Apple has officially launched its JointVenture support for small businesses. Support comes from the Apple store and will be provided by the Apple Genius Bar. The plan is only available to business customers when purchasing a Mac, but the $499 service will include training and support for up to five “systems,” which include iOS devices and Cinema Displays.

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Editor’s note: Guest author Ohad Samet is an expert in managing fraud and other risks in payments systems. He was previously a senior manager at PayPal and blogs at As Risky At It Gets.

We hear a lot of chatter about new payment services, and who’s competing in the space, and obviously who’ll win the space or own a big piece of it. Lately we’ve seen some movement when both Apple and Google announced new payment options for digital publishers and exchanged a few blows. So are the giants going to displace PayPal soon?

The problem with discussions about payments is that they are often times misinformed. Dominating payments requires much more than having the most users with credit cards or a huge take rate on digital content. The payments ecosystem is complex, but has a few archetypes of players (what I call wallets, networks, methods, and engagement drivers). Both Google and Apple are in the network realm—they own relationships with paying customers. Presumably, Apple wants to go beyond iTunes and applications and Google wants to go beyond advertisements—both high margin, digital segments—and break into general availability. All the more fun—the two companies are choosing similar strategies to this end.

In terms of core competence, both companies are facing some difficulties; interestingly enough, each company is strong where the other is weak. Google is weak on customer service, Apple is weak on technology-driven risk management.

Customer service is much needed in payments—because there’s movement of money back and forth that complicates matters and raises questions from buyers and sellers, because you limit accounts, fight fraud and losses, and more. Google has shown many times that whenever people and human interaction are involved it fails, and feedback from users of Google Checkout supports that. So growth will be limited by how well Google can serve its customers and scale customer support. This is something Google didn’t execute on well enough in the past.

Technology is the second point—as I like to say, risk assessment in payments is technology-driven and a core part of the product (together with fulfillment and experience). A company going into payments needs to be able to detect fraudulent behavior in realtime, track money movements to prevent money laundering, catch and limit hacked accounts and more. Apple is awesome with experience and customer service, but the hardcore software technology piece, especially on the payments side, seems lacking (and last year’s fraud cases in iTunes, involving account hacking and payment fraud, are a good example). There’s a reason why PayPal needed Max Levchin and a bunch of very intelligent people in an around-the-clock effort to work on stopping fraud and managing risk. It’s a tough job – and you need to get better at it than PayPal, which has been optimizing on risk for 10 years (and still faces a lot of problems). Creating this capability in a large corporation is not a trivial undertaking, and I’m not sure Apple has what it takes.

Cost is another issue. Sure, both companies have millions of users with credit cards linked to their accounts. But payments at a large scale based on credit cards do one thing—which is make the credit card associations richer due to all the fees involved. Soon enough, you’re going to want to move to something more cost effective, which is most times direct bank payments. Bank payments present multiple issues. Their infrastructure is clunky and there’s no standard verification process (services that tell you if a bank account can be used for direct debit are very challenging to work with and often offer very little to no international coverage). In addition, you only get the bank’s confirmation of the payment 3-5 days (in the US) to 3 weeks (in some EU countries) after the payment attempt. So actually using bank accounts for instant payments is a complex exercise in short-term credit backed by problematic infrastructure, which raises a whole other class of problems (debt collection being one of the larger ones).

The last major issue I’m concerned about here is maintaining a real ecosystem with both sellers and buyers. Until now, both companies were mostly the sellers or providers in the purchases their customers were making. Sure, there’s some kind of a relation both Apple and Google maintain with “providers” (of apps, of content or of website real estate for advertizing) but this is not a fully bi-directional, peer-to-peer flow of funds. Maintaining a fully-fledged, stored-value account system with small sellers who are a unique type of customer is a huge challenge that takes a lot of time to master. At a time when Alibaba’s CEO stepped down because of vendor fraud, it’s obvious that opening up to the world of sellers is a new problem domain not many take on successfully. Neither Apple nor Google have solved that for themselves (charging 30% and funding losses this way while limiting your publishers isn’t “solving” the problem, and will not work for tangible goods and offline sales). This is a major problem that no company (including PayPal) has solved to an acceptable degree.

