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Facebook Rolling Out Redesign

admin — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:07:28 +0000

Facebook seems to be rolling out its new site design to at least some people outside the company, although none of us at TechCrunch have yet to be graced with its presence. The new design is “exactly” like the screenshots that GigaOm posted on December 27, says one source.

Applications are taking the biggest hit, as Facebook announced in October. The search bar has been moved from the right to left-center and the navigation bar is simplified. Notably Facebook has removed the double link to your profile. Settings and login/logout have been combined into a single “account” drop down.

There isn’t a whole lot to hate here, but Facebook users have a fine tradition of trashing any changes to the site, and this will likely not be an exception.

Apple Expects to Sell 10 Million Tablets in 2010

admin — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 19:45:31 +0000

Apple is expecting to sell 10 million units of their “rumored” tablet computer in the first year of its release, at least according to a report from an ex-Googler.

Founding president of Google China, Lee Kai-fu, wrote in a blog post (Chinese) that he heard the news from a friend. He also said that the tablet is expected to be launched January 2010 and priced around $1000. Rumor has it the the iSlate/iGuide or (whatever you want to call it) will have a 7-inch and 10-inch touch screen but Lee says the gadget will have a 10-inch screen that looks like a giant iPhone.

Songbird Still Airborne, Takes On iTunes With Improved Device Syncing

admin — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 12:44:29 +0000

Music fans looking looking for an alternative to the iTunes/iPod ecosystem are getting a new option this week with the release of Songbird 1.4, which introduces support for CD ripping and syncing Mass Storage Class (MSC) Devices. The first feature is fairly self explanatory (and frankly I can’t believe it took this long to include), but it’s the latter that’s the most compelling: Songbird now features improved sync for a number of popular MSC devices, including the HTC Hero, Motorola Droid, Nokia N900, and the Palm Pre. The new features are available on Windows only for now, with Mac support planned for release early next year.

To be clear, Songbird has actually offered some MSC support before now, but CEO Jerrell Jimerson says that oftentimes devices don’t work as well as they should using generic support. Songbird has been working with manufacturers to try to make the syncing process as seamless as possible. They’ve inked a deal with Nokia, and are also engaged in less formal partnerships with a number of other manufacturers.

It’s been a rough year for Songbird. As we reported back in September, Songbird’s founding CEO Rob Lord left the company after burning through $8 million from Sequoia Capital and Atlas Ventures. The company brought on board Jimerson earlier this year to replace him, who managed to help raise a new round of funding (though it washed out prior investors and Sequoia didn’t participate). But there’s an opportunity for Songbird to serve as a music platform for Apple’s competitors, and it looks like that’s exactly what they’re doing.

Jimerson says that Songbird’s core functionality, which serves as a media player for both content saved locally to your computer and music that’s streamed from the web, remains fully intact. But the company is also looking to make the product more appealing to a broader userbase. And that includes forming more partnerships.

We’ve previously heard that Songbird has a deal with Phillips to install the software in 5 millionmusic players, which would be a big win for the company. Jimerson wouldn’t comment on that, but it seems like it would fit with Songbird’s new strategy.

Songbird’s increasing support for media sync makes it a more direct competitor toDoubleTwist, another powerful iTunes alternative that supports many devices and that also has a brilliant marketing team.

Source: Techcrunch.com