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Posts Tagged ‘events’

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.

With SXSW starting Friday in Austin, Texas, every location-based service out there is right now finalizing updates that they hope will be the one that gets them used more than all the others. Loopt, is betting on events integration.

The latest version of the app, due to hit the App Store tomorrow will feature a new Pulse tab. Here you’ll find events populated from a ton of sources including the live music tracker SonicLiving (SXSW is first and foremost a music event, after all) and most notably, Facebook. This pre-population is important, because it means the events will already be in the system so users won’t have to do anything other than share it with friends, or check-in if they’re going. The feature also uses you current location to show which events are happening around you at any given moment that a lot of people are at.

As you might expect, you also also tell who is already at the event, and which of your friend is supposed to be going. The later feature works with Facebook Connect. You can RSVP to an event right from within Loopt and see who else is scheduled to go.

Calling it the “best event ever from an app,” Loopt founder Sam Altman believes they’ll have every single event taking place at SXSW in their system. A newer startup, the recently funded Plancast (started by TechCrunch alum Mark Hendrickson), may have something to say about that statement as they’ll be debuting their own events-based iPhone app at the festival as well. And like this new Loopt feature, a key Plancast component is Facebook event integration.

Loopt was one of the original hot players in the location space, launching an iPhone app alongside the App Store launch in 2008. However, their initial bet was on always-on location updates, which the iPhone cannot do because it will not allow third-party apps to run in the background. Loopt found a loophole (see what I did there?) to that through AT&T, but by then the momentum has already swung to the check-in based location services like Foursquare and Gowalla. Last year, Loopt pivoted its app to be more predicated around check-ins.

Look for the latest Loopt app tomorrow in the App Store.

Disclosure: Loopt offers a TechCrunch branded version of the service here.

This year’s Winter Olympic games have come to a close, and while we may have hated the way its broadcast was handled by NBC, that didn’t stop Americans (or people around the world) from turning to their computers to check out the latest news. Google has just posted some search trends it saw during the games, offering some insight into which events captivated each country the most. Google writes that percentage-wise, Canadians searched for Olympics-related queries twice as much as everyone else (no surprise there). The United States came in second. And, rounding out the top three was the Netherlands, even though they had fewer medals that many of the other countries at the Games.

Perhaps more interesting are the events that grabbed the most attention in each country. In the United States, by far the most searches were driven by the tragic death of luger Nodar Kumaritashvili. Other popular events in the States included the men’s hockey finals and the men’s free skate. Korea’s graph, on the other hand, is absolutely dominated by women’s figure skating, driven by the success of national sensation Kim Yu-Na.  You can find graphs from more countries in the Google blog post.

Behavior-based marketing solutions provider Catalina Marketing has scored a big win. The company, which specializes in precision marketing and shopper-driven media, has tapped former Google exec Chris Henger to run its Digital Services business unit.

Henger joins Catalina Marketing from Google’s Affiliate Network business, originally part of the Google acquisition of DoubleClick in 2008 and launched in August of that year.

Henger served as a member of the executive team at Performics, an interactive marketing firm specialized in search and affiliate marketing, which was acquired by DoubleClick in 2004, for six years. After the acquisition, Henger played a key role in integrating DoubleClick Performics with Google’s Affiliate Network launch.

Prior to joining Performics, Henger was Senior Vice President/General Manager at publicly held Emusic.com, (acquired by Vivendi Universal).

Previously, he was responsible for all aspects of RollingStone.com including managing sales, technology, marketing and operations for the standalone division.

Henger spots a lot of similarities between Catalina Marketing and his previous employer:

“Catalina Marketing essentially does for its retail and CPG partners and brand clients what Google does for its advertisers – delivering relevant, highly-valued communications to large, but precise audiences; plus, Catalina Marketing gives brand advertisers access to the most important measure of engagement – incremental units sold.”

Henger will manage the company’s in-store network, said to be comprised of 90 million households and 300 million weekly shopper transactions.

(Thanks to Affiliate Summit / Flickr for letting us use the picture of Henger)

Toyota has been dealing with negative backlash from the massive safety recalls of its vehicles; and is even suffering in terms of sales. So what does the company do to repair its image? Turn to Twitter, of course! The Japanese auto giant has launched a branded channel on TweetMeme, in partnership with Federated Media, which aggregates and organize Twitter conversations regarding Toyota.

