The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘popularity’

Cooking and recipe community Allrecipes is launching a new iPhone app for pro users today, called Dinner Spinner Pro. The app, which costs $2.99 in the App Store, allows users to access the complete Allrecipes.com recipe library, add recipes directly to personal Recipes Boxes, create interactive shopping lists, and more.

Allrecipes launched a free iPhone app last year which has seen 2.8 million downloads. Based on the popularity of this app and requests by users to be able to save recipes, Allrecipes decided to launch a paid version with additional features. Cooks on the go can locate recipes, save recipes to personal Recipe Boxes, rate recipes, share recipes and upload mobile images to Allrecipes. The app also includes a shopping list feature which aggregates ingredients across recipes and allows users to virtually check off items while shopping.

Interestingly, the iPad may breathe new life into cooking and recipe apps. While reading recipes on the iPhone and other mobile devices while cooking can be tough; the iPad’s large screen almost simulates a digital cook book. And we all know that the iPad will be used as an e-book, allowing users to download and access cookbooks directly from their device.

AllRecipes’ president, Lisa Sharples, agrees that the iPad will be a “killer” device in the kitchen. Accroding to survey’s conducted by AllRecipes, one out of five people bring their laptops into the kitchen to access recipes. But the kitchen is a dangerous place for a laptops, with significant threats of spills onto keyboards. But the iPad could come with protective screens and stands, making it safe to use in the chaos of the kitchen.

Sharpcast’s SugarSync,, an application that synchronizes data across desktop computers, laptops, mobile phones, and even televisions, is making it easier for users to backup their data via email. The startup is launching an “Upload by Email” feature that lets users store email attachments in their SugarSync account with the ease of sending an email.

The new feature allows a SugarSync user to sync any email attachment to a dedicated folder in their SugarSync account by simply forwarding it to a special email address. Instantly, the file(s) is available on all synced devices and accounts. For example, if a user receives an email with many attachments, they can simply forward it to their SugarSync email address (comprised of random numbers and letters for spam protection). All attachments will transfer to their SugarSync account.For added security, SugarSync will scan all file attachments for viruses prior to syncing, and certain file types are not accepted (e.g., .exe, .cmd, .bat) to prevent malicious files from landing in an account.

At the moment, SugarSync is supporting 2 petabytes of data from users. SugarSync’s CEO Laura Yecies says that because of the popularity of the product, the company is adding a new power-user storage account that has 500 GB of storage, priced at $39.99 per month. Previously, the highest level of storage available was 250 GB.

SugarSync recently launched a small business friendly offering, which Yecies says is gaining considerable traction. You can read our past reviews of SugarSync here and here. The startup has ramped up its mobile offerings, with supports for Android, iPhone, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile powered phones.

SugarSync faces competition from Windows Live Mesh from Microsoft, Dropbox, Box.net, ZumoDrive and Mozy.

We’ve gotten word of another departure from MySpace in the wake of CEO Owen Van Natta’s firing two weeks ago. The latest to leave is Chris Bissell, MySpace’s Chief Software Architect, who has been with the company for over four years. Bissell was one of the few remaining members of MySpace’s old guard, which has gradually left (or been fired) from the company since the executive shakeup last spring that removed long-time CEO Chris DeWolfe.

Bissell was charged with maintaining MySpace’s backend architecture and ensuring that the site scaled to meet demand. MySpace has confirmed that he is leaving the company.  The news comes on the heels of the departure of SVP of User Experience and Design Kate Geminder and stream architect Monica Keller, who both left within a week of Van Natta’s firing.

These departures aren’t really surprising given yet another executive shakeup at the company (though Bissell didn’t have any clear ties to Van Natta), but MySpace has some serious rebuilding to do. We’re hearing that the company has shelved a total redesign Geminder and her team were working on in favor of a Hail Mary strategy to become a discovery recommendation engine.

Social music player TuneWiki is on a funding roll. The startup just raised $7 million in Series B funding from Motorola Ventures, Intellect Capital Ventures, HillsVen Capital, Novel TMT and Benchmark Israel. Today, TuneWiki is announcing that NOCOMO Capital, the venture arm of Japanese mobile giant NTT DOCOMO, has made an undisclosed investment in the company.

TuneWiki says it will use the investment for to build new products and expand its current mobile and web platforms.: TuneWiki is an app that brings music streaming, a lyrics database and music videos from YouTube to one social, customizable media player both on the web and to mobile devices. In the coming year, TuneWiki plans to launch a mobile game and significant feature upgrades to the TuneWiki social media player.

Of course, the NTT DOCOMO investment will also mean further expansion into the Japanese mobile markets.Rani Cohen, TuneWiki’s CEO, says that because of of the popularity of Karaoke applications in Japan, TuneWiki’s lyrics to music could gain traction in the country. TuneWiki boasts apps for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Nokia handsets.

TuneWiki is also appointing a new COO, Lawrence Goldberg, who was the former COO of Activision. Another Activision alum Michael Steiner, who worked on GuitarHero at the gaming company, is joining TuneWiki as director of marketing.

Considering just how similar the new HTC Desire is to the not-quite-as-new Google Nexus One (read: very, very similar), I wasn’t expecting to walk away from my hands on session with my mind too blown. I mean, it’s essentially just a Nexus One with HTC’s Sense UI and an optical trackpad, right?

Right - and that’s exactly why it’s amazing.

The short gloves are off. Earlier today, both Google and Facebook got into the URL shortening game with goo.gl and fb.me. Google’s move in particular is a direct challenge to bit.ly, the rising independent standard among link shortening services. Bit.ly’s response is in effect to ask publishers and consumers who they trust with all their data: Google or the rest of the Web?

