Get Ready For Blekko: Public Launch On November 1

Blekko, the shiny new search engine that we first started covering way back in 2008 when they had a hand puppet as their mascot, is preparing to launch. Next Monday, November 1, they’ll turn the lights on and let anyone in.

If you’re really raring to get in at the first possible moment, the site will technically go live at 9 pm California time on Sunday evening.

We’ve been testing it since July, along with 8,000 other people in the private beta (our beta review is here). Unlike the massive failure that was known as Cuil, the Blekko team isn’t out hyping the site as a Google-killer. Rather, Blekko is being positioned as a place for people to create and share their own search engines based on trusted websites, and to get deep insights into SEO via a very transparent ranking system.

Will you like it? During the beta period, the company says, about 11.5% of users stuck around and started using Blekko at least weekly. That’s a very high percentage of repeat usage for a new search engine. The targeted search engine feature is extremely useful, as you’ll see when the site launches. We’ll have a full launch review up on Sunday evening.

The company has raised $20 million from a variety of investors, including Marc Andreessen and Jeff Clavier’s SoftTech VC.

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Comcast Reports Drop in Cable Subscribers; Blames Economy

In a post this weekend, I wrote about how the cable tv industry was finally stepping towards the cliff. And we’d learn more today when Comcast, the largest U.S. cable operator, reported earnings. Well, the numbers are out, and it’s not a surprise.

275,000 Comcast subscribers cut the cord last quarter. Its subscriber count is down 3.5% from the same quarter last year. To be fair, some of that loss was offset by a gain in 219,000 digital cable subs. Revenue was up as customers bought higher priced bundles of tv, internet and phone service.

During the earnings call, Comcast blamed the drop on the lousy economy. Always a handy excuse. Sure, many people are struggling right now, and it makes sense that the high cost of cable is an expense they can no longer afford. Comcast said, based on exit interviews, only a ‘small number‘ seemed to cut the cord for over-the-air signals, and they are not planning to switch to internet tv alternatives.

Comcast’s exit interviews run counter to other reports. PlayOn, digital media server software that let’s you watch over-the-top video on TV, says 30% of it’s customers have canceled cable after using its box. Perhaps they weren’t Comcast customers? PlayOn estimates its customer base saves $24 million a year in cable fees.

Boxee’s CEO made the point on CNBC yesterday that his box won’t necessarily lead to cord cutting. “Instead, it will usher in a generation of people that never get cable.” He predicts with Boxee, they won’t see the point in cable, just like young people don’t see the point in a landline phone.

The CEO of Verizon, Ivan Seidenberg made the same point last month, saying young people are “not going to pay for something they don’t need to.” He also says “over the top is going to be a pretty big issue for cable.”

Another company to keep an eye on is Clicker. It launched a year ago at TechCrunch50. Clicker bills itself as “the simple way to find, share and watch TV online.” Many viewers agree, based on feedback to my earlier post.

And one more thing. No, not Apple. Actually Yahoo. You don’t hear much about new products at Yahoo. It took the tech community 20 hours to notice Yahoo Mail’s first redesign in five years. But, 600 million user strong Yahoo has a product called Yahoo Connected TV, which gets you access to movies, tv shows, and other web services. It’s already built into TV’s from Samsung, Sony, LG, Vizio, and Toshiba. Crunchgear reviewed it last year.

I haven’t even touched on mobile and DVRs vs Live. Maybe a future post.
But, you can’t tell me cable tv is not an industry being disrupted. Not overnight, but now live on tv.

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It’s A Location Turf War As Google Rolls Out Place Search

Back in April, we noted that Google was about to escalate the so-called “location wars” by reworking and rebranding their Locale Business Center as Google Places. They’ve since done a lot of work on improving the area (despite an on-again/off-again war with Yelp over results) and they’re clearly feeling good about it. How do I know? Because starting today, they’re going to add Place results to Google Search in a major way.

Place Search will now reside on Google.com when you’re doing a search that Google believes is attempting to discover a location. And it will also have a home in the left toolbar (you know, where “Images”, “Videos”, “Shopping”, etc reside) as “Places”, which a user can click on to just get location results.

In their blog post, Google notes:

One of the great things about our approach is that it makes it easier to find a comprehensive view of each place. In our new layout you’ll find many more relevant links on a single results page—often 30 or 40. Instead of doing eight or 10 searches, often you’ll get to the sites you’re looking for with just one search. In our testing Place Search saves people an average of two seconds on searches for local information.

While it’s in the process of rolling out, you can use this link to see what it will look like. As you can see, a search for “Chicago museums” will bring up seven or so museums place pages it believes you may be looking for. If you want more of these place suggestions, you can click on the “more results” link at the bottom of the seven. Or you can click on the Places left sidebar item.

The big question, of course, is what this means for all of Google’s competitors also in the location space? You’ll note that Google rather prominently links to results from sources of place information like Yelp and CitySearch, so some of them could actually benefit from this new style of result. Still, many of them will no longer be the number one result for specific place searches. That could hurt.

That said, this new layout should be much easier for people doing the actual searches to parse and find what they’re looking for.

For their part, Google should make a killing on the sponsored links related to place searches. As you can see below, they’re already populating a ton of these right below the all-important map on the right side. Many place results have sponsored links along the top as well.

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Spotify Looking For A COO, Still Hoping For U.S. Launch This Year

Music streaming service Spotify has retained executive search firm Odgers Berndtson to assist them in finding a chief operating officer as the number two executive after founder Daniel Ek. A number of candidates, particularly in Silicon Valley, have been contacted for the job.

