As of a month ago Trader's title had been downgraded to VP of Partnerships and Studio Services, although no top sales or business development replacement executive has yet been named.

Why is he gone? No one is saying. CEO Mark Pincus says only AT [Andrew Trader] and zynga have parted ways. He made an awesome contribution. We need to continue scaling the company. Trader hasn't yet returned a phone call asking for his comment.

Zynga's revenue growth has been nothing short of astronomical over the last 18 months, so it would be hard to blame him for not bringing in the dollars. Perhaps he took the fall for the Scamville saga although that has largely blown over now.

Trader was with Zynga nearly three years, so he's vested on a lot of his stock. Given how much money is at stake, the whole story about why the first cofounder of Zynga has left the building may never come out. Zynga raised $180 million in December 2009, at a rumored valuation of above $2 billion.

And no, I have no idea why he's holding a banana in the picture.

AdMob, the hotly contested mobile advertising company that was eventually acquired by Google in November 2009, published its monthly mobile metrics report. In addition to the report, they included survey results of existing iPhone users about their fondness for the iPad.

One in six iPhone owners intend to purchase an iPad much lower than Palm owners (one in nine) and even lower still for owners of Android phones (one in seventeen). Does this mean that Stevie J. is right that there is a need for a device in between a laptop and a smarthphone or are we iPhone owners just a bunch of fanboys/girls?

Probably a little of both.

Regardless, it does indicate that there is a preliminary market for the iPad that numbers in the millions of units.

Are you going to buy an iPad? What kind of phone do you own?

[Press Release] [AdMob Blog]

Disclosure: http://dsclzr.us/0

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One in Six iPhone Owners Intend to Buy an iPad is a post from: The Magical Tablet

While the saga between TechCrunch and Fusion Garage continues, the latter company is moving forward with the launch of the controversial web tablet, now called JooJoo. While it's not the magical tablet that inspired this blog (In African, the word joujou' means magical device.') Fusion Garage thinks they've got a winner on their hands.

For the same $499 that Apple intends to charge for an entry-level iPad with 140,000 available apps, Fusion Garage will provide you with a browser-based tablet without any capability to run and install local applications. It also lacks a 3G wireless option of any kind, relying solely on WiFi.

But what does the JooJoo have that iPad doesn't?

For starters, a 12.1 inch LCD touch screen in a widescreen aspect ration that we're more accustomed to seeing these days. And you can use all of that screen to render full HD quality video but only from your favorite video sites since the device has only 4 GB of SSD storage not nearly enough to store HD content of any real duration. It has the front-facing camera for videoconferencing that so many people feel is lacking in iPad as well as a USB port, though what one might do with that port is still unknown. As for the software, it's a Linux variant running a Webkit browser that will support both Adobe Flash 10.1 and Java.

So, do they have a winning device?

They may have had one before the iPad announcement, but not now not at that price point and limited functionality, anyway.

You can pre-order the JooJoo now which is expected to ship in 8 to 10 weeks though the site has indicated that time horizon for some time. If you're considering a JooJoo you may want to contact them for an update on a ship date, though the latest word from company executives is late Februrary.

Will you JooJoo?

[JooJoo]

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Will You JooJoo? is a post from: The Magical Tablet

• Windows Phone 7: First Videos
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• Apple to wrap digital books in FairPlay copy protection [Clarified]
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  Same old trick. Find what users are searching for, then fake 'em out! [Mashable]
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  Math teacher Dan Meyer puts a year's worth of personal metrics into the incredible video below. [dy/dan]
• 
  
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  If you develop for the iPhone and App Store proper, Apple's not going to reward your spare-time hacking. [Boy Genius Report]

SFWeekly Web Editor Alexia Tsotsis (not pictured left) spent some time early this morning trying out Chatroulette, a website that connects random strangers for a video chat. The results are unlikely to surprise you. Unless you are new to this whole Internet thing. Screen shots of some of her more entertaining chats are below the post.

Harkening back to the days of A/S/L, the random vidchat service Chatroulette is one of those online arenas where not being a white male looking to get off puts you in a definite minority. Founded by a 17 year-old Russian high school student named Andrew Ternovskiy, the service is a more successful Omegle, combining elements of the MTV show Next with vidchat capabilities.

Aspiring chatees click to play and as an escape latch you or your partner can hit Next anytime if you get bored, scared, or have to get back to work. The Report video as inappropriate button also seems to provide some comfort, but by judging by the nsfw fare served to me last night, doesn't provide much of a threat.

I pressed play last night at around 3:00 am PST and after about 45 clicks on Next encountered 5 straight up penis shots, a lot of camera disabled chats, two women who automatically clicked Next once they figured out that I too was a female, and a lot of very grateful looking guys, including a Chinese fan of Google and a French guy in indoor sunglasses, who asked me whether I was a more dominate lady or submissive woman in the hope that I would be the former.

Out of the 10,920 of my fellow Chatroulette participants, my Roulettees were a good cross section of Internet humanity. And while I did not encounter the suicide hanging videos alluded to in many of the chats, things like did you hear the one about the guy who shot himself in the bath tub, were brought up in conversation quite a few times, as examples of just how crazy Chatroulette can get.

Anywhere you get a mass of people communicating uncensored (and yes much like 4chan.org, China has not yet blocked Chatroulette) will be subject to typical groupthink behavior like urban myths and requests for interaction better left to the casual encounters section of Craigslist. Nonetheless, the service's potential for more substantial acts of communication is formidable.

Chatroulette is what you'd expect it to be, micro-interactive reality TV with a large heaping of cybersex. While most people are (whether they admit it or not) voyeurs the fact that Chatroulette lets the both participants see each other limits the site's potential user base to the weirdos and despite piquing VC Fred Wilson's interest it doesn't seem like there's currently enough weirdos to turn the humble startup into something mainstream.

One Roulettee, when asked what he thought the service was most useful for, responded, connecting with people around the world. Yeah, and asking them to show you their boobs.

1. The Answers market is in a land grab mode
Unlike eBay, where there's a general market for goods and you get huge network effects from having a critical mass of buyers and sellers, StackOverflow is all about niches. People who are searching for how to make sql server not go slow? aren't likely to bleed over to how to make swedish meatballs?.

This means that you'll have to fight for every niche. Similar to how general forums would have to fight for every niche. Just because you have a forum site that's big for gamers, you won't have much of an edge attracting foodies.

Finally, it's not like this is a new idea with no other entrants. Look at Yahoo Answers for a site that's still up with a similar model and look at Google Answers for another that couldn't be turned into a worthwhile business and closed.

2. Stack Overflow is like Starbucks
It really isn't. Starbucks can use capital efficiently because they have big capital expenditures securing land, building out stores, and purchasing coffee machines. Where's the capital intensity part of starting another answers site? Adding another server? Coming up with a new design?

