Go H.A.M. in Google Street View Shooter Game


[UPDATE 12/13 4:44pm PT: The Business Insider reported today that Google pulled their right to use the Street View API due to a violation of the terms of service. ]

[UPDATE 2:29pm PT: The Google Shot View game is back online but still in violation of the Google Maps API terms of use.]

[UPDATE 1:04pm PT: The Google Shoot View game is no longer available on the Pool Worldwide server. Note that it violates the Google Maps API terms of use.]

First-person shooter game Google Shoot View, created by Dutch advertising agency Pool Worldwide, lets you take an M4A1 to the streets, walk around and unleash fire on anyone and anything. Or in the words of Kanye West and Jay-Z, you can go H.A.M. 

With a rifle overlaid on top of Google Maps, you can shoot...
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Am I Happy about the Gowalla and Facebook Deal?

[ Gowalla co-founder and CEO Josh Williams on "This Week in Startups" in December 2010. Episode here. ]

By Jason Calacanis

Since the leak on Dec. 2 that Facebook was buying mobile social startup Gowalla, which I was lucky enough to invest in, I've been getting a constant stream of questions.

-- Am I pleased with the outcome?
-- Did the founders do an end run around the investors?
-- Did Facebook do an end run around the investors?

In the words of Facebook's status feature: "It's complicated."

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Zite CEO Expects More Social Readers to Emerge in 2012, Will Microsoft Be Next?

[ Image courtesy of Mark Johnson's Twitter account @philosophygeek. ]

Zite CEO Mark Johnson tells LAUNCH that he expects to see more personalized digital magazines and readers emerge in 2012 followed by consolidation in 2013. Earlier today, CNN-owned Zite launched its app for iPhone. 

"My prediction is that there's going to be a lot more expansion before there's consolidation," Mark says. "I think we'll see a few smaller competitors come out but I wouldn't be surprised if we saw something from Microsoft soon."

Microsoft has received a lot of attention lately since updating Xbox Live, launching Kinect and exploring ideas like using the Xbox 360 as a television connected PC, which would encroach on Apple and Google's existing products.

Google just released Currents yesterday but as Mark notes, even as the space gets more crowded...
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Google Offers Selling Zagat Guides Three Months after Acquisition


Groupon and LivingSocial don't own the businesses they offer deals on, which just might make Google the first to do so with its deal today for 56% off Zagat print restaurant guides for eight U.S. cities plus its America's Top Restaurants book -- a deal clearly intended for holiday gift-buyers with foodie friends and family.

Google announced its acquisition of restaurant-review publisher Zagat in September for an undisclosed amount, and Google sources told LAUNCH at that time that it would keep the Zagat brand and its subscription model for online content. In 2009, Google failed to buy Yelp, which filed its IPO paperwork last month.
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Watch CNET Editor Rafe Needleman and Peter Horan on TWiST News Roundtable Live at 1pm PT

[Rafe Needleman and Peter Horan. ]


Tune in for a special news roundtable live from CNET's San Francisco studios with Peter Horan, executive chairman of Halogen Media Group, and CNET's own Rafe Needleman today on This Week in Startups at 1pm PT.

Peter is a media and marketing executive with experience in both startups and multi-billion dollar public companies. Peter has been part of four profitable exits in the last seven years totaling...

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Zite Personalized News App Lands on iPhone to Rival Flipboard


Personalized news app Zite has just made its way to the iPhone -- the same week competitor Flipboard launched for iPhone.
 
Zite, powered by personalization technology, makes it easy for users to find interesting topics and stories to read based on their taste. Zite learns from both explicit -- thumbs-up and thumbs-down -- and implicit -- what stories you click on -- feedback to deliver more relevant news to you.

Current Zite for iPad users will be able to use their same profile on the iPhone thanks to Sybil, which allows multiple profiles.

While Flipboard's iPhone app...
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What Will Amazon Do If Walmart Goes All White-Label?

[ Image courtesy of Walmart via creative commons license. ]

In the next couple of years, Walmart will start selling private-label products to replace every branded product they offer, a source familiar with Walmart practices told LAUNCH.

Walmart has 30+ private labels that cover essentially every category at Walmart from food to clothing to office supplies. Walmart competitor Amazon, which is apparently opening its own retail stores, also has white-label products but not nearly as many, with only three brands: AmazonBasics, Pinzon for kitchen products and Strathwood for homes.

If Amazon decides to create more private-label brands, it would...
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Can't Tweet News Stories Found through Twitter's New App--Huh?


Twitter's newly redesigned iPhone app makes it delightfully easy to find hot news stories with its "discover" section. In fact, you can read the news story within the app -- no jumping to a browser page -- which we love.

We were puzzled, though, why we couldn't tweet the story we're reading in the app from the app itself by simply going to the tweet button embedded in the news article page.

