The necessity of getting tested for STDs is often avoided as much from embarrassment as from fear of the outcome. Like buying condoms at the store, it’s a situation where your private life is suddenly exposed, and even though it’s not something to be ashamed of, it’s something you’d rather keep to yourself. People shy from going to the clinic or hospital, even when it’s a serious matter for themselves or others, because of this natural tendency to eschew public scrutiny.

A project at St. George’s University in London aims to prevent this problem by making STD testing as private as pregnancy testing. They’re doing so by developing a mobile phone-compatible chip that would be capable of returning results within 15 minutes.

Continue reading…

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Mobile-Based STD Test Kit To Improve Conditions In Third World, Frat…

From the parallel universe known as "you've got to be kidding me" comes yet another trinket from New PC Gadgets that'll undoubtedly sell well despite being about as mindless as a product comes. In a bid to solve a simple problem that every internet addict faces when dining out or simply joining other Earthlings around a dinner table, the aforesaid company has just issued the Smartphone Coaster. That's a fanciful name for a bent piece of stainless steel. In practice, it holds just about any smartphone (or dumb / featurephone, for that matter) at a 75 degree angle, enabling you to keep a close eye on your display while stuffing your face. We're surmising that these will be aimed as restaurants more than in-home dinner tables, but hey, if you'd rather enable your tweens to ignore vital family conversations while gathered for supper, more power to you. It's available now for $3.95 (or less if buying in bulk), and no, we won't tell anyone that you're seriously considering a dozen.

Continue reading Smartphone Coaster keeps your eyes on the prize, even while you eat

Smartphone Coaster keeps your eyes on the prize, even while you eat originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 15:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Smartphone Coaster keeps your eyes on the prize, even while you eat

The world of media distribution is a bad place to be right now. What with major labels all wanting everything from everybody, people like Apple and Microsoft vying for exclusive content, and a ton of different laws governing all this international trade stuff, I’m surprised anybody gets anything done at all. But Microsoft has put in the work and they’re rolling out their Zune music and video services to a bunch of Europe. International reader, you may be on the list.

Of course, pricing and availability for certain programs and features differs from country to country, because a simple worldwide distribution platform is a fairy tale we tell our children, or a scary tale music execs tell theirs. There are variations.

Continue reading this story…

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Zune Expands Media Services In Many, Many Countries

In season 1 of AMC’s hit show Mad Men, Rachel Menken comes to the advertising firm Sterling Cooper because she wants to give her department store, Menken’s, a makeover, so to speak. She wants to transform it from a successful department store into an elite one. “What kind of people do you want [coming into your store]?,” Creative Director Don Draper asks Menken. “I want your kind of people Mr. Draper. People who don’t care about coupons — whether or not they can afford it. People who come into the store because it is expensive,” Menken replies.

Based on what we’re hearing, HP has been having similarly themed meetings in recent months. They want to transform themselves — from HP, the successful tech juggernaut, into Apple, the sexy one.

When you think of HP, what do you think of? For most consumers it’s either printers and sort of crappy, cheap computers that you get at Best Buy. But that’s not what HP aspires to be anymore, sources familiar with HP’s thinking are telling us. They want to be Apple. They want be the makers of high-quality consumer gadgets all connected by way of a digital ecosystem. An ecosystem they own and operate. One tied together by webOS.

While it should hardly be surprising to hear that any company wants to be Apple given that company’s recent success, HP is one of a very few — and actually maybe the only company with the required assets to potentially pull off such a makeover. Of course, that doesn’t mean they’ll be able to — but it’s possible. And they know that, and that’s exactly what their strategy is going forward, apparently.

On the face of it, it may not seem to make a lot of sense. After all, HP makes nearly double the revenue that Apple does each quarter. But despite this, it’s Apple that actually makes more profit. And it’s Apple that has more than double the market cap of HP. In the eyes of investors, Apple is the up-and-coming rockstar, HP is the aging one. And they’re closely tied to their counterpart, Microsoft, who is also seen as aging.

And that’s what HP is trying to break away from.

WebOS is the key to all of this. It’s the software layer that HP’s hardware has been lacking — forcing them to go with Microsoft instead. But the Palm acquisition in April changed all of that. From the moment that happened, HP has made no secret that the reason for the deal was to “double-down” on webOS.

Just listen to what HP executive Todd Bradley had to say today at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, CO. “I think you’ll see us with a family of slate products, clearly Microsoft for the enterprise, and a webOS product,” Bradley said. “Our focus is working with still our largest software partner, Microsoft, to create a tablet, a slate, for the enterprise business,” he continued. What he’s doing there is carefully positioning HP’s relationship with Microsoft on new products going forward as being focused on the enterprise side of things. Previously, it was stated HP would do a Windows-powered slate for consumers. That is no longer the case. That tablet will be built to run webOS.

Does that mean HP is going to ditch Windows altogether anytime soon? Of course not. As the largest maker of PCs, HP is Microsoft’s largest customer. But for the new products HP is planning, it’s going to be all webOS. And on the desktop side of things, they’re working on webOS-syncing software that will run on Windows (and Macs), we hear. So again, they’re basically trying to recreate the ecosystem that Apple has.

HP executive Jon Rubinstein (the CEO of Palm) also confirmed at the same event today that webOS 2.0 is coming later this year. This new version is likely to be the first one that will start to tie all of these HP products together.

Speaking of Rubinstein, his pedigree here can’t be overlooked. He was the executive at Apple in charge of the iPod until he left in 2006. He’s the one who oversaw the framework for the ecosystem Apple has in place today. There was some talk leading up to the Palm acquisition if Rubinstein would stay or go — he’s apparently onboard with this new “let’s turn HP into Apple” idea. That shouldn’t be surprising given that this was the basic strategy at Palm with the Pre.

But Palm failed simply because they didn’t have the resources to do what they wanted to do (challenge Apple’s iPhone directly). HP does — and then some. And while HP is not a player in the mobile space right now, they plan to be once again with webOS.

From what we’re hearing, HP wants to create a seamless experience for all of their hardware. That’s PCs to notebooks to netbooks to tablets to mobile phones to printers. And they want to do so with a much more controlled product line than they’ve previously had. They want to move towards more premium products, ones with higher margins. That will make the profits go up, just as it has with Apple.

Of course, whether or not HP can make any of this happen is a pretty big “if.” One obvious problem with them being Apple is that they don’t have their own retail stores, like Apple does. HPs are sold everywhere from Best Buy to Costco, but those stores tend to attract people looking for bargains. And those that aren’t, buy Macs there.

Second, HP’s strategy in mobile phones will meet resistance not only from the iPhone, but from Google’s Android phones. But Google appears to be positioning Android as the sort-of Windows of the smartphone era. That is, they’re all about getting their software as widely distributed as possible. Like Microsoft with PCs, Google don’t make their own hardware for Android (though they had a hand in designing the Nexus One, which is all but dead now). HP would be making its own hardware to run webOS. Again, like Apple.

Android also poses a potential threat in the tablet field. But again, Google won’t be making this hardware. As I said at the beginning, because HP is a hardware maker that just happened to purchase a great piece of software in webOS, they have a shot at pulling off what Apple has. Whereas most other rivals, even Google, cannot. Android may be ubiquitous by this time next year, but the experience won’t be as seamless as it is within Apple’s ecosystem. And, HP hopes, their ecosystem. As Apple has proven, people are willing to pay a premium for that.

This is HP’s big bet on the future. They’re betting on the Apple way. And that’s the right way for them to bet because they’re a hardware company. With a shift towards mobile starting to take place, as well as new products like tablets starting to rise, HP seems smart to get ahead of this trend. They’re not Microsoft or Google where profits are in licenses and advertising, respectively. With the webOS buy, they’re much closer to Apple. The profits there are in premium products, buoyed by the seamless ecosystem.

That’s where HP is heading.

