31 August 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
Everyone hates re-runs. They’re episodes you’ve likely already seen, being run out of order because there is no new content to run. But Fox may have just figured out a way to make them more interesting: Twitter.
The television network will be airing old episodes for two of its shows, Fringe and Glee, with Twitter commentary along the bottom of the screen. But no, sadly, not just anyone can tweet anything and have it be on national television, these will be moderated streams. And most of the it will be taken up by the tweets of the two shows’ casts and producers, apparently.
During the episodes, the cast members and producers will be watching and tweeting live. Fans be able to see their tweets on the bottom portion of their television screens or can follow along on Twitter itself by checking out the FRINGEonFOX and GLEEonFOX Twitter accounts. Select tweets from fans following along will be put on air.
Of course, CNN and some of the other television news networks have been using Twitter commentary for months now, and often put tweets on air. But doing the same on one of the major TV networks during prime time is another level of mainstream adoption for Twitter. It’s an extension of what we wrote about back in May, Twitter expanding beyond a simple web service.
So many Twitter users are already using the service to talk about their favorite television shows — as I’m writing this, three of the top ten trending topics are: Mad Men, Entourage, and True Blood — so integrating the two would seem to make sense. Now, if this were during a shows first run, the tweets might be distracting, but during a re-run, they add value.
It’s not clear if there is any financial deal in place for this, but this is clearly not the Twitter television show that got all the buzz a few months back. Money or no money, this is a great deal for Twitter.
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31 August 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
We suspect Business Catalyst, the company behind e-commerce software suite GoodBarry, went a little early with the news on its own website, but that’s a boon for tech business reporters awake at this time of day. Turns out Adobe Systems has agreed to acquire the part American, part Australian company for an undisclosed amount.
Details are scarce since there’s no press release or official word from Adobe yet, but Business Catalyst has published a couple of Q&A on its website that shed a minimal amount of light on the agreement. From what we can gather at this point despite the vague wording used for the announcement, there won’t be too many changes at Business Catalyst as the products, partner agreements, team, pricing, etc. should remain largely unchanged. GoodBarry, on the other hand, being merely a Business Catalyst brand set up for their retail operations, will be gradually phased out and morphed into the Business Catalyst offering:
Most importantly, we’ll be refocusing our marketing and sales efforts on the web professional market (via businesscatalyst.com), as opposed to web-savvy DIYers such as you. In other words, this means that eventually we will cease “retail” operations and focus on our wholesale operations, and we will only be selling subscriptions to our software via our partner and reseller network.
As a result, the GoodBarry brand as such will cease to exist as of the 1st of October 2009, although the company says changes for customer will be mostly cosmetical (the billing and branding will be all Business Catalyst as of the aforementioned date).
The most important question however is why Adobe bought Business Catalyst in the first place and what its intentions are with the company in the near future. We’ve contacted the company for more clarity on that but in the meantime here’s what we know.
Business Catalyst / GoodBarry provides tools that help web designers set up online businesses for their clients with minimal cost and effort and no programming skills required, combining website content management, e-commerce features, e-mail marketing, business analytics and basic CRM tools into one system.
Adobe evidently offers a wide range of tools for web professionals, but in the near future does not plan to integrate Business Catalyst’s products into its own offering, although they are clearly looking to hosted services to deliver websites and online businesses more and more. There will be an initial transit period, but with regards to what will happen after that both companies remain mum and mention only that they are currently in ‘planning stages’ and will provide more information in the following weeks.
We’ll update if and when we hear more.
On a sidenote, this isn’t the first time Business Catalyst CEO and Founder Bardia Housman sold a company. In 1997, he co-founded Start (start.com.au), Australia’s first free e-mail service provider, which in two years became the largest trafficked website in Australia as measured by Hitwise. In December 1999, Looksmart was acquired Start.
