Crenk

Where do you head to find technology company information? Currently, there are a lot of technology blogs that provide company directories, but I think there are two key players that stand out in this sector and I’m sure their pageviews will sore in the coming months and years. Those two players have to be Crunchbase and Tradevibes.

Crunchbase is the company directory from the superblog Techcrunch. Crunchbase is build on a wiki type system and instead of just writing about companies and collect data, Michael Arrington thought it would be a good idea to actually put it all together and make some more money from it. Crunchbase has a great look about it and it brings together information from some of the most well-known companies. On Crunchbase you can find descriptions of the company, funding information, location and telephone numbers, competitors and staffing information. I would like Crunchbase to find new ways to make money apart from advertising, like a highlighted company feature.

Tradevibes has a bit of a different layout, but essentially it is the same concept with the type of wiki development. Tradevibes provide a similar set of information as Crunchbase but it also has additional features, such as a fantasy exchange game, voting system on companies, and forums. The design on Tradevibes is actually a bit cluttered and there seems to be a lot of products that have simply just been put together to add features, instead of developing something in house that matches the site. For example, the job board in the left column from SimplyHired.

Both of these companies are leading the way in this niche, however there still seems to be a lot of issues in terms of design and integrating information that is actually needed, without information overload. It would also be nice to see integration with several technology blogs to provide news about each of the companies in the database, but so far even this seems to be limited.

With as long as Twitter has been with us, it’s amazing that we’ve not seen a monetizing model sooner. Well…it was bound to happen, and it’s here. Twitter can now display ads, and users can get paid for it with Twittad .

As you look at your account, think to yourself, “I’ve got followers, why shouldn’t I make money for being so popular.” If that’s your train of thought, this little addition to Twitter is right up your alley. Having full control of the ad space, you set the price on the space you are looking to sell andTwittad will match with the advertisers in their database.

Where does the ad go?

Good question, simple answer. The advertisement will sit in the upper left hand column of your Twitter homepage. That big empty space can be used more effectively now by placing an ad that will interest your followers. That’s it, it’s that simple. While some may have feared that the advertisement would have been plastered across your background, or cover the page with flashing, twirling, and otherwise annoying attention grabbers, the simple fact is that the ad will remain unobtrusive.

For the Twitter User

So the first question is obvious, how do I become a part of Twittad? Allowing Twittad to pair you with the appropriate advertiser and marketing promotions can be lucrative and here’s how.

You start off with submitting your page to Twittad for advertisers to purchase (remember you set the price). Once the price is agreed upon select the duration for which you’d like the ad to appear on your page. Now you wait, it can be long or short, but the advertiser must contact you once they are interested. You ultimately have the choice to accept or deny the advertisers offer. If you deny, wait for another offer. If you accept, then simply upload the ad to the design of your template and then notify the advertiser that you are ready to go.

You basically get paid for every hour you serve the advertisement to your followers, and a virtual account will keep track of your earnings. Once the duration of the advertisement has come to an end the virtual account releases the “real” funds to your account. So no worries, you don’t get paid in Monopoly money.

For the Advertiser

Being a part of Twittad is just as easy for the advertiser. All advertisers are able to browse what the users are willing to share and for how much. This gives the advertisers a chance to find the right candidate for their brand and hopefully gain some exposure on the popular micro-blogging site.

Advertisers start off by creating their advertisement using guidelines set by Twittad and following their examples. Once the ad is designed you browse the user database to find the right candidate for your product. You select the “Buy Now” and await their denial or acceptance. Denied? Keep looking. If you are accepted you simply connect and pay via Pay Pal, and if the user removes the ad prior to the agreed upon time, you are credited for the loss. Ultimately the tracking that is provided for the advertisers will alert them if agreements are broken and the advertiser is free to leave negative feedback in such cases.

Twittad receives 5% of the total paid out price as their fee for using their services.

Is This Viable?

I ask myself this question ever since I hear about Twittad. Is this a viable solution to make money on Twitter? Well, sure it can’t hurt to make a little money. The site itself shows how much individuals are making based on duration and follower count. But ultimately, how many people actually travel to your homepage on Twitter? The only time I can think of is when they choose to follow you, but otherwise with all theAPI’s out there, Twitter users are hardly ever on the actual site itself. Perhaps it won’t be long until these web apps we use are filled with advertising. If there’s a way to market, leave to the advertisers to find it.