[images: AMC]

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HP Wants To Become Apple. WebOS Is The Key

Nasdaq-listed Unica has acquired privately-held Pivotal Veracity for approximately $17.8 million in cash, the company announced this morning prior to the opening of the market.

The marketing software company picked up Pivotal Veracity, which was founded in August 2003, to ramp up its e-mail marketing software solutions in what it regards as a ‘logical extension’ of their offerings.

Pivotal Veracity markets a suite of tools designed to optimize the deliverability, reputation and effectiveness of digital communication. Its software suite enables its customers, which include companies like Cisco, Classmates.com, Digitas, Nestle and Sears, to maximize e-mail content rendering and delivery effectiveness and reduce the cost of sending emails that never reach intended recipients, including those that are filtered by ISP and third party spam filter services, or end up in personal spam folders.

Pivotal Veracity also helps customers protect their brands by minimizing the risk of being blacklisted, as well as ensuring that customers are actively protected by ISP and third party whitelists.

Unica had already integrated Pivotal Veracity’s solutions into its enterprise and on-demand offerings and says it expects to deepen that integration across both companies’ product lines and continue to sell Pivotal Veracity’s solutions on a stand-alone basis as well. Pivotal Veracity’s co-founders, Deirdre Baird and Michelle Eichner, will join Unica and guide the company’s efforts in email marketing and deliverability.

Unica says the acquisition is not expected to have a material impact to its revenue in fiscal year 2010 and should be neutral to slightly accretive to FY10 Non-GAAP EPS.

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Unica Acquires Pivotal Veracity For Approx. $17.8 Million In Cash

On December 14, one man woke up to find himself infested in a world with zombies. Or at least, he’s tweeting like it is.

This man, Gus, in Miami, Florida has been tweeting relentlessly for the past month as if the world is at and end. Or as he puts it in his bio, “Zombies are everywhere and this is my diary of the apocalypse.” Among other things, he’s documented his first zombie scratch (and relief that he was still human afterwards), his scavenging for food at abandoned gas stations, and of course, plenty of zombie sightings.

To add to the tale, Gus is even taking somewhat elaborate TwitPics of his adventure. For example, here’s a picture of a dead person (covered in blood) that Gus lifted some keys from. He’s also made a video, of some zombies apparently chasing him, that you can barely see.

Overall, a solid effort, and something that should keep the zombie-crazed Internet amused until Gus’ inevitable demise at the hands of zombies.

[thanks Franco]

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At The Dawn Of The Apocalypse, One Man Battles The Zombies — On…

iYogi, a company that provides remote tech support directly to consumers and small businesses, has raised a Series C round to the tune of $15 million.

The round was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson and joined by prior investors Canaan Partners, SAP Ventures, and SVB India Capital Partners. The Gurgaon, India-headquartered firm earlier raised $3.1 million and $9.5 million in two rounds in 2007 and 2008, respectively.

iYogi offers a number of tech support services like PC installation and recovery, anti-virus/spyware, data back-up and PC speed optimization. Its annual unlimited tech support plan starts at $139.99. Most of its tech support services are centered around Microsoft software, but Google and Apple products are also listed on iYogi’s website.

iYogi says it will use the additional capital to expand its team of Global Tech Experts, which are basically people who help consumers and SMBs solve their computer problems from a remote location. iYogi says that today, it has more than 100,000 annual subscribers and provides thousands of incident sessions every day on a 24/7 basis.

The company claims that it has seen a 300 percent growth in revenues and subscribers since 2008, and that it currently boasts an employee workforce of 1,200. iYogi intends to grow the number of Global Tech Experts to 3,000 worldwide in 2010.

iYogi delivers its services in partnership with companies like HP, Microsoft and Cisco and counts Amazon and Walmart among the retailers that have worked with the company to enhance customer service.

Have you ever used iYogi? Is it something you would recommend to your less tech-savvy friends and/or relatives?

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Remote Tech Support Company iYogi Gets A $15 Million Boost From DFJ,…

Today during Google’s Nexus One event, Android lead Andy Rubin revealed something that’s sure to be a relief for Android users and developers alike: you’ll eventually be able to store a vast number of applications on your phone — even large ones — the same way you can on an iPhone. The change will come with a future software update, when Android begins storing applications as encrypted files on the SD card. Rubin didn’t say how long it will be until we see the update, but it’s clear that the team is working to resolve the problem.

Up until now, developers have been hampered by the fact that every Android phone to date has had a relatively small amount of storage available for applications (a couple hundred megabytes as opposed to the iPhone’s many gigabytes). Apps are stored in the phone’s ROM rather than the phone’s removable (and cheaper) SD storage, which grants developers enhanced protection against having their apps against piracy. But it’s also proven to be a handicap.

Many of the iPhone’s most popular applications are graphics intensive, rich games. But these games often require high quality visual assets to go with them. The iPhone handles these fine — you can download massive apps over Wi-Fi or through iTunes sync. On the other hand, while the newest Android phones are certainly capable of rendering high quality graphics, their ability to handle large apps is limited by the phone’s available storage. Yes, developers can choose to download their app’s assets to the SD card after the initial install, but this isn’t a good experience for the end user.

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Android’s App Storage Limit Will Be Lifted With A Future Software…

AdNectar, a word-of-mouth marketing service for agencies and brands fielding campaigns on social networks, announced today that it has reached 2 billion virtual goods sent from its platform. AdNectar has clients ranging from Gillette and Funny or Die to Jelly Belly and Snapple/Dr. Pepper. Also, over 10 million virtual goods have been sent between friends on social networks.

According to data from AdNectar, campaigns reach scale fast. For example, over 1 million Malibu Rum branded drinks were sent in two weeks; and over 1 million Nestle Toll House cookies were sent for the “Bake some Love” campaign.

Engagement rates are also reportedly high for companies. Rates are anywhere from 2% to 6% because the campaigns tap into the implicit trust between your friends on these social networks. Also, brand impact is exceptionally high; 16% lift in purchase intent for Nestle Toll House, and 9% increase in brand favorability for Malibu Rum.

AdNectar and virtual goods is definitely taking off, and brands are starting to realize that, and AdNectar is using that to their advantage. AdNectar is based in Palo Alto, and has 7 employees. The company has only taken an angel round of funding from Larry Braitman, Tom Cole, Kevin Hartz, Brian O’Kelley, Jon Perlow, Russell Siegelman and David Shen.

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AdNectar Serves Over 2 Billion Virtual Goods Over Social Networks

If Joe Wilcox ran the computer industry, we’d still be using typewriters.

Wilcox has a lengthy post today on BetaNews saying that the world doesn’t need an Apple tablet. And while Wilcox does have some decent general points mixed in with some bad ones, this is hardly a new thought. In fact, it’s little more than an extension of a concept that has been around for a while, but has been reinvigorated recently as the hype around Apple swirls: That tablet computers are a niche product. Of course, it’s easy to argue that when you have history on your side up until this point. But Wilcox’s post completely overlooks what is likely to be the larger point, and in general is a dangerous way of thinking.

Now, let me just state right off the bat, that Wilcox’s conclusion could absolutely be right: That Apple’s tablet device may well turn out to be a bust. While Apple has a great recent track record, a new product is still always going to be somewhat of a crapshoot, even for them. That said, Wilcox seems awfully close-minded about the product’s potential, and frames his argument around that. He argues, for example, that an Apple tablet will be little more than a less-compelling version of the iPhone because it is less portable. Meanwhile, users who want more computing power will continue to use laptops. Again, that’s the basic premise behind the most of the recent arguments against Apple’s tablet. But Wilcox doesn’t even for a second imagine something that is very obvious to most people who follow Apple closely: The likelihood that they’re going to release a product exactly as we’re currently thinking about it, is very small.

