If You Want To Talk Technology With A German, Try Jaxtr Cafe
Social calling widget Jaxtr has just released a new destination called Jaxtr Cafe. Their widget, like Jangl’s, provides users with an anonymous number to call each other with the added bonus of cheaper long distance calling.
Up until now, Jaxtr users found each other more or less randomly on social networks of email signatures that listed links to the service. Jaxtr Cafe, however, is a social network of sorts where some 10 million users (50-60% active) of the service can find each other and carry on conversations about whatever they want. It also gives Jaxtr the opportunity to start monetizing their free service through advertising on the site. Jangl, on the other hand, has monetized on a case by case basis (rev share on Match.com, ads on PlentyOfFish).
Every user of Jaxtr is grandfathered in to Jaxtr Cafe’s profile database. You can search amongst these profiles based on interests and geography. For instance, if you want to talk to someone who’s an Australian and interested in food, you can easily do a search through the directory for just the right person. You can then call or text them using Jaxtr’s widget.
I was surprised no to see an offering closer to Ingenio’s Ether, but that may be an additional feature in the coming months. Rather the service seems a lot like Skype Live. However there’s the added advantage that while people aren’t always on Skype, but pretty much always have their phones. It does come at the cost of your local calling minutes, but you’ll wind up with a cheaper long distance chat.
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Tags: jaxtr, jangle, techcrunch, web2.0
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Redux Discovers Friends So You Don’t Have To
You’re probably familiar with the “recommended items” lists on sites like Amazon or Barnes and Noble. They help discover things you’ll probably like based on what you buy and what you view. Redux founder Darian Shirazi wants to apply the same power of discovery to growing communities of people online. The site is launching into beta today.
This site is part social network and part quiz show with the central goal being learning to most about what you’re like and who you’d like. You fill out a profile with all the standard questions (music, age, sex, books) with the added bonus of an optional Myers-Briggs personality test. The site also lets users post photos, list their location, or chat with each other.
However, the heart of the site is training their algorithm on what people you like. Similar to “I’m In Like With You”, users are periodically asked quiz questions by the site, such as “Do you like sports?” or “Do you have a teddy bear?”. Your answers to the questions coupled with your profile and the ones you view help Redux recommend you people like yourself based on a percentage score.
The algorithm isn’t “dumb” or based purely on matching up people based on answering questions the same. It actually learns what properties signify compatibility based on how people use the site and takes special care to match people up with niche interests (something Shirazi calls the “Anomaly Filter”). For instance, people who play sports will probably get along with people who watch sports. From there, the system could discover that people who play sports get along well with people who enjoy action films or any number of other attributes.
Finally, Redux closes the loop by encouraging compatible people to hang out at any of the thousands of public events they’ve pulled from sites like Upcoming.
While I have yet to make a friend based on a random conversation over a website, there are clearly plenty of people who do. On social networking sites people frequently drop a line to someone they might like to strike up a conversation. A service like Redux that matches based on personality makes the initial impetus behind the introduction more than superficial.
But Darian doesn’t think that Redux is necessarily about finding a life long friend. There has been a growing interest in personalizing the web and recommendations from real people are often the ones users trust. That’s why Redux will be distributing its service as a platform by the end of this year. Websites will be able to integrate with Redux to power all kinds of people driven recommendations. It seems like a smart move, because I can’t see most people logging on every day just to chat with friends and answer some questions. The context of another site can make the process more compelling.
Redux was created by the team behind Flick.IM and is funded by $1.65 million from investors including Peter Thiel.
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Tags: people, discovery, techcrunch, web2.0
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Here Comes A Train Wreck
Is this comment sexist?
Shelley, Lane’s attorney is abusing the DMCA for his/her own goals. And copyright has nothing to do with “giving credit.” It has to do with being forced to license work unless it falls under fair use, which this clearly does.
Mathew is right, you are wrong. But since Lane is a woman, it really doesn’t matter what she did as far as you are concerned. She’s a woman, so she’s right.
The “Shelley” in this post is a person who trolls TechCrunch about once per week accusing me of all sort of things, very often of being sexist. In my opinion she shifts her opinions regularly on issues to ensure that she supports the woman in any dispute. This particular exchange is around photographer Lane Hartwell taking down the web 2.0 bubble video, and I asked myself, what would Shelley’s position on this be if it was me who took the picture and issued the DMCA notice? She would have exactly the opposite opinion.