Yesterday Google’s new browser, Chrome was announced so today I downloaded and installed it onto my work Windows XP box to see what all the fuss is about and check for cross compatibility on sites we work on.  I spent about 5 minutes poking around, if I can’t figure out how to use a browser in 5 minutes, it’s too complicated for anyone but the most 733t 1337.

Download was very small; it then opens an applet and downloads the rest of the software.  Installation requires Firefox to be shut down so Chrome can import all your bookmarks, favorites, history and passwords; this goes quickly and rather painlessly.  Next you get a TOS about reporting options for crashes, I denied their request and the install was complete.

Upon launching Chrome for the first time an unusual question is asked, “Do you wish to keep Google as your default search engine?”   It’s unusual in that, it’s a Google product and the first thing about this new killer app is to strip out Search, the one thing Google does very, very well.  I selected to keep it.

All my bookmarks and history imported, what didn’t was my homepage.  I’m a long time iGoogle user and rely on the RSS feeds to get me caught up quickly at a glance to what is going on with the sites I follow.  Not there.  Instead six white boxes stare at me.  A little note tells you that these are your most visited sites.  Nice idea, but not for me.  I easily look at 50+ sites in six different tabs of iGoogle.  There is no apparent way to set a traditional “homepage” only what Google wants you to see.

The other thing lacking is an option to show the status bar.  I rely on the status bar while at work and home to see where any link will take my, by hovering over it.  There are also several add-ons for Firefox that sit in my status bar that I’ve come to love, from what I can tell in Chrome, there is no status bar option.

On the plus side, it is fast.  How fast?  I don’t have scientific numbers or pretty pie charts, but it really feels fast.  One site that I know uses a fairly common Java plugin to run an app wouldn’t work and there was no option to install it but everything else on the dozen or so sites I quickly browsed seem to work.

Is Chrome the next killer app?  Hard to say now, Firefox has such a loyal, loving fan base to it, but I think this could compliment it very well.

Like any good addiction, the first step is always admitting you have the addiction. For many of us, Twitter is that addiction. We find ourselves Twittering from work, twittering from parties, from events, from weddings, from bar mitzvahs, from the car, from our mobiles, you name it, we addicts are Twittering from it. On the other hand, there are still a few that remain of the mindset that Twitter is a time waster and provides no value.

Well for the addict like you and me, we are introduced to Tweetrush. A very systematic web app that provides you with your Twitter usage metrics. Now, after typing in your handle in the search bar, you can receive a breakdown of your usage and find out just how addicted you are.

Tweetrush was built on the analytics engine called Rush Hour, which basically looks at actions taken by a user, such as typing and sending a message via Twitter. Tracking can be done via the website and also through the various API’s that exist for the web application.

Information can be tracked for the last 7 days of usage:

The tracking can even break down by the hour of usage:

No matter how you slice, it, Tweetrush is an excellent tool for measuring your addiction, providing useful information on usage, but ultimately also reveal just how much of your life Twitter has taken over. Give it a try and learn to live with the addiction, Twitter is not going anywhere soon!

Animoto is an introduction to movie making made easily. There is no need to brave the very steep learning curve of Final Cut Pro and for those not exposed to iMovie, this web application fit a suitable need with a limited amount of time.

I did a previous review of Animoto here. In that review I spoke about the finer points of Animoto and its uses for those looking at creating quick vids to share with friends and families, and even embed into websites.

I want to congratulate Animoto for hitting their one year celebration and wanted to share a few numbers they shared with me via their email announcement:

1. 4 million videos have been made on the Animoto platform
2. More than 250,000 users in 200-some countries have registered on Animoto.com
3. Animoto vids have been watched over 50 million times on Animoto.com, blogs, social networks, video sharing sites and web sites around the world!

I also want to share with all the readers of Crenk some new features for Animoto!

1. You can now pick your own images to use as the cover for your video as opposed to the static images provided by Animoto.

2. Animoto for your iPhone!!! That’s right, now you can watch your Animoto videos on your iPhone and a hint at a possible iPhone app. We’ll be sure to review it when it comes out.

3. you can now incorporate logos and panoramics into the videos which was a long standing issue.

Animoto is a definite most for those of us looking at creating videos for presentations, thank you cards, get well cards, parties/events.

Napster has hinted that the company is up for sale again, saying in its response to a dissident shareholder group that the company is once again exploring possible strategic alternatives, and has retained UBS Investment Bank to assist in the process. The company hired UBS two years ago to explore a possible sale, but no deal emerged. Napster informed shareholders of the move in a letter that also said the company believes that three proposed dissident board candidates are “unqualified.”

