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Music Lovers’ Social Network Flowd Gets All New Mobile Apps

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 19:53:58 +0000

The music lover’s social network Flowd , which recently arrived stateside after its European debut, just updated its mobile applications with a boatload of new features that make them worth a look. Up until now, Flowd was only mildly interesting, as it was primarily touting its 600 or so artists and DJs who had signed up for the network – a number which, in the grand scheme things, is merely a drop in the bucket of all things music. But with the new mobile apps, Flowd is now aggregating artists’ activity from other social networks, including Twitter, YouTube, SoundCloud and Last.fm, allowing users to access artist updates, bios and gig calendars, even if the artist is not on Flowd. Although in testing, this added import/aggregation functionality didn’t mean that every artist profile page was now filled with data (it was still sort of hit-or-miss), there’s certainly more information than before. Plus, it should be noted that the problem with filing out profiles through automated means could be affected by the simple fact that some artists don’t have gig info online right now. In other words, nothing to pull in. In the updated Flowd mobile apps, there are nifty Twitter-esque “follow” buttons which let you quickly build a stream of updates from your favorite bands in order to get details on new concerts and other news. In a way, the Flowd apps can serve as a Twitter client for those interested in music, without you having to…you know…actually use Twitter. Also new in today’s app updates (iOS and Android) is a feature that lets Flowd scan your device to see what music is currently being played or the last track played. It can then post that info back to Flowd and optionally cross-post it to Facebook or Twitter. It’s not as elegant as the Spotify + Facebook integration (or MOG, Rdio, Rhapsody, etc. + Facebook), but it can serve as a path for social music sharing for those old-school people who still like to purchase MP3′s from services like Amazon or iTunes instead of paying for a music subscription. (And yes, there’s a lot of those people left yet). The Flowd mobile apps are available for free on iTunes , Android and Ovi (Nokia), but the app updates are on iOS and Android only. Flowd is a portfolio company of Digia Ventures, the venture division of leading Finnish technology services firm Digia, Plc with offices in Helsinki, Finland and Santa Clara, CA.

Prototype Blade Laptops Stolen From Razer Offices

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 19:36:33 +0000

We’ve been eagerly awaiting more news of Razer’s Blade , a 17-inch beast that they claim is “the world’s first true gaming laptop.” Alas, we didn’t think the news would be of the troubling variety: Razer says that two of their prototypes were stolen from their Bay Area R&D lab. Razer is working closely with the authorities, as you do when something this valuable is stolen, and they urge their fans not to buy any suspiciously Blade-like laptops in back alleys or out of the backs of pickups. The state of the prototypes isn’t mentioned, but I have to guess that they’ve probably been working on nailing down driver support and custom software for the customizable keys and touchscreen. And without proper support from developers (like, say, the ability to show your ammo count, lives left, that sort of thing), the Blade is really just an ordinary expensive laptop. Sure, they can sell them for a substantial bit of cash, but there are easier ways to steal laptops. Maybe the thieves are just big Razer fans. At any rate, if you have any clues or see one of the laptops on the market, contact cult@razerzone.com.

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Prototype Blade Laptops Stolen From Razer Offices

Google Launches 24×7 Phone Support To ‘Apps For Business’ Customers (Hooray For Humans!)