Anyway, A train wreck is about to happen and we can all watch it. Valleywag has already chimed in, but they didn’t get the real story. Eric Rice has now compared me to Don Imus in this video and is organizing people to go after TechCrunch sponsors on Twitter.
When this kind of thing gets rolling, there’s no stopping or controlling it. This is going to be highly entertaining for everyone to watch except me, and it’ll make Eric a very popular guy.
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I Made A Woman Comment, And I’m Totally Screwed
Is this comment sexist?
Shelley, Lane’s attorney is abusing the DMCA for his/her own goals. And copyright has nothing to do with “giving credit.” It has to do with being forced to license work unless it falls under fair use, which this clearly does.
Mathew is right, you are wrong. But since Lane is a woman, it really doesn’t matter what she did as far as you are concerned. She’s a woman, so she’s right.
The “Shelley” in this post is a person who trolls TechCrunch about once per week accusing me of all sort of things, very often of being sexist. In my opinion she shifts her opinions regularly on issues to ensure that she supports the woman in any dispute. This particular exchange is around photographer Lane Hartwell taking down the web 2.0 bubble video, and I asked myself, what would Shelley’s position on this be if it was me who took the picture and issued the DMCA notice? She would have exactly the opposite opinion.
Anyway, A train wreck is about to happen and we can all watch it. Valleywag has already chimed in, but they didn’t get the real story. Eric Rice has now compared me to Don Imus in this video and is organizing people to go after TechCrunch sponsors on Twitter.
When this kind of thing gets rolling, there’s no stopping or controlling it. This is going to be highly entertaining for everyone to watch except me, and it’ll make Eric a very popular guy.
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O'Reilly launches Velocity Web Performance and Operations...
By Jesse Robbins
I'm happy to announce that Steve Souders and I will be co-chairing Velocity, the new O'Reilly conference dedicated to Web Performance and Operations. Velocity is happening on June 23-24, 2008 at the San Francisco Airport Marriott in Burlingame, California.
Our theme is "Fast, Scalable, Resilient, Available". We're focusing on the crucial skills and knowledge needed by people who are building successful websites. This is the conference that many of us have wanted for a long time, and I'm really excited to help make it happen.
This year's program committee includes: Artur Bergman (O'Reilly Radar & Wikia), Cal Henderson (Flickr & author of 'Building Scalable Web Sites' ), Jon Jenkins (Amazon.com), and Eric Schurman (Live.com Search). We're ready to create this incredible conference, and invite your proposals to lead conference sessions. We are especially interested in the following topics:
Scaling experiences: What works, what doesn't, and how to tell the difference
CDNs – Getting content closer to the customer
Networking, DNS, and load balancing
Managing web services and SOAs
Making RIAs that are fast!
Maximizing database performance and efficiency
Optimizing production for customer experience
Capacity planning and load testing
Configuration management & Software Deployment
Infrastructure management, Monitoring, and Instrumentation
Incident Management and Business Continuity Planning
Virtualization in Production: Challenges & Opportunities
Policy / Process / Compliance in distributed environments
The Call for Participation for Velocity 2008 is open. Please the Velocity Proposals page for more details on submitting sessions. The submission deadline for all proposals is January 3, 2008.
Along with subscribing to the official RSS feed you can join the Facebook group and Upcoming event. Please use velocity08 when tagging.
Technorati Tags: conferences, infrastructure, innovation, operations, oreilly, performance, scale, velocity08, web2.0, webops
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Jajah In The Kitchen With Jangl, Cooking Up New Products
VOIP provider Jajah and social VOIP startup Jangl are partnering up to create some new products out of a mutually recognized compatibility.
The deal makes a lot of sense. Jajah is a high-profile VOIP startup making great strides in bringing VOIP to regular telephony (with over 2 million registered users), but their recently launched click-to-call widget hasn’t yet given them a large web presence. Jangl’s calling widget, however, has distribution on over 40 million user profiles through deals with social networks like Tagged.