Our first source on this story said that Spotify was actually looking for a new CEO to replace Ek. But Ek says this is inaccurate. “We’re looking for a COO to help run the company,” he said by phone this morning.

I also spoke with Ek about the story I wrote yesterday about acquisition attention from Google and Apple. Ek says Spotify has had absolutely no acquisition discussions with Apple at all, ever. “We don’t want to sell, we are here for the long term,” he said.

On the Google story he was less forthcoming, saying only that the story wasn’t correct in its entirety. “Google is a great partner,” he said.

I also asked Ek, since I had him on the phone, about Spotify’s U.S. launch plans. The company has been talking about a U.S. launch for well over a year, but it hasn’t happened yet. The complications appear to be over their very strong desire to offer a free version of the service here, as they do in Europe. Ek says that discussions with labels are ongoing, and that he still “hopes for a U.S. launch this year.”

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Intel And Another 70 Companies Launch Cloud 2015 Open Data Center Alliance

Today at a press event in San Francisco, Intel and a group of 70 companies announced an alliance to build a system of open standards for cloud computing. Part of the Cloud 2015 initiative, The Open Data Center Alliance makes it easier for customers to deploy cloud computing solutions, as it focuses on interoperability, flexibility and unifying industry standards. The Open Data Center Alliance will represent more than $50 billion in annual IT investment.

Intel, which powers 9 out 10 of the servers for the cloud today, will be a technical advisor and non voting member in the alliance. The companies involved are cross-vertical including Lockheed Martin, Marriott International, BMW and JP Morgan Chase, joining together with Intel towards the ultimate endgoal of simplified virtual computing. While Google, Amazon Yahoo are missing from the list, Intel commented that membership is still open, “There’s a lot of people still in the pipeline. We’re adding people by the minute.”

Grappling with the fact that there will be another one billion people and another 15 billion devices on the Internet in 2015, the Cloud 2015 vision to simplify virtual computing is three pronged: Federated (so clients can better and more securely share data), automated (more efficiency in moving data), and “client-aware” (a cloud API that is device aware, taking into account whether a user is on a phone or a laptop). Intel executives emphasized that communication between the players will be key in achieving the initiative’s goals of decreased IT spending and increased effiency.

“The Open Center Alliance is way to create and unify the voice of cloud consumers and cloud users, using usage models as a way to specify requirements. We’ve never seen this approach before.” said Intel representative Billy Cox.

From the hardware side, Intel also announced an expansion of its Cloud Builders program, which allows companies like Citrix, Dell, HP, IBM, Microsoft, NetApp and VMware to provide solutions for many of the issues brought up by the alliance and the usage model roadmap.

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Canada Gets Real About Seed Investing With New $45 Million Fund

If you need more proof that seed investing is taking over the world, just look up north to Canada. Three years ago, a group of angels started Montreal Startup, a $5 million seed fund. This week, they are launching their second, $45 million fund under a new name, Real Ventures. It will invest in startups across Canada from Montreal to Vancouver, but mostly within 250 kilometers of Montreal where most of the partners are based.

The partners include serial entrepreneur Austin Hill, John Stokes, and Jean-Sebastien Cournoyer, Daniel Drouet, Alan MacIntosh, and Mark MacLeod. The fund will invest in web, mobile, software, digital media, social and casual gaming startups.

A $45 million fund is small by venture capital standards, but it is actually quite large for a seed fund. New York City’s Founder Collective, for instance, is a $40 million fund. The more seed capital gets spread across different pockets of entrepreneurship, the more chance there will be for new startup hubs to grow or feed into the bigger hubs in California and, increasingly, New York. You can learn more about Real Ventures and its investing philosophy in this blog post.

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Borders’ Kobo Adds Newspaper, Magazine Subscriptions

Want an alternative to the Amazon Kindle/Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader duopoly? Borders’ Kobo is always a choice, and now there’s word that you can newspapers and magazines on there, “there” being the the Kobo Wireless eReader device as well as the iOS Apps.

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Nice Knowing You, Nook

The new Nook Color has been revealed, and it’s a 7? Android tablet with a color LCD touchscreen. Talk about bringing a knife to a knife fight when someone else already brought a gun.

It was the wrong move for Barnes & Noble to change horses mid-race. The only thing e-readers (and this is supposed to be an e-reader, make no mistake) have as a defense against the tablet onslaught is their superior (and rapidly improving) e-ink displays. Amazon knows this, and they know that a huge proportion of their sales are black-and-white. The color stuff market is ceded to tablets — they can have it, too, because e-readers already own the book market. Barnes & Noble just got greedy.

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Why Use UberCab When Calling A Cab Is Cheaper?

Last week San Francisco car matching startup UberCab was served a cease and desist order by the city of San Francisco because it did not have taxi licenses or taxi insurance and went beyond the normal scope of a limo service by picking people up right away.

As UberCab (which has now changed its name to Uber) serves primarily tech industry elite, there is much Internet debate over whether this is another case of “Innovation vs. Establishment” or a startup just straight up breaking the law.

Perhaps someone in the San Francisco Metro Transit Authority or the Taxi Dispatch service should pay a visit to Quora, where the “Why would anyone use UberCab when you can just call 415-333-3333 and quickly get a cab for a much lower price?” thread has reached epic proportions (with one Quora user reporting that a SF cab driver actually stole money from him).

Perhaps the most amazing answer comes from Micheal Wolfe, the CEO of JoinWire, who hilariously breaks down the typical SF taxi user experience.