Called Toyota Conversations, the site brings together the top stories being Tweeted about Toyota, from news articles to press releases. The site also shows visitors the most popular videos and images being shared about Toyota on Twitter. And the channel includes a Featured Tweets from Toyota’s Twitter account and press room as well as AdTweets, which are Tweetmeme’s retweetable ads for Toyota.

You may notice after taking a look at all of the top stories that are being aggregated on the site, that most of the news is positive. That doesn’t seem to match the general tone of the media writing about Toyota, which has been quick to criticize the car company for its manufacturing mistakes. If you take a look at Twitter sentiment app Tweetfeel, the sentiment of Tweets mentioning Toyota lean more negative. Tweetmeme channels can be set up to pick up only certain news sources. It looks like Toyota picked the friendlier ones.

That being said, it’s definitely interesting to see such a high-profile company taking to Twitter to try to reform its image by engaging directly in a dialogue with consumers. As we’ve seen with the recent Southwest/Kevin Smith incident, Twitter is influencing public relations in unprecedented ways. Now more than ever, brands are flocking to Twitter to not only monitor and track what’s being said about their company on Twitter but to influence and participate in the conversation.

Photo Credit/Flickr/JoelZimmer

TechCrunch Europe is plotting the next series of events we’re planning this year.

But we’re going to need your help.

We’re looking for speakers and startups to appear at our events, and we’re especially interested in new startups planning to launch (read on about why).

Meanwhile we’ve set up ticketing sites for you now so you can actually go and get early bird ticket prices right now. See below for details.

So far this year we’ve partnered with or created events in Istanbul and Barcelona for tech startups. The next series of events require YOU to get as involved as you can.

These take us to the Summer, after which we’ll be hitting other cities.

In all cases, here’s what we want:

The 2010 Winter Olympics kick off in Vancouver tonight, and for those of you who can’t be tied to your TV every night to watch the opening and closing ceremonies and competitions, here’s a compilation of sites where you can not only watch video highlights of the events but also see pictures, scores, medal counts and news from the Olympics:

1. NBC Olympics: NBC, which is covering the Olympics on TV, has also set up a site where you can catch the latest scores, news and select video coverage of the competitions (powered by Microsoft Silverlight). You can also see profiles of athletes and streams of Tweets from athletes on the U.S. Olympic teams. Unfortunately, it appears that NBC is severely limiting the streaming of competitions and the ceremonies to the general public, so video will most probably be comprised of short highlights. But if you are a cable subscriber, you will be able to access 400 hours of live streaming of the events, but will need to prove that you subscribe to premium-cable service to access full and live videos.

2. Vancouver 2010: Sponsored by the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the games, this site offers schedule of events, up-to-date results and maps of the various event sites in Vancouver.

3. Facebook: On Facebook, there is a dedicated page for the Vancouver Games from the Organizing Committee as well as a page from the International Olympics Committee, which will collects Facebook updates from athletes and post up-to-date photos from the various events.

4. Twitter: For real-time updates from the athletes, Twitter has complied a list of verified Olympic athletes. A site called Twitter-Athletes also provides the handles of many of the Olympians at the winter games.

5. Flickr: Flickr has teamed up the International Olympic Committee to create an official photo group on the photo sharing site. The IOC will also use the Flickr group to publish its official event photos, as well as upload images to its own Flickr photo stream.

6. Yahoo Sports: Yahoo Sports has launched a Winter Olympics site that will offer news coverage, photos, videos, medal counts and statistics. This week, Yahoo announced that it has also optimized its search engine for Winter Olympics news and stats.

7. Yahoo Mobile: Yahoo has also rolled out a mobile web site to allow users to news, event schedules, stats and pictures on the go.

8. Google: Google has optimized its mobile search to provide better results for Olympics searches. On Google’s mobile search interface, you can search for the name of your favorite sport, and the engine will give you the latest info about game results, schedules, medal count and more. On Android and iPhone devices, the search engine’s realtime search feature will show you the latest updates related to the games within the same search results.

