That Flickr Account Wasn’t Marissa Mayer, But She *Is* Currently Looking For A New Head Of Flickr

Alexia Tsotsis is the co-editor of TechCrunch. She attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA, majoring in Writing and Art, and moved to New York City shortly after graduation to work in the Media industry. After four years of living in New York and attending courses at New York University, she returned to Los Angeles in... ? Learn More

Oh Process Journalism, how lucky we here at TechCrunch are that we get to practice you. Anyways, here’s what I got: That “Marissa Mayer” account that went up on Flickr earlier today isn’t actually Marissa. While Mayer does have a personal Flickr account, it’s currently set to Private: We should have known she would never use a corporate Google photo on a Yahoo account!

Note: Yahoo PR *still* hasn’t responded to Anthony Ha’s email request for clarification.

While we’ve also learned that the increase in Flickr hiring started well before Mayer arrived, there is one key development that can be attributed to the new CEO: The hunt is on for a new, executive Flickr Product Head, because the site is currently being held together by Product Director Markus Spiering. Spiering is presently the de facto Flickr lead within Yahoo despite answering to Flickr General Manager Douglas Alexander.

Mayer is hoping to fill the position via acquisition, and is currently sniffing around the startup ecosystem for likely candidates; as it will probably be difficult to find the talent the company is looking for through a simple hire. The strategy is to have an entrepreneur in charge. And there are rumors that much of the existing team is being completely reorg’d, which is big company speak for dismantled.

Flickr, founded by Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake in 2004, has had tumultuous leadership and cultural change before being left in its current beleaguered state — going from the guidance of its original founders, to PM Matthew Rothenberg to Spiering. The changes left it slow and vulnerable to more nimble and mobile focused competitors like Instagram.

The product is the number one thing The Internet would like to see Mayer fix during her tenure at Yahoo, so it’s no surprise she’s made it a priority. Now if she’d only make her real account public.

Former game designers Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake created Flickr, an online photo sharing network, in 2004. Flickr, which began as a photo-sharing feature of their gaming project, has since then blossomed into one of the premiere photo-sharing sites on the web. Yahoo purchased Flickr for $35 million in March of 2005. Since then Flickr continues to compete with other photo-sharing giant Photobucket.

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Back To School: How To Ace Taking Notes

Jordan Crook studied English Literature at New York University before entering the tech space. Prior to joining TechCrunch, Crook dabbled in mobile marketing and mobile apps as well as doing device reviews for MobileMarketer and MobileBurn. Crook is fascinated with alternative energy production and greentech. She is now a writer for CrunchGear. ? Learn More

Back in the day, before the printing press made books a widely available commodity, students sat through class transcribing each and every word of a published work, as dictated by the teacher. We still take notes today, sure, but note-taking and lectures themselves have come a long way.

So as you tie your shoes, zip up your backpack, and head off to your first day of college (or second, third, or fourth first day of college), take these five methods into consideration for all your note-taking information-retaining needs.

While I maintain that there are plenty of better ways to jot down information in class, some of us are still hooked on the smell of paper, the feel of a book, and the soft glide of a brand new ball-point pen across the page. If that sounds like you, might I recommend Moleskine’s line of Folio and Volant professional notebooks.

Particularly, the Folio Professional Large Notebook seems to be the way to go if you prefer hardcover notebooks. It comes in both blank, graph, and ruled, with project planning sections in the back.

There are also numbered pages, an index, and included sticky tabs for added organization. The notebook costs $21, which is clearly a bit pricey for one item of your school supplies, but I find that the Moleskine route is always worth the investment.

Another option, which is a bit cheaper, is the Volant Extra Large Ruled Notebook. For $18.95, you’ll get a set of two of these 96-page softback notebooks, and they add a bit more color to your class time as opposed to the Folio line.

Along with the pen-wielding, page-turning students of yesteryear, a whole lot of us have made the staggering realization that typing is, in fact, faster.

Evernote, then, is an excellent service to turn to. The note service comes in the form of an iOS app, desktop app, Android app, and a web app, meaning you can basically sync all of your notes across each one of your devices and never be without all your information.