Here is how it works:

You call the number. You get a busy signal, or no one answers.

You call again, nothing.

You get a second phone, you dial Yellow on one and Desoto on the second and hit redial over and over again with both of your thumbs until one answers.

Your wife grabs two more phones and does double redial.

Finally it picks up. You wait on hold for 7 minutes.

A dispatcher answers. He barks, “10 minutes!” then hang up on you (it is always 10 minutes).

You wait 23 minutes with your grandma in the rain.

You call back and repeat the redial/hold routine.

You tell the dispatcher, your guy didn’t show. He says, “10 minutes!” and hangs up on you.

23 more minutes later you give up and go wander around the neighborhood hoping a cab randomly drives by.

You are 53 minutes late for your event raising money for children with sarcoma. Your friends ask if you really do care about the children.

38 minutes later a taxi driver arrives and knocks on your front door. The babysitter answer and says you are not there. The cabbie screams at her and makes the kids cry.

(And if a taxi does show, you get a guy driving like mad with the windows rolled down, cell phone in one hand, and radio blaring).

“You wait 23 minutes with your grandma in the rain” is pretty much spot on here.

Like in the case of Airbnb, UberCab in the fortunate/unfortunate position of being a catalyst for industry change. There’s something not quite right about regulations that allow for a dispatched cab to pick up another fare instead of completing its original transaction. Especially when they make it impossible for a service that has obvious consumer demand and puts idle drivers to work to continue its business.

UberCab, which has $1.25 million in funding from First Round Capital, is still in operation, risking a $5,000 fee every time a cab gets sent out and threat of 90 days in jail per each day it’s still running.

Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for that Taxi Magic cab I called last Tuesday.

Thanks: Matt Van Horn

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Want A Free Google TV? Become A Developer; Google Is Giving Away 10,000

Google TV is now out there in the wild. There’s no indication of how it’s selling just yet, but my hunch is that like early Android, it may be some time before sales really take off. That shouldn’t be too surprising considering that the platform is built on top of Android. But there aren’t a lot of apps and sites yet that are tailored for these new devices. They need more. And they know the way to get them. Free giveaways!

As they’ve announced on their Google TV blog today, the search giant is giving away 10,000 Google TV units to developers. Yes, 10,000.

The give-away started this morning at the Adobe MAX conference where they dished out 3,000 units. And it will continue over the next couple of weeks as Google will patrol the Google Code forums to look for developers who sound even remotely interested in developing for the platform. Or you can submit a request to get a unit for development.

Says Google:

As we’ve always said, the coolest thing about Google TV is that we don’t even know what the coolest thing about it will be. The experience is in the hands of its users and developers, and everyone is invited. Come play.

The Google TV unit being given away is the Logitech Revue, a device which normally sells for $300.

Sadly, this giveaway is U.S.-only for the time being. And yes, they want some sort of proof that you are actually a developer that plans to make an app or optimized site for the platform. I’m thinking about learning Java to build a solid fart app for the platform to get a free unit myself.

Update: Google wanted to make it clear that these units are meant to spur developers into making optimized sites for Google TV — not necessarily app developers (not yet at least).

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Google Feels Bad For Killing Newspapers, Gives Journalism $5 Million In Charity

Google announced today that it intends to give away $5 million dollars to organizations trying to find innovative ways to continue the practice of Journalism.

Great. Anything that even vaguely creates more jobs for writers is okay in my book, especially when I look at my tally of how many times you guys say I should be fired.

Unfairly blamed for the decline of media by Rupert Murdoch and his ilk, perhaps the higher ups at Google feel bad about their status as scapegoat for the Internet’s detrimental effect on the news industry and that’s why they’re feeling so generous?

Google will be giving away $2 million to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, with $1 million going to the Knight News Challenge and $1 million going towards continuation of U.S. Journalism grant making, whatever that means.

The remaining $3 million will be spent internationally.

From Google:

“Journalism is fundamental to a functioning democracy. So as media organizations globally continue to broaden their presence online, we’re eager to play our part on the technology side—experimenting with new ways of presenting news online; providing tools like Google Maps and YouTube Direct to make websites more engaging for readers; and investing heavily in our digital platforms to enable publishers to generate more revenue.”

… And getting a $5 million dollar tax write-off. In any case, the media industry shouldn’t look a gift search engine in the mouth; With newspaper circulation dropping 5% since last year, any sort of cashflow is more than welcome, even if it is charity.

Image: Failblog

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Solar Millennium Gets The Greenlight To Build The World’s Largest Solar Project In California

The US solar market took another step forward this week with the federal government’s approval of Solar Millennium’s plan to build a massive thermal power station in Blythe, California. Located between Phoenix and Los Angeles in the arid Palo Verde Valley, this thinly populated city will soon be home to the world’s largest solar project.

The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management delivered the final greenlight, wrapping up a (relatively swift) year-long approval process. Technically, it is the government’s first approval of a parabolic trough power plant, which uses curved mirrors to direct the sun’s heat towards a pipe that contains a heat transfer fluid. The heat from this fluid helps create steam which ultimately powers a turbine

Solar Millennium, a German firm, plans to build four plants on the expansive property with a total capacity of 1,000 megawatts— which is roughly on par with the country’s current total solar capacity. With 1,000 MW at completion, the station would be able to power more than 300,000 homes.

The hope, the company says, is to start supplying the grid with electricity by 2013. In terms of regional economic impact, Solar Millennium predicts that the project will hire 1,000 people during the construction phase and 220 permanent workers (once its operational).

