Jig is: delicious founder of delicious Labs Debuts Q&A encounters problems platform

Leena Rao is currently working as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school Medill School of journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007 she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney advocacy and community relations in New York. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where it was ... ? Read More

We've been waiting for delicious founder Joshua Schacter debut secret product goes out of its newest launch delicious Labs. And now the wait is over with the debut of a Jig, Q&A meets the recommendations of the site.

As fellow co-founder Nick Nguyen writes on the blog our Jig Jig is a website that will help you with your needs – by making it easy to share them with people who can help solve them. We have built a Jig to make it easy to describe what you need just a few words.

On a Jig, you can and try to find something "necessary" to help someone to find what they need to meet the needs of search by keyword or offer other help solve a problem or satisfy the demand. For example, you can place the need for Jig community (that is, I need a new design for my website, I need a new logo, etc.) and then members can propose solutions, or invite a friend to help.

You can log in to Twitter and Facebook to fill your social graph, create a profile with your personal information and follow the people on a Jig, like Quora. You can also specify your ' accessories ', which allows you to connect a group of users something in common with you. It is essentially a group function in the platform.

The site is fairly simple in design and functionality, but obviously this is only the beginning for Jig. As Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson notes Jig "the market needs of the people of things." Obviously this can evolve in many ways.

Delicious Labs raises $ 3 million in funding from Union Square Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and unnamed Angel investors.

Delicious Labs is founded by Joshua Schachter, founder of Delicious, and ex-googler Paul Rademacher and former Director of the Mozilla Add-ons, Nick Nguyen. Delicious Labs ...

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Hell Hath No Fury like a gamer scorned SuperPoke pets

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MG Siegler has been writing for TechCrunch since 2009. He covers the web, mobile, social, big companies, small companies, essentially everything. And Apple. A lot. Prior to TechCrunch, he covered various technology beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan. He’s previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked in Hollywood and in San Diego where... ? Learn More

This past Thursday, Google decided they had had enough of their Slide experiment. Even though it had only been a year since they spent $200 million+ on the social apps startup, they brought the hammer down, killing all but one Slide product (Prizes.org). The casualty list included Slide projects both new and old. And that sucks for apps like Photovine which just launched last week. But one Slide app termination above all others has people really up in arms: SuperPoke! Pets. How do I know? The comment section on TechCrunch.

If you look at our post about the Google killing Slide from Thursday, you’ll find 230+ comments right now. In the Facebook comments era of TechCrunch, this is a ton. In our pre-Facebook comments era this would probably equate to over 1,000 comments. And nearly every single one of these comments is in response to the killing of SuperPoke! Pets.

Google, you just pissed off the wrong group of casual gamers. And yes, nearly every single one of them seems to be a woman. That’s why I have to give the title of best comment (and credit for the headline of this post) to Annette Samford for the following gem:

Hell hath no fury like a SPP player scorned. Shame on you Google. You could have sent that 200 mil to the homeless and left the game alone. It’s not like any new developing was going on anyway. What was it costing you? Lame excuse for ditching a VERY popular and loved game by so many.

Samford’s comment also encapsulates many of the other comments. These players are really pissed off. I’ll paste a selection of the top comments below, because they do deserve a bigger audience — many of them clearly spent a lot of money on this game over the years. And they’re taking to the TechCrunch comment section because the official Slide post has no comment section.

Tonya Surbaugh:

People get to transfer photos but what about the LOYAL superpoke pets players? Not to mention all the $$$ spent on the game to see it go bye bye? GOOGLE + you say? I say hell to the NO!

Barbara Puder:

I started playing SuperPoke Pets because it was different from other games. It’s more social than any of the other games I’d played, and appealed more to to my creative side that the shoot-em-up or compete with other players type of games. Playing SPP is relaxing and fulfilling, without the time-crunch aspects of games like Farmville and Mafia Wars. (Really, Mafia Wars? We don’t have enough violence already?) I think it’s a huge mistake to eliminate this unique method of social and creative interaction. Please think very hard before pulling the plug, and reconsider what you could do with this game given the appropriate development and support.

Kitty Kurburski:

I too play Superpoke Pets and if you are taking it are you going to reimburse those of us who have spent money buying items for the game? This is a very sad day if you take our game. We love it.

