KevinRose
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WSJ: Sinking social news site Digg bought by NYC firm Betaworks (updated)
Digg, once one of the shining stars of the social media world, is now a sad shell of of its former self. The once mighty news-sharing service founded by Kevin Rose, has just been snatched up by a small New York City firm called Betaworks for a paltry $500,000, according to the Wall Street Journal. The site still draws roughly seven million visitors a month, but that's a far cry from the more than 30 million is was pulling in during its 2008 heyday. And the pocket change paid for the property pales in comparison to the over $45 million it raised from investors over its lifetime. The sale follows the departure of its most high profile exec, the aforementioned Rose, who is now in charge of Google Ventures. Betaworks plans to revitalize the brand involve folding it into News.me, another social news service, which launched in April of last year. The deal only includes the property itself and the brand -- none of Digg's remaining employees will be making the move to Betaworks. Of course, there were very few left once the Washington Post subsidiary Social Code hired 15 engineers from the floundering service, which accounted for more than half of its workforce. Update: As it turns out, that "$500,000" figure may not tell the whole story. TechCrunch and AllThingsD are both reporting that there's a lot more to consider besides the cash outlay.
Report: Kevin Rose moving within Mountain View, now a partner at Google Ventures
Have you been wondering what Digg co-founder, Kevin Rose, has been up to since joining the Mountain View team a couple months back? Well, AllThingsD is reporting that Mr. Rose has left his duties as senior product manager of Big G's social network in order to make a move to the company's investment firm, Google Ventures. According to the report, the switch has now been confirmed by an undisclosed Ventures spokesperson, although no further details were given at this time. The move itself isn't exactly a surprising one, given Rose's previous, and hefty history of venturing into startups within the industry. Feel free to chime in with your thoughts in the comments section below.
AllThingsD: Google diggs Kevin Rose (updated)
You might know Kevin Rose from his days at TechTV, as the cofounder of the social news website digg.com, or from his awesome drunken (and sometimes quotable) ramblings on his former video podcast diggnation. However, per AllThingsD, it appears that Rose, and perhaps a bunch of his cohorts at his latest gig, Milk, have been poached to work at the Google mothership. That comes merely a day after Milk shuttered its first product, Oink -- an app enabling users to rate experiences rather than venues, think Yelp but for things. As to what Rose and any coworkers that come with him will be doing once in Mountain View is currently unknown, but unfortunately it looks like Milk's headed to the deadpool, folks. Update: TechCrunch has it on good authority that Google is indeed picking up the entire Milk team. Also of note, was an alleged bidding war for the team with Facebook.
Apple's retail arm aids Japanese employees after earthquake
Earlier today, Kevin Rose published a set of emails he's received that really shine a light on how far Apple has gone to help out those in need during the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake. The account is that of an Apple Store manager somewhere in Tokyo who has been overseeing his store through the disaster. Just after the earthquake, hundreds of people crowded around Apple Stores to use the internet connections (Rose's correspondent suggests that there's a lack of free Wi-Fi in Japan, making the Apple Stores natural gathering places). Using Skype and FaceTime, victims were able to contact family members and even regroup at the stores. According to the letters, Apple retail stores in Japan have become a sort of safe haven for lots of Apple employees (both retail and corporate) and their families since the quake hit. Apple Japan has been footing the bill for food, water, supplies and even hotel rooms for those in need, stating that their "safety is most important." As public transportation systems have been mostly down, Apple has offered to pay for any and all expenses that may occur should an employee attempt to travel back home through alternate means. This is why I love this company: Apple gets it. Money isn't everything -- people are. That's what's important, and it's good to see them following through on that belief.
Google Me to be the Googlish answer to Facebook?
Kevin Rose, the dude who started Digg, got the Twitterverse all aflutter yesterday by suggesting that Google is working on a bona fide Facebook competitor -- to be called Google Me, according to his "very credible source." All such rumors ought to be treated with a healthy dose of skepticism, but today there's been some corroboration from one Adam D'Angelo, Facebook's former CTO. Adam, again citing reliable sources, tells us Google Me is a real project, with significant resources invested in it, and an indication that "Buzz wasn't enough" to counter the social site's growing presence. Another former Facebook exec, Richard Cooperstein, makes the astute observation that what Google's really trying to do is reclaim time that the ''book has stolen away; he notes that time spent on Facebook relative to Google search and YouTube continues to grow, and the Mountain View outfit has to retaliate to keep itself ahead. You'll find the K-Rose tweet after the break -- he deleted the original, but Google Cache can be a cruel mistress.