The company said the dissident candidates “have offered no specific business plan, other than suggesting a vague review of Napster’s business,” and also “have no significant ownership in Napster and, in fact, have been frequent sellers of Napster stock.”

Napster instead urged shareholders to re-elect its current slate of independent directors.

I predicted something like this happening to Napster back in December of last year. Napster has a business model that was rapidly decreasing and they didn’t even look like changing it. The company has a great brand, but they are still just moving in the wrong direction. A download store was never going to be right for this brand, they should have done something ad supported and in the same market as Imeem, build a community around this great brand. I so wish I had control of this brand!

Apple has pushed the new iPod Touch Firmware 2.0 to iTunes. All iPod Touch users can upgrade to this latest firmware by paying a one-time fee of $9.25.

iPhone users, however, get to upgrade to firmware 2.0 absolutely free of cost. As I find this kind of unfair on part of Apple to charge only iPod Touch users, so I am going to help you upgrade iPod Touch to firmware 2.0 absolutely for free.

If you want to have an updated iPod Touch 2.0 for free, then just follow the steps below:

1. Download iTunes 7.7 from Here.
2. Hold Shift and click Restore.
3. Select iPod1,1_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw
4. Enjoy!

The iPod1,1_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw firmware can be downloaded from any of the mirrors below. It is the complete stable and final iPod Touch Firmware 2.0 (5A347) and has been checked and tested.

Rapidshare mirror (Join parts using this software)

http://tinyurl.com/ipodtouch-firmware-2-part1
http://tinyurl.com/ipodtouch-firmware-2-part2
http://tinyurl.com/ipodtouch-firmware-2-part3

Uploaded.to mirror

http://uploaded.to/file/ih0z65/iPod1,1_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw

Freakshare mirror

http://freakshare.net/files/30208/iPod11_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw

Once you download the firmware locally on your PC, follow the steps above to update iPod Touch to Firmware 2.0.

WebHostingRating.com is a new host rating site where they are trying to build the biggest searchable web hosting directory featuring complete information on all web hosting providers, all their web hosting plans, promotional and discount coupons, and unedited reviews by real customers.

From what I can tell this service is built on a Wordpress platform which incorporates a review feature, allowing users to find the right provider and package to suite their needs.

Webhostingrating.com also have other sections on the site, such as a directory, web hosting awards and web hosting tutorials. The articles section is basically their blog in which they discuss everything web hosting. The site itself is brilliantly design and I can see this type of directory really taking off.

Since the site is relatively new, they have only review 4 key web hosting companies at present, but make sure you keep and eye out for more coming in the future. The hosting companies they have reviewed are all Unix hosting, but they have other categories that I’m sure will develop over time, such as Windows hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, collection hosting and managed hosting.

While offering some good reviews on trusted hosting companies, they are also writing their own corporate blog, which discusses everything from the world of web hosting. Currently, they seem to have approximately 100 articles in a variety of categories. These categories range from domain hosting to ecommerce to scripting. All the articles seem to be of good length and are very helpful. It would also have been nice to see them add a few pictures in the posts to mix up just the plain text. Normally, a site with the quality of articles they have would grow in the blogosphere, but add in the reviews section and you have a great site in the makings.

Anyways, make sure you head over to Webhostingrating.com and I’m sure they can help you find the right hosting package to meet your needs.

I came across quite and interesting site survey this morning. The survey is based on a highly un-scientific study into your criminal mind. In the end the survey estimates how much you will be able to carry in a bank robbery. This is a pretty cool way to spend a couple minutes or so. Make sure you head to Bank Robbery Talent.

$3,696,390
Quiz brought to you by money.co.uk

This morning I came across a very interesting new comparison website, Broadband Expert. The first thing I came across was the Broadband USB devices (mobile internet devices), which are affectionately know as dongles here in the UK. The site allows you to compare speed, download limits, monthly contracts, prices and even reviews from other users.

However, one of the downsides is that it only compares 3 of the UK mobile companies, 3, T-Mobile and Vodafone. It would have been nice to see all of the network sites in this list. Additionally, I would really like to see this done on a global scale and not just for the UK market.

This has always made me wonder, do these comparison type websites actually make decent money? Do they receive the majority of their revenues from direct display advertising on the site or is it mostly from affiliate earnings ever time some purchases a contract? I never actually thought they would work, but I do keep seeing tv advertisements for comparison websites like Confused.com. For example Confused.com keep quoting that they have 5 million people use their site for quotes last year, but this seems like a tiny amount. How can they be profitable from that amount of traffic? What are there revenue streams?