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Rupert Murdoch is pointing a gun to Google’s head , and Microsoft is helping him pull back the trigger. For the past few weeks, Murdoch and his officers at News Corp. have been very vocal about their distaste for Google and their desire to lead other media companies in a boycott of sorts. Murdoch keeps threatening to stop letting Google index the WSJ.com and his other media sites, and wants other news sites to join him in this self-imposed silence. The folks at Microsoft’s Bing think this is a great idea. Not only that, but the FT reports that Microsoft is in fact in discussions with News Corp. and other publishers about the possibility of paying them to remove their sites from Google’s search index. This report comes on the heels of a meeting in Europe where Bing dangled the prospect of premium spots in search results to publishers and outright money for search R&D. Microsoft is not afraid to buy search market share, which is what it’s doing with the Yahoo search deal and even its Cashback program . But with these latest talks, it is literally trying to buy the news, or at least exclusive access to the news. Bing can’t buy all the news, it can only buy certain brands. If Bing can somehow become the only place you can find news results and working links to the Wall Street Journal and other top papers such as the New York Times , the Washington Post , and the LA Times , for instance, that would be a big reason to switch for a lot of folks. But it’s not clear how much Bing would have to pay the news companies of the world for them to give up all the traffic Google sends them in return for a fraction of that traffic and some cash. Even Google couldn’t afford to strike such deals. Says Murdoch , of Google, “If they were to pay everybody for everything they took from every newspaper in the world, and every magazine, they wouldn’t have any profits left.” In order to actually make a dent in Google’s market share, Bing would have to pay such exorbitant sums to so many different news companies that it would be difficult to recoup its investment. Bing certainly get some marketing buzz out of any such move, but that’s about it. The big problem with a search engine trying to buy market share by buying parts of the news is that information spreads so quickly these days, exclusives last about 30 seconds. That information will end up on a site that is indexed by Google. Or the same news will be broken by someone else on the Web before the WSJ.com even gets to it. Exclusive indexing goes against the Web’s inherent openness. Companies that try to curtail that openness don’t last long on the Web. Image via PhotoXpress . Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

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Bing Tries To Buy The News

We had a great interview with Twitter COO Dick Costolo at the Real-Time CrunchUp on Friday. Costolo always gives the audience a few good nuggets of news and handles the more difficult questions with ease. He’s a pro. After the conference I reviewed some of the backstage footage we shot of Costolo before he went on stage for the formal interview. We ask lots of great questions – about Twitter’s revenue, business model, details of the search deals, chances of getting bought next year, and the lovely bathrooms they have at the office. He manages to entertain the entire TechCrunch editorial staff while revealing absolutely nothing. We even slip in a question about Feedburner (Costolo cofounded the company and sold it to Google in 2007) at the end, but sadly we ran out of tape before he answered. One thing Costolo does clear up – even though I’ve known him for five years now, I apparently have been mispronouncing his name the whole time. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

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Backstage Footage With Twitter COO Dick Costolo

Gadget Thumbnails for 19-Nov-2009 on Coolest Gadgets .

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Gadget Thumbnails for 19-Nov-2009 Coolest Gadgets

Tonight, Xobni is selectively allowing users to download a new version of its client with a number of UI enhancements. This launch coincides with Xobni’s new Salesforce extension. This is notable because it marks the launch of premium extensions for the first time, that give the company a new potential revenue stream. Here are a few of the bigger UI changes: As you can see in the screenshot, there’s a new set of horizontal tabs to better filter content. Xobni is also now surfacing links exchanged between contacts for the first time previously, there was just a way to do this for files exchanged. Also new, the Twitter extension element now includes a direct message (DM) option. LinkedIn support has been improved, as has some of the analytics. There are a half dozen or so other enhancements to the client such as extensions now being resizable, and better drag and drop support. There’s also finally a way for users to easily open a folder that emails reside in. Basically, if you’re addicted to Xobni, there’s a lot of little tweaks (and some bigger ones) to try out. But again, the big news is that Xobni is opening premium extensions to users and not just business users, all Xobni users. If Xobni is able to effectively convince users to buy these (as well as get more beyond just Salesforce), it could be a decent new revenue stream for the company. Back in July, the company introduced ‘Xobni Plus’ , the premium version of their product. Revenue streams can be addicting when turned on, it seems. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