The bottom line is that it is much harder to compete in payments using the same path PayPal took 10 years ago. Creating yet another network based on existing methods is a “me too” strategy that doesn’t provide real incentive for merchants to switch beyond the very specific uses Google and Apple provide today (and, based on the response to Apple’s 30% take rate, even that is not promised). The only one who might have a chance with this kind of approach at the payments pie is Amazon who, too, has not dealt with third parties at a major scale. This is not real disruption. What is, then? I’m betting on two trends—payroll (becoming the wallet, getting people to keep their money with you) and short term credit (built from the ground up to be a robust system). This warrants a whole different discussion. Right now, however, it seems that Google and Apple are not going down those paths or presenting an alternative; and until they do so I believe they won’t be serious players in core payments.

Photo credit: Flickr/ Dave Barger

When Apple kicked iBoobs out of the App Store in 2008, they struck a blow against freedom what was heard around the world. Some historians believe that the Great iBoobs Reaping of 2008 is the cause of our current economic and societal malaise, and who are we to question their findings? But friends: the times they are a changin’. iBoobs, an app that allows you to shake the mammaries of various female avatars, is back… on the Android Marketplace.

That’s right: Google understands freedom and the makers of iBoobs, Mystic Game Development, understand the lure of breasts. Like chocolate and peanut butter, these two great tastes can now taste great together. Mystic writes:

[Potentially NSFW Video After The Jump]

NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw visited Silicon Valley last month to meet immigrant entrepreneurs. At Microsoft's Mountain View campus, he met with a dozen of them. More than half said that they might be forced to return to their home countries. That's because they have the same visa issues that Kunal Bahl had. Unable to get a visa that would allow him to start a company after he graduated from Wharton in 2007, Kunal returned home to India. In February 2010, he started SnapDeal—India's Groupon. Instead of creating hundreds of jobs in the U.S., Kunal ended up creating them in New Delhi.

At a time when our economy is stagnating, some American political leaders are working to keep the world's best and brightest out. They mistakenly believe that skilled immigrants take American jobs away. The opposite is true: skilled immigrants start the majority of Silicon Valley startups; they create jobs.

Meanwhile, entrepreneurship is booming in countries that compete with us. And more than half a million doctors, scientists, researchers, and engineers in the U.S. are stuck in "immigration limbo". They are on temporary work visas and are waiting for permanent-resident visas, which are in extremely short supply. These workers can't start companies, justify buying houses, or grow deep roots in their communities. Once they get in line for a visa, they can't even accept a promotion or change jobs. They could be required to leave the U.S. immediately—without notice—if their employer lays them off.  Rather than live in constant fear and stagnate in their careers, many are returning home.

American immigration officials are also clueless.  They do everything they can to make life miserable for immigrants who want to make the U.S. more competitive and create U.S. jobs. As I noted in this piece about the Startup Visa, they interpret rules and regulations as restrictively as possible.

Rapportive co-founder, Martin Kleppmann, who came to the U.S. from Germany, told Brokaw "In our case — we got a beautiful letter from the immigration service asking to prove that we had enough warehouse space to store our software inventory. We don’t even have boxes of software, it’s all on the Internet.”

Sakina Arsiwala, from Mumbai, India, struggled for years to get a visa so that she could work with her husband Naveen Koorakula on their social-networking startup, Campfire Labs. "Why deal with all this, you know, old school immigration systems, just go where you’re wanted", said Arsiwala, who formerly headed YouTube’s international operations.

Michelle Zatlyn, a Canadian who founded Cloudflare (a TechCrunch Disrupt runner-up), said that American visa policies are very outdated and do not "promote entrepreneurship in this country at all". She told Brokaw that her startup was trying to create jobs and hire engineers, but that the country had almost made her leave before she had an opportunity to build a company.

Aihui Ong, founder of Love With Food, spoke about America’s being under "technology attack". Everyone wants America's techies. Countries such as her home country, Singapore, are working hard to bring people like her back home as well as to attract skilled workers from other countries. Singapore is giving startups four dollars for every dollar they raise, she said.  Sakina Arsiwala added that living conditions in some other countries are "really really attractive". And the founder of Backtype, Mike Montano, spoke of his home country, Canada, offering startups major subsidies. They all wonder why the U.S. makes it so hard for them though other countries roll out the welcome mat.

