Tech Week in Review 1-22-2010

Foursquare and Yelp Got Beef?

On the 15th, Yelp stepped into Foursquare’s arena, introducing a location check-in feature in it’s new iPhone app. Competition is usually a good thing though, pushes innovation. In this case, it looks like Yelp did a little more than provide some competition. In a post on his Tumblr blog, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley posted a screenshot of Yelp’s check-in interface along with a short note:

Shameless. At least innovate on top of it!:

Most any foursquare user will tell you our leaderboard is flawed. It tracks the wrong metrics; it encourages fake checks & cheating; etc. We’ve been hustling these past few months to build the infrastruture that allow us to tweak the game mechanics on our end (think: Leaderboard 2.0)

Poor guys, you copied the wrong stuff!

Admittedly, it’s hard to tell the two apart. It seems Dennis quickly removed the post and hid the photo, but not before someone reposted it (way to go re-blog feature). Besides simply avoiding any static, it looks like he may have pulled the post for fear of giving away too much about upcoming changes. (via TC)

Apple and Google Got Beef?

It looks like Google’s latest foray into the mobile device market has placed it opposite the battlefield of Apple. Mashable has a detailed walk-through of Google and Apple’s relationship going all the way back to ‘94. They site Eric Schidmt resigning from Apple’s board as a “watershed moment,” illustrating the rift that had grown between the two over the years. More recently, Microsoft and Apple have been in talks to replace Google search with Bing on the iPhone.

On the flip side, Louis Gray provides an alternate view of the tense situation between these three companies. He points out that Google never really went evil on us as Microsoft has done in the past. He also talks about Apple being a brand built on quality and replacing Google Search with Bing goes against that concept. Will old-school players Microsoft and Apple team up for the sake of taking down the new kid on the block? I guess we shall see.

YouTube Gets a Complete Makeover

I had actually forgot that Google owned YouTube since they hadn’t really done anything to it. Well, that is about to change. Google has completely revamped YouTube’s interface, leveraging the power of HTML5. Without getting into all the technical details, HTML5 will let you watch video in the browser without relying on buggy plugins. If there is any one thing that has been the bane of browser stability for who knows how long, it’s Flash. It seems Vimeo is embracing HTML5 as well.

Highlights of the update include removing a lot of the clutter and focusing on the videos themselves. The video descriptions have moved below the video and you can view the videos in multiple sizes. They’ve also dumped the 5-star ratings and switched to a Like/Dislike system, saying that users only used 1 or 5 stars anyway. These new features are currently in beta and you need to be running Chrome, Safari, or Chrome Frame in IE. Full story, more photos, and activation link at RWW.

About the Author
Rahsheen has been a certified geek since before it was the thing to do. He started programming and tinkering in the 4th grade. Now, Rahsheen mostly writes on various sites about technology trends in social media and mobile. . He is also a musician, singer, rapper, writer, and producer. @rahsheen - +Rahsheen Porter - coachrah.com
See all posts by rahsheen.