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Posts Tagged ‘calendar’

Back in November of last year, the location-based social event service Hot Potato launched at our Realtime CrunchUp. Today, they’ve taken what was a solid service, and made it a lot better with a number of upgrades.

First and foremost, there is a new iPhone application that just went live in the App Store. With a completely revamped user interface, the app makes it easier than ever to find and participate in events. Perhaps more importantly, it makes it really easy to create new events — and notably, the service has the nicest third-party Foursquare integration I’ve ever seen. When you click on the button to create an event, you can still manually enter a location, but if you happen to be around the venue, you can simply pick it from Foursquare’s list of venues with the click of a button. This drastically simplifies the event creation process since the venue metadata is already there.

This new app will be crucial for the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, which starts tomorrow. If you’ve been reading TechCrunch over the past week, you’ve undoubtedly seen that just about every location-based service has an app they’re unveiling. And another service based around planning events, Plancast, just launched their app this evening. But Hot Potato offers the best of both worlds as it allows you to both plan future events, and interact with ones currently taking place. The new app makes it very easy to chat about the event, and upload photos and videos.

And they’ve cleaned up the stream of information around these events. There is now a filter to show everyone commenting, or just your friends. There are also now number indicators to show unread items. And the check-in process has been simplified thanks to big green buttons that make it obvious.

Also new for SXSW is Twitter integration. On a case-by-case basis, Hot Potato will be pulling in tweets about certain events at SXSW, using a filter to make sure only relevant ones show up. You’ll be able to do things such as filter those tweets to show only those by people you actually follow, which will make them potentially much more meaningful to you. You can also reply to tweets thanks to integration of Twitter’s API. And you can share tweets from within the app that will show up as retweets on Twitter.

Another new features is Calendars — something which each Hot Potato user now has. Obviously, you can add the events you wish to be a part of to your calendar, but people you are friends with on the service can also add you to other events as well. The app also now features Push Notifications now (on top of revamped email notifications).

On top of the new app, Hot Potato has rolled out a completely revamped website with just about all of the same functionality of the new app (as well as the new look and feel). And at the highest level, Hot Potato finally has its own social graph, which can pull in friends from the usual suspects: Facebook, Twitter, your address book, etc.

And here’s something that should really help Hot Potato this week: each time someone checks-in to a SXSW event with Foursquare, that service will recommend they also join the event on Hot Potato. Clicking on the accompanying link provided in the Foursquare app with open the Hot Potato app and let them join the event with a click (if they have an account). As you might expect, you can also check-in to a venue on Foursquare within Hot Potato. With Foursquare likely to be one of the key apps used by conference goers, this cross promotion is simply huge.

On top of all of this, the service now has its own full API, so others can use and interact with their data.

Simply put, all these updates are full of win, and make a good app even better. And remarkably, they’ve managed to cram in all these new features while at the same time simplifying the overall experience.

Fine the new iPhone app here in the App Store. It’s a free download.

It’s getting tough to keep up with all of the location-related developments leading up to this year’s SXSW, and they just keep coming. Tonight, on the eve of the event, Plancast has just had its iPhone application approved. The service, which we’ve previously described as a ‘Foursquare for the future’, allows you to tell your friends where you’re planning to be as opposed to where you currently are (in other words, it lets you and your friends plan ahead). You can grab the new iPhone app here.

The application itself looks solid, and includes the core functionality you’ll find on the Plancast website. The main view allows you to scroll through a list of your friends’ upcoming events, and tapping on an event will show you where it is on a map and who else is going. At SXSW, where there are always many panels and parties going on, this can come in handy — sometimes it’s more practical to plan ahead than it is to walk across town when you notice a few of your friends are checking in somewhere.  One feature I’d like to see is a way to get push notifications when a bunch of friends are planning to attend the same event (e.g. “Hey, your friends are all going to Salt Lick in a few hours!”); hopefully we’ll get something like that in the next release. There’s also a mobile version of the site available for users on other mobile platforms.