Specifically Jangl will be using Jajah’s back-end VOIP engine to serve their calls. With Jajah in over 122 countries, it will give them a much greater reach than previously. In turn, Jangl will be using Jajah’s newly launched pre-call advertising engine to monetize their service with geographically specified ads powered by Oridian (another one of Jajah’s recent partnerships). The two are also alluding to future “strategic development and emerging products” as well, but not saying much else.
If the two ever decide to merge (not that we have any indication that they will), either one would only have to change the last three letters of their name (preferably Jajah—Jangl is the better name, at least for English speakers). Some customers might not even notice the switch.
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Tags: voip, telephony, web2.0, techcrunch
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Payoneer Collects $3M from Greylock, Signs-up iStockphoto
This is an especially good week for payment service provider Payoneer which is announcing it has received the remaining $3M of a $4M Greylock investment , and a new deal with iStockphoto.
Payoneer offers Web-based businesses a method to pay their members/users/partners by way of prepaid debit cards. The fully-functioning debit MasterCards are issued to payees worldwide and can be used online, at points-of-sale, or at ATM’s for cash withdrawals in local currency.
The 800-pound payment service provider is PayPal of course. (PaidByCash is another competitor). However, while PayPal is the top online payment service when it comes to person-to-person transactions, it is far from perfect in other respects, especially when it comes to international payments. For payees residing outside the US, PayPal cannot match the ease and simplicity that Payoneer offers when it comes to receiving their funds.
PayPal requires a bank account to transfer funds internationally. To confirm the bank account, PayPal makes a micro-deposit (a few cents) into the account, and then has the payee report back the exact amount, thereby “proving” account ownership. The problem is that for this process to even take place, the banking institutions in the country where the payee resides must support EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer). Not all countries do. For example, India, China the USSR countries, and some Latin American countries don’t. (Incidentally, this wacky process is why I still don’t have a PayPal account… I’ve gone through it 4-5 times in the past few years… The micro-deposit doesn’t register in my account immediately and by the time I remember it, I’ve already made the purchase in some other manner).
On Payoneer, account verification—a PayPal staple—is a non-issue. Anyone worldwide over 13 can get a card and get paid. Cards require one-time shipping and are then loaded and re-loaded electronically by Payoneer. Convenience-wise, the hassles and high fees normally associated with Wire Transfer and Check payments are greatly reduced or, when a bank is involved in the process, averted completely.
Other than the expected back-office goodies, Payoneer offers its business customers a branding and retention tool in the form of a co-branded MasterCard (see examples right).
Payoneer is also announcing the addition of iStockphoto to its client roster. Today, iStock will begin offering Payoneer as a payment method to its 35,000 contributing artists who earn royalties on the sale of their images and videos. Among Payoneer’s 70 clients are oDesk, MetaCafe, Amie Street and Plimus.
Founded in 2005, Payoneer employs 25 and is headquartered in New York with R&D in Tel-Aviv, Israel. A $2M seed round was raised from Payoneer’s CEO himself, Yuval Tal and private investors including Zohar Gilon, Charlie Federman, Michael Loeb and Ilan Kaufthal. Greylock (Israel) added a total of $4M in Series A this year, with Moshe Mor the partner attached to the deal.
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Tags: techcrunch, web2.0, online, payment
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BTW, Live Search 411 Is Taking On Goog 411
Telephone directory service has gone through a massive upheaval over the past year. Jingle Networks was able to take about 6% of the market with their Free 411 service. However, what started with Jingle Networks has exploded to a wider field of competition including heavyweights like Google and AT&T. But now, rather unceremoniously, Microsoft has finally gotten into the mix by launching their own free directory service, Live Search 411, this week. The announcement was mixed in with a few other notes about visual enhancements across their maps services. In contrast, Google has been visibly promoting their effort.
The free 411 service, Live Search 411, is a mobile service developed in partnership with recently acquired TellMe. You can get the service on any phone by dialing 1-800-CALL-411 (1-800-225-5411).
Like GOOG 411 users can get local directory service. All you have to do is say the city and state, then ask for the business or category to hear a list of options. However, the two services differ in their details. Live Search 411 also offer other services, such as movie times, weather, and traffic info. Like Google, internet enabled phones can have the results text messaged to them with a link to a map, but no directions. For those of you with realllly old phone, Dial Directions is a service that can write up these directions and send them over SMS.
