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And It Begins: Foursquare Shatters Its Check-In Record The Day Before SXSW - 03/12/2010 06:17 AM

The official Foursquare account just sent out a tweet letting everyone know that today is already the service's biggest day ever. This is interesting since it's actually the day before the SXSW conference kicks off in Austin, Texas. According to the tweet, Foursquare broke 275,000 check-ins (the previous record, set last Friday) for the day "hours ago." This means they're very likely well past 300,000 now and perhaps even higher. To put that in some perspective, just a month ago, Foursquare set a record with 1.2 million check-ins for the entire week. And that was double was it was the month prior. At today's rate, Foursquare would be doing well over 2 million check-ins a week.

Check-In For Charity During SXSW With CauseWorld And TechCrunch - 03/12/2010 06:07 AM

There are no shortage of location-based services launching this week at SXSW in Austin, Texas. Many of them allow you to "check-in" places to let others know you are there. So how do you differentiate between then and decide which to use? Well, here's one good way. CauseWorld, is a free iPhone and Android app that lets you check-in places, but it has an added real-world bonus: big brands give money to charity when you do so. And this week at SXSW, CauseWorld is teaming up with TechCrunch to offer double point (which they aptly call "karma") when you check in to one of over 50 venues around Austin (I'll paste the full list at the bottom of the post), including the Austin Convention Center (where SXSW is held).

Hot Potato Tosses A New Site, API, And iPhone App With Foursquare Integration At You - 03/12/2010 02:16 AM

Back in November of last year, the location-based social event service Hot Potato launched at our Realtime CrunchUp. Today, they've taken what was a solid service, and made it a lot better with a number of upgrades. First and foremost, there is a new iPhone application that just went live in the App Store. With a completely revamped user interface, the app makes it easier than ever to find and participate in events. Perhaps more importantly, it makes it really easy to create new events — and notably, the service has the nicest third-party Foursquare integration I've ever seen. When you click on the button to create an event, you can still manually enter a location, but if you happen to be around the venue, you can simply pick it from Foursquare's list of venues with the click of a button. This drastically simplifies the event creation process since the venue metadata is already there.

On The Eve Of SXSW’s Location War, Plancast Gets An iPhone App - 03/12/2010 01:31 AM

It's getting tough to keep up with all of the location-related developments leading up to this year's SXSW, and they just keep coming. Tonight, on the eve of the event, Plancast has just had its iPhone application approved. The service, which we've previously described as a 'Foursquare for the future', allows you to tell your friends where you're planning to be as opposed to where you currently are (in other words, it lets you and your friends plan ahead). You can grab the new iPhone app here. The application itself looks solid, and includes the core functionality you'll find on the Plancast website. The main view allows you to scroll through a list of your friends' upcoming events, and tapping on an event will show you where it is on a map and who else is going. At SXSW, where there are always many panels and parties going on, this can come in handy — sometimes it's more practical to plan ahead than it is to walk across town when you notice a few of your friends are checking in somewhere.

Milo’s Response To Google’s Blue Dot Specials: A Picture - 03/12/2010 12:04 AM

This morning Google announced a new Blue Dot feature on the mobile version of Google Product Search that shows whether a product is in-stock at nearby stores. This seems to pose a threat to startup Milo, which highlights local inventory in product search results both on the web and mobile devices. Milo's co-founder Ted Dziuba subsequently responded to our post with a Tweet that read "Google Product Search has availability for 5 retailers vs. Milo’s 49. Super cool web service, bro." At launch Google only has partnerships with Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm. Milo's list of merchants includes a range of retailers, from BestBuy and Nordstrom to Midwestern regional department store Blain's Farm and Fleet. When we asked for an additional response, Milo sent this amazing set of pictures below. Milo's Palo Alto office's are located at 165 University Avenue, in the same space as Google's first office back in 1999. Look closely at the picture and you may even see a few of the famous faces from Google's original team. The building itself is legendary in Silicon Valley and has also housed PayPal. Here's a 2007 New York Times article detailing the building's history and apparent lucky karma. The picture of the Google employees was given to Milo by one of its investors.

