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- SpeedDate Scores $6 Million For Matchmaking In A Hurry (Thu, 28 Aug 2008 03:30:35 -0700)
Online dating site SpeedDate has raised $6 million in a Series B funding round led by Menlo Ventures. SpeedDate offers users a series of 3 minute mini-dates, during which they can converse through video, audio, and a chat box. If both partners decide they were a good match when prompted at the end of the date, they can continue communicating through the site until they make the jump to real life. When we first wrote about SpeedDate, the site had a small userbase, which made it difficult to conduct a series of dates (there simply weren't enough potential matches). Since then the site has grown substantially (claiming 100,000 dates daily), so you can hop on and hope to find a reasonable match within a few minutes. - What The Veoh Decision Means For YouTube And Others (Thu, 28 Aug 2008 02:24:27 -0700)
Attorneys representing online video sites around the country are salivating today over the Veoh summary judgment decision (I know this because I've spoken to a few of them). In a nutshell, here's what we learned today: If you take reasonable precautions against copyrighted materials on your service, you may be ok. And oh yeah, if you are going to get sued, try to get sued in federal court in northern California, because the judges there are a lot more Internet-friendly than some other federal judges we've seen. Specifically, the court said that online video sites are protected under the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA if they: - Bungee Labs In A Freefall (Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:41:50 -0700)
Bungee Labs, a well funded Utah based startup that left private beta only six months ago, laid off 15 employees today to give themselves more runway on their cash burn rate. The last we checked they had 38 employees, so this is nearly 40% of their total headcount. - FYI, None Of Us Can Go To The Google/Vanity Fair Party Tonight (Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:35:27 -0700)
From: Vanity Fair / Google Date: August 27, 2008 9:06:32 PM PDT To: Michael Arrington Subject: IMPT: Google/Vanity Party Status Reply-To: demconventionparty@google.com Thank you for your interest in the Vanity Fair / Google Party. We have reached full capacity for this event and are unable to accommodate additional guests. If you have NOT received a Confirmation email–separate from the automated RSVP response– [...] - Transcoding Is Not A Crime, Says Court In Veoh Porn Case (Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:56:34 -0700)
Finally, a judge who may have actually visited the Internet once or twice before deciding a case. Judge Howard Lloyd, a judge on the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, threw out adult entertainment company IO Group's 2006 copyright infringement case against Veoh today. At the time Veoh had some user-uploaded porn on its service that belonged to IO Group. Despite quick takedowns from DMCA notices, IO Group sued anyway. - We Need To Kill The Business Card Once And For All (Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:42:47 -0700)
The business card needs to die, and everyone knows it. They're clumsy, easy to lose and virtually useless as one of the last bits of information that we pass non-digitally (they kill trees, too). The cell phone market could easily put business cards out of their misery, but instead of conforming to a single standard for contact exchange, handset manufacturers offer proprietary solutions or none at all. FriendBook, an iPhone application from Tapulous, looked like it might hold the answer. The app uses a physical "handshake" to swap information - users simply put their iPhones next to each other and shake them. Granted, this would only work on iPhones, but it could have paved the way for similar apps on other phones. But as of yesterday the fate of FriendBook is now in jeopardy due to the departure of its lead developer (and Tapulous cofounder) Mike Lee. So is all hope lost? - BackType, A Twitter For Comments (Wed, 27 Aug 2008 16:10:39 -0700)
BackType is the newest YCombinator startup to launch from their summer program. They're a blog-comment focused startup - founders Christoper Golda and Michael Montano are for the first time aggregating all comments from millions of blogs into a single, searchable, parsable stream. Think Twitter for all comments on the web. - FriendFeed Releases New Set Of Customizable Widgets (Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:06:54 -0700)
FriendFeed, the social activity aggregator, has released a set of customizable widgets that will allow bloggers to make sure their readers can follow all of their activities across the web. While the site has provided some widgets in the past, this set includes some new widgets to facilitate story sharing and allows for more tweaking than was offered before. Among the widgets offered are a new profile badge, a list of the most recent items in your feed, and a "Share on FriendFeed" chiclet that allows users to add an item to FriendFeed without leaving your site. You can grab the widgets here. - Mark Cuban Joins TechCrunch50 for a One-On-One Interview with Jason Calacanis (Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:52:37 -0700)
Mark Cuban will be joining the TechCrunch50 program on Tuesday, September 9 for a one-on-one interview with Jason Calacanis from the main stage. You probably know Mark as both the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and a serial entrepreneur who co-founded Broadcast.com with Todd Wagner. They then sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo in July of 1999 for $5.04 billion. Before Broadcast.com, Mark co-founded MicroSolutions, a leading National Systems Integrator, in 1983, and later sold it to CompuServe. - More Yahoo Senior Exec Defections: Steve Boom and Todd Teresi (Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:09:29 -0700)
