TechCrunch
DataSift Now Offering Historical Social Data Analysis Across Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Bitly & More Combined
Fresh on the heels of its deal with Tumblr for access to the Tumblr “firehose,” social data platform DataSift is putting that data, and more, to good use with the launch of a new API that performs historical analysis across Twitter, Tumblr, and Bit.ly “firehoses,” as well as data pulled from forums, blogs and public Facebook data.
With “Historic Preview,” as DataSift is calling it, developers have the ability to perform historical analysis across all sources combined, using four different analysis types. These include: frequency distribution, numeric statistical analysis, target volume, and word count (a list of up to 100 of the most often used words). The analysis functions can be applied to all 400+ metadata fields, the company says. (More details on that here).
Also shipping today as a part of this new addition to DataSift’s platform are five standard Preview reports, with let developers dig into the data to find out more about the quality and quantity of the data before running a full search.
A Basic report gives you an overview, with things like word clouds and pie charts. The Natural Language Processing Preview offers up sentiment analysis and entities (people, places and things mentioned). A Twitter Preview lets you hone in on Twitter word counts, hourly data volume, mentions, hashtags and more, while the Twitter Demographics Preview report lets you scope out anonymized data detailing things like gender, age, location, profession, likes and interests. And finally, a Links Preview lets you track the hourly volume of links, Twitter card data, Facebook OpenGraph data, and other items.
The company, which competes with other social data API providers like Topsy and Gnip, explains that today conversations are happening across networks, and businesses need tools that let them track more than simple keywords, but rather the social conversations in general. That’s always been DataSift’s strength – that it can not only sort through the billions of social actions out there on the web, but it can then allow its customers to filter those for demographic information, online influence, sentiment and more.
A company blog post describes how these new Preview APIs can be used, explaining how an advertiser could track a social media campaign by watching how many times a YouTube link was shared – even though people may be sharing that link without also including any particular hashtag, for example. That allows the company to better understand who the influencers are on the subject, and what sort of hashtags might work to better promote the message in the future, among other things.
The post also highlighted how complex it can be to track social conversations on today’s web, using another example detailing how a movie release is monitored. It found that Facebook and Twitter mentions peak ahead of the release, but then Instagram peaks after as people start snapping photos of themselves at the event. Meanwhile, historic insights into Bitly link data and Tumblr posts gives an even fuller picture of the kinds of things being said and who’s doing the talking.
More information on the APIs have been posted here for developers.
Microsoft Updates Windows Phone App Studio With New Graphics, SkyDrive Integration
Microsoft’s bid to help anyone to build applications for its Windows Phone platform continued this week, with an update to Windows Phone App Studio that improves the graphical diversity of apps and improved SkyDrive integration.
TechCrunch felt that Windows Phone App Studio was an interesting idea at launch and actually took the software for a spin, building our very own app for fun on the day it was released. It remains a beginners’ tool, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have potential, especially for students and niche small businesses.
It was something of a hit for Microsoft, seeing nearly 50,000 projects started in its first two days. Microsoft, not expecting such demand, had to rate-limit the inflow of new users for a period.
So, what’s new? You can now access photos that you have on SkyDrive in your application, navigation has been improved, new “icons, backgrounds, and stock images” that are available to developers, and, according to Paul Thurrott, bug fixes and performance bumps are part of the total package.
A final improvement is cleaner code samples. Microsoft claims to have made “a ton of progress” improving generated code, with the goal for “clean and lean code.” Better code is simpler to grok by beginners, the key audience for the platform.
As a platform, the Studio won’t change the short-term fortune of the Windows Phone platform, but it could help the next generation of developers become interested in Microsoft technologies. That’s no small prize.
Top Image Credit: Vernon Chan
Google Recently Made A Silent Shift To A New Search Algorithm, “Hummingbird”
Have you noticed recently that Google has gotten a bit better at offering up direct answers to questions? If so, there’s a reason for it: they recently flipped the switch on a new search algorithm they call “Hummingbird”, which focuses on parsing searches as complex questions.
