The event, at the Marriott Copley Place downtown, is just getting under way. I won’t bore you with every detail, but will post whenever things get interesting.

In the meantime, enjoy this take on Angry Birds for the BlackBerry.

Update, 10:17 am ET: The intro is still going on. RIM Vice President Alec Taylor is talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis for some reason. However, RIM was nice enough to pass out slides for the whole day. Here are some of the highlights:

BlackBerry Mobile Voice System
Launching in early 2011, this is an update to RIM’s effort to unify the desk and mobile phone, offering a single identity, voiceover Wi-Fi calling, a single voicemail box, dialing office extensions and more. RIM says the new version will support more types of business phone systems.

Other features coming later this year include automatic hand-off from Wi-Fi to mobile networks, a “move call from desk” feature and more.

BlackBerry Balance
A new effort to support mixing personal and corporate data on the BlackBerry. RIM is adding features such as the ability for IT to choose to wipe only corporate information from a device or to limit users from cutting work data and pasting it into a personal application or email. Other features include warnings when sending emails or calendar invites outside of the organization, the ability to encrypt media cards and options for preventing access to work data by third-party applications.

BlackBerry client for Microsoft SharePoint
Launching in early 2011, this will bring data from Microsoft’s portal software directly to BlackBerry handhelds. It will work with both the 2007 and 2010 versions of SharePoint and integrates into a number of BlackBerry programs, including E-mail, calendar, Documents To Go and the browser.

PlayBook
As for the forthcoming tablet, RIM says it will ship with 1GB of memory, have 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of flash memory, include a 3-megapixel front-facing and 5-megapixel rear-facing camera and have micro USB and Micro HDMI ports. (I can’t remember if they have said all of that before.) The slides say only that it will ship this quarter and will be “competitively priced,” reiterating past company positioning.

According to the slides, the company also plans to talk about cloud-based device management and changes to allow one BlackBerry server to support multiple corporations.

10:35 am ET: The Cuban Missile Crisis is apparently over, and VP Pete Devenyi is now outlining the company’s business product road map and making the pitch for its strategy.

“We really do have a great story,” he says, noting that the enterprise is different from the “arms race” of the consumer market.

“It’s not just about the number of apps in App world,” he says, noting that businesses can and are building programs just for use within the corporation. Some businesses, he says, have hundreds of internal apps, none of which show up in the public storefront. BlackBerry, he says, also allows businesses better control than rivals over what programs are on a worker’s device. For example, Devenyi says, when workers change groups within a company, the programs they have access to can be updated automatically with programs deleted and added from their devices.

“That kind of power is power that no one else has,” he says. “We don’t read about that much.”

10:43 am: In addition to both the paid BlackBerry Enterprise Server and the slimmed-down free “Express” version of the server, RIM plans to launch an email system aimed directly at small-to-midsize businesses–MDaemon Messaging Server, BlackBerry Edition. The idea is to give smaller businesses a full email server that has full BlackBerry support. The product stems from an acquisition RIM made a year or two ago and offers what RIM says are features similar to Microsoft’s Exchange Server but at a fraction of the price.

The company is also launching “very, very soon” a modest update to its flagship server product, BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0.3. It will add more support for employee-owned devices (including the BlackBerry Balance feature described earlier), support for encrypted attachments and certification for Microsoft’s Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and the latest version, known as Lync 2010.

11:18 am: RIM is launching yet another server this year, known as the BlackBerry Enterprise Application Middleware (BEAM). BEAM, which companies would have to buy in addition to their BlackBerry email server, aims to streamline enterprise content for use on a BlackBerry. ‘What that results in is a much more efficient application than you would otherwise have,” Devenyi says. It’s in beta now, he adds.

11:25 am: BlackBerry is launching its equivalent of Find My Phone, known as BlackBerry Protect, which will allow individuals to remotely wipe or post a message if a device is lost. Protect will launch later this year, Devenyi says.

Finally, the company is talking about a number of changes it is making to the core BlackBerry Enterprise Server so that it can run via the cloud. Launching later this year, RIM will have the ability for its server product to be remotely hosted and support more than one business. It’s not clear yet if this will be RIM offering BlackBerry as a cloud-based service or if this is a product for hosting partners, though it sounds more like the latter.

11:32 am: Devenyi told Mobilized that the company is just showing the architectural changes it is making, not saying how it will bring the cloud-based capabilities to market. “We’re still working through a number of those details ourselves.” Devenyi said. “It could be both, but we are not announcing.”

11:42 am: On to the PlayBook finally. Senior Product manager Ryan Bidan gives the spiel. He says there is a lot that the company isn’t ready to share. Addressing concerns around battery life, Bidan notes the PlayBook has a 5300-miliamp battery, but doesn’t give specifics on how much battery life that will translate to.

“We’ll have good battery life,” he says. “Don’t worry about the battery life.”

Other details:
Software updates will be pushed down to the device on an ongoing basis. There will be a version of App World on the device for downloading developer-created programs.

And with that, the formal part of the event is over.

The New York-based Internet company said it would “co-develop and co-produce new Web programming initially aimed at AOL’s growing women’s audience” with Endemol.

Endemol makes television shows, such as “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” “Big Brother,” “Wipeout” and “Jerseylicious,” as well as Web series “Married On My Space 1 & 2″ and “Coupon Mom.”

AOL is working on several other content partnerships, said sources, to add to its previous ones.

AOL said the first two “built-if-sold”–meaning some big advertiser has to pony up–will be:

“Re-Dressed by America”: An interactive Web series where online users make over subjects facing a life-changing event (high school reunions, first dates, etc.) by voting on their hairstyles, fashion, accessories and more. The series will be featured on Stylelist.com and MyDaily.com.

“Mamá’s Recipe”: U.S. families compete for the best family recipes and share their secrets with the AOL audience. The series will be featured on KitchenDaily and AOL Latino.

Not exactly “The Sopranos,” but there you have it.

Here’s the full press release from AOL:

AOL INC. AND ENDEMOL USA ANNOUNCE WEB PROGRAMMING PRODUCTION PARTNERSHIP

Agreement Further Expands AOL’s Original Video Offerings

New York, NY–January 12. 2011– AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) and Endemol USA today announced a production agreement to co-develop and co-produce new Web programming initially aimed at AOL’s growing women’s audience, as well as at the broader AOL audience. The partnership will focus on creating premium, unscripted digital video content that will enhance the user experience by taking advantage of the real time, interactive and community nature of the Web.

“Endemol is a premiere producer of unscripted programming and their expertise in creating unique, interactive, popular shows, combined with AOL’s growing video audience will take digital production to the next level,” said David Eun, President of AOL Media & Studios. “Endemol is the latest in a string of partnerships that serve both the AOL consumers and our advertising partners.”