Evernote lets you save links, photos, text, and scanned PDFs, all in the cloud. Chances are, as a student, you’ll need to go Premium to get the absolute most out of the service, but luckily that only costs $5/month or $45/year. Going premium will get you offline notes, a 50MB note capacity, and 1GB of monthly upload allowance (not storage, there’s a difference).

You’ll also tap into all kinds of fun features like notes history, group editing, and offline notes.

Livescribe is this clever company that has found a way to put a computer inside a ball-point pen. Granted, you have to buy special paper, but once you do, the pen will record your marks and the accompanying audio so you can search within your notes for various bits of a lecture, etc.

Livescribe also lets you share notes with others via social networks, Google Docs, Evernote or email, which will make it easy for you to collaborate with class-mates when it comes to mid-term/final time.

For those moments when life (read: class) gets really boring, many of the Livescribe smart pens have games, including one where you draw a piano and then tap the keys to play it. It may not be the best service for everyone, but intensive note-takers (and especially journalism students) could probably really use something this meticulous.

Right now you can save $20 on an 8GB Echo pen here.

Raise your hand if you have an iPad.

If your hand is in the air, first put it down, and second check out this pen/stylus from Platinum Pen. It’s a slick aluminum ball-point pen with a relatively slim body and clean look. But at the top, right where you click to open up the pen, there lies the head of a capacitive stylus.

This means you can actually use this little utensil as both a pen and a tablet or smartphone stylus, letting you switch back and forth between drawing digital diagrams and taking physical notes (or whatever combination of old school and new school you prefer).

The pen costs only $8.50 from Jetpens.

For the Android fan who needs the very latest and greatest, picking up one of the brand new Galaxy Note 10.1 tablets Samsung just released before hitting up European History class isn’t a bad idea. See, the magic here lies in the fact that this is one of the first full-featured tablets to come out with a pressure-sensitive (almost Wacom-style) stylus.

Samsung calls it an S-Pen, and it will let you take notes, take screenshots, mark up pictures, and create drawings all onto the tablet directly. It also comes with up to 64GB of memory via an SD card so there really isn’t any need for Evernote, Livescribe, or any other paid cloud storage service.

Plus, you can download apps, surf the web, send email, etc. all from your GalNote 10.1. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t recommend this to a student who’s solely looking for a good way to take notes. If, however, you’re looking for a tablet that might be useful for note-taking, I’d say the $499 Galaxy Note 10.1 is the way to go.

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Google Quietly Launches Google Play Movie Rentals In Germany

Google today quietly rolled out movie rentals in Germany. German Google users have long been able to buy movies through the Play Movies store, but according to German blogger Carsten Knobloch, the rental feature only went live earlier today. So far, Google hasn’t officially announced this launch and the Google Play help page doesn’t acknowledge it either, but a growing number of German users now report that they are able to rent movies from the Play store on the web and on their Android phones.

Movie rentals in the German Play store cost between 2.99 Euro or 4.99 Euro, depending on the movie and whether users want to see the SD or HD version.

Just like in the U.S. German users will have up to 30 days to start watching a video after they rent it. Unlike in the U.S., though, where you can only continue to watch the movie for 24 hours, German users will have 48 hours to finish watching it after they hit the play button for the first time. At almost $5 for a movie rental, the prices in the German store are significantly higher than in the U.S., though.

Earlier today, Google also brought Hangouts on Air to the German market. One Google Play feature that is still missing in Germany is the music store. German users also can’t currently buy the Nexus 7. The launch of more content services, however, could foreshadow the impending Nexus 7 launch in Germany.

Image credit: Cachys Blog

Launch Date: September 7, 1998

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 online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and Google+, the company’s extension into the social space. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing...

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Fab Sues Flash Sales Site TouchOfModern For Alleged Trademark Infringement

Colleen Taylor is based in San Francisco where she is a reporter for TechCrunch TV. Previously she worked for GigaOM, where she reported on startups and Silicon Valley. Earlier, Colleen reported for Mergermarket, an online newswire and subsidiary of the Financial Times focused on M&A. Before that, she was a contributing editor for Electronic News, the semiconductor industry trade newsletter. Colleen... ? Learn More

Updated. When you’re a company that’s grown as quickly as Fab.com, the design-oriented flash sales site which is on track to make more than $100 million in revenue this year and recently closed on $105 million in funding at a rumored $600 million valuation, it’s pretty much a given that some people might look to emulate your path to success. But according to Fab, one startup may be taking the imitation a bit too far.