Google mentioned the new algorithm for the first time today, at an event that was (in a confusing surprise to everyone who arrived at Google HQ and was put on a bus) hosted in the garage that Larry and Sergey rented as Google started to prove successful. Other things announced include a tweak to Google’s Knowledge Graph to allow it to handle comparison questions (“Which is better for me — olive oil or butter?”), and Push Notifications for Google Now on iOS.
Despite a good amount of questioning from the audience on just how Hummingbird worked, Google avoiding getting too technical. While they did say that this was the biggest overhaul to their engine since the 2009 “Caffeine” overhaul (which focused on speed and integrating social network results into search) and that it affects “around 90% of searches”, there wasn’t much offered in terms of technical details.
The main focus, and something that went repeated many a time, was that the new algorithm allows Google to more quickly parse full questions (as opposed to parsing searches word-by-word), and to identify and rank answers to those questions from the content they’ve indexed.
As for how it’ll affect results, moving forward (the ears of a zillion SEO dudes just perked): the engine overhaul was silently put in place weeks ago, right under all of our noses. If you haven’t noticed any huge jumps or drops in your search engine placement, you probably won’t any time soon — at least, not as a result of the new algorithm.
Google Improves Knowledge Graph With Comparisons And Filters, Brings Cards & Cross-Platform Notifications To Mobile
Google is turning 15 tomorrow and, fittingly, it’s celebrating the occasion by announcing a couple of new features for Google Search. The mobile search interface, for example, is about to get a bit of a redesign with results that are clustered on cards “so you can focus on the answers you’re looking for.”
Those answers, Google today announced, are also getting better. Thanks to its Knowledge Graph, the company continues to push to give users answers instead of just links, and with today’s update, it’s now featuring the ability to use the Knowledge Graph to compare things. If you want to compare the nutritional value of olive oil to butter, for example, Google Search will now give you a comparison chart with lots of details. The same holds true for other things, including dog breed and celestial objects. Google says it plans to expand this feature to more things over time.
Also new in this update is the ability to use Knowledge Graph to filter results. Say you ask Google: “Tell me about Impressionist artists.” Now, you’ll see who these artists are, and a new bar on top of the results will allow you dive in to learn more about them and to switch to learn more about abstract art, for example.
On mobile, Google is now making it easier to use your voice to set reminders and have those synced between devices. So you can say “Ok Google, Remind me to buy butter at Safeway” on your Nexus tablet and when you walk into the store with your iPhone, you’ll get that reminder. To enable this, Google will roll out a new version of its Search app for iPhone and iPad in the next few weeks.
With regard to notifications, it’s also worth noting that Google is now adding Google Now push notifications to its iPhone app, which will finally make Google Now useful on Apple’s platform.
(RED) Partner Apple Has Raised Over $65M For AIDS Research In Total
Product(RED) announced early today that its partner Apple had helped it raise more than $65 million. The announcement was made by U2 singer Bono at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting today.
The $65 million means that Apple has raised around $15 million since February 2012 with the initiative, if numbers out of an internal Apple meeting are accurate.
(RED) partners with a bunch of corporations like Nike, Starbucks, Apple, American Express and Beats, who contribute a slice of their profits from (RED)-branded products to HIV/AIDS research. Bono and Bobby Shriver of ONE/DATA created the concept in 2006 and Apple has been a partner for some time.
Bono at #CGI2013 on @RED partners: “Apple is certainly leading the crew” Thank you Apple for raising over $65 million to fight AIDS.
— (RED) (@RED) September 26, 2013
Apple currently offers a bunch of (PRODUCT)RED merchandise including an iPod Shuffle, iPod nano and iPod touch, as well as some iPad and iPhone cases.The (RED) iniative has come under fire for promoting the kind of ‘middle-man’ philanthropy that wastes money on advertising and fancy events rather than donating directly. In fact, the ONE Campaign annual report for 2012 pegged around 82 percent of expenses as going towards ‘program services’. But the organization claims that it has raised $200 million so far, and has impacted 14 million people.