Plancast was founded by TC alum Mark Hendrickson, and recently closed an $800,000 seed funding round that included a bevy of well known angels like SoftTech VC, Dave McClure, and Joshua Schachter.

For other SXSW-related location news, see Loopt’s new iPhone app, Gowalla’s new app, and Vicarious.ly, a new app from SimpleGeo that brings all of this location data together.

Tonight, Google is hosting one of their Campfire One events at their headquarters in Mountain View, CA. They’re using the event to launch their new Google Apps Marketplace. This is the app store that business applications can use to reach the more than 25 million people and 2 million business that use Google Apps for their domains.

Below, find our live notes.

Vic Gundotra, Vice President of Engineering

• Two million businesses have “gone Google”
• 25 million users.
• Everything you need is now in the cloud for businesses
• Tonight we’re launching the new Google Apps Marketplace
• It’s great for developers – who get access to these 25 million users instantly
• It’s also great for users.
• It’s simple to integrate.
• Build your app. And you don’t have to use App Engine. You can use whatever you want.
• And you can sell your app in the Marketplace.
• What does Google ask in return? A one-time fee of $100. And a low 20% rev share.
• Over 50 launch partners.

David Glazer, Engineering Director

• I want to walk you through the “how” now – build, integrate, and sell.
• Google Apps now has a large and growing number of extension points (we’ll be adding more over time)
• there is a central management system
• Universal integration to Google Apps navigation system.
• We use OpenID to manage authentication. Single sign-on.
• And we use OAuth for secure access to data. The OAuth grant of trust is built into the Marketplace.

• We have a complete manifest.
• Time for a demo. Here’s a developer showing off a “hello world” application.
• Easy step-by-step process to get your application in the Marketplace.

• It might take a couple of days for the app to show up in the Marketplace when you submit it.
• A domain admin simply then clicks the “Add it now” button.
• Then just three clicks left – 1) agree to terms of service 2) grant data access (such as to your calendar) 3) enable the app
• You can even see it in the apps drop down if you’re in, say, Gmail.

• Here’s Intuit now showing how to take a real app – for payroll – to show how easy it is to itegrate.
• Intuit is the largest payroll provider in the nation.
• We usually serve small companies, many are less than 20 employees.
• Another demo, this time from Atlassian – a software development company
• You can easily embed your information inside of Gmail.

• The thing I’m most excited about is the studio activity bar.
• With this, Google Talk can be used for instant collaboration.
• All of this is available today. In fact it’s being used by 40 developers in a bus traveling from SF to SXSW in Austin, TX.

• Another demo, Manymoon – a social productivity app.
• We used open standards to convert free users to paid users.
• Everything you’ve seen so far will be live later tonight – for this next demo, it will be coming soon.
• Gmail contextual gadgets – like when a YouTube video is embedded in Gmails – soon third-parties will be able to use this.

• Here’s a demo from Appirio.

Earlier this week, we reported on a number of new security enhancements that we expect Gmail to launch in the next few days, including oAuth support. It looks like we were right: a small startup called Etacts, which launched last month, has just implemented oAuth for Gmail IMAP accounts, allowing Etacts to securely tap into your email without the security risks associated with handing over your Gmail password. This appears to be the first public implementation of Gmail IMAP oAuth support. For email services, this is a big deal.  We expect Google to announce support for the new feature more broadly this week.

So why does this matter? Etacts is a powerful tool for making sure you keep in touch with the friends, family, and business associates that are important to you. But at launch, it came with one significant flaw: it required users to hand over their Gmail account passwords (without them, the service wouldn’t be able to automatically pull in your new email). Even though Etacts seems trustworthy, handing over a password carries risks — if the service was ever hacked, there’s a small chance your password could have been compromised. With oAuth, this isn’t an issue.

Now instead of entering your password, Etacts redirects you to a special Google site, where you can elect to grant Etacts access to your account information (you can revoke this permission at any time).  Etacts still stores your email header information, which contains the subject, timestamp, and recipients of each message, but most people probably won’t have an issue with that.