“We are thrilled to partner with such a successful and global leading company like AOL,” said David Goldberg, Chairman of Endemol North America. “This deal continues our growth as a leader in interactive digital entertainment, and we look forward to creating many genre-defining series with AOL.”

The first two built-if-sold series to be produced under the new agreement are:

“Re-Dressed By America”: An interactive web series where online users make over subjects facing a life-changing event (high school reunions, first dates, etc.) by voting on their hairstyles, fashion, accessories and more. The series will be featured on Stylelist.com and MyDaily.com.

“Mamá’s Recipe”: US families compete for the best family recipes and share their secrets with the AOL audience. The series will be featured on KitchenDaily (http://www.kitchendaily.com) and AOL Latino (http://latino.aol.com/).

AOL will promote each Web series throughout the AOL Network focusing on the sites and destinations relevant for each series’ demographic. Every series produced through this partnership will feature enhanced online programming, such as user voting, supplemental video clips and supporting blog content to create deeper user experiences, and opportunities for sponsors to integrate their messaging in creative and highly-engaging ways.

Endemol USA, one of the world’s leading producers of entertainment programming, will leverage its experience producing hit shows such as Emmy-award winning “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” “Big Brother,” “Wipeout” and “Jerseylicious,” as well as the hit Web series “Married On My Space 1 & 2″ and “Coupon Mom” to create captivating Web series with AOL.

“You’ve Got…” the video series that debuted with the new AOL.com launch, generated nearly 8 million views in its first month, and featured a diverse guest list including Kelly Ripa, Barack Obama, Matt Damon and the Marines in Afghanistan. For comparison, that puts “You’ve Got…” on-pace with a top 10 Web series. Overall, video views on the new AOL.com rose more than 3X in its first month.

I have had a little disagreement with my IT guy. He says that when taking my laptop out in public, I should never type anything with passwords or confidential information. He says that someone can pick up my information. I say that I can’t believe that everyone in public is totally exposed. There must be some way to protect yourself while on a public network. Who is right?

A:

There’s no single correct answer. It’s true that thieves in public places can and do steal passwords and other sensitive information transferred over public Wi-Fi hotspots. But it’s also true that methods like Virtual Private Networks can mitigate this problem, and that most public hotspots are, just by the odds, unlikely to harbor these thieves at any one time. However, my advice is to avoid doing any sensitive tasks, like banking or stock trading, while using public hotspots. And, if you’re doing anything confidential on your company or home network remotely, use a VPN, which is like a secure tunnel through the internet.

Q:

I recently purchased a new iMac and am considering installing anti-virus/spyware/malware programs on it. Reader forums in MacWorld magazine say it’s not needed. A local newspaper computer columnist says he’s had Macs since the early ’80s and has never run an AV program and has had no problems. Other online computer advisers say Macs are always vulnerable and advise to run AV programs. Any recommendations here?

A:

No computer is inherently invulnerable to malicious software, and that includes the Macintosh. However, nearly every malicious program known is meant to run on Windows and simply won’t operate on the Mac operating system. The handful of Mac viruses and other malware that have been discovered are either proofs of concept, or have spread to very few users and done little or no damage. Most Mac users I’ve known don’t run third-party security software and haven’t had malware problems. So I don’t routinely recommend Mac security software.

There are two caveats, however. If you are running Windows on your Mac, you should install Windows security software, to run while Windows is in use. Also, Mac users are just as vulnerable as Windows users are to online scams, or to insecure public networks. So, even though you may never get a virus, you still have to be careful about doing sensitive Internet tasks via public hotspots or careless behavior like clicking on links sent you by unknown email senders.

Q:

My car has an audio jack that integrates any input into the sound system. I know that Kindle has a text-to-speech feature. Would I be able to use that feature via the audio jack in the car?

A:

Without having tested your car’s input jack, I assume the answer is yes. The Kindle has a standard headphone jack.

However, note that the text-to-speech feature works only on certain books, not all of them. Publishers have the right to allow or disallow it for any book.

Also, even if it’s enabled, it isn’t the same as an audio book, which is usually read by a trained narrator or by the author. Instead, it’s a computer doing the reading.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox and my other columns at the All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

According to sources close to the situation, the aggressive Russian investment outfit DST Global is out of the running to fund Twitter.

Instead, the prize is almost certainly going to Kleiner Perkins, the legendary Silicon Valley venture firm of Web 1.0 that has been making a big push of late into the Web 2.0 market.

The valuation for the new round–which sources said is well above $150 million–will be from $3.5 billion to $4 billion.

And it is not clear if there are any other smaller investors in this funding, but sources said that was likely.

Sources added that the San Francisco microblogging service will be completing its newest round of funding next week, although Twitter might not even announce it publicly.

The new round will be the first in a year for Twitter.

In the fall of 2009, Twitter raised funding at a $1 billion valuation to help spur its growth to its current size of 325 employees, serving its 175 million users.

Such growth was of interest to DST, which has made giant investments in social networking giant Facebook, social gaming rocket ship Zynga and Groupon, the social buying site that recently ended acquisition talks with Google.

Twitter moving into its next phase of development is an attractive target for many VCs, as it seeks a lucrative way to monetize its popular business.

And, in fact, Kleiner star VC John Doerr has been making a big push to be the big investor in this key next round for Twitter, which also has had regular acquisition interest from both Google and Facebook.

What will be interesting to see is if acquisition interest in Twitter from the pair spikes, given the collapse of Google’s attempt to buy Groupon.

The talks with Twitter began, according to several sources, after Kleiner had considered investing in PostUp–the Twitter search engine and advertising platform start-up from Bill Gross’s Idealab, which was first called TweetUp.

PostUp irked Twitter, and its CEO Dick Costolo was particularly vocal about not allowing third-party ad rivals to create a spammier service.

Sources said it was Bill Campbell, well-known Silicon Valley exec and adviser to multiple companies such as Google, who brought Kleiner and Twitter into discussions.

Campbell’s latest coaching task has been at Twitter.

Kleiner has also recently stepped up its Web 2.0 game with the hiring of high-profile Wall Street analyst Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley.

She has been brought in to help turbocharge the firm’s digital investment portfolio, especially in social, mobile and commerce.

The move has underscored Kleiner’s noisy intent of late to jump into the social Web market.

After scoring a late entry into the scene with its investment in the fast-growing social gaming start-up Zynga, Kleiner has made a big marketing push recently to allocate a dedicated $250 million “sFund” to social start-ups.