It doesn't seem like Stack Overflow can efficiently use big money for anything but advertising itself. Which is kinda funny when the whole business is about getting page views to sell for ad crumbs. It also rings very much like dot-com. Remember when all you had to do was get eyeballs? Oh, it's free? Who cares, let's make it up on volume!

3. Stack Overflow wants to get on Techcrunch
If you're listing the publicity of Stack Overflow raises $10M in Series A by Fancy Schmancy VC as the 3rd pro for taking money, you're bound to be in trouble. The Techcrunch post you're going to get from this is going to scroll off the front page in 4 hours and nobody who's actually going to use your service is going to care.

Do you think people looking for an answer to how do I get the three gold rings in zelda? is going to give a hoot who's money you're burning to provide that forum? Or even that the advertisers you're hoping to attract is going to look at anything else than CPM and demographics for a clue on whether to invest? No.

4. The investor will give you advice, connections, and introductions
They may, but most of the introductions your typical investor is going to give you is how to get you out in 3-5 years. You can find a lot of advice in many places. Rarely is the quality of the advice associated with having money involved of largely superior quality.

And if you end up building something of considerable value, then the connections and introductions will come all by themselves. You usually have to work to fight them off with a stick when things are going great. And getting an intro to Mr. Very Important Person before you have anything of material value is usually not going to give you much anyway.

5. Taking money means big exit or IPO
I'd argue the opposite. When you take money, your exit is bound to be smaller unless you're playing the Web 2.0 lottery game (where a few lucky contestants gets bought for sums completely uncorrelated to business fundamentals). Taking money means giving up equity, which means there'll be less left over if you happen to build something that's valuable enough for others to buy.

And I don't know if you've heard, but the IPO markets aren't all that interested in eyeball companies without the numbers to back them up any more. Doesn't matter how many letters of the alphabet you've used for series whatever funding before you got there.

If you can build a great, profitable business, you'll have all the options to sell or go IPO. Taking VC only complicates that.

6. Taking VC will make your company successful
This one is funny. So if you're not looking to take VC and play the Web 2.0 lottery or aim for an early exit, you're just in it for personal aggrandizement. If you take the money, you just want the best for your business. Spot the disconnect here.

Now even given all this, there's actually still an argument for why Joel should take the money. It'll probably lower the chances of Stack Overflow ultimately succeeding as a long-term sustainable business, but if he has eyed that he has a hot property right now, it'll be a good time to take some money off the table.

A fool and his money will soon be departed applies equally to venture capitalists as it does to everyone else. If Joel and co. can negotiate a deal with Sand Hill road to give them a nice payout as part of the deal, this might well be even better than trying to shop around Stack Overflow for a sale that it's probably premature for.

Much better to take a small slice of the proceeds from a if this just get 1% of the billion dollar advertising market than to take the slice from how much money did you make for the past 12 months? of a strictly look-at-the-books sale.

Go cherries, go!

In December 2008, Six Apart acquired Pownce, a microblogging service that never managed to attract a large following. Pownce was shuttered after the acquisition, but its two-person team joined Six Apart to help integrate the technology into Six Apart's blogging services. Today Pownce founder Leah Culver has written on her blog that she's leaving Six Apart, where she spent the last year working on its TypePad and TypePad Motion products. Culver writes that her next project is developing an iPhone application for Plancast.

Despite reports to the contrary, Culver isn't joining Plancast full time (at least not yet). Plancast founder (and TechCrunch alum) Mark Hendrickson says that she's joining on a contract basis to build the iPhone app, but that the long-term future is uncertain. Culver's blog notes that she might continue working on Leafy Chat, a web based IRC client that's in private beta.

One thing worth pointing out: Culver and Mike Malone were Pownce's only engineers, and they were absorbed into the Six Apart team as part of the acquisition. Malone left Six Apart just over a year after the acquisition to join SimpleGeo, and now Culver has left just a few months later. It looks like they had a one-year post acquisition cliff, and given their departures soon thereafter, it's possible the integration of Pownce's technology didn't work out as they might have hoped.

Image by hyku

My Thoughts On Techcrunch And Daniel Brusilovsky

Today, the other key part of the equation has just gone live in the App Store, the PAYware Mobile app. This free application, when paired with the hardware, allows you to use your iPhone to easily accept credit card payments, just as Square does. Still, as Dorsey noted in the original video we took with him (second video below), Square is being aimed at a broader market of people who may not have merchant accounts but still wish to be able to accept payments. Also, while VeriFone's hardware is clearly better designed for use with the actual iPhone, Square's method of using the headphone jack is so that it will be able to be used with other mobile devices eventually (Square is currently working on an Android app, for example). VeriFone promises support for other platforms as well, but this particular hardware unit will only work with an iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS.

VeriFone also clearly believes its solution is the safer bet for merchants thanks to its secure payment gateway. Truth be told, running transactions on this device does feel a bit safer than Square's, but there are also a range of confusing options. And setting the thing up is kind of a pain. You're also paying for this extra security. VeriFone's solution has a $49 activation fee, along with a monthly fee of $15 on top of the 17 cents you're paying on each transaction. Square gives its hardware and accounts away for free, but plans to take a small percentage of each transaction. This will be an interesting battle to watch.

Watch a quick demo of VeriFone PAYware Mobile in the video below. You can order the hardware here. And you can find the app in the App Store here.

Editor's note: This a guest post written by Joff Redfern. Redfern is the co-founder of FlattenMe.com, a site for creating personalized storybooks. He was formerly a vice president of product at Yahoo, where he managed Yahoo Buzz and Toolbar.

Amazon Kindle: The Road Ahead

I'm a recent Kindle fan boy. I like the instant access to earth-friendly books, the paper-like display and the way it fits in my hand like a paperback. I've also deeply admired the crispness of the Kindle visionany book, any language, in minutes. But with Apple's iPad announcement the playing field on which the Kindle competes shifts and the disruptive technology itself gets disrupted.

If I were running the Kindle I would answer this question today: Are we innovating the publishing or the entertainment industry? Is the Kindle just for my reading entertainment or is it for watching, listening, gaming, browsing, sharing photos, and communicating with friends & family too? Ultimately the answer is shaped by consumer preference, competitors and time measured in years.

As a product guy this is a really intriguing question to try to unravelwhich path should Amazon choose? Over time this is what may push the Kindle into being more than just a reader . . .

For the same price, more is better

Will consumers prefer a multi-purpose entertainment tablet over a single-purpose reading device as their prices converge? This is a religious question; sides will be drawn. I look to the evolution of my own personal technology habits for the answer.

When I wanted to manage my contacts I started with a paper-based Address Book, upgraded to a Digital Rolodex, upgraded to a Palm V, upgraded to a Blackberry, then upgraded to an iPhone. Fundamentally I was trying to solve how I manage and communicate with my contacts. With each upgrade I got more functionality yet the price point for each device was not radically different.

