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Ok, so not only is Google Instant rejiggering how we think about search, but it is also a clever way to create instant music videos. We saw this with the official Google Instant version of Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (where the lyrics on the flash cards get typed into Google and create a stream of related results).

But now the same thing has been done with the “Instant Elements” song in the video above. The lyrics to Tom Lehrer’s song, “The Elements,” are typed into Google Instant, and it creates a visual accompaniment to the song, showing search results and images for each element like magnesium, silicon, and gadolinium. I think we have a meme here. You can do this for any song, and now people will.

The video was created by ad agency Whirled, the same one behind the famous Pulp Fiction Google Wave video.

Zynga has been taking it on the chin from the SF Weekly the last few weeks. First there was a four part series about some stickers that Zynga’s ad agency put on the streets of San Francisco – lame but not exactly Third Reicht territory. But the last two days the newspaper has focused on Zynga’s penchant for stealing game ideas from other companies. FarmVille, FishVille, PetVille, Café World, and Mafia Wars were all copies of other company’s games. That warranted a cover story.

The SFWeekly even gave this copying thing a name – Farmvillians. Which is kinda catchy, although it’s no Scamville if you ask me. Scamville was major league evil. Copying business ideas is just being part of Silicon Valley.

All this got me thinking about the quote “Behind every great fortune there is a crime” and the tendency of some people to go legit just as soon as they’ve won the game. Then they hope that they can wipe the slate clean and be accepted in the better parts of society.

I’m not talking about some real world gangster who moves into a more legitimate role as real estate tycoon and starts giving money to charity. I’m talking about the startups all around us. They all have stories. Some are worse than others, and Zynga has a particularly troubled past. Facebook may have done a better job of avoiding direct video documentation of some of its more interesting ethical moments, but they aren’t squeaky clean, either. Microsoft was famously evil for the first 25 years or so it was around. It’s just too easy to do the wrong thing in business, there are very rarely any consequences.

Should we just let the past go and wipe the slate clean once a company decides it makes more sense to be clean than dirty?

Here’s what I think. If they’ve sincerely changed, give ‘em another chance. It’s worked for the Catholics all these years, and I think it works well in our world, too. Plus, the stuff the Catholic Church has forgiven itself for is way more impressive than, say, putting stickers on a sidewalk or ripping off a few tens of thousands of clueless Farmville players.

That’s the rub though. Whether or not they really are sincere about not being evil any more. I’ve got no answer for that one.

TechCrunch-reading football fans may remember a nifty, free online game we wrote about last year called Quick Hit that puts you at the helm of a virtual football team. The game doesn’t involve the twitchy gameplay of gaming goliath Madden, but is instead built around strategy and play calling (though it does feature rich, 3D graphics to keep things interesting). You may also notice that the game’s logo looks a little different from last year’s: it now sports the official emblem of the NFL. And that’s a big deal.

You see, when Quick Hit launched last year it didn’t have the NFL license. That meant it didn’t have any of the official NFL teams, so you’d have to coach generic squads that don’t actually exist. Which, to put it lightly, is a big buzzkill when you’re trying to pretend you’re Bill Walsh and are reigning over the fictitious San Francisco Tigers. But now Quick Hit has forged a deal with the NFL that gives it rights to all of the real teams, uniforms, and stadiums. And today it’s launching a totally overhauled version of the game, including a premium edition that includes an improved 3D graphics engine.

The game itself is best described as a football RPG. First you choose a team and build out a roster of players. Gameplay revolves around deciding which plays to run — after picking a play, you take a step back as the computer acts it out (remember, this isn’t Madden, so you aren’t going to be mashing buttons as you try to steer your players down the field). This might not appeal much to hardcore console gamers, but Quick Hit is betting that there’s a much larger market for more casual gamers (like the millions who play fantasy football).

As you continue through the game you earn various upgrades and special plays which you can use to improve your players. You can also pay real money to purchase these upgrades, which is one of the game’s revenue channels.

The year’s version offers a premium upgrade, available for a one-time $15 fee or as part of the game’s monthly subscription option, to convert its 2D sprites into 3D using the Unity browser plugin (the screenshots are of the 3D version). The result is pretty impressive for a browser-based game and the engine also allows players on the 2D version to play an opponent running the 3D version without any issues.

