TechCrunch Disrupt, the startup conference held twice a year in New York and San Francisco, kicked off their spring edition with a 24-hour hackathon. The $5000 top prize (just a note hackers: Decoded, the fashion focused hackathon associated with the conference, had a top prize of $10,000, so consider fashion tech a serious option for your next hack) went to a web app that helps users map their purchases.

Rambler, created by William Hockey, Zach Perret and Michael Kelly, is a web app that lets users view their credit and debit card transactions on a map. During the dev process, the team tapped the Foursquare API for locations and the Plaid API to access user spending data. {TechCrunch}

Though FourSquare can’t seem to get a lot of love from investors, who want to see more revenue growth from the company, it remains an API favorite at hackathons and with developers building location aware apps.

Rambler’s team is also behind Plaid, which already has an app connecting Foursquare data with Square swipes, so the win isn’t a completely new idea, but should serve as a bit of a boost for the existing startup.

Learn to Drive, a virtual driving instructor app, and Radical, an embeddable calendar, were first and second runners up.

Arguably one of the best RSS feed readers out there, and at the very least the API behind some of the best feed readers out there, Google broke the hearts of many tech savvy bloggers, journalists and blog followers when they announced the July 1, 2013 shutdown of Google Reader, along with 7 other products.

“We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader. Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with Google Takeout over the course of the next four months.” {Google Blog}

While RSS feeds still provides the plumbing for many aggregators and web apps, they never got the mainstream adoption of something like Twitter. Google’s new focus on core products that fit a search, social or ads function for the company means that as fervent an audience as a particular product might have, anything not contributing to those areas could find itself on the chopping block. Prediction: don’t be surprised to see a similar deadpool announcement for Feedburner in the near future.

So that’s the news and the reasoning, but allow us to make the totally emotional argument: whyyyyyyyyy? Noooooo!

That feels a little better, but really Google? You can’t figure out how to make a product with a regularly engaged, passionate following  fit within your search/social/ad strategy? Facebook figured out how to integrate with publishers to let users easily share what they were reading on different sites to gain deeper insights into interests and make reading, well, more social. Sure, Google+ is still trying to topple MySpace for engagement, but it seems like a pretty obvious solution would be to at least bring Google Reader options into the fledgling social network. Considering that Robert Scoble has more Google+ followers than Cristiano Ronaldo, the tech savvy people who still regularly use RSS would probably consider it a plus, and end up spending more time on Google+. A win win for both sides.

Alas, it seems Google anticipated some of this reaction at the news of Reader being sent to the glue factory.

These changes are never easy. But by focusing our efforts, we can concentrate on building great products that really help in their lives.

Still seems like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Other products headed for the deadpool include Search API for Shopping, Google Voice App for Blackberry, Google Cloud Connect and 4 others that you probably never heard of anyway (the bathwater).

Net-a-Porter same day delivery vans in New York (L) and London (R)

Just a few hours ago, we picked up on the report that Google is working on an Amazon Prime competitor that will try to differentiate itself by offering same day delivery from brick and mortar stores. According to a Boston Consulting Group survey of 1500 consumers, only 9 percent said same day delivery would encourage them to shop online more often.

“Urban shoppers aged 18 to 34 with household income over $150,000 a year – known as affluent millennials – are more interested in same-day delivery, but this group accounts for only 2 percent of the market, according to the consulting firm’s report.

Consumers said they would only use same-day delivery in certain circumstances, like when they needed to buy a last-minute gift or could not get to a physical store, the survey found.” {Reuters}

Cited by 75% of the respondents, free shipping actually topped the list of things more likely to drive online shopping, followed by lower prices.

The key to getting same day delivery to take hold seems to be a lower price for the cost of delivery. That doesn’t seem to conflict with what Google is planning. As we mentioned yesterday, the $64-$69/year service is unlikely to bring in significant revenue from subscription fees, and will probably actually lose money. Net-a-Porter, who falls perfectly into the affluent audience/high-margin product zone mentioned in the survey, offers same day delivery in New York for $25, and for no charge in London. It would only take 3 orders to exceed Google’s annual rate for the service in the US. While the London delivery service is likely still a loss leader for Net-a-Porter, it does seem to imply that the challenge of offering same day delivery at a low price point – one of the things cited as a factor in the low interest among this group – is one of logistics. i.e. Can Google, or any of the companies competing in the space, create the kind of well oiled delivery machine that takes advantage of existing delivery schedules and routes to pass along lower costs to consumers?

While online shopping generally offers a selection advantage over brick and mortar stores, one big disadvantage is shipping. Free shipping is usually slow, and faster shipping generally comes at a much higher price. Amazon Prime meets those challenges somewhere in the middle, offering relatively quick shipping at a relatively affordable annual rate. TechCrunch reports that Google is hard at work on an Amazon Prime competitor called “Google Shopping Express,” and they’re prepared to lose a little to gain ground.

