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Thursday, October 23, 2008

Social Desktop Aggregator Sobees Launches Public Beta

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/-HNzaWesZvc/

Switzerland-based deskNET is debuting the public beta version of Sobees today, an application that aims to bring the web to a personalized desktop environment. We first came across Sobees when they presented their project in the DemoPit at the TechCrunch50 conference.

While many startups are heading in the opposite direction by trying to take the best of the desktop experience inside the browser, Sobees’ goal is to aggregate various web applications and services into a customized desktop environment instead, including search, weather updates, RSS feeds, YouTube videos, social networking sites, etc.

The bootstrapped startup wants to provide a seamless user experience fit for a mainstream audience when it comes to accessing online content or handling repetitive internet tasks, without the need to constantly switch between browser windows, tabs and multiple desktop apps. Customizable start pages like Netvibes, iGoogle / Google Desktop and MyYahoo are the biggest challengers, as well as the widgets you can add to your Mac or Windows Vista desktop.

Sobees also boasts a number of social features like interacting with friends, sharing data and news articles, as well as integration with video and photo sharing services. Sobees allows you to update your status messages across Facebook and Twitter, and also enables you to drag and drop media files and easily transfer them to a variety of services, e.g. dragging pictures to the desktop environment and uploading them directly to your Flickr account. Ubervu has a similar approach.

Sobees plans to make money from search monetization, advertising and selling branded modules.

Sobees sports an excellent design and has obviously paid much attention to the usability of the service (the ribbon menu is really cool) but one has to wonder if there’s a real need for this type of service. As fancy as it may be, it doesn’t solve a real problem, not one I’m aware of anyway.

Another barrier to take into account is the fact that Sobees can only be installed on machines running Windows Vista / XP with the yet-to-be-distributed .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 for now, although a Silverlight build is currently on the roadmap. I also experienced some problems launching and accessing the application after installing.

I embedded a demo video below which gives a good overview of the main functionalities (sexy voice over included).

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Mobile video streaming to hit Razr, BlackBerrys. Hello mainstream?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/eX5I8sOHMP4/

Last week we reported that Next2Friends had come out with what appeared to be the first application for the BlackBerry Curve and Pearl handsets to stream live video to the Web, in a similar fashion to early players like Qik, Flixwagon, and Kyte. Now it’s about to hit the BlackBerry Bold, and, more significantly, the mainstream Motorola Razr.

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The Cloud Is Shaping Up. Amazon Beefs Up EC2, Bechtolsheim Shifts His Attention To Arista

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/79tf5O0aV2A/

Cloud computing keeps advancing like rolling thunder. Amazon today announced a major upgrade to its EC2 compute cloud service and Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim has decided to spend more time at his startup Arista Networks, which sells 10-Gigabit Ethernet switches aimed at handling the loads at cloud-computing data centers. And just yesterday, RackSpace announced two small acquisitions to help it better compete against Amazon in the cloud computing as well. The biggest news today comes from Amazon, which is staking the "beta" label off of its EC2 service and announcing the following upgrades:

Google Fixes Gmail For The BlackBerry And Java Phones

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/TDSgKUGusow/

Google finally got around to fixing Gmail on the Blackberry and J2ME phones like the Nokia N95 or Sony Ericsson W910i. Now you can compose emails while offline. When you hit “send, they sit in the outbox until your handset finds a network again.

The offline capability will come in really handy on the subway. Now, my BlackBerry can do what Gmail on my iPhone and Android handsets can do. Just in time for the Blackberry Storm, too.

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Android Market Takes On Appleâs App Store: Games Still Rule, But Should They?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/1zXdYB5iEoI/

24 hours have passed since the launch of the Android Market, the Google equivalent to Apple’s App Store. Medialets has conducted a thorough analysis of the two store launches. The verdict: the size of Android Market pales in comparison to Apple’s store at launch, and won’t allow for paid applications until next year. But the stores are more alike than they are different, with very similar applications launching on both platforms, and an overwhelming focus on games.

Android Market launched with a total of 62 applications, all thoroughly vetted by Google (we’ve heard that Google only wanted to launch with the cream of the crop, but will relax the process in the future). In comparison Apple’s store launched with around 552 total applications that had to go through a lengthy approval process that Apple continues to enforce.

Because both app stores obscure the total number of downloads every application sees, it’s difficult to gauge exactly how popular each app is. When Apple’s store first launched everyone could view exactly how many people had downloaded a given application, but this data was removed less than a day after launch (now the best estimate is to look at the total number of reviews). Android’s store has some very vague popularity descriptions: you can see if an app falls within a certain range (100-500, 500-1000, etc.) but above 10,000 downloads apps simply fall in the overly broad “10,000-50,000″ bracket.

Medialets reports that nine applications made it to this top bracket on Android, with ShopSavvy (an application that allows user to take a photo of a barcode to compare a product’s price with other stores) taking the top spot. Apple’s most popular app at launch was its iPhone Remote, which allows users to control their iTunes library remotely. Only three of the top nine apps in Android’s store are games, but games are still the dominant presence on the store as they are in iTunes.

It’s possible that this skew towards games is a result of developers trying to approach Android the same way as they approached the iPhone, which may wind up being a mistake. Apple has openly embraced the store’s emphasis on gaming, heavily advertising “the funnest iPod ever”. Android phones (particularly the G1) appeal to a different market - one that cares less about aesthetics and fun and more about flexibility and a built-in keyboard. Don’t be surprised if games wind up being significantly less popular on the Android marketplace.

To get a taste of what’s available on Android, check out our top 10 picks, along with AppVee’s video reviews. For more analysis, check out the Medialets report here.

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Frogmetrics: Handheld Surveys You Might Actually Want To Fill Out

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/vNuUmOVeTkE/

Frogmetrics, a Y Combinator startup that helps companies quickly get customer feedback using a handheld hardware device, has launched to the public. The startup has created a custom firmware for the Nokia n810 internet tablet that lets companies offer their customers brief surveys that are far more convenient than traditional questionnaires, and has also developed advanced analytics software to help examine survey results. After months of pilot testing Frogmetrics has already landed its first Fortune 150 company - Google - and is now ready to start licensing its product under an enterprise subscription model.

Taking a Frogmetrics survey is incredibly simple - questions average around six words in length, and you simply tap the touch screen to answer each question. Most surveys can be completed in around 25 seconds, and while you can optionally choose to enter your email (if you’d like to be contacted by a manager after a bad experience, for example) there’s no obligation to do so. Contrast this with the archaic online surveys many retail chains employ that ask you to logon from your home computer and enter a 16 digit code for a chance to win a trivial prize, and it’s no surprise that Frogmetrics has seen response rates that put traditional questionnaires to shame.

Frogmetrics initially revealed itself over the summer at Y Combinator’s Demo Day, but details were scant. Since then it has been running pilot programs in a variety of fields, including restaurants, retail stores, trade shows, doctors’ offices, resorts, and airforces, and CEO Scott Brown says that the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Customers are intrigued by these handheld devices (it’s almost like a game), and because they’re taking the survey immediately after their experience at a store or in restaurant, their opinions are much fresher in their minds.

It’s hard to get excited about a company that deals with surveys - we’ve all grown accustomed to simply ignoring them whenever possible because they usually seem like a waste of time. But Frogmetrics has built an impressively simple solution that only takes a few seconds and even verges on being sort of fun (at least the first few times). And with Google as its first major customer, it looks like Frogmetrics may be on its way to replacing those annoying receipt codes once and for all.

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