In addition to the rights to use NFL teams in the game, Quick Hit is also going to be promoted on NFL.com, which should lead to a major boost in distribution. QuickHit CEO Jeffrey Anderson wouldn’t talk about the terms of the deal, but given how much exposure the NFL is giving the game, there’s a chance that the league now has a stake in the Quick Hit.

Unfortunately it isn’t all roses. Quick Hit has the rights to the NFL, but it doesn’t have a deal with the Players Association or Coaches Association, which means you won’t be commanding a roster of your favorite stars. Quick Hit has signed deals with some individual players like Donovan McNabb, but the majority of names in the game are fictitious. Still, having the actual uniforms and logos throughout the game is a big step forward, as is the distribution deal — expect Quick Hit’s popularity this season to be a big gain over last year’s.

If you want to try the game for yourself, be sure to use the promo code TCKICKOFF, which will earn TechCrunch readers an extra 2000 coaching points.

I don’t know why but I just can’t stop re-reading this exchange. Poor AT&T shoots itself in the head today by emailing customers and asking them to provide feedback in one centralized place. Customers promptly complied, and the tower of hate is almost overwhelming. Someone at AT&T will likely be cleaning out their desk tomorrow over this, and frankly I can’t believe they didn’t see it coming. It’ll be hard for AT&T to argue that the vast majority of its customers are happy when nearly all the comments are hugely negative, some violently so.

Some commenters were particularly incensed that they had to “like” the page before commenting.

I do pity the poor sobs who are being tasked with actually responding to all of these comments. They’re writing so fast that they can’t keep their grammar straight. And they’re trying, heroically, to defend the company against this self inflicted wound. Mostly they’re asking for specific feedback instead of vague but strong vitriol. And in this case they succeeded. Michael Tejada went from calling them the devil to simply requesting a no cap data plan. And even thanks them at the end.

Sometimes all people need is to know they’re being heard. Of course, the guy who said he has never successfully completed a call on his iPhone from his office may need a little more than platitudes.

Google made it clear at its press event today that Google Instant will not change way that company will rank ads or show ads. From the Google blog:

“We recommend monitoring your ads’ performance the same way you usually do. Google Instant might increase or decrease your overall impression levels. However, Google Instant can improve the quality of your clicks since it helps people search using terms that more directly connect them with the answers they need. Therefore, your overall campaign performance could improve.”

At the event, Google Ad Evangelist Frederick Vallaeys went into detail with us why the new feature might in fact improve Adwords campaign performance, and also debunked some of the easily made assumptions, which he outlined:

* Google Instant will greatly increase ad impressions: Impressions will go up, because of the new “3 seconds counts as an impression” rule as well as the rule that any page engagement also counts. But, from an advertiser perspective, that “20 times as many searches” statistic tossed around today is going to be more conservative.

* Increased impressions means increased costs: Most Adwords campaigns are cost per click, advertisers are not paying for impressions.

*  Advertisers will need to buy more keywords: Because Adwords are sold on the whole predictive text not partial queries, an advertiser still will be buying the same keywords, there’s no need to buy more keywords in order to to optimize performance.

“Because of the interactivity the feed, people will actually get close to the results that they want to see and are more likely to covert to becoming a buy.”

Google is banking on Google Instant users “learning how to search better,” or getting closer to the thing they were searching for, in essence optimizing the ad. “When the advertiser gets a click and they’re still paying the same amount for that click, they’re actually much more likely to get a sale from that,” says Vallaeys. The behavioral theory here is that normal non-instantly updating search is kind of hit or miss, and the more Google can serve up exactly what you want, the more you’ll actually want it or put your money where your mouth is and buy it.

Will the 350 million hours of user time per year saved negatively affect advertisers? According to Vallaeys, No. “We’re the only company in the world whose goal it is to get users off our site as quickly as possible. And ultimately we do monetize for a when a person finds the ad they were looking for and clicks off of it.”