If consumers can eventually get an entertainment tablet that also has the core features of a great reader (screen, content catalog, ease of purchasing) at under $200 they'll want more.

Prices drop. Over time, price won't be a factor in the purchase decision.

Today, Kindle enjoys a price advantage over the iPad. It is nearly half the price, starting at $260 versus $500 for the iPad, although the cheapest Kindle DX with an equivalent 9.7 inch screen is $489. That is pretty close already. What happens when the price of iPad-like devices trend down to a point of consumer indifference?

Moore's Law and business model innovation will drive the iPad-like devices to sub-$200 pricing. Unrealistic? The retail price of the iPhone 8GB dropped ~83% in 3 years from $599 to $99.

Also keep in mind that entertainment tablets are using different math from the Kindle. The device pricing will be subsidized by multiple revenue streamsdownloads of books, music, movies, games, apps, advertising, and more. Today I can get a cell phone device for free, will my iPad be free some day?

Competitors are playing a platform war. Is Kindle?

Apple, Google and Microsoft have massive investments in their respective mobile platforms. In particular, Apple is king of the mobile mountain. As Jobs declared today, Apple is now the largest mobile device company in the world.

This Apple sizzle has drawn 100,000+ developers and publishers to its iPhone (and now iPad) ecosystem. These apps are already available to entertain us in all sorts of ways on the iPad beyond what Apple exec Scott Forstall showed today.

Amazon knows this. Last week they announced a developer API is coming. So the question remains how robust is the API and will the developer community bite, or is it game over?

What would you do if you ran the Kindle?

Folks were a bit disappointed early on in the iPad announcement when it started to sound like it'd be WiFi only but there was a twist!

Late in the show, Steve Jobs announced that their will be 3G-enabled models. While Apple specifically named AT&T as the carrier who will offer up the 3G, he also stated that all iPads will be sold unlocked. It relies on GSM microSIMs so while you'll be able to take it around the world, don't expect to take it over to Verizon or any other CDMA carrier.

The pricing of 3G through AT&T is a bit strange; you can pick up 250 Megabytes of data for the stupidly expensive price of $14.99, or unlimited data for the surprisingly cheap price of $30.

Alas, 3G support doesn't come built into every model. Nothing in life is free, right? Gettin' a 3G chip thrown in will set you back an additional $130 bucks on the most expensive model, the 64GB edition, that brings the price up to $829. The 16 and 32 gigabyte models with 3G support will cost $629 and $729 respectively.

Alas, the 3G-enabled versions will take a bit longer to hit the shelves than their WiFi-only brethren; whereas the WiFi-only versions will be in stores within 60 days, Apple expects the 3G-friendly iPads to reach retail in 90.

Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies

For now, follow the CrunchGear guys do a little pre-show commentary starting at 9:30 AM PT.

Today, as I am sure you have noticed, I'm short on my five blog posts a day by about . . . um, five. That is until now.

I've been down with a bug all day and feeling a little better thanks to a great post from Bruno Giussani on his blog Lunch Over IP. The post is titled, Tips for Conference Bloggers, and includes an incredibly insightful and well designed PDF cheat sheet.

His post from a little over two years ago holds strong today and is resonating with me enough to crank this post out. Timing is important in this case since we are beginning a new conference season with mega events like SXSW on the horizon.

I spent nearly the entire last week at CES and had my pride handed to me by this monster trade show/conference/press extravaganza. I was ill prepared for everything that the event would throw at me and approached it like an average conference. This is a mistake I won't repeat.

What I learned at CES was that there are two types of attendees: those doing business and those covering the event. Those in the first category are more concerned with parties, sales and future business relationships. Those in the latter are analyzing, comparing and framing the event for publication.

Publishing from CES is a formidable process. Most press covering the event have teams of people dedicated to gathering information and creating media needed for a final publications. This is a smart move for an event with over 100k attendees.

In addition to the excellent PDF from Giussani's post that addresses the 95% of the concerns of a blogger in 2010 there is 5% that could be added for the here and now. There are new event realities and technologies that can enhance his original thoughts.

1. MiFi is a must have for connectivity. This is especially important for Giussani's rule of blogging an even no later that 10 minutes after it has ended. Conferences don't as often have wifi available as they did back then except in a few locations like press or blogger lounges.

2. Photo/Video lighting gear. Get used to shooting in dark to minimal light and learning your cameras settings well. Check your first few shots or reel to view the quality and make corrections as needed. Much of this can be enhanced with lighting rigs that will allow you to get the shots you need when they happen . . . not when you are ready for them with white balance or aperture settings.

3. Backup workflow. You have a machine that you love and take every where with you, right? What happens when it goes down? Before the event or during you should have a backup plan for gear failure so that it doesn't destroy your workflow. Blogging an event can be difficult in the first place, but when the workflow you went into the even is disrupted it can be detrimental to timely coverage.

4. Speak to previous attendees of the events you are going to be covering. This falls under the guidelines on page 6 of the PDF of collaboration. However, this is a proactive measure before the conference begins so that you can understand what obstacles you might be up against.

5. When the authors recommend having fun, it shouldn't just be at the end of the day for parties or networking. It should be throughout the day. It is counterproductive to be worried during the day about connectivity, media fails or missed opportunities. If something happens that you're not happy with, put it in the back of your mind or write a note down for it and move on. Dwelling on something that you can't do over is to your detriment and that of your readers ro viewers.

Please head over to Bruno Giussani's blog and download the PDF that he has made available. Even if you're not blogging a conference or trade show, there is great value in these tips for any writer publishing to the web.

Image: Screen shot of the PDF cover (Bruno Giussani).

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How To: Conference Blogging is a post from: TechStartups.com

In my search for information about the world, what matters to me and what is good, I go no farther than an application that I wrote called Filome. I've talk about it quite a bit here at Tech Startups.

It's an app that is about 85% of the way there and is relegated being updated when I have spare time. Which in the last 8 months hasn't been very often. One of the things it is brilliant at though is helping me find what is relevant to me and what I want to write about.

About 30 minutes ago it was tablet computers. But instead of writing about them and adding to the noise, I thought that I would share my filter a tablet computer group from Filome.

