Gregarius

Unread items (100)

Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger

Useful travel web sites

Posted: September 8th, 2008, 12:41am CEST by Robert Scoble

I travel a lot. You might notice that I use sites like TripIt and Dopplr to help me plan my trips, keep track of where I’m going, and share important information with my friends and family and you. I also mostly fly United because I’m a long time frequent flier there (if I was starting [...]

CNNMoney.com Recently Published/Updated

U.S. seizes Fannie and Freddie

Posted: September 8th, 2008, 12:34am CEST

Federal officials on Sunday unveiled an extraordinary takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, putting the government in charge of the twin mortgage giants and the $5 trillion in home loans they back.
Men in suits - few answers

Posted: September 8th, 2008, 12:29am CEST

There were no shortage of questions following the announcement Sunday morning of the massive government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The cost to taxpayers? The outcome for shareholders? Will this bailout lead other big companies to take too much risk?

Techmeme

Google Chrome Receives Heavy Criticism in Germany (Philipp Lenssen/Google Blogoscoped)

Posted: September 8th, 2008, 12:25am CEST

Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped:
Google Chrome Receives Heavy Criticism in Germany — It doesn't get any more “official” than this here. Yesterday, Saturday at around 20:07, Germany's oldest and perhaps biggest prime time news Tagesschau announced the following under the headline “Warning against internet browser"*:

CNNMoney.com Recently Published/Updated

What rescue means for mortgage rates

Posted: September 8th, 2008, 12:17am CEST

Mortgage applicants rejoice!

Techmeme

One Bad Apple - Apple is looking like what Microsoft ... (Daniel Lyons/Newsweek)

Posted: September 8th, 2008, 12:00am CEST

Daniel Lyons / Newsweek:
One Bad Apple — Apple is looking like what Microsoft was 10 years ago—a Bigfoot that squeezes smaller competitors. — From the magazine issue dated Sep 15, 2008 — A former lieutenant of Steve Jobs's once told me something surprising about his ex-boss. “Steve is a monopolist at heart,” he said.

TechCrunch

Is Search Really 90% Solved?

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 11:53pm CEST by Michael Arrington

Jessica Guynn has an excellent interview with Google’s Marissa Mayer today about Google’s first ten years (today is arguably Google’s tenth birthday). Good stuff in there - Marissa talks about Google’s accomplishments in search and advertising, and looks forward to a future where cloud computing becomes pervasive. Marissa also says she hopes to still be at the company in another ten years.

But one thing caught my eye. Marissa says search is “90 to 95%” solved:

Search is an unsolved problem. We have a good 90 to 95% of the solution, but there is a lot to go in the remaining 10%. How do we monetize new forms of content as they come online such as video, maps and books. How do we help content providers transition their businesses online and build healthy businesses.

Here’s the thing. I don’t think search is even close to being solved yet. In a May 25 post I talked about how early I think we are in search, and why a competitive search market is so important to make sure innovation keeps happening:

Innovation In Search Has Just Begun

I simply cannot believe that just a little over a decade into the commercial Internet, Tim O’Reilly is willing to say that the search war is over. Did he not read his good friend John Battelle’s book, The Search? He’s not the only expert out there who thinks the war is over - Danny Sullivan argued as much on the Gillmor Gang last week. But I simply cannot believe that this is all we can expect in terms of search innovation.

There are so many areas on search that remain to be conquered. Semantic search. Real language/AI search. The deep web. Media search. Today search basically returns web documents. What I want is for search to complete tasks for me. We’re no where near that today.

We are just getting started in search. To think that search has reached its pinnacle today is like saying aircraft were perfected before World War I. And if just one company were to carry on in aircraft innovation at that point, I doubt we’d have jetliners whisking us around the world today.

Innovation does not occur at a rapid pace without competition. If Google or any company were to control search exclusively, we could expect to see little happen in search technology or business models over even the medium and long term.

Sure, the odd startup or two would still come along and try to shake things up. But search is infrastructure intensive - the cost and difficulty of indexing the web and building a business in an established market requires resources that most new startups can’t realistically access. And if the market consolidates further, competing will become that much harder. There’s a reason monopolies get broken up by governments - market forces can’t generally undo them.

If search was 90% solved, Google could look at a picture of me standing by the Eiffel Tower and know, without textual metadata, what’s there. It could return results for a Barack Obama query that include all the videos he’s in, again without relying on tags or other textual metadata. Natural language. Deep web searches. Semantic search. All of these problems are unsolved.

This is not the long term solution to image search.

But anyway, Happy Birthday Google. You’ve done a lot in ten years. Just don’t give up on search yet.
CrunchBase Information Marissa Mayer Google Information provided by CrunchBase
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger

The future of the Web is Marc Canter’s back fence

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 11:41pm CEST by Robert Scoble

Yesterday I visited Marc Canter who was holding a BBQ. His back fence is, should we say, unique. Canter is the guy who started Macromind, which became Macromedia. He’s always been ahead of the market in recognizing where things are going. Plus he’s just fun to talk with. So, I filmed him showing off his [...]