Now, oAuth isn’t a magic bullet for security — if you give a malevolent service access to your Gmail account, they can sift through your email. What they won’t be able to do, though, is access any of your other Google services (Calendar, Google Checkout, etc). And they won’t have your password stored anywhere, so in the event that their servers get hacked, you won’t have to worry about your password being compromised.

It’s worth pointing out that Google offers oAuth access to some of its other services, like Calendar and Contacts, but this is the first time they’ve offered it for email. Gmail also appears to be the first major email provider to offer oAuth access.

It’s the PS2 ’s 10th birthday today in Japan (where’s it’s already Friday). It was originally released on March 5, 2000

More here: 
The PS2 is 10 years old today

This has not been the greatest start to the year for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. Days after news of the latest security flaw in Internet Explorer, Google is adding fuel to the fire by phasing out support for IE6 for two of its Google Apps products, Docs and Sites (which recently got an aesthetic upgrade).

For both the consumer and enterprise versions of Google Docs and Sites, the only browsers that will be fully compatible are Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0+, Mozilla Firefox 3.0+, Google Chrome 4.0+ and Safari 3.0+. The phase out will take place beginning March 1. While you’ll still be able to access Docs and Sites from IE6, you will have restricted functionality and many features won’t work, making the applications for the most part useless. We hear that Google will be phasing out IE6 support for the remainder of Google’s major products, including Gmail and Calendar, over the coming year. This isn’t Google’s first move to phases out IE6 functionality for its products. Last July, the search giant began phasing out YouTube support for the Microsoft browser. For users of IE6, the online video site began pointing to ‘modern’ browsers like Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.5 as alternatives. A similar prompt will now take place on Docs and Sites for users who are browsing from IE6.

For the most part, the tech community, including web developers and designers, tend to have a profound dislike of Internet Explorer 6. Obviously, the browse has many issues, including low performance and major security flaws. Even Microsoft itself, is recommending that all its customers upgrade to Internet Explorer 8, the latest version of the browser which has better security in place. The main reason why IE6 is still being used at all is because of corporate IT departments across the globe needing to make upgrade decisions. Unfortunately, a number of these companies still have to use the browser because they have systems in place built specifically to run with it. To add insult to injury, IE6 continues to lose market share in the browser world.

And Google isn’t the only technology company that is looking to close off support for IE6. Digg has hinted at wanting to cut support for the browser too. I have a feeling that as Google joins the web in gathering pitchforks around IE6, more companies will flock to join the movement.

Here’s something that we don’t see very often; a chance at winning a $5000 photographer grant for people working on important humanitarian and environmental projects. This could be a great opportunity for the right person, and can definitely help draw attention to a project. Here’s the specifics from the Photocrati Fund’s website: What is the Photocrati Fund?

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Here’s your chance to get a $5000 photographer grant

We might be seeing the start of a new form of motorsport. Electric motorcycles have really been at the cutting edge of development recently , and it’s going to be really interesting to see exactly what happens. In fact, the governing body of the MotoGP series is in the process of organizing some races

View original here: 
Electric motorcycle racing – now that’s where it’s at

Google Calendar is testing out a new feature that should make scheduling events a tad easier than it used to be by allowing you to see at a glance if the event you’re creating will conflict with the schedules of the people you’re inviting. Dubbed “Sneak Preview”, the feature’s name is perhaps more exciting than its actual function, but it should prove to be quite useful. The feature is apparently in a limited rollout right now, so don’t be surprised if you don’t have access to it.

Once you’ve activated Sneak Preview (assuming you have access to it), whenever you create a new event you’ll see a new viewing mode that displays a calendar alongside your event details. This calendar will show the schedules of each of the people you’ve invited to the event (provided you’re a friend or coworker with access to that information), and the proposed time for your event will appear as a semi-transparent blue box so you can quickly see where you might have conflicts. You can click each guest’s name to show/hide them on the calendar if some are more important than others.