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:48:49 +0000

Google has long been known as a company that favors algorithms and automation — which scale nicely to millions of people — over human-powered services, which don’t. That works well enough for them most of the time, but it’s led to one key issue: if something goes wrong with a Google product, it’s remarkably hard to get an actual human on the phone. It’s hard to get too upset over this when you’re using Google’s free products, but it can be immensely frustrating when you’re forking over money every month to use Google’s Apps for Business suite, which allow business to take advantage of features like custom domains and admin tools. These premium Apps users have historically had some options when things went wrong — Google’s support site includes various automated troubleshooters, and email support. But phone support was limited, so if the issue wasn’t critical, you probably weren’t going to have much luck talking to anyone. Which is a problem when your business is relying heavily on Google Apps. Now that’s changing: during the keynote at its Enterprise-focused Atmosphere event, Google has announced that it’s launching 24×7 phone support to business customers for all issues affecting its core services, which include things like Gmail, Docs, Calendar, and the other key apps. That’s a big deal — plenty of businesses want the peace of mind of being able to talk to someone, and this will doubtless help convince some companies that were on the fence to ‘Go Google’. Google has posted about the news on its Enterprise Blog, which briefly discusses Google’s support satisfaction (80% of small businesses are satisfied, as are 90% of large businesses — Google is shooting for 95%). Since we launched Google Apps for Business in 2007, we’ve been working hard to build a global support offering that’s responsive to the needs of our business customers. In the early days, our customers reached us mainly through email, and our 24 x 7 phone support was limited to critical issues. To improve the experience of our customers, we now provide 24 x 7 phone support to small, medium, and large Google Apps for Business customers for all issues affecting the core services. Our customers may also receive support through our web-based support portal, online help forms, and online help center. All support cases are handled directly by trained Google Apps experts. A support metric that we’re especially passionate about is customer satisfaction. We measure customer satisfaction by asking for feedback on a seven point scale at the time we close a support case. As measured on this scale, 80% of our business customers and 90% of our large business customers indicate that they’re more than satisfied with their support experience. While we’re proud of these ratings, we want to do even better. Our goal is to achieve an overall satisfaction rating of 95%. Image via Epiclectic on Flickr

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Google Launches 24×7 Phone Support To ‘Apps For Business’ Customers (Hooray For Humans!)

The Real Pirates Of Silicon Valley?