CNNMoney.com Recently Published/Updated

Fannie, Freddie aftershocks: More bank woes

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 11:40pm CEST

The takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is likely to cause big problems for hundreds of community banks nationwide and could lead to a new round of bank failures.

Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger

The “gold standard” of recent startups

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 11:15pm CEST by Robert Scoble

Well, I’ve taken potshots at the new breed of startups. But let’s go back and look at recent startups that have gotten our attention and use this list as a “gold standard” through which to judge companies that come out this week at one of the two conferences. I put forth a short list of some [...]

BusinessWeek Online -- Top News

Fannie, Freddie: Feds Step In

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 10:59pm CEST

CNNMoney.com Recently Published/Updated

JetBlue to auction flights on eBay

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 10:57pm CEST

Read full story for latest details.

Lummaland - das Weblog

Aufbruch in den Wahlkampf 2009

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 9:37pm CEST by nico

Nach einer sehr langen Zeit ist nun endlich die nervige Hängepartie beendet worden. Frank-Walter Steinmeier wurde erwartungsgemäß zum Kanzlerkandidaten für die Bundestagswahl 2009 vorgeschlagen, was aufgrund seiner Popularitätswerte sowieso schon alle erwartet hatten. In völliger Unkenntnis der Berliner Verhältnisse hatte Beck stets auf den geeigneten Zeitpunkt für die Verkündung gewartet, der natürlich nie kam. Nun ist Beck auch noch zurückgetreten, wieder einmal als Opfer der Zustände, die er nie verstehen wollte und in einer Rolle, die er stets fand. Ich finde das schade, ist Beck doch ein verdienter Ministerpräsident, aber es scheint, dass er mit den Funktionsweisen des Berliner Politikbetriebs nie warm geworden ist. Letztendlich sind jetzt immerhin alle Fronten geklärt.

Nun also Steinmeier und Müntefering als Parteivorsitzender, von Frau Nahles und Herrn Steinbrück war heute aber so etwas von gar nicht die Rede, das mir das schon wieder seltsam vorkommt. Frau Nahles wird jetzt sicherlich alles dafür tun, dass ihr Einfluss beim nächsten Parteitag wiederum gesichert wird. Mit Müntefering hat die Partei aber demnächst einen Vorsitzenden, der eigentlich dafür sorgen könnte, dass der Laden wieder rund läuft, schließlich hat er schon fast alle Ämter durchgespielt und könnte in eine Rolle als Übervater der Partei schlüpfen und die Ränge unter sich ordnen, was der Partei durchaus gut stehen würde.

Mit Steinmeier und Müntefering vorneweg dürfte der Wahlkampf auch einiges an Spannung erfahren, schliesslich wird das Linksfront-Gerede seitens der CDU/CSU so ins Leere laufen, sind die beiden doch linkeren Tendenzen eher seltenst verdächtigt worden. Steinmeier und Müntefering stehen für die erfolgreichen Schröder-Jahre und natürlich die Agenda 2010 und zeigen insgesamt die Kontinuität auf von 10 Regierungsjahren der SPD, in denen seit Kohl einiges bewegt wurde. Der Wahlkampf 2009 hat nun aber wirklich angefangen und die SPD hat sich heute endlich freigemacht von einigem Ballast, kann jetzt also mit Kraft in die politischen Auseinandersetzungen der nächsten 12 Monate gehen.

Techmeme

Marissa Mayer talks about Google at 10 - and 20 (Jessica Guynn/L.A. Times Tech Blog)

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 9:25pm CEST

Jessica Guynn / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Marissa Mayer talks about Google at 10 — and 20 — She is not nearly as famous as celebrity founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. But, in many ways, Marissa Mayer has become the public face of Google, which was incorporated 10 years ago today. — The Internet giant's first female engineer …

CNNMoney.com Recently Published/Updated

Fannie, Freddie: How they got here

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 9:02pm CEST

Call it a bailout, or a rescue, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are now firmly under the grip of the U.S. government.

John Battelle's Searchblog

Ambient Awareness

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 8:56pm CEST

Oh, I've kinda heard of that. Sounds familiar. Think I saw it somewhere, at some point.

From the NYT piece:
This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. The ambient information becomes like “a type of E.S.P.,” as Haley described it to me, an invisible dimension floating over everyday life.

q48

Auf zur OMD

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 8:14pm CEST by pascal

Beim Rumklicken auf der offiziellen OMD-Seite holpert noch einiges. (http://www.online-marketing-duesseldorf.de/besucherinfo klick auf registrieren)

Ich bin sehr gespannt, wie sich die Messe in diesem Jahr präsentieren wird. Der Druck von außen (BVDW + OVK) hat schon seine Vorboten unterwegs, die Anzahl der Nebenpartys steigt ( www.omclub.de ), und irgendwie ist ein Detail komplett an mir (und offensichtlich vielen anderen vorbeigegangen.

Es sind drei Tage

Wie? Drei Tage waren es doch schon immer. Am Vortag gab es einen Tradedoubler-Event, einen Metaapes Stammtisch und eine Falk-Party (später Doubleclick) Dieses Jahr kommt noch Valueclick dazu und Zanox veranstaltet gleich einen Event der sich von Dienstag Mittag bis Donnerstag Früh hinspannt.

