http://www.techcrunch.com Startup and Technology News Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:32:18 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en In time for Black Friday, Microsoft and eBay are partnering to offer eBay Daily Deals to Internet Explorer 8 users directly from the browser. Via a Internet Explorer Web Slice, Microsoft will offer users the best "Daily Deals" from eBay from within the browser. The deals will be found within ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/27/strange-bedfellows-ebay-and-microsoft-team-up-to-offer-daily-deals-to-ie8-users/ Perfect for Black Friday: JustBought.it lets you share what you're thinking of buying - or what you've already picked up - with your Twitter and Facebook friends in just a couple of steps. When you sign up for the service, you can have it connect directly to your Twitter and/or Facebook ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/27/justbought-it-social-shopping/ We reported today that Digital Garage, Twitter's partner in Japan, is ready to roll out a new, Japan-only way to monetize the service. The way it'll work is pretty simple: Japanese Twitter users will soon be able to charge their followers to view tweets - on a monthly basis or ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/27/6-reasons-why-twitter-japans-subscription-model-might-work-in-japan/ So it's been nearly 10 days since Foursquare launched its social mobile game 'ground assault' into 50 more cities, including a bunch of European ones. But what I'd like to know is who's actually using it here in Europe? Because, you see, Europeans are already quite well served by location ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/27/europe-gowalla-foursquare-rummble-qype/ The news of the day in social media land: Twitter is apparently going to start experimenting with paid premium accounts through its Japanese subsidiary, which has always been a bit separated from the rest of Twitter and in many ways a playground for the company (Groups, Twicco, Twitvideo.jp). Details are ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/27/twitter-japan-paid-premium-accounts/ As one of the hot social-location properties, Foursquare has a wealth of information about where you go. Unfortunately, it doesn't really offer many good ways to visualize it. In fact, Foursquare only focuses on providing a text stream of your check-ins. A new app takes that data and puts it ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/26/4mapper-foursquare-map/ When I first heard about this "Thanksgiving" thing, I thought it sounded like a great idea. We Brits spend a ridiculous amount of time each day giving thanks to strangers - we say thanks to people who hold doors for us, thanks to people who stop their cars to let us ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/26/thanksgiving-britain-america/ The Gillmor Gang convened Wednesday to ponder the last several weeks of events loosely contained in a discussion of the next generation Web operating system. Three major announcements set the table for this Thanksgiving edition: Google's ChromeOS, Microsoft's Silverlight 4, and salesforce's Chatter collaboration platform. The last might be pigeonholed ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/26/gillmor-gang-silverlight-v-chromeos-v-chatter/ The holiday season is in full swing, and that means it's time to share some of the comfort we enjoy year round with those who are a little less fortunate — and just to be nicer to people in general. This year, Yahoo is kicking off a drive called You ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/26/yahoo-you-in/ This guest post was written by Martin Seibert, a German Internet media consultant. Google Wave is a hot topic at the moment. The ambitious group collaboration and micro-messaging platform started rolling out in beta via an initial batch of 100,000 invitations two months ago. Many people still want invitations. Among ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/26/why-google-wave-sucks/ We recently wrote about Sidebar, an app that wants to help smartphone users with the process of finding the perfect apps for their phones. Sidebar is debuting its first app and guess what? It's not an iPhone app-it's an Android app! While Sidebar's Android app is built for all Google-powered ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/26/sidebar-delivers-personalized-mobile-apps-and-content-to-the-android/ The domain name russia.com has been purchased by an undisclosed buyer for $1.5 million through marketplace Sedo, reports Yakov Sadchikov over on the Quintura blog. Currently an online guide for travelers who would like to visit the country, Russia.com is an operation of Paley Media, a Seattle, WA-based consultancy firm that ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/26/russia-com-domain-name-sold/ Apologies for the confusing headline, but I couldn't resist. This morning, long-time software maker Corel Corporation turned over full ownership to Corel Holdings, a limited partnership controlled by an affiliate of Vector Capital, majority investor of the company behind many familiar software programs like WordPerfect, CorelDRAW, WinZip, Paint Shop Pro and ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/26/vector-capital-corel-corporation/ Clixtr, a startup that first presented itself to a wide audience at this year's TechCrunch50 Conference (our take), kicked off things with a relatively limited offering - a paid iPhone app - but is now upping its game with the launch of an accompanying location-aware photo sharing website. It's also ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/26/clixtr-web-launch/ We've been doing some more digging on the definitive moves by Microsoft to woo newspapers over to Bing and away from Google, a story we broke two weeks ago. Since then there have been some follow-up by various media outlets, notably the Financial Times this week which confirmed that Microsoft had ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/26/microsoft-bing-newspapers/ Today is Thanksgiving in the U.S. Traditionally we take stock of the things that we're thankful for on this day each year. And I realized that one of those things is Steve Jobs. I'm thankful that he returned to Apple in 1997 and did the things he has done since. ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/26/steve-jobs-apple-1997/ If you've ever tried searching the web for financial advice, you probably know just how much junk there is out there. Sure, there may be a few diamonds in the rough, but oftentimes the best results go to the finance 'experts' who are good at SEO - not the ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/25/investimonials-timothy-sykes/ SupportSpace, a company that provides on-demand remote tech support solutions, announced today that it has raised $10 million in funding. The round was led by Emergence Capital Partners and also included previous investors BRM Group and Gemini Israel. SupportSpace has raised $24.25M in total funding so far. Kevin Spain of ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/25/supportspace-funding/ I have something to admit: I've never been a big extension guy. When I was still using Firefox, I liked them, but the downside, browser bloat, turned me away. But now that we're starting to see the first steps of true extension support in Chrome, I think I could be ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/25/aviary-chrome-extension/ There are few things more terrifying to me than the idea of going anywhere near a shopping establishment on Black Friday. But if I lived in New York City, I think I would this year because Google, Verizon, Reuters, and R/GA are teaming up to take over the largest displays ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/25/google-droid-black-friday/ Last month we saw the launch of TechCrunch50 winner RedBeacon, the startup that lets you book local service providers directly from the web. Today it's getting some strong competition from a new startup called Thumbtack, a local service booking engine that's looking to offer both a comprehensive directory of ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/25/thumbtack-local-service-search/ The brains behind Yahoo Boss, a young engineer named Vik Singh, is leaving Yahoo to become an entrepreneur-in-residence at Sutter Hill Ventures. Earlier this year, Singh was named to Technology Review's 35 Under 35 list at the age of 24. Singh is exactly the kind of talent Yahoo should ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/25/yahoo-boss-loses-vik-singh/ As part of its push to go more social, Google has been attempting to unify its various account profiles into one Google Profile. And now it's more useful. Google's Brad Fitzpatrick has just tweeted out that Google Profiles can now be used as OpenIDs. What this means is that you can ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/25/google-profile-openid/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/25/the-5-rules-of-black-friday/ One of the most popular paid photo apps for the iPhone, Snapture (iTunes link) just got a few upgrades. The new features include the ability to share photos on either Twitter or Facebook, a new tap-to-focus capability, and different color modes (black & white, sepia, negative). Posting to ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/25/snapture-iphone-twitter-facebook/