But this doesn’t necessarily mean less searches, says Vallaeys, “What I think will happen is that users will be taught how to search better,  and do more searches if they’re finding that the searches actually work and they get results. That usually means that more search is happening. And usually that means more opportunity for advertisers to connect to users.”

Not surprisingly, Vallaeys refused to speculate when asked for an estimate of how much revenue this improved Adwords campaign performance could mean to Google. My guess: A lot.

Image: Audrey Fukuman

In this video we find AT&T’s rep, Seth Bloom, reaching out to New Yorkers in particular and explaining, as simply as possible, why their calls suck and how AT&T is trying to fix the problem. Wow.

Essentially AT&T is starting to move some calls to the the 850 MHz band for more in-building coverage. The best thing about this video is that Seth the AT&T Blogger Guy looks like someone you’d want to give a noogie to (that’s a good thing) and they show you whats inside those crazy switch boxes on top of buildings. Double rainbow.

Read more…

After Google’s search event this morning, TechCrunch TV got a chance to catch up with Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of Search Products and User Experience, in the demo pit.

In our brief video interview, an enthusiastic Mayer touts Google Instant as a “whole new way to search,”a game changer akin to the introduction of power steering in the automotive industry. It’s certainly a neat feature that optimizes the search experience, but the real question remains: how does Google Instant fundamentally change consumer behavior, and in turn SEO and Google’s ad sales.

Mayer was more tentative on this front. See video above. Apologies for the muffled audio on my end, only one wireless mic was working at the time.

There has been a lot of debate as to how Google Instant will impact Search Engine Optimization. By effectively compressing the time of each individual search and allowing users to edit searches in real time, Google Instant has the potential to radically upend the current mechanics of search and the discoverability of sites. According to Mayer, it’s too early to determine how the new feature will affect the company’s bottom line and she believes there will only be a “small change for the SEO community.”

That said, she does expect consumer usage patterns to dramatically shift, including her own. For Google, the hope is that the net effect is not just faster searches, but more searches: “One of the things I’ve seen in my own personal usage,  is that while each search is faster, I spend more time doing searches. Because I actually see the results coming in and out as I’m doing my searches… I learn things as I go. And after I’ve actually fulfilled my query, a lot of times I’ll see interesting suggestions, so I’ll scroll around and learn different things and so I think ultimately, it may increase engagement of our users.”

Mayer also told us that Google Instant will eventually hit the other sections of search within the next few months, including Google News and image search.

Bonus footage: After Mayer’s interview, we got a chance to talk to Steve Cheng, a product manager on Google’s Mobile team, who gave us a quick demo on Instant on mobile and discussed their upcoming rollout strategy. See video below.

John Seely Brown and John Hagel are two of the most respected technology and business thinkers in Silicon Valley. Seely Brown is best known as the long time Chief Scientist at Xerox Parc, while Hagel is the author of a number of influential business articles and books including Net Worth.

As the co-chairmen of Deloitte’s intriguingly named Center for the Edge, Seely Brown and Hagel have just come out with a new book called The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion which is a big-picture attempt to conceptualize the shift from the old industrial economy to today’s revolutionary digital economy.

The great change in contemporary economic life – what Seely Brown and Hagel call the “big shift” – is between the old centralized command-and-control industrial economy and today’s democratized edge economy. Sometimes sounding more like Marxist revolutionaries than Deloitte consultants, Seely Brown and Hagel see the pull economy as fundamentally changing every aspect of 21st century life – from business to education to politics to social activity.

This is a big, bold take on the digital revolution which has elicited highly favorable reviews from Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, Joichi Ito, Richard Florida, Eric Schmidt and Walter Isaacson. As Seely Brown and Hagel argue in the The Power of Pull: “The ultimate promise of pull is the opportunity to reclaim our individuality and pursue our potential in a was that were never feasible in a world of push…. For the first time ever, we have the real opportunity to become we are, and more importantly, who were meant to be.”

On Xerox Parc and the Center for the Edge

On why the power of pull represents the end of the command and control economy.

On the role of education and the power of imagination in restructuring business and society.

On the profound long-term shifts in the global economic system

On the cloud.