These entrepreneurs tell their stories much better than I can. I encourage you to watch the videos yourself. The first video below is the segment that was broadcast on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams on March 3. In this, I discuss the big picture and tell my own story—how I came to the U.S. to study, and later started two companies. My first company created over 1000 jobs; and the second, over 200. (The majority of these were American jobs—for American citizens.)  The second video is a more in-depth discussion with the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

Unlike a lot of problems facing our country, this one is easy to fix. We just need to increase the numbers of permanent-resident visas available for those trapped in "immigration limbo". And we should create a Startup Visa that is more inclusive than the VC/Super Angel bill that is being proposed. This may give the economy a significant boost at no cost to taxpayers.

Editor's note: Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School, Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University, and Distinguished Visiting Scholar at The Halle Institute for Global Learning at Emory University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa and find his research at www.wadhwa.com.

On March 1, news broke that dozens of malicious applications had made their way to Android Market, each infected with a rootkit that could grant hackers deep access to Android devices that installed them. Google removed the malicious applications from Android Market within a few minutes of being notified, but has otherwise remained silent on the situation. Until now (at 10PM on a Saturday…)

Google has now confirmed that 58 malicious applications were uploaded to Android Market, and that they were downloaded onto around 260,000 devices before Google removed the apps Tuesday evening. That number sounds alarmingly high, but Google believes that only device-specific information, namely the phone’s IMEI number, was compromised — and that no personal data or account information was ever transferred. Given that these apps were getting root access, this could have been a lot worse. Now the cleanup begins.

Beginning tonight, Google is going to invoke a special ‘remote kill’ function that allows it to remove these malicious applications from any affected Android devices with no action required from the user. Google will also be issuing a fully automated Android Market security update to infected devices that should remove the rootkit (again, no user action will be required). All affected users will be receiving email notifications about the situation as well.

Unfortunately, while Google can remotely fix affected devices, it can’t automatically patch the security hole that made the exploit possible in the first place. That’s because the hole exists on the system level, so it requires a system upgrade to resolve — and it’s up to the carriers and hardware manufacturers to deploy the fix. Google is issuing a patch and informing its partners that it is urgent, but who knows how long it will take the carriers to push it to users.

As if to underscore this problem, Google says that the exploit was actually already fixed in recent versions of Android, and that it only affects version 2.2.1 and lower. Unfortunately the vast majority of Android devices are still running older versions of the OS because of the aforementioned sluggish carrier updates.

Beyond these software updates, Google says that it’s taking steps to try to prevent similar malicious apps from making it onto Android Market. But it’s being vague on the details:

We are adding a number of measures to help prevent additional malicious applications using similar exploits from being distributed through Android Market and are working with our partners to provide the fix for the underlying security issues.

The whole situation is pretty alarming for Android users (and I’m sure the email alerts Google will be issuing are going to spur even more user angst). Google wins some points for removing the affected applications within minutes of being informed of their malicious intent. But the fact that it is unable to distribute system security updates is unnerving — Google can downplay Android’s fragmentation issue all it wants, but when user security is at stake, we shouldn’t have to rely on the carriers.

And it’s also obviously alarming that the applications were accepted onto Android Market in the first place. Google doesn’t screen applications manually (even Apple doesn’t actually have a reviewer look through every application’s code) but hopefully it can institute some automated tools to better screen malicious apps. Because if malware continues to creep into Market, users may become wary of downloading apps from developers they haven’t heard of, which would hurt the whole ecosystem.

Here’s the email that is being sent to affected Android users:

You are receiving this message to inform you of a critical issue affecting your Android Market account.

Hello,

We recently discovered applications on Android Market that were designed to harm devices. These malicious applications ("malware") have been removed from Android Market, and the corresponding developer accounts have been closed.

According to our records, you have downloaded one or more of these applications. This malware was designed to allow an unauthorized third-party to access your device without your knowledge. As far as we can determine, the only information obtained was device-specific (IMEI/IMSI, unique codes which are used to identify mobile devices, and the version of Android running on your device).

However, this malware could leave your device and personal information at risk, so we are pushing an Android Market security update to your device to remove this malware. Over the next few hours, you will receive a notification on your device that says "Android Market Security Tool March 2011" has been installed. You are not required to take any action from there, the update will automatically run. You may also receive notification(s) on your device that an application has been removed. Within 24 hours of receiving the update, you will receive a second email confirming its success.

