ZiiLabs Demonstrates Their Jaguar3 Android Tablet Media Platform On Video

Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He has written for the TechCrunch network since 2007. Some posts he’d like you to read: The Dangers of Externalizing Knowledge | Generation i | Surveillant Society | Choose Two | Frame Wars | The User’s Manifesto | Our Great Sin His personal website is coldewey.cc. ? Learn More

We’ve seen a few peeks of Creative’s Zii-powered Android tablets over the last couple months, but being rather spec-oriented, this reference platform didn’t get much attention. This video does a better job of showing off the advantages of having a general-purpose parallel CPU array like StemCell. It’s a special 48-core chip they’ve married to a 1.5GHz Cortex A9, and it’s dedicated to media processing.

It may not be that we ever see this guy in action: the Zii series of media players just couldn’t stand up to the iPod touch, and it could be that this augmented Android platform isn’t cost-effective or flashy enough to bring in sales. A hell of a lot of people are going to opt for something like the Fire, since they have no idea what WebM is, and don’t see why they would want to have 1080p playback on a small tablet that can’t even display that resolution. That’s why they have a Blu-ray player attached to a 55? LCD. Who can blame them?

It does look like a nice little tablet, though, and having that big parallel array would probably be attractive to a lot of developers. But I don’t think the market is big enough right now for this to sell more than a few thousand units.

[via Fine Oils]

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HTC’s Eyes Wander, Considers Buying Their Own OS

Chris Velazco is a mobile enthusiast and writer who studied English and Marketing at Rutgers University. Once upon a time, he was the news intern for MobileCrunch, and in between posts, he worked in wireless sales at Best Buy. After graduating, he returned to the new TechCrunch to as a full-time mobile writer. He counts advertising, running, musical theater,... ? Learn More

HTC has produced devices running a handful of operating systems over the years, from big names like Android to lightweight options like Qualcomm’s BREW. What we’ve never seen though is a device that is HTC through and through — HTC hardware meets HTC OS.

The Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer seems to have been thinking the same thing, as company chairwoman Cher Wang has revealed that HTC is considering purchasing their own mobile operating system for use in forthcoming devices.

Though the company’s intentions have now been outed, Wang makes clear that their next steps are not set in stone. Taiwan’s Central News Agency has learned that HTC is taking the cautious approach here: while HTC brass have internally discussed their options, Wang makes it clear that their OS purchase (if it ever happens) is not going to be an impulse buy.

In spite of their commitment to taking their time, HTC seems a bit nonchalant about introducing a new operating system to their already-ambitious line up. It’s likely because they realized that whatever operating system they purchase is only going to be a template upon which the HTC experience will be built. “We can use any OS we want,” Wang said. “We are able to make things different from our rivals on the second or third layer of a platform.”

At least one of those layers refers to HTC’s near-ubiquitous Sense UI, which in one form or another has sat on top of numerous operating systems in recent years. That, coupled with the company’s new focus on delivering services like HTC Watch mean that no matter what OS they end up purchasing, the end result should be full-featured and recognizable. Whether or not it will be enough to claim any significant market share is still up in the air, but it’ll be a real treat to see them try.

Launch Date: September 12, 1997

HTC Corp, (TAIEX: 2498) produces smartphones running the Android and Windows Phone 7 operating systems for themselves and as an OEM to other manufacturers. Since launching its own brand in late 2006, the company has introduced dozens of HTC-branded products around the world. The company recently introduced the HTC diamond to compete with Apple’s iPhone. Founded in 1997 by Cher Wang, Chairwoman, and Peter Chou, President and CEO, HTC made its name as the company behind many of the...

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Spotify Will No Longer Be Invite Only In The US, And Users Get Their First Six Months Of Service Free

Alexia Tsotsis currently works for TechCrunch as a writer. She is also a blogger who attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA. She majored in Writing and Art, moving to New York City shortly after graduation to work in the Entertainment/Media industry. After four years of living in New York City and attending courses at New York... ? Learn More

I’m sitting here at Facebook’s F8 conference with Spotify CEO Daniel Ek and he’s just told me that Spotify will no longer be invite-only in the US, and that the service will have no limitations (essentially be free) for an unpaid user’s first six months using the service — the clock will start ticking, and be retroactive, after a user signs up.

This six months leeway will be available both internationally and in the US.

The service is slowly rolling out the new features, so it might take a little time for invites to drop completely says Spotify community manager Andres Sehr. Users will need Facebook to bypass the invite system.

“For music to be inherently social it needs to be an open model, and that’s why we decided to do it today,” says Spotify representative Angela Watts. After the allotted six months have passed, music you encounter on Facebook will count towards your monthly Spotify limit, as you have to go through the Spotify app to listen to it.

Spotify’s tiered plans include a free version, which allows you to listen to up to ten hours free monthly, a $4.99 unlimited version which drops ads and $9.99 premium version which gives you unlimited mobile access in offline mode. “Paid users will continue to enjoy the service they have,” says Sehr.