NetworkEffect’s Liz Gannes first wrote of Kleiner’s interest in Twitter a week ago, followed by a report a day later in TechCrunch about Kleiner’s primacy in the Twitter funding race and Doerr’s fervent effort to land the investment.

None of the players mentioned here has responded to BoomTown’s request for a comment.

In a bit of coincidental timing, said Gnip CEO Jud Valeski, the filing for the round was posted yesterday on the SEC site (which is where I found it). He confirmed the round amount as $2 million, coming mostly from previous investor Foundry Group and including First Round Capital again. This brings the company to $6.6 million raised so far.

Gnip’s deal with Twitter finally brings pricing clarity to usage of Twitter’s data streams, at least for analytics and monitoring companies. The company has permission to collect significant revenue on the streams. Previously, Twitter’s only paid data option was the Firehose full stream of all user status messages, for which it charged different amounts depending on the size of the customer and what it was doing with the data. While Microsoft paid $10 million to incorporate the Firehose into its real-time search, some start-ups that create Twitter clients were getting the Firehose for free.

As I reported yesterday, Gnip will offer social media monitoring companies the Halfhose (50 percent of Tweets at a cost of $30,000 per month), the Decahose (10 percent of Tweets for $5,000 per month) and the Mentionhose (all mentions of a user including @replies and re-Tweets for $20,000 per month), with the caveat that they can’t publicly display the data.

Boulder, Colo.-based Gnip has gone through a big turnaround in the last year. In September ’09, it laid off seven of its 12-person staff, saying the huge increase in creation of social media data had overwhelmed the company’s self-built database and it needed to start over. In May of this year CEO Eric Marcoullier left the company, leaving it in the hands of his co-founder Valeski. Marcoullier, who had previously founded IGN and MyBlogLog, is now working on another start-up, the “Foursquare for Web sites” OneTrueFan.

But a deal with Twitter–a company that has historically expanded into its developers’ territory much to their dismay, rather than blessing third-party companies with partnerships–is a firm indication that Gnip is back on track.

So what did Foursquare co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley do when he was running the New York Marathon last week?

Three guesses and the first two don’t count: He checked in to the popular geolocation service from every mile marker on the 26-mile route.

Of course he did. (And you can see how here.)

It was, I will admit, somewhat charming, as Crowley most certainly was when I interviewed him onstage at a mobile conference earlier this week.

He also gave a very interesting talk about the future of Foursquare, painting a picture of a virtuous ecosystem of third-party developers helping to take the start-up into a place that’s much more than just a badge game and check-in service.

I have definitely given Crowley a bit of a hard time about a bunch of stuff, including taking the New York-based service from a hot mess of a trend to a cool necessity for consumers.

And, in the video below, he’s starting to make a very credible argument about how the company will evolve, even as it fights off intense competition from other rivals and, most especially, social networking giant Facebook’s Places offering.

I will be interviewing Crowley again at D: Dive Into Mobile on December 7 in San Francisco, where we will delve into Foursquare’s future even more.

Until then, enjoy the video interview I did, including Crowley showing off his real New York Marathon prize:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101112/foursquares-crowley-talks-about-a-real-ny-marathon-badge-coming-soon-to-a-d-dive-into-mobile-near-you/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20101110/samsung-galaxy-tab-tablet-review/ http://allthingsd.com/20101110/samsung-galaxy-tab-tablet-review/#comments Thu, 11 Nov 2010 02:02:56 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/?p=1610 After seven months of unchallenged prominence, Apple’s hot-selling iPad now has its first credible competitor in the nascent market for multitouch consumer tablet computers: the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

The Tab is being introduced over the next week by three major U.S. wireless phone carriers at $400 with a cellular data contract, or at $600 with cellular capability but no contract. The iPad starts at $499 for a Wi-Fi model with no cellular-data capability or contract, and is $629 for the least expensive model with cellular data capability but no contract.

Like the iPad, the Tab, which uses Google’s Android operating system, is a good-looking slate with a vivid color screen that can handle many of the tasks typically performed on a laptop. These include email, social networking, Web browsing, photo viewing, and music and video playback. It also can run a wide variety of third-party apps. But it has major differences, most notably in size.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab has less than half the screen real estate than that of the iPad.

The Tab has a 7-inch screen versus the 9.7-inch display on the iPad. That may seem like a small difference, but the numbers are deceptive, because screen sizes are always described using diagonal measurements. In fact, the actual screen real estate on the Tab is less than half of the iPad’s. That’s a disadvantage, but it allows the overall unit to be much smaller and lighter, and thus more easily used in one hand, something some users will welcome.

The new tablet will be introduced in coming days by Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, with a variety of cellular data plans. AT&T also will carry the Tab during the holiday season but hasn’t announced its timing or data-plan pricing. Although it is being sold by cellular carriers, the Tab, like the iPad (which offers optional month-to-month cellular data through AT&T) can’t make cellular voice calls.

I’ve been testing the Tab for a couple of weeks and I like it. It’s a serious alternative to the iPad and one that will be preferred by some folks. It includes the three most-requested features missing in the iPad: a camera (two in fact); the ability to run Web videos and applications written in Adobe’s Flash software; and multitasking, though, to be fair, the latter feature is coming to the iPad imminently via a software update. Another strong point is that like Apple, Samsung has rewritten some of the standard apps, such as the email and calendar programs, to make them look more like PC programs and less like smartphone apps.

On balance, however, I still prefer the iPad. For one thing, I like getting twice the screen size for a little more money up front—as little as $29 for the no-contract model with cellular capability. For another, the iPad has vastly more apps specifically designed for a tablet versus a smartphone—about 40,000 according to Apple, compared with just a handful for the Tab. And it can run about triple the apps overall, if you count smartphone apps that aren’t optimized for tablets.

Also, in my tests, the iPad’s battery life was about five hours better than the Tab’s, its maximum storage capacity is higher, and its aluminum body is more rugged than the Tab’s plastic casing. Finally, the iPad can be bought in a Wi-Fi-only model that frees you from any entanglement with cellphone carriers. The Tab also has Wi-Fi, but, so far, no Wi-Fi-only version, though Samsung is promising one next year.

Still, the Tab is a very attractive product and I enjoyed using it. For buyers who want to spend less up front, don’t mind the smaller screen, prefer the more compact dimensions and one-handed usability, and place high value on the cameras and on Flash, it may well be a better choice.

Hardware

The Tab is a rectangular slate about two inches shorter and three inches narrower than the iPad. It is also a tad thinner. It weighs less than a pound, compared with 1.5 pounds for the iPad. While its screen is smaller, it has almost the same resolution as the iPad, so almost as much material can be displayed on it.