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31 August 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
Platogo, an Austrian startup which we recently covered as being a Mini Seedcamp finalist, opens up in private beta tomorrow. Platogo, (as in Play Together Online) aims to be the one-stop-shop for simple online multiplayer gaming. You’ve heard of MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft, but Platogo focuses on simple, easy-to-learn, online flash games with nifty graphics which are easy to play, thus tapping into the far larger market of casual gamers. We have 50 exclusive Beta Invites for Techcrunch Europe Readers. The first 50 commenters on this post will get an invite code. And we’ll see if we can strong-arm the startup into handing out more.
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31 August 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
Recently NetVibes, the startup that lets you create a widget-filled customizable homepage, rolled out a free feature allowing users to create widget-based web pages, dubbed Theme Publishing. Ostensibly aimed at users, it also has one eye on potentially charging brands and agencies to create customised home pages.
In other words, Netvibes is trying to monetize itself as fast as possible. To that end it’s also now re-selling its architecture to portals and ISPs. Germany’s largest portal and ISP, T-Online, has thus now launched launched Meine Seite, a user-personalized, widget-based version of their site powered by Netvibes.
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31 August 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
Over the last few months we’ve seen the rise of a new and highly controversial kind of website that focuses on “Entertainment Shopping” — online stores that offer customers goods with very steep discounts, but with some risk involved in the shopping process. Some have likened these to gambling or scams, while others consider them auctions. In any case, it’s only becoming more popular, and now there’s a startup called SevenSnap that’s bringing Entertainment Shopping to the iPhone.
The app isn’t out on the App Store yet, but the company recently released a video (embedded below) that shows it off. Here’s how it works: every 60 minutes, SevenSnap puts a new item up for grabs (the example in the video is a Macbook Pro). If you want to have a shot at purchasing the item, you need to purchase “time credits”, which run a dollar per minute. Once you’ve done that, you can jump into the sale room, where you’ll get to watch as the item’s price drops every second (depending on how many people are in the room, it can drop by as much as $100 per minute). At this point it’s a game of chicken — the longer you wait the lower the price goes, but if someone pulls the trigger and purchases it then the price jumps up to its starting amount for everyone else. Remember, you’re paying a dollar per minute in the room, so whenever it resets you lose out on a few bucks.
SevenSnap Sneak-Preview (EN) from Tobias Hieb on Vimeo.
SevenSnap could be fun if you have cash to burn, but it’s not hard to see why people have issues with this kind of shopping site — If SevenSnap were to arbitrarily reset the prices of its items without actually selling them, it could effectively collect money for nothing. The startup may well turn out to be perfectly honest, but until the company has built up a reputation or there is some regulation involved, caveat emptor.
Other startups in this space have met with similar concerns regarding fraud, and are taking steps to make the process more consumer friendly. One of these is iBidCondo, which uses a somewhat similar model to auction off housing. We looked at the site July, when I (and a number of readers) pointed out some potential problems. In light of these concerns the site postponed an upcoming auction so that it can revamp its system to introduce more transparency.
The biggest name in this space is Swoopo, which uses the ‘falling prices’ model but has a much greater variety of products that are on sale simultaneously. The site recently introduced a new feature that negates some of the risk involved — even if you lose out on an auction, you can apply the money you’ve used to bid on it towards purchasing the product at its normal retail price. If you were only going to buy the product because of its incredibly low advertised price then you’re out of luck, but it’s definitely better than the old system where you would always walk away empty handed when you lost an auction.
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30 August 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
According to a Wall Street analyst, Apple will ship five to seven million iPhones in China during 2010, after striking a three-year agreement with China Unicom. Broadpoint AmTech analyst Brian Marshall estimates that the Chinese market will account for 15% to 20% of Apple’s global iPhone sales next year.
