The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Bloomberg Realizes The Web Is Not A Terminal
- AdParlor Debuts Cost-Per-Install Pricing Model For Facebook Ads
- Ride the City Bike Routing Service Hits the iPhone
- Educational Technology Company Knewton Scores $12.5 Million More
- Bill Gates Goes Back To College, Livestream At 11
- iPad 3G To Ship In the US By May 7th
- Investors Inject Another $8 Million Into Open Source Software Company Talend
- Viacom’s Epix Lands National Distribution Deal With Dish Network
- For Reasons Unknown, Ukrainian Journalist Sends First Underwater Tweet
- Don’t Sell Out, Foursquare. Not Now. Not To Yahoo.
- #GeeknRolla Update – Not Even A Volcano Can Stop Us
- Facebook E-Commerce App Payvment Allows Retailers To Use Coupons To Attract Fans
- It’s Official: Groupon Announces That $1.35 Billion Valuation Round
- Spearheaded By Meebo, XAuth Looks To Make Social Sites Smarter
- CouchPad
- More Execs Walk Away From Fox/MySpace: Slingshot Labs President & EVP Resign
- Chatroulette Founder: All Your Chats Are Belong To Me
- The Chinese Matrix and the War of Internet Addiction
- The User’s Manifesto: In Defense Of Hacking, Modding, And Jailbreaking
| Bloomberg Realizes The Web Is Not A Terminal Posted: 19 Apr 2010 08:48 AM PDT
There aren’t a lot of news sites with black backgrounds for the simple reason that it isn’t easy on the eyes (not to mention it is ugly). But that hasn’t stopped Bloomberg from taking its signature look from its old-style terminals to the Web. Its site sports garish gold headlines on a black background (see second screenshot below). Somebody finally told them that the Web does not need to look like a two-tone terminal, so Bloomberg is trying out a new design (preview). At least the background is white, but it still seems like a work in progress. The design is more bloggy, and less like a traditional news site, which makes sense since Bloomberg is more like a newswire. Headlines flow down the page in a blog-like manner, with one-sentence excerpts in preview-boxes. These are followed by a stream of even briefer headlines, with articles then broken out into different section boxes way down at the bottom of the page. Video is highlighted and the search is supposed to be improved. If you click through to Bloomberg TV, you get three live streams (U.S., Europe, and Asia). The live video is probably the best part of the site, but it’s still a little bit hidden. Why not put a big video thumbnail prominently above the fold? Market data is on the right, and house ads for Businessweek (which Bloomberg now owns) and, yes, its bread-and-butter terminals are also there. And of course there are the now-ubiquitous Fan and Follow buttons for Facebook and Twitter. Which version do you like better?
     
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| AdParlor Debuts Cost-Per-Install Pricing Model For Facebook Ads Posted: 19 Apr 2010 07:56 AM PDT
Just in time for f8, AdParlor this morning announced a tool that allows developers of Facebook apps to purchase Facebook Ads on a “cost per install” basis. With the launch of the new tool, developers can purchase ads in order to grow their user bases through Facebook directly, which AdParlor’s Ali Merali says means deeper targeting, higher levels of engagement and additional volume in application installs for their clients. AdParlor, which offers a banner advertising network as well as a virtual currency monetization platform, says it has delivered well over 10 million application installs across other Facebook apps to date. Their new product is built on top of the Facebook Ads API, and essentially allows app developers to buy ads on a fixed CPI by country. AdParlor also touts its optimization engine, which it says could not only result in the creation of “hundreds of ads” but also dynamically adjust bids to bring quality installs at a much lower rate than is the case now. According to Facebook’s public stats, there are more than 500,000 active applications currently on the Facebook Platform, although only some 250 applications have more than one million monthly active users (despite the social network itself boasting more than 400 million users). Advertising on Facebook is one way to get more users to sign up. Unfortunately, AdParlor is debuting the program to a select number of existing clients only. Based on the testimonials on its website, those include social gaming powerhouse Zynga and Omnicom Media Group’s PHD Network.      