Deborah Argerake:

Class action lawsuit requesting reimbursement for $$$ spent. Even after the slide team knew they were getting shut down, the promoted more sales. That seems a bit shady if not totally unethical. Could it be considered illegal? Any law student players out there want to bring this question to your professors?

Brianne Lane Baker:

I am very sad to see Superpoke! Pets go too! It’s the only game I have spent 2 years playing. I made lots of friends and loved how creative people could be with the game… never known another game that allows so much creativity.

Janice Hayes Scullenger:

this is the most hateful thing you could have done. millions of us on on this game. most people have disabilities and this is what they have. we have developed friendships. alot of people have spent tons on money on here. are you going to give them that back? but most of all you are taking away something that we have poured our heart and souls in. I have been on this game for over 3 years. I have some truly awesome people that I look forward to speaking to every day. I will drop all my google emails, change my servers and have over 3000 people on my yahoo account that will be more than happy to help me spread the word that google doesn’t care about the people that put faith in them. does google kick dogs and steal candy from babies too?

Lisa Morris Foster:

To say I am upset is an understatement! We all bought into you VIP for free from now on, after you stopped charging for gold. You knew that we would all spend the $$ to get it! I have invested thousands into this game. I think that I should be able to put that masterpiece I bought into my living room! Sell Slide to someone who might actually want to make some money and run it right, instead of running it into the ground! Google, you have let us all down! Make this right!

Michelle Strong:

WTF! Why did you buy Slide just to shut it down? I only play Superpoke Pets and I am not happy

Michelle Rustray Serrano:

I am so bummed..I must say I knew it was coming..SO my promise to YOU GOOGLE..I will NEVER use or buy a Google product EVER..YOU SUCK!

Jennifer Gyurkovic-Hagmann:

Hey Google! I expect a check in the mail for all of the gold items that I have in the SuperPoke Pets game. You do realize that people paid REAL MONEY for gold items, don’t you? If you do not make this right with all of the SPP players, I will never pay for anything Google ever again. I will also tell all who will listen what has happened here and how you care so little for the consumer!

Cathy Allaire:

IF YOU KILL OFF SUPERPOKE PETS, I WILL NOT EVER USE GOOGLE CHROME, GMAIL……NOT A SINGLE THING THAT YOU OWN…….SUPERPOKE PETS IS A GREAT GAME…..ALLOW US TO DOWNLOAD SUPERPOKE PETS TO OUR COMPUTER, SO THAT WE CAN CONTINUE TO PLAY OUR GAME. WE HAVE SPENT ALOT OF MONEY ON THIS GAME, AND IT IS SO UNFAIR TO TAKE IT AWAY FROM US.

Irene Schleinkofer Pedrogo:

Are you Freakin kidding me! This is BullShit! I’ve spent Alot of MONEY on Superpoke Pets I think YOU should THINK of something else to do so I don’t Loose my GOLD ITEMS!

Lisa T Spp:

I’ve heard of suicide missions but this tops them all! If Google really does shut down SuperPoke Pets they might as well close their own doors at the same time. As for Max Levchin leaving to pursue other opportunities, I don’t think anyone here would ever support any endeavor he undertakes. I, like millions of other players invested a lot of money into Slide through the SPP game and I view this no differently than if I had invested money in any other company or any other commodity. I foresee a major class action suite in the works if this all goes down. So much joy turning into so much sadness.

Clarice’s TeeTee:

spp players……….. who would join together in a lawsuit to get our money back from the items we have purchased?

And, for some levity, Wayne Elgin:

Favorite part of this post? The Farmville moms trolling TC.

Your move, Google. A number of players are now threatening class-action lawsuits due to the money issue. We’ll see if they follow through on those threats, but this situation could be a bad one for Google — especially when you consider that they just launched their own casual games section on Google+.

Here’s a dumb question: why doesn’t Google just move SuperPoke! Pets over to the Google+ Games section? Clearly, it has a rabid fan base. In fact, why not just move all the Slide games over there?

Slide, founded by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, makes widgets that help people express themselves. The company took a big risk in 2006 when they gave users the ability...

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Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of...

