FUTURE SHOPPING BAZAR

Just five days until TechCrunch40 next week in San Francisco. As of right now we have 27 tickets remaining, which means it should sell out sometime tomorrow afternoon and registrations will be cut off. There will be approximately 900 people at the conference, which is about double what we had originally planned (and hoped for).

Forty companies are preparing to launch products (actually, 39, but more on that below) in front of the full audience and panel of experts, and will compete for the $50,000 prize. An additional hundred startups will be showing their products in the demo stations. On top of that, Yahoo and AOL will be launching products at the event, and we have keynote sessions with Marc Andreessen, David Filo, Chad Hurley, Michael Moritz and Mark Zuckerberg. Jason Calacanis has been coaching startups at Sequoia Capital over the last few days to perfect the demos.

As I said above, we actually only have 39 startup launches planned. The last spot on stage on the last day will go the audience choice from the demo pit companies. Each attendee will be given two tokens (one for each day) to give to the demo pit companies they like best. Whoever gets the most tokens gets a spot on stage and is fully eligible to win the $50,000 prize.

I am really looking forward to the event, and I am absolutely humbled by the outpouring of enthusiasm we are receiving from companies and attendees . I’ve never been associated with a production of this size - there are literally thousands of moving pieces and any number of things can go wrong. There will undoubtedly be a hiccup or two during the conference, but with any luck all of the planning and hard work will pay off, forty startups will get the launch event they deserve and another hundred will get to show their stuff to nearly 1,000 people.

See you Monday! If you are attending, look for additional logistical details and announcements on the TechCrunch40 blog.

Labels: $, Crunch40 Tickets, Gmail, Google, inbuilt Dictaphone, Sell Out; More News, Tech, To

Sprint has a new website up called My Cell Style that asks you a few questions and then tells you what kind of mobile phone personality you have. I took the quiz and answered the questions honestly.

What does your cell phone say about you? According to a new website launched this week, if you’re sporting a Moto Q, you may be, uh-oh!, a
“Technosexual.” But don’t come out of the gadget-geek closet just yet, maybe your phone is designed for a rugged and in-no-way-sexually-ambiguous “Trail Blazer.” Whichever way your cell phone swings, check out www.mycellstyle.com to test your phone’s personality (sponsored by Sprint).

I am not offended that Sprint says I am a Technosexual (just like the guy in the video above). No. But I AM offended that they say the perfect phones for me are the Treo 755p, the HTC Mogul and the…wait for it…Motorola Q, which is quite possibly the worst cell phone ever created. Sprint then tried to sell me one of those ghastly phones. I guess I should just be thankful I wasn’t deemed “Runway Ready.”

Sprint doesn’t sell the iPhone, of course, so they couldn’t be honest and recommend the perfect phone for me. And they also don’t sell the phone I’d be using if the iPhone didn’t exist, the Helio Ocean.

I’m not a fan of Sprint. They fire customers who complain too much. And they have the dubious distinction of supplying me with the only phone I have ever thrown out of a moving vehicle (in 1999) because of poor call quality. Even today, it is the only mobile operator which has no coverage at my house.

In the interest of full disclosure, I participate in the Sprint Ambassador program where they send me a new phone once or twice a year to test out. I’ve never written about those phones, though. My guess is they won’t be sending too many more.

Labels: And, Google, inbuilt Dictaphone, Is, New, rohit bal, Sprint, Stupid, Thank You Sponsors: Featuring, Their, ucks, Website

By MARCUS KABEL 08.13.07, 12:01 AM ET A gunman opened fire in the sanctuary of a southwest Missouri church Sunday, killing a pastor and two worshippers and wounding several others, authorities said.
Three Shot Dead In Missouri Church Springdale Morning News
Official: Gunman kills three, including pastor, at Missouri church CNN International
St. Louis Post-Dispatch - KFVS - eFluxMedia (press release) - FOX News
all 672 news articles »



http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&tab=wn

Labels: 3, Church, FutureBazarOnline.com, in, inbuilt Dictaphone, jewelry, Killed, Mo., Shooting, Street

Google ignominiously shut down its video marketplace today via an email to us and everyone else who’s ever tried the service. The product, announced in January 2006 at CES by Larry Page, was an answer to iTunes’ sales of television shows. It was largely forgotten afterwards and if sales were occuring, we didn’t hear much about it.