To that effect, it is rolling out a new service called bit.ly Pro, which allows Web publishers to bit.ly to send out short links with their own branded (short) domain names such as nyti.ms, 4sq.com, mee.bo, or tcrn.ch. Publishers in the beta include AOL, Bing, foursquare, Hot Potato, the Huffington Post, Meebo, MSN, the New York Times, the Onion, TechCrunch, and the Wall Street Journal. What bit.ly is offering these publishers (us included) is a way to use a branded, trusted short URL which is powered by bit.ly. Publishers also get an analytics dashboard which shows realtime stats like the total number of clicks, and their distribution by geography and referring sites. Pro accounts is where all the money is, although bit.ly is not yet charging.

We’ve used our branded short domain tcrn.ch before with awe.sm for our story links we push out to Twitter, but switched to bit.ly because it was fast becoming the standard. In November, the bit.ly service shortened 2.1 billion links, up from 11.8 million the year before, and it currently accounts for about three quarters of all short links on Twitter.

As realtime streams increasingly become the communications bus of the Internet, the need for short links and their popularity will increase. The data surrounding those links—who passed them, which are the most popular, which are rising, which are falling—is potentially very valuable. To the extent that publishers and consumers don’t mind all of their data flowing through Google, they might just go with goo.gl and not worry about it. Bit.ly is betting they would rather control their own short links.

The appeal for publishers to use their own branded short URLs is that it acts like a verified link. Consumers who are familiar with the brand can learn to trust those links. In contrast, anything can be behind the generic short URLs, although bit.ly is taking steps to fight spam and malware abuse. Facebook with fb.me appears to be doing no more than just creating its own trusted short link for Facebook pages. Google, on the other hand, could easily expand goo.gl into a generic URL shortening service. Goo.gl launched only for Feedburner and Google Toolbar, but it is being used to shorten links from any and all domains.

Google was rumored to be sniffing around bit.ly earlier this year, but no acquisition ever materialized. Maybe it was just doing its homework.

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

It’s no secret that most people use the same password over and over again for most of the services they sign up for. While it’s obviously convenient, this becomes a major problem if one of those services is compromised. And that looks to be the case with RockYou, the social network app maker.

Over the weekend, the security firm Imperva issued a warning to RockYou that there was a serious SQL Injection flaw in their database. Such a flaw could grant hackers access to the the service’s entire list of user names and passwords in the database, they warned. Imperva said that after it notified RockYou about the flaw, it was apparently fixed over the weekend. But that’s not before at least one hacker gained access to what they claim is all of the 32 million accounts. 32,603,388 to be exact. The best part? The database included a full list of unprotected plain text passwords. And email addresses. Wow.

The hacker has posted a sample of what they found. They have blanked out the passwords for now, but warns, “Don’t lie to your customers, or i will publish everything.” As far as we can tell, RockYou hasn’t issued a warning about this to its users yet. We’ve reached out to the company, but have yet to hear back.

RockYou has a history of stupidity. See here, here, and here. This may take the cake.

Update: Here’s the statement we were given by RockYou on the situation:

“On December 4, RockYou’s IT team was alerted that the user database on RockYou.com had been compromised, potentially revealing some personal identification data for approximately 30M registered users on RockYou.com. RockYou immediately brought down the site and kept it down until a security patch was in place. RockYou confirms that no application accounts on Facebook were impacted by this hack and that most of the accounts affected were for earlier applications (including slideshow, glitter text, fun notes) that are no longer formally supported by the company. RockYou has secured the site and is in the process of informing all registered users that the hack took place.”

They also say that they plan to issue the following email to users in the next 24 hours:

Dear RockYou user,

As you know, RockYou takes our users privacy very seriously.  We take

a lot of effort to protect user data from security breaches and attacks.

Unfortunately, RockYou has very recently learned that it encountered a security breach.  As part of this breach, it is possible that someone may have accessed at least your email address and password for the RockYou system.  We felt it was important to notify you of this immediately so that you could take any action you feel necessary to protect your privacy.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact security@rockyou.com.  We are sorry for any problems this has caused you.

The RockYou team

Hmm “we felt it was important to notify you immediately” … 10 days later? And what’s the excuse for the plain-text passwords? FAIL.

[thanks ES]

[photo: flickr/naughty architect]

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

After watching Generation Kill , my anxiety for our troops went up quite a bit.

Go here to read the rest: 
New off-road military vehicle for Afghanistan looks solid as hell

You can’t please all of the people all of the time. And as Sony showed with the PSP Go, sometimes it’s hard to please any of them. The lack of a UMD drive wouldn’t have been such a big deal if they’d made the switchover process simple and easy.

View original post here:
Potentially hilarious: Logitech rumored to be making a UMD drive for the PSP Go

The New Oxford English Dictionary has announced that 2009’s Word of the Year is unfriend. While it is perhaps not used as broadly as the newly-verbed friend, the latter is already in the dictionary, so they can’t very well call it new. The best they can do is run with unfriend, which implies and extends the other. A worthy choice, I think, with “currency and potential longevity,” as Oxford’s Senior Lexicographer puts it. It set me thinking, though: how prescient have Word of the Year choices been? Have they infallibly documented the rise of tech in mainstream language and culture? —or are they a dusty collection of buzzwords, a history of folly and haste? And really, which of those is the truer depiction of the world of technology?

I examined Oxford’s WotY lists going back as far as their blog documents them, and consulted a few other word-tracking sources. Unsurprisingly, the popularity and continued pertinence of new words have been as unpredictable as the technologies they describe. Still, the world from a dictionary’s perspective makes for a unique retrospective.