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Facebook kills daily deals, but keep-registration transactions

MG Siegler at TechCrunch to write for the 2009 year. It covers web, mobile, social, big companies, small companies, almost all. And Apple. A lot. Prior to TechCrunch it covers different technologies beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, mg attended the University of Michigan. He previously lived in Los Angeles, where he worked in Hollywood and in San Diego where ... ? Read More

Quietly announcing they have killed off their nascent product deals this afternoon, Facebook has caused some confusion. (C) a decision to kill off Facebook site earlier this week, you see, everyone wanted to know what this means for location-based transactions, they started with it? Those who remain alive, Facebook said at the time. With today's performance will change anything?

No, says Facebook. Daily transactions separated from check transactions. -Registration of transactions will work slightly differently from the end of the site, but the company will continue to maintain and strengthen this product. Daily deals are dead — and e-mail account thanks them for it.

Facebook's statement on this issue:

After testing transactions for four months, we decided to put an end to our product deals in the coming weeks. We believe that there are a lot of power in the social approach to driving people in local enterprises. We remain committed to building products to help local businesses connect with people like ads, landing pages, authors of short stories and registration transactions. We learned a lot from our tests, and we will continue to evaluate how to best serve local businesses.

The more brutal terms that might be easier to understand: they are killing off their Groupon killer while maintaining a half their Foursquare killer during the murder of the other half of their Foursquare killer.

The following is a reminder of what still alive registration transaction will look on iPhone Facebook application:

Facebook is the largest social network, with more than 500 million users. Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in February 2004, originally as an exclusive network for students at Harvard University. She ...

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Russian giant Yandex search gets social news startup Tweeted times»

Robin Wauters is currently staff writer for TechCrunch and lead editor of Virtualization.com. In addition to its activities, professional blogging, he is an entrepreneur, the organizer of the event, from time to time the Council consultant and an angel investor, but most importantly champion full launch. Wauters lives and works in Belgium, a tiny country in Europe. He can often be found from his home or ... ? Read More

Yandex, one of the leading Internet companies in Russia, has acquired a startup enterprise "Times" Tweeted that lets people create custom online "newspaper" of their Twitter accounts. Financial terms of the purchase were not disclosed, but ESPN Sports said it aims to continue to offer social news service and that the whole team "Times" Tweeted to join search engine company.

Tweeted once co-founded Maxim Grinev and Maria Grineva, computer scientists at ETH Zurich, Switzerland and others.

Its users include celebrities like Snoop Dogg Alyssa Milano and Lance Weiler.

Yandex, which became public in May and is currently estimated at just shy of 10 billion dollars, plans to use the technology acquired from The Times, Tweeted to increase its search and content services with information from social networks.

This is the third Company Yandex acquired in the past nine months – his most recent purchases include single sign-on plugin maker Loginza and WebVisor in technology of analysis of behaviors and commands.

Tweeted once, formerly called the Twitter times competes with social news curation service Paper.li, which itself has raised more than $ 2 million in funding.

Another company operating in this space — Summify.

Yandex is an Internet technology company that operates in Russia and CIS countries. This is the largest Russian and seventh largest in the world of Internet searching. "Yandex" is an acronym for. ..

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Life is a crime: If you attempt to Shakedown my virtual office TechCrunch, I would almost beat you

MG Siegler at TechCrunch to write for the 2009 year. It covers web, mobile, social, big companies, small companies, almost all. And Apple. A lot. Prior to TechCrunch it covers different technologies beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, mg attended the University of Michigan. He previously lived in Los Angeles, where he worked in Hollywood and in San Diego where ... ? Read More

There is a simple fundamental reasons why Grand Theft Auto has exploded in the phenomenon. Everyone has sometimes criminal trends. And practically indulge them a hell of a lot better than actually indulging them and moral implications — or physical consequences. As a prison.

But what if you could make the Grand Theft Auto concept even more immersive, tying in the real world? Here's what life is all about.

New mobile game red robot laboratory-based Mike Ouye, Pete Hawley and John Harris, the former leaders at Playdom, EA and SCEE start — allows you to put a life of crime to your phone. This location-based games launch today for Android devices which can be highly addictive.