There is a reason that no less than Steve Jobs is said to be running point on this project, and has been for the several years that it has been in existence. The thought that Apple is simply going to settle, and release a product that is largely the same as all the other tablet computers that have come before it, is laughable. Jobs himself has supposedly shot down the product a few times because it wasn’t up to snuff. Don’t think that he won’t do it again, if he has to. But the indications now suggest that this product may finally be up to what he considers to be Apple’s standards. And if that’s the case, we can all expect something that’s at least somewhat unexpected.

And it’s potentially even bigger than that. Last week, I argued that the reason everyone is so excited about this tablet is because there is the very real possibility that it will alter the role of computing in our lives just as the iPhone has. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber took that concept further: “I think The Tablet is nothing short of Apple’s reconception of personal computing,” he wrote. While both of those concepts may sound a bit extreme, stop to think what is more likely: That Apple is happy to create a standard offering in a niche category, or that they’re trying to redefine the category and possibly the entire market?

It’s Apple, they’re trying to hit a homerun. That doesn’t mean they won’t strike out, but make no mistake that they are swinging for the fences. To create a bland tablet in the image of those that existed before it would be the equivalent of a bunt with no one on and two outs.

Something else to consider: There is the very real possibility that this could be Jobs’ last major new product launch. Health issues aside, Jobs will sooner or later retire from Apple. As we all know, products take a long time to come into existence from beginning to end — especially at Apple. And while I’m sure they have other new projects in the pipeline, it certainly seems possible that this tablet could be the last major one for a least a few years. Does anyone really think Jobs is going to go out betting on a niche product? No.

Wilcox argues that Apple’s recent hits like the iPod and iPhone were both just extensions of markets that already existed and were proven: Portable music players and mobile phones. That’s true, and Wilcox does acknowledge that Apple did make both of those markets better with their offerings. But he says that the tablet market won’t be the same because it’s “niche,” and Apple won’t be able to jump start it. Of course, this completely overlooks perhaps the best example: That Apple did jump start the personal computing revolution in the 1970s and 1980s. Before that, the best way to describe the PC was “niche.”

The most peculiar aspects of Wilcox’s post: His constant asking for readers to argue with him in the comments (we call this “baiting”), and his thought that if the tablet flops, it will demolish Apple’s stock price (I mean, it’s not like they’re making billions in profit each quarter off of all their other businesses and have more than enough leverage for even large risks now), simply distract from the rest of his post. Wilcox often likes to take the contrarian approach with regard to Apple, and that’s fine, it stirs interesting thoughts and discussions. But he’s often wrong, simply because it seems like he’s wants to reach a certain conclusion.

But all of this goes deeper still. The main problem I have with Wilcox’s post is the implication is that no company should step outside of its comfort zone. The arguments that Apple shouldn’t build a tablet simply because other companies have tried and failed in the past, or that they shouldn’t make a tablet because they failed with the Cube, are both troubling. Apple clearly believes that the future of computing is touch-based, and the tablet is a step in that direction. Maybe they’re wrong, but it would be a disservice to everyone to suggest they not even bother to try and find out. The potential upside is far too high. It’s the kind of stuff that keeps technology exciting and advancing.

[photo: flickr/rego]

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The World Doesn’t Need Someone Telling Us What We Don’t Need In…

FMyLife’s developer community has a new reason to visit the site this week: to complain about the restrictions the company has recently started to enforce on its API. From now on, FMyLife requires all applications that feature advertising or that have a price tag (e.g. on the App Store) to send 50% of their revenues back to FMyLife. Apps that are available for free, sans advertising, will be able to operate as usual.

For those who haven’t been introduced to the FMyLife phenomenon, the site invites users to leave brief personal stories that generally end in catastrophe or extreme embarrassment. All of the stories conclude with “FML” (or F*** My Life), which has become a catchphrase outside of the site as well. It’s a great Schadenfreude fix, and you may even wind up feeling some empathy for your peers (or not). The site, and the third party applications it has spawned, have proven to be extremely popular.

Now, FMyLife disallowed paid applications and advertising when its API launched in February 2009, but the company has been inconsistent about enforcing those rules. Some developers have offered their applications with advertising for some time. And FMyLife has even approved the use of advertising and premium versions in some cases, without anticipating just how popular these applications could become. As it turns out, some of these applications have turned into big businesses in their own right, and some have proven to be drains on FMyLife’s servers. Rather than kill off all applications that are monetizing the service, FMyLife has decided it wants a cut.

Here’s how FMyLife co-founder Didier Guedj is describing the changes to the policy:

The Fmylife API was created to spread FML stories on the internet for free, in the spirit of sharing. However, in recent months, several developers made a very big business by selling FML’s applications or by advertising on it. This has led us to change our policy:
1) Access to the Fmylife API remains free for those using it for non-business purposes.
2) We will now ask that those who are using Fmylife for profit share their revenue at a fair 50/50.

The recently policy changes are directly related to a conflict FMyLife has had with Enormego, a developer that built two applications for the iPhone: “F MyLife and” “F MyLife Pro”, (the free version was briefly ranked as the top application on the App Store) . Here’s how Guedj describes the situation:

Enormego created two applications for iPhones (”F-MyLife” et “F-MyLife Pro”) which generate consequential revenue (through the sale of the apps, plus advertising) because they got more than a million hits per day since April 2009. These two iPhone applications only work thanks to our website, its concept and content. It was agreed with Enormego on July that any revenue generated by these apps would be split 50/50 (no contract was drawn, just via an email exchange). Enormego has never paid to Fmylife any money, and has not replied to any of our Emails since September. After several warnings without any answers, we decided to cut off their access to the API function. Since, they have been pirating the content of our website to feed their applications. We then asked them to stop. They did, only a few days ago.

We’ve reached out to Enormego for their side of the story.

FMyLife’s motivations for implementing a more restrictive API are obvious: they want to make money off the site they’ve built. At the same time, the FMyLife service has certainly benefited from the efforts of these third party developers — you can be sure plenty of people who downloaded these mobile apps are also frequent visitors of the service’s homepage. FMyLife can do what they want with their data, but it’s clear that they should have been consistently enforcing their policies from the start. Some applications have already been discontinued (or removed FMyLife support) since the change.

All of that said, it does sound like FMyLife would be willing to work something out if a developer has already built an application using the API and objects strongly to the changes. From Guedj:

For new applications (premium or ads), we explain the new rule to their developer and they have the choice to share the future income, or they don’t have access to the API.

We’ve never disabled an application (except Enormego’s) because these developers work hard too, and we respect their work a lot. We talk with them, explain the situation and all of them have agreed easily (for now) with our new conditions.

Image via sjdvda on userlogos.

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FMyLife Starts Clamping Down On Its API, Has Some Developers Saying…

On deviantART, the site for anyone who thinks they are an artist, member submissions are known as “deviations.” The site’s been around since 2000, attracts 33 million monthly visitors (comScore), and just recently passed its 100 millionth deviation. It is, appropriately enough, a short story about gay sex.

I could quote from it, but it is more of a deviation from good writing than anything else. I might as well just show the “Blizzard” drawing above featuring some sort of black unicorn frolicking in the snow with an arctic fox. How should I put this? There are some creations which are better left in a drawer and maybe shouldn’t be shared with the world. Seriously, would you pay $150 for a print of this drawing?

I’m sure there’s some great art on deviantART among the 100 million submissions of drawings, photos, videos, and stories, but they are hard to find among the 99.9 million pieces of mediocrity which seem to fill up the site. It’s as though every kid from your high school art class who dropped out to draw dragons is on the site, telling the other drop-outs how amazing their art is. Some of it is so bad that it’s given rise to parody blog divineART, whose slogan is, “When art becomes visual pollution!”

But, hell, what do I know? Those 33 million visitors a month are enough to classify the site as mainstream (shhh, don’t tell).