Und parallel?

16.9. Marketing Leaders Day

lese ich auf meiner Einladung. Haben alle anderen das auch verpasst? Oder interessiert es keinen?

Und was machen Sie am Dienstag? Diskutieren Sie mit!

CNNMoney.com Recently Published/Updated

Fannie, Freddie: The biggest losers

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 8:03pm CEST

Big investors in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac face a brutal Monday. Shares in the mortgage giants, which have already lost 90% of their value over the past year, are likely to plunge anew in the wake of the government's announcement Sunday that it is taking control of the companies and ending the payment of common and preferred dividends.

Techmeme

Google at 10: Larry, Sergey & Me (Om Malik/GigaOM)

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 7:40pm CEST

Om Malik / GigaOM:
Google at 10: Larry, Sergey & Me — It is not clear how old Google is - some argue that world's largest search engine operator is 13 - after all it operated in stealth for about 3 years before launching in September 1998. Many major news organizations are going with September 2008 as the tenth anniversary so I am going to play along.

Signum sine tinnitu--by Guy Kawasaki

Unboxing a Nikon D90

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 7:01pm CEST by GuyKawasaki

Nikon just released the D90. This is the first digital SLR that can shoot movies (as far as I know, anyway)--now you don't have to carry a digital SLR and a video camera. How cool is that?! My buddies at Ritz Camera and the 6sight Future of Imaging conference made this possible. Click here to buy one from Ritz Camera. Incidentally, I'll be the first to admit that these aren't the greatest shots--I had no idea product shots are so much harder than people shots.

Later today I'll try to post a high-definition video taken with the D90. For complete photography news, click here.

www.best-practice-business.de/blog

Zukunftsvision: Schwimmende Städte als “nachhaltige” Zufluchtorte für Opfer von Klimakatastrophen

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 6:45pm CEST by Burkhard Schneider

Der Architekt und Visionär Vincent Callebaut hat sich Gedanken darüber gemacht, wo aufgrund des Klimawandels die Bewohner von Städten langfristig Zuflucht finden, die nahe am Wasser gebaut sind, egal ob Monaco, New York, Hongkong oder Rotterdam. Seine Lösung ist eine schwimmende Stadt mit dem Namen Lilyput. Als Vorbild hat er die Natur genommen: Seerosenblätter.

Diese großen “Rettungsinseln” sollen Platz für mehr als 50.000 Menschen haben, die dort dauerhaft leben können sollen. Durch Sonnenkollektoren, Windräder etc. sollen die Inseln mehr Energie generieren, als die Bewohner verbrauchen. 50 % der Stadt soll oberhalb und 50 % unterhalb der Wasseroberfläche liegen. Damit sich die Menschen langfristig heimisch fühlen, sind auch Flora und Fauna in Form von kleinen Wäldern, Wiesen und Parks geplant.

Derzeit handelt es sich erst um eine Zukunftsstudie, ohne konkrete Kostenschätzungen. Deshalb ist es bisher noch schwer einzuschätzen, wie teuer ein Platz pro Person wirklich werden könnte und ob und wann die erste “Rettungsinsel” vom Stapel läuft. Aber es ist zu erwarten, dass sich diesen Platz in der “Arche Noah” nur die Reichen leisten können. Was ich vermisse, ist auch ein Zoo, der auch die Tiervielfalt sichert.

Gefunden im mindsharing-Blog

CNNMoney.com Recently Published/Updated

Paulson's announcement on Fannie, Freddie

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 6:36pm CEST

Here is the statement by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Treasury and Federal Housing Finance Agency action to protect financial markets and taxpayers:

VentureBeat Wire

Eco-Products gobbles up $2M for compostable food items

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 6:30pm CEST by Jeremy Jacquot

CNNMoney.com Recently Published/Updated

Lockhart's statement on Fannie, Freddie

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 6:30pm CEST

The following is the statement by James Lockhart, director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, who will head the Federal Housing Finance Agency being created to oversee mortgage backers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

Techmeme

How Many Reviewers Should Be in the Kitchen? (Randall Stross/New York Times)

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 3:55pm CEST

Randall Stross / New York Times:
How Many Reviewers Should Be in the Kitchen? — FOR polar or lunar exploration, we are an intrepid species, eagerly vying with one another to be first. But we're not so brave when it comes to being the first to buy a particular product or service. We much prefer letting someone else go on ahead and report back.
CIA, FBI push 'Facebook for spies' (Larry Shaughnessy/CNN)

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 3:40pm CEST

Larry Shaughnessy / CNN:
CIA, FBI push ‘Facebook for spies’ — WASHINGTON (CNN) — When you see people at the office using such Internet sites as Facebook and MySpace, you might suspect those workers are slacking off. — But that's not the case at the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency …
Everyone Needs To Calm Down (Michael Arrington/TechCrunch)