The screen is sharp and generally responsive to touch, though, in my tests, a bit slower than the iPad’s screen. The Tab comes with 16 gigabytes of flash storage, the same as the base iPad. But with some carriers, this storage is internal and in others, it’s on a removable memory card. The card slot comes on all models and can hold up to 32 gigabytes at extra cost. The iPad, also at extra cost, comes in versions that go up to 64 gigabytes, all internal.

With its lighter weight and smaller size, I found the Tab easy to use while standing and moving. It easily fit in one hand, though for many tasks you’ll still need two hands.

Battery Life

Samsung and its partners make wildly varying battery claims for the Tab. The former says it can last up to 13 hours on a single charge, while T-Mobile claims just eight hours. I gave the Tab the same test I used for my iPad review: I put the screen on nearly full brightness, left the Wi-Fi on to collect email and played back-to-back videos until the unit died. My test Tab lasted six hours, 50 minutes, though at six hours, 10 minutes the screen dimmed irrevocably to a darkness level that made it useless. In the same test last spring, the iPad logged 11 hours, 28 minutes.

Cameras

The Tab has a 3-megapixel rear camera with flash and a 1.3-megapixel front camera mainly for video calls. Still-photographs and videos I took were of average quality, but videos taken with the front camera were fuzzy.

I tested video calling using a pre-release, tablet-optimized version of Qik, the software being preinstalled for this purpose on the Tab. Results were mixed. It will work over either cellular or Wi-Fi connections, but the version I tried wasn’t tuned for cellular, so we used Wi-Fi. In my conversation with a Qik executive, the call at first failed to go through. When it did go through, it worked fine for awhile, and then failed when I tried a feature designed to hide my image. Later, the audio dropped altogether. Qik says it is fixing the problems.

Software

The Tab uses the latest version of Android, and it generally worked very smoothly, even though Google has warned that Android isn’t yet ready for tablets. I was especially impressed with Samsung’s attractive and usable rewrites of the calendar, email and contacts apps, which, like their iPad cousins, use multiple panels to make them more computer-like, while still remaining touch-friendly.

I found the Web browser to be a bit jerky in zooming into text and scrolling through long pages. I tested several Adobe Flash videos and websites written in Flash. Sometimes they played and sometimes they didn’t. In all cases, they slowed the browser down. On one site written in Flash, I got a warning saying I might want to “abort” lest the computer become “unresponsive.” In another case, the Tab crashed. So I conclude that while the Tab does play Flash, it needs work on that score.

I downloaded a few third-party apps. I couldn’t find any that were rewritten with extra features for tablets, nor any way to discover these in the Android Market. Some of my downloaded apps scaled fine to tablet size. Others were surrounded by large black bars.

Cellular pricing

On an iPad, if you opt for cellular-data service, there is no contract and only two monthly prices—$14.99 for 250 megabytes and $25 for 2 gigabytes. On the Tab, it’s much more complicated. Verizon, which is selling only the $600 no-contract model, says its pricing will start at $20 a month for 1 gigabyte of data. Sprint charges $29.99 monthly for 2 gigabytes and $59.99 for 5 gigabytes. T-Mobile has different prices for no-contract and contract models, and different rates for new and existing customers. Just two examples: a new customer under contract on a Tab can pay $30 monthly for 200 megabytes or $50 for 5 gigabytes.

So, I urge Tab buyers to do the math carefully on the overall cost of the device under various carriers and plans.

Bottom Line

The Tab is attractive, versatile and competitively priced, though monthly cell fees can add up. It’s different enough from the iPad, yet good enough, to give consumers a real choice.

Find all his columns and videos at walt.allthingsd.com Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101110/samsung-galaxy-tab-tablet-review/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101103/liveblogging-the-facebook-mobile-event-single-sign-on/ http://allthingsd.com/20101103/liveblogging-the-facebook-mobile-event-single-sign-on/#comments Wed, 03 Nov 2010 17:55:54 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=36691

BoomTown arrived late to the Facebook mobile event for the press due to traffic related to the parade today for the San Francisco Giants’ World Series victory–and where I would much rather be right now.

Go Giants!

10:53 am PT: In any case, I am here in the cafeteria of Facebook again, where the company continues its attempts to take over the known digital universe before Google does.

Currently, the social networking giant notes “200 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook from a phone, more than triple the number just one year ago.”

Thus, some new tries of a lot of stuff, such as single sign-on.

Meaning you sign on a Facebook and it signs you on all over the Web (or at least at those in partnership with the company).

Such as at Groupon and Zynga.

This single sign-on stuff has been tried by many before, a kind of Holy Grail of the Web, and where everyone has failed.

But it also the proverbial camel’s nose poking in your digital tent.

As in, the whole Facebook body is surely coming in next.

Facebook’s exec in charge of all this, Eric Tseng, talks about a virtuous circle of single sign-on, happy users and happy developers, sounding as if this is the single biggest problem facing humanity.

A password crisis! Silicon Valley to the rescue!

Perhaps the only issue the now damaged administration of President Barack Obama could actually get some legislation passed on now.

“My fellow Americans, we have too long be stuck in a miasma of forgetting which name of our dog we used for our password plus the number one…”

How much do I want to be at Giants parade right now? Much!

11:02 am: Next, we move onto more ability to show your location to friends on Facebook better and make sense of it by opening location APIs.

More heavy pontificating about what a disaster it is that we cannot properly see where our friends are on Facebook in the real world.

Of course, this leaves out the pertinent point that my “friends” on Facebook are exactly those I do not want to run into at the Starbucks on El Camino Real in Palo Alto, Calif.

Loopt Founder Sam Altman comes up to show off the integration with Facebook Places, where this problem is solved anyway.

“We believe data wants to be unified,” says Altman.

Certainly if you are the Borg, you want it to be unified. Me, not so much.

11:11 am: Now comes the attempted Groupon-killer from Facebook, which is creatively called “Deals.”

This is essentially allowing Facebook Places to locate a person and then merchants to offer deals when a user is nearby via a platform offered by Facebook.

You can do individual deals, such as getting a beer at a bar when you check in. Then, there is a loyalty deal on the phone, taking the place of that dog-eared card you always lose.

And there is the “friend deal.” This is not friends with benefits, sadly.

It means if you check in and bring a lot of folks, one eats free–which sounds just a little naughty.

Also, there is one deal type related to charity.

For the Gap, for example, you get a free jeans if you are among the first 10,000 to check in at a Gap store. There are 500 million Facebook users, so you do the math.

Essentially, it is about getting stuff if you check in, including experiences.

So, just like little white mice in Facebook’s lab, we push the button, we get the cheese. Sigh.