The email to users, which is copied below, also lets them know that any videos they’ve purchased will no longer be viewable. Money spent on videos is not being refunded, either. Users get a sixty day credit on their Google Checkout account instead. That should spur sales of their new overflow storage product, at least. I just wish I could use it on ebay. heh

It’s a mistake not to fully refund every dollar in video purchases. Users are going to be hesitant to try out Google services in the future if they can’t believe that something they are buying is really theirs to keep.

Hello,

As a valued Google user, we’re contacting you with some important information about the videos you’ve purchased or rented from Google Video. In an effort to improve all Google services, we will no longer offer theability to buy or rent vi deos for download from Google Video, ending the DTO/DTR (download-to-own/rent) program. This change will be effective August 15, 2007.

To fully account for the video purchases you made before July 18, 2007, we are providing you with a Google Checkout bonus for $5.00. Your bonus expires in 60 days, and you can use it at the stores listed here: http://www.google.com/checkout/signupwelcome.html. The minimum purchase amount must be equal to or greater than your bonus amount, before shipping and tax.

After August 15, 2007, you will no longer be able to view your purchased or rented videos.

If you have further questions or requests, please do not hesitate to contact us. Thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely,

The Google Video Team

Labels: Closes, fashion, future, FutureBazarOnline.com, Google, GPRS, inbuilt Dictaphone, Luck, Marketplace; Users, Of, Out, pocket outlook, Video

which is mostly an ad network but also owns a group of sites focused on women, is actively attempting to raise $200 million in a private round of financing. The company previously raised $18.5 million in December 2006.

The company has hired Allen & Company to represent them in the transaction, and has been distributing a private placement document to potential investors. They’ve actually distributed it a little too liberally - we have a copy and have embedded it at the bottom of this post.

Glam has driven revenue aggressively and say they’ll get to $21 million this year, and $150 million next year. Losses this year are expected to be around $3.7 million.

But the company is driving that revenue by selling ads for partner websites, not on their own page views. A minimal amount of research into their business shows that the company is an ad network, not a content site.

In the private placement document, Glam describes itself in the first sentence as “Glam Media is a Web 2.0 distributed media company that is number one in reach for women as reported by comScore Media Metrix.” I believe this is a perversion of the term “Web 2.0″ (see below - any company this deep in SEO shenanigans is very Web 1.0 focused) and the company certainly is not the largest womens site on the Internet. While revenue growth looks good, Glam isn’t really a content site. They’re little more than an ad network that is claiming the traffic for all of its partners to make it look like a huge womens destination site.

Traffic Nonsense

A cornerstone of the company’s argument for raising such a large round is their tremendous growth over the last twelve months. They boast of faster growth than MySpace, and claim to be the no. 1 womens website on the Internet with 19.1 million unique monthly users:

Glam Media has grown from 782,000 unique users in June 2006, to 19.1 million unique users in June 2007. By way of comparison, MySpace grew from 1.6 to 15.6 million unique users the year prior to its acquisition by News Corporation in July 2005. Glam has been ranked as the highest in traffic growth in the Top Web 100 web properties by comScore Media Metrix for the past 6 months. By May 2007, the Company had reached #1 ranking (in terms of traffic) in the women’s category, per comScore Media Metrix, within only 20 months after launch, beating iVillage/NBC which has held the top position for over nine years. Glam continues to be the #1 ranked website in the women’s category with a 23% lead ahead of iVillage/NBC, 85% ahead of AOL Living and 185% ahead of all CondeNast websites combined.

