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Posts Tagged ‘yet-work’

The dev team has released their latest carrier unlock, ultrasn0w, It requires a quick using redsn0w and then the installation of ultrasn0w through Cydia. If you’ve already jailbroken your iPhone 3G simply add repo666.ultrasn0w.com to your repositories list and download ultrasn0w.

What does this do? It carrier unlocks the iPhone 3G. Sadly, it doesn’t yet work on the 3G S. It is also safe to update to the latest 3.0 version.

VoIP startup Ooma has raised another $14 million in venture capital, we’ve heard from multiple sources, increasing the total amount of capital the company has raised to $56 million. This most recent round of financing was led by existing investor Worldview Technology Partners and was a restructuring that wiped out earlier investors who chose not to participate in this round.

The company was really on the ropes and down to its last few dollars, says one source. But sales, particularly at Best Buy, are brisk and the company should reach profitability with this new round of financing, he added.

Ooma first launched two years ago as a new type of consumer VoIP product. But a complicated business model (expensive hardware, free service) made it confusing for consumers to compare to competitive offerings from Vonage and others.

But customer reviews were very positive, and the company brought in seasoned sales executive Rich Buchanan, previously at Sling Media. Best Buy started selling the devices and have been very successful in moving them off the shelves.

The company also announced a new handset product called the Telo at CES earlier this year. It is not yet available for purchase.

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

MySpace is planning to lay off 300 of its 450 non-U.S. employees, it announced this morning, confirming our earlier report. Just one person in three gets to keep his or her job. The company has now announced that over 700 of it’s 1,800 total employees have been or will be laid off - 30% of U.S. staff last week, and 66% of non-U.S. staff today.

The company will not confirm whether Managing Director Travis Katz is still with the company (we reported earlier this evening that he has left the company). Update: sources at MySpace are saying that Katz will remain with MySpace and that “his role hasn’t changed.” The company will still not respond to an on-the-record request for comment about Katz.

TechCrunch Europe has the press release and email from MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta to what’s left of staff.

The company also says that it will close “at least 4 of its offices outside the United States,” adding “Upon completion of the proposed plan, London, Berlin, and Sydney would become the primary regional hubs for MySpace’s international operations. Under the proposed plan, MySpace would place all existing offices in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, and Spain under review for possible restructure. MySpace China, a locally owned, operated, and managed company, and MySpace’s joint venture in Japan would not be affected by the proposed plan.”

The email to employees notes absurdly that the “restructuring steps we have taken have laid the groundwork for an exciting new chapter of innovation for MySpace” (with nearly half of MySpace staff now laid off, the few that are left are thinking about everything except innovation). He also says “I look forward to working with you all and speaking with you in the coming days.” I’m sure he’ll get something less than a warm reception.

From: Owen Van Natta
Sent: martedì 23 giugno 2009 11.30
To: FIM MySpace All
Subject: IMPORTANT: PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL RESTRUCTURE
Importance: High

Everyone,

Last week we made a number of changes to MySpace’s domestic structure in order to create a leaner, more nimble organization. Today, we are announcing the next step in our overall restructuring effort - a proposal to streamline our operations abroad.

Unlike our recent domestic restructuring announcement, what we are announcing today is a formal proposal we intend to implement, rather than an executed plan. As required by laws in countries where we operate, we will not implement the plan until we have consulted with potentially affected employees. As a result, even though the plan we are proposing today would apply to all international divisions of the company, a finalized international restructuring will be put into action over a period of days.

Similar to our domestic restructuring, our international plan is designed to rein in growth in staff and expenses that we cannot sustain. Our proposal would reduce MySpace’s international staff from 450 employees to approximately 150 employees and close at least 4 of our offices outside the United States.

Upon completion of the proposed plan, London, Berlin, and Sydney would become the primary regional hubs for MySpace’s international operations. Under the proposed plan, MySpace would place all existing offices in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, and Spain under review for possible restructure. MySpace China, a locally owned, operated, and managed company, and MySpace’s joint venture in Japan would not be affected by the proposed plan.

We are focusing on London, Berlin, and Sydney for two very simple reasons: (1) these are markets where we have a lot of MySpace users as well as the resources to allow us to compete effectively and (2) these are major international commerce centers where a robust MySpace presence can help our company develop new and innovative business partnerships.

As with the domestic changes we made last week, these proposed international reductions and eliminations will be extremely challenging – professionally and personally. These are difficult decisions and they are essential to our financial well-being and the re-establishment of our overall growth strategy.

Our goal to tap into as many international markets as possible drove us to create too many offices around the globe, and with them came inefficiencies. Under the new plan, we will refocus our efforts on regional business partnerships and integration in a smaller number of territories, while retaining a robust international presence. We remain steadfast in our commitment to reaching a global audience.

The last two weeks have been tough for everyone. The employees who leave us played an important role in the successes of MySpace in these international markets, and I thank them for their hard and dedicated work. The restructuring steps we have taken have laid the groundwork for an exciting new chapter of innovation for MySpace. I look forward to working with you all and speaking with you in the coming days.

Thank you,

Owen

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

With well over 200 million registered users, Facebook is undeniably a giant on the web, and one that is sitting on an enormous amount of raw data about individuals and demographically selected groups at that. While private profiles are not even always as private as we’d like to assume - something we’ve learned yesterday and multiple times in the past as well - there’s a lot of data that you can extract from what’s openly available to the public.

For example: what are the most common names used on the social network?

Well that’s exactly what social search solutions provider Rapleaf wanted to find out, so they crawled no less than 100 million public Facebook profiles for unique names and compiled three lists: most common first names, last names and combinations of both.

There are little surprises to be found in the lists. Over 1 million of scanned profiles has ‘John’ as first name, making it the most popular on Facebook, although chances are ‘Michael’ should come out on top if ‘Mike’ as a nickname wouldn’t be counted as unique. Out of the ten most common first names, only number 10 is female (Maria), although ‘Chris’ could account for men or women alike. The top 10:

First Name Count
1. John 1,037,972
2. David 966,439
3. Michael 798,212
4. Chris 647,966
5. Mike 535,065
6. Mark 526,198
7. Paul 511,504
8. Daniel 504,203
9. James 494,945
10. Maria 484,693

The last names list is more representative of Facebook’s global reach than the list above, and is led by another American household name: Smith. Surnames like ‘Lee’ are popular worldwide, and the numbers 7, 8, 9 and 10 are all outspoken Hispanic names that are very common throughout the whole of Latin-America and Spain. Top ten:

Last Name Count
1. Smith 1,049,158
2. Jones 520,943
3. Johnson 440,978
4. Lee 392,709
5. Brown 375,444
6. Williams 372,486
7. Rodriguez 328,984
8. Garcia 311,477
9. Gonzalez 277,987
10. Lopez 269,896

The list of top 10 full names commonly used on Facebook is believed to be comprised of both real and fake accounts, considering the fact both ‘John Smith’ and ‘Jane Smith’ made it on there. Again, little surprises in the top 10:

Full Name Count
1. John Smith 75,980
2. Joe Smith 14,648
3. Bob Smith 13,846
4. Mike Smith 11,199
5. Juan Carlos 10,254
6. Jane Smith 10,023
7. Mike Jones 10,014
8. David Smith 9,322
9. Sarah Smith 8,534
10. James Smith 8,397

Rapleaf offers the top 100 lists as CSV download, but we’ve made it easier for you to consult them by creating separate pages with the full lists:

Top 100 Most Common First Names On Facebook
Top 100 Most Common Last Names On Facebook
Top 100 Most Common Full Names On Facebook

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