iPhone OS 4.0 Looms, But When Will We See It? - 03/11/2010 10:16 PM

Apple has set the standard that once every year they will release a new version of the iPhone. It stands to reason that this year will be no different, with a new model likely coming sometime this summer. But arguably just as important as Apple's hardware refresh is the accompanying software refresh that comes with it as well. And that's why it shouldn't be surprising at all that whispers of iPhone OS 4.0 are starting to grow. But this year, the timeline appears a bit off. As AppleInsider reported today, iPhone OS 4.0 is likely to deliver multitasking support. If true, that will make it perhaps the most important OS upgrade for the platform yet. However, in reporting the news, AppleInsider also notes that the software, "remains under development and reportedly has a quite 'way to go' before it's ready for prime time." Looking back at the iPhone OS SDK history you'll notice a constant: Apple has released the beta builds in March the past two years. We're already well into March this year, and so far, no word about Apple being close to doing the same.

Vicarious.ly: SimpleGeo’s One Location-Based Stream To Visualize Them All - 03/11/2010 09:59 PM

As I've made abundantly clear over the past several days, just about every service that has anything to do with location is launching something at the SXSW festival which starts tomorrow in Austin, Texas. Don't believe me, here's a small sampling (Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Whrrl, Plancast, Brizzly, Twitter). So, how are you going to wrap your head around all this location data? SimpleGeo has an awesome way. Vicarious.ly is a real-time location-based stream of information presented in a nice visual way. While the plan is to eventually launch one for many different cities around the U.S. and eventually the world, the first one is based around Austin, for SXSW. To make it, SimpleGeo partnered with BlockChalk, Brightkite, Bump Technologies, Flickr, Fwix, Foursquare, Gowalla, and Twitter to pull all of their location data and place it both in a constantly-updating stream, and put data points on a Google Map at the top of the page. These data points are represented by the logos of the various companies, so it's easy to follow visually.

For The Trifecta: MSNBC Extends Its BreakingNews Brand To Facebook - 03/11/2010 09:36 PM

Last November, MSNBC acquired the Twitter account @breakingnews, which was started as a basic newswire by Michael van Poppel and gradually grew to 1.4 million followers (it's now up to over 1.6 million). A month later, MSNBC announced that it had acquired BreakingNews.com, which has become a web portal for the online newswire. And today, it's managed to complete the trifecta: MSNBC has just launched a Facebook Page at Facebook.com/BreakingNews. MSNBC spokesperson Gina Stikes says that the new Facebook account will only send updates for the biggest stories to break (you can still use its other feeds if you want to receive every story to come from the service). The page is obviously still quite new (it only has 645 fans right now), but you can expect that the grow quickly.

AOL Launches Lifestream As New Standalone Product. This Is What Google Buzz Should Have Been - 03/11/2010 08:48 PM

Aol launched Lifestream, a social aggregator and publisher, as part of their AIM platform at TechCrunch50 Last Fall. Since then it has gained nearly 2 million users, say Aol. Based on that success Aol is now launching Lifestream as a standalone product at lifestream.aol.com. Like Friendfeed, Lifestream aggregates a number of third party social networks - Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Foursquare, Delicious, Digg, Flickr, YouTube, etc., so if you follow a Lifestream user you'll see all of the content that user publishes on those networks, and Lifestream automatically pulls in content from people you already follow on those various social networks, so you don't have to create yet another new friend list. Lifestream isn't yet integrated with Google Buzz, but Aol says it may be coming soon. Users can filter out content from specific networks if they like, on a per user or broad basis. A way to think about this - "noise cancellation for social networks."

Google Cuts Milo At The Knees With Its Blue Dot Specials - 03/11/2010 07:34 PM

Google just launched a new feature on the mobile version of Google Product Search which could take local shopping search startup Milo out at the knees. Whenever you do a Google product search from a mobile phone, blue dots will appear next to items which are in-stock at nearby stores. The image at right is from a search I just did for "HDTVs." The blue dots are subtle, but they certainly distinguish those results. Google has partnerships with Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm to show local inventory, and it is inviting other merchants to apply to participate as well. Highlighting local inventory in product search results is exactly what Milo does, although it works on the Web as well as mobile. Milo will have to try to keep one step ahead of Google now that its business has been targeted as a feature of Google Product search.

