Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Monday, January 21, 2008

2007 Crunchies: The Winners

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/219236705/

A great evening was had by all tonight as some of the leading startups gathered for the first annual Crunchies, a joint production between Read/Write Web, VentureBeat, GigaOm and TechCrunch.

The ceremony went (mostly) smoothly with a couple of surprises amongst the results. For a full list of nominees, visit the Crunchies 2007 portal here.

Best Overall: Facebook

Facebook revolutionized the idea of what social networking could be.

Best technology innovation / achievement: Earthmine

Earthmine picks up where Google Earth leaves off, bringing deep semantic data to 3D panoramas of the real world. Earthmine's system can keep track of the objects found in the real world and attribute information to each of them, such as latitude, longitude, elevation, and other attributes.

Best Clean Tech Startup: Tesla Motors

Tesla’s green sports car has captured the imagination of a public who had come to expect electric cars to be dull are boring. Due to be released this year, the company has pre-orders from some of the biggest names in Entertainment and Technology.

Best video startup: Hulu

Hulu put television online. Their broadcasting system was modeled on the success of social video sites and drawn the praise of its previous critics.

Best user-generated content site: Digg

Digg’s simple voting system defined the emerging social media revolution. Getting “dugg” quickly became a badge of honor and established a coveted place in the geek lexicon.

Best mobile start-up: Twitter

Twitter, the new addictive microblogging platform. It wasn’t until after the South by Southwest conference that people realized the value of the incredibly simple microblogging platform.

Best International startup: Netvibes
Based in London, Tariq Karim and Freddy Mini’s Netvibes has made waves in the U.S. as a top personalized web portal.

Best consumer startup: Meebo
Meebo made instant messaging ubiquitous by bringing it online. They then developed it into a platform where anyone could add chat to their applications.

Best enterprise startup: Zoho

Zoho’s comprehensive online suite of 14 business applications ranging from document editing to CRM continues to lead the way in the move away from desktop computing to working in the cloud.

Best design: SmugMug

SmugMug is professional photo site. SmugMug’s attention to detail and design can command as much as $150 per year from their users.

Best new gadget/ device: Apple iPhone. See the Apple acceptance speech here.

Best business model: Zazzle

Looking for a Star Wars hat or memorable mug? Zazzle is an on-demand factory of consumer goods for top brands. It also lets consumers become producers by uploading their own images onto that T-shirt, mug, or mousepad. . Consumers can also receive a commission on products that they sell and design themselves

Best bootstrapped startup: Techmeme.
Founded and developed solely by Gabe Rivera, Techmeme serves as the front page of the tech blogosphere. The site’s advanced algorithms identify the day’s top stories by making sense of conversations across the web’s best blogs.

Best Startup Founder: Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)

Does this really need any explanation? At 23 Mark has built one of the world’s leading online destinations that has recently been valued at $15 billion. A remarkable achievement for anyone, let alone someone at the still relatively young 23. A well deserved award.

Best Startup CEO: Toni Schneider (Automattic)

Schnieder has lead the company from its roots as a open source alternative to Movable Type into a multi-million dollar enterprise that saves the world from blog spam and offers a free hosted blogging solution that competes with Google’s Blogger.

Best new startup: iMedix

iMedix combines search and social networking to change the way people find health information online. Users are encouraged to help each other by sharing health experiences and links from around the web.

Most likely to succeed: Automattic (WordPress)

The open source blogging platform that powers the long tale and turned into a multi-million dollar spam fighting and hosted blogging service.

Best use of viral marketing: StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon’s service lets users bookmark and discover new sites they love. With only a $1.5 million investment in 2005, StumbleUpon gew to over 4 million Stumblers and was bought by eBay in 2007 for $75 million

Best time sink site: Kongregate

CEO Jim Greer describes Kongregate as XBox live for casual games. This site hosts some of the webs most addictive casual games. Remember Desktop Tower Defense? Moreover, the games are not only played by users, but also created by them in exchange for a share of advertising revenue and other rewards.

Most likely to make the world a better place: DonorsChose

DonorsChoose.org is dedicated to connecting classrooms in need with individuals who want to help.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Nielsen: Google, Yahoo, Losing Search Share To MSN. (Not A Typo)

Source: http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/01/nielsen-google-yahoo-losing-search-share-to-msn-not-a-typo.html

Interesting news to dump late on Friday: Nielsen's newest search share rankings show Microsoft gaining at Google and Yahoo. Google and YHOO saw their share drop 1.4% and .2%, respectively, while MSFT jumped 1.8% between Nov. and Dec., 2007.

All of this is newsworthy, because we've become used to watching GOOG's search share march inexorably upwards, while its competitors stumble. But it in addition to the usual caveats -- this is one research firm, and one set of month-to-month data -- the Nielsen data comes with a new asterisk.

Last fall, the firm made changes to its tracking panel, which it says resulted in "more granular reporting, increased accuracy, an expanded Internet universe and more advanced tracking." That sounds great, but the downside is that the company says it means we can't compare its pre-Nov. 2007 data with anything it's done before. Which essentially means that if we want meaningful trend data from Nielsen, we're going to have wait several months.

