When Google pulled out of its proposed search advertising deal with Yahoo last month, it was chief legal counsel David Drummond who made the announcement. He cited concerns of a “protracted legal battle,” but only now do we learn that the Justice Department was only three hours away from filing an antitrust lawsuit to block the deal. Sandy Litvack, the prosecutor hired by the justice Department to head up the case, tells Am Law Daily: We were going to file the complaint at a certain time during the day. We told them we were going to file the complaint...
On Thursday Livestation, a P2P desktop application for streaming live TV broadcasts, will show a preview for its iPhone/iPod Touch app to do the same. Yes - live TV on the iPhone. Luckily we don’t have to wait. They’ve got a YouTube video, embedded after the jump, which shows the app working on an iPhone. The irony to all this is that Livestation is a product of a long-in-the-tooth UK startup called Skinkers which is… part owned by Microsoft. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0...
Make sure to look at the latest job listing on CrunchBoard. While doing that take a look at our new Crunchboard Service and Sales Directories. They are a great way to connect with the start-up community. Here’s some of jobs posted in the past week: User Interface EngineerFacebook - Palo Alto, CA Product DesignFacebook - Palo Alto, CA Killer Interactive DeveloperCrispin Porter + Bogusky - Boulder, CO or Miami, FL Web Project ManagerFOX News Channel - New York, NY Superstar Rails Developer Cerego - Tokyo, Japan Senior Java/Flash/Flex ProgrammerRoboDynamics - Santa Monica, CA TechCrunch is also still looking for...
Yahoo continues to outsource lots of businesses it previously built and maintained directly. Especially in music - In February they shut their subscription music service, and in September they announced a deal to allow full song playbacks through the Rhapsody service. Next up is Yahoo’s radio product, http://music.yahoo.com/launchcast. The site today, which draws 3 million monthly unique visitors says Yahoo, allows users to listen to music based on preferred genres and artists. But Launchcast is limited only to Windows users on Internet Explorer, shutting out a large percentage of the Internet. Next year they’ll shutter the service and relaunch with...
Conspiracy theory lovers are going to have a field day with this one: when you try to access Facebook using the Google Chrome browser today, you’ll get a warning that the social network may in fact be a phishing site. At least, it gave a warning here and at least two tipsters. It worked fine for me until earlier this morning. Is everyone seeing this? Update: this blog says the problem occurs in Firefox as well, but I don’t see it. Twitter is buzzing with people getting this notice as well. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to...
As we speculated last month, Facebook is about to hand over its official classifieds listings to a partner, and that partner is Oodle, we have been able to confirm. An announcement may be made as early as tomorrow. What is interesting about this deal is that Oodle already powers the classifieds on MySpace. Even though Facebook and MySpace are archrivals, this makes sense because in classifieds scale matters. The more listings and the more people seeing those listings, the better. Classifieds so far have failed on Facebook because they have not been reengineered to be more social. Oodle should...
With 2008 on the way out and right around 10,000 iPhone applications behind them, Apple has released a bunch of lists outlining which applications scored the most downloads since the App Store’s launch back in July. The lists are separated by whether the the application is paid or free - first as an overall look, and then by each major category (games, entertainment, utilities, social networking, and music). While the overall top applications should come as no surprise to anybody who takes an occasional glance at the iPhone’s built-in top downloads page, there are a few interesting gems hidden...
Songbird, the open-source, media focused web browser, has launched its 1.0 milestone release to the public. The browser, which we’ve covered extensively since it was first announced back in 2005, offers a number of features that make it an appealing alternative to music players like iTunes, including a feature called mashTape will automatically cull the internet for relevant content for each song you play, using sources like YouTube and Flickr. The app also includes integrated support for Last.fm, concert ticket purchases, and add-ons to further enhance the browser. In practice the browser works well (not much of the interface...
Apparently at least some Australians aren’t happy with a PayPal advertisements that include legendary Aborigine David Unaipon with a motorcycle police helmet added on to suggest PayPal has heightened security. The ads, which are on the sides of buses in Australia, says the Sydney Morning Herald, are disrespectful and degrading according to Unaipon’s relatives. The ads also apparently feature other bills as well. And PayPal, instead of just not commenting or removing those specific ads, makes a mess of it. “PayPal spokeswoman Kelly Stevens said the ads were “perfectly legal”" - which doesn’t really address the issue. Best quote...
