eBay is having second thoughts about how easy it will be to spread the Kijiji brand in the U.S. The company is testing out the name “eBay Classifieds” in two cities, San Antonio and Pittsburgh. A letter sent out to Kijiji members states: We here at Kijiji thought it made a lot of sense to start using the eBay brand name. After all, we are part of the eBay family and we are a classifieds site…so “eBay Classifieds” just seemed like a good idea. Maybe it also has something to do with the “j”s and “i”s blending together beyond recognition in “Kijiji.” It’s not just the name that needs work. The number of visitors to Kijiji sites worldwide was up only 7 percent in January to 23.2 million, while Craigslist grew six times faster and widened the gap. It ended January with 41.4 million unique visitors (comScore numbers). In the U.S., Kijiji is experiencing much stronger growth, but its 3.7 million unique visitors in January is only a tenth of that of Craigslist (which had 39.4 million U.S. unique visitors). A year ago, Kijiji vowed to become No. 1 in the U.S. It is still far from that goal. And Oodle, which just signed a deal to power Facebook’s classifieds (in addition to MySpace’s and AOL’s ), is catching up from below. Kijiji is going to need more than a name change to challenge Craigslist. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. [...more]
Well done to the Authors Guild! Amazon revealed last night that the text-to-speech feature in the Kindle 2 will now be optional for publishers. The guild had been tenaciously fighting this feature, arguing that it had the potential to turn the Kindle 2 into a de-facto audiobook player. Right or wrong, Amazon has caved, and now publishers will be able to dictate whether or not the Kindle 2 is able to read aloud their books. [...more]
Last we saw of this thing, it was also being called the Galaxy 7, but all of the specs were already in place. Well, Asus has finally granted the P835’s wish and made it a real boy. Wait, no — they’ve just made an official announcement. We knew all this stuff months ago, but it’s good to check in: last-minute tweaks to the UI or, say, built-in storage can have a serious effect on price and availability. It looks like nothing has been changed this time, but if you don’t believe us, feel free to compare this Russian review with the official spec sheet or the phone’s page . Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. [...more]
Photo gift service Personello has launched a simple but useful web service dubbed DAZZ that lets you preview a wide variety of goods with uploaded photos on them, completely automated and with both custom images and video clips. It seems like a no-brainer for any personalized photo gift service provider to offer a similar functionality, but to the best of my knowledge DAZZ is currently the only one of its kind. What you do is create an account on the DAZZ website and upload a photo that you’re considering printing on things like mugs, mousepads, t-shirts, teddybears, snowglobes, jigsaw puzzles etc. to give away as a gift. The startup’s ‘DAZZigners’ will then strip out the background and create a collection of so-called photostyles (e.g. Flowers, Heart, Sepia, Pop Art, etc.) centered around the main subject of the photo. DAZZ subsequently lets you preview a bunch of items and also put together a video that shows a number of items in a sequence which should help make up your mind. For each type of item, you also get to see a separate animated video clip showing you the personalized gift in question in a relevant setting. (screenshots embedded below) The biggest downside of DAZZ is that it takes several hours to get your photostyle previews ready, so it’s not the most ideal way to trigger impulsive purchases (although you are notified by e-mail once the previews are ready for your evaluation). Also, the video player inexplicably doesn’t offer a way to embed videos in your own website or blog so you can only play them when logged on to your account on DAZZ.com. I think Personello, a startup based in Germany, was right to execute on this idea and offer a way for potential customers to visualize personalized photo gifts prior to purchase. Many people are not aware of the fact that photos can be printed on a slew of regular things, and this could open their eyes to the possibilities of giving away personalized gifts and significantly lower the threshold for them to actually start buying stuff. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors [...more]
In a heated bidding war , ToysRUs bought the domain name Toys.com at auction for $5.1 million. ToysRus really wanted the domain, for obvious reasons. Everyone except ToysRUs and domain holding company National A-1 (owner of domains such as free.com, boys.com, girls.com, and divorce.com) bowed out of the auction at $3 million. The last $2 million was just those two companies going back and forth for hours. ToysRUs really didn’t have much choice. If it wants to be the first thing people associate with toys it really couldn’t afford to allow anyone else to own that domain, even in this economy. Who says real estate is dead? Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. [...more]
Carrying around a little screen at all times means — what else? — that you can read comics all over the place while looking as if you’re checking your email. The iVerse app, for both iPhone and Android, lets you read comics that have been customized for viewing on a small screen. Instead of having you zoom around a full-sized page, they’ve cut the pages into smaller, screen-size chunks. Not the best for full-page art and the like, but much more convenient and natural to read. I downloaded “Proof” #1 (looks kind of interesting); it was clear and easy to read. Trouble is, every comic downloads as a separate app. If you were to start using iVerse with any regularity, that would get really annoying, really fast. This isn’t going to be replacing print comics any time soon (or digital distributables for your regular display), but it’s a good venue for comics that don’t require that level of visual fidelity. I hope to see more comic makers taking advantage of this platform soon. [via CNET ] Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 [...more]
Here’s the live stream of our Cloud Computing Roundtable , which kicks off at 2:30 PST with product demos from a handful of early-stage cloud-focused start-ups, with commentary from a panel of experts. Shortly thereafter our roundtable discussion will bring together a dozen panelists from some of Silicon Valley’s most acclaimed companies who will discuss the future of cloud-based services. Thank you to Sun Microsystems for sponsoring the roundtable stream (powered by ustream and camera work by FutureWorks .) Twitter Hash Tag: #tccloud Live Videos by Ustream Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 [...more]
The iPhone is like the bacon-wrapped scallop of the mobile world. Both are quite visually pleasing relative to their peers, easy to use, and generally liked by the masses. Spend a little too much time with either, however, and you start to see the flaws. With the scallops, the grease and animal fat that was oh-so delicious on the way down begins to clog your arteries and slow your saunter. With the iPhone, the interface that seemed oh-so-polished when it first met your fingertips begins to show signs of oversight and imperfection. We’ve been using the iPhone for just a few months shy of two years now, and a few things that once seemed trivial have come to drive us up the wall. You’ll find no mention of the glaring faults (The lack of MMS, Copy and Paste, etc) in this list - we’re talking about the stuff that we just can’t believe made it through Apple’s user experience team. Read the rest of this entry at MobileCrunch > > Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. [...more]
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