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 06:32:22 +0000

ArcticStartup recently broke the news about an ambitious seasteading endeavor called Blueseed started by Silicon Valley founders Max Marty and Dario Mutabdzija. The post came shortly after Max pitched the idea (embedded below) at JumpStartDays on October 17th, in which he received a huge round of applause. Seasteading isn’t a new idea. Other than pirates, one of the first well known attempts at seasteading was the data haven called HavenCo that was located on a sea platform off the coast of England. The sea platform was its own country called Sealand , with its own passports, currency, etc. The project was a direct result of restrictive laws around online gambling. Similar concepts have been developed around floating hospitals called Mercy Ships , where medical treatments are performed on large ocean vessels. While these ships currently serve developing countries, one can imagine how similar ships could provide low cost healthcare all around the world by operating out in the open waters free from the various laws that restrict the ability for inexpensive medical treatments through competitive pricing. Back when I was a sysadmin, I became friends with one of the residents of Sealand and officers of HavenCo, Ryan Lackey and later a few of the founders of Havenco, Jo and Sean Hastings . I was such a huge fan of this endeavor, that I begged Ryan to let me come join him. At the time, I was pondering either working at HavenCo or on a project in Antarctica. I was very young, and this was some phase in my life where I wanted to push myself to extremes. I also loved the idea that there could be ways to make change in the world by applying pressure from outside of a system through creating market choices. This is what Blueseed is attempting to do, but instead of gambling, they are taking the issues around not being able to get H1B immigration visas head on: Blueseed aims to provide an alternative solution to the US work visa problem for Silicon Valley and allow professionals lacking a visa to legally work in close proximity to companies and investors from the Valley. Blueseed plans to do this by providing living and office accommodations on a vessel anchored 12 nautical miles offshore from California (half an hour by ferry), in international waters outside the jurisdiction of the United States. Target customers include startup entrepreneurs for whom a satisfactory U.S. work visa solution doesn’t exist, staffing companies impacted by the January 2010 Neufeld memo preventing 3rd party employee placement, and other high-tech professionals interested in the advantages provided by Blueseed’s location. Its no secret that I’m a libertarian and a lot of people disagree with my stances on limited government, but I do believe people from all political sides in Silicon Valley are with me when I say our country’s immigration policies are pretty fucked up. I agree with Greg Anderson from ArticStartup, who wrote, “As an American citizen, I don’t know if I should feel really impressed or disappointed about Blueseed’s plans.” I got a chance to interview Max about Blueseed and here’s a summary of our interview: Max became interested in seasteading and creating what he calls the “Googleplex of the sea” after he heard an online talk by Patri Friedman . Max sees seasteading as a response to the reality of the world in which he currently lives in and as a way to change the system from the outside, by simply offering people a better alternative. “If you are comfortable with what you’ve got, that’s fine, but if not, we may have something for you…”. Through complete chance, he eventually met Patri in person at a conference in San Jose and through that luck and serendipity, he ended up joining them at the Seasteading Institute. While director of the institute, Max met his partner Dario. Max had been searching for ways to apply something practical to the concept of seasteading and after looking at things like medical tourism, etc., he decided to become focused on solving a problem near and dear to him. Max is a first generation immigrant and his partner is an immigrant. While Max was in college in Florida, he made friends with amazing and talented people from around the world and after they graduated, they found it incredibly difficult to stay in the US. Most returned home where they started their professional careers, even though that wasn’t what they wanted. They wanted to stay and become part of what once made the US great by helping to create economic growth and prosperity. If you think about many of our entrepreneurial stars in Silicon Valley, you’ll come up with many names of amazing people who came to our country as immigrants. I can name a few off the top of my head such as Max Levchin , Luke Nosek and Alfred Lin , but just for fun and to add gravity to why immigration is so important, you should list as many as you can think of in the comments. Max Marty’s own family didn’t have to go through the pains of sponsorship and visas, because being from Cuba, they were considered political refugees, but he saw this problem all around him and considered it ridiculous that our country treated professionals and entrepreneurs in such a terrible way. Max stated, “Our political reality is that coming to work here is not actually possible.” “The idea came to me while I was on a Reason cruise. When you are on one of these ships, it feels like you are in a small city and part of a community.” Max and I discussed how his ship would need to be an extension of the Silicon Valley community in order to connect with the right talent and investors. Being so close, people would be able to come to shore on visitor visas and take meetings and have a social life. One of the reasons I didn’t go to Sealand was due to gender ratio. Even though I’m well accustomed at this point being surrounded by men, I can always go home and have my girly hideout, but on a platform and in an intimate setting like that, it just didn’t seem like a good idea. I brought this up with Max and he said that the organization will be actively looking for startups led by female entrepreneurs from around the world. The logistics of doing anything on the ocean are mind boggling. His team is currently raising a round of funding to help get to the next stage of making this dream a reality. With a few investors committed, they are one step closer to getting some of the logistical planning out of the way such as food provisioning, establishing relations with customs and border protection, dealing with Internet access, etc. Because this is such a huge endeavor, I asked Max what he most needed help with if I could get the word out there and he said, “Recently we were thinking about the environmental angle to it. Maybe people would be interested in showcasing or demoing their sustainability products on the ship. Come help us create a sustainable environment on the vessel, so that we’re not a blight on the ocean. It would be great to connect with individuals in this space.” I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that we can talk about being pirates all we want, but to truly be a pirate, you have to have a ship. This is a crazy idea, but one I would love to see succeed. Hats off to Max and Dario for dreaming big and trying to make a difference in the world.

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The Real Pirates Of Silicon Valley?