In the meantime, there’s quite a bit of construction to be done which will require significant financing. In a press release, the company said it has secured enough cash for the first wave of construction, which could begin as early as this year, but acknowledged that it is heavily dependent on government incentives and pending loans.

Speaking of the federal government’s approval, Solar Millennium’s CFO, Oliver Blamberger says, “This paves the way for the start of construction of the first two 242-MW plants before the end of the year…This is also good news for our advanced talks with the US Department of Energy on the loan guarantees for which we have applied. A successful conclusion of this process would secure more than two thirds of the financing volume of the first two planned power plants through the American Federal Financing Bank.”

As we mentioned in a post on Monday, the US solar market is ramping up significantly, with capacity expected to grow roughly 30x over the next 10 years to 44G. But the capital intensive industry will need to continue to raise heaps of private capital (and benefit from generous government policies) to get there.

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Thank You Sir (AOL), May We Have Another (Link)?

When AOL bought us a month ago, we were promised a lot of things: autonomy, resources, inappropriately long corporate meetings, and fame. So far, AOL has come through on the first three. But fame, by which I mean homepage love on aol.com, had thus far eluded us. But today that changed. Boy did it ever.

Yesterday, we got word from our corporate overlords that they were likely to test a link to one of our stories on their homepage in the near future. Today, when scanning our referrer logs, we noticed something interesting. A massively huge tidal wave of traffic from aol.com.

Just how huge was this wave of traffic? Let’s put it this way: so far today, AOL is not only the number one referrer to TechCrunch, it’s tripling the number two: Twitter. That’s just from one little link to one story on a rotating tile on the homepage. It’s fairly amazing.

I point this out for two reasons. One, to boast about this awesome power we now possess. Two, it’s a great reminder of the power of the big boys — even the ones you don’t really think about anymore. Both AOL and Yahoo still have two of the most trafficked homepages on the web. While they may have fallen out of favor with the tech elite, the so-called “normals” seem to love them. I have to assume these are also the same people that click on web ads.

So, in all seriousness, I’ll now nicely ask AOL: thank you sir, may we have another?

[image: Universal Pictures]

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Hands-On With the Nook Color

It’s obviously a little early for a full assessment of this new device but we do know a few things. It’s quite small and compact – much lighter than and iPad – and the UI is very handsome. Android users will be kind of miffed that the device doesn’t support the Android App Store, however, because B&N want’s a “curated experience.” So much for the openness of Android.

As a recent Nook convert, I’m excited for B&N if a little wary. At $249 the Nook Color is half the price of the iPad. However, don’t expect this to act as a full tablet computer. It isn’t. It’s B&N’s show and outside software isn’t invited.

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Barnes & Noble Reveals The Nook Color, Please Act Surprised

Well, well. The interweb rumor mill wins again. It’s been said for weeks that B&N was going to out a color Nook and sure enough, the bookseller did just that.

Android powers the second-gen Nook and it uses a 7-inch color, yep, color LCD for displaying the content. Since Android is inside, it’s slightly more than an ebook reader and slightly less than a tablet. There are social networking apps like Facebook and Twitter, along with the ability to display videos as well as the standard ebook content. Sounds a bit like some other devices, no?

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How Spotify Almost Sold To Google For $1 Billion, Plus New Apple Rumors

“Apple, Inc. (AAPL) in negotiations to acquire Spotify,” read the tip that came in yesterday via email from an anonymous source. Most tips are just outright false, but we dug into this one a little bit.

Here’s what we heard – Apple and Spotify are in on-again, off-again discussions about an acquisition, but at best it’s very early in the process. No firm price has been offered, no term sheet tabled. Still, it’s interesting that the two are talking.

But way more interesting is this – Last year, around the time that Apple acquired music service Lala, Google and Spotify were deep in acquisition discussions, says a source with knowledge of the negotiations.

Ultimately no deal happened, and the two companies tried to negotiate a deal to have Spotify pre-installed on all Android phones instead.

But the deal almost happened, says our source, and Google was going to pay nearly $1 billion for the service. Ultimately the deal went sideways because Google was demanding that all label deals be grandfathered in. And Spotify wanted a $800 million+ walk away fee if the deal faltered (Google had a similar provision in their Admob acquisition).

Here’s what “grandfathering” label deals means: The deals that music labels do with online music companies contain a provision that if the company is acquired, the deals terminate. That’s exactly what tripped up Facebook when they were looking to acquire or partner with a music startup a few years ago.

So if a company like Spotify gets great label deals, like they have in Europe, those deals have to be completely renegotiated if they’re acquired. It ends up making these companies largely un-buyable.

So the deal never happened. And Spotify is yet to launch in the U.S. after protracted but fruitless negotiations with U.S. music labels.

The service is apparently profitable in Europe based on really attractive deals with labels there. But those five year deals won’t last forever, and will need to be renegotiated soon. What Spotify needs is to launch in the U.S. and soon. Even without a free version.

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Twitter Hits 300 Employees As The Search For A New Office Continues

This past June, we noted that Twitter had zoomed past 200 employees — basically doubling in just six months. The rapid hiring pace continues at the startup, though not quite as quickly. The company has just hired their 300th employee a tweet confirms today.

And with that growth comes the need to expand. As we noted back in September, Twitter confirmed that at some point relatively soon they’d likely have to look at new office options. That search is getting close to coming up with a new place, we’ve heard. And they’re very likely to stay in the SoMa district of San Francisco. For their part, Twitter will only say they have “no updates on this right now“.

