The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘launch’

We’re happy to announce the rollout of a mobile version of TechCrunch. We know how spotty wireless coverage can be, and how frustrating it can get to wait for a ton of extras to load while you’re staring at 2.5″ screen and can’t see them anyway. To that end, this version is stripped down to the bare essentials to ensure quick load times and ease of use. It’s based on the WPTouch theme by BraveNewCode.

It’s not an app – it works with any touch-enabled browser. You can, of course, add it to your home screen for easy access to the latest in technology news. Thank you to Bing, our launch partner for the mobile version.

To see the new mobile version, just go to techcrunch.com on any touch-screen mobile device. We’ll be adding full support for non-touchscreen models soon.

We’ll be improving on the design in the coming weeks, so tell us your thoughts in the comments.

Fwix, a startup that offers a stream of local news that’s updated in real-time, has landed a deal with The New York Times Company to use Fwix’s hyper-local news wire across The New York Times Company’s Regional Media Group’s 15 newspapers, as well as other business units such as Boston.com and NYTimes.com.

Fwix, which launched its realtime API a few weeks ago, aggregates news articles and blog posts that are relevant to a certain region (the site now features support for over 80 cities in the United States and Canada). To do this, the Fwix team selects news sources and blogs that it thinks are related to each city, and also uses automated algorithms to determine when other content might also be relevant. Fwix has also recently tweaked its algorithm and offerings to include “nearby” local content features. So content on Fwix displays relationships between both topics and nearby location. For example, after reading a story about a robbery that took place in the Mission district of San Francisco, you’ll be able to find any other crime and or stories about the Mission neighborhood.

While its still unknown how Fwix will be implemented across all of the New York Times’ properties, the startup’s local news content is already being used in the publishing company’s Northern California newspaper, the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat. In the “YourTown” section, the Fwix feed is set to a current location and feeds realtime news about the San Francisco Bay area. However in some instances, the Fwix news feed might show the reader his or her own local news by autodetect location via an IP address (say, at a global-reaching site like www.nytimes.com).

There is a revenue agreement with The New York Times Company, says Fwix founder and CEO Darian Shirazi, but he declined to reveal the exact amount involved in the deal. And the deal is not exclusive, so Fwix can be incorporated on other news sites as well. Fwix’s local news stream has also been integrated on integrated on WeatherUnderground.com and UPI.com. And the startup also launched the Fwix News Publisher app on Facebook, which lets any Facebook Page add local news of any variety of subjects (business, sports, politics, living, entertainment, etc.) to their page’s feed. The deal with the New York Times is a huge coup for a startup that launched less than two years ago.

Can you blame ‘em? If you bought into a two-year contract a little more than two years ago, possibly because of shortcomings in the first iPhone (a perfectly reasonable decision), you would have been watching with jealous eye the introduction of the 3G, the 3GS, and the launch and growth of the App Store

Here is the original: 
40% of BlackBerry users: “Yeah, I’d trade in for an iPhone”

Hot off the news that the iPad will ship more-or-less on time on April 3, Apple stock has shot up to a new all-time high of 219.70, besting a previous high of 215.59, which it hit on January 5, 2010.

Apple had originally said that the iPad was going to be shipping in “late March”, so it’s missing its target by a few days, but after multiple rumors of substantial delays, investors are probably breathing a sigh of relief. Still, while the launch date has been set, there’s still a chance that production issues could make it hard to actually find a device.

Apple’s market cap is also reaching very close to $200B, currently standing at $199.17B.  That’s above above Google’s market cap $179.73B — the two companies, which are increasingly at odds with each other, have swapped places multiple times over the last few years).

Fiverr is a marketplace for gigs that are priced at $5. Essentially, you can sell and buy tasks for $5. So anyone can create a gig for small service on the site, and visitors can accept gigs as well. Gig prices are fixed at $5. Buyers can order gigs and are required to pay for the gig in advance. Fiverr takes $1 off of the $5 fee.

Gigs range from installing WordPress on a server to reading Tarot cards to writing a romantic sonnet. Tasks are divided into categories, including Funny and Bizarre, Social Marketing, Graphics, Writing,Technology, Business, Silly Stuff and Programming.

The idea is kind of brilliant and also entertaining. While you don’t necessarily have assurance that your task will be completed to your standards, you are only shelling out $5 for the task, so it’s not a total loss if the gig falls through or isn’t done well. Fiverr will also post buyer feedback on people who perform tasks. Task performers will be given a positive feedback score, which can be seen by users who are considering hiring them for gigs.

Image recognition technology startup Kooaba yesterday released an API that definitely deserves some developer attention.

The Swiss company aims to unlock its library of over 10 million images, ranging from album covers to books and movie posters, and provide access to all that precious data via the cloud.

Kooaba hopes that the launch of the API will trigger third-party developers to develop more mobile applications – iPhone and Android versions exist already – or tools that tap into social networking services like Facebook and Twitter, etcetera.

Here’s a video of Kooaba for iPhone in case you’re familiar with the company and its offering:

At long last, webOS has been granted a Facebook application worth its weight in kilobytes. A completely revamped version of the Facebook application has just gone live in the Palm App Catalog – and boy, is it an improvement.

Palm has offered some level of Facebook support on webOS since the launch of the Pixi – but as we noted in our Pixi review, calling what it had “Facebook support” was probably exaggerating. You could sync your Facebook contacts, read your news feed, and.. well, that’s it.

The new app, however…

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

That bastion of fine games reporting, Bloomberg News , has a story on a new cart called “Classic Books” that will contain the greatest, public domain, royalty-free hits from Mark Twain and William Shakespeare. How much do you have to pay for this walk down Gutenberg Project Lane

Go here to read the rest:
Nintendo keeps it public domain with their new ebook cartridge

We may give AT&T a bit of grief for the fact that their network essentially curled up into a ball and cried for two years after the launch of the first iPhone, but they’ve been dumping a ton of change into improving things over the last 8 months — and it looks like its helped.

See original here:
Surprise! AT&T might just have the best 3G network in the US

On the heels of the launch of the much-hyped iPad, investors and developers alike are beginning to cater to the iPad ecosystem. CNET and E! Online co-founder Kevin Wendle has teamed with MusicNation co-founder Daniel Klaus to form AppFund, a company designed to help entrepreneurs create and launch iPad and other Tablet based applications.

Similar to startup incubators like Y Combinator, AppFund will provide funding and expert mentoring to help developers build the very applications that will support the long-term success of the iPad. Based in New York City, AppFund will invest anywhere from $5000 to $500,000 in startups developing applications for the iPad or other tablet devices. The amount funded will depend on the complexity of each app.

The firm is encouraging developers to submit proposals immediately to be part of the launch of the first iPad applications by summer 2010. According to the fun’s site, AppFund has allocated several million dollars and may increase the size of the fund with additional capital or partners at a later time as needed. It’s not surprising that funds and incubators are popping up to foster and invest in promising development for the iPad and other tablet apps. AppFund is similar in some ways to Kleiner Perkins’ iFund, a $100 million fund for investing in startups building off of the iPhone and iPod touch platform, except that it is a much smaller fund.