Arrived Has Arrived

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 05:23:52 +0000

Want to tell your friends that you’ve arrived somewhere, but you’re too lazy to check in to Foursquare, Twitter, Instagram, Batch, iMessage/or text them? WELL YOU’RE REALLY SAD IN LUCK EXTREMELY PRIVILEGED PEOPLE, BECAUSE TECHCRUNCH DISRUPT FINALIST ARRIVED HAS ARRIVED IS NOW OUT OF PRIVATE BETA. In case you didn’t get the memo, Arrived is an iPhone app that notifies people when you get to a certain place, with, get this, no immediate effort from your lonesome. Yeah, I know. Crazy ass modern world right? Arrived co-founder Matthias Broecheler stands by the fact that a good number of people actually want to do this, “People love to set up arrivals around places like ‘San Francisco’ or ‘Manhattan’ or ‘Central Park’, so that they can be notified when friends arrive there. We spend a lot of time working on a geo-fencing solution that would allow people to arrive in geographic areas of various sizes automatically without draining a user’s battery. We are the first iPhone app we know that does this efficiently. Most apps only do geofencing around places, that is, a geographic point with a small radius around it.” To use Arrived, download the app and pick a place you want to notify people about. Then pick the people you want to notify about your arrival and voila it just works! I picked a random place ( The Ramp , a bar down the street) and then a bunch of random people so my old co-workers are totally going to get a random message one of these days when I’ve forgotten all about this article and I’m walking by there on the way to work. HAH. TAKE THAT OLD COWORKERS. You can download this thing here.

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Arrived Has Arrived

Google Acquires Katango, The Automatic Friend Sorter

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 21:38:54 +0000

Back in September we broke the news that Google was in talks to acquire Katango , a small Kleiner Perkins-backed startup that launched this past summer. Today, they’ve made it official: Katango just announced that it’s been acquired by Google, and that it’ll be joining the Google+ team. Katango is a logical fit for Google, though their initial product was focused primarily on Facebook. The startup first debuted an iPhone app in July , setting out to made it easier to selectively share with various groups of friends on Facebook. Facebook’s List feature has long allowed users to share certain pieces of content with different friends, but it did little to automate the process of actually breaking your friends out into different groups. That’s where Katango came in: you’d connect the app with your Facebook social graph, and it would analyze your friends to automatically sort them into different buckets. It was powerful, but the competitive landscape changed significantly shortly after Katango’s launch. In September, Facebook unveiled Smart Lists , which also help automate the process of separating friends into lists (it offers some pre-built lists, like coworkers and people who live nearby, and its suggestion feature makes it easy to build custom lists as well). In other words, Facebook is solving the problem itself. But Google+ has a feature that’s analogous to Facebook’s Friend Lists: Circles. And while Google has promoted Circles heavily, both in its marketing and on Google+ itself, it doesn’t do much in the way of automatically helping users sort their friends into Circles — there’s still a lot of legwork involved. Which Katango seems perfectly suited to help with. Here’s a statement from a Google spokesperson: “We were impressed by the Katango team’s innovative approach to making your social circles smarter, and we think they’ll be a great addition to the Google+ team.”

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Google Acquires Katango, The Automatic Friend Sorter

First Quad-Core Tablet Unveiled, Gmail App for BlackBerry Discontinued: Today’s Top Stories

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 14:01:45 +0000

Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. We’re keeping our eyes on six particular stories of interest today. Asus Unveils First Quad-Core Tablet Further details about the next-generation Asus Transformer tablet, the Transformer Prime, have been announced : The 10.1-inch tablet sports a 8.3mm-thick body, a 1280×800 display, 1GB of RAM, a Nvidia Tegra 3 chip (making it the world’s first quad-core tablet), an 8-megapixel camera capable of shooting 1080p video, a 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera, a microSD slot and an update to Android Ice Cream Sandwich scheduled for the end of the year. It costs $499 for the 32GB version and $599 for a 64GB model with an option attachable keyboard for $149. President Obama Threatens to Veto Law to Repeal Net Neutrality The White House has threatened to veto Republican-sponsored legislation that would overturn the net neutrality rules the FCC passed last December. The U.S. Senate is expected to vote on S.J. Resolution 6, “Disapproval of Federal Communications Commission Rule Regulating the Internet and Broadband Industry Practices,” sometime Thursday. Google Discontinuing Gmail for BlackBerry Google is discontinuing support its Gmail app for BlackBerry in favor of a web version beginning November 22, the company has announced . Adobe Stopping Development of Flash for Mobile? According to what appears to be a leaked statement that will be released publicly Wednesday, Adobe is ceasing development of its Flash Player for browsers on mobile devices. Apple: Siri Is Not Coming to Older iPhone Versions Apple’s voice assistant Siri will remain exclusive to the iPhone 4S , Apple has confirmed. HP Buys More Time to Determine the Future of WebOS HP CEO Meg Whitman told employees in an all-hands meeting Tuesday that the company still hasn’t decided what to do with webOS, the mobile operating system it gained from its acquisition of Palm. Further News Groupon is rolling out “personalization” features that will help businesses pinpoint subscribers who are most likely to become repeat customers. Kobo, the creator of the Kobo ereader, has been acquired by Japanese ecommerce firm Rakuten for $315 million in cash. Image courtesy of iStockphoto , DNY59 More About: first to know series