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Rentlord Launches A Socially Connected Market To Let Landlords And Tenants Manage Their Rent

Rip Empson is a writer at TechCrunch. He’s not here to make friends, he’s here to WIN, and don’t you forget it. You can reach him at rip[at]techcrunch[dot]com ? Learn More

You know what’s not that fun? Apartment searches. Also landlords. Luckily, launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt is Rentlord, a social platform that allows landlords and lessees to painlessly create and manage their rent, leases, contracts, and much more. Rentlord boasts a socially-connected market that lets users find homes and apartments based on a trust gradient enabled by integration with your social graph. Rentlord allows users to find a home or tenant, then start a contract online, as well as connecting members of the home with one another and allowing landlords to manage the property in tandem with their tenant(s).

How does it work? Once users sign up for Rentlord, they can list their apartment or house once, including images, details, a description, at which point Rentlord automatically geotags the listing, blasts it out over social channels, and cross-posts across UK rental portals — free of charge. Users can send messages to each other to meet in person, close deals in minutes, using Rentlord’s customizable contracting utility — all from the comfort of a single platform.

The startup has been working with lawyers in Europe to draw up a contract form so that landlords and lessees can do everything online, keep track of their leases, and complete every part of the renting process on one platform. Those contracts are stored on Rentlord permanently, so you can always refer back to the contract, and never have to worry about devious landlords switching up the terms of the lease.

As part of creating an all-in-one portal for renters and landlords, Rentlord also offers users the ability to pay their rent through the platform, split bills with housemates, and receive reminders when its time to pay the rent or pay utilities. And for those on the apartment or house search, the startup’s platform enables you to locate restaurants and points of interest that are close to the location of the place you’re interested in to help you decide if its the right neighborhood for you.

And for those already renting, the platform enables you to call in a local plumber, report a leak to your landlord, and organize your domestic life. As to how they’re making money, for all those transactions taking place on Rentlord, the platform takes a commission on those transactions, though Founder Colin Tan tells me that the commission is low enough that users won’t be scared away.

Rentlord is currently available in the U.K., but it will be rolling out functionality in the U.S. over the next month. The startup also announced today that it is backed by Seedcamp, the european micro seed fund for internet technology companies based in London, as well as Dave McClure’s 500 Startups.

For more on Rentlord, check ‘em out at home here. Cool startup.

Rentlord is the online way to let and sublet homes.

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If You Weren’t Using TestFlight Before, You Will Be Now With Their New SDK

MG Siegler has been writing for TechCrunch since 2009. He covers the web, mobile, social, big companies, small companies, essentially everything. And Apple. A lot. Prior to TechCrunch, he covered various technology beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan. He’s previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked in Hollywood and in San Diego where... ? Learn More

It was nine months ago when we first wrote about TestFlight, the super-simple over-the-air (OTA) iOS app distribution service. As we noted at the time, the service seemed perfect for developers looking for a better way to test their apps before releasing them into Apple’s App Store. Since then, many developers have found it to be the perfect solution — it seems like pretty much every developer I encounter now uses it.

Today, TestFlight version 2 is rolling out, and with it comes a full SDK that is likely to push any developer not yet using the service, over the edge. Here are the new features:

Crash Reports
Real time reports with environment snapshots, full session activity, and your NSLogs.

Check Points
Monitor tester engagement and watch as they progress through your app or take unexpected turns.

In-App Questions
Get the answers you need right when you need them. Ask multiple choice or open answer questions in real time the moment a checkpoint is reached.

Feedback
Gather more feedback with in-app forms or via tester email replies, which is all neatly organized in your dashboard and enables immediate responses.

In-App Updates
Prompt testers to install the latest version of your app and they can update instantly over-the-air.

Enterprise IPA Support
If you have an Enterprise Developer account through Apple, you get the added benefit of unlimited devices with all the TestFlight features at no charge. TestFlight fully supports Enterprise IPA’s.

In other words, the best just got a lot better.

And the key part is the that even with all the upgrades, the service remains free for developers to use. TestFlight says that while they reserve the right to charge for more premium add-ons down the road, these features are all now a part of the core functionality and will remain free.

Currently, everyone from Adobe to MTV to Tumblr to Spotify to Instagram are using TestFlight. It’s great for distribution (which used to ridiculously involve the sending and manual installing of IPA’s and provisioning files), and now it’s going to be even better for diagnostics and analytics. If there’s any service that stands out as something Apple should buy, this is it.

TestFlight notes that the SDK has been in testing with some developers for a few months. At least one of those developers notes that it’s “fucking fantastic”.

Say no more.

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In First Company-Wide Email, Meg Whitman Says HP Must Focus On Their Mission

Matt is currently working as a writer for TechCrunch. Matt Burns is a family man first and attempts to be a writer second. Born and raised in the heart of the automotive world, only cars eclipse his love of gadgets. He previously wrote for Engadget and EngadgetHD before moving into the party house that is TechCrunch. He learned the retail... ? Learn More

Meg Whitman just took over as HP’s CEO and President hours ago and she, along with the new executive chairman of the board, Ray Lane, didn’t waste anytime reaching out to their more than 300,000 employees. In the email embedded further down in the post, they reaffirm the statement released earlier today that Meg Whitman has “enormous respect for HP” and indicates that HP matters not only to Silicon Valley, but to California and the United States. The company has a “deep-rooted legacy” and is something they want to maintain and build upon.

