Product Reviews Exclusive: Sneak Peak at Google DreamAds! ReadWriteWeb has discovered the existence of a stealth Google project, called DreamAds. It is a very ambitious project, topping even the wireless balloons which Google is also looking into. Essentially DreamAds is Google's latest plan to extend AdSense - this time into our dreams. It may sound far-fetched, but an inside source at Google told us… Emre Sokullu View comments
Trends Graphing Social Patterns Recap O'Reilly's Graphing Social Patterns conference, which was held this week in San Diego, brought together key people who are shaping the newly born social platforms industry; platform providers, app makers, investors, advertising networks, etc. Our own Sean Ammirati was one of the speakers and has already covered some of the most important… Emre Sokullu View comments
Advertising Plan B for Microsoft: Split up the Advertising Atom Since Microsoft made its $44 billion offer for Yahoo! (so far rejected), many industry veterans, including Fred Wilson and Paul Kedrosky, have proposed ideas for Yahoo! to increase profitability, avoid a take over by Microsoft (which could potentially damage M&A activities) and stay independent (though without search, Id call it… Emre Sokullu View comments
International What Is It About Turkey? It's A Lot of Things TechCrunch's Mike Butcher reports about Turkish social network Yonja's $12.5 million worth of funding and asks, "What is it about Turkey?." As a Turkish native, I think I am the right person to answer that question and also, this can be an opportunity to shed some light on the latest intriguing developments at Facebook, LinkedIn, Xing, and… Emre Sokullu View comments
Analysis The State of Office 2.0 and its Future Over the past 10 years, Corel, Sun, IBM and others have tried to compete with Microsoft in the office software business, but thus far none of them have been able to take a significant chunk of Microsoft's large market share, which generates revenues exceeding $15 billion each year. These companies have tried everything; including Sun open… Emre Sokullu View comments
Amazon Why Amazon's HaaS (Hardware as a Service) Strategy is a Winner We all know the term 'Software as a Service (SaaS). The term SaaS was coined in a conference in 2005 and then popularized by Salesforce with its "No Software" motto. Today Google is one of the strongest backers of this approach, with such products as Gmail, Google Reader and Google Docs. And ever since Bill Gates' famous Internet… Emre Sokullu View comments
TechCrunch40, 2007 TechCrunch40: Entertainment for All Ages This was the final session on Day 2 - and the title said it all. Some of these 5 entertainment startups target kids, some target adults! FlowPlay FlowPlay is a gaming social networking site that targets the teen demographic. It consists of Flash-based animatable avatars, enabling you to interact with your virtual friends without revealing who… Emre Sokullu View comments
TechCrunch40, 2007 TechCrunch40: Rich Media and Mashups The third session of the day dealt with rich media and mashups. These companies all had something to do with images, music, or movies in some way. Below are summaries and thoughts from the five presentations in this group. xtr3D xtr3D is trying to change the way we interact with computers. Their software replaces the traditional mouse and… Emre Sokullu View comments
TechCrunch40, 2007 TechCrunch40: Revenue Models & Analytics In the second session of the second day, it is the turn of advertising companies. AdBrite AdBrite has announced a new product: SPOTTT.com. It's a link exchange program that is very similar to LinkExchange (from the web 1.0 era). Just to remind you; LinkExchange was sold to Microsoft for $265M in 1998. Started by FuckedCompany's founder Philip… Emre Sokullu View comments
TechCrunch40, 2007 TechCrunch40: Productivity and Web Apps The second and final day of the TechCrunch40 conference is underway with the first of the final four start up sessions. Session 5 focuses on productivity and web applications. Below are my thoughts about each of the startups that presented. Xobni Xobni ("inbox" spelled backwards), makes the Insight plugin for Microsoft Outlook that adds… Emre Sokullu View comments