Digg layoffs aside, hiring seems to be booming in the tech space. Zynga is also about to open a new massive SoMA-based office that should accomodate up to 2,000 employees.

As a side note, it’s sort of interesting that the tweet today highlights that Twitter “just” hit 300 employees when co-founder Evan Williams’ post back on October 4 pointed out the same number. We’ll assume “full-time” might be the key there. Perhaps the other number counted contractors/part-timers. We’ve reached out to Twitter to clarify.

Update: Says Twitter:

We had 300 full-time + contractors + interns at that time. Now we have 300 full-time employees.

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The Top 5 PC Alternatives To The MacBook Air

Apple raised the bar on ultra-portable computers with the latest MacBook Air. There’s no questioning that. Steve Jobs & Co. took the already-thin MacBook Air and shrunk down both its physical size and price tag. Win win, right?

Well, yeah, but the MacBook Air isn’t for everyone. Good thing the PC world has been doing the ultra-portable thing just as long as Apple and offers some quality alternatives. Sure, there really isn’t one model that soundly beats the new MacBook Air in every category, but the same can be said about the Air versus the five computers listed after the jump.

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Amazon Touts Kindle Sales Numbers Without Sharing Kindle Sales Numbers

Unsurprisingly, the fourth quarter is usually the best sales period for the Kindle (and most retail products), but it looks like this year will be especially strong as more consumers flock to e-books. After announcing a new e-book loan feature last week, Amazon is revealing a number of new Kindle stats today in time for the holiday shopping rush.

According to the company, sales of the new generation Kindle devices have already surpassed total Kindle device sales from the holiday season of last year (October through December 2009).

Sales of individual Kindle titles are flying off the digital bookshelves. Amazon sold more than three times as many Kindle books in the first nine months of 2010 as in the first nine months of 2009. Amazon also said that Kindle book sales continue to overtake print on Amazon.com. This data is consistent with Q2 and Q1 Kindle numbers Amazon revealed during its earnings call in July. And in the past 30 days, Amazon.com customers purchased more Kindle books than print books, which includes both hardcover and paperback combined, for the top 10, 25, 100, and 1,000 bestselling books on Amazon.com.

In the three months since Amazon debuted the new Kindle, Kindle devices or Kindle-related items such as Kindle books and covers represented 15 of the top 15 bestselling items on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk combined. Of course, this dramatic growth is buoyed by the fact that e-book sales are rapidly growing (Amazon says sales are up 193 percent between January and August 2010). Kindle book sales growth during the same period exceeded this rate.

All of this growth sounds pretty great, but it’s really hard to accept these stats and data without the actual numbers of Kindles sold or e-books sold. Clearly, Kindles are big-sellers for the e-commerce giant (perhaps because the company slashed prices of the device to $139 for WiFi-only and $189 for the full-featured model). Amazon is notorious for sending out releases or news touting Kindle sales while never releasing the actual numbers (data which Apple reveals all the time).

For now, Kindle sales will continue to be one of the best-kept secrets in device land.

Also related: B&N will be releasing a color version of its Kindle competitor, the Nook, this week.

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Recycle old gadgets (and make a buck or two) with eBay Instant Sale

Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.

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AdMob Brings Interactive Video Ads To Android

Google’s recently purchased mobile ad network AdMob is announcing today that it is bringing interactive video ads to Android phones. AdMob already offers the video ad format for iPhones.

Similar to the iPhone formats, the new SDK for Android devices includes interactive video and interactive interstitial ad units. The ad network will dynamically identify screen resolution, size, and network connection speed to serve users the best ad for each device. And Android developers have more interactive options when including ads in their applications. The new ad units themselves can be placed when an app opens or within an app.

AdMob says that it has run over 120 video and interactive interstitial campaigns for clients such as Universal Pictures, Best Buy and Seattle’s Best Coffee. Google’s big push for AdMob has been the ability to serve interactive mobile ads across many mobile platforms, whereas single-platform options like iAd have been focused on only serving iOS devices, limiting reach for advertisers. Interestingly, Apple is also eying the video ad space and is rumored to be developing iAds for video.

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Nook Color revealed by overzealous screen protector?

By Sean Hollister posted Oct 24th 2010 9:14PM Barnes & Noble's done a pretty decent job of keeping a supposed Nook Color hidden from our prying eyes, but an errant accessory may have jumped the gun -- the "Nook Color Screen Film Kit," to be precise, whose product image is pictured immediately above. CNET discovered the protective film hanging out on Barnes & Noble's website, and quickly grabbed this picture before it could be removed. Even if we're legitimately looking at the new Nook, of course, this doesn't tell us much about the seemingly button-less product underneath. How's this: We'll go out on a limb and tell you it's got a color touchscreen.

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ASUS officially walks away from Garmin-Asus partnership

By Darren Murph posted Oct 25th 2010 11:46AM Chalk another up to the rumor mill. Just as we'd heard, the Garmin-Asus partnership will soon be no more. After a few arguably valiant attempts to break into the smartphone market, it seems as if ASUS is walking away in hopes of finding greener grass elsewhere. According to Reuters, an unnamed ASUS official has confirmed that it would be "ending its mobile phone cooperation agreement with Garmin." We're expecting the rest of the breakup details to roll tomorrow, but honestly, you'd turn the other cheek and move on if you were classy. But we both know that's not happening, right?

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Ray Ozzie Has Seen The Future, And It Looks A Lot Like Google

Just as Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie is preparing to step down, he’s leaving the software giant with a farewell memo outlining where the “Post-PC” world is headed. Titled “Dawn of a New Day,” it comes across as a dire warning for Microsoft to move faster away from its dependence on the PC towards “continuous services” in the cloud available across a wide array of “connected devices.”