One couldn’t help but think about how much more money Apple might be able to donate if it produced a (RED) version of its most popular product: The iPhone.
Apple doesn’t have a reputation for public philanthropy but has been making some moves to change that. Early last year, Tim Cook held a town hall meeting with Apple employees and noted several donations that Apple had made. Those included $50 million to Stanford’s hospitals, as well as the quoted $50 million (RED) contribution.
Of course, Apple has around $146 billion in the bank, so charitable contributions are probably a good way to snag a tax break. Hopefully the expansion of Apple’s charitable efforts under Cook continues.
Facebook Lets You Edit Posts After Sharing On Android And Web Now, iOS Soon
Typo ruin your social media masterpiece? Facebook is starting to let you edit a post’s text after you publish it. The feature comes to the web and Android in an update today, and to iOS soon. Previously you had to delete your post, lose all your Likes and comments, and repost to edit something. Android users also get emotion and activity sharing, events at a glance, and photo album creation today.
Soon you’ll be able to edit all posts and comments from the web, Android, or iOS. To edit posts, you’ll be able to click the down arrow in the top right of one of your posts and select ‘Edit Post’ to change the text. Your revisions and original post will still be viewable if friends check your post’s edit history, though. For comments, hovering over or tapping a post will reveal a pencil icon on the right you can click to start editing.
The long-requested Facebook feature was likely held back because the company was scared users would bait and switch each other. Imagine if a friend posted “Like this post if you hate Justin Bieber”, and you liked it, but then they edited it to say “Like if you LOVE Justin Bieber”. That could defame your music tastes.
But Facebook apparently found that the edit history section was enough to deter people from such trickery. It started allowing users to edit comments in June 2012, and Page owners have also had the ability to edit text on photo posts for a while. Facebook seems to have encountered few problems so now everyone is getting the option.
Google+ has had post editing for a while, facilitating its more long-winded, in-depth discussion style. Don’t expect editing to come to Twitter anytime soon, though, as it wouldn’t jive with the service’s real-time permanent record style.
The feature could be a big help on mobile where touchscreen keypads make it easy to screw up. It’s always a shame to have to wash away the comments you got immediately just to make an “its” an “it’s”. Facebook may have been losing posts to deletions because of typos, so the change could also add just a tiny more content flowing to the News Feed that brings in eyeballs for its ads.
Google Updates Their iOS Search App With Google Now Push Notifications
This morning at an oddly mysterious* event in Mountain View, Google announced a minor, but not insignificant, update to their Google Search app for iOS: Push Notifications.
[* "Mysterious" in the sense that Google told us to meet them at their Mountain View campus, then quickly shuffled us onto a bus and got on the freeway without telling us much about where we were headed. I was pretty sure I was about to be assimilated into the Android army. Turns out, they were taking us to a garage that Larry and Sergey rented from Google's now senior VP Susan Wojcicki a few years into their Googlequest.]
So, what does all that mean for you? Mostly, that Google Now for iOS will be able to alert you of things it’s noticed without you having to enter the app. If the traffic is jammed on your route to work, for example, it can throw an alert directly to your lock screen.
If you’re an Android user, that feature might seem a bit old-hat. As Google Now can run constantly in the background on Android, it’s been able to do such things for a while now. On iOS, however, most apps are shuffled into a state of hibernation, requiring developers to use Apple’s push notification system to send background alerts to the user. Until now, Google Now for iOS hadn’t made use of these notifications.
Evernote Announces A Market For Physical Products, Including Post-Its … And Socks?
Evernote, the popular note-taking app with 75 million users, today unveiled the latest chapter in its bid to become the go-to place for people to store all their memories — a decisive move into physical merchandise.
It’s entering a partnership with 3M and its Post-it note brand to develop a special line of notepads and a camera to take notes, record them, and then seamlessly transfer them into Evernote’s platform. That news was actually leaked last night, but today Evernote went one step further, announcing that these products and more will now be sold through a special online shop, called Evernote Market. (The company says the market will also be available in its desktop and mobile apps.)