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Xobni Updates Its UI, Gains Monetizable Extensions

Love it or hate it , there’s no doubt that “citizen journalism” the trend where ‘regular people’ record video, snap photos, and tweet live from breaking news events is quickly gaining steam. One of the biggest catalysts for the trend has been YouTube, which gives people an easy way to upload and share the video footage they shoot from the heat of the action. And while we’ve seen some media sites, like CNN’s iReport, attempt to take advantage of this user submitted content, many news sites haven’t found a good way to integrate it. Today, YouTube is launching a new application that looks to make this easy for all media organizations. Dubbed YouTube Direct, the new open source application will allow news orgs to integrate a video upload tool directly into their sites, where they can accept and review user uploaded footage. The new tool will allow news organizations to screen video uploads as they come in, and use the best clips for their broadcasts and on their websites. Of course, news organizations will still be responsible for actually curating the content to ensure that it’s accurate, which isa task that will require additional manpower for the more popular news sites. All video content uploaded through these tools will be available on YouTube proper as well. My biggest concern with this kind of reporting is always credibility oftentimes you’ll come across videos on YouTube that seem like they’re relevant to breaking news, but are unable to determine who uploaded the clip. Fortunately, as an open source tool YouTube Direct allows organizations to customize their submission process. Hopefully the more credible ones will require (or at least encourage) uploaders to leave their contact information, so that fact checkers can follow up on their video reports to ensure their validity. News organizations aren’t the only sites looking to accept user generated videos, eitherYouTube Direct will work that any site that wants to upload video content, so we should probably expect to see some more creative uses in the future. The feature is not live quite yet, but should be up by tomorrow morning. Update : You can see an example implementation at 7NEWS of Boston (scroll towards the bottom of the page). Image by quinn.anya Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

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YouTube Direct Gives News Orgs A Way To Accept User-Submitted Videos

Best Music Gadget 2009 nominations – And the nominees are…

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Best Music Gadget 2009 nominations – Pocket-lint

The past decade’s march towards better gadgets shows a trend line pointing towards ultra powerful gadgets with UIs so seamless, they make Macs look like a punchcard computers. But if you think about it, wenot hardwareare the …

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Gadget Singularity: Let's Ditch Our Buttons and Screens Forever …

Gadget Thumbnails for 09-Nov-2009 on Coolest Gadgets .

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Gadget Thumbnails for 09-Nov-2009 Coolest Gadgets

If anyone wonders what Google gadgets are, here you can find your answer. Powered by Google, these gadgets are mini applications made by Google users, having a.

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Google Gadget

When Loopt launched in 2006 it was ahead of a curve that is just starting to be recognized: Location. Now, with services like Foursquare , Gowalla , Brightkite , and even Twitter fueling the location-based services frenzy, Loopt realized that it needed to shift its strategy a bit. Enter Pulse, a new feature launching today. Previously, Loopt was more of a passive service you started it up on some device and it kept track of where you were. Other users could see where you were if they opened the app too, but generally it wasn’t about pinging your friends to let them know where you are and what you were doing. But Pulse makes Loopt much more of an active service. It recommends hot places, hot events, and lets you know what your friends are up to. This new feature is already live on Loopt’s website, but as we alluded to back in May , this will also be a part of the Loopt 2.0 iPhone app, which should be released shortly. But things have even changed since then. As you can see in the screenshots, a key feature of this new Loopt is the idea of the “Check In.” Obviously, this is a direct reaction to competitors like Foursquare and Gowalla which are built around that very idea. This is a key part of the new Loopt as checking in helps it recommend things for your friends to do. But Loopt is also using other data to recommend places. It has a partnership with Zagat to get restaurant information and pulls data from sources like Citysearch to further its recommendations. All of this data has allowed Loopt to create what founder Sam Altman refers to as a “local search engine.” And this is altering Loopt’s business as well. As we’ve previously covered, location is a potentially powerful tool for business models involving things like coupons. Foursquare is starting to delve into this, but it isn’t yet making money from it . This new version of Loopt is taking full advantage of this. The company has already struck deals with partners such as Jack In The Box to serve up virtual coupons when users of Loopt are nearby a restaurant. Fans of Loopt will still recognize many of the features of the service, but everything has been improved, Altman says. One thing not included however is Mix, Loopt’s service that helped users potentially find dates. That was spun off into its own app last month. Loopt also offers some things that Foursquare doesn’t such as the ability to see where all your friends are checked in on an actual map (rather than just a list of where they are). And you can also see not only that friends are at a particular place, but how others have rated it (with a smiley face or a frowning face). This allows you to see if a restaurant is not good, for example. The iPhone is proving to be a boon for location-based services, but it also has a very big weakness: Third-party apps cannot run in the background. This is one reason why the previous version of Loopt didn’t work well on the device; it kept track of your location, but only when you had it open. Loopt recently launched a new feature that allows you to get around this by pinging your phone to get your location with the help of the carrier. But that service costs extra money, a huge barrier. Moving to the concept of check-ins seems like a better way to keep people using your application. So can Loopt take on the younger location-based upstarts with its new features? We’ll see, but Loopt has a couple of big advantages: 1) It works on over 100 mobile devices (Foursquare, for example, works on only a few right now but any phone can access its mobile website). 2) Apple seems to love Loopt. They’ve included it in commercials, and routinely feature it in the App Store. Disclosure : Loopt offers a TechCrunch branded version of the service here . Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