Ozzie has hit upon some of these themes before, starting with a big-think memo five years ago called “The Internet Services Disruption.” Certainly his original concept of Microsoft Mesh was very much in this vein of syncing data across devices and the cloud. But Mesh has been years in the making, and is only now beginning to see the light of day in limited ways.

It is almost as if Ozzie is saying Microsoft didn’t completely get the message. After starting off this latest memo with some dutiful praise, he gets to the meat of his concerns:

Yet, for all our great progress, some of the opportunities I laid out in my memo five years ago remain elusive and are yet to be realized.

Certain of our competitors’ products and their rapid advancement & refinement of new usage scenarios have been quite noteworthy. Our early and clear vision notwithstanding, their execution has surpassed our own in mobile experiences, in the seamless fusion of hardware & software & services, and in social networking & myriad new forms of internet-centric social interaction.

What he describes sounds a lot like Google, which is pushing to remove the distinction between native apps and Web apps with the Chrome OS and Google Apps.

Google is also probably the furthest ahead in terms of syncing connected devices such as Android phones and Google TVs to the cloud. A general design principle Google follows is if your data is in the cloud, it should be available on all your devices. This is already true for Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Picasa. It’s also increasingly true for other apps.

The Send-To-Android feature, for instance, makes it easy to send links to phones which will then launch apps on those phones. Google extended that functionality to its Chrome browser. Android also updates apps over the air seamlessly.

Obviously, Google isn’t the only threat here. It certainly isn’t at the forefront of social networking (that would be Facebook). And perhaps that is where Microsoft can still find its footing, by creating a computing architecture that brings together devices, the cloud and social networks. Ozzie hints at this:

Tomorrow’s experiences will be inherently transmedia & trans-device. They’ll be centered on your own social & organizational networks. For both individuals and businesses, new consumption & interaction models will change the game. It’s inevitable.

Of course, Google also realizes how important social is going to become. But when you think about who is winning in social, neither company comes to mind.

Photo credit: Flickr/Dan Farber

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Barnes & Noble launching Nook Kids this week, set to be the Nook Color's killer app?

By Tim Stevens posted Oct 25th 2010 9:14AM Say what you want about the current spate of e-books, few will do anything to hold the interest of your three-year-old nephew. To those who like to keep peanut butter and jelly out of the keys if their Kindles that's a good thing, but for Barnes & Noble that's a business opportunity waiting to be tapped. According to The Wall Street Journal, the company will soon launch Nook Kids, a dedicated collection for young readers expected to start with an impressive selection of 12,000 titles. Many of those will be "enhanced," like the book Jamberry, having one page with falling blueberries that kids can pop with a tap. That seems to be further proof of a full touchscreen on the rumored Color Nook, expected to be unveiled this Tuesday. Later in the year look for a Nook Kids app on the iPad and other devices, so now might be a good time to start teaching little Joey about regular hand cleaning.

[Thanks, Carson R.]

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A Week In The Technology-Packed 2011 Ford Edge Sport

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Pioneer and Buffalo announce first 128GB BDXL optical disc burners for PCs

By Thomas Ricker posted Oct 25th 2010 3:18AM
The dream of burning 128GB of PC data onto a single optical disc just took a step closer to reality with the announcement of this BDXL burner (model BDR-206MBK) from Pioneer. Buffalo will ship it as both an external USB 2.0 model (BRXL-6U2) and internal SATA model (BRXL-6FBS-BK). The drive handles new 4-layer (128GB) and 3-layer (100GB) BD-R XL at 4x speeds in addition to 3-layer BD-RE XL and older BD-R/BD-R DL and BD-RE/BD-RE DL Blu-ray disc media. Pioneer will begin shipping the drive in November for an undisclosed price -- no word on pricing from Buffalo or when it'll have its act together to ship product.

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Acer Liquid Metal S120 spotted running Android 2.2 on AT&T bands in FCC

By Thomas Ricker posted Oct 25th 2010 1:48AM Rumors of a 3.6-inch 800 x 480 Liquid Metal handset from Acer have been heating up in recent months. Now the aluminum handset said to be housing an 800MHz Qualcomm MSM7230-1 processor just cleared the FCC sporting GSM/EDGE 850/1900 and WCDMA Band II and V making it the perfect candidate for an AT&T launch. The listing also confirms Android 2.2 Froyo, GPS, Bluetooth, and 802.11b/g/n WiFi on the tested model S120 DVT2 (that's Design Verification Test 2) prototype. With an October launch set for the UK, well, it won't be long before we see this babe in North America. A bit of documentary evidence after the break.

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Google revises internal privacy practices, appoints director of privacy

By Donald Melanson posted Oct 24th 2010 10:16PM Google's run into quite a number of privacy concerns in the past, and things hit something of a tipping point earlier this year when it was revealed that the company was snooping on WiFi data while it was collecting Street View images. Now Google has finally come back with some answers to some privacy questions it says it's been studying for the past several months. First and foremost is the appointment of Alma Whitten as the company's new directory of privacy, who will manage Google's privacy efforts across both engineering and product management, and ensure that the company builds "effective privacy controls" into its products and internal practices. Backing that up is some expanded privacy training, including a new program that all employees will be required to take beginning in December, and some new internal compliance procedures, which includes a requirement that every engineering project leader maintain a privacy design document for each project they're working on. Hit up the source link below for the company's complete statement on the matter.