But I wonder if I check in right now, I can be transported to the Giants parade via a time machine. Now that might be something worth handing over my privacy to Facebook.

“The big takeaway for today is that there is obviously a lot of change in the social space,” says Facebook CEO and Co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. “You can rethink any product area and make it be social.”

Indeed, you can. And Facebook obviously is going to be plowing on through a lot of them in order to solidify its stranglehold on the consumer.

11:23 am: Q&A!

The first question is on privacy and third-party developers giving up your location.

Yes, that!

Zuckerberg makes assurances that the current privacy steps now in place are working just fine and also users need to consent.

“The place information about people is not public,” he says.

There is question from Ben Parr of Mashable, about whether there is an iPad app for Facebook coming.

“It’s not mobile…it is a computer,” declares Zuckerberg, dismissing the very good question.

“I think Apple would disagree with you,” countered Parr, correctly.

“Well, sorry,” said Zuckerberg with more than a little bit of snark.

For a second, he sounds just like the guy from the Facebook movie.

But Zuckerberg quickly declares his love of Apple products and apologizes, although he should not have as it was a funny exchange.

A question about single sign-on. Zuckerberg notes that it has been tried, but the experience was bad.

“What we think is going to happen now is that it is so easy when it works, it is a whole different experience,” he said, comparing it to the way YouTube made video uploading on the Web easier.

Zuckerberg’s goal is that all apps become social, which is also a virtuous circle for Facebook, of course.

A question about the deals offer. It seems for Zuckerberg that Facebook is not getting a cut from retailers right now, as Groupon does.

Ruh-roh, Andrew Mason!

Zuckerberg then notes that the Places offering is going well, without giving a lot of specifics.

At the end, PR maven Brandee Barker wraps it up by saying what I have been thinking this entire time:

“Go Giants!”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101103/liveblogging-the-facebook-mobile-event-single-sign-on/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20101021/liveblogging-unveiling-of-the-sfund-at-facebook-with-guest-stars-kleiner-amazon-and-zynga/ http://allthingsd.com/20101021/liveblogging-unveiling-of-the-sfund-at-facebook-with-guest-stars-kleiner-amazon-and-zynga/#comments Thu, 21 Oct 2010 17:44:40 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=35998

BoomTown had to park a badillion miles away from Facebook’s suburban HQ in Palo Alto, Calif. and hoofed it there for a press event that unveiled the sFund.

What’s that? A $250 million fund for social start-ups.

10:40 am PT: The excitement was building–well, not really…well, not at all, in fact–at the Facebook cafeteria, as the Silicon Valley press got to see the name of the sFund on screens throughout the room.

Kleiner Perkins power VC John Doerr started off the proceedings with some microphone snafus, when he tried to get out from behind the podium.

“John, sometimes you have to stay in the box,” joked Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who was sitting onstage in what appears to be an Internet Hall of Fame group.

The others would be Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Zynga CEO and Founder Mark Pincus, and giant-man-about-Web Bing Gordon.

Doerr talked on about the importance of social, related to the Internet.

Then, he introed Zuckerberg, hoodie-less, who agreed with him, talking about photos and how social made them hot on Facebook.

Apparently, everything is going social. Personally, I am now contemplating becoming a hermit.

Doerr went full Oprah on him, asking what would inspire him to innovate, if he were starting out today (and presumably there were no Winklevii around to “borrow” an idea from).

“If you take any passion and map it to an industry,” said Zuckerberg, it will result in disruption.

Then Doerr channeled Barbara Walters at Pincus, tossing him a softball query about the fabulousness of it all.

For example: “What’s inspired you to be a CEO at this amazing company?” (Note to Walt Mossberg: Let’s file that tough one away for D9!)

11:01 am:Thank goodness then for Bezos, who simply said he hoped these new companies will take some of that $250 million and use Amazon Web Services.

He talked about how these trends grow virally and “sometimes violently.”

Ouch!

Speaking of pinchy, Bezos moved on to some chemical explosion metaphor, and I am now certain I want to be a hermit crab.

Then, after a question about what he would do now, he veered to bioengineering! Doerr wanted a social answer, but Bezos was talking test tubes and “engineered and synthetic life.”

But Gordon behaved for John “Diane Sawyer” Doerr and talked about how social is the only place to be for the cool kids.

He reeled off the other partners, including Comcast, Liberty Media and Allen & Co.

One more question from Doerr: Five years from now, what is going to make you “delighted” about and for the customers you service.

Gordon: He could see the family.

Pincus: He has 12-week twins, not the Winklevii, who are still too young to use Facebook. He was excited it is all getting wired.

“When everyone is always connected to one another, rather than connected to the Web,” he said, that’s the bomb.

He called the big social companies “dial tones,” as in Zynga was the gaming dial tone, Amazon was the shopping dial tone and Facebook was the dial tone.

Zuckerberg: I was not sure he was actually answering the question. But I believed his wish was about these social networks getting to scale.

He went on though, talking about how some companies were building a “light” social layer versus companies where social was “built fundamentally into the product.”

These, of course, have an advantage, according to the gospel of Zuckerberg.

Bezos: He talked about Amazon’s Web services some more–this dude is a retailer, so he was sure good at selling.

Gordon, who is apparently like Ed McMahon to Doerr’s Johnny Carson, rounded up the feel-good session.

11:17 am: Q&A.

Go Miguel Helft, from the New York Times, who asked a good question, about what took so long for Doerr to do this fund, since social–i.e., Facebook–has been around for seven years or more.

Doerr joked, “Next question.” Ha.

But really. Doerr did not answer except to say that Zynga only exploded a year ago, so back off, Miguel.

There were two other dullish questions, about new partners.

“It’s a quarter-billion-dollar party,” said Gordon, which I was not quite wanting to attend. Which made me a social party pooper.

Larry Magid from CBS asked about social responsibility around privacy, especially after the recent controversy around the leaking of Facebook user info to advertisers, via third-party apps companies such as Zynga.

Then, there ws a question about whether this is not simply the “fbFund,” as in Facebook, since the social networking site was going to benefit the most from all this.

No, it was not, declares Doerr.

More questions–about monetization, advertising, free versus paid and an off-topic one about rumors of Amazon launching an app store (of course it is!).

Zuckerberg took the monetization one. All of the above, it’s great, money for all.

The event finished with a very odd poem by Gordon, which ended with a decent joke about the possibility that entrepreneurs, if they are lucky, get a movie “made about you.”

He was referring to “The Social Network,” which trashed Zuckerberg.