[ See screen shots after the jump. ]

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Is Google+ Trying to Be Like Myspace Music?



Japanese pop group AKB48 is leveraging the social functions of Google+ to regularly host Hangouts with fans and broadcast concerts live through Hangouts on Air, Google+ VP of Product Bradley Horowitz recently announced.

When MySpace was still in its prime, it served as the go-to place for keeping track of what songs artists were creating. In 2007, it even launched Myspace Transmissions, a series of digital EPs featuring audio recordings, streaming video of music performances and video footage of artist interviews for fans to enjoy.

As interest in With Myspace irrelevant and Facebook tightly integrated with Spotify, Google keeps making an effort to expand its music content on the network, as it launched Google Music featuring tight integration with Google+ in November to challenge iTunes Match and Spotify. At that same time, Google introduced its Artist Hub, a DIY-like software that lets anyone sell and price their music on Google Music.

Horowitz describes AKB48 as...
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Amazon Has a Ton of White Label Products and Is Hiding Them! (and Why Bezos Is the New Jobs)


By Jason Calacanis

Amazon has white-label products -- but it's hiding them.

Following up on my piece last night, Dan Gillmor [ @dangillmor ] told me that Amazon had started creating its own products under the "AmazonBasics" brand. I was shocked, as every week five Amazon boxes come to our house with everything from soy milk to batteries, and obviously tons of electronics.

It turns out that one item I just ordered, a slick car charger with two USB ports, is being offered by Amazon under its own name.

Why didn't I see that when I searched for it?
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Rumor: Amazon Retail Stores Coming & Predatory Pricing Channel Destruction


[UPDATE as of 11:41am PT on Thursday: Amazon Has a Ton of White Label Products and Is Hiding Them! (and Why Bezos Is the New Jobs) by Jason Calacanis. ]


By Jason Calacanis

Just heard an interesting piece of gossip from a very credible source: Amazon is going to open retail stores and will start making its own branded merchandise.

That would seem absolutely insane if we hadn't witnessed Bezos doing the following insane -- and wildly successful -- things:

1. Explode the tablet space by offering a below-cost $199 tablet.
2. Explode the video space by giving Amazon Prime subscribers instant streaming of 10K+ free movies and videos.
3. Explode the book space by giving Amazon Prime subscribers 5K loanable ebooks for free.
4. Explode the shipping space by offering folks free, unlimited two-day shipping for an Amazon Prime subscription of $79.

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Email Client Sparrow 1.5 Launches with Dropbox, iPhone App Coming Early 2012



Mac email application Sparrow 1.5 launched today with Dropbox integration, smart search and more control over remote images.

Once you authorize Dropbox integration, you can attach and sync any file from your Dropbox by dragging and dropping it onto the compose window.  

"Sending a mail with attachment has never been simpler," the blog states. "And without even noticing it, you are syncing your files in the cloud making sure you never lose them."

The new version also includes the ability to block remote images
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'Whether You Like Android or Not, You Will Support That Platform'


[ Slide from Mary Meeker's October 2011 presentation on internet trends. ]

[ UPDATE 12/8/2011 11:45am: Marco's follow-up to this piece is "Standing up for Android." Also, CNET has corrected the Eric Schmidt quote about supporting Android that Marco cited in this post. ]

Editor's note: Best known as the creator of Instapaper and formerly the lead developer for Tumblr, Marco Arment [ @marcoarment, marco.org ] is far from convinced that Android will become developers' mobile platform of choice, as Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt is predicting. The quotes excerpted below are from this CNET article about Schmidt's speech at Le Web. Post syndicated with permission. Read the original here and see his exchange with developer Gina Trapani here.

By Marco Arment

Google’s Eric Schmidt, predicting that Android will overtake iOS within 6 months as the platform developers target first:

"Ultimately, application vendors are driven by volume, and volume is favored by the open approach Google is taking. There are so many manufacturers working to deliver Android phones globally," Schmidt said. "Whether you like Android or not, you will support that platform, and maybe you’ll even deliver it first."

Is that a prediction or a threat?

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Flipboard Service Still Down Due to High Demand for iPhone App


[UPDATE as of 1:15pm PT] All existing Flipboard iPad users and those who can now launch Flipboard for iPad and iPhone. Even if you aren't currently signed up for Flipboard on your iPad, you can still sign up right now to be able to launch the iPhone app. "For brand new Flipboard for iPhone users, we are still seeing server load issues that cause an error message when people try to set up. We are working on the server balancing and expect to have another update soon," the Flipboard blog states.]

After launching the highly anticipated Flipboard app for iPhone last night, the tablet magazine service went down this morning and has turned off account creation until it can fully restore the service, the Flipboard blog states.

"Due to high demand, our service is currently down, we...
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Excelade Video Analysis App Helps You Master All Sports, USA Olympic Skeleton Coach Loves It



Sports video analysis app developer UberSense recently launched a new product into its family -- Excelade for iPad and iPhone, which provides video analysis for any sport, dance form, musical instruments or other types of activities where technique analysis could be beneficial.