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 2:55pm CEST

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Everyone Needs To Calm Down — I haven't had a lot of time to jump into the big fracas this weekend emerging about TechCrunch50 because the team has been busy organizing the conference, working with the Expert Panelists on scheduling issues and spending hours and hours working with the 52 startups …

q48

OM-Club 2008 - Die coole OMD Party

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 2:07pm CEST by pascal

Die einen sind es satt, immer um Karten für eine Party zu betteln, auf der eh nur Offliner rumhüpfen, und ihre Online-Kompetenz feiern (siehe Spiegel-Video), die andern möchten keine Lounge mit Türsteher, sondern eine ehrliche Party von Online Marketing Profis für alle, die gerne Party machen. Und zwar Open End. Wer will sich schon in Düsseldorf unter der Woche um zwei Uhr nach einer neuen Location umsehen? Niemand. Deswegen auf zum OM-Club 2008. Wo die richtige Party abgeht.

Veranstaltet von Randolf und Scarlett, die schon mehrfach ihre Feierkompetenz unter Beweis gestellt haben…

Gerüchte gehen um, dass alle Hostessen der Messe Hier (im Gegensatz zu den offiziellen Partys) hochwillkommen sind, und sie sogar eine mittlere Überraschung erwartet.

Ach ja, und sponsored, was das Zeug hält, damit mal gezeigt wird, was eine außerverbandliche / außerpolitische Party uns wert ist.

gründerszene

Netmoms vermeldet 150.000 User - kurze Bestandsaufnahme der Schlacht um die Mutter

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 1:27pm CEST by Lukasz

Vor ca. 2 Jahren startete das Rennen um Müttercommunities. Vor wenigen Tagen vermeldete Netmoms 150 K deutschsprachige Nutzer und die weitere Auslandsexpansion (siehe Pressemeldung). Damit dürfte es sich im Feld durchgesetzt haben. Ich habe mich damals dummerweise nicht beteiligt, weil mir der ganze Bereich zu kompetitiv war. Grund genug, für eine kurze Bestandsaufnahme: - Insgesamt sind [...]

Seth's Blog

Getting used to infinity

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST by Seth Godin

I have a new thing to collect.

I collect pictures of crowds stunned by a baseball bat heading their way. I don't collect photos where anyone is injured, just the ones where people are all weirded out.

This, of course, is a crazy thing to collect, but the fascinating thing is that it's possible at all. All of us grew up in a world of content scarcity, and now we live in a world of content infinity.

That means, for example, that finding a rare song is essentially banal. There are no rare songs (except on LP). It means that finding a photo of what you're looking for isn't the hard part, it's deciding what to look for in the first place.

Of course, it's not just photos or music. It's service providers, freelancers, employees, charitable tools, places to live, vacation spots, dogs to adopt, people to date.

If you find a great baseball bat flying in the stands photo, I'm hoping you'll send me one. In the meantime, don't be afraid of infinity. There's a lot of it going around.

www.best-practice-business.de/blog

Sticks and Stones: Personalisierte Fotobilderserie als Geschenkidee

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 12:45pm CEST by Burkhard Schneider

Ich will mit einem kleinen Bilderrätsel beginnen. Was seht Ihr im obigen Bild? Richtig. Der Dachgiebel sieht wie der Buchstabe “A” aus. Und genau diese Beoabachtung ist die Basis für eine sehr lukrative Geschäftsidee in den USA. Jera und Brad Deal verkaufen seit 2005 über das Web konkret personalisierte Fotoserien im Bilderrahmen. Am häufigsten wird der Vorname des Beschenkten gewählt. Für jeden Buchstabe gibt es verschiedene Motive, die der Kunde nach eigenem Geschmack zusammenstellen kann.

Könnt Ihr Euch aber auch vorstellen, dass man mit dieser Idee Millionär werden kann? Das Gründerehepaar hat es bereits bewiesen. In diesem Jahr soll mit den personalisierten Bilderserien ein Umsatz von mehr als 10 Millionen USD realisiert werden. Dabei begann alles mit einer “Spielerei”. Jera spielte mit Ihrer Tochter “Letter Hunting” (Buchstabensuche), um ihrer Tochter die Umgebung näher zu bringen und selbst Wartezeiten spielend zu überbrücken. Mittlerweile berichte die Presse in der ganzen USA über diese clevere Geschenkidee. Das lag u.a. daran, dass Oprah Winfrey pressewirksam eine personalisierte Bilderserie geschenkt wurde.

Dieses Erfolgsbeispiel zeigt einmal mehr, dass viele Ideen mehr wirtschaftlichen Erfolg einbringen, als man sich das am Anfang vorstellen kann. Deshalb gilt immer wieder das Prinzip: “Just do it”. Clever war natürlich, dass man ein personalisiertes Geschenk kreierte und mit dem Geschenk an viele Promis viel PR erhielt. Wer noch mehr solche unglaubliche Erfolgsstories nachlesen will, dem empfehle ich den Entrepreneurship-Artikel “young millionaires”.

TechCrunch

No ChaChing For ChaCha Guides

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 12:29pm CEST by Michael Arrington

ChaCha used to be a ridiculous human powered web based search engine that’s best use appeared to be for killing time when bored.