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Loopt Shifts Its Strategy To Tap The Pulse Of Location

If you are a huge fan of Twitter and don’t actually own a mobile phone, then you may want to check out TwitterPeak, which is the first device dedicated solely to Twitter.

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TwitterPeek – The Twitter Only Gadget | Geeky Gadgets

T-Mobile in the UK have uploaded details of the HTC HD2 to their site stating it has a launch date of November. The problem is that they have displayed the.

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HTC HD2 Coming to T-Mobile UK November

You could say StudiVZ , the German Facebook clone, has a few problems on its hands – and some unwelcome publicity. Back in August Facebook officially became Germanys biggest social network, increasing reach by more than 50% from March to July 2009 taking it to 6.2 million unique users in Germany. By contrast StudiVZ had 4.28 million uniques. Then StudiVZ became the subject of some high profile hacks which showed up its lax attitude to security. In particular was that by a 20 year old man who used crawler software to harvest detailed user information from all of the “VZ” sites (owned by VZ-Netzwerke), copying 48,000 profiles in just four hours. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

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Hacker Of German Facebook Clones Commits Suicide In Jail

HTC have announced that they are to make an update available for the HTC Hero brining it up to Android 2.0 (Eclair). The statement said that the only delays at.

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HTC Hero to get Android 2.0

Gadget Reviews: Akai Miniak, Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ and; “I have quite a bit of M-Audio gear and it’s never given me a lick of trouble in Windows or OSX. I recommend it to anyone who isn’t above using operating systems that aren’t …

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Gadget Reviews: Akai Miniak, Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ and more …

We just noticed something in the App Store: An official app made by the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (a.k.a. NASDAQ), the American stock exchange, has been approved. That itself is interesting, but perhaps even more interesting is a key functionality of the app is to highlight tweets about various NASDAQ stocks. The free app is called NASDAQ Portfolio Manager [ App Store Link ], and it’s really slick. As you’d expect, you can use it to look up various stocks and get access to real-time data when the market is open. It also has some impressive stock charting options. The main individual stock screen has all the data you’d expect (highs, lows, etc), but if you rotate your iPhone to the side, you get a full chart with a variety of viewing option. And if you run your finger over this chart, you can pinpoint stock prices at various dates. Back in regular view, if you swipe right once, you’ll be taken to a page that has all the latest tweets about that stock, coming in from StockTwits , the Twitter stock service. In this view, anyone who tweets with the StockTwits $STOCKNAME syntax will have their tweet show up here. There is also a separate StockTwits option along the bottom of the app which allows you to drill deeper into what people are publicly saying about stocks on the service. Here, you can find the full stream of tweets about stocks, or tailor the stream to show things like tweets about Futures or just tweets from StockTwits “Top Data Junkies.” This is interesting, because it would seem that the NASDAQ has decided to use StockTwit’s APIs rather than Twitter’s. Obviously, the NASDAQ is going to want to attach themselves to something it considers reliable, and as we wrote last month , StockTwits has invested a lot in making its own backend infrastructure that works on top of Twitter, but also seperately from it. The NASDAQ app also makes it very easy to keep track of your own portfolio by allowing users to enter the stocks they own including the price paid, the date, and the number of shares. And you can add any NASDAQ stock to your Watch List simply by clicking the star icon along the top of the screen when you’re on a stock’s page (the starring animation is also slick). The search funtionality is very fast. One thing you can’t do from this app is actually buy and sell stocks, but who knows, maybe we’ll see something like that in the future. Overall, this app is very solid, and its inclusion of StockTwits seems to be a very strong endorsement of that service. CrunchBase Information StockTwits Twitter iPhone Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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NASDAQ Launches A Slick iPhone App Highlighting Tweets From StockTwits

