Quadtechint.com

Google has been very much about saving out of print books by moving them into a digital format over the last seven years. This has been a part of their Google Book Search project, which involved pulling books out of libraries and scanning them in, and thus preserving them forever. Of course, some people prefer a hard copy, and now that’s going to be a possibility as well, at least at some locations. Google has teamed up with On Demand Books, makers of the $100,000 Espresso Book Machine, which enables people who own the machine to print books on site, rather then waiting for them to be printed, bound, shipped, and then delivered to book stores. Your average 300 page book with a color cover takes about four minutes, and costs about $3.00 to produce. This has huge implications, partly to the out of print book industry and partly to the end user. The out of print book industry typically charge extremely high prices for books, which may not really be an option for them anymore. For the end user, it’ll make books that previously were impossible to find accessible, and easy to locate.Currently, there are a few sites that are up and running. The Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge Massachusetts, the University of Michigan Shapiro library, and the Blackwell Bookshop in London just to name a few. The company hopes to have about 90 machines running world wide in the next year, so keep your eyes open. The books will probably sell for about $8 each, allowing the book seller to make some money after paying for the materials and fees to Google and On Demand. This is amazing. Imagine being able to go to a major book store and have them print the book you want to order, instead of having to find it on the shelf or order it in. I for one am looking forward to it.

Apple has long been associated with the saying “it just works”. Well, sometimes it apparently works a little too well, to the point of allowing users to delete their entire Flickr libraries in one fell swoop without really meaning to. Oops. The problem stems from the way Apple’s popular iPhoto software is integrated with Flickr. Recent versions of iPhoto allow users to sync specified albums with Flickr, which means they can automatically upload new photos as soon as they import them into iPhoto from their cameras, and change their captions for both at once. The problem is that iPhoto treats this syncing very literally: if you delete a photo from one of these albums on iPhoto, it doesn’t just remove it from the Set on Flickr — it actually deletes the photo from your Flickr account entirely. iPhoto apparently informs users that when they stop sharing a photo album between iPhoto and Flickr, “The album no longer appears on Flickr, but the photos remain in your [iPhoto] library.” The wording is both ambiguous (Apple could just mean it’s deleting the photos from the Flickr set) and not nearly strong enough to suggest that it’s actually deleting data. And plenty of people have made that mistake. Over the last several weeks this has led to a number of threads in Flickr’s help forum where some users are up in arms after accidentally deleting hundreds of photos at once.

Adobe is a big company, with a lots of products, but one of its strongest brands is Flash. So when Adobe contacted Envato, an Australian startup that operates a set of popular marketplaces for digital creative goods to change one of their marketplaces names, Envato had no choice. Envato operates a property called FlashDen, which sells Adobe Flash and Flex files like preloaders, galleries, site templates and utilities. Files are created and sold by a huge community of authors from all over the world. Last week Adobe contacted Envato and asked Envato to change the name and URL of FlashDen so that it would no longer contain the term ‘Flash’, which is a registered trademark of Adobe. With little time, Envato changed the name from FlashDen to ActiveDen. Seeing this change, we reached out to Collis Ta’eed, the CEO of Envato, and he mentioned that Envato received a letter from a law firm representing Adobe asking to change FlashDen’s name. Envato followed through, not wanting more legal problems with Adobe. Ta’eed also mentioned that “FlashDen” was filed as a trademark in Australia in January 2008 and entered on the Australian trademark register in August 2008. Envato is based in Melbourne, Australia. I guess the main takeaway here is that if you are trying to help Adobe build its ecosystem of apps around Flash, don’t try to communicate that by including the word Flash in the name of your site. Envato currently operates five “marketplaces” including ThemeForest, GraphicRiver, AudioJungle, VideoHive and now ActiveDen.