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No custom ringtones for Windows Phone 7? (video)

We just sat through an eight minute long video of someone at Pocketnow sampling every ringtone on his HTC Surround. Why did we do this? Just wanted to see if we could stand it; suffice it to say, we never want to hear a ringtone again. Perhaps more importantly, our man points out that Microsoft seems to have left the ability to add your own custom ringtones out of Windows Phone 7 altogether. The Surround itself has a couple recognizable fan favorites that we recognize from AT&T and HTC phones past, so it looks like manufacturers and carriers will be able to bring their own to the table, but for the end user, it looks like you won't be able to roll your own -- at least for the time being. And now we're going to go put our phones on vibrate.

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How To Protect Your Login Information From Firesheep

TechCrunch reader Steve Manuel claims to have found a workaround to Firesheep, the controversial Firefox extension that allows anyone on an insecure open Wifi network to access user login info for almost every single social network in existence.

Firesheep banks on the fact that most social sites default to the HTTP protocol because it’s quicker. The already existing Firefox extension Force-TLS attempts to circumvent this by forcing those sites to use the HTTPS protocol, therefore making user cookies invisible to Firesheep.

Like the alternative option HTTPS Everywhere, the Force-TLS  Firefox extension allows your browser to change HTTP to HTTPS on sites that you indicate in the Firefox Add On “Preferences” menu, protecting your login information and ensuring a secure connection when you access social sites.

HTTPS encrypts user data, so if a script like Firesheep’s like tries to pull it, it can’t be read. Force-TLS forces a number of sites to make all of their requests over an SSL secured channel and while some sites, like Amazon, don’t currently have the secure option, the majors like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc all allow a HTTPS connection.

How to configure:

1. Download the plugin here and install into Firefox.

2. Open “Preferences” and add the domains you want to force the HTTPS connection with.

3. Restart Firefox.

Note: Unlike HTTPS Everywhere, Force-TLS relies on the user defining the sites they want to access through a secure HTTPS connection.

And while everyone should have learned by now that there’s always some privacy risk when interacting online, hopefully the installation of Force-TLS will at least put less of a damper on today’s stint at your local “free Wifi!” boasting cafe. I’m also looking into the possibility of equivalents for this extension on other browsers and will update this post as soon as I have alternative options.

Thanks: Steve Manuel

Teaser Image: Kevin Steele

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Viper SmartStart app goes to 2.0, gets potentially cheaper and throws roadside assistance into the mix

Directed Electronics Announces New Viper SmartStart™ Models with Lower Pricing and Free Roadside Assistance through the Viper Motor Club™

Vista, California (10-22-2010) - Directed Electronics today announced what it calls Viper SmartStart 2.0 – a comprehensive update to its award-winning Viper SmartStart product line, which allows users to control vehicle security and convenience features using their iPhone®, BlackBerry® or Android® smartphone.

Lower Pricing
With Viper SmartStart 2.0, Directed has dramatically lowered pricing, with dealers advertising Viper SmartStart as low as $199 as an add-on to compatible Viper systems. According to Mike Simmons, Executive VP of Directed Electronics, "We optimized the design and engineered costs out to put Viper SmartStart within reach of as many customers as possible."

"We created the smartphone car integration category last year with the launch of Viper SmartStart," said Simmons. "It's exciting to see all the attention the category has been getting lately, with OnStar® and many of the OEMs pre-announcing their products on the drawing board. It's clear that customers are very interested in controlling their car from their smartphone, and we will continue to lead this category by being first to market with the most advanced – and most affordable – solutions."

Viper Motor Club
Locked out? Dead Battery? Need a tow? Viper SmartStart's got your back. Free roadside assistance now comes with Viper SmartStart 2.0. Customers in a bind can access the Viper Motor Club with just the push of a button in the Viper SmartStart app. And this is just one of many features Directed will be adding starting in the 4th Quarter. "We are focused on delivering a simple and affordable smartphone solution with features that drivers really value, including the new Viper Motor Club," added Simmons.

"It is hard to believe we launched Viper SmartStart just one year ago," said Kevin Duffy, President of Directed Electronics. "Viper SmartStart received an onslaught of media attention, and introduced a completely new product category in mobile electronics. We expect the launch of Viper SmartStart 2.0 to drive a whole new wave of customer interest over the next few months, especially with cold weather on its way."

The new Viper SmartStart 2.0 Module (VSM200) can add SmartStart capability to the millions of cars on the road with Viper systems installed. Now most Viper remote start and security systems installed since 2003 are SmartStart compatible. In addition, two new complete Viper SmartStart systems are being introduced: Dealers are advertising the Viper VSS3000 Remote Start System as low as $299, while the Viper VSS5000 Security with Remote Start System is being advertised as low as $499. For more information including a store locator, please visit www.viper.com/smartstart

