. They aren’t as bad as the ridiculous ads that float over the text you’re trying to read, but they are in the same ballpark.

They also slow the site down significantly.

In the past our sales guys have brought up these kinds of ads, and our CEO Heather has shot them down. In this case I’m not sure who’s responsible. AOL has now taken over some of our ad sales, I believe. And our awesome sales team (who has to put up with stuff like this) is handling the rest. I think so anyway, normally I don’t pay much attention to that side of the business. So far my internal requests for more information have been ignored.

Whoever did it, I’m going to try to stop it. Which will probably involve six hours of internal meetings and at least one power point deck. So at least you know that it’s going to cause me a lot more pain than it’s causing you.

You’ve got that going for you, which is nice.

Today at the Inside Social Apps conference in San Francisco, Inside Network’s Kim-Mai Cutler sat down with Eric Chu, a group manager at Google for the Android platform. The two discussed the platform mainly from a developer perspective. And the initial question may have been the most interesting.

When asked about the status of an in-app payment system for Android, Chu noted that it was set to launch last quarter, but it was forced to be delayed. Why was it delayed? “Developers were busy with their Christmas applications,” Chu said. “So we couldn’t get enough feedback,” he continued.

“Helping developers monetize is very important to us,” Chu said promising that instead in-app purchase ability will come this quarter. “So stay tuned,” he said.

Cutler asked if the plan was to use carrier billing for this in-app purchases when it does launch? Chu responded that they’ve invested a lot in carrier billing over the past several months. “It’s one fo the lowest-friction models,” he said. But he said it wouldn’t just be carrier billing, they’d use the Android Market payment system as well, and they’re working on adding other methods. When they do add more, developers won’t have to do a thing, Chu said.

Later, a question from the audience asked if the in-app system would require the latest versions of Android, Chu ensured everyone that the majority of current Android devices will be able to use the system.

Chu also reiterated that apps coming through the Market will have to use Google’s own payment offerings. But those outside the system can take advantage of Android’s openness.

At the tail-end of Yahoo’s fourth quarter earnings conference call today, CEO Carol Bartz was asked about competition with Facebook in display advertising. Facebook has come out of nowhere to account for nearly a quarter of all display ads on the Internet.

“There is some confusion about whether Facebook leads in display advertising,” Bartz responded. “It is because they have a lot of little impressions. We actually lead in display revenue.” But in fact, the two may be neck and neck. In 2010, Yahoo’s reported display ad revenues (after taking out traffic acquisition costs, the part they give to partner sites which run its ads) were $1.89 billion. Meanwhile, Facebook’s estimated global ad revenues for 2010 were $1.86 billion, with ad revenues expected to more than double to $4 billion this year.

Take this comparison with a grain of salt because one is real audited numbers versus an estimate of a private company’s business, but if that estimate is anywhere near correct, Facebook will soon surpass Yahoo in display ad revenues as well as impressions, if it hasn’t already.

Yahoo showed significant improvement to its bottom line in the fourth quarter, with profits doubling to $312 million. However, its revenues of $1.2 billion (again, minus TAC) were down 4 percent. To fend of Facebook, Yahoo has to get overall revenues growing again, and fast.

Yahoo is growing profits by cutting costs (as it did today with more layoffs) more than by growing its business. Although if you break down Yahoo’s revenues, display ads is the one bright spot. It was up 16 percent to $567 million in the quarter, whereas search revenues were down 18 percent to $388 million. (See earnings slides below).

Bartz also seems to have a better answer to the question, What is Yahoo? She seems to have settled on Yahoo becoming a “great content” company. In other words, a media company. “We just want to create content that is interesting to people,” she said. Don’t we all.