30 August 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
No Pirate Bay deal, says key GGF technology partner Peerialism, the company set to provide the revolutionary P2P technology behind the new Pirate Bay, has announced that it is doubtful that it will do any business with Global Gaming Factory. GGF are supposed to buy Peerialism, but CEO Johan Ljungberg said that’s doubtful since the company has no money. TorrentFreak
30 August 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
Using a laptop has distinct advantages over desktops, most prominently in the mobility department. To gain that boost in portability, though, sacrifices must be made. As a whole, laptops lack the computing muscle offered by their clunky counterparts. That shows in more areas than one – not least in precious screen real estate.
30 August 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
Shownotes:
I’m back from the staycation and have a lot to cover! Nokia announced their Booklet 3G. It’s a beautifully designed netbook with WiFi, built in 3G and GPS, plus an HDMI port.
Sirius announced the XM SkyDock, which turns an iPhone or iPod Touch into a Sirius XM Radio tuner. It’ll charge your phone and broadcast audio from it, either stored or streaming for $120.
The newest PocketDock from SendStation adds line out and a mini USB port to you iPhone or iPod.
I’m loving my latest WordPress install called Pretty Link Pro. I would say this is the best plug-in I’ve ever installed because it allows you to control your brand better throughout the Internet. We’ve all become accustomed to shortened URLs and using services like bit.ly and tinyurl.com. They’re great services, but unfortunately you’re giving away those links to another brand other than your own. Pretty Link Pro allows you to create shortened URLs using your own domain name. My normal posts for GeekBrief.TV look something like this: www.geekbrief.tv/brief-616-slimmer-ps3-glass-dualview-st225-st220-logitech-mice. I have to shorten that if I want to tweet it, but with Pretty Link Pro I can turn it into www.geekbrief.tv/616 (the episode of that particular Brief). Or, I can turn www.calilewis.me/12-days-of-twitter-wrapped-up into www.calilewis.me/12days. There are tons of features, all of which you can find at www.geekbrief.tv/prettylink. John P. is the one who turned me on to this plugin, and he wrote a full review on his blog, www.onemansblog.com/plp.
Snailmailr.com will let you send snail mail with color pictures to the unconnected members in your family just by going to their website and filling in the address, and typing the letter. It’s as easy as sending an email.
You can sign up at Angieslist.com/geek and save 25% and find service providers you can trust when you use promo code GEEK.
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30 August 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
Since February, Google has been quietly testing a new type of search functionality: AJAX search. Basically, Google uses more advanced JavaScript to make search result pages load even faster by only loading new information as needed on new queries. And while it doesn’t appear to be rolling out on a large scale yet, more users are starting to notice it.
One such user is Mike Stoppelman, a software engineer at Yelp. But Stoppelman’s take on it is interesting, and worth noting because before he worked at Yelp, he was an engineer at Google for four years. As Stoppelman sees it, Google is bringing out AJAX Search to combat Microsoft’s Bing search product, which has garnered quite a bit of attention since its launch a few months ago. Some claim that Bing is faster than Google, but an AJAX Google would undoubtedly be faster than Bing.
Of course, as I mentioned, Google has been testing this since well before Bing was born, but the timing of a wider roll-out could well be a result of Bing. Google has denied making changes as a result of competitors in the past, most recently for its new “Caffeine” test, but at some point they have to concede that they do watch what rivals are doing and change plans accordingly — it would be foolish not to. It’s worth noting that Caffeine appears to use AJAX search results as well.
There’s also the issue of whether or not this speed increase really matters all that much? After all, both Google and Bing are now serving up results in fractions of a second, and any increase probably isn’t going to be perceived in a meaningful way by end users.
But remember, this is Google. A move to shave off fractions of a second definitely seems like something they would focus on, knowing that those fractions add up. Shave enough fractions of a second off of everyone’s searches and you’ll be supplying people will more time to do more searches — which of course means more ads served, and most importantly, more money.
So how will you know if you’re getting the AJAX results? Look at the URL. A normal Google Search has something like the following at its end:
/search?q=QUERY
An AJAX search result replaces that with something that looks like:
/#q=QUERY
As I mentioned, if you don’t see the AJAX results in your regular Google results, you can see it on the Caffeine test page here.
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