The Google program would offer same-day delivery from brick and mortar stores at $64-69/year. Amazon Prime is $79/year for two-day shipping, so there’s probably not going to be a significant monetary gain from Google’s delivery service. It does serve another purpose though, which is merchant and user adoption.

One of the biggest challenges in setting up any e-commerce venture is logistics and shipping. Even among large multi-national chains like WalMart and Target – two of the rumored partners for Google Shipping Express – online inventory, which is often stored at a warehouse, is completely separate from in-store inventory. And while you can generally check in-store availability from products, if something is available at a store 20 miles away, your only options are generally to travel a bit further to get it, or wait an extra few days to get it. It sounds like Google is trying to fill that gap by sourcing from brick and mortar stores that are closer to the end location than a warehouse, but further than a walk down the street.

“If the Google Shopping Express service debuts publicly, and we have no reason to think that it won’t, this would mean that the company could capitalize on its recent acquisitions of both BufferBox and Channel Intelligence to dominate the online-to-offline retail market. Google could possibly use its BufferBox delivery lockers to facilitate the ease of shipment — like what Amazon has been testing in Seattle, New York and the UK. It could use Channel Intelligence’s data-management platform to coordinate sales and delivery.” {TechCrunch}

Which actually seems like a brilliant way to challenge Amazon. We’ll keep an eye on any further specifics.

In Apple‘s ongoing case against Samsung, all kinds of interesting peripheral information is emerging. One of the most fascinating is a 2010 survey that shows the top reason for consumers going with an Android phone rather than an iPhone was carrier loyalty.

With the survey indicating that 25 percent of overall Android buyers at the time had considered an iPhone, the numbers gives us a real look at just how much the iPhone’s AT&T exclusivity may have hurt it while Android — and Verizon’s Droid brand — surged in the US.

43% Wanted to stay with current provider
36% Trusted Google brand
30% Preferred larger screen
27% Preferred Android Market
26% Wanted better Google services intergration
25% Wanted latest and greatest smartphone
25% Wanted turn-by-turn GPS
25% Wanted latest and greatest technology

{The Verge}

Research firm IDC put Android’s global marketshare at 68% in Q2 of this year, dwarfing Apple’s 17%.

More specifically, IDC pegged Android’s gain “directly” to Samsung, which represented 44% of all Android phones shipped during the quarter. That’s more than the next seven Android vendors combined, IDC said. {CNNMoney}

The iPhone is, of course, now available on 3 out of the 4 major US mobile carriers (T-Mobile being the lone network to not offer an iPhone), and Apple’s strategy of offering older versions to compete with lower priced Android phones could help in carving out a larger slice of the market.

The first two pictures unbabied via Unbaby.me

If you’re of a certain age, you may be secretly sick of looking at the endless stream of chubby cheeks and little bald heads filling your Facebook newsfeed as old friends become new parents. Well, now you can maintain your friendship and do something about the baby overload.

“Unbaby.me is a Chrome extension that recognizes baby photos on social networking sites like Facebook, and replaces them with photos of cats or dogs or cars or whatever you want. You just add to Chrome, update a few keywords, and tell it what to change the photos to. (The default is cats.)” {TechCrunch}

The extension already has more than 45,000 likes on Facebook, and 1400 tweets to its credit, so there’s obviously a user base.  Still, are baby pictures really that bad?

“Once you’ve seen one baby, you’ve seen them all,” you say, and that’s mostly true. Sure, there are different colored eyes, some with hair, some without, but in general they’re all toothless little people who are, by definition, cute.

Granted there are some unfortunate looking babies out there (author’s note: this refers to no one I know), and some parents who take things too far (your child covered in placenta is not adorable), but in general you get to experience all of the adorable things that go along with babies with none of the spitup, late night crying or poopy diapers.

In seriousness, there are some valid reasons why someone might not want to see baby pictures: a parent who’s recently lost a child might have trouble seeing reminders of their loss, someone struggling to conceive could also be effected negatively. While it’s doubtful that all 45,000 people who liked this extension on Chrome fall into that category, there could be a legitimate use for Unbaby.me beyond catering to grumps.

CNN will reportedly buy social media blog Mashable for more than $200 million, according to Reuters blogger Felix Salmon.

Salmon said that a source told him that CNN will announce the deal on Tuesday. {VentureBeat}

Should the rumors prove to be true, it would only confirm that life is not fair. Not only would a $200 million acquisition price tag  be 6 to 10 times what AOL paid for TechCrunch and their network of sites, but it would also value the site’s visitors even higher than AOL did in its merger with the Huffington Post. Somewhere, Michael Arrington has to be kicking himself for selling when he did (though there are plenty of other reasons why he might regret selling).

Then there’s the fact that Pete Cashmore looks like this:

Which is not particularly relevant to the acquisition, but just thought we’d throw in there that Cashmore is already one of the better looking tech bloggers out there, and he could be on his way to becoming one of the richest. Don’t hate him because he’s beautiful though; hate him because he’s negotiating one absolutely stunning deal.