First there is the feed for those that want to get right to it - http://www.filome.com/group/ksmith/1/tablet%20computers.rss

Below are the latest 25 posts regarding tablet computing. All linking to the original posts. Find one and follow it down the rabbit hole. Enjoy! (Remember: If you want to stay updated subscribe to the feed link above)

1. You Can Take It With You: Future Trends in Media
2. Who needs tablet computers anyway?
3. Can Android Tablets Find a Market?
4. Why I Hate Ereaders, And Doubt They'll Ever Hit the Mainstream [Ebooks]
5. Why Google Should Make a Tablet [Opinion]
6. Apple to Launch iTunes on the Web
7. Analyst noise: Apple tablet in March for $1k, publishers on-board, Verizon iPhone coming too
8. Apple Tablet Release Date Gets Narrowed Down, Prices Get Estimated
9. Which Companies Will Win The Battle For The E-Book Consumer?
10. A New, Now Netbook You Can Actually Buy: PsiXpda
11. Analysts Predict 1 Billion+ Mobile Web Users by 2010
12. Time Inc. shows off magazine tablet demo, plans future anger about 70/30 profit split
13. Apple tablet rumored to be 'shockingly' inexpensive
14. Apple Registers TabletMac Trademark After Dueling Axiotron MacBook Modders [AppleTablet]
15. Using the Apple LP and Extras format for learning?
16. NVIDIA Tegra tablet prototype hands-on
17. What If Steve Jobs Hadn't Returned To Apple In 1997?
18. Hearst, Time, Conde iTunes For Magazines Only A Few Weeks Away
19. DigiTimes Claims Apple Tablet Delayed for OLED Upgrade [Rumor]
20. Apple tablet(s) in 2H 2010 with OLED screen and tailored content in tow?
21. Cond Nast Gets Wired Ready For Apple Tablet (In Case There Is One)
22. Adobe Air hits 2.0 this is powerful stuff
23. The death of the URL
24. Apple tablet speculation: high-end graphics, several models
25. Bookmark Away: Instapaper Comes Up With A New Way To Work With The Kindle

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Tablets, tablets, tablets The Next Devices is a post from: TechStartups.com

User: Taminania
Location: Norway
Occupation: Psychologist

These sound like the character sketch for the lead in a science fiction piece about some dystopian future. Maybe a future ruled through a bot-mediated reality? Sorry, just had to touch on yesterday's post about that.

The information above is true in fact. She is a social psychologist in Oslo, Norway that goes by the user name Taminania on Google Reader. And she shares about 20 blog posts on average from her subscription list daily. I have never met or spoken with Taminania but she is a rock star in my world. A smart rock star.

She isn't the leader of a rogue group fighting for survival in the aforementioned dystopian world. She is a passionate psychologist that seeks out high quality content online in her field then shares it online. In this sharing process the door opens wide to accept her recommendations, nearly tacit, that allow those that come across her Google Reader shared feed enlightened.

In every example of the site that I have built to capture and continue filtering her shared feed, and that of about 59 others, I talk about her shares. By filtering the master feed that Taminania creates through daily user activity I am able to glean what I find most valuable and let the rest flow on by.

Example:

I have created a group called Taminania Science. Where I filter down the entire content database to shares from Tamihania, from any publisher and with the keywords augmented, brain, reality, science, research.

Which currently yields the following results:

1. To Make Memories, New Neurons Must Erase Older Ones
2. Foreign subtitles improve speech perception
3. Why Do We Dream?
4. Are You Treating Your Computer Better Than You Treat Yourself?
5. New Brain Findings On Dyslexic Children: Good Readers Learn From Repeating Auditory Signals, Poor Readers Do Not
6. Geoffrey Cohen on Identity, Belief, and Bias
7. Bacteria in Gut Linked to Obesity; Western Diet a Factor

Compare this list her current (as of this moment) full Google Reader shared feed:

1. Drop of water
2. To Make Memories, New Neurons Must Erase Older Ones
3. Google *Chrome OS* To Launch Within A Week
4. Eleven Myths of De-Cluttering.
5. How To Easily Automate Backing Up Your Wordpress Blog
6. A New TV Guide for Internet Television
7. The Introvert's Guide to People

Of all the links in the first list above I am not subscribed to a single of the publishers. I don't need to be to get the value of their content. However, I do need a guide like Taminania that has an understanding the topics and the drive to sort the quality content from these publishers. The other thing I need is the software to make it happen. In this case I built it for myself and would love to publicly release it. But in the current version it doesn't scale very well and has a tendency to crash my server. Who can make this happen for everyone?

The answer is simple Google. What I have created are features and an automated advanced search that pulls from a pool of data. My pool is currently 43k items. Google's slightly larger. By a factor of 10k or more I am sure.

What I am able to learn from Taminania's shares in what is clearly not a dystopian reality comes to me from as close to osmosis as a human can get when it comes to information. In this version of the story we are all learners and we are all teachers. The only problem is that we don't have the tools we need to teach.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Google Reader and The Osmotic Learner is a post from: TechStartups.com

Dogster has never been a Web 2.0 darling. At first glance a social network for pets isn't the most innovative idea, and its audience is limited to the kinds of wackos who make name tags for their dogs at conferences or create elaborate fictional personalities for their cats.

But with the benefit of hindsight, Dogster has done two things very, very right: It never raised venture funding and never relied on an ad network for revenues. The result is its network of sites Dogster, Catster and Snuzzy that focused on maximizing revenues early on instead of aiming for user growth for the sake of user growth. While many other Web 2.0 names are struggling to raise more money to stay in business, Dogster has been profitable since the second quarter of 2007 and is solidly in control of its own destiny. (Full disclosure: Michael Arrington was a very early angel investor. His statement about his investments is here.)

Not only thatpremium ad sales for the sites are up 20% this year. Why? Because while hot sites like Digg and Facebook outsourced ads to big players like Microsoft and smaller sites outsourced them to Google, Dogster has invested five years in building direct relationships with big pet food, supply and other consumer packaged good brands. We figured each $50,000 ad deal was like getting another angel investor, says Ted Rheingold, Dogster CEO.

These aren't lame banners. These are coupons, contests and other things that incent users to interact with the brand. A recent example was a coupon from Royal Canin Cat Food. The company was hoping for 500 takers and it got 5,000. As a result Dogster and Catster charge $10-$12 CPMs and as high as $40 CPMs for their newsletter. (I interviewed Rheingold about this strategy back when I was co-hosting TechTicker. The clip is below.)

But there's a problem. Dogster is still a small site and even happy advertisers will only continue to pay so much to reach the same users. So Dogster has solved that by deciding to become in essence the thing that it always argued startups shouldn't work with: Ad resellers.

Dogster will now sell ads for the much larger Cheezburger Network of Lolanimal-related sites that include IHasaHotdog and ICanHazCheezburgera never-ending meme that will hit one billion page views later this week. That's 10 billion cat pictures served, says founder Ben Huh. At 72 pixels per inch, if you laid them out end-to-end it would reach the moon and back four times. (I'm guessing that moon part is actually true. Huh also told me that under the new deal every time they sold an ad, Dogster would ship them a free dog.)

The two have just closed their first sale to Clorox for Fresh Step Kitty Litter. Sexy? Maybe not. But it's lucrative. But Dogster is no longer in the one million-unique category, it's selling for six million uniques and until the CPM dies, this is still a volume industry. Neither company would comment much on the economics, but Dogster is taking a smaller cut than a traditional ad network would. In exchange, Cheezburger Networks has to do more work to make sure the ads are effective, whether it's creating a contest or just tracking the metrics the way Dogster already does in house.