Many of the widgets scattered across the Web are made in Flash, but Adobe doesn’t participate in the widget economy. Today, it is taking a first tentative step towards changing that with the release of a new Distribution Manager for widgets created on the Flash Platform. In addition to making it easier for people to share the widgets across 70 Web and mobile destinations, it will track their usage, and serve as a widget ad network as well. Adobe is obviously interested in getting into the advertising end of the business, which is why it recently announced it is acquiring Omniture for $1.8 billion. Rather than just getting paid once for the tools to create Web apps and content, it wants to get a piece of those recurring advertising dollars too. The widget distribution play is along the same lines, except that for now Adobe is doing it through a partnership with Gigya, the widget distribution and advertising network. What that means is that any money Adobe makes will be split more ways, but in return it achieves faster entry into the market. The Distribution Manager allows Flash developers to put a share button on their apps, which opens up a menu giving consumers the option to send that particular widget to Facebook, iGoogle, MySpace, My Yahoo, or various other destinations. It also supports the iPhone, Windows Mobile, and Symbian phones. (Since the iPhone does not yet support Flash, a version of the apps must already be present in the iTunes Store in non-Flash form). Many advertisers themselves are creating Flash widgets which they are hoping will be spread around virally. They can buy installs on Adobe’s widget network for $1 per install. On the flip side, developers who choose to run these ads will get an effective CPM of $5 (i.e., for every 1,000 impressions). Adobe and Gigya will split whatever is the difference between those two numbers, which will be a function of the exact (undisclosed) revenue share, the number of times an ad widget is installed, and how often it is passed along. Developers also get an Adobe AIr app which helps them keep track of all of their widgets. They can measure unique users, number of impressions, interaction rates, installs, and how many times it is passed on. The Distribution Manager can also break down installs and usage by social network, device, or country. The next Flash platform service Adobe wants to role out is the ability to develop an app once and distribute it anywhere without re-writing the app.

Companies and brands always want to have their Twitter profiles and background images fit their profile. Tweet Scenes is hoping to make the process of creating backgrounds for Twitter users much easier. You upload your logo, photos, text and links, and give some basic background information on your company and what you’re looking for. You then pay a flat fee ($129) up front, and get your design done in three business days.Tweet Scenes is owned and operated by a web design and development company (Carnes Media) with over a decade of design and branding experience. Carnes Media has done sites like Tatango, who we recently covered, Derek Media, and many others. There are lots of free alternatives to Tweet Scenes, like TwitterBackground.com, which is currently the number one free Twitter backgrounds site. According to Nathan Carnes, the founder of Tweet Scenes, there aren’t any good Twitter background companies that make good quality backgrounds for the brands on Twitter. Also, you should consider the fact that there are numerous third party applications that don’t use Twitter.com, so you will never see the backgrounds. It’s a little unclear why someone would pay $129 for a Twitter background when you could get one for free — if you wanted to spend that much you might as well just find a designer to do it for you. If you don’t like the background you get, there’s a money-back guarantee. You can find an example of one of the backgrounds below.

It used to be that M.I.T was filled with code-breakers. Part of the movie A Beautiful Mind takes place there and in real life it’s always had close ties with the military and intelligence agencies. Tech companies also like to recruit there, and Google is no exception. In search of some beautiful minds, Google has been putting up signs around the M.I.T campus with a code that say, “If you can figure this out, you may have a future with Google.” If they crack the code, which is a fairly simple substitution cipher (or not), it reveals a phone number where they can leave their contact information.So far, no M.I.T. students have been able to crack the code, or at least they haven’t bothered to leave a voicemail. Maybe they need some help. The first person to crack the code gets a TechCrunch T-shirt, or maybe a job at Google if you call the number and leave your name.We have a winner: Actually two, it was a team effort. Scott Kyle did the set-up and Hakan came up with the final answer: 617-639-0570. The number is a substitution cipher that you get by writing out 0-9 then A-Z, then using the keyword “JOBS” to shift the letters. Interestingly, there is also a second solution (617-274-8660), which leads to another non-Google recruiting number. That one might just be a red herring, or a way to weed out the semi-smart folks who couldn’t come up with the harder solution.

Earlier today we learned that Apple had begun to pull all Google Voice-enabled applications from the App Store, citing the fact that they “duplicate features that come with the iPhone”. Now comes even worse news: we’ve learned that Apple has blocked Google’s official Google Voice application itself from the App Store. In other words, Google Voice — one of the best things to happen to telephony services in a very long time — will have no presence at all on the App Store. If there’s ever been a time to be furious with Apple, now is it.

A Google Spokesperson has told us the following:

We work hard to bring Google applications to a number of mobile platforms, including the iPhone. Apple did not approve the Google Voice application we submitted six weeks ago to the Apple App Store. We will continue to work to bring our services to iPhone users — for example, by taking advantage of advances in mobile browsers.