They state the obvious in that HP needs to refocused on their mission (although she doesn’t define said mission) and the company is filled with the “industry’s brightest and most talented people.” No mention of bringing back the $99 TouchPad, though.

Meg and Ray have a large task. Leo didn’t exactly handle HP with care. In his attempt to morph HP into a different sort of company, HP’s stock price plummeted and its market cap crashed. Meg Whitman makes HP’s seventh CEO in the last 12 years. Wish her luck. She’s going to need it.

Meg Whitman, is the former CEO and Board Chairman of eBay. She resigned in March of 2008. In September of 2009, she announced her official candidacy for governor of California. Leading eBay from 1998 to 2008, Meg helped the company grow from 30 employees and a little over $4 million in revenue to more than 15,000 employees, nearly $8 billion in revenue, and a network of 12 million users in California alone. Under Meg’s leadership, eBay...

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Amazon Tacitly Confirms The “Kindle Fire” On Their Website

Chris Velazco is a mobile enthusiast and writer who studied English and Marketing at Rutgers University. Once upon a time, he was the news intern for MobileCrunch, and in between posts, he worked in wireless sales at Best Buy. After graduating, he returned to the new TechCrunch to as a full-time mobile writer. He counts advertising, running, musical theater,... ? Learn More

It won’t be long now before Amazon kicks off their big press conference, where the much-awaited Kindle tablet is rumored to make its first public appearance. We’ve learned recently that Amazon will be calling it the Kindle Fire, and the company seems to have quietly confirmed the name on their website.

Let’s try something here: punch “amazon.com/food” into your address bar, and you’ll be redirected to the company’s food and grocery selection. Likewise, “amazon.com/clothes” takes you to their virtual equivalent of a department store. Take a wild guess as to where “amazon.com/kindlefire” leads you.

Yep, the “kindlefire” subdomain redirects you to the Kindle store. Coincidence? I very much doubt it — normally, tacking anything onto the end of the amazon.com URL takes you straight to an error page, and other Amazon-owned Kindle names similarly lead to a dead end. Take for example KindleWave.com — Amazon registered the domain name in late August, but amazon.com/kindlewave leads to an error page.

The issue of the domain name also seems to have been squared away: Domain Name Wire reports that Amazon has recently purchased the KindleFire.com domain name from its original owner. At time of writing, the URL leads nowhere, but expect that to change shortly.

We’ll have more details when the press conference kicks off at 10 AM, but keep your eyes peeled on the Kindle Fire page: something interesting is likely to pop up before too long.

UPDATE: Our live blog of the event is getting ready to start, so feel free to mosey on over and see what Amazon is up to.

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Amazon Stays Quiet As Their Appstore Goes International

Chris Velazco is a mobile enthusiast and writer who studied English and Marketing at Rutgers University. Once upon a time, he was the news intern for MobileCrunch, and in between posts, he worked in wireless sales at Best Buy. After graduating, he returned to the new TechCrunch to as a full-time mobile writer. He counts advertising, running, musical theater,... ? Learn More

Amazon’s Appstore has always been a great place to pick up great Android apps on the cheap, but it came with a caveat: ever since its launch this past March, it has only been available to U.S. customers. Surprisingly, Amazon seems to have lifted this restriction today without so much as a peep, because international customers are reporting that they can now download the free app of the day sans hassle.

At first it looked like only Europe was granted access, but Pocket Gamer reports that a few countries outside the EU have been given the green light too.

So far, the list of countries where the Appstore appears to have gone live include the UK, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Australia, India, and Holland. Both free and paid app purchases are reportedly running smoothly, albeit with a vestigial American influence. The prices still appear in US dollars, which means enterprising app fans can take advantage of favorable exchange rates.

Before today, international users could still access the Appstore, but it required a bit of dedication: they had to create a new Amazon account with a US address. Now all it takes is a quick .apk download from Amazon, and setting the Android device in question to install content from unknown sources.

It’s a bit puzzling as to why Amazon flipped the switch on the Appstore without a word, but there are a few theories already making the rounds. It could be that Amazon is just doing a little stress testing to see how an official rollout would manage in the future, or it could be a bit of foreshadowing for an impending Amazon tablet launch. Of course, it could also just be a huge mistake, in which case international users should enjoy it while it lasts.

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Keen On… Sir Martin Sorrell: We Have to Get Consumers to Pay for Their Content (TCTV)

Andrew Keen is an Anglo-American entrepreneur, writer, broadcaster and public speaker. He is the author of the international hit “Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is Killing our Culture” which has been published in 17 different languages and was short-listed for the Higham’s Business Technology Book of the Year award. As a pioneering Silicon Valley based Internet entrepreneur,... ? Learn More

It’s Stream time again. Last year, when I interviewed Sir Martin Sorrell, the co-founder and CEO of WPP at the company’s annual Stream unconference in Athens, Sir Martin argued that “free=fail.”

And this year, Sorrell, who presides over the world’s largest advertising company, a global leviathan with 153,000 people working in 2,400 offices in 107 countries, was equally scathing in his attack on free online content. Arguing that giving away quality content was a “dreadful mistake” that resulted in many digital media companies “crucifying themselves”, Sir Martin said that not charging for online content is the “wrong” business model.

