A lot of people like to bitch and moan about how in the age of realtime information, the stream moves too quickly and as a result, there’s a decent chance of inaccurate news being spread. There’s no question it’s an issue, but with the situation in Egypt, we’re once again seeing the overwhelming upside of this realtime data spread that makes services like Twitter so powerful. And just look at the flip side.
The above image shows the frontpage of a newspaper that was delivered this morning. There are hundreds more like it around the country. Many, many people still get their news this way. They woke up this morning, opened the paper and got information that is so old that it’s now totally inaccurate. It’s ridiculous.
This has actually always been an issue — “In related news, DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN!,” quips Twitter’s Mark Trammell — but if radio hit the newspaper format over the head, the live, 24/7 television news channels drove a stake in its heart. And now the realtime web has pounded that stake deeper. With a sledgehammer. And then stuck a grenade in the mouth of the corpse.
I’m sorry, but there’s simply no role for the newspaper anymore. That’s not saying there’s no role for newspaper journalism, just the physical product itself. It’s a waste of paper, ink, and time. R.I.P.
Face.com initially rolled out its REST API, which allows developers to tap its awesome facial recognition technology for use in their own websites and applications, almost a year ago. Today, the startup is moving the API from ‘alpha’ to ‘beta’ mode – and it gets more exciting if you look at pricing.
While over 10,000 developers are said to be using the API since its May 2010 launch already, there were some restrictions to it, as they could only scan up to 200 photos per hour. As from today, developers can scan 5,000 photos per hour (or 120,000 per day) – still at no cost.
It’s a price that’s hard to beat, but that’s not the only thing Face.com says should spark developer interest.
Face.com says the technology has also been improved significantly, enabling third-party developers to pick up more faces in group photos and identifying the people in them more accurately than ever. You can also group similar faces in photos together now, which is great for bulk-tagging support in applications that make use of the API.
The API also boasts easy integration with Facebook (enabling you to recognize Facebook friends in photos across Facebook Connected apps) as well as Twitter (search and tagging for Twitter faces across a variety of photo services).
Face.com previously released a couple of popular Facebook apps, Photo Finder (which allows you to scan all the photos in your Facebook network) and Photo Tagger (which allows you to upload folders of pictures and bulk-tag photos).
The Israeli startup claims its technology has now ‘discovered’ over 18 billion faces across its APIs and Facebook apps, and counting.
Recently, rumors started swirling about the company about the fact that they reportedly rebuffed an acquisition offer from Facebook, and that its technology is actually used to power Facebook Photos’ facial recognition functionality.
HTML5 versus native apps. It’s a debate as old as — well, at least three years ago. And pretty much since the beginning of that debate, there has been a general underlying current among the geek community that HTML5 is good and native is bad. Native is what we have to deal with as we wait for HTML5 to prevail.
But what if that never happens?
Let’s be honest: right now, most HTML-based mobile apps are a joke when compared to their native counterparts. It’s not even remotely close. In fact, you could argue that the discrepancy isn’t much smaller than it was three years ago. And considering that the App Store was only on the verge of launching at that point, in many ways, the discrepancy is even bigger. Just look at mobile games now, for example.
Developers often state their love of HTML5 and their commitment to it going forward. But many have no choice. Native app development is not only difficult, it’s expensive.
These days, if you’re going to do native apps, you at least have to support iOS and Android. That means at least two developers for each different language, and preferably more. And if your startup is big enough or hot enough (like Foursquare, for example), you’ll probably want to have apps for Windows Phone, Blackberry, and webOS as well (which, to be fair is largely HTML-based).
Talking to developers, this is the single biggest pain point on the mobile side of things. And many talk about HTML5 as the remedy. A number now choose to build an iOS app then settle on a web app for Android at first. Others do both iPhone and Android but only offer rudimentary sites for the other platforms.
But the fact that very few, if any, choose to go HTML5-only is telling. If we were anywhere close to the language being a unifier and savior, at least some would. We’re not close.
Let’s look at the debate from the perspective of the three hottest technology companies right now: Apple, Google, and Facebook.
Apple is basically all-in on native apps. Google is half-in on native apps, half-in on HTML5. Facebook is seemingly all-in on HTML5 (at least going forward).
Apple is very interesting in this regard. When the iPhone launched in 2007, the only native apps were the ones made by them. Developers were told to build web apps in order to get on the device. Who knows if Apple planned third-party native apps all along or if they pivoted when they saw the opportunity, but a year later, we had the App Store.
It’s the single reason there’s any debate right now.
Apple is now obviously native app all the way. But it’s on their own terms. When a developer makes an app that Apple doesn’t like in some way, they recommend that they make an HTML5 app to bring it to one of their devices.
It’s more or less a “my way or the highway” approach — it’s just a nice way of putting it. Apple is using the hype around HTML5 to their advantage here. They know that those apps can’t compete with their native apps, but so many people are so bullish about the future of the technology (and, to be fair, Apple seems to be as well at least on the Safari side of things) that Apple is able to play that to their advantage.