On August 9th, Fab filed a lawsuit against a San Francisco company called Whitehawk Ventures, which does business as TouchofModern.com, a design-oriented flash sales site that debuted earlier this year (click here to read TechCrunch’s coverage of that launch.)

The 25-page lawsuit, which TechCrunch has obtained and embedded below, alleges that Whitehawk is infringing Fab’s trademarks, trade dress, and copyrights. Fab also alleges that Whitehawk has engaged in unfair competition by allegedly copying key elements of its site design, including its overall look and feel, visual icons, and lifting exact copy.

I reached out to Fab’s CEO Jason Goldberg, who confirmed that Fab has indeed filed suit and provided the following comment about the situation:

Like the people who create the products we sell, we’re designers. We build all of our own technology, and we take pride in the unique design of our website and mobile apps. We have gathered a significant amount of evidence to support our lawsuit, and the copycat claim against Touch of Modern is very strong. We are hopeful that this matter will be resolved quickly. In the meantime, we will continue to focus on bringing everyday design to Fab’s 6 million-plus members.

We have also contacted TouchOfModern founder Jonathan Wu for comment, and will update this if we receive any word back. UPDATE: TouchOfModern has responded with the following statement:

“We are aware of the lawsuit brought against us by Fab.com. We believe the allegations are baseless and we fully intend to defend ourselves.

The claims in the lawsuit are unsupported and lack any substance. All of our design elements utilize open source frameworks and are developed in-house.

Our vendors have consistently told us that they prefer working with us over Fab.com. And the $100M+ that Fab.com has raised allows them to engage in such bullying tactics to stifle competition.

While we’re only a fraction of Fab.com’s size, TouchOfModern appeals to a higher end audience and we strive to offer not only beautifully designed modern products, but products that are high in quality and worthy of distinction.”

Here are images that Fab included in its legal complaint that show the two sites side-by-side (click to enlarge):


And here is the lawsuit in full:

Fab is on a mission to help people better their lives with design. Fab was founded by serial entrepreneur Jason Goldberg in February 2011 and launched on June 9, 2011. Fab’s founders are Bradford Shellhammer, Nishith Shah and Deepa Shah. Fab’s headquarters are in New York. The company also has offices in Berlin, London and Pune. Over 6 million people around the world use Fab to discover everyday design products at great prices, to connect with the world’s most exciting...

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A $12-Million-A-Month iOS Game? NaturalMotion Has It With CSR Racing

Kim-Mai Cutler is a technology journalist who has worked for Bloomberg, VentureBeat and The Wall Street Journal. Before she joined TechCrunch, she led mobile coverage at Inside Network, a six-person media startup that was acquired by WebMediaBrands in 2011 for $14 million in cash and stock. She specializes in covering gaming, distribution and monetization of mobile applications and venture... ? Learn More

As the iOS platform has gradually amassed more than 365 million units in cumulative device sales, it has created a rising tide for all mobile app developers, who have seen increasing monthly revenue run-rates with each year.

Now comes a new high point from Benchmark Capital-backed NaturalMotion, which said its highly hyped title CSR Racing passed $12 million in monthly revenue. That’s a big jump up from previously reported high water marks like the roughly $5 million or so Infinity Blade apparently pulled in during the very lucrative holiday month of December. The game had quite a bit of an advantage though as it was featured during an Apple keynote at the last Worldwide Developers Conference — an extremely rare feat for a game developer.

CSR Racing is, as it eponymously suggests, a drag racing title. There are partnerships with Ford, Mini and so on to provide customized cars. The game monetizes through in-app purchases where players can spend either earned or paid currency they buy in the game.

“We tried to monetize many parts of the game, but not too aggressively,” said chief executive Torsten Reil. “We think this is a more sustainable and defensible approach that’s ended up working.”

Boss Alien, the Brighton, U.K.-based development shop that worked on CSR Racing, is also joining NaturalMotion through an acquisition. The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

NaturalMotion was started more than a decade ago and specializes in doing realistic 3D animation of human bodies. Its technology has been licensed out to studios like Rockstar Games, which used it in Grand Theft Auto 4 and movies like Troy, which starred Brad Pitt.

