Roundup: Ad market reset, Windows 7 pricing, Pogue's voicemail crusade continues

Online advertising stops its nose-dive — Second-quarter global ad revenues, at $7.864 billion, were down 3.4 percent from a year ago. But admit it: After the past year, a 3.4 percent drop almost feels like growth. Is this a “reset” of base level from which the ad market can now grow again? TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld plots the line and explains the economist-speak. Erick, I hate to be all VentureBeat fussy, but do you have more … Continue Reading

Opera CEO still seeks U.S. success

updated

Jon von Tetzchner (pronounced “Yon,” not “John”) co-founded Opera in 1995 after developing a small, fast browser for Norway’s national phone company. The original version needed to fit on a 1.2 megabyte floppy disk and run fast on old PCs too slow for the two browser giants of the time, Internet Explorer 4 and Netscape Communicator.

Fourteen years later, von Tetzchner has carved out a small but solid niche for Opera. The company’s browsers … Continue Reading

FCC investigating rejection of Google Voice apps from iPhone store

Regulators from the Federal Communications Commission have sent letters to AT&T and Apple, demanding to know “the who, what and why” of Apple’s rejection of Google’s official Google Voice app for the iPhone, according to a report by Wired News reporter Ryan Singel. AT&T has been widely rumored to have demanded that Apple remove all Google Voice apps from its store.

The FCC’s rapid-fire questions get down to the details:

“Are there any terms in … Continue Reading

Video: Hacker Charlie Miller on how he compromised the iPhone

Charlie Miller (left) has had a string of hits as a hacker. This week he added to his list as he announced at the Black Hat security conference that he and partner Collin Mulliner were able to hack an iPhone with a text message.

Charlie Miller made his name hacking cool stuff like the first Apple iPhone, the T-Mobile HTC G1 phone with Google Android software, Second Life, and the Mac operating system. He does … Continue Reading

FairSoftware tries to kill the handshake deal for iPhone app developers

It’s the classic story. Someone has a great idea, they decide to work with their friends, then there’s real money owed or earned, and they don’t have a written agreement to settle their differences — cue the tears. A startup called FairSoftware wants to help you avoid such disasters by creating a business and legal framework for early-stage projects. And this week, it added iPhone applications into the mix.

The Mountain View, Calif., company’s underlying … Continue Reading

Spying tools come to iPhone, legality dubious

New software turns the iPhone into a powerful eavesdropping tool, but only for those who are willing to jailbreak the phone and wade into murky legal territory.

Seychelles-based FlexiSpy, a purveyor of snooping applications for mobile devices, has released new software that lets you remotely turn on an iPhone’s microphone and listen in on the surroundings. FlexiSpy likens this to an audio bug — the kind used by the FBI to keep tabs on mobsters.… Continue Reading

Attack of the Palm Pre VoIP apps

Voxofon is angling to be the first native VoIP application for the Palm Pre later this year, but a new Web version of Shape Services‘ IM+ can already access the more-familiar Skype.

IM+ for the Palm Pre, spotted today by JkOnTheRun, can be reached by pointing the Pre’s Web browser to s4palm.com. (This actually works on my iPhone as well, but it’s redundant with a native app available.) There, users can call other Skype contacts … Continue Reading

Apple fixes security hole in iPhone

Apple has patched a flaw in the iPhone that makes it vulnerable to being hacked by a text message.

Charlie Miller, security researcher at Independent Security Evaluators described on Thursday how he could take over an iPhone with a single text message. He made the disclosure at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.

In an interview yesterday evening, Miller told me he told Apple about the flaw six weeks ago, but he didn’t … Continue Reading

Dear YouTube: When do Jill and Kevin get paid?

If you haven’t seen the viral video that sent Chris Brown’s year-old track “Forever” to the top of Amazon and iTunes sales charts, here’s your chance to catch up with the rest of the Internet. A gushing blog post on the Official Google Blog yesterday enthused about how the copyright holders for the song used in this video were able to monetize its breakout popularity. Today, though, online trash talk centers around the hole in … Continue Reading

Please, please don't personalize Twitter for me

Slide’s competitive strategy manager Doug Sherrets explained on VentureBeat this morning why a system — generally known as “open data” — that allows companies to share information about each other’s customers would empower them to deliver more serendipitous automatic content to these customers. The concept is called “discovery,” and dates back on the mainstream Internet to Amazon’s product referral service, which launched in the 90s.