They raised a boatload of money from Jeff Bezos and others and eventually switched to an all-mobile interface. They also began offering their platform to third party marketers.

But now there are indications that the company is having cash flow issues, even after a recent pay cut to guides. As before, the information is coming from their poorly-paid and poorly-treated human guides.

Employees are simply not being paid, says one guide, asking to remain anonymous. And he sends several screen shots of ChaCha’s internal forum for guides, which show dozens of complaints about slow or non-existent payouts. A selection of comments:

I have been with ChaCha since the end of July and still haven’t gotten paid. I’m not even getting the runaround because I’m not getting a response from anyone…I have kids to feed and need to be paid. I’m not even tripping about the cut in pay…

I became a guide on August 6. I submitted my paperwork that day and then faxed my signature card on August 18. I heard nothing. I email FIB on August 28 and they wanted utility bills as I have a P.O. On the 28th of August I emailed them again as I had heard nothing. I still have no account!

ChaCha doesn’t seem to care about taking care of their Guides, which is really sad. It’s only due to our work, they are able to grow and make money. You think ChaCha would take better care of us. It’s pathetic to see them spend so much time on stupid hot minute contests and such things, while they don’t take a single second out to help us guides who are long past getting paid what we worked hard to earn.

For the love of God. It’s been 5 weeks and no pay me now button. No response, no anything. What’s going on here? I want my money. Can I get any help at all?

I have been waiting an extremely long time for them to get back to me over my earnings which I WANT NOW! And I am thinking about small claims because I contacted them MORE THAN enough times for them to respond, and gave them soo much time.

The comments go on. The guide who sent them to us also says the complaints are being deleted from the forum almost as fast as he can take screen shots.

I’ve emailed ChaCha for a comment.

CrunchBase Information ChaCha Information provided by CrunchBase
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Everyone Needs To Calm Down

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 10:39am CEST by Michael Arrington

I haven’t had a lot of time to jump into the big fracas this weekend emerging about TechCrunch50 because the team has been busy organizing the conference, working with the Expert Panelists on scheduling issues and spending hours and hours working with the 52 startups that will be launching at the event to make sure their demos properly reflect what they’ve worked so hard to create.

But I do have a few things to say.

First, thanks to Chris O’Brien at the San Jose Mercury News who wrote such a great article on TechCrunch and the conference. What a wonderful, positive way to kick things off as we go into the craziness on Monday. He really gets what we’re trying to accomplish and how honored we are that these startups have chosen to launch at our event.

Second, some of the press out there is starting to go a little crazy with the drama between TechCrunch50 and the competing DEMO conference. But there’s nothing new here. We’ve stated from the beginning, in early 2007, that we think the DEMO format is unethical. If you are going to parade out a bunch of startups on a stage that paid you $18,500 each, you simply can’t say they’re the most qualified companies to be at the event. It’s just a lie. Here’s what they are: Sponsors. And here’s what’s going on: Payola.

We’re approaching the market in a straightforward and honest way. We aren’t charging companies to get on stage. We are charging people to attend. And we also have sponsors (really kick ass sponsors who get what we are trying to do). All of the economics are transparent, there is nothing hidden.

That honesty is why 1,700 have chosen to attend the event. That honesty is why these great industry leaders are spending their time to judge and discuss the launches. And that honesty is why over 1,000 startups spent time applying to the event and going through endless rounds of interviews for the chance to get on stage (thank you to every one of you who applied).

Most of the press gets this, even though DEMO organizer Chris Shipley sounds like she’s about to blow a fuse over the fact that their business model is finally being questioned.

Third, CNET really needs to chill out about press coverage of the event. This $1.8 billion company has published at least four articles complaining about the fact that we are not disclosing the companies launching at the event until Monday morning, and/or about the fact that TechCrunch the blog has some sort of unfair advantage in covering these startups launching at TechCrunch50.

We aren’t disclosing the names of the startups because we want the press to actually attend the event, not cover it from their office. We want them to hear the ooh’s and ahh’s (and maybe boo’s) from the audience first hand as they write their stories. We want them to actually participate. And based on last year’s coverage, the model works very well. I’m sorry if it doesn’t suit CNET, but it suits us and it suits the startups launching there very well. And when it comes to TechCrunch’s coverage, we’ll be sure to link out to all the quality third party coverage out there. Also, we’ll have critical company information on each launching startup available on CrunchBase starting Monday morning. CNET and everyone else is free to grab that data and use it however they like, with no requirement of attribution (it’s not our data, it’s the startups’ data).

Finally, Can we please remember what’s important? There are 52 companies launching at TechCrunch50 this week, and they deserve their brief moments in the spotlight. These people have put their hearts and souls into creating whatever it is that their entrepreneurial spirit compelled them to create, and they only get to launch once. We’re putting on one hell of a show for them, and my sincere hope is that we can get all this political garbage out of the way today so that we can focus on what really matters at the event: the startups.

If you want to focus on the news at the event as it unfolds, complete coverage of the conference from start to finish will be at this link and on the TechCrunch50 blog.