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| Ride the City Bike Routing Service Hits the iPhone Posted: 19 Apr 2010 06:29 AM PDT  Friends of CG Jordan Anderson and Vaidila Kungys, creators of Ride the City New York just released their first Ride the City iPhone app [download] for NYC. The app, like the service, offers safe bike routes through New York and is based on the OpenStreetMap project. It costs $1.99. To use it, you simply enter your start and end points and then follow the route. The map takes into consideration low-traffic roads as well as dedicated bike lanes to get you from point A to a Russian bath house in the East Village. It also works on the iPad, but it will be hard to keep one hand free to signal when you're lugging your slate around.
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| Educational Technology Company Knewton Scores $12.5 Million More Posted: 19 Apr 2010 06:25 AM PDT
Returning investors include Accel Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, First Round Capital, and angel investor Reid Hoffman, who are bringing the total of capital injected into the company to just south of $20 million with this third round. Knewton says it will use the new financing to accelerate expansion to meet demand for its adaptive learning engine, which uses proprietary algorithms to identify and address each student’s unique needs. The company’s platform tracks virtually every action by every student and accordingly prioritizes concepts for study each day based on which concepts a student is weakest in. Subsequently, the Knewton system delivers those concepts in whatever learning modality is best for that individual student, such as bite size, media format, time of day, and the number and difficulty of accompanying practice questions. When Erick Schonfeld reviewed the service in late 2008, he wrote:
Read the full review here (it digs pretty deep). Knewton has gone to market with a suite of adaptive-learning test prep products (it just unveiled one for the SAT test), and says it is now working on opening the platform for anyone to use. Knewton faces competition from companies like Brightstorm and Grockit.      
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| Bill Gates Goes Back To College, Livestream At 11 Posted: 19 Apr 2010 06:21 AM PDT
Bill Gates is spending most of his time these days with the Gates Foundation, which he started with his wife Melinda to take a new approach to philanthropy after leaving his day-to-day responsibilities at Microsoft. Gates has been blogging occasionally and taking to Twitter. Today, he is going back to college on a speaking tour to encourage students to take on big challenges like fighting poverty, improving world health, developing new energy sources, and combating climate change. His first stop will be at UC Berkeley, and we will livestream his speech here on TechCrunch, starting at 11 AM PT.      
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| iPad 3G To Ship In the US By May 7th Posted: 19 Apr 2010 06:12 AM PDT  Apple in the US has updated its online store today, adding a shipping date and pre-order buttons for the different versions of the iPad 3G. And it looks like Americans will be able to lay their hands on the the 3G variant of the device "by May 7th". As with the Wi-Fi model, each customer is currently able to pre-order a maximum of just two iPads online.
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| Investors Inject Another $8 Million Into Open Source Software Company Talend Posted: 19 Apr 2010 05:18 AM PDT
Existing investors Balderton Capital, AGF Private Equity and Galileo Partners all chipped in again, bringing Talend’s total of funding secured to date to $28 million. Talend says its flagship open source data solutions have been downloaded more than seven million times to date, and that 2009 was a killer year for the company. The company claims its paying customer base grew 140% to well over 1,000 customers in 2009. The company says it will use the new funding to further develop and extend its range of open source data integration, data quality and master data management (MDM) solutions. The three investors (all European, by the way) clearly believe strongly in the company’s ability to disrupt the market, which has historically been dominated by a handful of vendors adopting a traditional proprietary model. Talend chooses to take an open approach by publishing the code of its core and base modules under a GPL license, offering the developer community the ability to improve the product and make enhancements that can benefit everyone. Balderton Capital, for one, knows the potential of such open source models well, as it played an instrumental role in growing MySQL’s business (the open-source database company was sold to Sun Microsystems for $1 billion in January 2008).      