But it worries me to see Twitter CEO Biz Stone … Continue Reading

FonGenie automates phone calls for small businesses

If you run a brick-and-mortar store, there’s a decent chance that you or your employees waste a lot of time answering dumb questions on the phone: “What are your hours?” “How do I get to your store?” “Are you open right now?” Now a startup called FonGenie has built a service to automate this process and to help bring in more money, too.

When a business owner signs up with Mountain View, Calif.-based FonGenie, they … Continue Reading

Hackers alter Wii controller for disabled users

University of Delaware students say they have hacked the Wii video game controller and the Wii Fit’s Wii Balance Board to be used with applications for disabled people.

Dubbed WiiAssist, the project adapts the infrared sensors in the Wii controller, which detects a Wii game player’s motion and position, so that it can be attached to someone’s head. The sensor is then used to track head movements, which can control a mouse in a computer … Continue Reading

Kleiner makes splash with inaugural water investment

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has backed its first water-related cleantech company — a significant milestone for the firm, and a sign that the floodgates might finally open in water investing in the U.S. The lucky recipient, Applied Process Technology (APT), makes water remediation technology that removes agricultural (read: fertilizer) nitrates from well water.

Europe has been leading the pack in the water space for a while now, with the U.S. opting to focus cleantech … Continue Reading

Watercooler brings new revenue strategy to this fall's Facebook fantasy football season

Watercooler, a company that has gained 25 million users on Facebook sports and television applications, is hoping to rack up the revenue this fall with a new version of its popular fantasy football app, Fantasy Football 2009, that emphasizes a combination of payments and targeted ads. It is using a couple tactics honed over the last year by a variety of social games.

One tactic is a premium service where you can see live results … Continue Reading

Ozmo snags $3.75M for wireless personal area networks

Ozmo Devices, provider of technology that allows users to create wireless personal area networks for battery-operated devices at low prices, has raised $3.75 million toward an anticipated $10 million round of equity, according to PE Hub. Part of this sum came from the conversion of $750,000 in promissory notes acquired in June. The Palo Alto, Calif., company previously raised $12.5 million. It is backed by Granite Ventures, Intel Capital and Tallwood Venture Capital.… Continue Reading

Touchscreen CrunchPad due in November, but price has crept up to $400

The touchscreen tablet PC that TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington decided to build himself will be available in November, according to an article in Singapore newspaper The Straits Times. Arrington launched the project a year ago, on his sense that the public demand for a $200 tablet PC was so strong, yet so overlooked by the tech industry, that there was a huge business opportunity for a product that could be launched with relatively low capital. … Continue Reading

Zynga becomes No. 1 in number of online gamers

In casual games, Yahoo Games has been the biggest online operator in the U.S. for years. But now it’s been surpassed by Zynga, the social gaming company that has a huge audience on Facebook and the iPhone.

Zynga now has 44 million monthly unique users for its games such as Texas HoldEm Poker, which people play with their friends on Facebook, according to internal Zynga numbers. By comparison, Yahoo Games has 19.3 million monthly users, … Continue Reading

That NDA might be hurting more than it helps

For many entrepreneurs, secrecy is the watchword. Jeff Hawkins  has a different philosophy, though.

The founder of Palm and Numenta encourages entrepreneurs to involve people in their problems and to solicit as many qualified opinions as they can. Getting caught up in non-disclosure agreements, product secrecy and idea ownership too early can cost you.  Instead, he suggests, talk openly with people and learn from their experience – and if you have investors, have them involved … Continue Reading

Open data is the future of web discovery

Twitter cofounders have talked about the importance of discovery in interviews and at conferences over the last several months. This week a new design for Twitter.com went live featuring top tweets and a search box to find more of what you want, but Twitter and many other web companies could improve discovery much more by incorporating other players’ data.

Also, a year and a half ago, Google vice president Marissa Mayer said that social search … Continue Reading