The problem is that it’s all complete nonsense. The growth in comscore numbers has nothing to do with more traffic coming to Glam’s websites. Rather, Glam sells advertising for a number of very large partners (see list of some of the largest to the right) and is able to claim credit at Comscore for their user numbers. So the comscore numbers for sites such as MyYearbook, Kaboodle (recently acquired) and Meez, among dozens of others, are being used to support the 19 million unique visitor number.

Glam also owns a number of pure SEO sites like free-beauty-tips.com, celebrity-hairstyles.org and others. These sites drive a lot of traffic from search engine queries and pump up the Comscore numbers dramatically, but provide, as far as I can tell, absolutely no original content.

In fact, the numbers are so inflated that Glam.com, the main website owned by the company, brings in just 654,000 unique monthly visitors, or about 3.4% of the 19 million the company claims.

We’ve uploaded June Comscore numbers for the entire Glam network that shows where these 19 million users are really coming from - other sites. See Glam’s Comscore breakdown here.

There is no way that this site can in good conscience claim the user numbers that they do in the private placement document. Comscore has long been criticized for allowing companies to “steal” the traffic of others to make themselves look much bigger than they really are. This is a perfect example of how that kind information could be used to mislead the public and potential investors. Glam is an advertising network, and runs a very good SEO operation, but they are not the no. 1 destination site on the Internet for women.

Labels: A, cartridges. It has a USB Port and is compatible with Windows, Cloning, Copyright, FutureBazarOnline.com, Glam, GPRS, inbuilt Dictaphone, Is, Sham?

the online/offline calendar and organizer, has closed their series A round of financing from Adobe Systems Incorporated and LMKR. In what is becoming an annoying trend, the company is not disclosing the size of the round.

You’ll probably recognize the company from the somewhat viral product demo that swept the blogosphere last October. Since then they’ve been through a private and public beta.

Scrybe is a Flash-based organizational and productivity tool that works both online and offline. It consists of multiple calendar management, to do lists, web clip bookmarklet, contact list (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail or Outlook importing), and The system operates offline by caching your changes and then uploading when the system reconnects. Zimbra and Google Gears provide similar online/offline products.

The driving principle behind the application is usability. Scrybe’s main selling point is that the application retains the context of the data that you’re working with by “zooming” instead of flipping to the data. One example is the calendar. The cells of the calendar expand and contract as you edit a week, day, or hour more closely while still showing the details of the surrounding days. See the extended video below for more details.

Labels: A, Closes, HP, inbuilt Dictaphone, Infrared, MMS, Scrybe, Series

Labels: FutureBazarOnline.com, handsfree speaker, inbuilt Dictaphone, london, MMS, polyphonic ring tones, polyphonic ringtones, Push to Talk, USB Connector and is WAP enabled.

Nokia - N72 Average User Review Rating 6.36 Good This 124 grams phone has a Lithium-ion battery type, which allows you talk time of 215 minutes and stand by time of 260 hours. It has added features like 262K colour TFT display with a resolution of 176 x 208 pixels, ambient light detector, voice dial, voice mail, call conferencing, PTT, triband, vibration mode, predictive text input, polyphonic ring tones, calculator, calendar, tasks, integrated handsfree speaker, fm radio, SMS, EMS, MMS, GPRS, EDGE, Bluetooth, infrared, Push to Talk, Bluetooth, USB connector, EDGE, GPRS, flight mode, polyphonic ringtones, inbuilt Dictaphone, mp3 capability, fm radio, visual radio and is WAP enabled. It comes with a 2MP camera with 20x zoom, inbuilt flash control, advanced camera modes, scenes, white balancer, colour tones, brightness adjuster, image quality adjuster, self timer and video recording. This phone is PDA enabled and has an inbuilt memory of 20 MB, 128 MB RS-MMC card and hot swappable slot for RS-MMC card slot.

Labels: Bluetooth, EDGE, EMS, flight mode, fm radio, GPRS, inbuilt Dictaphone, Infrared, MMS, mp3 capability, polyphonic ringtones, Push to Talk, SMS, USB connector