It's an interesting announcement, since ICanHazCheezburger is so much larger and better known. Typically it's the smaller site that outsources inventory to the giant. But the founders Huh and Rheingold were long time friends who'd frequently ask each other's advice: Rheingold would ask how Huh got those gaudy user numbers and Huh would ask how on earth Rheingold was so good at monetization. Looks like the two will now be able to actually share those areas of expertise: Dogster now gets a network of six million uniques and Huh gets much higher revenues.

Neither of the deals is exclusive. Dogster plans to add more complementary sites to its ad inventory and Cheezburger Networks plans to ink similar partnerships for properties with non-pet user profiles like the FailBlog and newly launched ItMadeMyDay.comwhich has already hit one million page views.

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Getting started with the site is quite easy, because Outright has recently partnered with a number of financial services: you can import invoices from Freshbooks, receipts from Shoeboxed, your PayPal transaction history, as well as your credit card transactions through a deal with Expensify, which supports 94% of US credit cards. You only have to do this once once you've linked your account, they'll keep automatically updating until you unlink them.

Once you're done with the initial setup, everything on Outright is fairly self-explanatory (which is sort of the idea). The home screen presents you with a chart pitting your costs against your income to give you an at-a-glance look at your business's health. At the top of the screen you'll see tabs for Income, Expenses, Taxes, and Reports, where you can hone in on the transactions you're looking for. Transactions are automatically sorted into different categories (for example, the site knows that your airline's tickets belong under the Travel' category), and you can also generate reports on a per-customer basis, which would be helpful for eBay sellers. Beyond that the application helps with taxes by offering reminders when a deadline is coming up and an estimated amount that you'll have to pay.

Outright isn't as robust as some other financial services out there, but if you're looking to keep things simple it's certainly worth a look. The company was formerly called GoBoostrap.com, but changed its name in conjunction with news of its $2 million funding in February.

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Shared by Marinho Brando
no que eu concorde com os comentrios (no os li, no posso julgar)... mas apenas dois cents:

"quem" Sarah Lacy? aspirante a Thomas Jefferson? suplente do Obama? seguidora de Paris Hilton? ou s mais uma jornalista p-de-chinelo de um site que vive de blefes?

e a segunda coisa : NINGUM tem o direito de pichar a bandeira de uma nao, colocar fogo, rasgar ou fazer seja l o que for. A bandeira de uma nao no a bandeira do PT nem do Talib. At onde eu sei, a lei pode perfeitamente dar cadeia pra ela se ela pisar por aqui no futuro. Quer reclamar da burocracia? Entra na fila! Mas eu estou rindo at hoje da pisada dela e acho que vou continuar rindo...

No ltimo dia 3, o TechCrunch publicou um artigo de Sarah Lacy no qual a jornalista basicamente mete o pau no governo brasileiro por supostos problemas tcnicos e burocrticos que a impediram de vir ao nosso pas na data em que planejara. O mais relevante, porm, no foi a chiadeira dela, mas a reao de grande parte dos leitores.

Alm de escrever para o TechCrunch, Sarah trabalha para o site da Business Week e o Yahoo! Finance. Abaixo, segue um resumo do contedo de seu texto:

• Sarah decidiu vir ao Brasil para conhecer startups e empreendedores, pois prepara um livro sobre empreendedorismo em mercados emergentes.
• O Brasil era o lugar que ningum no Vale do Silcio insistiu para que ela visitasse, e seu marido at lhe pediu que no viesse, pois ouvira muitas notcias de sequestros e violncia.
• Mas ela estava convencida de que havia um mundo de empresas e histria empolgantes por aqui. Assim, durante cerca de quatro meses estudou portugus e planejou a viagem.
• Seu visto deveria ter chegado no dia 28 de agosto, mas isso no ocorreu com isso, ela perdeu tempo e dinheiro, sendo obrigada a reorganizar seu calendrio.
• Garantiram a ela que o visto chegaria at dia 2 de setembro, mas a nova data tambm no foi cumprida com isso, Sarah perdeu mais tempo e dinheiro.
• Ela trocou a passagem ao Brasil por uma China.
• Aparentemente, o governo brasileiro decidiu mudar para um novo sistema de computadores em seus consulados, e esse processo tem causado severos atrasos Sarah foi vtima disso.
• Ela conclui dizendo o seguinte:

Voc quer investimento externo e ateno, Brasil? Eis uma ideia: DEIXEM AS PESSOAS ENTRAR NO MALDITO PAS. Voc quer mostrar seu valor de TI? Que tal equipar seus consulados com sistemas de computadores que funcionam? Ou talvez implantar [a mudana] lentamente, para que outros postos possam cuidar da demanda. Ou treinar pessoas primeiro.
O pas deveria se sentir embaraado, e suas empresas deveriam estar furiosas. Vou planejar tentar todo esse negcio de Brasil novamente em dezembro ou janeiro. No por culpa dos empreendedores ou dos nossos leitores que isso aconteceu, e ainda acredito que h timas histrias no Brasil que eu vou querer contar. Mas ser um pas mais difcil de entrar do que a China no um bom indcio para o investimento externo, Brasil.

O texto de Sarah gerou muita polmica, com cerca de 500 comentrios no TechCrunch e repercusso em outros sites, alm de um interessante artigo de Paul Carr (que j ultrapassou os 450 comentrios) no mesmo blog.

Carr diz que, se tivesse uma startup, estaria puto, pois teria perdido uma oportunidade mostrar seu negcio para algum de fora do pas.

Ele nota que a maioria dos leitores que comentaram ataca Sarah e a poltica norte-americana de vistos. Alguns deles usaram palavras como reciprocidade' e troco', e muitos sugeriram furiosamente que ela deveria ter comeado a solicitar o visto mais cedo. Houve ainda reclamaes montagem da bandeira brasileira e afirmao do marido sobre a violncia no Brasil.

Confuso diante de tanta agressividade, Carr releu o texto de Sarah para ver se no deixara passar algum trecho batido um pedido para que o Brasil seja bombardeado de volta idade da pedra ou uma insinuao de que as mulheres do pas no so limpas, por exemplo. Mas no, ela realmente havia apenas reclamado que uma atualizao de computadores causou inconvenincias a ela e outros viajantes que j tinham seus vistos aprovados, mas que no o receberam no dia prometido.

Uma reclamao completamente vlida. Mas que gerou centenas de comentrios raivosos.

Assim, h basicamente dois grandes problemas nos comentrios sobre o post de Sarah: grande parte deles (1) foge do assunto principal a suposta falha tcnica e burocrtica do governo brasileiro e (2) demonstra excessiva agressividade.

Planejamento, bandeira, violncia, reciprocidade. A maior parte dos comentaristas concentrou-se nesses pontos e fugiu do mais importante no texto de Sarah.

