Archive for: techcrunch

AOL Consolidating Blog Brands into 20 Power Brands!

AOL have been having an identity crisis for quite some time, now it seems that Tim Armstrong (AOL CEO) is trying to amalgamate some of the small sites to create much larger branding within AOL. AOL has just finishing consolidating 53 different content brands into 20 “power brands.”

Within Huffington Post Celebrity you will now find: PopEater articles. AOL News is already consolidated into the Huffington Post and Politics Daily has been rolled into HuffPost Politics. Kitchen Daily will become HuffPost Kitchen, Parent Dish will become HuffPost Parents, AOL Black Voices will become HuffPost Black Voices, and so on. HuffPost Music, HuffPost Small Business, and HuffPost Kids will all be new.

Outside of the Huffington Post, the power brands that will remain are:

AOL.com
Autoblog
Engadget
Joystiq
Mapquest
MMA Fighting
Moviefone
Patch
Stylelist
TechCrunch
TUAW
AOL Autos
AOL Healthy Living
AOL Industry
AOL Money & Finance,
AOL Music
AOL Search
AOL Travel
AOL Video

Goodbye Cuil, We Barely Knew You…Literally

If I were to ask how many people out there actually used Cuil there’s not doubt I’d hear the sound of crickets. The much maligned search engine the was supposed to be the Google killer had attracted the eyeballs of major tech media outlets only to be the laughing stock of the community. Since it’s launch, the search engine has struggled for it’s fair share of respect, but never quite getting there. We’ve covered Cuil in the past and came to the same conclusion, that Cuil was just not meant for the public and would have been better off staying behind closed doors to either die on the vine, or prepare itself for an actual launch.

It seems that news on this search engine just does not die. Recently reported on TechCrunch, Michael Arrington writes that Cuil is finally closing its doors for good…unofficially at least. According to the report, what few employees that are still with the company have not been paid, which is never a good sign. While they look for green pastures the future for the search engine is almost certain. With its line of successive failures, perhaps now we can finally lay it to rest.

So what say you? Did anyone in the Crenk community ever use Cuil? The few that commented on past articles were not impressed, but if you actually liked it, we’d like to hear why.

Photo Credit slimmer_jimmer

App Store Not Skinemax, Policies Changed

Remember the days when Cinemax was the channel you went to if you wanted to see any amount of skin. It has become a joke nowadays, but there was a time when many of us referred to it as Skinemax. Well Apple’s App Store is not to be labeled in the same way. Recently we’ve seen complaints about the type of apps that are being allowed to go through the approval process. Apps to include interests in busty asians, busty women, swimsuits, hot models, and all sorts of combinations. The once happy playground of games and productivity apps has now been diluted with apps that have “raised” our interest.

According to a great article on TechCrunch, the policies are changing, and it’s going to affect a large swath of apps already approved in the app store. The zero tolerance on “sexual content” has been passed and we’ll soon see those apps gone entirely from the store. Some of these apps were developed as the foundation for business, so Apple is essentially putting them out on the streets. While many of us may not agree with what we see, is Apple doing the right thing by running them out?

According to the article, the developer of Wobble has outlined the following change of policies:

1. No images of women in bikinis

2. No images of men in bikinis!

3. No skin

4. No silhouettes

5. No sexual connotations or innuendo: boobs, babes, booty, sex – all banned

6. Nothing that can be sexually arousing!!

7. No apps will be approved that in any way imply sexual content

Anyone want to share their opinion? Seems pretty ridiculous and perhaps a little overreaching, but it is Apple’s sandbox. If you want to play in it you follow their rules. Leave your comments and let’s chat about this.

Apple’s Imitation is not Flattery

As you continue to bathe in the glow and light of the announcement of Apple’s new iPad, perhaps you can divert your attention to a few other Apple related topics that we’ll surely not hear the end of. Apple is known to claim dominance not just in the world of products, but in intellectual property rights, and domain names that are even closely similar to any of their product lines. We’ve read stories of Apple’s tight fist making one owner cough up numerous domain names for the sake of brand protection.

But here’s a story that only a few sites have picked up on. I first noticed this when I saw the presentation via an iPhone recording, but confirmed when I saw the photos, Apple’s new ebook front was a total copy of Will Shipley‘s Delicious Monster. Now if you go to TechCrunch you can read an extensive article on their conversation with Shipley and his frustration on several points. First that Apple had strategically hired several of his former employees, and then secondly lift the look and feel of his design for their purpose. An imitation situation that was not flattering one bit.

So while I expect Will to take some action against Apple for the design, it begs the question…why? Why not hire Will directly if you’re hiring his employees? In Will’s words “they can’t afford me.” That might be so, but to so blatantly lift the look and feel without any attribution or agreement seems really heavy handed.

Do companies like Apple work outside the boundaries of standard practice? They seem so concerned when people encroach on their territory that it would seem appropriate that they would be wary of doing the same to others. While Shipley’s application does do more than just books, covering all types of media, I definitely think we’ll be hearing more on this in the days and weeks to come.

Photo Courtesy of TechCrunch

MySpace Breathes New Life into imeem Playlists

…to what end?