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The 100 Millionth Deviation on DeviantART Is A Gay Sex Story, But…

What’s not to like about free directory assistance? Investors are pouring yet another $6.7 million into Jingle Networks, the company behind 1-800-FREE-411. The funding round was disclosed today in an SEC filing, and it brings the total amount raised by the company to almost $90 million.

The investors in this round were not disclosed in the filing, but previous investors include First Round Capital, Goldman Sachs, Hearst, and Liberty Associated Partners.

Jingle runs voice ads before giving out directory assistance numbers, and competes with GOOG-411. Last year, before the U.S. financial meltdown, it was looking to IPO, launched a broader voice ad network, and even hit profitability on a per-call basis.

The IPO talk stopped as soon as the advertising recession hit, and you’ve got to wonder how that voice ad network is doing now, and whether it is still profitable per call. I’d be surprised. If they were profitable, why would they have to raise $6.7 million now, on top of the $7.5 million they raised just last February. Maybe this one will get the company back over the hump and ready for an exit.

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Jingle Networks Rings In The New Year With A $6.7 Million Funding…

Cc:Betty, a free service that helps organize group email threads, has rolled out an iPhone app to help declutter your email on your mobile device. Cc:Betty’s app is a group based email application that breaks email conversations into collated, threaded discussions.

An account can be created right from the app, and new group discussions can be created, using the iPhone address book to access your contacts. Photos can be easily attached as well and new contacts can be added to discussions via your address book. Any discussions, or other content such as attachments a person has in their Cc:Betty.com account are automatically synced to their iPhone. When one of your discussions is updated, you’ll get a push-notification to your iPhone so you can access important information on the go.

Founded in 2008 by Michael Cerda, Cc:Betty began as a web application that routes, parses, and organizes email conversations in a simple at-a-glance dashboard so you never have to scour your inbox to find the bits and pieces of a long thread. If you cc “betty@ccbetty.com” on any email, “she” will create a mailspace, which is a webpage, for your entire email thread and will divide important things such as dates, times, people, places, and files and will format them all in one place. Cc:Betty will track messages with up to 100 recipients and can organize emails with up to 20 MB in size, including attachments.

Cc:Betty recently integrated with Twitter, so that users of the service can tweet in and out of a of the collaboration platform, as well as see each other’s latest tweets. The startup also upgraded its service with several new features, including the ability to see maps, images and documents as large thumbnails in email threads, and a list of people in an email conversation. You can also filter content of the thread by participant. The startup’s founder Michael Cerda tells me that the company is also rolling out a stealth SMB centric offering in the near future called Threadbox.

The startup also just raised $500,000 in funding from Western Technology Investment. The startup previously raised $1.5 million in seed funding in June led by Venrock with investors Seraph Group and Hillsven participating. The company was incubated in Venrock’s offices and officially launched at DEMO in March.

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Cc:Betty Launches iPhone App For To Make Sense Of Your Email

Startup RepairPal, an auto repair and maintenance information site, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Tugboat Ventures, with Rick Keister, David Strohm, Mark Goines, and Michael Torres participating. The startup previously raised $3 million in seed and angel funding.

The site, which we reviewed last year, is similar to a Google Health for cars. You get price estimates for different parts and repair jobs for your car. You enter your car year, model, and mileage, and it spits out price ranges for your zip code. There is also a directory of hundreds of thousands of local mechanics, with each shop placed onto a Google Map. Members can rate each mechanic and once a repair is completed, you can keep an online service record at RepairPal. It’s like a one-stop shop to maintain and record the health of your car.

RepairPal also launched a free, handy iPhone app which will help users find reasonable prices for car repairs and provided them with locations of reputable repair shops in their areas on the go. The app also includes Google Maps integration, user reviews for each shop and a list of towing and roadside assistance services based on your location.

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RepairPal Grabs $4 Million For Google Health For Cars

The recently released e-book reader from Barnes & Noble, the Nook, has been rooted by the community of enthusiasts at nookdevs.com. The complete instructions for hacking the device and obtaining root access are detailed on the site. The Nook went on sale in late November and aims to compete with the dominant Amazon Kindle, a device which has spurred its own community of hackers and modifiers.

The Nook retails for $259, and is an Android-powered device with built in AT&T 3G service and WiFi, along with an e-ink screen that is found in most other readers. The instructions for rooting the device require that the device is opened up and that the SD card which stores the operating system be removed. The process seems a little too simple, almost as if the device was designed to be hacked. The storage is on a removable card, which can then be loaded in another machine where the process of acquiring root access to the operating system is carried out.

This will likely lead to DRM controls being bypassed, and a slew of homebrew projects being created based on the hardware – which might ironically help Barnes & Noble in its bid to unseat both the Kindle and Sony e-Reader.

Full detailed instructions and photographs are available on the site here. The entire process is straight forward and only takes around 30-45 minutes. I might actually order a Nook now.

Tip via Nenad Nikolic (@shonzilla)

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Barnes and Noble Nook e-Book Reader Rooted

File syncing and storage startup Zumodrive has raised $1.5 million in funding led by Sherpalo Ventures with Tandem Entrepreneurs and VeriFone CEO Douglas Bergeron participating. We initially reviewed Zumodrive here.

While there are a plethora of syncing and storage services available to users, Zumodrive, which spawned from Y Combinator startup Zecter, has a different take on file syncing. Similar to other services, Zumodrive creates a drive on your device that is synced to the cloud. But service has a different twist-the service tricks the file system into thinking those cloud-stored files are local, and streams them from the cloud when you open or access them.

ZumoDrive, which currently has 300,000 users, recently launched a new version which lets users to access their music playlists, photo albums and document folders on any device. ZumoDrive mimics a standard hard drive but saves content in the cloud and then streams it to each device instead of saving local copies, making it the killer app for the netbook and other devices with limited storage.

Zumo now plays nice with the iPhone, with an new app that lets users sync their content to their phone without having todeal with local storage capacity issues. And ZumoDrive released a new version of its system that wirelessly syncs playlists between devices, auto-detects content, and lets users link file folders on their devices to ZumoDrive only once so that changes in that folder will always be linked to ZumoDrive. The service has also been upgraded to integrate well with media applications, like iTunes, so users can play entire music libraries saved in ZumoDrive on multiple devices without manually syncing content. ZumoDrive will use the new funding for product development.

Zecter previously launched a product called Versionate, an office-wiki product, that we first covered in July 2007. We wrote about them again a year ago. ZumoDrive faces competition from Dropbox, SugarSync, and Box.net.

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ZumoDrive Lands $1.5 Million For Cloud Storage And Syncing Application

A number of companies are pursuing AOL’s ICQ instant messaging product, we’re hearing. Russian press is saying DST (a recent Facebook investor) is talking about buying the service. Our sources say they’re a relatively new bidder to the process, and others continue to show interest. One of those interested parties is Google. Another, at least at one point, was Skype.

ICQ, which AOL acquired in 1998 for $400 million, has 33 million worldwide monthly users, according to Comscore. But 8.3 million of those are in Russia, where it hold the no. 1 spot for instant messaging. That explains DST’s interest. It also explains some of Google’s interest as they struggle to get a proper foothold in that market.

The end price for ICQ may be higher than $250 million.

Rumors of ICQ’s possible sale were first reported in mid November. We’d heard speculation that Naspers was interested late last month but have since dropped out of the bidding process.

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Google, DST Make Play For AOL’s ICQ

Sean Parker (Founders Fund, Facebook, Plaxo, Napster) and angel investor Ron Conway are doing a little smack talking over who’ll raise the most money for charity. Conway is raising for the UCSF Foundation, and Parker is fighting Malaria through Malaria No More.

So far Parker is in the lead, with more than $15,000 raised (he’s tying it to his 30th birthday party tonight). Conway, who started later, has nearly $7,500. They’re both using Causes on Facebook, one of Parker’s companies, to raise the money.

We’re not picking sides, and both are very worthy causes. Donate early and often. And consider asking friends to donate instead of giving holiday gifts.