The company initially raised funding from Balderton Capital, but just tacked on an additional $11 million in funding from Benchmark Capital. That round put gaming veteran Mitch Lasky, who sold JAMDAT to EA more than five years ago, on the company’s board.

The company’s previous big hit before CSR Racing was an uber-realistic animal care-taking game called My Horse. The company differentiates itself from other freemium developers with very photo-realistic 3D animation, instead of 2D art that resembles titles from the social gaming world.

“What’s happening overall is that Wave One of mobile-social games is coming to an end,” Reil sad. “Two-dimensional resource management games, like clickfests, are fading.”

The company is working on six games simultaneously at the moment and is up to 160 people with offices in the U.K. and the U.S.

NaturalMotion Ltd is the creator of Dynamic Motion Synthesis (DMS), a break-through in 3D character animation. Based on Oxford University research, Dynamic Motion Synthesis creates high-quality 3D character animation in real time by combining artificial intelligence, biomechanics, and dynamics simulation. NaturalMotion’s first product, endorphin, utilises this approach to dramatically accelerate the production of offline 3D character animation. In March 2006, NaturalMotion announced euphoria, which brings Dynamic Motion Synthesis live onto Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. euphoria is able to create...

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Suunto Adds Active Mapping To Their Ambit Smart Watch

Biggs is the East Coast Editor of TechCrunch. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at... ? Learn More

In a real first for a GPS watch, Suunto has added a mapping feature to their Ambit smartwatch via a free update. The watch previously supported GPS tracking, waypoints, and training functions but this upgrade adds a live map to the mix, allowing hikers and runners to pinpoint their location on a trail or course.

From the Suunto website:

With this update, users will be able to download routes online or input their own waypoints. Out on the trails, users will be able to see their route in real time, including their start point, position and the route ahead.

Another upcoming update will add Suunto foot pod and ANT+ accessory compatibility along with improved training instruments like interval timers. It will also support “community-crafted” features uploaded by users to Suunto’s support site.

This is a real first for these sorts of watches. First, this update is wildly compelling and that it comes free, after the watch has been on the market for a few months. The watch itself is pretty cool, as evidenced by this in-depth review and it’s fascinating that it can be upgraded via software to unlock new features.

The community features are also compelling in that they allow groups of people – runners, bikers, onanists – to upload various readout settings and programs. All of this, of course, inside a package the size of a silver dollar. The watch itself is $500 and these updates will be free at Movescount.com in September.

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The Invisible Bike Helmet: An Airbag On The Go

Josh Constine is a technology journalist who specializes in deep analysis of social products. He is currently a writer for TechCrunch. Previously, Constine was the Lead Writer of Inside Facebook, where he covered Facebook product changes, privacy, the Ads API, Page management, ecommerce, virtual currency, and music technology. Prior to writing for Inside Facebook, Constine graduated from Stanford University... ? Learn More

People die trying to look cool. Vanity is the sad reason why people don’t wear bike helmets. So two Swedish women set out to invent “the invisible bicycle helmet”, They’ve succeeded, and the end product isn’t a made of clear plexiglass and there’s no lightbending-stealth technology. In fact it’s not really a helmet at all.

Hövding is a rapidly-inflating airbag that deploys from a collar around your neck when you’re in an accident. Here’s how it works, and a video demonstrating this amazing, but still expensive, invention.

The invisible bicycle helmet uses rechargeable battery-powered accelerometers and gyroscopes that detect the typical motions involved in a bike crash. They trigger a tiny gas inflator which instantly fills a nylon airbag with helium. The bag forms a hood around your head that cushions the impact of the street, a car, or anything else you slam into.

The product and company named Hövding began as the industrial design master’s thesis of two students, Anna Haupt and Terese Alstinat, at Sweden’s Lund University. After five years of research and $10 million in funding, they’re now selling the invisible bike helmet. It’s not cheap, though.

Hövding costs $600 and only works once. But considering the potential hospital bills, and you know, the risk of death, it might be a good investment for fashion-forward bikers. Really you should just be confident and realize that wearing  areal bike helmet doesn’t make you uncool. But if that’s too much to ask, at least get a Hövding.

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