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| Viacom’s Epix Lands National Distribution Deal With Dish Network Posted: 19 Apr 2010 05:15 AM PDT
Jointly backed by Viacom, Lionsgate, Paramount, and MGM, EPIX provides access to over 15,000 movie titles. The company originally signed a deal with Verizon FIOS, which was somewhat limiting considering only some 2 million people use Verizon’s cable service. Epix is getting a much greater userbase with the deal with Dish Network, which has more than 14.1 million customers around the nation. This is also the first national distribution deal for EPIX. Cox brings more clients to EPIX with its base of 6.2 million customers, which including 2.7 million digital cable subscribers. Mediacom, the 7th largest cable provider in the U.S., will bring with it a base of 1.3 million subscribers in 22 states. And Carter, which is the fourth largest cable provider in the U.S. will bring EPIX to 5.7 million homes by May 2010. With all six distribution deals, the company expects to reach 30 million homes. One of our main issues with EPIX was that it was tied to Verizon FIOS but it appears that the company is steadily adding more cable providers to distribute its service. Unfortunately, the platform offers a sliver of available movies out there, since it only includes the movies available through the studios that are backing the company. But EPIX is useful because it transcends the TV and your computer and it’s fairly easy to use. EPIX also is creating original content; the company announced earlier this year that it would be creating a comedy series on Silicon Valley, based on Dan Lyons’ Fake Steve Jobs persona. Now that EPIX has scored deals with Dish, Cox and Charter, I’m sure the company is looking to cross Time Warner and Comcast off the list.      
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| For Reasons Unknown, Ukrainian Journalist Sends First Underwater Tweet Posted: 19 Apr 2010 01:59 AM PDT
And you thought tweeting from space was an achievement? Ukrainian TV journalist Julia Gorodetskaya (@gorodetskaya) has sent the first documented underwater tweet from the floor of a 19-feet deep dolphinarium in Odessa, Ukraine. The scuba tweeting session was broadcasted by local media (see subtitled video below) and documented by regional press. The tweet was sent via a mobile phone sealed in plastic from the Twitter website, using the Opera Mini browser. Radio waves passed to the surface through an elongated antenna. The preparation process and the actual underwater tweeting was also filmed and broadcasted live by Boris Khodorkovsky to his QIK account and published on YouTube and other social media services. You can find pictures of the whole thing on Flickr. Gorodetskaya, who did not know how to dive or swim prior to the event, sent a total of four messages to Twitter. Below is the first one. In English, it reads: "This is first in history #underwater_tweet. I told you, @netocrat." The event was dreamed up and organized by a national mobile operator to tout the quality of its network. And I can’t help but think about the wonderful opportunity to raise awareness for a good cause in the process that was somehow overlooked, and therefor terribly wasted.
(Image via Flickr / NETOCRAT Communications)
     
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| Don’t Sell Out, Foursquare. Not Now. Not To Yahoo. Posted: 18 Apr 2010 11:50 PM PDT
There are so many reasons why this deal shouldn’t happen. Here are just a few: 1. It’s bad for Yahoo: Yahoo’s senior team is grasping at straws, and they desperately want to find a way to stay relevant. But this is not it. What the heck is Yahoo going to do with Foursquare that will somehow turn around their business? Absolutely nothing, that’s what. M&A for PR purposes is not what savvy executive teams do. Whatever tech cred they think they’ll get by buying Foursquare is in their imagination. 2. Yahoo is a horrendous choice for Foursquare. It’s where startups go to die. They’ve bought so many companies that were so promising, only to see them wither on the vine. And the founders always leave in disgust (see Flickr, Delicious and the rest in the left sidebar on their CrunchBase page – how many of these were successful?). And sometimes they buy companies just to shut them down entirely a year later. See Yahoo Kills Maven: From Acquisition To Deadpool In 17 Months Try to imagine what Facebook would be today if Yahoo had successfully acquired them in 2006. 3. You only sell now if you think your business doesn’t have legs. Aardvark did it because of very slow user growth and the founders got nervous. They were in a similar situation as Foursquare – lots of VCs ready to put in money at a great valuation, but they took the sale to Google instead. Now we’ll never know what Aardvark could have become had it stayed independent. Guys like Facebook and Twitter stayed independent despite outrageous acquisition offers. If the Foursquare team believes in their product, they should stay in the game. 4. The Dodgeball/Google debacle should have given founder Dennis Crowley enough of a taste of what happens to most companies when they get acquired. Dennis, remember when you wrote this – “It’s no real secret that Google wasn’t supporting dodgeball the way we expected. The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us – especially as we couldn’t