“We went down the wrong road from the beginning”, Sorrell told me about early Internet business models. And he argues that we are making the same mistake with our obsession today with “openness” and “transparency”. The pendulum will swing, Sir Martin predicts. People are going to demand what he described as “closed systems” in which they will happily pay for privacy from the transparent social web.

Sir Martin Sorrell has been Group Chief Executive Officer of WPP Group PLC of Grey Global Group Inc. since its founding in 1986. Sorrell started his career as Marketing Associate of Glendinning Associates of Westport, Connecticut. In 1997, he was appointed as Ambassador of British Business by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and subsequently appointed to the Office’s Panel 2000 aimed at rebranding Britain abroad. In 1999, he was appointed by the Secretary of State for Education and Employment...

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Andrew Keen is an Anglo-American entrepreneur, writer, broadcaster and public speaker. He is the author of the international hit “Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is Killing our Culture” which has been published in 17 different languages and was short-listed for the Higham’s Business Technology Book of the Year award. As a pioneering Silicon Valley based Internet entrepreneur, Andrew founded Audiocafe.com in 1995 and built it into a popular first generation Internet music company. He is currently the...

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Idle Games Wants To Be The Pixar Of Social Gaming; In Their First Game, You Play God

MG Siegler has been writing for TechCrunch since 2009. He covers the web, mobile, social, big companies, small companies, essentially everything. And Apple. A lot. Prior to TechCrunch, he covered various technology beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan. He’s previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked in Hollywood and in San Diego where... ? Learn More

If you were into PC gaming in the early 2000s, you know what Black & White is. Peter Molyneux’s 2001 classic published by EA gave every gamer the role they wanted: God. A new startup is aiming to bring that style of game into the social space. And more broadly, they aim to be the “Pixar of casual games”.

Idle Games is launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt. Their first title is Idle Worship, a Black & White-esque game for Facebook. You play the role of a god, controlling villagers on an island to do certain tasks for you. While that may sound ominous, you can choose to be either good or bad in your actions. And overall, the game is light-hearted and fun. We’ve been playing with a beta version of the game for a few weeks; it’s solid.

This first title by Idle Games, a startup founded by Rick Thompson (a co-founder of Playdom) and Jeffrey Hyman, aims to disrupt the casual gaming market by being an “anti-Zynga” of sorts. They believe social gaming is more about entertainment, interaction, and quality — not just button-mashing or mindless clicking. In many ways, they’re also going after the MMO market too. While the games will start on Facebook, you can imagine that they could quickly spread to other platforms as well.

Like other casual games and MMOs, the emphasis for the business will be on virtual goods. But again, the Idle Games team is determined to create goods of the utmost quality so that users feel compelled to buy them and happy when they do. In this regard, Idle Games’ mission sounds a bit similar to that of Tiny Speck, makers of the soon-to-be-released game MMO Glitch.

The Idle Games team also has a number of pending patents surrounding their particular style of social gameplay, they note. One key is their use of synchronous gameplay (as opposed to other games which typically are asynchronous). You can play alongside other “Gods” in the game, visit their islands, etc. Inside Social Games did a new preview of the game back in April.

“The game must be your wingman and break the ice for you,” Hyman said on stage today, explaining why Idle Worship creates better gaming connections than other endeavors out there.

All told, Idle Worship took the team of about 50 around two years to build. Again, the focus is on quality. They’ve raised roughly $9 million in funding so far.

Expert Judges Q&A Session:

Josh Felser, Freestyle Capital; April Underwood, Twitter; Jim Lanzone, CBS Interactive; Michael Marquez, CODE Advisors

JL: Why this game? There are a ton out there.

A: We think it’s like the entertainment industry. It is a hits-driven business, we’re putting the emphasis on quality. It’s a bit like capturing lightning in a bottle, but we’re leveraging the social graph in unique ways. We think this is the first true social game on Facbeook.

MM: Is this launched?

A: In a few countries so far.

MM: What about use engagement?

A: The initial metrics are blowing away the norms. Over 50 percent are returning after week one.

JF: Can you compare this to Zynga?

A: Absolutely. I don’t know if you read last Friday’s WSJ, but it says on the front page, Zynga is an analytics company masking as a game company. We’re an entertainment and games company. Zynga is a black and white television. Everyone wants it until the color television comes out. That’s us. We care about the entertainment experience.

AU: Your game looks engaging I want to play it. Tell me about the patents.

A: We’ve invest two solid years of engineering to do the tech here. We have five patents filed for this stuff. Rendering engine, etc.

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Palringo Dives Into Location-Based Chat And Brings Their 11 Million Users Along For The Ride

Greg Kumparak is the editor of MobileCrunch.com, a mobile industry blog within the TechCrunch Network. Greg has been writing for the TechCrunch network since May of 2008. Greg was born in the outskirts of San Jose, CA, and now lives in the East Bay. ? Learn More

Location-based group chat. It’s just one of those ideas that everyone seems to be convinced is a good one, but that no one has really pulled off well just yet.

Tossing their chips into the local chat game today is Palringo, which began its life back in 2007 as the iPhone’s first multi-network IM client. Their kicker? They’ve already got an established userbase of around 11 million users.

