I went back through TechCrunch since October 1st and have compiled a list of new web services and/or software listed as launched, in beta or in stealth mode within the last 45 days. This should be helpful to those who want to follow what’s new.

In some cases my own brief commentary or explanation was added but I tried to make this more a reference than an opinion piece. Consider any errors or omissions my own and not TechCrunch. At the end there is a link to a custom script I wrote that will navigate through the TechCrunch OPML and date sorts the profiles/reviews from newest to oldest.

Mentioned on TechCrunch in the last 45 days
*10/2
Writeboard

*10/3
Zoho Writer
1-800-free-411
iKarma

*10/4
Ning

*10/5
zvents
Flock
Attention Trust recorder - FF extension

*10/6
Zimbra
KnowNow
Orb
Wink
AllPeers
Social Text
Rollyo - Yahoo only
Joyent
bunchball
RealTravel

*10/7
edgeio
Google Reader
sphere

*10/8 - 10/9
Yahoo Podcasts
gada

*10/10
Yahoo Blog Search

*10/11
Wink
Measure Map

*10/12 - 10/13
yelp
Qumana v2.0
remember the milk

*10/16
PreviewSeek

*10/17
inform
HealthLine
Goowy

*10/18
web2ornot
jux2 metasearch engine sold on eBay for $101,000

*10/19
Socialight

*10/20 - 10/22
riya

*10/22 - 10/24
ma.gnolia
Stickis

*10/25
del.icio.us public search
Google Base - appeared briefly, and then blocked by Google
VideoEgg
kaboodle

*10/26 - 10/27
WaxMail - voice email service for Outlook

*10/28
Flickr Photo Printing

*10/29 - 10/30
Shadows
Blogniscient
Speak With Me

*10/31
trulia
CourseCafe
blogbridge
picaboo

#########################
*Nov 1-2 (no links because month is still pending and links will change)
Windows Live and Office Live
Yahoo Local Maps 2.0

*Nov 3-4
Technorati upgrade - full boolean search
Fruitcast
Odeo studio

*Nov 5-6
Zoozio
Amazon Mechanical Turk
yackpack

*Nov 7
Topix blends blogs with news
PubSub Community Lists
Feedster podcast search

*Nov 8-9
Etsy - p2p auction
LibraryThing - tag books
tagalag - tag people

*Nov 10
Facebook
Digg - growing in comparison to Slashdot
newsvine
Pandora

*Nov 11
fotolia - buy/sell pictures
Tagworld

*Nov 12-14
Instant Domain Search - AJAX powered available domain search
Songbird
Google Analytics
Amazon user tagging
Yahoo Shoposphere

About TechCrunch
Generally, editorial coverage in TechCrunch is neutral like PC Magazine in that it serves as more what is new or coming soon than offers a whole lot of personal opinion on the quality of the service, but sometimes Michael Arrington will snap. Perhaps after he has seen one too many “me too” offerings.

Arrington, an attorney by day, was credited by Dave Winer as being helpful in the sale of Weblogs, inc. sale to Verisign, which he politely refuted. Something I haven’t seen discussed much is how TechCrunch has been a great way for him to market to people in the technology space. It’s the “oh by the way” marketing factor. I’m not saying Mr. Arrington is using TechCrunch to do that, but if he is then it’s an intriguing marketing strategy.

Here’s a little more info on Arrington:

Mike’s career began as a corporate attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. In 1999 he left Wilson Sonsini and joined RealNames Corporation as VP Business Development and General Counsel. He co-founded Achex (funded by Draper Fisher Jurvetson and RRE Ventures) in 2000, which was sold to First Data Corp. in 2001. His subsequent roles include the COO position at RazorGator (A Kleiner Perkins backed startup) and he was the CEO at Pool.com, a leading company in the secondary domain name market. Mike has also recently consulted on new products and business development for a number of companies, including Snapnames and Verisign.

Arrington indicated the reason he put TechCrunch together was because there was no single place he could find what TechCrunch is doing. He points out a current limitation with using OPML files:

The problem with opml files from readers is that they are static, meaning I can give you my OPML file but you will never know if I add or delete feeds unless I tell you and give you the new file. All you get is a snapshot of my feeds from the moment that I share my file with you. Dave thinks these files should be dynamic, which means that I can share my opml file, or as he calls it my reading list, and anyone who subscribes to it will always have the current version, no matter how often I amend that list.

Yes, these OPML files should be dynamic, and I’m not sure why they couldn’t be. There is a dateModified field in the OPML file that shows the last time the document was modified.

I noticed from the Techcrunch OPML linked off the home page right column of Scripting.com that the last update was Monday Oct 17, 2005 at 07:32:37 GMT. That’s nearly a month old. Does a more recent update of this OPML file exist? I looked on TechCrunch and didn’t see.

I thought it would be cool to have something online to search through the OPML and sort entries by date instead of category so I could see what new TechCrunch profile/reviews were added from newest to oldest. Time to whip out the text editor.

Building a simple OPML search filter
My quick coding goal was to put something together that I could point to an OPML file and get date sorted entries. Here is the resulting code: Unofficial TechCrunch OPML date sorted profiles/reviews.

Through the course of writing the parsing code above, I discovered an omission with Tech Crunch most current OPML for the searchfox entry (no date):

<outline text=”SearchFox” type=”link” url=”http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/09/12/searchfox-personalized-rss-reader/” />

I didn’t set it to dynamically grab the most recent OPML file, but that would be trivial at this point and then folks could receive a listing of the most recent profiles by date, updated as often as Techcrunch updated the OPML file.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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