convince them that dodgeball was worth engineering resources, leaving us to watch as other startups got to innovate in the mobile + social space.” You sold your startup too soon once before. Why do it again now? 5. You can hedge. Lots of startups take money off the table in a venture round instead of selling outright. The WordPress guys did it, for example. The Aardvark team had the option of doing it. You can ask your VCs to redo their term sheets and double the amount raised. Take half off the table and you, your children and their children will never want for anything material in their lives, even if Foursquare goes south right afterwards. Foursquare has a destiny. It may be to go out of business. It may be to go public and be a huge force in our culture. It may be something in between. But selling out now is like dropping out of college to take up drugs. Whatever you would have become, that isn’t what you’ll become once you sell out to Yahoo. Call Caterina from Flickr and ask her if she wishes she hadn’t sold to Yahoo. Call Joshua Schachter from Delicious and ask him the same thing. My guess is both will privately tell you NFW would they have sold to Yahoo knowing what they were stepping into. Facebook and Twitter hitting the geo space must be a scary thing for a small startup to contemplate. But there’s real momentum and that intangible buzz behind your product right now. Play this out. In ten years, you’ll be glad you did. Unless you’re broke then because Foursquare failed, of course, and bitter that you didn’t take the money from Yahoo when it was offered. But there’s a reason why you became an entrepreneur and didn’t just stay a mid level developer grunt at a variety of large organizations. You have the fire to change the world. So go do it.      
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| #GeeknRolla Update – Not Even A Volcano Can Stop Us Posted: 18 Apr 2010 11:49 PM PDT  Well folks, it's been an interesting weekend of email and phone calls, but the good news is that TechCrunch Europe's GeeknRolla is STILL ON tomorrow in London, and there is not one single damn volcano on the planet, however ash-filled, that can stop us bringing this awesome event to you. The very last tickets and DemoPit tables are available here. And frankly, we have to pay tribute to you guys. We have been hearing amazing stories of how people are getting to London for tomorrow's event - from hiring boats, airplanes and even keynote speaker Morten Lund driving to London in a banged up car from Copenhagen. And our live streaming partners Bambuser are on a "#volcanrolla" road trip from Stockholm, overland and sea. Speaker Cédric Giorgi just got the very last ticket available on Eurostar, and Jennifer Lee has been collecting people at Calais to take over by car ferry. Amazing. Of course, because of the airlines situation, there will be one or two changes to the line-up. But we are working hard to make sure it all goes smoothly. For breaking news about GeeknRolla we have fired-up the @GeeknRolla Twitter account to help people with information on travel plans, ticketing and anything else relevant to the event. And if you can't make the main day but want to party with us and SixNationState, hit the After Party which has a separate ticket. Here are some more details for you.
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| Facebook E-Commerce App Payvment Allows Retailers To Use Coupons To Attract Fans Posted: 18 Apr 2010 11:49 PM PDT
Payvment's Facebook App lets anyone create a retail store on Facebook. The app lets you set up products, categories of products (i.e. shoes, T-shirts, sweaters), import photos, list terms of service and shipping options and more. Once you set up your online shop on Facebook, it will show up in a separate tab on your profile or page under "storefront". Called the Facebook Fan Incentive Pricing feature, the new functionality essentially bridges the gap between social interactions on the site and retail behavior using coupons and discounts. With the new feature, sellers can provide an electronic coupon or instant discount to potential and current fans by simply enabling the feature via Payvment's storefront application for Facebook. The pricing feature allows users to choose the discount amount to be provided to anyone that becomes a Fan of their Facebook page and current Fans are automatically provided the discount. And when visitors that are not Fans come to a storefront, Payvment automatically prompts them to become a Fan to receive special Fan pricing. Another compelling feature of Payvment's e-commerce app is the ability to allow shoppers to carry their goods with them across thousands of Payvment-powered storefronts on Facebook. It makes shopping on Facebook almost like shopping at Target, where you can visit multiple departments and buy all of your diverse purchases at once. Users can also add comments and reviews to Payvment-enabled storefronts. As retailers flock to Facebook for both brand awareness and e-commerce, Payyvment’s free offerings are attractive because the platform is a one-stop shop for both efforts. However, Payvment isn’t the first to implement this strategy; 1-800-Flowers started offering discounts to users who became fans of its page last July. The startup, which just raised $1.2 million in funding, faces competition from BigCommerce, Alvenda and others.