For the sake of full disclosure: Palringo will be in the StartupAlley at next week’s TechCrunch Disrupt. Given that I wasn’t aware of this until well after I started writing this post, however, I can quite confidently say this didn’t affect my decision to cover the update.

With localized chat, there seems to be two different approaches: pinning clusters of users together automagically behind the scenes (a la Yobongo), or letting uses create/join geotagged rooms on their own. Palringo has gone with the latter.

After you’ve logged into Palringo, you’re shown the standard IM screen with its support for AIM, ICQ, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live, Facebook, Palringo’s own chat network, and myriad other services. Once you’ve grown bored of the friends you’ve already got, however, a Groups tab down at the bottom leads to a land of new folks — albeit one seemingly filled mostly with kids being kids, people asking each other if they’re over 18, trolls, people complaining about trolls, and trolls trolling people complaining about trolls. Turns out, not much has changed since the “OMG ASL?! Type 1 if you like Hanson“-filled chat rooms of the mid 90's.

Hopefully the new geotagging features can help fix that. Each new group can be geotagged with a location around which it centers, connecting you with people nearby — which, at least in theory, improves the quality of conversation and connections made. All groups can be viewed on a map, letting you tap around until you find one that fits your interests. Within about 40 miles east of my area, for example, there are currently three: one for people who live in Fremont, one up in Walnut Creek for people who want to talk about Blizzard games, and one way out in Antioch that, as far as I can tell, primarily discusses where to buy weed.

From what I’ve seen so far, I’m not too convinced Palringo will come out on top of the location chat game. Hell, after seeing a number of launches in this space with none that I’m aware of managing to maintain any sort of regular user base, I’m still not even entirely convinced such a game truly exists.

Palringo has designed the ultimate mobile group messaging service. With millions of users sending billions of messages each month, Palringo allows anyone with a mobile phone to chat with...

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New Startup JPEGmini Reduces Photos’ Size, Not Their Quality

Photographers, take note. A startup called JPEGmini is introducing a new photo compression technology for JPEG photos which reduces the overall file size (by up to 5 times), while preserving the photo’s quality and resolution.

The technology is designed specifically with the Web in mind, as more photographers, both amateur and professional, use online storage for photo archival purposes. With JPEGmini, photos can be uploaded, emailed and shared faster, while saving on storage and bandwidth costs.

Sounds great, of course. But the question is: does it work?

According to the company, the JPEGmini technology works by analyzing the input image using a unique quality detector which imitates the human visual system. Based on this analysis, it applies the maximum amount of compression which will not cause visible artifacts. The second part of the system is a JPEG encoder, which adapts the JPEG encoding process to the original photos, creating the most compact representation of the photos that is possible under the JPEG standard.

So, to be clear: JPEGmini is not a new file format, it uses the JPEG file format.

And in some cases, it can achieve a recompression ratio of up to 5 times, or an 80% reduction.

The key phrase here is “some cases.” JPEGmini doesn’t always surpass the capabilities of current technology, it seems. Says San Francisco-based professional photographer Jim Goldstein of JMG Galleries, in tests, JPEGmini achieves greater file size savings on larger Web images than Photoshop did. But with smaller images, Photoshop’s “Save for Web” setting (at 60% quality) did better. (More details on the tests here).

This seems to confirm what JPEGmini itself says – the higher the original JPEG photo resolution, the greater the file size reduction it can offer. (Only photos 8 MP and higher can achieve the 80% reduction rate using this technology, for example).

As a professional photographer, Goldstein was also careful to read through the Terms of Service for JPEGmini, which says that if you choose to upload a photo to the site, they can use it to promote their service. This is overly broad, but could be ameliorated simply by adding the line “upon request.”

In addition, it’s worth noting that JPEGmini preserves all the photo’s metadata.

Still, for professionals, the best savings and balance of image quality would come from saving a JPEG for a RAW file, and ideally, doing compressions in batches, not one-by-one as with JPEGmini’s service, explains Goldstein. Correction: JPEGmini lets you upload folders. 

So perhaps professional photographers don’t have need of JPEGmini, after all. But other consumers might…especially those who don’t own a copy of Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom, for example. The technology could be integrated into consumer electronics, like phones and digital cameras, too, as a way to save storage space and bandwidth when saving or sharing photos.

JPEGmini was developed by ICVT, an Israeli startup company based in Tel-Aviv. Its founder, Sharon Carmel, previously co-founded Emblaze, which developed the Internet’s first vector-based graphics player, preceding Macromedia Flash, and BeInSync, a P2P sync and backup company acquired by Phoenix Technologies in 2008. JPEGmini is self-funded.

As BeInSync’s chief VP of research and development, co-founder Sharon Carmel oversees strategic product development and drives the global market vision for BeInSync’s next-generation anywhere data access solution. Previously,...

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AppRedeem Launches In-App Deals To Drive Users Of Free Apps To Their Paid Versions

Rip Empson is a writer at TechCrunch. He’s not here to make friends, he’s here to WIN, and don’t you forget it. You can reach him at rip[at]techcrunch[dot]com ? Learn More

In January, AppRedeem raised $750,000 from SV Angel and Blue Run Ventures to offer mobile app developers innovative, effective solutions aimed at driving app installs and engagement. Since then, the startup has been quietly working its way into a hot new category: Deals. Today, the Mountain View-based startup is officially announcing AppRedeem Deals, a new mobile in-app promotional network that rewards users for continued app engagement, while helping developers to drive conversion to paid versions of their apps.