Of course, it’s not hard to guess who’s behind the restriction: our old friend AT&T. Google Voice scares the carriers. It allows users to send free SMS messages and get cheap long-distance over Google Voice’s lines. It also makes it trivial to switch to a new phone service, because everyone calls the Google Voice number anyway. Carriers have known about Google Voice for a long time, but it wasn’t until recently that it began accepting new users, and there has still been some hassle associated with actually using the service. Smartphone apps like GV Mobile remove many of those hassles, which is why AT&T is keen to keep them off the iPhone (Google already has official apps available for BlackBerry and Android).

Here’s another testament to just how ridiculous this move is: GV Mobile’s developer Sean Kovacs says that the app was personally approved last April by Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing — the man who often takes the stage during Apple keynotes when Steve Jobs isn’t around. Kovacs says that Schiller called him to personally apologize for the delay in initially getting the application approved. Now, I’m sure Apple has laid out in its terms of service somewhere that you’re not allowed to mimic the iPhone’s functionality. But when you’ve got a blessing from that high up, that would seem like a pretty good indication that the application belongs in the App Store.

The thing that really bothers me about the move is that Apple is now actively stifling innovation. Google Voice is the kind of service that can actually have a positive impact on your life, and not in a frivolous, entertainment-related sense. It makes it easier to connect with people, and to manage those connections. Apple can point to the App Store’s 50,000 applications all it wants, but how many of them could truly be called groundbreaking? Are they really putting a dent in the universe?

All the more upsetting is that this comes from the company that Steve Jobs built. The company that once made record labels bow to a flat 0.99 pricing structure for years longer than they would have liked is now screwing customers because AT&T asked them to. They’re trying to limit what I can and can’t run on my mobile phone — a phone whose marketing is largely based on its extensibility.

Back when the App Store first launched there were some warnings about its walled garden approach — could developers trust Apple to maintain a fair marketplace? Until recently, Apple has managed the store in a generally benevolent, if not somewhat incompetent manner. But now things are taking a turn for the worse. From a handicapped Sling app to blocked apps from Qik and Google Voice, it’s becoming clear that Apple is doing its best to keep many of the iPhone’s most game-changing apps away from users. Palm, if you’re looking for marketing material — take note.

Update: John Gruber has confirmed with a trusted source that AT&T is to blame for the Google Voice ban.

It’s been just under a year since Yammer, the ‘Twitter for businesses’, launched at TechCrunch 50 and won the conference’s top prize. Since then the service has seen steady growth, with over 40,000 networks signed up for the service. It’s also become an absolutely essential tool inside the TechCrunch office, which is why I grew alarmed when I noticed that the service is currently down. But a quick visit to the site’s blog reveals that this was planned downtime, and for good reason: when Yammer comes back up, it will feature a host of impressive features in what may be the service’s biggest update since launch. We got in touch with CEO David Sacks, who outlined what we can expect when the service comes back later tonight.

Some of the new features include:

Revamped iPhone App — The big new feature here is Push notifications, which will allow you to get updated whenever you get a message without having to burn through SMS messages. The app also integrates a camera mode for taking photos, improved text entry (you can auto-save drafts and type in landscape mode), and improved performance. The app is currently pending approval in the app store, so we may have to wait a few more days to download it.

Likes — Yammer is adopting the feature popularized by Friendfeed and later “borrowed” by Facebook. However, Likes in Yammer aren’t just virtual pats on the back — every time you Like something, it will be shared with everyone in your network, which means that Liked messages grow virally.

Threads — You’ll now be able to view messages in a threaded view, in a manner that looks very similar to Facebook, or you can revert back to the Twitter-like stream Yammer has used until now. The stream works fine for small groups, but it can become unwieldly when multiple conversations are going on at once, which makes the threaded view a welcome addition. For now this will be limited to the web version, but the desktop client will support it in the next few weeks.

Improved Search — Search has been improved to include a number of advanced options, including limiting searches to a specific user or to coworkers in a certain group.
Other improvements include more security options (you can make passwords automatically expire after a certain time period), a ‘broadcast’ mode for network admins that lets them send a message throughout an entire network, and an improved interface.

All in all this is a great update for Yammer, which continues to improve on an already-solid product. Last month Yammer unveiled a rebuilt client for Adobe AIR, which was also a big improvement over the old app. That said, I could do without AIR’s quirks — I wish Yammer offered some native clients.