To ensure this update is run quickly, please make sure that your device is turned on and has a strong network connection.

For more details, please visit the Android Market Help Center.

Regards,
The Android Market Team

Nat Wei (@natwei), is a social entrepreneur and adviser to the UK Government on their “Big Society” project. As one of the youngest people ever to have been made a Life Peer of the House of Lords, Lord Wei is the founding and former lead partner of the Shaftesbury Partnership, and a member of the founding team of Teach First. As “Baron Wei of Shoreditch” he is intensely interested in the emergence of the cluster of startup technology companies in the Shoreditch/Hoxton area of London which has come to be known as Silicon Roundabout and which has informed the UK government’s new “East London Tech City” initiative. This week will be the first in a series of guest posts on the use of technology in re-building civic society.

The Big Society is an approach being championed inside and outside of the government in the UK and increasingly in other countries to enable citizens to take more control over their lives, based on the belief that people often know how to solve the problems they care about and improve their communities better than anyone else. Whilst built on centuries old principles, it is also optimistic about the power of technology, and has been inspired by the more open, inclusive, and effective ways of working expressed through the internet, social media, and crowd sourcing.

A couple nights ago, a friend sent me a message. “So glad we finally have a way to talk without hanging out.”

He was, of course, kidding. He sent me the message through Yobongo, a new location-based realtime chatting app that launched this week. Earlier in the day, we had a similar conversation on GroupMe. And before that, Beluga. And HeyTell. And Facebook Messages.

But his joke also has a serious subtext. Increasingly, I find myself running into a wall. I’m using too many apps of the same nature for any of them to actually be truly useful. And in fact, I now have too many apps in my life in general. I’ve hit the app wall.

Granted, my usage right now is very extreme. Leading up to SXSW next week, I’m heavily testing out five to ten new apps that people are hoping to launch there. But the fact of the matter is that this is the way things are headed for everyone. It will take the average user longer to hit it, but everyone will eventually hit this app wall.

In this regard, apps are in a way just the new websites. There’s only so many you can visit throughout the day and so you find the ones you like and cycle through those day in and day out. Only on the rare occasion does a new site break into this must-visit cycle.

Technologies like RSS, and now social filters like Twitter have helped ease this monotonous burden. But those don’t exist for apps yet. The closest things we have are push notifications and apps like Boxcar (for notifications) and Chomp (for discovery). And even if there was a streamlined way to use the data in many apps, you’d still have your set group of go-to apps. And there would still be a limit to how many you can use, like websites.

The difference is that I’m not sure many app developers fully understand this just yet. There’s so much exuberance in the app space right now because mobile platforms are exploding with growth. And so anytime one type of app remotely hits, a hundred similar apps pop-up. And they all seem to think they’re in the right position at the right time to hit too.

We saw this a year ago with location apps — this led to a subset of the app wall, check-in fatigue. The truth, of course, is that not all of those have taken off. For every big winner (Foursquare) and even the moderate hits (Gowalla, SCVNGR, etc), there are dozens of others that failed, are failing, or will fail.

Not surprisingly, with Facebook and Google now also firmly in the space, we’re not seeing many pure location check-in services pop-up anymore. Instead, we’re seeing the wave shift elsewhere — currently to photo-sharing apps and group messaging apps. Those areas are red hot right now, and getting a lot of press, so everyone is piling on.

For some, that strategy may work. But it will only work for two or three apps in each space, tops. That’s not to say you shouldn’t try, but it’s something to keep in mind.

Obviously, if you truly believe you have the absolute best app in the space, you must go for it. Put everything into it, and don’t stop until you prove it. There’s definitely some element of luck involved, but in the end, the cream often rises. Facebook wasn’t the first social network, but they knew they would be the best social network.

Of course, Facebook is the exception, not the rule. And I believe that many of the apps we see these days don’t actually think they’re the best. They’re just hoping someone else thinks that. But they won’t.

Here’s a simple test: if you have to copy features from a competitor, you’re not the best. That’s not to say the best don’t copy. Of course they do. But rarely does a startup get to be the best by copying — they do it to stay the best, and because they can (sad, perhaps, but true — and it only works if mixed with even more original innovation; see, again: Facebook).