To test the waters, the startup began with “The Moron Test Section 2?, currently the third ranked free app on the iTunes app store. To use this app as an example of how AppRedeem Deals works, when a Moron Test user reaches “Game Over”, AppRedeem presents a promotional discount for Moron Test’s paid app. The startup is currently offering 50 to 100 percent off those paid apps from within its free counterpart. Unlike Tapjoy, said AppRedeem Co-founder Sheffield Nolan, AppRedeem Deals aims to ensure that people taking advantage of the discount have already installed the free version without any incentive, so the motivation to buy the paid version is fully aligned with that of Apple and its policy.

According to Nolan, this enables users of the free app to take advantage of the opportunity to upgrade at no cost to them, whereas for developers, their paid apps are then monetized more effectively, and they get to use those promotional dollars targeting people who already tried and enjoyed their apps. The paid version of Moron Test jumped up to the fourteenth spot on the App Store after the developers integrated their free app with AppRedeem Deals.

Since launching the beta 6 weeks ago, AppRedeem membership has grown from 55,000 to over 580,000 — in other words, membership has grown by more than 34K members per day since adding Deals.

Here are the key numbers that came from the first 6 weeks of AppRedeem ‘Deals’. Nolan tells me that, at first, AppRedeem will use their new deals network as a customer acquisition tool. At present, they are not taking a cut of the discount they are offering gamers, so all the money earned from the discounts is going straight to the developers. The team plans to offer cuts and take a small percentage of the deal in the future.

The startup’s next focus, the co-founder said, is to begin helping developers drive increased engagement of their apps, and to begin implementing deals with more partners to enable further functionality to promotional offers for in-app purchases. In the last week, Nolan said, AppRedeem hit profitability, so they will also be looking to raise a series A round in the coming months. (They will also be announcing the addition of a top executive of a big deals company in the near future.)

For more, check out AppRedeem at home here.

AppRedeem is an early-stage, high-growth promotion and advertising platform that drives mobile application engagement. World-class firms – Gilt Groupe, Groupon, and others – use AppRedeem today to fuel their...

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PlayHaven’s New Platform Lets iOS Developers Tweak Their Apps On The Fly

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The iOS App Store is quite the volatile place. Even if you manage to fight your app up to the top of the charts, keeping it up there is an entirely new challenge. You’ve got to know exactly what’s working with your users — and more importantly, you’ve got to be able to mix things up quickly when you find things that aren’t.

Alas, mixing things up quickly on the App Store is inherently a bit difficult. Even if you can crank out everything required for your app update in a week or two, you can never be too sure if Apple’s review process will take a day, a week, or a month.

This morning, PlayHaven is launching a new platform that allows iOS developers to launch and test content campaigns within their apps without requiring another trip through the approval arena.

The idea is pretty simple, but it’s a clever one: PlayHaven’s platform lets developers design and fire off what they call “Dynamic Overlays”, which are essentially quickly customizable HTML5 pop-ups that engage the user and can fire off underlying code.

Now, what the hell does that mean? Here’s some examples of what you can do:

Rewards: Want to give your users a bit of in-game currency for playing on Christmas? Or Easter? Or Secretary’s Day? Tuck in PlayHaven’s APIs, drop in your code to allow currency rewards, and submit those changes — once it’s approved, you can schedule/change/cancel rewards on-the-fly without requiring updates each and every time.Announce updates: PlayHaven can detect when a user is using an old version of an app, then automatically pop up a graphical alert explaining why they should update.Game promotion: Launching a new game? Toss up an alert in your currently available games letting players know.

These are the most obvious ideas, but there’s plenty of room for creativity here. These Dynamic Overlays can be triggered by just about anything: scheduled dates, version number, accessing a specific part of the application, etc., which should make them pretty flexible.

PlayHaven also makes it pretty simple to figure out what’s working and what’s not, with a full analytics dashboard sitting on the backend. So you launched a campaign in your crazy space shooter advertising your new zombie flower-planting game, but no one is clicking? Tweak the graphic to make the zombie a bit bloodier and your flowers a bit brighter, push the new overlay, and measure the changes in click-throughs and conversion rate on-the-fly.

PlayHaven has quickly found some pretty serious traction for the platform, already naming heavy-hitters like Halfbrick (Fruit Ninja), DistinctDev (The Moron Test), and Glu (with their bajillions of games) as committed partners.

You can find more information on PlayHaven’s new platform here.

PlayHaven is a real-time mobile game marketing platform with a reach of 35 million unique users, driving 100 million monthly game sessions. Since its launch in May 2010, PlayHaven...

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Sony, Hitachi And Toshiba Make Their LCD Business Merger Official

Dr. Serkan Toto currently works as the first and only Asia-based writer for the TechCrunch network, mainly covering Japan-related technology and web companies for TechCrunch, CrunchGear and MobileCrunch. Serkan also works full-time as an independent web and mobile industry consultant with a focus on the Japanese market. He is sept-lingual, holds an MBA and is a PhD in economics. Serkan... ? Learn More

Yesterday, we reported about Sony, Hitachi and Toshiba planning to establish a joint venture for small and mid-size LCD panels in Japan. And today, the three companies, plus major shareholder Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, made the plan official.