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Venture Capitalists Ron Conway And Sean Parker Battle For Charity

It’s about 9:45 am Paris time here at the sixth annual Le Web conference. Kicking things off is Twitter creator Jack Dorsey, who just launched his new startup, a mobile payment platform and service called Square, talking with Le Web’s Loic Le Meur. There are 2,300 registered attendees at the event, the most ever, and it looks like most of them have jammed themselves into the main floor to see Dorsey talk.

The audience is eating this up. A large screen next to the stage is showing real time tweets related to the talk, and a new one is popping up every second or faster.

Dorsey is kicking things off talking about his initial vision for Twitter (our first post). “I knew the concept was huge,” he said on stage. “The hardest part of any idea is getting started.”

Dorsey says he’s been surprised by the velocity of growth, and the ways that users have changed it – retweets, @mentions, hashtags, etc., were all invented by users.

Jack’s now giving the audience one of the first live demo’s of his new startup, Square (see here for a video of our demo). Square lets users make payments over a mobile phone, starting with the iPhone. The hardware will be given away for free, he says.

Funny enough, the demo isn’t working properly, although Loic says it worked perfectly back stage. Dorsey switched from wifi to Orange’s mobile network and the payment went right through.

Dorsey is highlighting the social aspects of the service. A picture of the payer pops up if they’re a registered user, adding security to the transaction.

The service is in limited beta, says Dorsey. And a number of retailers around the U.S. are accepting payments via Square.

Dorsey says the service will go live for all next year, hopefully by March. He also responded to a question I asked about Apple’s explorations into this space – they will become a direct competitor. Dorsey says they’re focused on the user experience, getting people in without contracts, merchant accounts, etc. Apple is doing things differently.

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Le Web Kicks Things Off With Jack Dorsey

We heard strong reports for online traffic Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but today, comScore added definitive spending numbers that indicate that holiday shopping online is picking up this year. For the holiday season-to-date, nearly $16 billion has been spent online, which is a 3 percent increase versus the same period last year. The most recent week ending December 6 reached $4.6 billion in holiday spending, which surpassed any individual spending week in 2008 but was still below two individual weeks in 2007. comScore reports that $887 million was spent on Cyber Monday, but decreased steadily as the week continued.

In an interesting twist to the usual online spending reports, comScore dug a little deeper with respondents on the influence of social media on their holiday shopping behavior. According a survey taken last week, 28 percent of shoppers surveyed said that social media has influenced their purchases. Consumer-generated product reviews, like those seen on both retail sites and standalone review sites was the most common form of social media that had influenced holiday purchases (13 percent of respondents), followed by an expert product review (11 percent).

Seven percent of respondents said they took advantage of deals and offers advertised on Facebook Fan pages while while 6 percent said they were influenced by a friend’s Facebook status update referring to a particular product. This is a really compelling factoid for any online site that uses Facebook Connect to allow users to update status with deals and purchases from their site. Five percent of respondents said they had followed a company on Twitter to take advantage of special offers and deals, while 3 percent said that a friend’s “tweet” about a product influenced their purchase behavior.

The trend of social media influence on shopping is truly fascinating and one that will surely grow. Review sites like Retrevo are incorporating Twitter into their platform and retailers like BestBuy, Dell and others are taking advantage of social media to promote their deals and products. Today, Dell reported that it rung up $6.5 million in sales thanks to Twitter promotions. Obviously, social networks can be a boon to retailers.

Of course, comScore’s numbers still have room for two to three more weeks of online holiday shopping spending, so the $16 billion is sure to rise.

<img src="pending http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/sho31.jpg”>

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Online Holiday Spending Reaches $16 Billion; Social Media Continues To…

When Brightcove released a major upgrade to its online video platform last month, one of the new set of features was better analytics. It turns out that Brightcove’s new video analytics suite is powered TubeMogul. Professional video publishers who use Brightcove can now measure things like the geographic distribution of their viewers, how many seconds they watch each video, their drop-off rate, number of unique viewers, number of new viewers, as well as total video plays.

The two companies have also signed a joint R&D pact to develop new video analytics products exclusively for Brightcove. TubeMogul will also become a marketing partner for Brightcove’s paid video hosting, streaming, and advertising services. About 125,000 people use TubeMogul’s free video analytics. Many of them are online video professionals Brightcove is hoping to turn into paying subscribers for its new “low-end” $99/month plan.

Analytics are an important part of the video equation, especially for advertisers and marketers who need to demonstrate the ROI of spending money on online video. TubeMogul already has an advanced analytics package Brightcove can plug into its latest release. TubeMogul adds Brightcove as a customer and will receive both R&D payments and marketing fees for each new Brightcove client it helps to sign up.

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Brightcove Teams Up With TubeMogul To Power Its Analytics

Usually when Twitter goes down it happens in the middle of some sort of event that causes a rush of tweets. Today is just a regular old lazy Sunday, and yet here we are, with it being down.

It’s so lazy, in fact, that no one is even bitching about Twitter being down on FriendFeed, even though it has been for a good 30 minutes now. There is also no update on the status blog. It’s weird. It’s eerie. Twitter is quietly down.

It is really news anymore when Twitter goes down? Not really. But they’ve been doing such a good job at staying up for a while now that hiccups like this and the one last week are at least worth noting. Especially when new COO Dick Costolo emphasizes how Twitter will have absolutely no problem scaling going forward.

As always, you should study up on our list of 15 alternate things to do when Twitter is down.

Update: And she’s back. A little over a half hour of downtime it looks like.

Update 2: Deja vu? Looks like Twitter has a canned message for the Status page to note downtime, so I’m not sure why it takes them so long to get it up. It’s smart to default to “about” 10 minutes ago though when it’s really “about” triple that.

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Lazy Sunday: Twitter Takes The Day Off

The whole idea of using your mobile phone’s camera view as a screen on top of which to add geo-specific information (also known as augmented reality) is one of the more exciting areas in the world of mobile apps. Amsterdam-based Layar, one of the companies at pushing the boundaries of this growing movement, just released Layar 3.0, which offers a whole slew of new ways to layer data onto the real world as seen through your phone.

The company opened up its augmented reality browser to developers last summer and more recently added 3D capabilities. In a blog post, the company details how developers are using its augmented reality platform.

One developer created a 3D architectural model of a building in Rotterdam so that visitors to the construction site can see how a superimposed version of it will look on their phones (see video below).

Another one added cut-outs of the Beatles on Abbey Road and other places they sing about. You could do the same with historical tours, adding historical figures and information about events as augmented reality notes which pop up or let you play an audio narration when you are actually there.

Or you could just add Blimps and UFOs over buildings as sort of an augmented reality graffiti.

And of course there is also a Twitter app which shows nearby Tweets, along with the avatars of the people who Tweeted them (at least I think that’s what it shows).

Anyway, it just shows how many different directions developers can take augmented reality apps. Layar wants to attract as many developers as possible as it seeks funding beyond the $1 million it’s raised so far. Here’s the video:

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Layar 3.0 Is Ready To Add New Layers To Your (Mobile) Reality

Over the last six months just about all of my tech friends have started using Foursquare, a geolocation-based game that was built by the creators of Google-acquired Dodgeball. Some of them will literally pull out their phones as soon as they enter any restaurant, event or even TechCrunch HQ and check in just so they can be named ‘mayor’ of that establishment (whoever checks into any particular location the most times becomes mayor of that location). It’s fascinating and a bit bizarre to watch, and it clearly shows that Foursquare has tapped into something powerful.

But all this time I’ve had a nagging feeling that Foursquare, at least in its current form, is not going to be the next Twitter, as some people have concluded. Because as good as Foursquare is at figuring out where and what your friends are up to, they can’t hope to compete with Facebook. That is, if Facebook does Geo right.