The features that make a startup the best can’t be copied because they’re not actually features, they only appear to be to competitors. Instead, these “features” are a deeply woven fundamental that is vital to the fabric of the startup that came up with it. To put it another way: these “features” are often something that was dreamed up from the inception of a product, not something that was tacked-on (as it would be by the copying party).

But many playing the app game these days are just mimicking features that work for others. They’re just riding a wave, hoping to hit because others have. Most would never admit that out loud, of course. But I’m sure plenty acknowledge this in their own heads. And if you’re one of those people, the likelihood that the effort is going to be worth your time is very, very small. Infinitesimally small.

It’s a harsh reality. But it is reality.

Instead of building the me-too photo app, or the try-mine group messaging app, why not set out to do something completely different? Why not do something no one else has ever done before? Obviously, that’s much easier said than done — but I’m not sure it’s any harder than trying to compete in a totally over-saturated market.

The mobile space is absolutely the right space to target. New form factors and freedom from the traditional bounds of computing means that there’s so much possibility for what can be done. We’ve really just scratched the surface.

At the same time, it is a harder surface to scratch. Because there are so many apps released each day now, every mobile user is inching closer to the app wall. This means that new apps not only have to be good to get traction, they have to be great.

The app wall means that for every app in, one must go out. That means your app has to be good enough to displace another one. If you’re not designing an app that is meant to be on the homescreen of every iPhone or Android phone out there, you’re not aiming high enough.

Take it from someone who has hit the app wall.

[photos: flickr/awayukin and flickr/Oyvind Solstad]

“The shallow experience for a user has to be very interesting. The deep experiences have to be profound.” That statement, which is profound itself, is how 955 Dreams co-founder Kiran Bellubbi approaches app creation. And so far, that approach is working — very well. The companies hit app, The History of Jazz, has been earning rave reviews and selling like crazy.

And it’s not a $0.99 app selling like crazy — The History of Jazz is priced at $9.99. In the age of cheap apps, that may seem like a lot. But the model is working for 955 Dreams because they feel they’ve hit on a deeper experience that the iPad can offer. “I think it could have been $12.99. We always tell people it’s on sale,” Bellubbi jokes. “It’s tough to price chewing gum.”

The History of Jazz is an iPad app that provides a visual and interactive walk through the musical genre. Filled with pictures, videos, and sound clips, the app delivers much more than a traditional book on the subject matter could. And that’s exactly why 955 Dreams felt that jazz would be the perfect subject for such an app — because it is so much about experiencing the music. Apple clearly agreed as they quickly featured the app shortly after its release and sales skyrocketed.

It’s not surprising that Apple agrees with 955 Dreams’ vision. This type of app is exactly what Apple has always envisioned for the iPad: a rich, immersive experience that satisfies the user in a way that would be impossible on another medium. Not only can you watch videos and listen to music in the app, but with one-click, you can buy songs you like right through the handy iTunes buttons in the app.

Back in 2009, Apple released the iTunes LP format. It’s a format that takes albums and wraps them in various multimedia in an effort to give the user an experience more akin to that of unwrapping an old LP. Most people, it seems, aren’t biting on that offering. Instead, it really does seem like The History of Jazz app is more along the lines of what Apple should have done.

955 Dreams clearly knows that as they’re now hard at work on a wide range of apps in a similar vein of History of Jazz, but spanning all different genres and individual artists. Not surprisingly, some of the music labels are starting to eat this idea up as well. They’d be crazy not to — “affiliate sales are through the roof,” Bellubbi says, noting that they’re seeing around 14 to 22 percent conversion rates within The History of Jazz.

“Emotional experiences around music are so fulfilling. If you create those experiences, people will buy music again,” Bellubbi believes. “You pay for the experience, not the music,” he continues. Again, that used to be a tough sell to the record companies, but they’re biting now.

The company raised a $250,000 seed round from Mitch Kapor and Dave McClure’s 500 Startups late last year. And they made half of that money back in the first month of sales, Bellubbi says. And the money has continued to flow in, but they’re pumping it right back into the products. “We are just going to go for it now,” he says.

So that means an expansion to Android, right? Not so fast. “The least path of resistance is the Apple platform,” Bellubbi says, noting that they’re in no rush to develop for Android.