Earlier today AT&T sent out a “Special Message From AT&T” email highlighting a 18-19 billion dollar investment in their network as well as plans for other improvements. The email provides a link to their Facebook page an avalanche of comments like this cropped up:

“”Im only sticking out my contract because I dont have the money to pay a termination fee at the moment. “

“I switched to AT&T solely for the iPhone. I have such terrible reception in my neighborhood that I can’t actually use it as a phone. My coworker received a FREE microcell for this very reason, apparently he is a “valued AT&T customer” whereas I am not. I spoke with several people at AT&T on multiple calls trying to receive one also, but they all insisted “no one” has ever gotten it free. I know this is untrue because I saw the letter from granting him a free microcell at any AT&T store and was there as he received his complimentary device, “as a valued customer.” Sad that your company had to develop an VoIP device so people could use their phone for it’s intended purpose, especially in a major city like San Francisco. Perhaps spending 10s of billions of dollars on your network is not such sound footing, for when the iPhone goes to different carriers, surely so will your entire iPhone customer base. Let me know when you’re ready to send me my free microcell.”

“I don’t want a NATION WIDE response. I want a LOCAL targeted response. Tell me what you are doing to improve service in San Francisco please. The iPhone capital of the world is pretty much the wrong place to have bad service. I lose my service in our elevator at work: SOMA. I have no service in my apartment: LOWER HAIGHT. My roommate sits there on his Droid / Verizon & has a whole conversation without saying “oh wait can you hear me?” and losing his call 5x. I have to go outside to our porch, or lean out the window to make a call or send a txt. I literally get frustrated with AT&T almost EVERY SINGLE DAY. Make a change, and announce that change locally, with measurable results via feedback from people & you get to keep me as a customer when Verizon/iPhone comes out.”

“The coverage here in Denver is mortifying. On a scale of 1-10, my service here is a 3. I used to love your service, best of all time, was never happier…now it’s a joke. Support is a joke. Customer Service, a joke. They said they would give me a discount once my service got better..I pay $150 every month…after 6 months of dropped calls, lost business, missing everything, they offered me a $31.00 discount off 1 month.”

I HATE ATT!!!!!!!!

Here’s the email that started it all:

The most ironic part of the whole debacle? You have to “Like” the AT&T page to leave a comment, so many of the people expressing their anger and frustration were actually giving props to AT&T.

Update: Seth Bloom from AT&T tells TechCrunch that the company appreciates the feedback whether positive or negative, “Our letters today – in addition to thanking customers and outlining what we’re doing to make sure our service continually improves – asked for feedback and we’re getting it. We engage with customers all day every day on Facebook. We don’t delete comments, we answer questions and complaints directly and honestly, and we have a separate team of customer service managers who engage one-on-one with customers who post specific problems.”

I noticed something interesting while watching the Bob Dylan Google Instant video during Google’s search event today: some new text next to the drop down search suggestions. Guess what it is? The “I’m Feeling Lucky” button.

So, no, Google didn’t kill the feature as Business Insider stated today. Well, technically they did kill the button — but the feature remains intact. To use it now, you simply hover over one of the search suggestions in the drop box and move to the right and click on the link.

And when you click on this link, it does the same thing as it previously did — take you to the page it thinks you wanted to go to. Or, as commenter Jarred Taylor notes, you can also now just hit the right arrow button on your keyboard when the result is highlighted and it will take you to the “lucky” result.

Business Insider’s larger point remains intact though: how this change will affect Google’s bottom line remains to be seen. But overall, Google is still feeling lucky, punk.

Google really did just change the game in search today with the introduction of Google Instant. While Google execs at today’s event emphasized how much faster it makes search, Google Instant is really about showing you more search results. And this will have very interesting implications for consumers expectations of what they want from search, search market share, and how sites try to game search through SEO tactics.

Google Instant turns search into a realtime stream of results which flow onto your screen as you type your query. With each letter you type, a whole new set of results flash by. This is important for several reasons. First and foremost, you will now see many more search results than you would have otherwise. Most people never click through to the second page of search results. If it is not in the first ten blue links (or really the first five or six), it might as well not exist for most people. With Google Instant search, instead of people seeing only ten results, they may now see 50 or 100 (depending on how many letters they type and how far they get through each search query). They also potentially get to see more ads, as those change along with the results.

