The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘relationship’

Technology has made it easier than ever to get caught cheating. Tiger Woods may have been the latest to get caught with his text message and voicemail pants down but many celebs and non-celebs have gotten caught just by sending texts or posting messages on the wrong Facebook wall. All it takes is one snooping partner to completely blow up your whole cheating operation

See the original post:
So You Cheated. Now What?

I’m doing this just because no one really believes the stuff we get hit with here at TechCrunch every day. None of this ever gets posted. But I’m on a roll today, so why not.

And no matter how crazy the message, we do try to respond as helpfully as possible. We’re here all week, so feel free to email with any further relationship/legal advice requests. In fact, I’m thinking of starting a new once-a-day crazy email from the inbox series of posts.

We’ll update with any further response from Sarah.

From: Michael Arrington
Date: November 9, 2009 1:54:16 PM PST
To: Sarah
Subject: Re: sueing facebook??????

Maybe it’s time for a new boyfriend.

On Nov 9, 2009, at 1:42 PM, Sarah wrote:

Hi my name is Sarah and I have a quick question. My boyfriend got kicked off of face book for sending too many messages is there any way to get him back on if not then he is kicked off for at least a month. please contact me as [email removed]. please it is very important

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

After much trial and tribulation, I finally obtained Apple’s new Magic Mouse last week. Following its release, the $70 device was so popular that practically every store in the Bay Area was sold out of them for much of last week even though most were getting new shipments every morning. Supplies remain tight online where Apple is showing a 5 to 7 day waiting period and Amazon is showing a 2 to 5 week one. So is it worth it?

The short answer is yes. This is hands-down the best mouse Apple has ever made. It’s not even close. That said, it could be even better, and hopefully down the road, with a software update, it will be.

Despite more or less starting the mouse trend, the past decade has seen some truly awful mice from Apple. Fans of the original iMac will remember the hockey-puck variety which was great if you had hooves for hands. Even worse that was for whatever reason Apple refused to add a second button to its mice, even though every other manufacturer was and most of those were clearly better products (this also makes Apple’s recent decision to add more buttons to its new remote a bit odd).

Apple finally relented, sort of, with its Mighty Mouse. Though it technically didn’t have two buttons, it did allow users to click on the right (or left) side of the mouse to simulate a second button. Too bad that mouse was one of the worst ever made. The scroll wheel on the thing was basically useless after a few months (and in some cases weeks) of use. It would attract so much grime that it had to be cleaned almost on a daily basis. The device also had side buttons that were so hard to click that they were basically pointless, and the Bluetooth version offered more ways to fail as it offered bad performance.

With the new Magic Mouse, Apple finally has taken a step in the right direction. The company has managed to make an elegant looking mouse (the entire top is just one smooth surface) that is also functional. Like the Mighty Mouse, despite having just one main clickable surface, you can still both right and left click, and it works well. Likewise, unlike the Bluetooth version of the Mighty Mouse, the Magic Mouse (which only comes in Bluetooth) seems very stable and responsive (though there are varying reports on this for certain types of machines).

Depending on your hand size, some people may not like the height of the Magic Mouse (it’s very low to the surface), but I find it to be quite nice, and better overall than the feel of the Mighty Mouse.

But the big selling point is its touch surface.

This is such a wonderful feature that you have to imagine it will soon find its way into most mice from various companies (Microsoft is already working on a bunch). With it, you no longer have to worry about mucking up a scroll ball, because the entire surface of the mouse is a scroll wheel of sorts if you simply move a finger up or down. It’s rather amazing how well the accelerated scrolling works. It’s better than most track balls.

The surface is also multi-touch. This means that if you swipe left or right with two fingers, you can go forwards or backwards on web pages you’re looking at. I’m finding that despite what Forbes said about it a couple weeks ago, it’s a great feature.

But.

As great as the Magic Mouse is, it has one absolutely perplexing problem: Why on Earth are they limiting the multi-touch functionality? First of all, there is absolutely one thing Mighty Mouse users will miss with the Magic Mouse: When you clicked on the scroll ball, it would allow you to do an action like Expose. With Magic Mouse, you can’t do that.

Obviously, there is no ball to click on now, but I cannot figure out why Apple wouldn’t utilize something like a two-finger click (possible with multi-touch) to do this. And why not have functionality for a three finger click too? And why not a three finger swipe? It’d be hard to fit perhaps, but why not four-finger too?

The possibilities are endless for what this mouse could do thanks to multi-touch, yet Apple is doing basically nothing with it. How about pinch-to-zoom? Nope.

I suspect we may see Apple remedy this will a software update eventually. After all, it has a history of doing that. The multi-touch trackpads on Apple’s MacBooks started out similarly crippled and have since added functionality. If you’re using a MacBook, the trackpad remains a much better input method than the Magic Mouse, simply because of the different multi-touch gestures.

