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This past weekend, I wrote a post wondering if Android was surging in the U.S. market because Apple was letting it? The main thought was that by remaining exclusively tied to AT&T, Apple was driving some users to choose Android, which is available on all the U.S. carriers. In the post, I posed a question: if it's not the iPhone/AT&T deal, why do you choose Android? Nearly 1,000 people responded, and a large percentage focused on the same idea: the idea of "openness."
You'll forgive me, but I have to say it: what a load of crap.
In theory, I'm right there with you. The thought of a truly open mobile operating system is very appealing. The problem is that in practice, that's just simply not the reality of the situation. Maybe if Google had their way, the system would be truly open. But they don't. Sadly, they have to deal with a very big roadblock: the carriers. |
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The market for web-based translations is estimated to be worth around $3 billion currently, and big markets tend to attract investors. One of the newer companies in that area, Tokyo-based myGengo (which we previously profiled as "Mechanical Turk for translation"), just raised a $750,000 seed round from some high-profile backers. |
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I typically hear from VCs these days when they are either doing a big, growth capital round, a follow-on funding, an investment in concert with a syndicate or.... bleeeeeeeeep (as in not at all). The rise of the "Super Angels", a trend TechCrunch Europe was first to call in 2008, seems to be putting paid to VC's involvement in early stage.
Or perhaps not.
Venture capital house Eden Ventures appears to be on something of a roll and has taken to co-investing with angels like a duck to water. Today it announces five (count'em) new investments, which range in size from £100,000 to £1 million.
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Ok, so not only is Google Instant rejiggering how we think about search, but it is also a clever way to create instant music videos. We saw this with the official Google Instant version of Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" (where the lyrics on the flash cards get typed into Google and create a stream of related results).
But now the same thing has been done with the "Instant Elements" song in the video above. The lyrics to Tom Lehrer's song, "The Elements," are typed into Google Instant, and it creates a visual accompaniment to the song, showing search results and images for each element like magnesium, silicon, and gadolinium. I think we have a meme here. You can do this for any song, and now people will. |
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Zynga has been taking it on the chin from the SF Weekly the last few weeks. First there was a four part series about some stickers that Zynga's ad agency put on the streets of San Francisco - lame but not exactly Third Reicht territory. But the last two days the newspaper has focused on Zynga's penchant for stealing game ideas from other companies. FarmVille, FishVille, PetVille, Café World, and Mafia Wars were all copies of other company's games. That warranted a cover story.
The SFWeekly even gave this copying thing a name - Farmvillians. Which is kinda catchy, although it's no Scamville if you ask me. Scamville was major league evil. Copying business ideas is just being part of Silicon Valley.
All this got me thinking about the quote "Behind every great fortune there is a crime" and the tendency of some people to go legit just as soon as they've won the game. Then they hope that they can wipe the slate clean and be accepted in the better parts of society. |
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TechCrunch-reading football fans may remember a nifty, free online game we wrote about last year called Quick Hit that puts you at the helm of a virtual football team. The game doesn't involve the twitchy gameplay of gaming goliath Madden, but is instead built around strategy and play calling (though it does feature rich, 3D graphics to keep things interesting). You may also notice that the game's logo looks a little different from last year's: it now sports the official emblem of the NFL. And that's a big deal.
You see, when Quick Hit launched last year it didn't have the NFL license. That meant it didn't have any of the official NFL teams, so you'd have to coach generic squads that don't actually exist. Which, to put it lightly, is a big buzzkill when you're trying to pretend you're Bill Walsh and are reigning over the fictitious San Francisco Tigers. But now Quick Hit has forged a deal with the NFL that gives it rights to all of the real teams, uniforms, and stadiums. |
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US courts figured this out a while ago, but it's nice to see that an Australian court has now ruled that newspaper headlines don't deserve copyright protection. The specific lawsuit was over the use of Australian Financial Review headlines in LexisNexis, which also summarized the articles in question. It appears the judge also said that the use of the headlines constitutes "fair dealing," but I'm a bit confused about the combination here. If the headlines aren't copyrightable... then fair dealing shouldn't even come into |
play. Not surprisingly, the publisher of AFR, Fairfax Media, is not at all happy about the ruling, making the totally laughable argument that copyrights on headlines is necessary:
Gill described the judgment as "disappointing", adding: "It is not consistent with what is necessary to protect intellectual property in the digital media environment... We are considering our appeal opportunities."
Seriously. If you're relying on copyright protection of your news headlines as a part of your business model, you've got the wrong business model.Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
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Nearly a decade ago, we wrote about how difficult it was for Cubans to get access to the internet, with some resorting to bootleg access to get around the limitations. It wasn't just that internet access was hard to come by, expensive and incredibly slow, but that it was heavily filtered, leaving little access to many popular sites. Still, back in 2003, we noted (with some surprise) that Fidel Castro was saying that the internet was important in giving people a voice and breaking down communications barriers.
Apparently, he still believes that. While Castro hasn't been heard from as much since handing over control of the government to his younger brother Raul Castro, he's apparently still a fan of the internet, and has become something of an internet junkie. In |
a recent interview he's again talking up the wonders and importance of the internet, and notes that he reads 200 to 300 news items a day, and is a big fan of Wikileaks (no surprise there).
As for the vastly limited access on the island, he blames the US embargo (of course), but even if that explains the difficulty and expense associated with access, it does not explain the filters and the limits (including a long period -- only recently ended -- where Cubans weren't allowed to have computers with internet access in their homes). So, the overall position still seems pretty hypocritical. Internet access is important in "putting an end to secrets," as he says... but the Cuban government doesn't want that to apply to itself.Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
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