As reported, the semi-public organization will control 70% of the venture (to be set up by the end of the year), with the other partners holding a 10% stake each. Tentatively named “Japan Display”, the venture will launch with a cool US$2.6 billion investment and instantly control 21.5% of the world market for small and medium-sized LCDs.

According to Japanese business daily The Nikkei, Sharp will be the second-largest maker of this type of displays with a 20% market share. The same newspaper says the four companies involved in Japan Display are currently trying to figure out where to set up plants in order to start production as quickly as possible.

Apart from LCDs, Japan Display will also invest in OLED-related research and development.

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Recording Labels Sue YouTube Downloader Website, Fail To Grasp The Insignificance Of Their Actions

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The recording industry doesn’t have the most respectable history when it comes to lawsuits. Between asking for millions for trivial acts of piracy, and asking potentially for trillions in more serious cases, they’ve shown that they’re not only completely disconnected from reality, but totally unheeding of the actual effects of their litigation. So it’s not surprising to see them tilting at yet another windmill.

Today’s target is TubeFire, a site that should be familiar to you, at least in principle. It allows you to download and convert YouTube videos to a format more easily watched offline (FLV files can be tricky). You give it the URL, it churns for a bit, and then you can download the video in MP4 or another format. Clearly this re-containering of free content is a grave threat to the recording industry, and must be stopped at all costs. So 25 of the world’s largest labels have gotten together and sued them.

TubeFire’s services are temporarily suspended pending examination of the complaint (in its place is a note apologizing and briefly describing the situation). And to be honest, the complaint is probably valid: technically, TubeFire was modifying and redistributing copyrighted material, at least so it appears on the face of it. The site is owned by Japanese media company MusicGate, and the suit was filed in Tokyo District Court. How international content protection laws will play out is beyond the purview of this article, but an international consortium of content providers is likely to make its effect felt regardless of jurisdiction.

The funny thing is that, as it so often is with these clowns, they’re not only barking up the wrong tree for a number of reasons, but they don’t seem to understand that they’re in a whole forest of wrong trees.

TubeFire is an ace away from being a perfectly legal service. To begin with, it’s plainly providing a useful service that’s only potentially a danger to copyright. Re-encoding videos to enhance portability isn’t criminal. YouTube is a fundamentally online service, and this is a natural extension of it, the way image servers and short URLs have acted for Twitter for so long. Users want to watch these videos, which for all intents and purposes are being given away for free, in places other than YouTube, for a number of perfectly legitimate reasons: bandwidth caps, coverage issues, traveling, and yes, sharing.

Next, local copies of the videos in question may already be present on the user’s computer. By simply viewing the video, it’s possible they have duplicated the whole thing in RAM or a temp folder. This writing, rewriting, renaming, and so on must count as modifying copyrighted data, mustn’t it? If not, then TubeFire isn’t much different. The video is already being encoded multiple times, transmitted as packet data, decoded and translated to display data. One more encode in there doesn’t materially affect the product.

Furthermore, is it really TubeFire doing this? Just as it is not Bittorrent Inc that pirates movies and music, TubeFire should not be held accountable for the actions of users. Terrorists used Google Maps to plan their strikes. Stalkers use Facebook to find victims. TubeFire is a simple in-out operation that corrects a minor problem with videos that users already have access to.

And let us not forget that TubeFire is one of perhaps hundreds of tools used for this purpose. They must not have looked very hard for them. Let me help, guys. I have one myself, built into my browser! I’ve buried it in the menu so it doesn’t clutter the screen, but look at how easy it is for me to grab one of many copies of a video:

Update: Mike reminds me that we in fact had our own tool for several years. YouTube sent us a cease and desist letter and eventually disabled the tool, but no one shook us down for millions in damages. It was a TOS thing, not a copyright thing.

Many of these are easily accessible just by changing the URL slightly or other simple methods. Some sites and tools strip the audio out, another extremely easy process — and one replicable, of course, by loading the YouTube video and closing your eyes.

These companies want to have their cake and allow no one to eat it at all. They don’t seem to understand that putting content on a service like YouTube comes at a price. They are making the content publicly available, free to all. They are literally giving away the content — and then they get mad when someone takes it!

The labels are seeking what appears to be statutory lost-income damages of $300 per video for an estimated 10,000 videos. That adds up to $3 million — the amount the labels would have earned if TubeFire had licensed each video. Now there are two objections here. Why is it a license and not royalties? If anything, TubeFire “rebroadcasted” the content, more like a relay station than anything, and a standard royalty fee of however many pennies or yen seems like it might be more applicable. I’m dubious on that point, however. It’s also unclear whether TubeFire knew they should have been licensing. The service does not require that information; it takes an identifier code, downloads the associated FLV file, and repackages it. Were the labels paying their artists when a file was watched, downloaded, or only when purchased? And how do they define “download”?