There are a lot of other good mice out there (Logitech and Microsoft both seem to make good ones), and with the Magic Mouse, Apple has finally melded its desire for style with a mouse that offers a nice user experience. But it could be much better, and soon I hope it will be. Apple needs to keep its touch agenda moving forward.

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

Zynga’s most recent Facebook game, FishVille, has temporarily been taken offline by Facebook for advertising violations.

FishVille will remain suspended, Facebook tells us, “until Facebook is satisfied that Zynga demonstrates compliance with Facebook restrictions — as well as Zynga’s own restrictions — on the ads it offers users.”

This is a relatively light slap on the wrist since the game only launched two days ago and had a couple of thousand users (Update: Zynga says FishVille had 875,000 users yesterday. wow). Zynga’s other games, including FarmVille with 63 million monthly users, remain online, despite the fact that they were showing the same ads.

But this does send a clear message to Zynga and other game developers that Facebook isn’t ignoring the problem. Whether it’s a real concern over the user experience or simply embarrassment from the press suggesting Facebook is a haven for scammers is somewhat irrelevant.

Facebook has also shut down a total of four ad networks in recent months for ad violations, including Tatto Media and Gambit. Other networks, such as SendMe Mobile, which was founded by ex-CNET executives, have largely taken their place by offering similarly questionable offers that trick users into mobile subscriptions.

This is also a bit of an arms race. Zynga may be specifically filtering Facebook employees from seeing ads that violate Facebook terms and conditions, making it difficult for Facebook to enforce the rules.

And the relationship between the two companies is complicated. Facebook battling Zynga on the advertising scams. But Zynga is also one of Facebook’s largest advertisers, probably accounting for between 10% and 20% of total Facebook revenue.

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

In the interest of bringing Ron and Fez ’s fantastic radio show topics to a more tech-minded audience, I propose the following: games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band , while fun and, generally speaking, “good,” will not save rock music.

Read more: 
Rock music is dead, and all the Rock Band in the world won’t save it

Samsung has just announced a pair of LCD monitors with built-in TV features that promise to “eliminate the line between work productivity and HD entertainment,” according to the press release.

Read more here: 
What’s missing from this press release?

Kosmix, the reference engine that dynamically generates comprehensive topic pages as soon as you search for them, has just acquired a small startup called Cruxlux. Cruxlux has spent the last two years building an engine that can take any two people, places, or things and tell you how they’re related. Terms of the deals were not disclosed, other than that that it was in both cash and stock.

If you’re a fan of the classic game ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon‘, you’ll love the Cruxlux engine. The company has built algorithms that will automatically figure out how various people, places, things, and topics are related through a handful of steps, using sources across the web. Say, for example, I wanted to see how TechCrunch is connected to President Obama: the site first says that TechCrunch was founded by Michael Arrington, who is connected to Stanford Law School (he went there). That in turn is connected to Harvard Law School (they both use non-letter grading systems). Which brings us to Harvard Law School, which Barack Obama attended. With each step, the site has a ‘how’ feature that tells you how the subjects are related.

Cruxlux has been in private beta until now, allowing you to type in any two topics to see how they’re related, and I’ve had quite a bit of fun playing around with it. Unfortunately, it isn’t going to be opening up to the general public, at least not in its current form. Instead, the service will soon be integrated with Koxmix, helping surface new connections as you browse through the site’s topics pages.

And really, the integration makes perfect sense. In its current form Cruxlux seems best for entertainment, not research — how often would you really take the time to plug in two topics to see their connections? Now that the relationship engine will be integrated with Kosmix, it will be much more useful, because they’ll be shown alongside every topic.

Cruxlux was founded in 2007 by Guha Jayachandran and Curtis Spencer, who met while they were students at Stanford.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Soft-spoken Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh had some surprisingly harsh criticism for the TC50 companies he saw today: Why aren’t you trying to change the world? I asked him more about that in our backstage sidestage interview during the TC50 cocktail party. “To be fair, is selling shoes changing the world?” I asked. Watch the clip after the jump to hear his answer.

I pressed Hsieh on details about his relationship with Jeff Bezos and Amazon. He can’t really comment because the US Justice Department hasn’t yet ruled on the deal, but he did admit “I’ve always thought Jeff was a lovely man.” So that’s how it works in that soon-to-be corporate family.

The most interesting admission may be his advice for start-ups: Do you really need venture capital?

TC50 and Tony Hsieh from sarah lacy on Vimeo.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

With so much being said about Google’s new Chrome OS being a direct attack on Microsoft, naturally some of the gaze is now going to shift towards what it means for Apple, which makes the second most popular OS in the world. Here’s what it means — For its products, very, very little. For its board of directors, potentially a lot more.