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First Quad-Core Tablet Unveiled, Gmail App for BlackBerry Discontinued: Today’s Top Stories

Steve’s Last Laugh: Adobe Killing Off Flash For Mobile Devices

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 06:59:14 +0000

The year was 2008. I was at an event focused on mobile, sitting in on a roundtable discussion with several folks from key companies in the industry. One gentleman was from Adobe. The iPhone had launched the previous year, famously without any support for Flash. A lot of folks were up in arms about this — including several at this table. The guy from Adobe assured everyone: mobile Flash would be coming soon. And it was going to be wonderful. The notion that Apple wouldn’t include it on the iPhone because of performance issues was pure hogwash. The same thing was said in 2009. The same thing was said in 2010. The same thing was still being said in 2011. So you’ll forgive me when I snicker a bit at the news tonight that Adobe plans to cease development of their Flash player for mobile devices. Jason Perlow has the scoop for ZDNet , and it’s a doozy. Here’s the apparent forthcoming announcement from Adobe on the matter: Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates. This announcement, along with talk of a focus on HTML5, should be out in the next day or so, according to Perlow. Yes, Adobe is ending their efforts to get Flash onto mobile devices. But again, that’s odd, since all we’ve heard out of the company for the past 3+ years was either how mobile Flash was coming, or how it was just about to be perfected. While it did finally come — in June 2010 for Android — it was far from perfect. That’s putting it nicely. Put less nicely, it sucked. The technology on mobile devices was never ready for primetime. As Harry McCracken put it this past February: Mobile Flash: Always Exciting, Always Not Quite Here Yet . In that post, McCracken noted that Motorola was touting full Flash support as a big selling point of their then-new Xoom tablet. But there was an asterisk. Flash would not ship with the device itself. It would come later. It would always come later. Things got really heated in April 2010, when Steve Jobs took to Apple’s website to write a missive against Flash. Simply titled, Thoughts on Flash , Jobs destroyed the technology in 1,700 or so words . Perhaps most damning were his thoughts on mobile Flash in particular. The key parts: “In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it.” “Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath.” This letter prompted an ill-advised advertising campaign (which they ran all over the web, even on TechCrunch) by Adobe in which they proclaimed: “We Love Apple”. It was transparent and lame. Worse, it was just about the weakest response possible. Adobe didn’t address any of the issues Jobs brought up. They tried to be cute. They brought an advertisement to a gun fight, as I noted at the time . When pressed, Adobe would only call Jobs’ dismissing of Flash “ a smokescreen “. And they would continue to promise that the technology would soon be perfected. Better, Adobe’s platform evangelist summed up his feelings with: “ Go Screw Yourself Apple “. It’s sad that Jobs is no longer with us to see this day. But the truth is that he probably didn’t need to see it — he knew he was right. In his post, he outlined the need for a move towards technologies like HTML5, and now that’s exactly where Adobe is heading. Steve gets the last laugh. Timeline: apple Updated Apple Store App Makes For Less Painful Retail Experience Siri And The iPhone's Physical Keyboard With 4S Now Tops Among Big 3, Apple Grabs 52% Of Industry Profits; Doles Out Huge Bonuses European Commission Launches Investigation Into Samsung's Litigation Tactics TechCrunch Giveaway: Apple iPad 2 #TechCrunch → All Articles for apple CrunchBase: Apple Website: apple.com Launch Date: January 4, 1976 IPO: November 9, 1980, NASDAQ:AAPL → Learn More CrunchBase: Adobe Systems Website: adobe.com/ IPO: Nasdaq:ADBE → Learn More