Google just found a way to jack up the number of search results you see by doing nothing more than type in a word or two like you always do. Most people can scan results visually and can absorb a lot more information if it is streamed to them in this fashion rather than having to manually click through to see more results. If people get used to this, it will put pressure on Bing and other search engines to quickly follow suit. People go to the search engines whether they can find things more quickly. (Google Instant is already turned on for some people and will roll out throughout the day. If you go to Google’s main search page you can see how it works.)

Which brings us to the whole issue of search market share. Currently, market research firms such as comScore count search market share by the number of queries and search results each engine delivers. Search engines like Yahoo and Bing have been juicing these numbers recently by adding search results to other parts of their sites such as slideshows and news. But now how do you count a query when each letter brings up different results. Google dominates search market share as it is currently measured, and now it just changed the game. Counting queries is now completely outdated.

SEO (Search engine optimization) will change as well. Sites will need to optimize for particular letter combinations, not just entire keywords. It will be interesting to see whether results get spammed or if Google will gain the upperhand in this constant cat and mouse game.

Earlier today, Google launched a new feature that could fundamentally change the way people go about searching the web: Google Instant. The feature, which is rolling out now, shows results for your search queries as soon as you begin typing them — oftentimes you’ll have the information you were looking for before you’re even finished typing your query. You can see our full coverage on the launch here.

Such a major change will impact the way people conduct their searches, and that will lead to repercussions for the search ecosystem. Steve Rubel says that it will make Search Engine Optimization (SEO) — the dark magic that helps websites appear higher in search results — totally irrelevant. Now Matt Cutts, the longtime Googler who is in charge of Google’s webspam team and often speaks publicly about SEO issues, has weighed in on how he thinks things will change. And change, they will.

Here’s one key passage from his blog post:

Q: Will Google Instant change search engine optimization?

A: I think over time it might. The search results will remain the same for a query, but it’s possible that people will learn to search differently over time. For example, I was recently researching a congressperson. With Google Instant, it was more visible to me that this congressperson had proposed an energy plan, so I refined my search to learn more, and quickly found myself reading a post on the congressperson’s blog that had been on page 2 of the search results.

Cutts goes on to further discuss this tendency to continuously refine your search queries — a concept that came up during this morning’s announcement. On ‘old’ Google, most users run a search query then browse through a page or two of results to see if they find what they’re looking for. With Google Instant, it’s more common for them to quickly tweak their query on the fly, or to flip through the suggested results by simply hitting the arrow keys. That change is important — it may make it even less likely that a user will see your site if it’s listed at the bottom of the results page, or a page or two deep.

But Cutts goes on to say that this doesn’t mean SEO is dead:

I’ve said it before, but SEO is in many ways about change. The best SEOs recognize, adapt, and even flourish when changes happen.

Also worth noting: Google Instant will have an impact on advertisers as well. Before now, it was straightforward to measure an ad impression — the user ran a query, and your ad either showed up on the page or it didn’t. But because of the constantly updating nature of Google Instant, ads will now often appear for a fraction of a second. To account for this Google is changing the way it measures impressions (it only counts if the user hits the ‘Enter’ key to complete their query, looks at the page for over three seconds, or they click on a link from the results page). But Google is also preemptively warning advertisers to expect some fluctuations:

With this change, you might notice some fluctuations in AdWords impression volume and traffic for organic keywords. For example, you may find that certain keywords receive significantly more or fewer impressions moving forward.

We’ll have more on these issues, including an interview with Google VP of Search Product and User Experience Marissa Mayer, later this afternoon.

Earlier this year we wrote about TechCrunch 50 company Localbacon’s relaunch as Jibe, a next-generation job board that leverages Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to help job seekers find the best positions in the job market. Today, Jibe, which has been in private beta since March, is launching to the public, with job listings from Conde Nast, MTV Networks, Amazon, Equinox, and Church & Dwight.

On Jibe, job seekers sign in with Facebook Connect. The platform will pull in their work and education history from their Facebook profile and from LinkedIn and Twitter to pre-populate their Jibe profile. Then for every job posting, they can see if they are connected to anyone at that company. Jibe allows members to message those people directly to ask for a recommendation or job advice.