I think that’s the real question. For those of you that have followed the MySpace Acquisition of imeem and the eventual realization that users could not access their playlists, Crenk is wonders if people still care. There was no doubt that users of the imeem music service were dedicated to the platform and infuriated at how MySpace handled the acquisition.

With no warning at all the entire platform was shut down leaving developers and users in the dark. A lot of users left for other music sites, sites that appeared to be more stable. Now acquisitions can happen at any time, but two things were for sure. First users wanted to know where their music was and were unhappy with the response by MySpace, and secondly that many users detested the MySpace music platform and did not want to be affiliated with it.

Still, it’s nice to see that MySpace as still followed through with its promise of bringing back the playlists and there will be no doubt that users will migrate and begin to engage one another again, just on a different platform. Now it’s only fair to note that MySpace was not officially responsible for the imeem platform going down. Users were unawares that money had run out and services were on their way to being shut down with or without MySpace’s involvement.

For full reports and a step by step process to access your music accounts, take a look at the article from TechCrunch.

Microsoft Songsmith Provides Musical Mockeries!

In the words of John Cougar Mellencamp, both the commerical for Microsoft Songsmith and the number of parody tunes that have been released “hurt so good.”

The Songsmith commercial caused a ripple of laughter when the painful commercial made its rounds on the internet. Viewers lamented on the lack of acting as well as the blatent use of an Apple laptop throughout the entire promotion. You can vew the entire promotion here.

Recently, several Songsmith parodies of popular songs have been released using the Songsmith application.Both TechCrunch and This Week in Tech (TWiT) covered these interesting adaptions that almost appear to come from a bizarro world.

Here is “Roxanne” by The Police via Songsmith.

If you’d like to see other tunes mutilated by this Microsoft inception, visit the the article posted over on TechCrunch. Prepare to laugh, cry, or a mixture of both!

Book Worms Unite with BookSprouts

Never before have we as a global community ever felt so connected as we have in the past ten years. We have grown from gatherings, town hall meetings, forums and message boards, internet chat rooms, to social networks. I host a podcast over at Tech in Twenty, and we’ve discussed the growth in popularity for social networks and how niche interests have played a huge part of that growth.

We have all heard of the popular social networks like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Ning, etc. But there are a lot of networks out there that cater to a more specific market, no matter if you’re into music, television, knitting, dating, marbles, or candles, there is a group for you. BookSprouts is the newly developed social site for book clubs. The site is a amongst a few competitors that claim to be a space for readers, but BookSprout is different in that the actual design is easy to navigate at the layout is welcoming to new users with little confusion. Every step for you is laid out so that users can get started immediately without getting lost in the site.

I had time to explore the site and came across the same problem the write of the TechCrunch article did. Only two of the books I listed had actual groups connected to them. This was rather limiting since those books were not considered favorites of mine, so it left me little desire to join that discussion. While I won’t blame this entirely on BookSprout, this is a user generated community, unless someone starts a group for the book, I have little time to manage one on my own.

I like how the site is free of ads. Though one might question the ability of the site to sustain itself, other social sites like Ning are free of advertisements and function perfectly well without all the advertising. The ability to purchase what other users are reading straight from the site is nice with an easily accessible Amazon link, but might be too limiting considering that there might be other places offering the book cheaper. For that you might want to check out my post on Booksprice.

Here is a video that details what Booksprice offers and what they’ve done for their users. Pick a couple of books, sign-up, and enjoy!

Zemanta Launches Public API

Zemanta has long been a favorite addition to my blogging processes. This interesting little addition to the browser builds in the ability include photos, links, and tags for all of your media inserts. By installing Zemanta, I have reduced the time it takes to track down information to include, and by setting up some personal settings I’m sure to find what I need when I need it.

The New

Zemanta has always offered what it thinks you will need in terms of photos and links, but today Zemanta is launching their public API which will now allow users to build a “user suggestion engine.”

Funding for the company has come from Union Square Ventures, Eden Ventures and The Accelerator Group, along with its win at the fist SeedCamp, this announcement has come out of LeWeb in Paris, France. This announcement is sure to increase not only the number of users, but also the dependency that online writers will have on this dynamic tool.

The Future

Zemanta has now opened itself to a huge reception in the world of online content creators. By opening their API, they can approach content creators to leverage their unorganized with the system, and the users are able to access the content for various needs.

In an article by TechCrunch, they state that “usage of the API is free for up to 10.000 API calls per month, and for a subscription fee above that.” So not only has Zemanta found a way to integrate user input, but they also find a way to monetize their efforts for content creators to get organized.

Zemanta has a bright future ahead of it. I have just recently connected with one of the Founders for Zemanta on Twitter @andraz. He’s easily approachable and seems to be keen on connecting with users around the world.

“Danger Will Robinson…Danger”

For those of you not following TechCrunch’s Layoff Tracker, the tech industry is taking a major hit. So far a total of 44,283 (to include HP‘s release) people are gone from their respective companies. Is this another Dot Com Bust?

How bad is this? Well, pretty bad considering that most tech startups are staffed minimally to keep costs down. Some companies have been forced to cut as many has 1/3 of their staff, some up to 50%.

I were Chicken Little, the sky would definitely be falling right now!

TechCrunch Creates Layoff Tracker

Image via CrunchBase