Think of it as Foursquare meets Grand Theft Auto meets Spymaster (remember the Spymaster?) corresponds to Gowalla — well, old Gowalla before they recently said they have killed an element of virtual goods. Essence to go around your city and battle other properties of the element. The point is not to "register" to attack the other players all that you have to capture the city.

"Social utility guys taught people such as registration, but it's not real deep gaming experience," says the Ouye. "We're going after the gaming space. We are talking about the discovery of new places while playing igru"on continues.

Life is a crime uses real cards, which are individual red robot Labs group to include a virtual view of key landmarks in the city. Right now, Seattle (where red robot Labs is the opening game at PAX today) is constructed from. Soon after San Francisco and other cities in the United States will be too. These maps to incentivize people to fight for the Golden Gate Bridge, for example.

However, any location is fair game. Management team TechCrunch, for example to add.

The combat nature of the game is quite simple. You find someone you want to fight and becomes a Battle with the support of your weapons and stats. If you have a indicator of reputation than your opponent, you can remove them in battle. But perhaps they have a better tool than you even wait a little bit of that.

First game will mainly be a single player experience. But down the line, the red robot guys hope people form virtual bands to battle other bands for the superiority of the location. One of the ideas that the team has is Android vs. iPhone when the iPhone version launches later this fall. Maybe Jason and I will play at OMG JK.

At one point the red team robot got around 200 Googlers he played in the Googleplex, we are told.

In the end, as a form of gangs in the game will be different levels that individual users can rise to within the gang.

Another element of the game is to pick up and go virtual goods with other users — both sides are rewarded in the game for this action. There are about 200 names in the game right now and a lot of settings for users.

In the broader sense of life is a crime is a location-based gaming platform, the red robot Labs hopes to build a simple step. Their intention was to three games at this year's platform is two, built them, and the third party.

The location of the game is wide open right now, the Ouye says. ", and we're going after him because they really sticky" he continues.

"We compete for 30 seconds or 1 minute when you are in the waiting line. You want to make a virtual crime than range, or you want to register? "

You hear that Foursquare? Man up. Time to fight.

Life is a crime can be found in the Android market here.

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Red Robot Labs is the launch of mobile games, located in Palo Alto, California. The company was founded in January 2011, the team of industry veterans who are passionate ...

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XYDO, Web social network for news, brings daily, custom sticky notes to your Inbox (invites)

RIP Empson-writer at TechCrunch. He did not find friends here, he is here to win and you don't forget it. You can contact him at rip [at] techcrunch [dot] com ? more

Where do you get your news (TechCrunch, of course)? Some of you may be familiar to the tactile experience of newsprint, ink on my fingers, but chances are that your news consumption is largely online — or on a mobile device. But thanks to content fire hose, which is the Internet, there are a lot of irrelevant junk floating around out there, and thus focus digital readers and content distributors has improved filters, aggregators and readers of this channel noise in the signal.

Whether your go to resource for real-time news will be Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, or TechMemes the world we all are looking for simple, curator, and social, way to use content from the sites we believe — as we would like to, but not so frequently visit.

XYDO, run, which began in May and raised $ 1.25 from EPIC ventures and many of the angels in June, hopped in the space of social news, user experience, which combines the best parts of sites like Digg, and Hacker News in an effort to serve you with relevant, curator and social news from top content houses.

XYDO met with early success (over 750000 unique visitors in August only) from this very idea: he wanted to be news, which effectively prioritizes content that really matters to you. Firstly, it does so through its Web platform. But what if we don't want to click over XYDO.com each time we want to get the latest news?

To expand its mission news personalization and try to hit the user with a virtual version of rolled up newspaper directly at home, launching today announces the launch of XYDO brief, which seeks to deliver a personalized and relevant news based on the user's social interactions, networks, and traces all email, place they may constitute at least once a day.

News by email? And this is nothing new, you might say. And you'd be wrong. But XYDO hopes to offer a value proposition and an opportunity to rethink that position, combing your social network to ensure a truly just and real-time Web method to get the news through the Inbox. A brief XYDO uses the same social, sourcing mixed with actual human curation techniques that it uses its flagship product.