Jibe uses a credit system that allows applicants to apply for jobs. Applicants can earn credits by linking their Jibe account to their various social networks, broadcasting their job search, sending private messages through the system, or updating their work history profile. They can also buy 500 credits for $5.

Each job listing is ranked based on how many times it’s been viewed, saved, or applied for. The jobs that rank higher turn up at the top of job searches. Employers can post jobs for free, but pay $15 to unlock an applicant’s profile. By unlocking the profile employers get to see the applicant’s name, who else they are connected to in the company, and they can send them a direct message. Candidates whose profile gets unlocked the most appear on a leaderboard.

Jibe, which is incubated in Dogpatch Labs in New York City, closed an $875,000 seed round led by Polaris Venture Partners (which runs Dogpatch Labs) with Lerer Media Ventures, Zelkova Ventures, Jason Calacanis, and Josh and Jared Kushner participating in the round.

With the seed funding, Jibe has expanded its team with some key hires from the online job board and technology industry. Jibe’s new Director of Enterprise Sales, Lisa Kloster came from The Ladders where she was their top outside salesperson in 2008 and 2009. JIBE’s Director of Engineering, Andrzej Lawn came from Gilt Groupe and was previously at the New York Times.

As current job boards falter with pure listings, it makes sense to allow users to tap into their social graph in the job search. And since the site is targeted at the under-25 crowd, many users have already built enough connections on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to make Jibe beneficial.

Over time, we’ve scooped things ranging from Facebook Places to various Chrome OS features simply by digging through code put out there in public. What’s great about doing this is that it negates the inevitable non-denial denials from companies when you ask about these features. Code doesn’t lie. Neither do images. And the latter may reveal two upcoming features destined for Google Search.

Check out this image. It’s a file Google uses in conjunction with CSS to style their web results pages. On it, you’ll notice all the major navigational elements currently found on google.com are there — but there are also two extra ones: the question mark and the people icon.

Now, it’s certainly possible that these are simply icons that Google is no longer using in their search navigation but has tested out in the past (they do so many little tests). But I can’t recall ever seeing them, and neither can anyone else I’ve asked. Further, you’ll note that the name of the file is nav_log16.png — Google actually iterates these file names when they make nav changes, so this one is pretty new. If you want to go back in time in the way Google search looked, check out nav_logo7, for example. Or nav_logo3.

So what are the question mark and people icons? Judging from their position, they seem to be destined for the left side bar navigation on Google Search results. Could it be that Google is thinking about re-starting their (since-retired) Google Answers product? Remember, Google bought Q&A service Aardvark earlier this year for $50 million. Might they use it to populate a new Google Questions product?

Between Facebook Questions, Quora, Formspring and others, Q&A is a very hot space right now — and Google’s search box is still undoubtedly the most-used question submission form in the world. It’s a question (see what I did there?) of “when,” not “if” for such a product.

And what about the people icon (which shows two humanoid figures standing next to each other)? Yes, it looks like the MySpace logo, but that probably isn’t what they’re going for. Could this be the first signs of the mythical “Google Me” social reboot project being led by Vic Gundotra?

Or is it just a better way to showcase social circle searches? Currently, those reside at the bottom of search result pages, while status updates from Twitter are found in the “Updates” area (which is the blue chat box logo).

We’ve reached out to Google to get their non-denial denial. But following the launch of Google Instant today, these may be the next things we see from the search giant.

[thanks Sean]

As location-based services have emerged as compelling ways for businesses to interact with potential customers, there have been a flux of marketing and social media platforms that help set up campaigns. Context Optional, SnackSquare, Geotoko, Sprout Social and a number of other platforms are helping brands run campaigns on services like Foursquare, Twitter, Gowalla and now Facebook Places. PlacePunch is launching its platform in the space, and has already enlisted a well-known brand as a client.

PlacePunch, which received seed funding from Shotput Ventures, allows businesses both big and small to run their own location-based marketing campaigns that integrate with Foursquare, Facebook Places, Twitter, Gowalla and other location-based social networks.

