Common Paradox Tech Blog

Google just launched a new feature on the mobile version of Google Product Search which could take local shopping search startup Milo out at the knees. Whenever you do a Google product search from a mobile phone, blue dots will appear next to items which are in-stock at nearby stores. The image at right is from a search I just did for “HDTVs.”  The blue dots are subtle, but they certainly distinguish those results. Google has partnerships with Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm to show local inventory, and it is inviting other merchants to apply to participate as well.

Highlighting local inventory in product search results is exactly what Milo does, although it works on the Web as well as mobile. Milo will have to try to keep one step ahead of Google now that its business has been targeted as a feature of Google Product search.

Consumer Reports has a new report on which computer company has the best tech support. Apple wins! That’s what happens when the same company controls the hardware as well as the operating system (and several of the most prominent pieces of software). The highest ranking PC manufacturer is Dell for desktops and Lenovo for laptops.

Google launched a new service today in from its Labs called Google Reader Play. It is a more visual way to browse through the most popular items being saved and shared on Google Reader. When you launch it, you are presented with a large photo, video, or text excerpt on the main part of the screen, and can flip through by clicking on arrows or selecting an item from the filmstrip at the bottom of the screen.

Google Reader Play doesn’t require you to sign in, but if you do then you can star, share, and like items, and it starts to recommend things to you based on what your friends share, star, and like in Google Reader. The user interface seems to borrow a lot from StumbleUpon, with its concept of randomly flicking through the best stuff on the Web. In particular, it’s very similar to StumbleVideo, except it includes more than just videos. It is very image-heavy. The user interface reminds me of some elements of enjosythin.gs as well in the way that it presents images and text excerpts in a blown-up manner. The arrows are very Fast Flip, another Labs experiment for the Google News in making magazine and newspaper articles more visually browsable.

Two weeks ago on TechCrunch I posted “The Facebook Imperative,” which posed a simple question, “Why isn’t all enterprise software like Facebook?” It was the next iteration of the question I asked in 1999 that spawned salesforce.com, “Why isn’t all enterprise software like Amazon.com.” If you have read my book, Behind The Cloud, you are well aware how that one question launched a company, and a movement. Its been an exciting decade. But the real excitement is just starting.

Frankly, I’ve been amazed by the huge amount of responses, tweets, and comments (aka “the ruckus across the blogoshere,” as Joe McKendrick calls it). It only strengthens my conviction that we are about to see the greatest revolution in enterprise software, ever. Well, really, the most exciting revolution in computing, ever.

Editor’s note: This guest post is written by Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com.

Live video streaming on the web is becoming more and more popular, and for news organizations and brands who don’t want to shell out thousands of dollars a day for a satellite truck there is another option. At SXSW, Kyte is going to release a new product called Kyte LivePro Unwired with Spin magazine.

LivePro is a computer in a backpack connected to six data cards all uploading live video at the same time, balancing the load across three different carriers (Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon). It is made by LiveU and Kyte will be reselling it to its larger customers. Kyte CEO Daniel Graf came by my office the other day to show me the technology (see video after the jump).

Earlier today, Google chief economist gave a presentation to an FTC workshop on the changing economics of the newspaper industry. We all know that newspaper ad revenues have been falling off a cliff for years. Many media companies blame Google and are trying to put the genie back in the bottle with partial metered models for online news.

Google is understandably on the defensive, trotting out Varian to paint an unemotional picture with as much data as he can muster. But the picture he paints is a dour one for print media. For instance, the chart above shows the decline of overall newspaper ad revenues. Newspapers have taken huge hits in classifieds advertising (in blue) and national brand advertising (in red). The online portion (green) is still too small to make much of a difference.

When Chomp launched eight weeks ago in the iTunes store, it launched as an app for reviewing other iPhone apps. The app shows you a stream of realtime reviews, which you can filter by everyone or just your Facebook freinds. The app is showing some traction and should hit 300,000 active monthly users sometime tomorrow, according to co-founder Ben Keighran.

While it started out as an app, today Chomp launched a complimentary Website with full app search capabilities and links for each app. There, users can also see the stream of reviews, as well as dedicated pages for each app and vanity URLs for each reviewer. Developers can now link to the Chomp reviews directly from inside their apps using Chomp Connect, which also launched today in private beta. Chomp Connect lets developers add Chomp review buttons right inside their apps without forcing to go anywhere else.

Does the world need more than one Twitter? How about 10,000 of them? That is how many sites are running on the hosted version of StatusNet, which went into private beta at our Realtime CrunchUp last November. Today, StatusNet is opening up its hosted service to all comers in a public beta.

You can think about StatusNet as the WordPress of microblogging. StatusNet is open-source software which can either be downloaded and run on your own enterprise servers or now on StatusNet’s hosted servers. Basic service is free, with plans to charge for premium levels down the line. The premium versions will be ad-free, support unlimited users, larger file sizes, your own domain and design, Facebook and Twitter integration, and XMPP feeds.

With the SXSW conference approaching in Austin, we are seeing a lot of geo-location launching this year. A lot of startups are taking advantage of Foursquare’s APIs in particular to get their geo apps quickly out of the gate.

Take FourWhere. It is a pretty basic mashup of Foursquare comments and venues overlayed on Google Maps. You can search by city and neighborhood, and see all the recent tips from people who have checked into various nearby restaurants, bars, stores, and offices. The site forces you to right-click to see comments or venues instead of just having a menu in the side, but it does the job.

We have written repeatedly that Windows itself is one of the main reasons why touchscreen computers have never caught the general public’s attention. The interface just wasn’t designed for finger input. Like it or not, that’s the truth. Windows was designed to be used with a mouse, and to a lesser extent, a pen or stylus.

That’s fine. Windows 7 works great. I’m writing this on a Win7 machine. But I hate Windows on my tablet computers for the aforementioned reason. It’s also the reason I’m very apprehensive of the upcoming onslaught of slate computers. I’m afraid that wonderful hardware will be passed up in favor of the disappointing iPad because of the interface. But Adobe gave me hope today in its demo of Flash and Air on the HP slate device.