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

Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger

How to be a stealth site

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 10:10am CEST by Robert Scoble

Let’s say you want to introduce your product on a certain date. Say on Monday because you are demonstrating your product at Demo or TC50. Well, you aren’t allowed to show off the product, right? So, what do you do? Well, look at Causecast’s site. This is done pretty darn well. What did they do? 1. It’s an attractive [...]

Techmeme

Shoddy Reporting, Invective, and Arrogance. Yeah, I Want Some of That (Chrisshipley/The Guidewire)

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 9:30am CEST

Chrisshipley / The Guidewire:
Shoddy Reporting, Invective, and Arrogance. Yeah, I Want Some of That — One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. — As I was growing up, my mother instructed me that, when I got angry or frustrated, to count to ten before saying anything.

Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger

The Superbowl of Startups

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 8:48am CEST by Robert Scoble

When I attended Demo I remember being in awe of what I thought of as the Superbowl of Startups. Here were these companies that prepared months to spend six minutes on stage. Later I talked with “DemoGods Coaches” like Shel Israel or Nathan Gold. They told me just how much hard work went in behind the scenes. [...]

GigaOM

Google at 10: Larry, Sergey & Me

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 7:29am CEST by Om Malik

It is not clear how old Google is - some argue that world’s largest search engine operator is 13 - after all it operated in stealth for about 3 years before launching in September 1998. Many major news organizations are going with September 2008 as the tenth anniversary so I am going to play along. Forbes.com even asked the question, Has Google Changed The World? from many well known people. For some odd reason they decided to seek my thoughts.

Gandhi changed the world. The steam engine changed the world. Heart transplants changed the world. The Internet changed the world. Google simply made a small (albeit important) contribution toward making Internet a better experience for all of us.

Google’s (s GOOG) contributions are still worthy of praise. It is no longer impossible to find relevant information on the fast-growing Internet. I remember tearing my hair out looking for relevant information. Today it is as simple as acting on our impulse to seek that knowledge–and that has infinitely changed the way we interact with the machines.

The article triggered a chain reaction and a trip down the memory lane. I had been a Google-addict for a while and loved its simple elegance over rivals such as AltaVista and Inktomi-powered searches. I had talked to the company earlier, but I didn’t meet the Stanford duo in person up until September 1999. The company had just raised about $25 million in venture money.

“I have never paid more money for so little a stake in a startup,” John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers was heard saying. Good thing he did - for he paid next to nothing for what could arguably be the Internet-equivalent of Alaskan oil and gas fields.

Larry Page & Sergey Brin had stopped by at the Forbes.com offices and we talked at length about the company. It ultimately resulted in this feature, How Google Is That? Larry still had the same disastrous haircut he supports today. Brin was measured and logical as always in his responses. They thankfully made no meaningless and “do-no-evil” hypocritical statements. They were just two guys out to change the world. I remember getting along with them famously, but never saw or talked to them since, though I have been to many Google press events.

Then & Now: You’ve come a long way baby

The company was 12-months old. They had just come up with their version of contextual-text advertisng system. They had 40 employees, were looking for an inhouse chef, and were doing about 4 million page views a day and about 4 million searches a day. That’s 45 searches per second. No one in the company owned a glider, though their venture backers had their own private planes. The company was housed in 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto and the co-founders were single.

In July 2008, Google registered 7.23 billion searches - about 242 million a day. That works out to about 4 million searches in an hour or over 1100 searches per second. (Funny, it turned out to be much bigger than the market estimates used by Google.) It had sales of $5.4 billion in the second quarter of 2008 alone. It now employs over 19,000 people. Larry and Sergey are billionaires and own a Boeing 767 & a Boeing 757. They are both married. The company has offices in multiple locations and data centers that are sprinkled around the globe.

After meeting with them and discussing the merits of search-only approach versus portals, I came to this conclusion: “Perhaps the other Stanford duo, Yahoo! cofounders David Filo and Jerry Yang, should be a little concerned–their media ambitions have superseded their customers’ desire for a really smart search engine.” In hindsight, I am surprised I was able to get away with making that statement and my editor didn’t catch what clearly was an opinion - a no-no in the non-blog mediascape. After all, it seemed so stupid to suggest that because Yahoo (s YHOO) had 240 million page views a day and was literally printing money.

Brin tried to convince me that the text-based contextual advertising (first popularized by LinkExchange, a company that was bought by Microsoft) was their way of making money. “Banners are not working and clickthrough rates are falling, I think highly focused ads are the answer,” Brin said, and pointed out that Google would be in black in 24 months. By 2001, I could have kicked myself for doubting the kid!

Why did they win?

Fast forward 9 years, and most of Google’s competitors have gone to the great technology graveyard, nary a tombstone. Simpli.com, Dogpile, Direct Hit and Northern Light were all part of the new search engines that were taking on the incumbents like Yahoo, Lycos and HotBot and wanted to make web searches simpler and more accurate.

“Google is essentially trying to categorize and catalog the web. We have a very different product and a different approach,” Jeffrey Stibel, cofounder and CEO of then Providence, R.I.-based Simpli.com told me for the Forbes.com story. He was taking a more exotic linguistic approach to search. It is now owned by Valueclick, an ad-network.