Sim, ela poderia ter solicitado o visto mais cedo, usado outra imagem para ilustrar o post e, sei l, casado com um homem que no liga para a falta de segurana em outros pases. Os Estados Unidos poderiam ter um processo menos caro, desgastante e irritante para os brasileiros conseguirem o visto.

Que seja.

Nada disso muda o fato de que Sarah no recebeu seu visto na data prometida. Duas vezes. Nada disso muda o fato de que as startups brasileiras perderam uma boa oportunidade de divulgar seus negcios para a mdia do exterior. Culpa, segundo a jornalista, do governo brasileiro.

Esse o cerne da questo, ignorado na maioria dos comentrios.

No digo que Sarah no merece crticas. Muito pelo contrrio. Como nota o Valleywag, ela aparentemente no solicitou o visto a tempo, pois teve que recorrer a um tipo de servio de despachante e foi a dona desse servio que a informou sobre os problemas consulares. No duvido que o Brasil realmente tenha atrasado a entrega do visto de muita gente, mas existe tambm a possibilidade de a empresa ter cometido falhas e jogado a culpa para o governo brasileiro, e Sarah no levou isso em conta.

Enquanto isso, Jenna Wortham, do New York Times, conseguiu entrar aqui sem problemas, o que levou Peter Kafka, do All Things Digital, a dizer no Twitter que ela deveria dar dicas de visto a Sarah.

Para piorar, o artigo de Sarah exala certa arrogncia. Esta definitivamente a pior coisa que j ocorreu ao Brasil, Sarah Lacy no ser autorizada a visit-lo... Epic-est fail', de fato, ironizou o Valleywag.

Tanto Sarah quanto os seus leitores tm direito a criticar. Mas preciso uma ateno especial quando muitos dos que comentam fogem do assunto principal (o atraso na entrega do visto) e, pior, atacam o autor do texto com argumentos rasos (ou nenhum), ofensas absurdas e alto nvel de agressividade incluindo at ameaas. Por que tudo isso ocorreu? Como as coisas chegaram a esse ponto?

Paul Carr d a dica.

Ele diz que foi contratado pelo TechCrunch para ser o controverso, para dizer coisas inflamatrias e incitar debates furiosos entre idiotas. Como seus textos provocaram muito menos comentrios do que o de Sarah, Carr diz que passar a usar ttulos como estes abaixo, deliberadamente provocativos:

O Estado de Israel passou dados RIAA?
Aquisio do Last.fm pela CBS: o mais inteligente acordo norte-americano com um alemo desde Wernher von Braun?
Educao dos EUA no produziu um aluno decente desde o atentado de Oklahoma: ento por que to difcil para terroristas estrangeiros conseguir vistos H1B?
Os fanboys do Brasil: por que os usurios latino-americanos de Mac so ainda mais insuportavelmente presunosos do que aqueles no resto do mundo
Os franceses so preguiosos, os americanos so preguiosos, os britnicos tm dentes ruins, os palestinos so todos terroristas, e os suos ficaram ricos com ouro nazista e tudo culpa da AT&T
V se foder, Blgica

Brilhante.

O erro de Sarah foi falar mal de um pas. No caso, o Brasil.

Erro entre aspas porque o grande problema daquele post no o texto dela, mas os comentrios, que demonstram um nacionalismo exacerbado em manifestaes insanas e sem razo, no raras vezes aproximando-se da xenofobia e do racismo.

A questo aqui no o nacionalismo em si, mas alguns atos que derivam (em parte) dele. Essas reaes extremadas parecem ser infelizmente cada vez mais comuns, principalmente com o relativo anonimato proporcionado pela internet.

Crticas em geral podem atingir as pessoas de diferentes maneiras, provocando reaes variadas. Quando elas envolvem um sentimento de identificao como o nacionalismo , as reaes frequentemente so mais colricas e menos racionais.

Repito: no um problema (apenas) do nacionalismo. No prprio post de Sarah os comentrios ofensivos no so apenas de brasileiros. Muita gente de outros pases tambm meteu o pau nos Estados Unidos. Por qu? Provavelmente rolou uma identificao com os brasileiros em maior ou menor escala, o antiamericanismo um sentimento muito difundido pelo mundo.

Outro exemplo: futebol. Mesmo entre amigos, quando critico outros times, preciso tomar cuidado. Se no, acontece isto:

Voc viu o Juvenal Juvncio? O cara um...
Ah, t falando o qu? Vocs tm o Andres Sanchez!
Sim, eu tambm no sou f do Andres, mas...
Deixa o meu time em paz!

Pois torcer por um clube envolve um sentimento de identificao. Ento no raro eu preciso criticar o meu prprio time ou fazer algum tipo de ressalva antes de falar sobre o time dos outros, para desarmar o meu interlocutor. Eu sei que no Corinthians assim e assado, no gosto disso e daquilo. Ponto. Mas agora quero falar do Palmeiras.

Mesmo quando o assunto tecnologia, vemos reaes exageradas de gente que de alguma maneira se identifica com Apple, Linux, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Canon, Nikon...

Esse sentimento de identificao seja com nao, clube, marca, filosofia, religio ou qualquer outra coisa comum, aceitvel e muitas vezes incontrolvel. Mas ele no pode justificar atos extremos e irracionais, que no raras vezes tm consequncias graves.

necessrio haver maior tolerncia a opinies alheias, especialmente quando elas tocam em assuntos que envolvem sentimentos. Obviamente, no h uma soluo evidente para isso se houvesse, o mundo seria um lugar bem mais pacfico , mas no por isso que vamos ignorar esses excessos, deixar de debat-los. Talvez no exista de fato uma soluo definitiva para a intolerncia, mas h como diminu-la e discutir o problema certamente faz parte desse processo.

A intolerncia generalizada pode ser consequncia de uma tolerncia excessiva. Para ficar no caso do TechCrunch, a internet um ambiente to tolerante que acaba dando espao a manifestaes de intolerncia. Nesse caso, o desafio estabelecer os limites da tolerncia ela no pode servir como subterfgio para atos de intolerncia.

Como voc vai nas suas resolues de Ano Novo?
No fiz nenhuma.
Note que, para algum se aperfeioar, ele precisa ter alguma ideia do que bom. Isso envolve certos valores.
Mas como todos sabemos, valores so relativos. Cada sistema de crenas igualmente vlido, e precisamos tolerar a diversidade. Virtude no melhor que vcio. apenas diferente.
No sei se consigo tolerar tanta tolerncia assim.
Eu me recuso a ser sacrificado segundo noes de comportamento virtuoso.

O Brasil supostamente falhou com Sarah, e ela tem todo o direito de reclamar disso, assim como ns temos liberdade para critic-la. Mas tudo isso deve ocorrer dentro de certos limites que, a meu ver, foram respeitados pela jornalista, mas ignorados por grande parte dos leitores que deixou comentrios no post.

Quando os limites so desrespeitados, a liberdade de expresso perde um pouco do seu sentido. A manuteno desse direito passa pelo controle dos limites da tolerncia.