     
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| It’s Official: Groupon Announces That $1.35 Billion Valuation Round Posted: 18 Apr 2010 09:29 PM PDT
We wrote an extensive overview of the company last year when they closed their last round of financing. Since that time the service has been extended to new cities – 54 total now offer a daily deal via Groupon. 4 million Groupons have now been sold, says the company. Press release is below.
     
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| Spearheaded By Meebo, XAuth Looks To Make Social Sites Smarter Posted: 18 Apr 2010 09:03 PM PDT
Here’s how the official site, XAuth.org is describing the platform:
So what does that mean? Imagine visiting TechCrunch and seeing share buttons tailored to the services you use. If you don’t use Google Buzz but are an avid Reddit user, we could automatically hide Buzz and swap the appropriate Reddit button in. Yes, there are already ways to do this, but currently TechCrunch.com would have to issue requests to every popular sharing service each time a new user visited the site, which isn’t always practical — XAuth is more efficient, because it already knows which services you belong to. But what about privacy? There is a central XAuth server that exists to facilitate data transfer between domains, but your personal information is never actually transferred through it. Instead, all personally identifiable information is stored in your browser using HTML5’s local storage — XAuth.org exists to verify which tokens a third party has access to. If you’re still wary, you can choose to opt out of XAuth using a control panel at XAuth.org. When it comes to exploring XAuth’s potential, personalized sharing buttons are just the beginning— services can include whatever information they want in their token. Say MySpace decided it wanted to allow Meebo to automatically have access to its users’ friend lists. MySpace could include a session ID as part of its token that would grant Meebo access to that data, without any input required from the user. Using XAuth, MySpace could grant access to this token only to a select few partners on a whitelist, or it could open it up to any third parties who wanted it. In effect, XAuth’s flexibility allows any social service provider to achieve the ‘auto-connect‘ functionality that we hear Facebook plans to launch soon. That could be powerful, but it also has the potential to be creepy — do users really want their information pre-populated as they browse the web? The answer isn’t clear yet. That said, most sites (particularly sites where security is a priority) will probably only use XAuth to inform third parties that the user has an account with them, without actually sharing any of their personally identifiable data (in other words, we’ll see the personalized button scenario discussed above). Update: Here’s a video taken by Robert Scoble of Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg explaining XAuth:
     
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| Posted: 18 Apr 2010 06:03 PM PDT  It's taken this long to attempt to write something on the iPad. I took some notes at Google's Atmosphere event just to try out the system, but quickly discovered that the newly realtimed Google Docs were only available in read only mode. A Google PR guy told me they were waiting on a "real browser" before rolling the tool out to iPad users sometime later this year. I ended up in gmail draft mode. By now I've gotten the fundamental message, which is that Apple is rebuilding the Mac from the ground, or rather the pocket, up. The AppStore debuted with iPhone and iPad apps mushed together; now they are segregated as the iPad specific tools build out. The iPhone OS 4 announcements made clear that multitasking was the bedrock of the new OS, with the concurrent processes opening the door to sharing data between various services in realtime i.e. the network. Micromessages, popups, alerts, some kind of cross-app communication that makes realtime aware applications possible. 