Kevin Rose demos Square payment system for iPhone
Digg's Kevin Rose is the newest investor in this Square iPhone payment system that we've been seeing lately, and as you can see above, he's demo'ed the unit for everyone over on YouTube. It works as we've heard: there's just an addon that you plug into the iPhone's headphone jack, and then an app takes information from the swiper, and transmits it out for an actual credit card payment, with a finger doing the signature. The app, as Kevin says, will even upload GPS information, so you can make sure that payments are happening in the right place. Unfortunately, what he doesn't mention is the actual price to get payments up and running. Square's website says that there's "no contracts, monthly fees, or hidden costs," but they've got to pay for the system somehow, so you'd expect there to be a fee for setup, for the accessory, and then a fee per charge through the system, but we haven't heard what any of those will end up being yet. Depending on how steep they are, this could be a gamechanger -- accepting payments anywhere, any time, with an online record and receipt for each one, no cash involved. Would be incredible for small business owners, and probably a lot of other sales folks, too.
Google Chrome developer preview (unofficially) released
Digg's Kevin Rose, perennial purveyor of information that just "fell off the back of the truck" shared a link early this morning to Google's new, supercharged, Webkit-based browser -- for Mac. The new browser, Chrome, is clearly marked as a developer preview, and not meant for general browsing. In fact, as a good Mac citizen, it will refuse to set itself as your default browser. It scores a 100 on the Acid3 test straight out of the box, but doesn't pass: it fails something called the linktest, which involves interacting A tags and IFRAMEs. A little research suggests that it could be a bug with Webkit. If that's true, then it's a bug that Safari 4 beta has fixed. Chrome appears to have Flash (and other plugin) support disabled as well. JavaScript support, however, is fully functional. While Chrome performed much better than Firefox on this cursory test, it still didn't beat Safari 4 by a long shot. While only a beta, its performance is respectable and sure to improve. Again, Google Chrome isn't for everyone, but if you're a web developer who needs to keep up with the bleeding edge of browser development, then this preview should be stable and reliable enough for you to test what you need to. Read through for the full JavaScript test details. Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
Found Footage: Kevin Rose on iPhone 3.0 features
Here's a short video from SXSW with DiggNation hosts Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose, where Rose goes through a laundry list of iPhone 3.0 features that will allegedly be announced tomorrow during the Apple Press Event. This video sounds rather alcohol-fueled -- at least it appears that the audience members, who are screaming out their most-wanted features for most of the video, were rather drunk -- and Rose has a somewhat checkered past with his Apple predictions, but his description of cut & paste on the iPhone sounds quite realistic. He also states at one point that the point of the 3.0 release is to bring the iPhone's feature set to the level of the Palm Pre. If that's the case, then we should also hear about Bluetooth tethering and integrated MMS messaging for the iPhone -- which I, for one, seriously doubt. Of course, we'll all see what's coming tomorrow, and you can get your coverage of the event here on TUAW. Note that the video contains words that may be offensive to some people.[via Engadget]
iPhone 3.0 to have copy and paste, Pre-like features -- but no background apps
Digg's Kevin Rose has a solid (but far from perfect) track record when it comes to Apple rumors, and he just drove the nerds of SXSWi crazy with his latest gaze into the crystal ball: he says the iPhone 3.0 will have copy and paste. Kev says that the interface is much like the magnifying glass -- you use two fingers to select the text you want, and then you can cut or copy. Sure, that's great, but we think the bigger news is that Rose says 3.0 won't have support for background apps -- which makes his claim that that 3.0 will bring the iPhone "up to speed with the Palm Pre" a little suspect. We'll find out what's what in just a few days, but in the meantime check the video of Rose after the break.