They might as well say, “you’re welcome to build an HTML5 app *snicker*.”
Google is significantly more gray with regard to their position.
At the past two Google I/O conferences, all we’ve heard about from the search giant is HTML5-this and HTML5-that. But their actions speak louder than their words.
Google has done some great work with HTML5 — some of their mobile web apps are quite good. In fact, they’re arguably the best web apps out there. But they too are nowhere near native app good.
And take something like their Jules Verne logo today — it utilized the iPhone’s accelerometer via the HTML5 baked into Safari to move around. Very cool. But would anyone have thought twice about it if it were a part of a native app? No.
It seems like Google is well aware of this native app/HTML5 app discrepancy. That’s why we’re seeing an increasing number of their once HTML-based apps going native. And it’s not only on their own Android platform, but on the iPhone as well.
And that’s not all. Recent reports underscore Google going a bit native app crazy. There’s apparently a big push inside the company to hire any good app developers that they can get their hands on. And they’re even offering for them to work inside Google as their own startups. Essentially, it sounds like the Googleplex is becoming an app incubator of sorts. One that pays a salary.
But wait, this is Google. Again, aren’t they supposed to be the main torchbearers of the HTML5 movement? Yes. But they’ve also been hedging their bet this entire time. That’s exactly why development of both Android and Chrome OS has continued totally separate from one another.
Chrome OS, an operating system built entirely around HTML5 is still very much in beta mode. Android, an operating system built entirely around native apps is exploding with growth. Which would you back right now?
And then there’s Facebook.
Speaking at the Inside Social Apps conference last month, Facebook CTO Bret Taylor made it very clear that HTML5 is a the key focus for the social network in 2011. He reiterated as much to me when I spoke with him afterwards.
In fact, Facebook is so committed to HTML5 that they’re going to be offering tools to their broad development community in order to help them bring their apps up to speed. Most significantly, this includes games, which are today largely based on Flash.
Taylor echoed the hardships that startups face with mobile development across several platforms these days. Facebook, while much larger than a typical startup, still works in relatively small teams. And while he said that structural changes would help in 2011, they too are betting that HTML5 is the ultimate unifier.
Facebook has an odd history in the mobile app space. When the iPhone first launched, they had easily the best mobile web-based app — which was developed by Joe Hewitt. When native apps were finally allowed, Hewitt built that as well, and again, it was clearly one of the best apps available (and the top downloaded app of all time for iOS).
Then Hewitt decided he was fed up with some of the App Store rules. So he stopped doing iOS work. The Facebook app stood neglected for quite some time. And while it’s better today, it still has the same basic look and feel of the app that Hewitt built.
Meanwhile, on the Android side of things, it has been a nightmare. The Facebook Android app has long been a joke when compared to its iPhone brother. Facebook keeps slowly improving it, but it’s still not as good.
On the tablet side of things, Taylor said the iPad was an unfortunate casualty of Facebook’s lack of mobile team structure leading up to that device’s launch. He spoke about the importance of having a tablet-optimized version of the service soon.
That seemed to indicate that this would be an HTML5-based web app. But I’ve heard reports from two different sources that Facebook has been internally testing a native iPad app in recent months.
Maybe they won’t release such an app. And maybe they take an HTML5-only approach to tablets. But I certainly wouldn’t bet against a native iPad app. And maybe one optimized for Honeycomb as well.
It sounds as if Facebook is all about HTML5 — except when native apps offer a better experience. Which, love it or hate it, is still always.
And such a stance is more or less the attitude that everyone with the necessary resources seems to have. And that’s the point. After all these months and years, we’re still debating the HTML5 versus native app thing — but it still has yet to be a contest.
Everyone seems to pay HTML5 plenty of lip-service. But look at their actions. Apple, Google, Facebook, and developers are all focusing on native apps, not HTML5 apps.
And look at the platform pipelines. Android is (finally) about to get in-app purchasing. iOS is likely to (finally) get a revamped Push Notification system with the next iteration of iOS. Android Honeycomb will offer developers a whole new set of tools and APIs. Both platforms are likely to expand quickly into NFC and everything that can offer.
All of that will be native app only. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It was actually Hewitt who said it best when he ripped the state of web development a new one last year with a series of tweets. The best was: “I want desperately to be a web developer again, but if I have to wait until 2020 for browsers to do what Cocoa can do in 2010, I won’t wait.”
If HTML5 is an oncoming train, native app development is an oncoming rocket ship. And everyone seems to know that’s not going to change anytime soon. Even if they don’t want to admit it, their native apps speak for them.
TiVo this morning launched a free website for anyone interested in commercial ratings (particularly marketers, I guess). The ‘Ad Scorecard’ is designed to let people analyze how effective a brand’s TV commercials are at retaining viewers and how well they are performing relative to competing brands.
And by launching, I mean the company pretty much bashed every other audience and effectiveness measurement companies out there, saying they are no longer effective themselves.