While the world’s largest social network has been almost totally silent with regard to its plans for geolocation, we’ve been hearing an increasing number of rumors about Facebook finally coming close to launching these features. Such rumors have come and gone for a long time, but all signs point to the most recent batch being true. For one, Facebook recently edited its Privacy Policy to explicitly allow for location-based features. And perhaps more importantly, the clock is ticking: Facebook’s rival Twitter just launched its Geolocation API, and Facebook can’t afford to be left in the dust. Facebook absolutely needs to implement location if it’s going to maintain its status as the top social network.

When it does launch, Facebook is going to have a massive impact on the current location based service environment. Much of this still-nascent space will change. And those that fail to evolve quickly will die.

Deconstructing Foursquare

I’m singling out Foursquare because it’s currently the hottest startup in location. But many of the issues affecting Foursquare apply to other promising geo-based startups like Gowalla, and the countless others that are surely in the works.

During our Realtime CrunchUp, Foursquare VP of Business Development Tristan Walker described Foursquare as a company that “makes things that make cities easier to use. We try to get folks to get out and explore the cities in which they live, or visit, and incentivize them to do so. It’s a little bit of a friend finder, a little bit of a social city guide… and we use game mechanics to tie that all together.”

First, let’s look at Foursquare the game. Whenever you check in on Foursquare, you’re rewarded with points and (sometimes) badges with clever names. These are fun initially, because you can easily compete with your friends for bragging rights. But while these game elements are a good way to entice users, they’re ultimately just a gimmick. In two year’s time, will any of these people seriously care about how many checkins they have? I doubt it. Certainly not enough to motivate them to check in every time they enter an establishment. If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a lifelong gamer, it’s that even the most engaging, addictive games out there get tired after a while. And Foursquare’s gameplay simply isn’t that engaging to begin with.

Then there’s the social city guide element of Foursquare, which could one day be a full-fledged social recommendation feature. But right now it revolves around leaving ‘tips’ about the locations you visit. This is Foursquare’s weakest point. When I look through the tips of various restaurants they’re usually filled with things like “try the chicken noodle soup”. These are occasionally helpful, but they lack context. Most of the tips I’m seeing were left by people who I don’t know at all, and they’re too brief to be any more useful than something I can already find on Yelp. I certainly haven’t reached the point where I want to see the available Foursquare tips every time I check into a restaurant.

Finally, there’s Foursquare the friend finder. The first thing you see when you boot the app is a list of where your friends have checked in recently. This is the driving force behind Foursquare’s growing popularity. There have been other services, like Loopt and Brightkite, that have let you keep tabs on your friends for quite a while. But Foursquare’s check-in model has struck a chord because it provides more context (you know what people are up to as opposed to just where they are) and a greater amount of privacy, because you have to explicitly choose to check in. The appeal of the friend finder is obvious — if you see your buddy is at a nearby bar, maybe you’ll walk over to meet him. This isn’t just a gimmick. It appeals to some fundamental human desire to hang out with people you enjoy spending time with. This will never grow old. And it’s where Facebook is poised to dominate.

Why Facebook Already Won

The most compelling part of Foursquare is the ability to see at a glance what your friends are up to. Unfortunately, most people don’t know all that many people on Foursquare yet — my current Friends List on Foursquare is dominated by folks who live and breathe tech, without a single person from my ‘regular’ social circle on the service. Twitter has always suffered from the same problem, and even a year of stellar growth and constant press attention hasn’t yet given Twitter an on ramp into mainstream use.

Facebook doesn’t have that problem. At most, there are probably a few dozen people who you’d like to share your location with. And you’re already friends with all of them on Facebook. You may even have separated them into a Friends List of “real” friends — the people you hang out with on a regular basis. And that’s why Facebook has already won the battle. Unlike Twitter, where you may be interested in following people you don’t know well, your circle of close friends on Facebook and the people with whom you’d probably like to share your location are one and the same. If Facebook really wanted to, it could probably even look at people you’re commonly tagged alongside in photos to help suggest who to include on your list of ‘location’ friends.

There are plenty of other things Facebook has going for it. Facebook already has a robust system for managing privacy settings. Granted, they’re confusing as all hell, but Facebook has made it clear that it’s working on making them easier to use. And over the years millions of people have come to trust Facebook as a relatively safe service — something that is key given the sensitive nature of location. Foursquare is a looming privacy disaster.

The other key component is Facebook’s ubiquity on GPS-enabled smartphones. These are essential for updating your location on the go (which is where most of geo’s utility comes from). And Facebook is already dominating here. Facebook is the most popular iPhone/iPod Touch app of all time, and it has a strong presence on other platforms as well (it comes preinstalled on Android and Palm’s WebOS).

It is hard to overstate how important these advantages are for Facebook. It may not be particularly difficult for other services to implement privacy features and friends lists, or even to build nice iPhone apps. But getting people to start using them will be incredibly difficult.

The Big Question Mark

Facebook has made it quite clear that location based something is coming. We’ve heard rumors about it for months, and in their most recent Privacy Policy change they actually included language directly pertaining to location based services. Here’s how it reads:

“Location Information. When you share your location with others or add a location to something you post, we treat that like any other content you post (for example, it is subject to your privacy settings). If we offer a service that supports this type of location sharing we will present you with an opt-in choice of whether you want to participate.”

So it looks like it’s coming soon, but we still don’t know the direction Facebook is going to take.

There are two obvious ways Facebook could treat location. It can act as a direct competitor to services like Loopt, Foursquare, and the rest by allowing you to directly check into locations from your phone or via the web. Or, it could serve as something of a central hub for location that third parties could update via an API. In other words, updating a service like Foursquare could then update your Facebook location.

It seems likely that Facebook will wind up doing both. Twitter is already trying to become the central hub for geo-positioned status updates through its own API, and Facebook isn’t going to give that up without a fight. Given Facebook’s moves to bolster its other API functions, I think it’s safe to say they’ll be allowing developers to push a user’s geolocation from their service or app into Facebook.

Facebook would be foolish to rely exclusively on third parties as a source of location data. Many people update their status messages and photos exclusively through Facebook.com and their official mobile applications, probably without realizing they have other options. The big question is what form this native location functionality that appears within Facebook will take. Facebook could simply allow people to geotag their status updates in the same way that Twitter does. Or it could adopt a robust location feature that more closely resembles Foursquare and Loopt. The change in the Terms of Service leaves room for both of these. Again, I think Facebook will do both. Third parties may be able to tap into this data via Facebook Connect, but they won’t own it.

I don’t think Facebook is going to set out to beat Foursquare. Far from it, in fact — I think Facebook is going to readily accept geo data through its API, which makes Foursquare a great potential contributor. But if Facebook chooses to own your location and that of your friends, it will severely undermine Foursquare’s primary feature.

Nothing Is In the Bag

All of that said, Facebook could still mess this up. The company has been thinking of location for a very long time now, and has held off largely because of the concerns over privacy. These concerns are certainly valid. Attorneys general from multiple countries are clearly keeping their eyes on the site’s potential safety risks. In light of this scrutiny, there’s a chance that Facebook will roll out location too slowly. Or that what they do roll out will be handicapped. Given how much is at stake I don’t think they’ll let that happen, but it’s possible.

How Foursquare And The Rest Can Still Thrive

If Facebook does nail geo, that doesn’t necessarily mean Foursquare is doomed. It just means that Foursquare needs to build a product whose core value extends beyond showing where your friends are. That’s why I think its social city guide is probably the best thing it has going for it. It may be lacking now, but if Foursquare can build out a compelling recommendation engine that introduces you to new people to meet and places to see based on your past checkin history, it could be very cool. It could also continue building out its gaming elements to keep them fresh.

Looking forward, services like SimpleGeo and GeoAPI will be able to help apps integrate location very quickly. Facebook is going to own the social graph, but there’s plenty that can still be done beyond that. Games. Dating apps. Hyper-local advertising. These all have very bright futures. They’ll just need to figure out how to use location as a starting point, rather than a core feature.