While some have already talked about this a bit, I think main points have been missed. First, the obvious point: When Chrome OS launches next year it will be aimed directly at a market Apple is not in: Netbooks. Yes, Apple is likely to launch a tablet computer of some kind in the future, maybe next year, but that is not a netbook. That will be a touchscreen device that will undoubtedly run some kind of special flavor of the iPhone OS or OS X or a combination of the two. And I would bet that it will have stand-alone apps like the iPhone. That is not what Chrome OS is about.

Secondly, while Google’s long term plan for Chrome OS is obviously to expand beyond the netbook realm and into more traditional PCs, that once again is unlikely to affect Apple. Apple makes computers that sell at high margins. This makes them expensive compared to some PCs, as has been talked about a lot recently thanks to Microsoft’s ad campaigns. Even now, in just about the worst economy we’re ever likely to see, Apple hasn’t changed this too much. Apple customers pay this premium because they think the melding of great hardware with Apple’s solid software (OS X and iLife) is worth it over a Windows-based machine.

Chrome OS will directly appeal to those users who want out of the Windows environment but don’t want to pay the Apple premium. That is to say, it will appeal to the lower end of the market, which again, Apple doesn’t participate in.

Third, while Apple clearly is committed to Mac OS X right now, remember that it first and foremost makes its money off of hardware sales. This is the opposite of Microsoft. During WWDC this year, Apple kind of danced around a key statistic: that the iPhone OS is quickly taking over as the dominant OS X version. If Apple can get out of its AT&T exclusivity in the U.S. (which I’d bet will happen next year) and do things like expand to China (which I bet will happen later this year or early next year), the sky is the limit for where that OS can go. Apple could well be more of a mobile company (iPhone and tablet) in a few years than a traditional computer company.

A lot of people may not like to hear that, but it’s true. The trends don’t lie. And there’s a reason Apple dropped the “Computer” from its name in 2007.

And Google Chrome OS is not a mobile OS, that’s Android. Assuming it can get on more devices, Android should be more of a direct competitor to OS X (I didn’t say Mac OS X) over the next decade than Chrome OS will be.

Still, there are some good points to be made about the relationship now between Apple and Google. As Anthony Ha of VentureBeat wrote last night, this move may mean the end of Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Apple’s board of directors. (And Arthur Levinson too, the Genentech CEO who currently resides on both Apple and Google’s boards). When the FTC was looking into Schmidt and Levinson’s roles on both boards as a possible antitrust violation back in May, we wrote that we thought it was just a shot across Google’s bow, and unlikely to force Schmidt to leave Apple’s board. He didn’t.

But Google getting into the OS business makes things decidedly more murky, even if the two OSes (Chrome OS and OS X) aren’t likely to have much effect on each other. Schmidt already has to excuse himself in Apple board meetings when the iPhone is talked about. Now he may have to do the same when OS X comes up. That leaves the question of just how much is there left to talk about at the board meetings when both Schmidt and Levinson are in the room?

Even though they’re probably not likely to understand too much about Google’s actual plans with Chrome OS, you can bet the government is quickly going to take a hard look at this relationship again. And that could well force at least Schmidt, and probably Levinson, to step down in the near future.

And while Apple may not like that since both are seasoned execs who undoubtedly provide a lot of insight in the board meetings, it will be fine. And that just makes more room for COO Tim Cook to possibly join the board.

As for Chrome OS and OS X themselves, I wouldn’t waste too much time thinking about it. While it will take several years for this all to play out, this is a direct attack by Google on Microsoft’s core. It’s perhaps the most bold move in a series of battles currently raging between the two (Android vs. Windows Mobile, Bing vs. Google Search, Google Docs vs. Office, etc). This is all about Microsoft, and not about Apple. And I don’t think Apple is losing any sleep at night over Google attacking what is also its rival.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

On the very same day that a certain search and Internet advertising giant based in Mountain View, California has made public its plans to soon bring to market an open-source operating system that it hopes will give Microsoft a run for its money when it comes to powering the netbooks of this world, a lone startup from Paris, France has raised millions in financing to do exactly the same thing. I’m talking about Jolicloud, Netvibes founder and former CEO Tariq Krim’s new company, which has just raised $4.2 million in Series A funding from Atomico Ventures and Mangrove Capital Partners.

With the investment, Jolicloud not only gains capital from two of the most widely respected venture capital firms in Europe, Krim also wins two heavyweight entrepeneurs / investors on its board of directors as well as one experienced advisor. Atomico Ventures’ Niklas Zennström (of Kazaa, Skype and Joost fame) and Gilles Samoun (current fotopedia CEO) will both take seats on the startup’s board, and Michael Jackson - partner at Mangrove Capital Partners and former COO of Skype - will take up the role of advisor.