In any case, quarter-billion-dollar party on, Mark.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101021/liveblogging-unveiling-of-the-sfund-at-facebook-with-guest-stars-kleiner-amazon-and-zynga/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101021/viral-radio-facebook-flap/ http://allthingsd.com/20101021/viral-radio-facebook-flap/#comments Thu, 21 Oct 2010 08:18:17 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=35957

Here’s a radio interview BoomTown did earlier this week on San Francisco’s KQED “Forum” show, hosted by Michael Krasny.

The topic was a report in the The Wall Street Journal that certain third-party apps on Facebook were grabbing information about users in ways that violated the social networking site’s privacy guidelines.

Privacy advocates cried foul, while others thought it was more a tempest in a teapot– which I, NPR reporter Laura Sydell and Marc Rotenberg, executive director for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, discussed.

One conclusion, which you will understand after listening: Facebook definitely does not cause cancer.

Here’s the audio:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101021/viral-radio-facebook-flap/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20100929/web-analysts-push-for-privacy-standards/ http://allthingsd.com/20100929/web-analysts-push-for-privacy-standards/#comments Wed, 29 Sep 2010 17:39:31 +0000 Jennifer Valentino-DeVries http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=30445 As Web tracking faces growing regulatory and public scrutiny, people who analyze online data for a living are confronting questions about their industry.

The Wall Street Journal’s What They Know series has documented the cutting-edge uses of the tracking technology used to create profiles of consumers’ habits. The 50 most popular U.S. websites installed 64 tracking files on average, the Journal study found.

Many of these are of the type used to develop profiles of users for behaviorally targeted advertising, but there can be other uses for such files.

Many sites use Web-analytics programs, for example, to evaluate the traffic coming to their own pages. Cookies from these programs can come from the site itself, in which case they are known as first-party cookies, or from another service, in which case they’re called third-party cookies. Such services are generally separate from ad networks, but there are no rules governing the sharing of such data.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100929/web-analysts-push-for-privacy-standards/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100831/oauth-sounds-geeky-but-protecting-passwords-is-worth-it/ http://allthingsd.com/20100831/oauth-sounds-geeky-but-protecting-passwords-is-worth-it/#comments Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:00:49 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=33130

Today at 8 am PT, Twitter will turn on OAuth for user authentication, which would seem like something only nerds should care about.

In fact, everyone should.

With third-party apps no longer given access to Twitter passwords, in this highly unprotected digital world, the consumer is a little bit more protected.

I myself cringe every time an app asks for basic authorization–my password for Twitter–so I can use whatever it is offering.

Since so much of the Web has become social, connecting services to each other tightly–so that they all work together–is a must.

What it also does is create untold security issues.

But OAuth–which is used by an increasing number of big sites–mitigates some of that, allowing you to sign in to Twitter itself and then let the service authenticate.

Here at All Things Digital, we are also updating our mobile app to use OAuth, since it will render the old way obsolete.

And it couldn’t come soon enough.

Here is the Twitter blog post on the changeover:

Twitter Applications and OAuth

Monday, August 30, 2010

If you are like most Twitter users, you have used use a third-party Twitter application to read or send Tweets. As of August 31, Twitter applications will all use OAuth, an authentication method that lets you use apps without them storing your password.

What does this mean for me?

The move to OAuth will mean increased security and a better experience. Applications won’t store your username and password, and if you change your password, applications will continue to work.

With OAuth, you still individually approve each application before using it, and you can revoke access at any time. To see which applications you have authorized or to revoke access, just go to the Connections section under Settings.

One thing to note–to continue to use your favorite applications, you should make sure you are running the latest version of the app. Otherwise, you may soon find that it doesn’t work anymore.

Tell me more about OAuth

In order for Twitter applications to access your account, developers have been able to choose one of two authentication methods: Basic Authentication or OAuth. Both require your permission, but there is an important difference. With Basic Auth, you provide your username and password for the app to access Twitter, and the application has to store and send this information over the Internet each time you use the app. With OAuth, this isn’t the case. Instead, you approve an application to access Twitter, and the application doesn’t store your password.

Fortunately, developers have known about our transition to OAuth since last December, so they’ve had time to update their apps. And many apps, including Echofon, TweetDeck, Twitterrific, Seesmic, and Twitter for Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry, are already using OAuth. We appreciate the work and time that developers have invested in this update in order to keep you safe.

[Image credit goes to hueniverse.com, a most excellent blog about all things OAuth and web standards.]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100831/oauth-sounds-geeky-but-protecting-passwords-is-worth-it/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100830/scvngrs-seth-priebatsch-talks-about-geo-location-wars-facebook-places-and-more/ http://allthingsd.com/20100830/scvngrs-seth-priebatsch-talks-about-geo-location-wars-facebook-places-and-more/#comments Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:00:09 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=33047

Last week, SCVNGR integrated its third-party social geolocation game service into the Facebook Places mega-location offering.

As it turned out, BoomTown was in Beantown–as in Boston–for a lovely wedding, so I took some prenuptial time to visit SCVNGR’s HQ in Cambridge, Mass., to talk to its founder, Seth Priebatsch.

In the launch last week, SCVNGR was one of a series of start-ups in the geolocation arena–such as Foursquare and Gowalla–that announced their cooperation with the giant social networking site’s effort to include their services into the offering using its social graph APIs.

SCVNGR’s take in the geolocation race is to allow users to do check-ins, complete challenges and earn points for rewards on mobile devices such as Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and Google (GOOG) Android devices.

The idea came from an entrepreneur competition the high-energy Priebasch won as a freshman at Princeton University, which he left soon after to found SCVNGR.

It has raised about $5 million in funding from venture outfits such as Highland Capital Partners and Google Ventures–an investment that only adds to the irony here, since the search giant itself is about to launch a new social service to compete with Facebook.

Here is the video interview with Priebatsch, as well as a tour of SCVNGR’s HQ, in which we talk all about this and also how he hopes to differentiate his service from the pack:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100830/scvngrs-seth-priebatsch-talks-about-geo-location-wars-facebook-places-and-more/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20100818/twitters-coo-dick-costolo-talks-about-management-monetization-and-ipo-cravings/ http://allthingsd.com/20100818/twitters-coo-dick-costolo-talks-about-management-monetization-and-ipo-cravings/#comments Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:00:49 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=32362

Yesterday, BoomTown headed to the well-appointed downtown San Francisco HQ of Twitter as part of a renewed quest that I have dubbed “Meet the Twits.”

No, really! Since Twitter has been on a significant hiring spree for all kinds of execs and staffers–it now has almost 250 employees–I have been in need of some serious meeting and greeting to see what’s going on there at the microblogging kingpin.