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Watch Out Foursquare, Facebook is Poised To Dominate Geo

As one of the hot social-location properties, Foursquare has a wealth of information about where you go. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really offer many good ways to visualize it. In fact, Foursquare only focuses on providing a text stream of your check-ins. A new app takes that data and puts it on a map.

4mapper, built by John Wiseman, is a very simple application. Once you authorize it to use your Foursquare data (via Foursquare’s new API), it will pull your location information and place it on top of a Google Map. Your check-ins are displayed as white dots on the map. The more times you have check-in to a certain place, the larger the dot will be. Clicking on these dots will give you more information about where you checked-in. And you can zoom in on the map for better detail about your check-ins.

As I said, this is a very simple app, built on Google App Engine, but it’s interesting. It’s sort of like a heat map to show where you frequent in any given city. It’s similar to what Social Great has been doing with Foursquare data, only this is personalized, whereas that is an aggregator of data in various cities.

While Foursquare, the service, is interesting for a number of reasons, namely its gaming element and the potential business component, the geolocation data served up via the API may also prove to be a great source of some new apps. After coding this using Foursquare’s API, Wiseman also came up with a Python module for accessing the API. You can find that here.

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4mapper Puts Foursquare On The Map

This guest post was written by Martin Seibert, a German Internet media consultant.

Google Wave is a hot topic at the moment. The ambitious group collaboration and micro-messaging platform started rolling out in beta via an initial batch of 100,000 invitations two months ago. Many people still want invitations. Among those who’ve tried it, some criticize it, some praise it. For now it has a lot of usability problems that are described below. Yes, you should look at Google Wave. But there is no need to desperately long for an invitation yet.

Nevertheless, this post outlines how you’ll probably use Google Wave in the future and also gives you advice on how to implement it in your company or your team of coworkers. It also reveals some big usability problems in the current version. Those issues aside, I would like to show you the advantages of the “wave” once again and describe some cool use cases that might make you love it at some point in the future.

Introduction to Google Wave

If you don’t know the wave yet, you might want to see this movie:

Advantages of Google Wave

• Innovative interface
  The user interface of Google Wave breaks new ground and yet is not unfamiliar as its layout resembles the inbox of your mail application. The timeline that lets you recap how the wave has evolved and changed since your last visit is something that even wikis don’t have today—a feature that will surely be copied extensively in the future due to its intuitive usability.
• Waves activate participants to contribute
  Furthermore, the user interface motivates further contributions to the wave. This is an excellent way to convince a lot of people to participate.
• Real-time collaboration
  It is a completely new experience to actually see your friends, colleagues and contacts type in and change content in real time. No other application apart from a few client-side chat tools currently offers such a service via a web interface. If you’re a tech geek, you’ll love that part of Google Wave. It is a powerful innovation when it comes to real-time communication and collaboration. It is competing with the well-known comforts of email, wikis and chat, but in a lot of use cases, I think Wave will win.

What is Google Wave good for?

Brainstorming, early concept creation and discussion is what I see Google Wave being used for extensively in the near future. It can also serve as a multi-user note-taking platform for meetings and sessions in your company or university. If you want to organize an event collaboratively, Google Wave will most likely replace wikis. That’s a punch in the gut for all creators of wiki software.  These are just the most obvious uses.  As more people use Google Wave and become comfortable with it, they will begin using it in entirely new ways.  The real-time communications it makes possible will override its weak points because of the greater efficiency it allows for any group trying to work together.  One day the wave is gonna rock! But that is not today.

Google Wave is overly complex (Steve Rubel)

Robert Scoble put it this way: “This service is way overhyped and as people start to use it they will realize it brings the worst of email and IM together: unproductivity.”

What he means is shown in this video I have put on YouTube:

If you look at the public waves being updated at a speed that none of us can follow, you will understand how especially non-tech-savvy users will find it overly complex. I hear them say: “I just don’t want to know all this stuff.”

Even if “all this stuff” is relevant content from your teammates, you’ll have to filter and sort it all out to make it manageable. I believe it’s possible, but Google Wave users will have to learn how to do it.

The interface after login with an open wave

Disadvantages and usability problems

• Missing revisions with rollbacks
  There is no professional revisioning system in place yet. If somebody messes up your wave and you want to undo it, you’re in for an unpleasant surprise: You have to do it manually. So folks, please do not delete too much content on waves.
• No permanent hiding of replies yet
  At the same time, Google Wave does not offer a way to permanently hide replies. Result? The main text in the wave is disturbed by images, boxes, colors and text from all participants. This can become a real mess and might even prevent you from reading the important content. The Google Wave team should definitely address this.
  (Look at the screenshot above and see how nice the small “+” sign fits in. That should be the default.)
• Why can’t I invite everybody yet? Closed preview kills value
  Right now Google Wave is not suitable for real usage as too few people have an account. If you can’t invite everybody, the value of a wave decreases dramatically.
• Where are notifications for updates of the waves I follow?
  There are no means of monitoring waves. This is Google Wave’s biggest weakness.  I don’t get an email, Gtalk alert, or any other notification in the communication systems I already use today when there is new activity in a wave.  As I am still heavily using RSS feeds (in contrast to other TechCrunch authors—by the way, almost 4 million TechCrunch readers use RSS feeds as well), I’d love an RSS feed of the waves I want to keep an eye on. Unfortunately, this isn’t yet an option.
• Too slow for a real chat
  For a real chat, Google Wave is much too slow. The performance of live transmissions varies from good to very poor and back without any understandable pattern. Today, you’ll want to keep using Skype or Jabber clients for chatting. I expect this to change, once we see local implementations of Google Wave in companies. Most of the server power can then go to the companies’ employees, clients and partners.
• Google Wave is unstable
  If there are peeks, Google Wave seems to have trouble with the load of lots of users. Here is a screenshot that I see way to often.
  
• Portability: no exporting of waves possible yet
  There isn’t an export feature to my beloved wiki yet. I’d love to have the wave content “natively” (not as an embed) in my Confluence, Foswiki (TWiki), XWiki, Mindtouch, DokuWiki or MediaWiki whenever I want it. To Google and wiki vendors: please give us that kind of portability.
• Google accounts should not be required
  Why do I need a Google Account to participate in a wave? That is a big problem if you want to engage with clients and non-tech-savvy users.
• Who is really online?
  Google Wave tries to display who is online by showing a green dot on the profile picture, but it’s not reliable yet. In fact, I’ve even seen people writing content who were identified as being offline.
• Remember: don’t share confidential information in waves
  As soon as you invite somebody to a wave, he can access it forever. If the discussion reveals secrets you don’t want to share with all participants, you’re out of luck: there is no way to get anybody out of the wave. The only chance you have is to create a new wave from the existing one. If you don’t want to do that, you’d better keep confidential information out.
• No markup editing like in wikis
  There is no source code view in Google Wave that you would want to use as an experienced wiki user to control what appears and how.
• Waves lack readable URLs
  Waves already have permanent URLs. But how readable is this? “https://wave.google.com/wave/#minimized:nav,minimized:contact,minimized:search,restored:wave:googlewave.com!w%252Be-cg7PN0A.1″. The Google Wave team will have to come up with more readable versions that are short and self-explanatory. This one should instead read: “https://wave.google.com/wave/google-wave-learnings-advantages-usecases-and-usability-flaws/252Be-cg7PN0A/fullscreen/”

To-do’s for you to use Google Wave in your company

The following list to be a bit premature. As one cannot install Google Wave yet, this is just a checklist to help you prepare for it.