In comparison, Google’s analysis of the link structure of the World Wide Web and large-scale data mining and ability to ranks a page against similar pages turned out to be the right approach. Was it just the algorithm and a better monetization scheme? Was it a right solution at the right time? I think it was a bit of all that - but most importantly, it was a farsighted approach to infrastructure and the network.

It’s the infrastructure stupid.

This was the critical difference - I wrote about it recently - between winning and losing. I was reminded of this by an old PowerPoint presentation. They talked about using commodity compute infrastructure to out muscle everyone and doing analysis of the web like it has never been done before. It seems so obvious today - but back then it was an idea ahead of its time. The impact of pizza box servers was yet to be seen, and companies like Cobalt Networks (sold to Sun Microsystems for $1 billion) were selling early versions of Linux-powered thin servers, but they were not cheap by any means.

Many on Wall Street question why Google spends so much money on infrastructure. The question is why not - after all every millisecond of performance means more searches and more searches mean more advertising. More infrastructure means more crawling, more indexing and better results. I think that slide reminds us of the fact that infrastructure-as-an-advantage is in the DNA of Google. And that is unlikely to change - and that is why world’s smartest engineers and computer scientists still want to work there.

History has made a genius out of all who bet on Larry and Sergey - the investors, the employees, journalists who were enthralled by their story. In reality to those who built Google, it was the only option.

Tomorrow: What You, Me & Corporations Can Learn From Google

Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger

Scoble Sucks

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 6:48am CEST by Robert Scoble

Whoa, the hate mail has been flowing fast and furious tonight. Pat Phelan, founder of MaxRoam, says that today my shine came off. Loic Le Meur, founder of Seesmic, says that it’s easy to knock startups when I’ve never started one. I’ve never been the top dog, but the store I helped manage in the 1980s was [...]

Techmeme

Breaking News: Satellite to Gather Exclusive Images for Google ... (Andy Plesser/Beet.TV)

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 4:50am CEST

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:
Breaking News: Satellite to Gather Exclusive Images for Google Earth Blasts off in California...Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Launch — VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, CA — A Delta 2 rocket carrying a GeoEye satellite lifted off at 11:50 a.m. PDT today. The imaging satellite will provide mapping exclusively to Google.

TechCrunch

Family Tree Wars Continue: MyHeritage Raises Big Round, Shows Impressive Growth

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 3:30am CEST by Michael Arrington

It’s been just a few days after our post on Geni’s big growth numbers - and now big news from Israeli competitor MyHeritage.

The site has grown from 180 million profiles a year ago to 260 million today, they say. Registered users have also grown, from 17 million to 25 million. Compare that to almost 2 million users for Geni. 230 million photos have been uploaded to the site, which is available in 25 languages and has 5 million monthly unique visitors. Support for ten more language will be released this month.

Investors have certainly noticed MyHeritage’s stellar growth. The company has raised a new round of funding - $15 million in a Series D round led by Index Ventures and joined by current investor Accel Partners. That brings their total capital raised to $24 million.

New Features - Recognize Those Faces

MyHeritage’s facial recognition, which works a little like recent Picasa enhancements, lets you train the service by tagging a few photos of an individual. MyHeritage then starts to auto-tag other photos that you upload of that person, too. Users don’t have to upload photos directly, either. They can sync from Picasa, Flickr, Facebook, etc. And once the photos are properly tagged with people’s names, MyHeritage will re-sync them back to the original services.

Just to reiterate that, MyHeritage has created a heck of a tool to let users auto-tag photos with people’s names on the services they already use.

CrunchBase Information MyHeritage Information provided by CrunchBase
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

John Battelle's Searchblog

Google Says: We'll Get Own Own Data, Thanks

Posted: September 7th, 2008, 12:15am CEST

Not content to lease data from others who have satellites, Google today launched its own satellite into space. Via BeetTv, thanks Andy.
Talk about web meets world....this is yet another indicator of the integration of virtual and physical. And it brings Google one step closer to what I think could be the company's Waterloo - a viral meme that Google is sensing too much, knows too much, and is too powerful. It may not be rational, but no one ever accused humans of being entirely rational.
Update: Apparently Google does not own the satellite, just the data....

TechCrunch

ContestMachine: A Product Giveaway Widget For Bloggers

Posted: September 6th, 2008, 11:28pm CEST by Erick Schonfeld

Giving away products can be a logistical pain. For instance, when we give away a T-shirt or laptop, we have to go through hundreds of comments, contact the person, and do a lot of manual processing. A new Y Combinator startup called ContestMachine that just launched makes giving stuff away as easy as putting a widget on your blog.

You create a contest widget by entering all the details of the giveaway: prizes, deadlines, rules. Winners can be randomly chosen by ContestMachine or judged by the blogger. It automates the process of creating giveaways, and opens up contests to any blogger or small business who has a Website. The service is free to try out for up to two contests a month, and then charges $9 a month or $90 a year for more contests.