For those keeping notes, the Huffington Post – also founded in 2005 –  had nearly 40 million visitors (according to Quantcast) at the time of acquisition, valuing each visitor at roughly $8. Mashable has roughly 9.5 million visitors, which would value each of their visitors at more than $21.

Mashable has never reported raising any money from investors, whereas the Huffington Post had $37 million in funding when they were acquired. Which means that Cashmore may come out of the deal with a better payoff than Arianna Huffington.

At the time of the TechCrunch acquisition, we predicted that one for Mashable was in the cards, though we obviously misjudged CNN’s level of interest in a purely digital publication.

Wall Street's latest whiz kid

Just when you think the job market couldn’t get any more competitive, along comes a super computer know-it-all that doesn’t request time off, or lunch or bathroom breaks like pesky humans. Forget what the Terminator taught you: the machines won’t try to kill you, they’ll just make your tiny little brain obsolete, and you’ll voluntarily bow down to your new automated overlords.

Or they’ll help humans do their jobs better, but the other version just sounds more ominous/interesting.

Kicking things off in the machine takeover of the world is Watson, the IBM super computer that ruined Jeopardy! for humanoids.

“IBM has signed a deal with banking group Citi to use the data-analyzing abilities of the Watson supercomputer to help deal with its customers.

Citi will try out Watson – which beat off human competition to win the US quiz show Jeopardy! last year – in a variety of roles. These could include building customer profiles based on their banking interactions, blogs, and Twitter feeds, and using those profiles to advise human staff on loans and transactions. ” {the Register}

Did you hear that social media experts? Pretty soon Watson is going to be stalking people on Twitter faster and better than you can.

With some of the existing automation on Twitter, at some point it’s just going to be one machine talking to another and social will go back to meaning actually interacting with people in person. Then the machines will annoy each other with how many bytes they used up before breakfast, what the computer down the hall said.

And on the plus side, at least Citi doesn’t have to worry about their latest employee dressing too sexy.

MySpace, once the dominant social network, is now generally held up as exhibit A of what goes wrong when technology fails to keep pace with user behavior. Even though the network waved the white flag as the place for friends some time ago and ceded its position to Facebook, it’s worth remembering that there’s still an audience there.

Likely drawn in by the musicians and bands that helped push the network into the mainstream in the first place, MySpace still offers something people want. Google+, for all of their brute force efforts, doesn’t seem to have that figured out yet.

“Users visiting from home or work computers spent an average of just three to four minutes a month on Google+ between September and January, according to comScore. In comparison, social networkers spent six to seven hours clicking around on Facebook each month during the same period.

Users also spent less time on Google+ during that period than they did on Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Tumblr, and even Pinterest, according to comScore. While they spent an average of three minutes in January on Google+, users logged eight minutes on MySpace, 17 minutes on LinkedIn, 21 minutes on Twitter, and almost an hour and a half on both Tumblr and Pinterest. comScore’s data did not take into account visits from mobile devices.” {PC Mag}

Google’s spokespeople claim that their internal usage figures are much higher. While that’s more than possible – 3rd party  measurement tools can often miss large chunks of user activity – it’s also a strong possibility that Google is measuring usage differently. Clicked a +1 button in your search results? On an AdSense ad? That might be considered usage to Google even though it’s not actually activity on the network.

And that’s part of the problem. When we broke the news of Boutiques’ sharp decline (the project was eventually killed off), one of the things that was clear was that Google had no clear idea on what Boutiques wanted to be. That seems to have continued over to Google+, which is nice enough, but doesn’t offer any clear point of differentiation over other networks. Tumblr makes it easy to reblog; Pinterest makes it even easier for photos; LinkedIn is for professional networking; Facebook started off as a network of people you know and evolved to a place for sharing your interests with people you know; Twitter is for short public updates; MySpace is for music and the artists that make it.

And Google+? Well, it’s a little bit of all of those, but not enough of any of them to compel users to spend more time on the network.

Even though Go Daddy has more domain name transfers coming in than it has going out, the company still wants to remind you that it opposes SOPA every chance they get. {The Next Web}

Screenshot via the Next Web

So the boycott against GoDaddy for their initial support of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which many in the online community see as a step towards legalized censorship of the internet in the US, did result in a higher than average loss of customers this week.

But the popular registrar received nearly twice as many inbound transfers, so while it didn’t have the mass balance sheet depleting effect originally intended, it did force the company to take a look at their stance on the bill. If passed into law, the bill would give copyright holders sweeping powers over websites which they claim are infringing upon their copyrights. This includes, but is not limited to, the ability to have a domain taken down without giving the domain owner a chance to challenge the legitimacy of the reported infringement.

Obviously, it’s not exactly reassuring to find out that your domain registrar is supporting the companies opposing the people who buy domains.

Having “reevaluated” their position, GoDaddy also concluded that they probably shouldn’t throw their support behind a bill with the potential to negatively impact the very people who keep them in business, and officially withdrew their support. While it’s good to have an official statement on the matter, reminding customers who may be poised to flee that they’ve put more thought into the issue isn’t a bad idea.