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| More Execs Walk Away From Fox/MySpace: Slingshot Labs President & EVP Resign Posted: 18 Apr 2010 02:34 PM PDT
This leaves Slingshot Labs in disarray at a crucial moment. Their “LinkedIn Killer” product, internally known as WSJ Connect or Streetfeed, is supposed to go into beta testing next month. We first wrote about the project last year. Slighshot Labs has also had a couple of other successful product launches. Daily Fill is still going strong. Another project, SocialPlan, is now the backbone of the new MySpace Events. MySpace even grabbed that team out of Slingshot and made them full time MySpace employees. This also marks the departure of the last MySpace founder from News Corp. Josh Berman was the COO of MySpace at the time it was acquired. Chris DeWolfe (CEO), Tom Anderson (President), Aber Whitcomb (CTO), and Colin Digiaro (SVP Sales) have all now left to work on different projects. Except for Tom, it’s not clear what he’s up to these days.      
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| Chatroulette Founder: All Your Chats Are Belong To Me Posted: 18 Apr 2010 01:59 PM PDT
What’s important, though, is that I don’t want this space to lie empty for the week. So how fortunate that on Tuesday Andrey Ternovskiy from Chatroulette stopped by the office to say hello. And in keeping with the new TC policy of pointing a camera at all of our visitors, I bullied him into a video interview. Andrey, as you probably know, is from Moscow. And despite the fact that his English is far better than my Russian, his accent – coupled with my ineptitude as an interviewer – did not make for the most gripping viewing. However, there is one clip that stands out, both in clarity and in providing an insight into Andrey’s future strategy for Chatroulette. It came just after I asked Andrey what new features he was planning to add to the service using all the VC money he’s allegedly in town to raise… As he explains in the video, Andrey is worried that when people meet on Chatroulette they frequently decide to keep in touch by exchanging Facebook or Skype details. This is something Andrey wants to discourage, preferring instead to add that functionality to Chatroulette. I asked him to clarify whether he means adding features that will make it easier for users to connect through third party services, or whether he literally means he wants to stop users leaving the site at all – preferring, Veruca Salt style – to keep them all for himself. Andrey was clear: “I don’t like connecting third parties” he said, citing the fact that many Chatroulette users would like to keep in touch with their new friends while retaining the anonymity the service affords them. Given the general Silicon Valley obsession with openness and the decentralisation of the social graph, Andrey’s plan to build walls and lock users in, ostensibly for their own protection, seems odd. Even, one might even say, Soviet. It’ll be interesting to see if VCs in the Valley agree. Another thing that stuck me as I spoke to Andrey was how similar his story sounds to that of an old friend of mine, Alex Tew. Alex, for those with short memories, was the kid who – while still at university – built the Million Dollar Homepage, and in doing so was feted as the web’s biggest marketing genius. VC’s courted him, media outlets around the world profiled him – but like all child stars, the fame was short lived and Alex soon has to return to the realities of running his business and figuring out what to do next. Given the parallels, I couldn’t resist calling Alex on Skype and asking him, firstly, whether he thought Chatroulette would prove to be a sustainable business and, if so, how – especially given that the site is basically “a sex crime waiting to happen”. Here’s what he had to say… I still think the Million Dollar Homepenis idea is a winner. Normal column service resumes next week.      
