Another Popular Developer Lays The Smack Down On Apple’s App Store

Posted on August 31st, 2009 in Latest Info by Jason Kincaid

3709438002_021cb145181Another day, another story of Apple’s ridiculous App Store approval policies gone awry. Joe Stump, the former lead architect for Digg who is well known in the developer community, has posted an entirely NSFW rant to his blog that condemns Apple for preventing a key update to his application from going live for over six weeks. Stump’s language is quite colorful so I’m not going to quote it extensively, but be sure to read his full blog post.

In the post, Stump outlines a problem that he had with Chess Wars, the Facebook Connect-enabled chess game that came out in July. After catching a show-stopping bug soon after the initial release, his company Blunder Move promptly issued an update. Soon thereafter they noticed another bug, which they quickly released a fix for. Unfortunately, this second update has sat in App Store purgatory for many weeks now, and Apple has gone silent on when it will be approved.

Stump also describes his efforts to get his friends inside Apple to help his cause, going on to say that they’ve been able to do basically nothing other than tell him to contact Apple’s unhelpful team of app reviewers. Even once the update is approved, the app will have to endure the 1-star reviews it has received without any way to reverse them. Here’s how Stump closes out the blog post:

To our users affected by this, I’m truly sorry. There’s absolutely nothing I can do about your horrible user experience and, as a developer who loves his users, nothing pains me more.

To Apple, please kindly extend the world class customer service I’m so accustomed to as an Apple fanboy to your developers.

Other notable developers to have criticized the App Store’s policies include Panic co-founder Steven Frank, and Joe Hewitt, who is charged with building the enormously popular Facebook iPhone app.

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TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Google Lands Deal to Put Chrome Browser in Sony PCs

Posted on August 31st, 2009 in Latest Info by PC World: Latest Technology News
Sony will distribute Google's Chrome browser in PCs for the North America market.

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The Almost Hopeless Challenge Of Web Security

Posted on August 31st, 2009 in Latest Info by Nik Cubrilovic
Today we are trusting the web with our most personal and important data, from private photos and social graphs to finances and key work documents. Our hesitation to share such information has dropped over the years as our trust in our favorite services grows. Yet all the while, the web is actually growing less secure, as sites are left open to new attacks that can spread easily and leave users totally unaware when they've been compromised. Looking back on the history of the web, classic security protection involved patching servers to assure latest versions were running, monitoring advisories from vendors, and maintaining some level of filtering and firewall to keep basic attacks out. Simple moves on the part of an admin or developer could protect sites from 99% of automated scripts. But a few years ago, a new security can-of-worms was opened, as new exploits that took advantage of simple oversights within web applications were being used to steal large amounts of user data.
TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

TechCrunch50 Partners Step Up with $1 million In Advertising For Launching Startups

Posted on August 31st, 2009 in Latest Info by Michael Arrington

In July we said we would be giving away substantial amounts of advertising to promote the new startups and products launching at TechCrunch50 on September 14-15.

Today I’m pleased to announce that four of our key partners will be giving an aggregate of $1 million in advertising to TechCrunch50 companies. Facebook, Google (Youtube), Microsoft (Bing) and MySpace are all participating with substantial donations. We expect more partners to join shortly.

One of the cooler additional ideas was proposed by the Bing team. They’ll make tshirts that say “Bing Loves [company/logo]” and Bing staff will wear these tshirts, each one promoting a different TechCrunch50 startup, to various events and conferences they’ll attend throughout the year. They promise that the team will be familiar with the startup/product they’re promoting on their tshirts and be ready to talk about it when people ask. Crazy idea right? I love it.

YouTube is offering in-video advertising, and MySpace and Facebook will give substantial advertising credits on their ad platforms. So there are lots of ways TechCrunch50 companies will get exposure even after the event is over.

Also, sponsor Perkins Coie (which is also our law firm) will be giving away free legal services to one of the winners.

Thanks to MySpace, Bing, YouTube and Facebook for helping these young startups get just a little more much-needed exposure.

Mad Men Image: New York Times

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TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

A Look At fbFund’s First Summer As An Incubator Program

Posted on August 31st, 2009 in Latest Info by Jason Kincaid

Over the last twelve weeks, 24 startups have been working out of Facebook’s old headquarters in downtown Palo Alto as part of fbFund REV, Facebook’s startup incubator program that’s jointly run with Accel Partners and Founders Fund. During that time the startups have receieved mentorship from some of Silicon Valley’s elite, as well as help from Facebook engineers. Tomorrow, they’ll be presenting at the program’s Demo Day (we’ll have full coverage beginning tomorrow afternoon). In light of the close of this session, we’ve compiled a number of the mentor presentations given thoughout the summer, and sat down with fbFund team member Dave McClure, who outlined what made the program unique.

McClure says that REV is a “social incubator” — an idea that is helped by the fact that all of the startups enrolled somehow take advantage of Facebook, the world’s largest social network. But McClure also says that the structure of the incubator, from the way classes are held to the actual layout of the building, is designed to ensure that the startups involved maintain interaction with each other. Startups have been working in wide, open rooms with white boards and no cubicles, and the program invited mentors to speak to all of the startups around three times per week. The fact that the startups get office hours and help from Facebook employees can also help give them a leg up on the competition.

Of course, fbFund has been around for some time now — it was announced back in September 2007, and has since seen a number of graduating classes. But past winners in fbFund were given no-strings-attached cash grants, while the new model, obviously inspired by incubators like Y Combinator invites the finalists to participate in a mentorship program while fbFund takes a small stake in the startups.

Here’s a list of talks that were given over the summer, as well as embedded videos of a few of the sessions.

Financing
Marketing
Product Management
Legal Issues
Early Stage Hiring (HR)
Why Startups Fail (Strategy)
Gaming
Monetization






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TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

IBM Puts Virtual Desktops in the Cloud

Posted on August 31st, 2009 in Latest Info by PC World: Latest Technology News
IBM is rolling out a subscription service in October that aims to make it easier for large companies to use desktop virtualization, the company said Monday.

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AMD Ships Low-power Six-core Opteron Chip

Posted on August 31st, 2009 in Latest Info by PC World: Latest Technology News
Advanced Micro Devices on Monday started shipping a low-power variant of its six-core Opteron server chip.

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Sony to Outsource LCD TV Production to Hon Hai

Posted on August 31st, 2009 in Latest Info by PC World: Latest Technology News
Sony plans to outsource LCD TV production for the Americas to Hon Hai Precision as it seeks to lower costs and focus on engineering.

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Smartbooks Prepare to Compete in Mini-laptop Space

Posted on August 31st, 2009 in Latest Info by PC World: Latest Technology News
After half a year of demonstrations and talk, mini-laptops based on Arm chips are set to compete with netbooks built around Intel's Atom.

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More ‘Screenshots’ Of Google Chrome OS Emerge

Posted on August 31st, 2009 in Latest Info by PC World: Latest Technology News
Another day, another batch of so-called Google Chrome OS screenshots surfaces online.

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