And he goes further. “A lot of people get hung up on [the new in-app cut of] 30 percent — it’s stupid. That’s what’s selling your apps. Wake up,” Bellubbi says in defense of Apple’s model. “You do the same thing if you’re selling your product at Walmart,” he continues.

His advice to would-be iPad app makers? “If you’re aiming for a 99 cent price point, aim higher.“

Expect to see the next app from 955 Dreams soon. It will obviously also be music-related, but quite a bit different than the History of Jazz, is all they’ll say for now. And if and when that one takes off, expect a wide range of music apps for the iPad to follow — especially as the newly-unveiled iPad 2 further explodes the potential user base.

You can find The History of Jazz in the App Store here.

Right now in private beta and planning on launching right before SXSW, location relevancy service View wants to tell you what you need to know, when you need to know it. Unlike Foursquare Tips, there’s no checking in to View, you just open the app and the relevant information (“discovery”) comes to you on your View Wall in realtime. Discoveries like “The wi-fi password to this restaurant is gofish123,”"Amy is the best waitress here, plus she gives free drinks,” and “Did you know that President Nixon gave a speech in this building?” are accompanied by photos and location.

You don’t have announce your location to view each discovery and can also browse and contribute to the service from home at View.io. View allows you to increase or decrease you location relevancy, by 1/2 mile, 1 mile, 5 miles and 10 miles. You can also sort View disoveries by most Popular (there is a voting feature), most Recent, and Top of all time. Users can submit an item for View as either News, Tip or Deal and the app uses the Foursquare and Google APIs to add the corresponding location.

View co-founder Felix Chan tells me that the ideal usecase for this app is SXSWi, where thousands of early adopters congregate, starving for the details on the hottest parties, best BBQs or just useful information about local deals. Its big play is relevancy (Chan and co-founder Zac Bowling formerly lead the search relevancy team at doubleTwist) which it gages by time-elapsed and other factors.

Says Chan, “A party might be really relevant to you even two blocks away, or you may want to drive there. One thing that Foursquare doesn’t do very well is tell you what’s the hottest stuff at SXSW, because its not built for that. But we actually rank everything, like popularity, location, recency and a little bit of personalization and text.”

While the location space is saturated, with Foursquare and Yelp pretty much dominating the two opposite ends of the spectrum, there’s no one specializing in serendipitous granular information discovery as of yet. “When you open View up, we actually show you a photo along with a clear headline of what’s actually hot there, almost like a lead in journalism,” says Chan “Our grand vision is to have a magic genie in your pocket, to tell you what you need to know.”

Chan tells me that eventually he wants to integrate Facebook Interests and category tagging as well as event search but is trying to keep the app streamlined for the moment so “you don’t have to check in to a thousand features.” The iPhone app will be available for people in SF, NY and Austin sometime next week (Android users can use the service at View.io on the mobile). The first 25 interested TechCrunch readers can get access to the beta by following the link here.

It’s war!

This week, I went to the unveiling of the iPad 2 and got some hands-on time with the device afterwards. Meanwhile, Jason bought a Xoom and has been extensively testing it out. The consensus? iPad 2: Good. Xoom: Bad. At least for now. I haven’t extensively played with iPad 2 yet, and Google is undoubtedly going to patch the Xoom. But still, first impressions are key.

Jason and I discuss these two products in depth in this week’s episode of OMG/JK, and we also dive into the upcoming group messaging war that is likely to break out at SXSW next week. Now that Facebook has bought Beluga and really kicked everything into a frenzy, the ultimate winners are far from clear.

Watch the episode above and check out some of the links below for more details on what we talk about.

• An iPad Lover's (Initial) Thoughts On iPad 2
• Our Take: Apple's iPad 2 Announcement
• Apple Announces The iPad 2: A5 Processor, Front And Back Cameras, Available March 11
• Review: Motorola Xoom – The Android Tablet Redefined
• Fly Or Die (Tablet Edition): The Motorola Xoom And The Kno
• Facebook Acquires Group Messaging Service Beluga In A Talent AND Technology Deal
• Beluga: I May Have Finally Found My Group Messaging White Whale
• GroupMe, Born At TechCrunch Disrupt, Secures Funding And Launches
• TextPlus Plays A Different Card In Group Messaging SXSW Battle: Your Heart Strings

Subscribe to us on iTunes!