9. iPhone Apps: Apple has recommended several iPhone apps to help you keep up with news, schedules and more, including NBC’s official Olympics App, Canadian TV channel CTV’s Olympics App, push notifications-enabled Vancouver Games, and Olympic Games news aggregatror Winter Games Grub.

Photo credit/Flickr/s.yume

Buying an old NES off eBay is a great idea. I did it in college and got two zappers, two power gloves, like twenty games, and a bunch of other stuff for just under $50. But this particular auction fetched the mind-blowing bid of $13,105.

Continued here: 
Can you spot the reason someone just paid $13000 for an NES and five games?

Earlier today, the French site Nowhereelse.fr posted a video of what looks to be a commercial for Apple’s new tablet device, expected to be unveiled on Wednesday during an Apple event in San Francisco. The video led VentureBeat to wonder if it wasn’t the first real commercial for the device. Unfortunately, I’m not sure VentureBeat even ran a translation of the French post about it, because if they did, they’d see that it reads “In the meantime, here’s what an advertisement might look like…” (emphasis mine). In other words, no way is this real.

And really, that should be easy to tell just by watching the video. Does it have somewhat of an Apple look and feel to it? Kind of, but several things don’t feel right. First of all, it’s predicated around the design of the invites that went out for Apple’s event this week, decorated with paint splashes. The likelihood that Apple would use that same concept in a new ad for the device is slim. Technologizer did a good overview of the history of Apple event invites last week, and as you can see, most have nothing to do with product marketing efforts. Sure, a few use the silhouetted people design that are used in iPod commercials, but those were popular before the events. Still, it’s not impossible that Apple would use this design for a tablet commercial, but several other things are still off.

The biggest problem is the image shown on the display of the device. Clearly, it’s running a full version of OS X, just as Macs run — but that’s not expected to be the case. In fact, given the rumored processor in the device, it’s unlikely that it could even run a full version of OS X (complete with GarageBand, iPhoto, iTunes and other processor-intensive apps) up to Apple’s standards. Instead, the device is expected to use a new version of the iPhone OS (which is Mac OS-based). And if you look at the image, you’ll see that the dock icons are being magnified as if a mouse is moving over them. That concept likely wouldn’t work at all on a touchscreen tablet because how and why would you run your finger over this area without clicking on any of the icons? And let’s not even get into why an (awful-looking) on-screen keyboard would appear as you were hovering over a dock item.

Also problematic: the whole “After 10 years in development…” thing. Is Apple likely to admit just how long it has been working on the tablet? If they do, it will be on stage on Wednesday, not in a commercial. Plus the whole 10 year number is hard to lock down, depending on which reports you believe.

Then there is the design of the device in the video. While its overall look does correspond with reports that it will look similar to a first generation iPhone, the likelihood that it will have all those ports on the back seems pretty small. I mean, that would be okay if the device were always docked, but that’s not the point of it, you’re supposed to be able to hold it. And while it could very well have USB ports, would it really have Firewire and ethernet cable ports? And why wouldn’t it use Apple’s newer Mini Display Port? And why is there a black stripe across the back?

There are a half dozen other little things that are off too: the typography seems a bit off, the “iPad” name is far from certain, it’s an odd song choice, etc. Oh, and then there’s the fact that on the front of the device, the left hand side of the screen has a black border, while there is no border on the right. Even if this was just a picture of a prototype Apple was using for a teaser commercial, do you think Apple would overlook something like that? No way.

So is this the Apple Tablet? No way.

If you go to the Silverlight version of Bing Maps, at the bottom is an application gallery which adds different features and layers to the maps. Two new Silverlight apps added today are for Events and Destination Maps.

The Events app brings up nearby events and places them as pins on the map. The name of the events appear in the left-hand column, where you can scroll through them and sort by popularity or date. You can also filter by specific times (today, tomorrow, this weekend, this week, next week, or a specific date range). The app also lets you narrow the search down by categories such as music, sports, performing arts, food & dining, and fairs & festivals.

The Destination Maps app creates a stylized map that is good for party invites or directions. The recipient gets a simplified map showing just the route from where they are coming from to where they are going, and the maps can be skinned with different background themes including a a European road map or a pirate treasure map (below).