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Steve’s Last Laugh: Adobe Killing Off Flash For Mobile Devices

Nintendo May Enable Two Wii U Controllers At Once After All

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 21:15:23 +0000

One of the big disappointments at E3 was the news that Nintendo’s weird new console, the Wii U , would only support one of their tablet controllers at once. But recent losses have made them reconsider their situation and the opportunities presented by allowing a second controller to be used in the home — and sold at stores. We were initially skeptical of the new system, as rumor after rumor piled up and eventually were mostly proven to be true. A six-inch touchscreen with built-in motion and traditional controls — a big gamble, but not as big as only allowing one to be used at a time. The Wii was all about being in the same room as people and flailing about like crazy. Taking that away removes the keystone from the arch and it all comes tumbling down, revealing the last-last-generation graphics and laggy controls. The reason for having only one controller available was technical. They didn’t elaborate at E3, but given what we know, it seems that the Wii U central console only had enough bandwidth to send a video signal to one controller at a time. As the CPU and amount of RAM in the console haven’t been specified yet, there’s still room to give it a bump. But as a developer told Develop : Nintendo now know they absolutely need to support two tablets… Even if that affects framerate, as a developer and player, I don’t care. It needs to work. Developers will design appropriate games for this. If you’re building a quiz game you’re not going to give a shit about the framerate. True. It’s about the unique experience, the fun factor. The rest will get figured out in time. Has Nintendo forgotten that they released an accessory for the Wiimote after a year that made it act the way it should have at launch? Not to mention the fact that two tablet controllers equals accessory sales. Satoru Iwata has said having to buy another controller is a “cost barrier.” Earth to Iwata: If you wanted to play four-player Mario Party or any of the other major sellers, you had to shell out for four controllers. And if you want to play whatever the killer app is for two tablet controllers, you’ll need to shell out again. That’s how it works. Nintendo desperately needs that money. And if it expects to sell 100 million Wii Us the way they’re looking right now, they’re going to have a rather ugly awakening. Nintendo led a tectonic shift in gaming habits. Now they’re scrambling to make ends meet. The right decision now could make the Wii U a truly interesting development in the gaming world, but the wrong one could make it an albatross they have to support half-heartedly for three years.

Griffin’s Beacon Lets You Channel Surf From Your Android Device

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:48:08 +0000

A handful of new Android tablets can take control of your television thanks to their built-in IR blasters, but Griffin has just come through with a solution for those of you stuck with less versatile hardware. Enter the Beacon, a standalone IR transmitter that helps turn your Android device into a remote control . Setting up the Beacon itself is pretty straightforward — just pop in four AA batteries (ugh), pair it with your phone via Bluetooth, and you’re off to the races. As we’ve seen with the Xoom 2s , having the necessary hardware is only half of the equation. Users also need to download the Dijit remote app from the Android Market in order to actually make the Beacon work, but thankfully the initial setup process is simple. The app contains a pretty extensive list of supported TVs and components, so getting the whole home theater up and running shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. An iOS-friendly version of the Beacon has been making the rounds for a while now, but the Android model has just begun to trickle out into the wild. Considering its $69.99 price tag, the Beacon isn’t much less expensive than some fancy dedicated universal remotes, but that’s not really the point. I’ve often made mention of how I’d like to be to control everything around me with a single device, and devices like the Beacon and the Harmony Link help make that (admittedly naive) vision more real. Quick word of warning: the Beacon only works with devices that run Android 2.3.3 or later, so those of you looking to make the leap better have all your updates in order first.

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Griffin’s Beacon Lets You Channel Surf From Your Android Device