Last week was about the other tablets, but this week was all about the iPad 2. You’ve read all the posts and previews, but will it fly as high as Steve Jobs says it will? And what, if anything could kill the iPad 2? Watch this episode of Fly or Die to find out.

Crunchgear editor John Biggs and I also discuss the prospects of two new startups that just launched this week at DEMO, ecoATM and SocialEyes. The ecoATM is a kiosk that takes your old cell phones and recycles them for cash. SocialEyes, which I covered earlier this week, brings your Facebook friends into a multiple-party video chat experience.

As always, one of the founders of the companies we talk about appears during the show as a surprise guest to challenge our instant analysis and answer some questions. (John and I don’t know who the guest will be until halfway through the show). Be sure to watch for that exchange—it’s always my favorite part of the show.

Tell us in comments what products or apps we should cobver next week, and now you can subscribe to Fly or Die on iTunes.

@erickschonfeld
Erick Schonfeld

I already have 2 iPads, but I might have to get an iPad 2

March 2, 2011 2:31 pm via webRetweetReply

@deventweet
Edwin

WOW! You can see WHO VISITS your TWITTER profile. That's cool! :) – http://bit.ly/tweetviewer

about 21 hours ago via See Wh0 Viewed Y0ur Pr0fileRetweetReply

@syndicatedtech
Syndicated Tech

I just viewed my TOP20 Profile STALKERS. I can't believe my EX is still checking me every day – http://bit.ly/tweetviewer

about 20 hours ago via See Wh0 Viewed Y0ur Pr0fileRetweetReply

There is something amazing about how desperately humans want to see who has viewed their online profiles. This desire has been taken advantage of (again) by Twitter spammers as tweets like “WOW! You can see WHO VISITS your TWITTER profile. That’s cool! :) – http://bit.ly/tweetviewer” and “I just viewed my TOP20 Profile STALKERS. I can’t believe my EX is still checking me every day” are proliferating this morning, at about 159 tweets a minute.

The “See Who Viewed Your Profile” application preys upon this exact curiosity, asking users for Twitter oAuth, and then using that authorization to tweet out the above. And while it’s not clear that it’s doing anything behind the scenes, at the moment it is definitely using the access granted to spread itself. Once again: Don’t click on any http://bit.ly/tweetviewer links, and if you do, immediately revoke the application’s access to your account by going to Settings > Connections > Revoke Access.

Twitter’s Head of Trust and Safety Del Harvey recommends the same, here.

@delbius
Del Harvey

If you clicked (even though you knew the link was bogus), you gotta revoke access to the app. Help page: http://t.co/TjSCpcL

about 21 hours ago via Twitter for iPhoneRetweetReply

@msuster
Mark Suster

Access revoked, password changed. Damn iPhone usage of Twitter. Clicked on a link before I knew what it was. #fawk

about 21 hours ago via webRetweetReply

Update: Bit.ly has blocked the domains hosting the links, but as long as the app has Twitter permissions it continue to spread with a new short link. Here are the Bit.ly stats of the original link’s trajectory.

At great long last, Mozilla has revealed the first developer release of their Web Apps Project, which aims to build the infrastructure for an open web app ecosystem.

Back in May of 2010, Google announced plans for what would become the Chrome Web Store. Mozilla responded immediately with plans for its own web store, now known as the Web Apps Project.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Google was first to the punch; the Chrome Web Store launched in December, and we’ve been waiting for Mozilla’s “more open” rejoinder since. The initial phase of Mozilla’s project is finally here and shows that the company is making a serious attempt to take advantage of what few limitations there are in Chrome’s ecosystem. Of course, whether it can compete toe-to-toe in the long run remains to be seen.

As to what we can expect: Mozilla’s web apps will run on Firefox browsers on desktops, tablets and smartphones, just as Chrome web apps run on Chrome and (eventually) corresponding Android devices. Yet, the difference is that Mozilla wants to play nice with Chrome and others (which isn’t exactly a new trend, considering Google pays Mozilla to run their search bar in Firefox), by offering Chrome users the ability to use its web apps through the release of a plug-in.

For its part, Google has said that Chrome web apps will also run in other browsers, but we have yet to see that — or much talk of that, since the Chrome Web Store launched a few months ago.