Each piece of content that enters the system (from more than 100000 content sources) is scored based on the recommendations of its launch 2 million + contributors and curators. Using the secret sauce of social network aggregation and prioritization, mixed with crowdsourced Conservancy, XYDO serves its users in between personalized News 10-12 in each email is passed these guidelines have been tested to ensure social news you get in your Inbox you want to see news.

The default value for the XYDO a brief — one message per day, but users can navigate to and select the different categories of explosions (whether "technology" or "policy"), they would get, as well as how many of these notes they wish to receive, and what time of day. For those who live on the wire this seems very similar; This e-mail version widely available.

Thus, for those of us who in one way or another to spend all day in our mailboxes, being able to tinker with a simple service, which you configure in an attempt to provide a simple way to read news without having to go look for our social networks and favorite content sources — is of paramount importance.

Also note: XYDO provides readers with TechCrunch with 500 exclusive (and free) should check their new product. To test the service for yourself, click here. Then come on back and let us know what you think.

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Bloody Thursday: Google Deadpools slide all goods except for one

MG Siegler at TechCrunch to write for the 2009 year. It covers web, mobile, social, big companies, small companies, almost all. And Apple. A lot. Prior to TechCrunch it covers different technologies beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, mg attended the University of Michigan. He previously lived in Los Angeles, where he worked in Hollywood and in San Diego where ... ? Read More

Because we need more big tech news this week. Yes, it's true that Google just brought down the hammer on the slide, as Liz Gannes AllThingsD was first reported earlier this evening. Yes, it is true that Max Levchin leaves. Now we know the fate of all products slide. And it's not pretty.

They all went out of business, except for one, we have learned. This means the slideshow products to Google's acquisition of the company a year ago, and new to slide command builds within Google over the past year. Yes, it includes new products like Disco, pool party, incoming video and just started last week Photovine. They are all dead.

The lone exception Prizes.org (which we reviewed here), we have heard. The reason is that it was elaborated by a group of slides in China for Google, and they will keep is, apparently.

It was only in August last year, Google bought slide for about $ 200 million after employee bonuses. The idea is to get more serious about social gaming, and get a proven entrepreneur Levchin on board. But much has changed in the past year — on the one hand, Eric Schmidt is no longer a Director. For another Google now has Google +.

The slide has been running as a fully autonomous unit is broken down into smaller groups inside of Google. During the time that seemed like a good strategy that can keep Google prompt. Now it just looks kind of silly.

The slide was so autonomous that many work on products that compete with features that were part of the Google +. Many of the applications created iOS first, and does not work at all on Google Android platform.

For its part, Google has only the following statement:

Max decided to leave the slide, and use other features, and we wish him success. Most of the commands from the slide stays on Google to work on other opportunities.

This is also true that slide commands not to learn about this bloodshed before this afternoon. Can't help but feel bad for those commands-especially Photovine command, which is really just run their spots photo sharing app a week ago. Unlike other projects slide Google even gave them both PR resources to get the word out about app. eight days later, dead.

Larry page was clearly not messing around with his efforts to streamline Google as much as possible and trim any fat. While Google said that the majority of the members of the Group slide will remain on Google, I wouldn't be surprised to see the outcome pretty quickly.

Update: slide just put up the following blog post to let customers know about cancelled the product:

We wanted to give you all in advance in the coming months the resignation of a number of products and applications of the slide. This includes slide in products such as slideshows and SuperPoke! Pets, as well as more recent products such as Photovine, video of the Inbox and pool party. We have created products with a view to providing a fun way for people to connect, communicate and share. Although we are incredibly grateful to our users and for all the wonderful feedback over the years, many of these products is no longer as active or has not yet caught as we initially expected.

Most importantly we would like to take this opportunity to assure you that we are committed to help our users save their data as easily as soon as possible. We recognize that many of you are valuable content with us and want to assure you that, whenever possible, you'll have plenty of time to load this information or transfer it to another service.

For example, Slide.com, we will allow users to upload their photos, or export them in Picasa account. We are working to release this function exports in the coming weeks, and after adding, users will have several months to take advantage of the translation of their photos.

Google provides search and advertising services, which together seek to organize and monetize the world's information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers many ...

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Slide was founded by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, makes widgets that help people express themselves. The company took a big risk in 2006 year, when they gave users the ability to ...

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