If the labels are in fact successful at bankrupting and shutting down TubeFire, I must warn them that the effect will be utterly nil. Any user who wants to download a video from YouTube will do so. There will be no reduction in this practice. The site is easily cloned, as the great number of similar sites shows (I can’t even remember which one is the original, if there is one). And like most of their legal actions, this one will bring down a rain of bad PR; if anything, piracy will increase. Here’s where I would put the hydra metaphor if this article weren’t already over a thousand words long.

Why, I wonder, did they not think harder about this and try something more effective and interesting? Maybe for music videos, the YouTube version is only half the song, and then there’s a link to the artist’s site, where there’s a more secure player and various buy and share links. Or release 10-second snippets on YouTube leading up the actual release elsewhere. Or just accept that when you let the cat out of the bag, you’re unlikely to get it back in. Piracy is when people steal things. Piracy is not people taking the content you gave them and watching it somewhere else. And TubeFire is nothing but a simple shortcut for actions users would be able to carry out anyway. Unfortunately, this distinction requires a judge capable of comprehending tech issues like this, and those judges are in short supply these days.

I know the music and movie associations are famously impervious to reason, but this is beyond stupid.

[via TorrentFreak]

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Native Or Web? Bizness Apps Adds HTML5 Platform To Let SMBs Create Their Own Apps — For Both

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Ness Serves Up Their First Personal Search App Catering To Restaurant Discovery

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Twitter Founders Put Their Weight Behind A New Startup: Lift

Robin Wauters currently works as a staff writer for TechCrunch and lead editor of Virtualization.com. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in Belgium, a tiny country in Europe. He can often be found working from his home or... ? Learn More

Twitter co-founders Biz Stone, Evan Williams, and longtime sidekick Jason Goldman, recently shifted their focus away from the micro-sharing service provider to reboot Obvious, the company that originally incubated Twitter.

Yesterday, Stone announced Obvious’ first project: incubating an app development company called Lift, created by Tony Stubblebine and Jon Crosby. Obvious says it will assist Lift with “strategy, design, funding and recruiting”.

What Lift is building remains unclear, but Stone writes:

“Tony Stubblebine and Jon Crosby have created an interesting new application for unlocking human potential through positive reinforcement. We love this software for what it does, and because we’ve tried it and it works.”

Crosby says more will be shared “in the coming months”. If you’re interested in learning more now: Marshall Kirkpatrick has been sleuthing and writes about what he found on ReadWriteWeb.

Stubblebine previously worked at Wesabe, Odeo (where he worked with the Obvious trio) and O’Reilly Media and also founded CrowdVine. Crosby boasts gigs at Path, Engine Yard and Songbird on his résumé.

Lift will be billed as an ‘Obvious Company’, although the Obvious team clearly sees this more as a partnership, wherein Lift gets to follow its own path under the leadership of Stubblebine and Crosby.

Its service is currently in private alpha, but the website lets people sign up to receive more information when it’s available. Oh, and you’ll be able to log in through Twitter and Facebook.

As an amusing aside: entrepreneur and hacker Connor Montgomery, and/or Stubblebine, appear to have added some humor to the Lift website code:

(meta name=”description” content=”Lift. Achieve anything (assuming we finish building this app).”)

I assume they will. Can’t wait to finally be able to achieve anything!

The Obvious Corporation creates technology systems to facilitate the process of collaboration between people to improve the world. Obvious believes that technology has the power to affect individuals, organizations,...

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Android Devs Can Now Start Optimizing Their Apps For Google TV

Jason Kincaid currently works as a writer at TechCrunch. He grew up in Danville, California and later relocated to UCLA in Los Angeles, California, where he studied biology with a minor in ‘Society and Genetics’. You can reach him at jkincaidtc@gmail.com (he has other addresses too, so don’t worry if you have a different one). ? Learn More

Last fall, Google made its first attempt to take over your living room with the launch of Google TV — a platform that merged the web with television content to create an experience promising to usher in a new era of convenience and interactivity.

Unfortunately it’s been mostly a dud thus far. The platform’s overly-complex user interface and content issues (some major channels specifically block access to their websites from Google TV devices) has led to weak adoption. Google is reportedly working to give the platform a major revamp, and there’s at least one more bright light in its future: soon, Google TV will support Android applications.

Now, Google’s been promising that the platform would be receiving Android support ever since it was first announced, but up until now there hasn’t been a strong indication as to when that’d actually happen (the most specific Google’s gotten has been “summer”). Today, we’re one big step closer to seeing that promise come fruition: Google has just released a preview version of a Google TV plug-in for the Android SDK.

This doesn’t mean that you can install Android apps yet. Rather, it means developers can start to tweak their existing Android apps for the so-called ’10 foot experience’, so that their apps will be ready once the Google TV update does ship to users.

From the Android blog:

These are still early days for Google TV, and this release is another step in providing developer tools for the big screen. While the number of apps available on TV will initially be small, we expect that through this early release of the add-on you’ll be able to bring optimized TV apps into the ecosystem more quickly. To start doing this, download the Google TV add-on today. Also, please continue to reach out to us on the Google TV Android Developer Community forum. We look forward to your contributions!

Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of...

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In July 2005, Google acquired Android, a small startup company based in Palo Alto, CA. Android’s co-founders who went to work at Google included Andy Rubin (co-founder of...

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