They also differ in some smaller ways as well. Live Search prompts the user for input more often than GOOG 411, which assumes a lot of responses unless the user says otherwise. Live 411 lets you search by city district as well, which is useful if you want to find a restaurant around where you live. I found the voice recognition on both services to be equal, with both failing for names of some Italian restaurants I searched.
The fight between these well financed services will likely be a long one, and no one’s making any money yet.
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Tags: techcrunch, web2.0
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Zipidee Wants To Be THE Marketplace For Digital Goods
In 1995 eBay sold a laser pointer online and kicked off the online marketplace for selling physical goods. As networks improved in the intervening years, the idea of what can be bought and sold online has grown to include digital goods as well. Zipidee wants to be a market for those digital goods, and is expected to launch some time in the next week.
It’s by no means a new concept, there are several sites out there that trade in digital bits: Payloadz, Tradebits, e-Junkie, Edgeio, and more. eBay already sells digital goods, with delivery often handled through these third party sites. iTunes can also sell your content, but requires an approved label if you want to get paid.
However, Zipidee will offer considerably more control over pricing and distribution than these other sites. Merchants on Zipidee will be able to create their own virtual store where they can list their digital wares for sale on the site directly or across Zipidee’s website widgets. It’s an ideal setup for anyone selling an instructional video series or their own audiobook.
Audio and video can be uploaded to the site to be rented or bought at whatever price the creator wishes and consumed via downloads or streams. Other services often only allow downloads.
You will be able to track the sale of their good in real time and adjust the price accordingly using their analytics dashboard. Creators will also have the option of protecting their product with Zipidee’s own DRM system. DRMed goods come with a license to play the media through their web or downloadable player on any computer with your Zipidee credentials.
Zipidee will make money through a $1 listing fee (waived to start) and roughly 80/20 split of the purchase price (Zipidee takes a smaller cut for higher priced goods).
To start, Zipidee will focus on digitizing the kind of media now sold at conferences and trade shows as DVDs or Books. For launch, they’re digitizing materials from a series of consultants and speakers such as DreamUniversity and MightyVentures who currently sell millions of dollars in physical merchandise directly to their customers.
Yet, there’s still a big question over whether and where people will buy “long-tail” digital content. Zipidee is fighting the trend toward free digital content (wikipedia, 5 min) and people are reluctant enough to even pay for big-media’s content (most songs on iPods do not come from iTunes). There is also a question as to whether the best way to sell this content is horizontally in a single marketplace, or vertically by topic. There are a great number of digital content verticals out there already that could serve as points of sale for independently produced content (DocStoc, Scribd, Amie Street, 5 Min, Snocap). We’ll have to see how it all pans out when Zipidee launches.
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Tags: techcrunch, web2.0, digital, goods
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TringMe: Phone Free Click To Call
Nearly every VOIP related startup has their own click-to-call widget, Jajah, Jangl, Jaxtr, and even GrandCentral. These widgets let you easily and sometimes anonymously set up a call with friends over the web. They’re very useful and come packed with features like voicemail and texting. However, each of these services connects phones to phones, which still eats away at your mobile minutes while you’re talking to that business contact or MySpace hottie.
TringMe offers a bit more flexibility. Callers can ditch their phone and call directly through their Flash widget to your mobile phone, landline, and GTalk (Yahoo and Skype coming soon). All they need is a microphone and one click. Although they’re still in private beta, you can try the demo widget to the right for an idea of the experience.
Similar to the other services, your phone number is kept private and the calls are free (now’s the time for that overseas call). You can also set the widget to just receive voicemails, which are emailed to you, saved on your standard mailbox, or recorded and played back in GTalk. There is one major drawback, though. Since there is no virtual phone number involved, callers have to be at a computer and can’t call you while they’re on the go.
Naturally such an easy and anonymous calling service is susceptible to abuse, and I don’t see any countermeasures in place to keep out prank calls and telemarketers. The other services have verified phone numbers and white/black lists to keep abuse to a minimum. I expect TringMe will have to incorporate similar controls to make people more comfortable with using the widget.
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Tags: click_to_call, voip, widget, techcrunch, web2.0
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