Most of Creately's diagram and illustration tools, ranging from dead-simple flowcharts to circuit diagrams, are free for signed-up users and allow sharing, embedding, publishing, commenting, and other collaboration tools for up to five people on publicly available works (paid accounts get more shared users and private postings). Like so many web tools, it strips down the interface of desktop offerings like Visio and makes it easier for first-timers to get a grasp on things. Click on a shape or line in your Creately chart, and a context menu offers all the options of moving, reshaping, resizing, or whatever else you can do with it.

We might ask for a more updated look than the steel-gray toolbars of yore, but the end productsstamped with a subtle Creately logo, unless you fork outare what really matter. Creately is free to sign up for and use.

Steve Gillmor is going to love this, of course, since he proclaimed that RSS was dead and Twitter was the new messaging protocol bus, or something to that effect. Rest In Peace, RSS, he wrote, saying It's time to get completely off RSS and switch to TwitterAll my RSS feeds are in Google Reader. I don't go there any more. Since all my feeds are in Google Reader and I don't go there, I don't use RSS anymore.

Santosh Jayaram, Twitter's existing head of operations (and also from Google), will presumably remain with the company and report to Costolo.

Costolo, who is also an early Twitter investor, is someone who has actual experience building scalable infrastructures, which Twitter sorely needs. The company hasn't launched any new features in recent memory, and continues to have regular downtime. In fact, Twitter's inability to build features and keep the service live is a serious competitive disadvantage. Costolo can presumably fix all that.

Twitter is actively hiring more senior people, we've heard. In July they hired Alexander Macgillivray, Google's associate general counsel for Product and IP, as their new General Counsel.

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But first lawsuits first.

Advertise.com, which was purchased by ABCsearch.com earlier this year and rebranded as such a few months ago, is a variation on AOL-owned Advertising.com, the beleaguered Internet company claims. In legalese, that translates as follows:

Advertise.com recently commenced use of the virtually identical and confusingly similar designation Advertise.com and design in connection with the same and complimentary services as those offered by Plaintiffs under their federally-registered Advertising.com name and marks and their Ad.com name and marks.

Update: looks like Advertise.com sued AOL first (August 17, 2009)

A search of the USPTO database shows that AOL does in fact have three registered trademarks for Advertising.com, but all are design trademarks, which means they stand little chance of exercising trademark rights over something as generic as the domain name advertise.com. Granted, the logo looks vaguely similar, but virtually identical and confusing' it ain't.

Note that AOL doesn't even effectively market Advertising.com as a business unit anymore - although it may soon recommence doing just that - and redirects the domain name to its Platform-A website instead (AOL rebranded it to the name of this whole-owned subsidiary in April last year and now prefers AOL Advertising as the overarching denominator).

So why would anyone confuse Advertise.com for an AOL property? It just doesn't make any sense to try and claim ownership over any domain name with a variation on the word advertising' in it. What's next? Ads.com? Advertisement.com? In the court documents, embedded below, AOL even boasts the fact that Advertise.com has only about 25,000 unique visitors per month, so what's really at stake here?

The second case is even more bizarre: although often used in its communication, Ad.com is apparently not a trademark owned by AOL, although the company has filed an application for it in the past. But that domain name is actually owned by a Marcos Guillen, who recently sold it to Directi and Skenzo for $1.4 million. Well, almost sold it, because the deal fell through after all, according to industry watchers due to the fact that the mark has not yet acquired distinctiveness for any of the applicants - including AOL - following a recent examination. Guillen has now filed a lawsuit against Directi and Skenzo for backing out of its auction purchase of Ad.com, seeking $1.4 million, prejudgment interest, and/or damages according to proof.

Aol

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If you were a Bloglines user, consider yourself old school. Most people moved on to Google Reader long ago, and then bailed on RSS entirely for the Real Time Gang (Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, etc.).

The once-great feed reader, bought by IAC in February 2005 for around $10 million, has been on life support for a couple of years now.

A two year old beta site with new features remains in beta and has never been launched on the main domain name. A band aid was put on the problems the service had a year ago, but not a single new feature of note has launched since then.

Repeated attempts to sell the service for next to nothing went nowhere. And recently, we've heard, IAC strongly considered simply shutting it down. The team ultimately decided not to, but they are clearly looking for a long term home for the project.

Competitor Newsgator recently threw in the towel and suggested users port their feeds over to Google Reader.

Something interesting needs to happen at Bloglines at a product level, or they will, inevitably, be deadpooled.

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It's been a long road to get here. Schoemaker originally filed suit against Farrell last April, when Farrell used Schoemaker's trademarked term Shoemoney in his ad copy a breach of Google's terms of service. The case was interesting not just because of Schoemaker's notoriety, but because Farrell is an employee working out of Google's New York office. Given his position, it was feasible that Farrell had used his access at Google to somehow bypass the system's trademark filters (among other things), though Google denied this and attributed the fault to human error.

Farrell subsequently filed an affadavit stating he didn't know that the term was trademarked and blamed a failure of Google's text filters. In June, Farrell then went on to counter-sue Schoemaker for defamation. Farrell dropped half of the counter-suit a month ago, and soon thereafter approached Schoemaker about a settlement.

Yesterday, Schoemaker posted the following to his blog:

For those that have been following my lawsuit against the Farrells, there have been several developments. A few weeks ago, after originally withdrawing half of their defamation lawsuit against me, the Farrells withdrew the other half and completely abandoned their counter-suit against me. I was then approached about the possibility of accepting a settlement offer in exchange for me dismissing my trademark infringement case against the Farrells. Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to write about the nature of the settlement talks or the amount of money that was offered because the settlement offers that were made required confidentiality.
I can say that my lawsuit against the Farrells was settled. This has been a real educational experience for me. I was looking forward to getting my day in court, but I can also say that I am very happy with the final result. There is not a whole lot more I am allowed to discuss.

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• 7,130,389: Digital notification and response system
• 7,496,183: Method for providing digital notification
• 7,519,165: Method for providing digital notification and receiving responses

The video clip above, from YouTube, is grainy, but TechCrunch's Mike Arrington assures readers it's in the final movie. I hadn't seen the film myself, unaware it touched on social networking, but Arrington writes that MySpace takes up a solid five minutes of the movie.

The treatment is brutal. Early in the clip, MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson asks Sandler if he actually uses the product. The star's reply: "No, no no. I fuck girls, Tom. I don't have time for that." When he goes on stage, the comic greets the MySpace crowd as "nerds" and then trashes their users: "They say the more friends you have on MySpace the less friends you have in real life." .

Sure, MySpace's competitors are insulted, too. But companies like Silicon Valley-based Facebook are fighting hard to avoid Hollywood; Facebook trashed Ben Mezrich's book about the company, The Accidental Billionaires, and by extension the Aaron Sorkin movie based on that book, calling it inaccurate.