The site, which is powered by TiVo’s research tool, Stop||Watch ratings service and its self-reportedly ‘second-by-second’ measurement capabilities, was launched to “demonstrate that there is more accurate information available to the media industry to help them determine the efficacy of their TV ads beyond the limited data used as the industry currency today”.
Fighting words, if you ask me.
Tara Maitra, VP of Advertising & Research Sales at TiVo, also stepped up to the plate, and in a statement deemed current methods of measuring the quantity and quality of television advertising audiences “antiquated and broken”.
Visitors of the site can compare up to three brands with national broadcast and cable TV spots against each other – after registering – to determine which one most effectively retains viewers over a timeframe ranging from one week to three months. Visitors are also shown the weekly performance for each brand broken out in a graphical chart display.
TiVo’s decision to offer a free look into its anonymous ratings data is of course meant to help marketers discover the company’s full suite of research offerings.
But at least they’re not pulling any punches upon launching the free site.
Today, RecycleMatch — a Houston-based startup that helps businesses sell or give away stuff to recyclers and manufacturers so that they don’t have to send it to a landfill — took its online marketplace out of beta, unveiling several new features and services.
If the site performs as hoped, RecycleMatch could become the Alibaba, eBay or Amazon of waste-management and manufacturing, while helping just about any company improve its sustainability profile.
Among the materials RecycleMatch helps businesses take out of the landfill-bound waste stream are: “commodity recyclables” including paper, steel, plastic and glass; wastewater; consumer electronics and business equipment (a.k.a. e-waste); and food waste.
How do you “recycle” food waste, exactly? [ed: Besides throwing overripe tomatoes around in Valencia, Spain’s famous annual Tomato Battle…] One soup maker uses RecycleMatch to sell its wasted product to renewable energy companies that purchase or pick it up to turn it into biofuel.
The startup, whose offices are in Houston and Austin, recently attained a series A investment from a fund that it hasn’t yet revealed, and is putting the undisclosed capital towards sales and marketing, as well as website development. A few months ago, RecycleMatch brought on a new chief executive, Chris Porch, a serial entrepreneur who earlier worked in c-suite levels positions at Zag.com and BetweenMarkets, other online marketplace businesses.
RecycleMatch founder, Brooke Farrell, spoke with TechCrunch about her inspiration to start this business (bringing on her brother-in-law Chad Farrell as co-founder) in the fall of 2009. The environmental and financial costs of sending business and industrial waste to landfills in the United States could be, and must be reduced she thought, while studying EPA data and tuning in to blogs and trades about trash and the environment.
She noted on Tuesday:
“For each one pound of waste generated by a consumer in the United States today, there are 60.31 lbs. of commercially generated manufacturing and industrial waste that were generated in the production of those goods. Companies pay on average, in the U.S. $45 per ton tipping fees to send that waste to landfills.”
The new RecycleMatch website features the following services for buyers and bidders of recyclable or re-usable materials:
1. Anonymous listings and messaging between buyers and bidders, that protects companies from revealing to the public what is in their waste stream.
2. Specialized bidding that…
a. lets buyers bid on materials, or find materials they need for free one time, or on a regular, weekly or monthly basis.
b. allows sellers to choose among bidders who offer the best price, or are in the most convenient location to arrange a pick-up, or have an intended use for the materials that the sellers can appreciate.
4. Reputation management system where buyers and sellers rate and are able to respond to one another, unlike the Yelp model. The reputation scores and reviews will be monitored by RecycleMatch’s customer service team.
Porch believes RecycleMatch will lower the cost of innovation in materials science and renewable energy. He said:
“When there was damage done to a big building in Houston after a hurricane, people could not deal with a lot of the glass waste, because of a particular kind of film that was on it. We matched the company [that had to clean up this glass] with another that took it, and crushed it to make countertops.
There are so many innovative ways to reuse materials instead of dumping them in a landfill. We make it possible for this to happen, across state lines, and in a way that’s affordable for all involved.”
With its new leadership and website in place, Farrell predicted:
“RecycleMatch should grow within orders of magnitude this year. Right now, we’re looking at several hundred listings on our site. We expect to see five or ten thousand listings within a year.”
Editor’s note:
A reader asks how RecycleMatch plans to make money. According to CEO Porch, RecycleMatch uses “a performance based business model.” The site and service is free for those who want to register and list materials for sale, and to those who bid as buyers.
The company charges 5% commission for material sold on the site. If material is given away free, RecycleMatch charges $5 a ton for whatever material is picked up by a “buyer.” Porch and Farrell said those listing materials on RecycleMatch save money by not paying tipping fees at landfills, which according to the company are on average, in the U.S., $45 per ton.
@sarahlane
HTML5 versus native apps. It’s a debate as old as — well, at least three years ago. And pretty much since the beginning of that debate, there has been a general underlying current among the geek community that HTML5 is good and native is bad. Native is what we have to deal with as we wait for HTML5 to prevail.
Today, 