The startup hopes to attract advertisers who want to connect with blog readers and offer products to give away as a form of marketing. If ContestMachine can build up a large enough network of bloggers, big brands might want to use it as an efficient means of creating attention or buzz for their products. The bloggers, in this case, would act as filters for what is cool and what is not. Or maybe they’ll just give away anything they can get their hands on.

Here’s a contest I just created to give away a coveted TechCrunch T-shirt. Just eneter your e-mail, and ContestMachien will pick a winner at random. The contest ends tomorrow.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

CNNMoney.com Recently Published/Updated

Rescue cost: The big unknown

Posted: September 6th, 2008, 10:49pm CEST

If only it were the $64 million question. The taxpayer bill for rescuing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could turn out to be the $64 billion question. Or more - or less.

Techmeme

Startups: your web site sucks (Robert Scoble/Scobleizer)

Posted: September 6th, 2008, 10:45pm CEST

Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
Startups: your web site sucks — I visited each website from the list of Demo finalists. — Boy, do they suck. Really, really suck. — Does no one understand how to market themselves? — It's amazing to me that not a single Demo website has learned from the lessons of Gary Vaynerchuk's Winelibrary.tv.
On iTunes 8 and hunches; also iPhone 2.1 for Tuesday (Jacqui Cheng/Infinite Loop)

Posted: September 6th, 2008, 10:40pm CEST

Jacqui Cheng / Infinite Loop:
On iTunes 8 and hunches; also iPhone 2.1 for Tuesday — On Friday, we posted a short roundup of what's expected in iTunes 8 thanks to the rumortastic stylings of Kevin Rose. The Pandora-like Genius feature, Genius Sidebar, Grid view, and more are all said to be included.

TechCrunch

The Big Conference Launch: How to Stand Out from the Crowd

Posted: September 6th, 2008, 10:31pm CEST by Brian Solis

Editor’s Note: This post represents the professional advice of Brian Solis who is not affiliated with TechCrunch50. If you are a participating TC50 company, resident TechCrunch PR expert Sarah Ross is available to share and review the public relations guidelines with you. It is important to work directly with Sarah to ensure you are in compliance with these guidelines to maximize your PR opportunity while also avoiding disqualification.

How do you launch a startup at a big tech conference without getting lost in the crowd? With TechCrunch50, Demo and several other major tech conferences around the corner, this question is on the minds of more than one entrepreneur. How do you create visibility for your startup, and do you need PR to do it, or just a great demo?

The coming days and weeks will be filled by some of the industry’s most anticipated, attended and watched conferences. They’re all competing for mind share and they are attracting influential attendees and spectators who will report their experiences and observations far and wide. In the next two to three weeks, over 150-200 companies will vie for attention and precious blog and media real estate.

Your story, as wonderful as it is, will need help rising above the flurry of news that will jockey to reach the ears and eyes of bloggers, press, customers, investors, and partners.

Even though some A-list bloggers and high profile entrepreneurs (Jason Calacanis, cough) have publicly implied that any good product or eloquent and outspoken CEO will easily traverse the roads cluttered with inferior startups to quickly rise to stardom simply by existing, the reality is, you really do need a strategic launch plan and some level of PR. Most importantly, you need a polished, professional, and creative demonstration that will resonate with attendees and compel them to want to learn more.

Public Relations

This advice may seem 101, and in some cases it is. Nonetheless, it’s an important refresher for those companies who are using TechCrunch50 and other conferences to debut their company or new products.

For those 52 companies presenting at TC50, there is a clear and prevailing rule to participate in the event and it will make the difference whether or not you launch to accolades or you’re disinvited before you hit the stage:

You have to introduce your new company or product, for the first time, on stage at TC50.

Some people are debating the merits of this requirement. But given this rule, let’s explore a few ways to ensure a successful launch.

What’s Your Story?

Let’s start by determining who your customers and users are and where they go for information and insight. Identifying these groups will humanize the process of crafting your story. It forces you to adapt what you’re introducing specifically to the people you’re hoping to reach.

The next step is to summarize not only what you’re introducing, but distill the value, benefits and extraordinary features that differentiate you from your competition and also highlight how you’re solving real world problems and challenges. This process will impact your press materials, your stage demo, your pitch, and ultimately the perception that conference attendees form.

Demonstration

You have an obligation to attendees and also to your development team to present your company in a way that makes people remember who you are and why you were invited to participate in the first place.

This isn’t a local meetup for startups. This isn’t just another opportunity to practice your everyday company pitch. This is a major production that requires an entirely new level of presentation, probably of the caliber that you may not have experienced previously. The world will literally be watching. (TC50, for instance, will be streamed live on Ustream, photos will appearon a special Flickr page, and stories will be organized by the audience at large on a dedicated Mixx community site). And the live audience will be sitting through dozens of demos. So what are you going to do that will make everyone in the room stop checking email or updating Twitter, pay attention to your time on stage, and more importantly, remember you after the event? This is your first and best chance to create enthusiasm and support in order to ignite referrals and potential word of mouth for being one of the hottest companies to debut this year.

Ditch the Powerpoint presentation. No one wants to see bulleted lists that say what you do or endure a series of slides that detail your professional

Gregarius

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