But MySpace is based in Beverly Hills, close to Hollywood, and seems to have a better handle on the big picture: Being on the silver screen, in any context, means you're culturally relevant. Why not embrace the opportunity to make your virtual community a lot more real? (Via TechCrunch.)

The site is still fairly new, but's already beginning to attract some top talent, including Susan Kare, who is famous for designing the on-screen graphics of the original Macintosh computer and many of Facebook's popular virtual gifts. LTL Prints is featuring many of these artists in a collection of big wall art, which includes art curated by the Start Soma Art Gallery.

It's hard to really get excited about stickers, but these are actually pretty impressive. They're made out of a study fabric-based paper that's really hard to tear (we tried), and it can also be applied many times on various surfaces, like walls and glass. You can roll the sticker up in a ball, and it will pull apart without any lasting damage. Contrast that with most other large stickers, which are typically made of vinyl, and it becomes clear that these are truly some high grade stickers.

Prices for the stickers range from $20 for a 2ft sticker to $165 for a massive 7 ft tall sticker. From there you're free to charge higher prices if you sell your sticker in the site's integrated marketplace.

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Its taken a bit longer than we all might have hoped, but it seems that Android is really starting to pick up the steam it deserves. Be it Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson.. if they're a big gun in the mobile manufacturing world (Well, outside of certain obvious exclusions), they're probably working on an Android handset or two. The first off the bat and the most dedicated so far has been HTC - and if the latest rumors hold true, they might be looking to throw even more weight behind it.

According to the Digitimes, HTC may be looking to put the Droid onto as much as fifty percent of their handsets. Now, HTC doesn't push'em out as fast as some other manufacturers (by the way, Samsung, we're totally talking about you), but they still pump out a good number of'em each year. And of their lineup, almost the entirety is Windows Mobile. Digitimes also adds that HTC is aiming for around 30% of their handsets this year to be Android-based. We can think of about 5 or 6 we're expecting to see by years end (including those that have launched already) -f it that's 30% and HTC continues to make around as many total devices next year, we can probably expect at least 9 or 10 Droidphones from them next year. Fuzzy math? Absolutely. But we can hope, can't we?

[Via EngadgetMobile]

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But reading over the fine print, it doesn't appear that you need to use the money for back-to-school shopping. And in fact, the rules state that you have to be over 18 to enter the contest, so unless parents are doing it for their kids, or it's all college kids entering, it doesn't really seem all that student-friendly. And that's good, because it will increase my chances of winning and using the $500 on something more desirable than protractors like maybe beer.

Here's how the contest works: Starting tomorrow, the Bing Cashback Twitter account will start tweet out a trivia question. Anyone who @replies back the correct answer within an hour, is then eligible to win the money for that day.

This is a good idea by Bing because the trivia will be Bing Shopping and Cashback-related, so basically you have to use Bing to find the answer. And you are required to use the #cashbackpack hashtag in your public tweet to ensure others will start following the content. Not to mention that you will have to be following the @bingcashback account closely all 7 days to see when it asks its question.

Unfortunately, this contest is only open to those in the U.S.

Come on Bing, beer me.

[photo: flickr/elvissa]

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Apart from those, I consider an RSS reader to be such a vital tool for me as well, both on a private as a professional level. As I wrote before, I quickly fell in love with Streamy for that particular aspect of sifting through mountains of information on a daily basis, partly because it allows me to both track blogs and news sites I subscribe to and keep track of what Twitter and the people I follow on there as well as on Facebook and FriendFeed are buzzing about.

Add to that Techmeme, which has an algorithm in place designed to weed out the best and/or most talked about news stories related to the tech industry out there, and you can tell I have a pretty solid set of tools readily available that enable me to keep tabs on what I want and need to be tracking closely. Techfuga was another one, but it recently ground to a halt.

New to the arsenal of tools at my disposal free of charge is Tech Investor News, which despite its not-so-sexy name is exactly what it sounds like: a news site that investors in tech companies - plus industry pundits and reporters - should be made aware of. Glad to be of service.

TIN complements the websites and services described above perfectly, and competes with neither one of them. If anything, it saves me a lot of time and rids me of the pain of going to Google News / Blogsearch all the time to learn what the most recent stories in tech or centered around a company in particular are.

What I like about it? The big fat stock quote in the upper corner, the fact that you can filter down to 20 of the most discussed tech companies (note the Google Investor News screenshot below), the decent search function and the speed with which it updates news feeds (every 5 minutes or so, with some human editing involved). But what I also like is the fact that you can narrow your news consumption down to a specific set of categories which makes it very easy to find specific information (for instance, you can opt to display only stories about Steve Jobs' or Rumors' when browsing for news on Apple).

TIN is a project bootstrapped by a self-described media nut' / investor called Frank Cioffi, who spent decades working in such media as radio and television and turned to the internet after many years of consulting and trading stocks. Cioffi got the idea for Tech Investor News to scratch his own itch, and that's always a good way to start something that other people - like me - could also find interesting.

Bookmarked!

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As usual, a question came up about Apple entering the low-end laptop market, which is a fancy way of saying netbook market. Once again, Apple COO Tim Cook reiterated Apple's stance that Our goal is not to build the most computers. It's to build the best. What he means by this is that Apple has no interest in playing in the low-end market, which is of course also a low-margin market, which would mean Apple's pretty margins taking a hit. But wording is everything, and Cook once again didn't exactly eliminate the possibility of Apple making a new type of portable computing device.

He said that no matter what the price point is, that if Apple feels it can build a product worthy of its brand, it will do so. But he also specifically called out two price points that he thought are producing junky products, and implied that such price points will continue to produce junky products: $399 and $499.

And so if Apple is working on a tablet computer (or a larger screen iPod touch) of some kind, it will likely be priced above $500. To Apple watchers, that is obvious, but it's still important to hear Cook more or less say it.

A follow-up question later on about netbooks, asked if Apple specifically saw a future for a new mobile device with a larger screen? Cook joked that while he never wanted to rule out anything in the future, he also never intends to answer questions about new products. He went on to say that he believes most customers buying portable computers want a full-featured notebook. And many netbooks are slow and run old operating systems. Naturally, he didn't mention Chrome OS.

And that just seems to be more proof that whatever big touchscreen device Apple makes, it won't be so much of a netbook, but rather a product that Apple hopes will once again kickstart a new type of market. Whether that will work, who knows. Let's see the thing first.

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One other piece of news that will be very interesting to non-developers eagerly waiting to try out the service: Google is planning to release Wave to 100,000 users beginning on September 30th, using the service's main wave.google.com hub rather than the developer site (we can likely expect a Gmail-like limited invitation system). By this time we can likely expect there to be a rich variety of Wave widgets the site already boasts plenty of them, including a RickRoll widget and more practical things like a weather forecast but you can't try them out without a Developer Sandbox account.

Thanks to Noah Hendrix for the tip.

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