There is a lot of chatter about TweetMeme’s rather robust growth to over 18 million unique monthly visitors on Compete.com . That puts them ahead of well known sites like LinkedIn and gmail.com with 15 million and 9 million visitors, respectively, on the service). In fact, Tweetmeme currently sits as the 68th largest site on the Internet, according to Compete. What does TweetMeme do? They offer other sites a “retweet” button that makes it easy for readers to send story links to Twitter . We use it on all our sites, you can see it on the top right of this post. They also have analytics around tweets sent via the service, and a home page that shows the most retweeted Tweets at any given time. It competes with Digg , TechMeme , Google News and other news aggregators to show breaking news. But is TweetMeme really so big? The short answer is no. Comscore tracks 721,000 worldwide monthly unique visitors to TweetMeme. Quantcast says the number is more like 2.4 million . Google Trends barely registers TweetMeme against URL shortener service Bit.ly , which is similar to TweetMeme in some ways. We believe Compete is simply counting all those javascript widgets that sites like us include on their stories. Which means it’s basically aggregating all of the traffic stats from sites that use TweetMeme. Not so useful. Why This Matters Everyone is trying to take real time Twitter data and massage it into a useful, filtered news stream. Bit.ly has a new product on the way called Bit.ly Now . Digg is rebuilding the service from the ground up to take advantage of Twitter data in figuring out what’s hot sooner. If TweetMeme is really drawing that much traffic, it puts them ahead of Bit.ly and near Digg in total traffic. And that makes them a third contender in an already crowded space. In the upcoming war between Bit.ly and Digg (and maybe TweetMeme), what matters, besides access to Twitter’s data flow, is the total traffic base to start things off. The ability to index and categorize links on the fly is also important, and all of these companies are working on ways to properly analyze data in milliseconds, which is hard to do properly at scale. A lot is going to happen in this space in the near future. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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Just How Big Is TweetMeme Anyway, And Why Does It Matter?

Gadget Thumbs 10/24/2009 on Coolest Gadgets . … Hands on Review of the Powermat. Verdict: Hands off my Powermat! LED Umbrella . Gadget Thumbs 10/24/2009. October 24th, 2009 by Al in Gadget Thumbs Hands on Review of the Powermat. …

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Gadget Thumbs 10/24/2009 Coolest Gadgets

What is this Week’s Coolest Gadget ? on Coolest Gadgets .

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What is this Week's Coolest Gadget? Coolest Gadgets

VoIP startup TringMe has launched a Facebook application that lets users make calls from the social network using its Flash-based web phone for browsers. The app also lets you embed widgets to your profile for your Facebook friends to call or SMS you. The app has much of the functionality that a regular VoIP app like Skype has. TringMe’s app lets users set up caller-id, send SMS messages from Facebook, lets callers leave voicemails that the users can access and lets you add TringMe widgets to your profile that let friends and visitors call or SMS you from that page, which seems to be the most appealing feature of the app. And if you have a TringMe account, you can integrate your account with Facebook. Of course, you have to buy credits to use the application, which range from $5 to $100 worth of credits, bought via PayPal. Facebook also has a similar Skype-based app called SkypeMe. that lets you Skype your friends. TringMe also recently launched a demo of a widget that now allows a user the ability to make a VoIP call from Microsoft Silverlight applications. Silverlight doesnt allow access to a microphone, thus restricting VoIP calls, so TringMe used a backdoor Flash widget to access the microphone. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

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TringMes App Lets You Make Calls From Facebook