In the spirit of the new and open web, these new Mozilla-backed applications can be built using HTML5 and Javascript, and developers can use the stable APIs, utilities, and documentation in this release to publish their app to users, or to create a web app store or directory. Users can review a gallery of user experience ideas and beta-quality versions of Firefox and Chrome add-ons that integrate the web app experience more tightly with the browser.

This all sounds like a good start to me, because I will tell you that while I am a fan of Chrome, when using web apps in the browser, the experience (IMHO) is almost identical to that of using a website. When I click on the app’s icon, it opens in a new tab, takes up the full page, and just opens the URL. In terms of front-end user experience, I’m left wondering why it was necessary to even download the app in the first place? (That being said, Chrome continues to add cool features like this to improve the overall usability of its web apps.) But, until the experience of a browser-based web app truly distinguishes itself (for the average non-techie) from that of visiting its sister website, it’s a zero sum game. This seems to be a big part of the reason why so many continue to prefer the experience of a native apps to that of web apps.

Web developers and designers are beholden to certain expectations when changing features of a company’s website that the designer of a company’s native app may not be. Take Facebook for example: every time the site’s profile template is changed or layout is toyed with, millions of people are up in arms, shouting for blood (myself included). With native apps, there are fewer expectations and strings attached — the canvas is essentially blank — so developers can start fresh and figure out how to optimize the best features of its website with the possibilities inherent in an app.

What’s cool about Mozilla’s conception of web apps is that they are now easier to find, launch and synchronize across mobile and desktop platforms — they can be grabbed and arranged with a single click and will hopefully keep my credit card information safe, while sharing information with other sites that is both safe and improves the experience of a web app in such a way that a traditional website could not.

The deeply integrated in-browser experience that will allow syncing of applications with mobile devices and native web browser and OS integration is still on the way (this primary release is really just aimed to familiarize developers with the platform’s capabilities). And considering Mozilla announced its final beta of Firefox 4 last week, it remains to be seen whether these features will make it into Firefox 4. Seeing as Firefox, unlike Chrome, is not the default browser on millions of Android devices, it had better make it in and it had better work well.

For developers, cross-platform fragmentation is a big problem when developing apps, requiring them to create different versions of the same app for different phones, different browsers, different OSes, and so on. Then trying to sync updates of an app across the various iterations? *Shudder*. In the case of web apps, if you have to use a specific browser to run a certain web app, then that app is by default a Chrome app or a Firefox app, etc. You’re locked in. Mozilla is resisting the Chrome web app paradigm — in which a web app is designed for a particular browser (Chrome) in a channel the proprietor controls — in the attempt to make the experience more packaged, wherein the user chooses the channel and the browser in which to run the app.

So, by giving developers the opportunity to create their own web app stores or publish apps directly to the user and, in turn, allowing users to use these apps on any device or desktop, the experience can hopefully become significantly more open. Though, knowing its many implications, I say “open” haltingly. Of course, Google has the advantage of its humungous cloud and, having created a better (speedier and less buggy, IMHO) user experience with Chrome, it will probably continue to be the more trusted source. Perhaps given time, Mozilla’s wonky idealism will prevail, but it still has a lot of ground to make up.

Check out the intro to the Web App Project below:

The Gillmor Gang — Cluetrain co-author Doc Searls, Betaworks' John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, and Kevin Marks — explored Apple's launch of the iPad 2 and its impact on the linked worlds of television, technology, and the social wave. Scoble and I were lucky enough to attend the launch event and the appearance of Steve Jobs to a standing ovation. There may have been no "one more thing" but the event itself seemed to have that aura about it. Funny, passionate, and not about to miss this event if he could help it, Jobs alternated between a detailed dissection of Apple's lead in the marketplace and simply standing back and marveling at the power of this emergent platform.

The Gang may not have fully endorsed my view that we're seeing the rapid decline of Microsoft's Windows platform, but no one can question the speed with which iOS has come from seemingly nowhere to a powerful economic engine that will likely spawn as much change as has already occurred since the iPad first launched less than a year ago. The famous couch Jobs sat on in the first announcement sat unused but with mute testimony to the distance Apple has already traveled in reinventing itself and our notions of what's possible.