1. Technology

• Server infrastructure and a good sysadmin: You will clearly need a server and a skilled admin to set up a Google Wave server, if you want to use it in your company. If you want a lot of employees, partners and clients to use it, you should prepare to invest in good hardware to make the real-time experience a good one. Up until now no one has been allowed to install the preview version of Google Wave. This means that nobody knows how difficult or easy it will be to install it and how easy it will be to connect it with other public wave servers. Still, it should be helpful to have a sysadmin around who knows what he is doing.
• HTML5-compatible browsers: Google Wave is an HTML5 application. If your company still works on Internet Explorer 6 or below, you will not be able to use Google Wave flawlessly. Therefore, make sure all participants have access to up-to-date browsers.
• Fast web connection: A decent web connection for both servers and clients is highly recommended to have a good real-time communication experience.
• Firewall configuration: Your admin should know how to configure your firewall so that your Google Wave server can communicate with the world.

2. Organization

• Define the goal of the wave and make sure everybody understands the purpose and the content of your wave. If you don’t, a lot of “side-noise” will arise.
• Create wave guidelines: You should set up guidelines for your wave participants to make sure they understand what the wave is for.
• On-boarding: Make sure that everybody you want to work with has a Google Wave account. (I know, this is quite difficult today. And that’s why Google Wave isn’t that useful yet.)
• What application is to be used? Differentiate the systems in your company so that everybody understands when to use emails, wikis, chats, databases and when to use Google Wave. How to set them apart? I don’t know.  This will emerge organically.
• Give Google Wave a purpose: Make sure people understand how to use Google Wave. You don’t want them to turn it down before even testing it thoroughly. That is especially true for the non-geek users.
• Not too many wavers on one wave: You should beware of inviting too many people because you can’t kick them out afterwards.

3. Culture

• Do not delete content without permission: My brother had created a new wave to evaluate Google Wave. We were all filling in texts, comments and arguments. Within a very short period of time, a really cool document had evolved, and I thought: “you should make this a blog post.” So I started to restructure it, changed arguments and content into text, and deleted the comments afterwards. The bashing and flaming that triggered from people who were angry with me for killing their content was enormous.
• Make rules and copyright clear: After I had restructured our wave and taken all the bashing for deleting the obsolete comments, the first participants asked if they could use the content in their blogs. We became aware of the as-yet unanswered question: “Who owns a wave? Who may do what with it? Who is allowed to use its content?” Make sure to clarify this in advance with your coworkers.
• Be aware of the complexity: The basic use and advantage of Google Wave should be clear to your employees once you roll out Google Wave. If the purpose is not clear, its complexity will quickly drive away many of your colleagues. Good luck trying to convince them to come back.
• Get ready for live feedback stress: A special problem in a wave is that you get answers to what you write while you’re still writing it. Every other means of communication leaves room to formulate and write your message first. In Google Wave the stress of a personal meeting with live communication can occur. (See the video above if you don’t know what I mean.)
• For now, consider only inviting geeks: Today, nobody can really control documents in waves, and there’s no real revision yet. And waves change a lot. Therefore, it’s better to invite people who can give good feedback. The more wavers, the more complex a wave will become.

Overall evaluation and outlook

If you criticize Google Wave, you should keep in mind that it is a “preview” now. It’s not a beta, and it’s not a final release. The Google Wave team has set out to create “email as it should be in 2010″. And from what I see, they have a good chance of doing so, but 2010 is less than two months away. However, I am willing to bet that this piece of software will eventually overcome Robert Scoble’s criticism.

For professional collaboration, I still recommend the wikis mentioned above. But if you’re into real-time collaboration, Google Wave will eventually be your choice. Just make sure to bring advanced web skills.

Sources
A lot of the content for this blog post was created in a wave. As no one knows who owns the content in a wave, I would like to list all who participated: mseibert (That’s me!), jseibert, eicker, bfri, Silke, Sam, Gerrit, Ton, Paul

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Why Google Wave Sucks, And Why You Will Use It Anyway

MOG has set a launch date for its All Access music streaming service: December 2. That’s when you’ll be able to sign up for the hands down best music streaming service on the web. If you’re willing to pay $5/month, that is.

Is it worth it? I’m definitely starting to think so. Partially because of the quality of the product (more on that below), and partially because the free streaming music business model seems to be falling apart. Spotify is delaying U.S. launch, MySpace may move to a subscription service, and the iMeem service, recently acquired by MySpace, may not even be around for much longer. By this time next year there may not be any legal free streaming services left.

But even with free streaming competitors, MOG may be worth it. I’ve been testing the service for a couple of weeks and it is a significantly better user experience than any other music service I’ve tried, including Spotify, MySpace Music and Pandora.

It’s just incredibly easy to search for and discover music, add it to playlists or your library, and start listening.

MOG has released a short video showing the full service (until now we’ve just had two teasers).

You can see from the video how easy it is to search for artists, albums or songs, and add them to your library or to playlists. Based on this alone MOG is better than MySpace Music, which continues to try to slow down users – the more songs they stream, the more MySpace has to pay. MOG doesn’t have that problem because they pay the labels a set fee per user every month.

But MOG also has another killer feature – MOG Radio. The video shows how it works. Type in any artist and start to listen to songs just from that artist. use the slider to add in more similar artists. Move it all the way to the right and you basically have Pandora. But the ability to just listen to music from one artist is a really compelling product. I’d consider paying $5/month just for this feature alone.

I also like MOG’s social features. You can search for playlists created by other users, or go to user profile pages to see what music they’ve been listening to. If you like their taste, you can follow them and get updates on new music they are playing.

You can see all of these features in the overview video embedded above. Watch that video and then decide: would you pay $5/month for MOG All Access? Let us know in the comments.

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MOG All Access Music Service: Watch The Video Now, Sign Up On December…

First of all, yes, everyone on Twitter now should have access to the new Retweet functionality. Currently, only Twitter.com and a handful of clients support the new mechanism. But did you know that you can also trigger the new Retweets via SMS?

As the Twitter mobile account noted earlier tonight, if you simply send “RT USERNAME” to 40404 (at least in the U.S.) it will automatically retweet the last tweet of whatever username you entered has sent. And yes, it will be a new-style Retweet.

If you love the new Retweets, that’s a great feature. If you hate them, well, then, you’ll hate this too. For more on that, see here.

Regardless, Twitter’s quick moves to expand and extend mobile support is pretty impressive.

A couple other things worth noting about Retweet now that it’s live for everyone:

1) You can stop seeing the new Retweets from any user simply by clicking on their profile and making sure the rotating arrow badge under their name is not green.

2) New style Retweets do not show up in your @replies section. To see them, you have to go into the new Retweets section and click on the “Your tweets, retweeted” area.

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Twitter’s New Retweets Work Via SMS Too

Last week we reported on Shakira’s decision to use Ustream and Facebook to live stream the debut of her latest music video, Give It Up To Me — a move that’s a fairly huge departure from the standard MTV route we probably would have seen a few years ago. Ustream has just given us the stats of yesterday’s launch, and it’s clear that it drew quite a crowd: over the course of the ten minute live stream, Shakira’s video had 95,000 unique viewers during the initial broadcast. And over the course of the last 24 hours, the video has seen a total of over 500,000 views.

Ustream says that Shakira video wasn’t its most popular of all time — the streams for Michael Jackson’s memorial service and President Obama’s Inauguration saw much more traffic, with 4.6MM and 3.8MM total streams respectivly. But those streams were both hours long, while Shakira’s stream lasted a mere ten minutes. It’s also important to note that these viewers were likely more engaged than they would be if they were just staring at the tube. By integrating Ustream into Facebook, Shakira was likely able to gain quite a few new Fans on her Facebook account, which means she’s established a long term way to reach out to them.

It’s worth pointing out that Shakira was’t the first artist to stream her video — that title appears to be held by Chamillionaire who debuted his video for Good Morning a few days prior. Given Shakira’s success don’t be surprised if more artists start following suit.

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Shakira’s Stats Don’t Lie: Facebook/Ustream Music Video Debut Is A…