The announcement is being made on-stage at Evernote’s EC3 conference in San Francisco. CEO Phil Libin said that it might seem “weird” for the company to get into physical products, but he noted that the company teamed up with Moleskine last year to create a special notebook with features to make it easier to digitize notes in Moleskine’s pretty leather notebooks.
“Paperless is not the goal — great experience is not the goal.” Libin said, later adding, “We want to eliminate the stupid uses of paper, but we want to extend the great uses.”
Other products that will be new to the market in addition to the Post-it products are devices from ScanSnap and Adonit.
ScanSnap’s Evernote Edition, the company says, is the result of a collaboration with ScanSnap “to marry hardware speed and precision with Evernote’s organization and sync features.” It says it will be the most advanced scanner-to-service integration on the market.
Meanwhile, the Jot Script Evernote Edition Stylus from Adonit is “the first and only fine point stylus on the market, and optimized to work with Penultimate, Evernote’s award winning handwriting application.”
And Evernote is also unveiling a line of lifestyle products that don’t really have a strong tech angle but are customized with company branding. Those include the Evernote Rucksack and Evernote Flat Pack from Côte&Ciel. And there are socks! It’s a real soup-to-nuts approach.
Think of what Evernote is doing as the enterprise-y version of the same strategy that has been embodied by consumer brands like Disney and Rovio’s Angry Birds. Or even the same concept of vertical integration embodied by companies like Apple. The idea is that physical products not only extend the brand of the bigger company. But it will also give users more ways of tapping into Evernote and making it more used, and useful.
Judging by the fact that Rovio itself projects to make more revenue from merchandising than it does from its actual games — and Apple, of course, makes vastly more profit from its hardware than it does its services — this could end up being a smart move for Evernote. To date, the company’s biggest revenue streams come from people who pay for its premium apps. This gives the company a more diversified monetization strategy longer term.
Evernote VP of Product Jeff Zwerner said that as the company looks at physical integrations, it follows five broad principles — giving physical products a digital future, balancing life and work, bringing “global finds” to users, incrementally improving essential products, and designing software and hardware together.
“That’s right, we’re a fashion brand now,” Libin said. “No one saw that coming.”
Hands On With The New And Improved Screenhero, The App That Takes Screen Sharing To The Next Level
If you think screen sharing has already been mastered by the likes of WebEx and GoToMeeting, you probably haven’t tried Screenhero yet. ScreenHero, which launched earlier this year out of Y Combinator, is an app that turns any Mac or PC into a completely collaborative environment — a place where two people can not just share a screen, but also work together on it with their own mouse cursors in real-time.
It’s a great concept, especially for software engineers and designers — indeed, ScreenHero co-founder and CEO J Sherwani says that they have been the earliest adopters of the app in its beta form. But ScreenHero has debuted new updated version of its app for Mac (a new Windows version is on the way) that could help push its popularity further into the mainstream.
Sherwani stopped by TechCrunch HQ this week to give us a firsthand look at the updated Screenhero, and you can see that in the video embedded above.
The biggest overall difference in the new Screenhero is that it’s much more responsive — that’s because its been rebuilt to use H264 rather than its original VP8. The app also now includes voice chat, which was a highly-requested feature (it helps to be able to talk to someone that you’re sharing a mouse with, and now people won’t have to set up a separate call to do so.) The UI has gotten a facelift, as well.
Right now, Screenhero is still free since it’s in beta mode. Eventually, Sherwani says it will offer professional pricing plans for a yet-to-be determined cost.
In general, Screenhero is an app that seems to fit more with the modern way of working than legacy screen sharing apps. By default, Screenhero lets both people take control of the display — it’s built to facilitate a real conversation between equals, not a lecture from on high. It’s a solid philosophy that should appeal to how people want to do business today. It will be exciting to see how Screenhero grows from here.
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