In fact, on my way to chat with COO Dick Costolo and Vice President of Engineering Michael Abbott–newly arrived from Palm and going full Ahab on the fail whale–I ran into former Google (GOOG) exec and spanking-new Twitter international head Katie Stanton and February-appointed CFO Ali Rowghani, formerly of Pixar.

It’s exec-mania over there!

Thus, the first place to start had to be a chit-chat with Costolo, who is about to have his one-year anniversary at Twitter as No. 2 to CEO and co-founder Evan Williams.

Costolo, as anyone who knows him well will tell you, is a very funny guy and also pretty forthright on what’s happening at Twitter.

He’d know, of course, as an early adviser and investor at the start-up–who came to Twitter rather suddenly after leaving Google, which had bought Costolo’s Feedburner.

Here’s the interview I did with Costolo, in which he talks about new execs, promoted tweets and trends, what’s next for the Silicon Valley darling and also the false, but funny, rumor of an IPO “craving” he has:

(You can also click here to see MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka’s video interview with Costolo in April about its ad business and his thoughts on Twitter’s third-party developers.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100818/twitters-coo-dick-costolo-talks-about-management-monetization-and-ipo-cravings/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100818/will-facebook-debut-a-foursquare-lite-location-feature-or-a-real-competitor-or-what/ http://allthingsd.com/20100818/will-facebook-debut-a-foursquare-lite-location-feature-or-a-real-competitor-or-what/#comments Wed, 18 Aug 2010 12:11:14 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=32361

Later today, as BoomTown previously reported, Facebook is likely to show off what it has been working on for a while now in the geo-location arena.

We’ll see whassup at 4:30 pm PT, when Facebook will hold a “news event” at the social-networking powerhouse’s HQ in Silicon Valley. (I will be liveblogging from it, natch.)

While most agree that the unveiling of the powerful social-networking site’s geo-location plans will have big impact, it will be much more interesting to see precisely what Facebook will do and how it innovates.

The company has certainly been talking about some sort of location feature for a long time–even as start-ups such as Foursquare and Booyah have grown like gangbusters–so much so that it has become a mini-waiting game in Silicon Valley.

But how Facebook integrates the hot trend into what it has built rather than bought–Facebook considered buying the New York-based Foursquare–is full of all kinds of complexities and possible sand traps.

Here is what I think it might–and should–show off:

NO PLAYING GAMES

There is plenty of that kind of silliness offered by others, and the badge, mayorships and general gaming is not really Facebook’s style.

In fact, gimmickry, which eventually becomes tiresome, is not really one of the tools in Facebook’s arsenal. Creating features–such as the Wall–that have become daily helpers is the ticket here.

In fact, it would be great if Facebook could go radically useful with a check-in feature, which would be for the rest of us who are not interested in broadcasting our presence at New York clubs into the wee hours.

Still, it would be nice to get all kinds of offers and freebies for using the service and giving up even more personal information to the hungry maw of this–still–Mark Zuckerberg production.

SEAMLESS THIRD-PARTY AGGREGATION

A must, given Facebook is all about integration and coordination for its users. It has already easily welcomed in all kinds of third-party services, and it must give developers on its platform geo-location capabilities.

So, any Facebook offering would need to integrate all the current location services, both on the Web site and in its mobile app.

That said, it is also important that Facebook also has a strong and effective offering of its own.

PLEASE MARK, I WANT SOME MORE

Location-sharing needs to be more than location-sharing, IMHO.

That’s because check-ins can become as inane as some Twitter posts.

In my bedroom! Now, in my bathroom! Now, in my kitchen. Hey from the 7-11! Aaaaaagh!

In fact, what is most useful about Foursquare is a part the service seems to give little attention to–user-generated info about various places.

Facebook could give truly helpful on-the-go info if it did a good job here, letting me know–for example–that I need to avoid the shrimp-puff appetizer at all costs or alerting me to the joys of some esoteric spa service.

Best of all, it would be nice if this info were not generated just by my friends, but by everyone. Because my friends are really boring.

WHAT HAPPENS ON FACEBOOK CHECK-IN, STAYS ON FACEBOOK CHECK-IN

Facebook has a long-running and much-deserved reputation for not treating privacy issues with enough concern and care.

While it is one thing to have a status update that you are enjoying 43 cold ones by the Jersey Shore with Snooki, it is quite another to geo-locate your trashy sojourn without a terrific level of control.

And, of course, controls that are comprehensible and easy to use.

Thus, some rules:

Any location service must be opt-in only.

Any location service must be set to private to start and allow users to change settings with each update.

Check-ins must be verified, so people cannot lie and manipulate the system.

The entire Facebook community of 500 million users must know exactly where Mark Zuckerberg is at every moment–wait, that’s just my secret wish.

Well, not a wish: All Facebook execs should publicly and actively be using the check-in services to let us all know that everyone is on the exact same page.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100818/will-facebook-debut-a-foursquare-lite-location-feature-or-a-real-competitor-or-what/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100720/linkedin-ceo-jeff-weiner-talks-about-growth-business-intelligence-ipo-and-more/ http://allthingsd.com/20100720/linkedin-ceo-jeff-weiner-talks-about-growth-business-intelligence-ipo-and-more/#comments Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:15:38 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=30893

Last week, BoomTown paid a long overdue visit on Jeff Weiner, the former Yahoo exec who took over the helm of LinkedIn from founder Reid Hoffman just over a year ago.

Among the topics of discussion: The strong growth over the last year of the social networking site focused on business professionals; its latest goal to surface “business intelligence” for users; LinkedIn’s competitors; and, of course, the likely initial public offering in its future.

Running the show has turned out well so far for Weiner, who was a digital exec among many previous jobs.

Before coming to the Mountain View, Calif.-based LinkedIn, Weiner ran the Network division of Yahoo (YHOO), putting him in charge of most of its consumer offerings.

He left the Internet giant in 2008 and did a brief stint as an executive-in-residence at two Silicon Valley venture firms–Accel Partners and Greylock Partners–before joining LinkedIn later that year as its president.

When he took over as CEO in June of 2009, Weiner listed a number of priorities moving forward, including scaling the network, increasing the user base and engagement, improving user experience and product ease, juicing up search, further expanding internationally and strengthening the platform and third-party developer relationships.

That’s a lot, although most simply focus on LinkedIn’s growth from 42 million members worldwide then to more than 70 million today.

While profitable–via three lines of revenue, including premium subscriptions, corporate solutions and advertising–LinkedIn will need that rocket growth to shoulder its $1 billion valuation and perhaps even more if it has its anticipated IPO.

There are challenges, of course, such as the daily appearance of other professional networking sites and apps, but none has yet gained as much traction or offered such rich streams of data yet as LinkedIn.