SecondMarket: Facebook And Zynga Dominate Transactions In February - 03/11/2010 07:03 PM

In January, private company stock marketplace SecondMarket published data on private company stock sales that they helped complete in 2009. And February's report showed the transactions that took place in January, which showed a strong demand for consumer products and services startups. The majority of transactions in January were sales of Facebook stock. SecondMarket just released its February report, which you can download here. Transactions more tripled in February, from $13 million in sales to $43.8 million in sales last month. A full 48% of the transactions were sales of Facebook stock, compared to 38% in January. And last month, we reported that sales are being completed for as high as $40 per share (or a $17.6 billion valuation). But we learned this week that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is in no rush to take the company public. LinkedIn took 18% of the transactions, and sales of both Twitter and Zynga stock were each 15% of the total. LifeLock rounded the group out with 4% of the total.

Barnes & Noble Uses Crunchies Endorsement On In Store Nook Posters. We Want One. - 03/11/2010 06:50 PM

We were somewhat sad when Barnes & Noble sent their PR firm to accept their award for the Nook for Best Gadget of 2009 at the Crunchies in January. Traditionally only Apple blows off the awards, and we've always been able to work around that. But apparently Barnes & Noble are at least aware that they won the award. They are using it to promote the Nook on in-store posters, we learned recently. We sent TechCruncher Laura Boychenko over to the local Barnes & Noble last night with strict instructions to rip one of the posters off the wall and run like hell back to the office with it. She failed in her task, but did take a few pictures and a video and promised to ask Barnes & Noble for one of the posters for our office. Less dramatic, but just as effective I guess.

AOL, Intel, And The New York Times Help betaworks Raise A $20 Million Series B - 03/11/2010 06:13 PM

Betaworks, the New York City-based holding company investing in the realtime Web, just raised a $20 million Series B. The round was led by RRE Ventures and Intel Capital, DFJ Growth, AOL Ventures, The New York Times, Softbank Japan and Softbank NY, Lerer Investments and Founders Collective, also participated, along with investors from the last round, which was $7.5 million The company both invests and incubates realtime media startups, including Summize (acquired by Twitter for realtime search), bit.ly, TweetDeck, StockTwits, SuperFeedr, Outside.in, OMGPOP, and gdgt.

Consumer Reports Says Apple Has The Best Tech Support, Acer/Gateway/eMachines The Worst - 03/11/2010 05:51 PM

Consumer Reports has a new report on which computer company has the best tech support. Apple wins! That's what happens when the same company controls the hardware as well as the operating system (and several of the most prominent pieces of software). The highest ranking PC manufacturer is Dell for desktops and Lenovo for laptops.

Evri Acquires Radar Networks In Semantic Search Consolidation - 03/11/2010 05:50 PM

After shopping itself around to all the major search engines, Radar Networks finally found a buyer in another semantic search startup. Today, Evri is announcing that it will be acquiring Radar Networks, along with its core technical team and its main product, Twine. Rumors surfaced yesterday on ReadWriteWeb that Evri was being acquired, but that is not the case. Evri is the acquirer.

Euro Startup Competition Plugg Names Fits.me Its Winner - 03/11/2010 05:42 PM

Fits.me, a virtual fitting room for internet clothing retailers based on robots (yes really) has won the European startup competition in Brussels, Plugg. It's actually even cooler than it sounds. By creating robotic shape-shifting manakins and testing how people reacted by seeing clothes on the robot with their dimensions, sales actually went up. Only 7% of all clothing is sold online today, a $36bn market It's $20bn for computers), because you can't see how the clothes look on a human body. The fits.me trial with partners showed these pictures of adjustable manakins wearing clothes increased sales three times and dramatically reduced returns by 28%.

FlyScreen Adds Foursquare To Its Android Lock-screen App - 03/11/2010 04:48 PM

FlyScreen, the mobile phone lock-screen replacement from Israeli startup Cellogic, has added Foursquare integration to its Android app ahead of this year's South by Southwest festival. The new Foursquare widget lets users of the location-based social network access its main features, including the ability to quickly find places nearby, "check-in", share their location with friends via Foursquare, Twitter and/or Facebook, as well as access their foursquare friends-list.

Perseids, John Hughes, And G.I. Joe Are Trending Topics On Wikipedia - 03/11/2010 04:46 PM

Google has Google Trends, Twitter has trending topics, and now so does Wikipedia. Pete Skomoroch, a Senior Research Scientist at LinkedIn and blogger at Data Wrangling, built a trending topics page for Wikipedia. The homepage ranks the top-25 Wikipedia articles with the most pageviews over the past 30 days, as well as the fastest rising articles in the past 24 hours. Some of the most popular Wikipedia articles in the past month include ones on the Perseids meteor shower, Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted, director John Hughes, and G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra. These are quite different than the types of search trends you would find on Google trends or realtime trending topics on Twitter.