What is fascination with Britney Spears? Maybe it’s a train-wreck kind of thing. Once again she tops Yahoo’s list of overall searches for 2008, just like she did last year. In fact, the entire list hardly changed at all. The term “WWE” was once again No. 2. All in all, six out of the top ten search terms remained the same. The only new entrants were “Barack Obama,” “Miley Cyrus,” “Angelina Jolie,” and “American Idol.” This list doesn’t really tell you much other than that people are obsessed with celebrities. I’ve bolded the repeats below: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/03/yahoo-top-searches-2007-please-people-stop-typing-britney-spears-into-search-boxes/ 1. Britney Spears...
Last year Amazon had trouble filling orders of the then-new Kindle, so eBay took over and prices rocketed to $1,500. This year, same problem. Amazon says orders for Kindles will take 11-13 weeks to fulfill (which is, we believe, when they will launch the Kindle 2). So you aren’t getting one by Christmas directly from Amazon. But eBay and Amazon stores have them for sale. New ones are going for as much as $975 (some are less) for buy it now. The market price for used ones seems to be in the $700 range, but some one is just $429....
CrunchBase, our free database of startup and people information, continues to grow thanks to countless additions and corrections by the community. The site now has entries on 20,000 people, 10,000 companies and over 1,000 venture funds. The majority of content is added by the community (CrunchBase has wiki features to allow unlimited versioning control to step back if bad entries are made). When an important deal or milestone about a person or startup is reported on any site, people add it to Crunchbase for others to find. We’re starting to see grass roots efforts by local startup communities to make...
On Facebook, the spam you get from friends is bad enough, but tolerable. The really bad stuff is actual spam, which more and more people are being subject to. On Friday, judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose, California, awarded Facebook $873 million in damages against Adam Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital under the CAN-SPAM act. It is the largest award under the act ever granted, topping the $234 million award MySpace won against spammers last May. The chances of Facebook ever collecting that amount from the defendants are minimal (spam pays, but not that much). Still, sit sends the...
Hot on the heels of news that it rejected an acquisition offer from Facebook, Twitter has announced that it has acquired Values of n, a startup that produced information management applications including Stikkit, a post-it note application and I Want Sandy, an Email assistant. The primary goal of the acquisition appears to have been to bring Rael Dornfest to the Twitter team. Dornfest is the founder of Values of n and former CTO at O’Reilly Media, whose responsibilities also included editing the O’Reilly Hacks series. He was also the head of the RSS-DEV group, which created the RSS 1.0...
Jumping from one crowded space to another, Evite competitor MyPunchbowl has just launched a new eCard service, allowing users to send customized greeting cards using its impressive card editor. Users will be able to choose from an array of holiday, birthday, and thank you cards, which they can embellish with family photos and a number of text effects. CEO Matt Douglas says that while there are many other sites on the web that offer free Ecards, the vast majority of them are unprofessional and aren’t very visually appealing. With MyPunchbowl’s Ecard Studio, Douglas says that the company is striving...
It’s not the first time we’ve heard rumors about Facebook looking to acquire Twitter or about an impending deal breaking down. But this time, Kara Swisher over at BoomTown offers a bit of insight about the deal size. According to Kara (and her sources), Facebook was offering $500 million of its stock at the infamous (and ridiculous) $15 billion valuation to acquire Twitter up until 3 weeks ago. Apparently talks, which were reportedly initiated by privately-held Facebook, broke down because of doubts on behalf of Twitter investors and executives about the stock’s actual worth, the usual concerns that arise when...
Sony is set to announce a re-launch of video entertainment network site Crackle today, with a roll-out of a number of new web shows including sketches by L.A. comedy troupe “The Groundlings”, a video game show called “The Jace Hall Show” and a five-minute talk show dubbed “Anytime with Bob Kushell” hosted by a Hollywood writer. Sony’s media business, Sony Pictures Entertainment, will be using the types of production techniques that it puts into movies and TV to resemble other online programming by staying short, often no more than five minutes long, reports Reuters. Crackle’s season begins December 1. Last...