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| The Chinese Matrix and the War of Internet Addiction Posted: 18 Apr 2010 01:51 PM PDT
Frank Yu is a Chief Product Officer with BokanTech in Beijing. He also writes the China Angle Column for the Game Developer's Conference website Gamasutra. Sometimes in the bustle of news and product launches, we tend to overlook some significant events that emerge from the net until months later. One such item was a Chinese machinima video that came out in February of 2010 via online video sites in China called the The War of Internet Addiction. I heard about it back then but thought it was just yet another user generated parody adventure for cheap laughs. I was wrong. While we were chatrouletting in the West, something was brewing in the Chinese Matrix and a homegrown Neo/John Conner had spawned. Using the game World of Warcraft, 100 volunteers, 3 months development time and lots of cigarettes and greasy lunch boxes, video blogger known as Sexy Corn 性感玉米, (age 26 from Hunan China) created a 64 minute machinima that touched a national nerve in China among not just online game players, but a whole generation of young people. The video won the Best Video award in the Tudou Video Film awards in Beijing on April 17, 2010, 3 months after it was first unleashed in China. Tudou, one of China's largest video sharing sites, holds the awards ceremony each year that has been described as China's version of Sundance to both honor and focus attention on China's emerging animation and film making talent. To have what some consider to be one of the most emotional and widespread appeals by Chinese citizens for the end of government repression of the internet and its netizens winning a public award marks an incredible milestone in Chinese media. Getting the award also made me reconsider and watch it for the first time yesterday. The War of Internet Addiction at one level talks about the various plans and rules that Chinese authorities impose on the common netizens in the guise of protecting them from pornography, sensitive topics and as the title implies internet addiction. At another level it mentions the failed government Green Dam content filters, the corruption and tainted food scandals as examples of the many injustices that the common people endur. One of the characters in the video makes a dramatic plea to let them play games and enjoy the virtual world of the internet without government interference. It was this plea that moved the video from being just a game parody but a manifesto for freedom with gut wrenching emotional impact. The censorship and monitoring of domestic web sites and discussion groups are common in China. There is even talk of a new government bureau intended to monitor social network sites alone. Foreign sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Blogspot and Youtube are currently blocked. Flickr, Wikipedia and various Google sites are open now but have been blocked in the past and may be blocked again in the future. In this environment, many creative filmmakers, artists, musicians use "egao", a Chinese term for a kind of remix culture satire that criticizes without directly confronting, in their works in order to get past the censors and avoid prosecution. Creating a video in the guise of a game narrative gave the video makers a subtle and coded platform to get the message out to their audience and to fly it under the radar of the very people that the video makes fun of. Much of the video alludes to Chinese memes and topical events, such as the bickering between the government regulating agencies for games and the operation transition of WoW from The9 to Netease. The writing and dialogue can best be described as sophomoric but the issues that they confront are not shock tactics to gain notoriety or to make money. The appeal is sincere, even naïve, and has struck a chord with many Chinese, old and young, gamer and non gamers alike. The following is an English translation reprinted with permission by Kaiser Kuo and Jean Shao.
Although there have been many other machinimas and remix videos released in China in the past few years, this video differs in that it is in some ways a call to arms, or more precisely a call to not remain silent, as a protest to current conditions. Although flashmobs may technically be illegal in China, flash mobbing in games has proved to be an outlet by Chinese netizens for expressing dissatisfaction in the past. The winning of this particular video at the Tudou Video Festival this year in China is a window into this growing sentiment against staying quiet when it comes to internet censorship in China.      
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| The User’s Manifesto: In Defense Of Hacking, Modding, And Jailbreaking Posted: 18 Apr 2010 11:28 AM PDT
These questions are natural, because a few years ago they wouldn’t even be possible. What reason would you have for breaking open an first-generation iPod, or hacking an original Playstation? The question of “unauthorized software” on System 9 and Windows XP was plainly moot. But as the capabilities of the PC, console, and phone have expanded, so have their magisteria. And as their power grew, so did their chains. These chains were so light before that we didn’t notice them, but now that they are not only visible but are beginning to truly encumber our devices, we must consider whether we are right to throw them off. The answer, to me at least, seems obvious: no company or person has the right to tell you that you may not do what you like with your own property.      
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Online educational technology startup 
It is becoming alarmingly apparent that 
Between music, 
We reported the details last week 
Slingshot Labs, a research and development arm for News Corp.’s digital properties, has lost its two top execs. President 
For a variety of reasons, too complicated to explain in this short intro paragraph, there’s no NSFW column from me this week. All will be revealed soon, but suffice it to say that any or all of the following are involved: 1) a semi-secret project 2) an unexpected career turn 3) the future of media 4) a plume of volcanic ash from Iceland.
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