Here’s Weiner talking about all that and more in the video of this interview:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100720/linkedin-ceo-jeff-weiner-talks-about-growth-business-intelligence-ipo-and-more/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20100608/meet-the-two-grad-students-who-freaked-out-the-nyt-the-pulse-ipad-app-creators-speak/ http://allthingsd.com/20100608/meet-the-two-grad-students-who-freaked-out-the-nyt-the-pulse-ipad-app-creators-speak/#comments Wed, 09 Jun 2010 01:17:03 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=29246

The first thing to strike you about the pair of Stanford University graduate students (pictured here) who made the banned and then unbanned news-reading iPad app, Pulse News Reader, is how they look like an advertisement for all that is good about entrepreneurship.

Sweet-natured, slightly naive, energetic and very product focused, they are the last techies you’d choose to be the ones who got the New York Times (NYT) in enough of a tizzy to force Apple to pull the aggregator from its App Store.

BoomTown met Akshay Kothari, 23, and 22-year-old Ankit Gupta this afternoon at a hotel near the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, where Pulse was called out yesterday by name by Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs for excellence only hours before the company had to stop offering it to users.

At first, the shy pair said they did not want to call attention to themselves or rail on Apple or the Times. After much convincing by me, they agreed to talk about their unusual situation in the video below, focusing on the product and its origins.

It started out simple enough, creating Pulse for the Launch Pad class at Stanford, which requires students to develop and put out a product. Both students are at Stanford’s Institute of Design and created a company called Alphonso Labs when Pulse was done.

It took them only four weeks to develop and, within weeks after it was approved for sale in the App Store, Pulse became a red-hot paid seller for the fast-growing tablet device–putting Pulse at No. 1 at times on the list of paid apps on iTunes.

In fact, the app was so well regarded that the Times wrote a rave about it last week.

The high culminated for Kothari and Gupta when Jobs named Pulse first in a list of the most-promising apps for the iPad in his keynote speech at the WWDC yesterday.

Unfortunately, that was the last hurrah for them, since the business side of the New York Times–after seeing the article about Pulse in the Times–had already fired off a letter to Apple demanding that the app be taken down.

“The Pulse News Reader app, makes commercial use of the NYTimes.com and Boston.com RSS feeds, in violation of their Terms of Use,” wrote Times lawyer Richard Samson to Apple on June 3. “Thus, the use of our content is unlicensed. The app also frames the NYTimes.com and Boston.com websites in violation of their respective Terms of Use.”

Sources at the Times said that while there are many other similar readers for online news that do exactly the same thing, Pulse’s combined framing and use of the paper’s RSS feed for commercial gain–as well as, let’s be frank, its popularity–caused execs to make what looks like a pretty boneheaded move.

(Could they have called the pair first? Of course they could have, but they did not.)

So, after the Times lawyer wrote Apple, Apple wrote Kothari and Gupta, telling them of the removal of Pulse from the App Store: “The New York Times Company believes your application named ‘Pulse News Reader’ infringes The New York Times Company’s rights.”

Today, though, the app was suddenly back up with no comment from Apple.

A Times spokesperson said this might be a mistake and that the media giant did not know what had happened.

Neither did Gupta and Kothari, who said the app on sale now is the same as the old one, although they had submitted a new version without the Times as a default earlier today.

“It’s a mystery,” said Gupta. “Although it is sad that we were off the App Store right when people might have heard about us.”

The next step? Who knows?

UPDATE: Sources close to the situation said that the Pulse iPad app was reposted because the new version submitted earlier today does not automatically include the Times properties and that older versions sold will soon be updated.

Other sources also noted that the Times has had issues with many other third-party news readers in the past, though not one as visible as Pulse.

And it remains to be seen if Pulse’s creators face other irked content owners or not.

In any case, one thing is still certain: Like its creators, the innovative Pulse is sweet, and it is on sale for $3.99 at iTunes.

For now, that is.

Until the next twisty development, here’s the video interview of Kothari and Gupta:

[Photo by All Things Digital intern Drake Martinet--taken before the recent controversy.]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100608/meet-the-two-grad-students-who-freaked-out-the-nyt-the-pulse-ipad-app-creators-speak/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20100524/we-sort-of-warned-you-twitter-boots-rival-ad-networks-from-its-stream/ http://allthingsd.com/20100524/we-sort-of-warned-you-twitter-boots-rival-ad-networks-from-its-stream/#comments Mon, 24 May 2010 15:51:00 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=19860 UPDATE: Twitter’s changes move beyond booting ad networks — it also wants to tax publishers and developers who make money by selling ads against Twitter results.

——————-

Does your business plan involve running ads in Twitter’s stream? Think again: Twitter appears to have shut out all rival ad networks from its service.

The relevant quote from a Twitter blog post today: “We will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API.”

We sort of saw this coming. When Twitter launched its own ad system last month, COO Dick Costolo made it clear that Twitter would be restricting the way rival ad systems could use the service’s data feed.

But Costolo also seemed to leave room for ad networks like 140 Proof and Ad.ly. The supposed terms: If you use “real” tweets as your ads, you’ll be okay. Here’s an excerpt from an interview I conducted with him on this very topic:

Clients can use our system and other ad systems at the same time. The distinction I would make, or the caveat I would add to that, [is that] we are going to probably prohibit pieces, insertions into the timeline that cause user confusion.

So for example, if someone creates an ad that looks like a tweet in the timeline, but isn’t a tweet–such that if you click on the retweet button, you go to a landing page instead of retweeting the tweet–that’s something [that] causes user confusion; it harms the overall value of the platform, and we’re going to prohibit that.

What changed? I’ve asked Twitter for comment, but I doubt we’ll get more than what Costolo has already offered in his post. The short version: It’s our service, and we’re running it in a way that makes the most sense to us.

That’s fine, and that’s the company’s prerogative. But in addition to the third-party ad businesses Twitter just gut-punched, the move is going to have repercussions with Twitter’s third-party developers, who were already wary about the service’s intentions. It’s an open invitation to them to search for other partners. Like, um, Google (GOOG).

Meanwhile, TweetUp CEO Bill Gross, who is launching his Twitter ad product today, tells me his service won’t be affected by Twitter’s new policy because he’s not placing his ads in Twitter’s stream. Rather, he’s inserting them into Twitter search results his company generates. Seems to me that Twitter’s new policy is broad enough that it could be aimed at TweetUp too. But let’s see what happens…

Here’s that interview with Costolo from April:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100524/we-sort-of-warned-you-twitter-boots-rival-ad-networks-from-its-stream/feed/ 0