The mass exodus of both execs and rank and file employees at Yahoo continues. In fact the real defections may just be getting started at a high percentage of employees vest on lucrative restricted stock units this month. Two new SVPs, Todd Teresi and Steve Boom, have now also resigned from Yahoo. - Google Expands Its Wiki Approach to Map Making (India Edition) (Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:48:39 -0700)
When it comes to the availability of good mapping data, not all parts of the world are created equal. That's why Google is taking a wiki approach to filling out the white spaces on its maps, particularly in developing nations. Back in June, it launched Map Maker for a small group of island nations where there isn't great existing cartography data. But now it's added India to the countries that can modified on Google Maps. As Google gains more experience with this experiment, more countries may be added in the future. Although it is starting in regions that have poor map data, hopefully it will figure out a way to add this capability for every region of the world. (Even in the U.S., Google Maps is not perfect). - Yep, We Redesigned (Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:45:43 -0700)
As many of our readers have noticed (and noted) already, we rolled out a new design for TechCrunch yesterday evening. And while we're still making lots of small changes, we wanted to take a second to write a proper post explaining our intentions and soliciting your feedback. - ESPN Helps The Active Network Raise $80 Million More (Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:22:57 -0700)
The Active Network, a network of sites focused on getting people involved in sports and other activities, has raised an additional $80 million in a Series F round led by ESPN and joined by Canaan Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, and Performance Equity Partners. - CrunchGear Featured Review: Palm Treo Pro (Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:45:49 -0700)
Today CrunchGear reviews the $549 Palm Treo Pro, a Windows Mobile Smartphone with the good looks of the Blackberry Bold and the goodness of unlocked G.S.M. with 3G and G.P.S. support. - Acquia Announces Beta Launch of Commercial Drupal Distribution (Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:00:03 -0700)
Today Acquia has announced the beta launch of a commercially supported distribution of Drupal. The release is essentially a hardened distribution of Drupal, complemented with technical support and network service offerings. Code named Carbon for now, the package includes a select set of community contributed modules alongside the Drupal core. - Cisco Beefs Up WebEx With $215 Million Acquisition of Email Startup PostPath (Wed, 27 Aug 2008 09:06:23 -0700)
Cisco is getting into the Web e-mail game with a $215 million purchase of five-year-old PostPath. PostWho? The company sells a Linux-based e-mail service to enterprises somewhat like Zimbra (which Yahoo bought for $350 million last year). PostPath is a fully functional in-browser Ajax client, and on the back-end it is trying to take on Microsoft Exchange. Cisco will likely add PostPath's functionality to its WebEx collaboration service (it bought WebEx for $3.2 billion last year). - Getting European Startups Together (Wed, 27 Aug 2008 08:15:30 -0700)
A big problem in Europe - and something I found out during my TechCrunch Euro Tour this Summer - is that startups have very few opportunities to meet and network. If a startup eco-system in Europe is ever really going to take off, startups need to get together more often. Berlin is centrally located for the rest of Europe (East and West) and has a thriving startups scene right now. Get where this is heading yet? - Diary.com - Scrapbooking For The Twitter Generation? (Wed, 27 Aug 2008 08:10:40 -0700)
Guess what the URL Diary.com has been doing since 1996? Not much. But now the owner, a guy in London, is looking to re-imagine the concept of the diary for the Twitter generation. Diary.com has a clean interface, a little like like Twitter, but instead of 140 charcters you plug in 1000. - Russia Is Rising In Internet Population (Wed, 27 Aug 2008 08:07:52 -0700)
For Web companies looking to expand abroad, Russia needs to be at the top of their list of markets to enter. Russia has the fastest growing Internet population in Europe, followed by France and Spain. In a comparison of 16 European Internet populations by country, comScore reports that Russia's Internet audience for the month of June grew 27 percent year over year, compared to 21 percent growth in France and 15 percent growth in Spain. (Is Russia part of Europe? It is for the purposes of this analysis). If you look at the total size of the Internet populations in each country, however, Russia ranks fifth with 17.5 million monthly Internet visitors. But by Internet penetration, Russia ranks last, with only 14 percent of the total population online. So there is still lots of room for growth there. - How Google Earth Helped Win A Gold Medal (Wed, 27 Aug 2008 06:38:10 -0700)
Google Earth is getting a nice plug from Olympic Gold Medal cyclist Kristin Armstrong. When she did her time trials in December, 2007 in China, she took along her husband's GPS unit to capture the elevation along the route. Then she used that data to find the best training route back home. In a guest post on the Google Lat-Long blog, she writes: After returning home to Boise, Idaho, I exported the GPS data to several different formats, one of which I was able to launch with Google Earth. I was then able to trace the entire course from the comfort of my home half a world away and find a similar route to train on back in Boise. This capability along with having the elevation profile proved invaluable in my preparation for my Gold Medal race. Google proves that once again, information is a competitive advantage.