OpenGL 4.0 Comes Out To Play - 03/11/2010 03:05 PM

With Microsoft becoming increasingly marginalized in areas like mobile media, DirectX is becoming less of a must-use toolset and more of a gaming-specific one. The other side of the coin is, of course, the increasing relevance of standards like OpenGL, OpenAL, and OpenCL: powerful cross-platform systems for graphics, audio, and parallel processing. You may remember OpenCL from its debut on the Mac in Snow Leopard, and OpenGL ES of course powers the UI on the iPad. OpenAL is still a ways from being brought under the public eye, but it's getting there. In the meantime, OpenGL 4.0 was announced today at GDC, and clearly it has DirectX in its sights.

Motally Brings Mobile Analytics To Smartphone Games - 03/11/2010 02:58 PM

As mobile gaming takes off, developers will need in-depth analysis to determine consumer behavior with their games and adjust their games accordingly. Motally, which provides user-action tracking services for the mobile web and apps, is expanding its product base today offering a targeted analytics service aimed towards mobile games on the iPhone, Android and Blackberry platforms. The service is currently in private beta, but developers will be able to sign up to use the service. Motally's game-oriented analytics platform allows publishers to track in-game data including where users drop out in-play and which levels users interact with most. Motally also allows for the dynamic changing of the game's design, allowing developers to measure the impact of changes immediately. As a result, publishers can tweak their games including design, performance, and ad placement by pinpointing areas of the game with the most traffic and identifying trouble areas.

The Magic Mouse, Fixed At Last - 03/11/2010 02:41 PM

I handle a lot of mice in this job (right now I'm using the Mionix Naos 5000) and I have to say that if a mouse were, like the Magic Mouse, shaped completely wrong for human hands, I would throw it away and never speak of it again. Others, while perhaps more crafty, are far less principled, and will go so far as to fabricate a silicone crutch to rest their hand on. There, I fixed it!

Motorola To Replace Google With Bing On Chinese Android Phones - 03/11/2010 02:30 PM

If I were a spit takin' man, I'd do a spit take right now. Motorola, stalwart of freedom, will work with Chinese carriers to add Bing to Chinese Android-based phones, ousting Google Search and Maps from the scene. Now this isn't meanness on Motorola's part although Reuters notes that this move could have something to do with that whole Great Chinese Google Hacking Incident a few weeks ago.

MyEdu Will Be Your Curriculum Guide And Virtual College Advisor Rolled Into One - 03/11/2010 12:00 PM

Do you remember to the days of college, when you were required to sort through your curriculum and career goals with your designated college advisor? Education startup MyEdu aims to replace this by helping students virtually access their academic information and create a roadmap tailored to their career goals. To date, over 2 million students at 750 universities have used MyEdu to earn their degree. MyEdu's suite of online products try to streamline the entire process of a college student's lifecycle, from selecting a college through to earning a degree. The suite includes detailed course descriptions, grade distributions, official course evaluations, and student reviews to pick the right classes; and schedule Planner to build the best schedule that fits a student's time constraints and goals.

Lucid Imagination Raises $10 Million For Apache Search Technology - 03/11/2010 08:56 AM

Lucid Imagination, the startup that commercially distributes the open source Apache Lucene and Apache Solr search technology, has raised $10 million in Series B funding from Shasta Ventures with Granite Ventures and Walden International participating in the round. This brings the company's total funding to $16 million. Lucid powers enterprise search technologies using the open source Lucene/Solr search. Customers include Zappos, Nike and Netflix. The new funding will be used to accelerate the adoption of Lucene/Solr search technology.

Opera Mini 5 Beta Now Available For Android - 03/11/2010 08:00 AM

Sure, Opera Mini may (or may not) already be the most popular mobile browser in the world -- but why stop there? Following up on the Android release of Opera Mobile 4 just over a year ago, Opera has just launched Opera Mini 5 for Android into public beta. The jump from version 4 to version 5 is pretty huge, introducing a handful of features that Opera says "makes your mobile browsing experience as close as it can be to your desktop experience."