In the meantime, go ahead and enjoy these apples-to-apples comparisons, for what they're worth.

+----------+-----------+----------+-----------+-----------+----------+-----------+ |          |           DECEMBER 2007          |           NOVEMBER 2007          | +----------+-----------+----------+-----------+-----------+----------+-----------+ | Provider |  Searches | Share of | Searches/ |  Searches | Share of | Searches/ | |          |     (000) | Searches | Searcher  |    (000)  | Searches | Searcher  | +----------+-----------+----------+-----------+-----------+----------+-----------+ | Google   | 4,062,536 |    56.3% |      37.9 | 4,253,794 |    57.7% |      40.8 | | Yahoo!   | 1,273,688 |    17.7% |      22.4 | 1,317,919 |    17.9% |      23.7 | | MSN/Live |   995,899 |    13.8% |      31.7 |   880,550 |    12.0% |      27.8 | | AOL      |   339,761 |     4.7% |      15.2 |   332,385 |     4.5% |      14.7 | | Ask.com  |   159,529 |     2.2% |      10.0 |   195,848 |     2.7% |      10.5 | | My Web   |    70,630 |     1.0% |      10.4 |    87,001 |     1.2% |      12.6 | | Comcast  |    34,715 |     0.5% |      10.1 |    39,257 |     0.5% |      10.4 | | NexTag   |    29,019 |     0.4% |       2.9 |    27,714 |     0.4% |       3.1 | | AT&T     |    25,159 |     0.3% |       9.1 |    29,244 |     0.4% |       9.2 | +----------+-----------+----------+-----------+-----------+----------+-----------+ Source: Nielsen Online, MegaView Search

Oh, How the Mighty Have Fallen: Joost Edition

Source: http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/01/oh-how-the-mighty-have-fallen-joost-edition.html

Last summer, Joost was the hottest thing going. Finally, real TV on the Internet. The traditional networks couldn't stop praising it (the first frantically waving red flag). Joost was going to steamroll sleazy and maligned YouTube, which was only making hay by stealing everyone's content. Joost already had 1 million users, etc.

Well, you don't hear much about Joost anymore--other than about its flaws:

it requires a software download,
it needs to be turned on (as opposed to web-based video, which you encounter everywhere)
its technology never worked right,
it doesn't have enough good content
people don't actually want to "watch TV" on the Internet (they're fine watching shows, but they want to do their own programming, not watch "channels"), and
the 1 million user number might have been misleading. (We always suspected the 1 million was "downloads," not "active users," and we still don't know anyone who actually watches Joost)
YouTube, Hulu, et al, are vastly more convenient

Joost has now ditched its CTO, presumably in an attempt to get its technology working. That's a start, but it won't address the other problems.

Over at NewTeeVee, Janko Reottgers suggests five ways to save Joost. With the exception of "build a web version," we don't find any of them compelling. (And even that one won't help, because there already are web versions of Joost out there--dozens of them). We therefore reiterate our assessment from last summer: Joost is the PointCast of 2007.

The Chronicles of Joost:
Joost Loses CTO, Hires Comcast Exec
The Company Hulu Really Will Kill: Joost

Why Nate Westheimer Doesn't Watch Joost
Why We Don't Watch Joost
Prediction: Joost is the PointCast of 2007

PocketGuitar Lets You Kick Out Riffs With Your iPhone [Software]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/219908574/pocketguitar-lets-you-kick-out-riffs-with-your-iphone

PocketGuitar%20GI.jpg You were born to rock, and to help you live dream, Shinya Kasatani has released PocketGuitar for the iPhone and iPod touch, which turns your device into a touchscreen guitar. The application looks insanely great, and we cannot believe it has taken humanity this long to realize the true destiny of the iPhone. It makes so much sense now; it is the guitar of the future, sent back to destroy enemies of rock music.

If your not feeling up to an acoustic solo session, fret not, well actually, you will need to fret, but you can do all your fretting alongside music that is already stored on your iPhone. That's right, you can be Hendrix. Man, you are so in to the music, you are Hendrix. That some heavy, insane music philosophy right there. To get your fingers strumming, launch Installer and follow these instructions: Installer > Sources > Add http://podmap.net/apps to your repositories. PockeGuitar is filed under the Toys category. If this takes off in a big way, expect iPhone finger board extension peripherals to drop soon. We can't wait. [PocketGuitar via Mobilewhack]

Bug Labs announces WiFi-free Hiro P BUGbase

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/219116368/

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Looks like Bug Labs is fixing to release its BUGbase in more than one version due to apparent issues related to solid, stable open source WiFi chipsets and drivers. Picking up the Hiro P Edition monicker (let's hope it doesn't snow crash), this revised first BUGbase will ship without 802.11, but adds a small joystick control, and as recompense for the wireless sacrifice, Hiro P owners will get a free BUGvonhippel module (the hardware breakout box, basically), and the option to snag a pluggable WiFi attachment on the cheap at a later time. For those who want to wait for the full, integrated-WiFi experience, Bug's not yet offering a set schedule for the "regular" base kit, but Hiro P goes on pre-sale at the Bug Labs store for the regular early adopter price this Monday.

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