With Excelade, athletes and dancers can easily analyze their performance and compare it against their own progress, progress of friends or against instructional videos, similar to the apps for Golf and Baseball. While SwingReader Golf and Baseball offered a library of pro videos, since there are numerous sports, they did not want to pre-populated the app with a ton of videos, UberSense co-founder Amit Jardosh tells LAUNCH via email. 

"Features-wise, for now the app is almost on par with our other apps, but...
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Watch Gowalla Investor Shervin Pishevar on TWiST Today at 1pm PT


Managing Director at Menlo Ventures Shervin Pishevar will be on This Week in Startups today at 1pm PT.

Menlo Ventures has invested in companies like Carbonite, Bloomspot and Roku. Shervin is also an active angel investor in companies including Kevin Rose's Milk, the recently-acquired-by-Facebook Gowalla and Rapportive.

Previously, Shervin served as the founding president and COO of Webs, one of the largest social publishing communities in the world with 30M+ members. Shervin, Jason and co-host Tyler Crowley will discuss...
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WTF PayPal? Zivity Account Shut Down and Reinstated, CEO "Uneasy" about Service Husband Helped Create


Ebay-owned PayPal gets far more attention for shutting down accounts and reinstating them following media/blogger coverage than it does for its actual product, a trend that sadly continued this week with the shutdown/reinstatement of Regretsy's Secret Santa campaign.

Although Zivity's content -- mainly artsy photos of semi-nude and nude models -- is for mature audiences, the company just experienced the same cycle. Its subscriber-driven site used PayPal for four years with no issues until its account was frozen Monday for no apparent reason as the site's content had not changed and PayPal's acceptable use policy (AUP) had not either, CEO Cyan Banister told LAUNCH. PayPal, however, claimed Zivity "could be considered obscene."

Beyond the fact that PayPal does not explain how it dtermines "obscene," the situation was all the more ironic because Cyan's husband and Zivity co-founder is Scott Banister, who invented the PayPal payment over email process.
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Facebook Security Flaw Reveals Zuckerberg's Private Photos


[UPDATE 12/13/11 at 9:15am: Facebook is now suggesting that you enable secure browsing to help protect account from hackers. ]

[ UPDATE 11:52am PT: ] Facebook has ackowledged the bug that allowed users to access private photos and is currently fixing the bug. A Facebook spokesperson told ZDnet that the bug "was discovered in one of our reporting flows" that let users report several instances of inappropriate images or posts. Facebook also reaffirmed its commitment to data privacy, stating it as a "top priority" for the company. ]

A Facebook security hole that allows you to view, save and share private photos has enabled one hacker to expose those of Mark Zuckerberg.

The method requires you to first locate the person you want to view photos of, then report a photo as nudity or pornography. From there, check Report to Facebook and click continue. Facebook will then give you the option to help them take action by selecting additional photos to include in the report, which then gives you access to the user's private photos.

Facebook has received an enormous amount of criticism lately...
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Sick of Facebook Connect? Trove Promises Less Pain for Developers and More Control for Consumers

You know the drill: try out a new service or app these days and you're confronted with a Facebook or Twitter authorization. Like us, you may cringe at how much is being asked for or mutter "fine" under your breath before hitting "accept." At that point, you hope the company doesn't misuse your info.

Now imagine if all your data, including photos, appeared on the device or new app where you wanted them, almost magically. And if you bought a new smartphone or tablet, you'd only have to download your favorite apps and they'd be ready to rock, no configuring necessary. Plus you wouldn't have to worry about privacy or security because you could easily control which apps saw/got which data.

Sound too good to be true? Trove is betting this scenario will become normal eventually, and it could happen even sooner if it succeeds at courting both developers and consumers.

Since launching its API in August, Trove has focused on developers. Their pitch: spend more time building products instead of solving "plumbing" problems. [ The founders first got attention for their developer survey of which APIs were worst to work with -- the overwhelming answer was Facebook. ]

Taking a page from the Twilio playbook, Trove is...

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Zite Adds First Branded Section for Lululemon, But Still No Ads in App



Tablet magazine Zite has just launched its first branded section for athletic clothing line lululemon yet still refrains from placing ads -- which have become the norm on Flipboard, Editions by AOL and tablet content platform OnSwipe.

"We’ve been very vocal about not putting ads into Zite," the blog states. "Though you will find lululemon posts within the section, most of the content is simply what may inspire a lululemon guest," the Zite blog states. "From health articles to fitness tips, lululemon trained the channel to generate content that would appeal to health and fitness buffs. Of course, the lululemon channel will also personalize content for you based on your reading habits and specific interests."
  
To access the channel, click "Customize" and select lululemon. 

Flipboard, which...
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