About Directed Electronics

Headquartered in Southern California, Directed Electronics is the largest designer and marketer in North America of consumer-branded vehicle security and remote start systems (sold under Viper®, Clifford®, Python®, Autostart® and other brand names). Directed Electronics is also a supplier of mobile audio products sold principally under the Orion® brand name, and digital OEM Integration products sold under the XPRESSKIT® brand name. Directed Electronics markets its broad portfolio of products through many channels including leading national retailers and specialty chains throughout North America and around the world. Founded in 1982, the company's primary operations are located in Vista, California and Quebec, Canada. For more information, please visit www.directed.com. Directed Electronics is a business unit of DEI Holdings, Inc.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this news release that are not historical fact constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements typically are identified by the use of terms such as "may," "should," "might," "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate" and similar words, although some may be expressed differently. Shareholders and other readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause the actual results of DEI Holdings to be materially different from historical results or from any results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These factors include competition in the consumer electronics industry, development of new products and changing demand of customers, reliance on certain key customers, decline in consumer spending, reliance on certain manufacturers and their ability to maintain satisfactory delivery schedules, disruption in supply chain, shortages of components and materials, economic risks associated with changes in social, political, regulatory, and economic conditions in the countries where the company's products are manufactured, quality installation of products by customers, significant product returns or product liability claims, compliance with various state and local regulations, risks with international operations, impairment of goodwill and intangible assets, claims related to intellectual property, ability to service debt obligations, restrictive terms of the company's senior secured credit facility, vulnerability to increases in interest rates, disruption in distribution centers, ability to raise additional capital if needed, dependence on senior management, ability to realize on investments made in the business, and integration of acquired businesses. Certain of these factors, as well as various additional factors, are discussed from time to time in the reports filed by DEI Holdings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. DEI Holdings disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iPod, iPod touch, and iTunes are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc.

Other trademarks, service marks and trade names appearing in this release are the property of their respective owners.

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Symbian Foundation winding down operations?

By Chris Ziegler posted Oct 25th 2010 2:12PM 2010 hasn't exactly been a banner year for Symbian, with Symbian^3 getting lipstick-on-a-pig reviews via the just-launched Nokia N8, top-tier supporter Samsung moving on, and chief exec Lee Williams either quitting or being shown the door. On that note, it comes as little surprise that doomsday rumors are starting to swirl -- and The Register is citing a "source close to Symbian" as saying that new CEO Tim Holbrow is under orders to square things away for closure while some employees have apparently already been offered severance packages. Seeing how Sammy was one of the Foundation's primary sponsors (along with Nokia and Sony Ericsson), it's reasonable to believe that they're finding themselves in a cash pinch -- and now that Nokia is de-emphasizing the concept of Symbian^4 altogether, it seems like there might be little work for these guys left... especially considering that Sony Ericsson has no new Symbian products in the pipe. Putting a CFO in charge of a company is often a sign that the bottom line -- not product innovation -- is the priority, and realistically, there's never been a better time for Nokia to bring things back in-house since other manufacturers have moved on and MeeGo isn't ready for prime time just yet. Time to call Symbian dead? Far from it, but a major shake-up is starting to feel inevitable.

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LDK Solar Inks $300 Million Deal With BYD

Several big names in solar have settled from recent highs on Wall Street, but there’s still a lot of money running into the sector.

On Monday morning, LDK Solar announced that it has locked up a new two-year sales deal with Chinese juggernaut BYD worth roughly $300 million. Under the deal, LDK will provide monthly shipments of polysilicon starting on January 2011.

It’s another win for the solar wafer manufacturer, which earlier this month raised its third quarter revenue guidance about 7% to a range of $610 to $640 million. In addition to raising its outlook, LDK noted that shipments of solar wafers and modules were outpacing demand.

For its part, the diversified BYD— which makes everything from automobiles to mobile phone batteries— has made no secret of its ambitions in green tech.

Earlier this year BYD announced that it will spend more than $3 billion over five years to construct one of China’s biggest solar power battery plant in Shangluo. Meanwhile, the company has also been working on large-scale energy storage solutions and their all-electric vehicle, the e6, is being prepped for a US debut. Although BYD (which Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has a 10% stake in) has struggled this year amid soft demand in China’s auto market, the company has seemingly maintained its aggressive stride in the green sector.

“We are very excited to add BYD, a leading high-tech enterprise that has a strong commitment to the green energy sector, as a key customer,” LDK’s CEO, Xiaofeng Peng said in a statement.

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HTC 7 Pro squares away its FCC approval?

By Chris Ziegler posted Oct 25th 2010 12:31PM So, here's what we know: a Windows Phone from HTC just earned its FCC wings, it's production (meaning non-prototype) hardware... and it's a CDMA device. That alone is notable considering that Microsoft has said that CDMA won't be available until the first half of next year, and here we are in October with an FCC-approved, production-ready device waiting in the wings already. We're not the type to be floating conspiracy theories, but could it be that we're dealing with an artificial delay here, or is the CDMA software stack really that far away from being solid? Anyhow, if we had to guess, this is probably the tilt-sliding 7 Pro, seeing how that's the only CDMA Windows Phone 7 device to bow so far, equipped with 802.11b / g / n alongside Bluetooth + EDR. Sprint, let's make this happen.

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Jolicloud prepping a netbook of its own

What do you do if you're the maker of a popular netbook operating system? Create your own netbook, of course! Okay, it does seem like a rather odd step, but Jolicloud CEO Tariq Krim tweeted a few teaser images this morning and then confirmed with the exclusive shot above that the software company is in fact working with a hardware partner to create its own 10.1-inch netbook. The details are fairly slim at the moment, but Krim did share that the mini-laptop will boot Jolicloud 1.1 and be primarily aimed at those in the 12 to 25 age range. As for specs, your guess is as good as ours at this point, although he boasted that it will be able to rock 720p video. We can't tell much from the picture above, but it sure does have a funky lid, VGA port and a few USB sockets. Pricing and availability are being firmed up now, but it will apparently hit for under $500 and before those long-awaited Chrome OS netbooks. That's not really saying much at this point since we've been wondering about the whereabouts of those Chrome-books for almost a half a year now, but hit the gallery below for a few more mysterious shots and we'll promise to fill you in on the details when we hear more.

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