MacBook / MacBook Pro rumor roundup
Well the rumoratti has certainly been working overtime today when it comes to Apple, so we've decided to bundle all the news that's currently doing the rounds into one tasty and nutritious post.First up, there are new -- and quite detailed -- pictures out of what appears to be those MacBook and MacBook Pro casings we saw during the week. Again, we can't 100 percent confirm that these are the real deal, but they certainly have that Air-meets-MacBook hybrid quality to them that would suggest we're looking at the next iteration of the line.Secondly, Apple has gone and published a support document for the "MacBook/MacBook Pro (Late 2008)" -- which suggests (gasp!) that there might be some late 2008 refreshes in our future. Oh really? Weird. Rounding out the excitement, AppleInsider "confirms" the rumor that the new MacBooks will jettison the integrated Intel graphics which earlier models have used in favor of NVIDIA's MCP79 platform. The GPUs apparently use a new set of GeForce 9300 and 9400 chips that will make previous performance look archaic by comparison. Additionally, according to hotshot Mac rumor specialist Kevin Rose, the new systems will support Blu-ray drives, thus finally allowing you to watch season 4 of Lost the way the lord intended it.As with all rumors, you can never really know which one of these is going to stick, but luckily we won't have to wait very long to get to the bottom of it. In the meantime, feel free to peruse the various links below and soak in the sweet, sweet gossip.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]Read - Leaked MacBook / MacBook Pro casing photosRead - Apple Document Confirms MacBook/MacBook Pro (Late 2008)Read - Apple dumping Intel chipsets for NVIDIA's in new MacBooksRead - Kevin Rose drops MacBook Blu-Ray Rumor at Live Diggnation event
Kevin Rose unearths redesigned iPod nano, digs for more?
Kevin Rose of Digg origins claims to have the scoop on the latest iPod nano. Mind you, this is the same Kevin Rose who notoriously claimed that a generation one iPhone would launch in both CDMA and GSM versions with a pair of batteries and slide-out keyboard. Uh hem. This time however, he backs up his claims with this picture of a skinnier, longer, and curvier nano -- credible because it just happens to be consistent with other rumors we've seen floating around and certainly makes sense for an Apple obsessed with tapering edges and video playback. Kev also claims that the iPod lineup will undergo "fairly large" price cuts to avoid the market cannibalization assumed by the lower $199 iPhone 3G purchase price. The iPod touch, which currently starts at $299 for 8GB, will see some slight cosmetic changes as well as a new 2.1 firmware update (which will obviously make its way to the iPhone). Tagging along with the iPod refresh is a new iTunes 8.0 which, according to Rose's sources, deserves the full point upgrade based on all the new features and functionality it brings. All this, "in the next 2-3 weeks." He then adds that OS X 10.5.6 is rumored to include Blu-ray support which could point to future Blu-ray options in Apple's lineup of Macs -- oh, and ponies, lots of ponies. Listen to the man say it in his own words in the video after the break.[Thanks, Matt and Alexis F.]
Digg releases official iPhone interface
We've come full circle on the iPhone software merry-go-round-- the first app we saw for the iPhone was a mockup built with Digg's API, and now Digg has released their own iPhone application.And it works pretty well, even if you're not using an iPhone. You can log in right there in the interface, and even browse topics through a drop-down menu. Perhaps the biggest new feature is a "mini-permalink" page that will automatically grab the top 5 moderated comments from the regular Digg page and only show those. That right there is almost enough to make me browse the iPhone Digg rather than the regular Digg, even on my desktop-- the fewer and more useful Digg comments I can see, the better.Kevin Rose also promises a way to see the top stories in the iPhone interface is coming, and since there is no way to actually add comments yet (you have to go to the main Digg page for the article to do so), they may work on that in the future as well. After all this app was supposedly thrown together in 48 hours-- Rose promised coder Joe Stump that if he did it in two days, he'd get an iPhone, and apparently he did.
iPhone details 'confirmed' by Kevin Rose
As our "geeky sister" blog Engadget is reporting, Digg founder Kevin Rose (no relation) has announced iPhone specs on his podcast. While you might take most iPhone rumors with the customary grain of salt, this is the guy who called the ball on the iPod Nano prior to His Steveness' introduction of same. We'll reserve judgment for now, save to note that this wee Frankenphone, yet to ship or be announced, has Bear Stearns anticipating six billion bucks of revenue for AAPL in '07. Such is the power of this fully operational iPod battlestati-- I mean, ecosystem.The nitty-gritty from the podcast, via Engadget: Extremely small form factor Two battery design (with single charger) -- one for playing music, the other for phone functions Flash memory: 4GB for $249, 8GB for $449 "Slide-out keyboard" Possibly touchscreen Likely launch with a 'singular GSM carrier' with CDMA and other GSM to follow Hang those iPod Socks by the chimney with care; we'll hope that the iPhone soon will be there. (Just so long as Michael Bennett isn't waiting in my front yard with a .38.)[Thanks Javi, Andrew G. and David C.!]