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I’m in India this weekend with fellow TechCrunch/BusinessWeek writer Sarah Lacy. After we’re done with the elephant rides in Jaipur, we’re going to be meeting local tech startups. Then we head back to New Delhi to meet more aspiring entrepreneurs. Sarah is writing a book on how startup culture has gone global and I’m researching how R&D has globalized. It never ceases to amaze me how you can find brilliant entrepreneurs everywhere—whether in the middle of the Thar Desert in Rajasthan or Santiago Chile (where local entrepreneurs showed me life-sized holographic images projected through some hardware connected to their laptops, and software which can help monitor the operational efficiencies of department stores in California). The promise of these early ventures is always amazing and their enthusiasm infectious. Which brings me to Global Entrepreneurship Week. And Snoop Dogg.

You are probably asking yourself, what the heck does the controversial and highly successful rapper have to do with entrepreneurship? Snoop has graciously agreed to serve on a Nov. 16 mentoring panel that features high-powered entrepreneurs handing out sage advice on how they launched and grew their businesses and brands. No doubt, Snoop has built one of the most durable brands in the notoriously volatile world of hip-hop. In fact, I’d wager that Snoop could give some solid lessons to some of the top decision makers and brand masters on a global basis. The panel is but one of a huge slate of events arranged by the Kauffman Foundation (full disclosure — they have underwritten some of my research) for Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Those events span the globe, running in 85 countries and hundreds of venues all with a singular goal—to spur innovative thinkers to do innovative things. The emphasis of many of the events, not surprisingly, is technology. The events are designed to teach, inspire, and foster collaboration among entrepreneurs (many of whom may not even know they are entrepreneurs yet). Aside from getting some sage advice from the original Snoop, the week is also chock full of opportunities for entrepreneurs of every type. Got a great idea to join the clean tech revolution? During Global Entrepreneurship Week in San Francisco, the Clean Tech Open Ideas Competition finals will be held. In this competition, thousands of people submitted early-stage clean technology ideas and it helps turn them into successful companies. Ideas can cover anything that fosters a healthy natural environment, from big-think solar breakthroughs to power-management software for buildings or hotels. Just like the TechCrunch50, this bakeoff will let people with big ideas present in front of a high-powered panel of experts and vie for startup-funding and other assistance.

While a lot of the events are in the U.S., the spread beyond our shores is notable and accelerating. Take “Speednetwork the Globe”. This is a series of networking events where entrepreneurs of all backgrounds can meet with potential collaborators, mentors and investors in five-minute increments. More than 500 speednetworking events in 31 countries happened in 2008, connecting approximately 25,000 people. Likely even more will be scheduled this year and this is a model for how to get geeks and suits—the two key components of a tech startup—together and brainstorming.

A quick look through the list showed me that pretty much anywhere I go I can find some event worth hitting. On November 18 in Chile (which I wrote about previously as being a rising comer in the tech world) the government-backed Foro Innovacion (Innovation Forum) will hold an all day business plan ideathon competition, focused on technology industries. In Tokyo, on November 14 the Honda Foundation is sponsoring a seminar addressing the needs and challenges of social entrepreneurs in Asia.

That last event I put in for a reason. Enterpreneurship, I strongly believe, is not just about making money. In much of the world, entrepreneurship is about giving people control over their own fate, lifting them out of poverty, and improving the world. Even here, in the U.S., entrepreneurship is an incredible social resource. All meaningful job growth over the past few decades has come from start-ups and entrepreneurial businesses that are small in size but powerful in impact. The latest economic crisis and wave after wave of resulting layoffs has clearly illustrated there is no safety in working for a big company, or having the right kind of degree, or even being a productive employee.

This is the core of entrepreneurship, the ability to lift yourself up by your own bootstraps, no matter the circumstances, and create a business and a way to support yourself, your family and your community. Most of you reading this either are entrepreneurs or have entrepreneurial aspirations. I’m saying, that’s great. You are what has made this country an amazing place, and these types of motivations are what has lifted tens of millions of people out of poverty around the world. So pay attention to Global Entrepreneurship week, mark it on your calendar, and attend an event if you can. Next time around, organize an event in your area. And never forget why you are doing what you do.

Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa.

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