For example, a restaurant can create a loyalty program that counts customer check-in towards rewards and coupons. PlacePunch provides a good amount of the infrastructure, including branded sign-up pages, mobile coupon delivery and analytics, to run these programs. Marketers can also run personalized messaging programs through Twitter for customers that check into their venues. So if customers check-in to your coffee shop, you could set up an recurring Tweet welcoming them.

PlacePunch also provides a dashboard of reports and analytics to help businesses learn more about their customers and venues, including demographics, time of check-ins, and more. And the bootstrapped startup has signed on InterContinental Hotels Group as a client.

Of course, the location-based services themselves could start offering ways for businesses to interact with consumers but the plus of using a platform like PlacePunch is that you can tap into a number of services from the same dashboard.

During their Search event today, Google’s Marissa Mayer highlighted the fact that the search giant ran their first real commercial this year during the Super Bowl. If they choose to run a second, I think they have it.

Later in the event, Mayer introduced a clip they put together using Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” music video. It’s a smart idea because in the video Dylan uses flash cards to show what he’s saying as he sings it — sorta like how you now see results as you type with Google Instant.

The video cuts between shots of Dylan’s video with someone doing a Google Instant query based on what he’s singing and the results showing up as they type. It’s a nice, fun way to show off the power of Google Instant. And at 45 seconds, it’s almost the perfect length to run as a TV spot.

Google has traditionally shied away from advertising, but their chief rival Bing (Microsoft) is doing plenty of it all over television — and they appear to be gaining market share. It may be time for Google to counter in a real way with ads like this.

As we wrote yesterday, it appeared that Chris Sacca’s newly launched fund, Lowercase Capital, has raised over $20 million in funding over the course of the summer. But today, it looks like Sacca has filed another Form D under the name Lowercase RT, LP for another $20 million. Similar to the filings from yesterday, it’s unclear who the investors are from the SEC filing.

This brings the total amount raised over the past 6 months to nearly $50 million. It’s important to note that Sacca operates a number of other funds, so this recent $20 million and the previous raises could be used in his other investment vehicles. As Lowercase’s account cryptically Tweeted yesterday, #4: closed.

As GigaOm’s Liz Gannes wrote earlier this summer, Sacca operates a fund that makes investments in early-stage startups, and one that buys secondary market shares of companies such as Twitter and Facebook. Another two funds are jointly run with New York-based investors, and are focused on taking large public companies private in Hollywood, transportation and wireless. A fifth fund buys founder shares of early stage companies under the Lowercase brand.

Lowercase’s previous investments include SimpleGeo, Fanbridge, DailyBooth, Posterous and Stickybits. And Lowercase has been on an funding tear, participating in a number of recent rounds in hot startups, including Embed.ly, Chartbeat, and Backupify.

When the World Economic Forum reaches out to the world and asks people to talk about resource sustainability, energy efficiency and carbon emissions, they expect serious, thoughtful answer. And for the most part they get them.

Americans, of course, have to add a little flair. And so I’m not surprised to see a whole series of super hero interviews where they talk about these important issues, filmed in Venice Beach. The funny thing is that the answers are pretty good if you don’t watch the actual video and just listen to the audio. Boba Fett and Iron Man really nailed it with thoughtful answers in my opinion.

And it’s nice to see the very conservative WEF take a lighthearted approach to this. They even featured the video on their blog and will show it at next week’s summit in China. Our own Sarah Lacy will be there covering the event.

Over the last 24 hours there’s been a significant buildup to a special Google event that’s being held this morning at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art. The search giant is clearly excited: Google featured a kinetic logo on its homepage yesterday, and they now have a logo that went live last night hints at live updating search. The event is about to kick off, and it’s sure to bring some big news. We’ll be live blogging it below and will also be writing individual posts calling out the biggest news. You can watch a live stream of the event here.

Update:: Here are our posts detailing the day’s major news:

• No, Google Didn’t Just Kill “I’m Feeling Lucky” — They Just Moved It
• Bob Dylan Shows Off Google Instant — Google’s Second Commercial, Perhaps? [Video]
• Google Instant Is Less About Speed Than It Is About Volume
• Google Instant Coming Natively To Browsers “In The Next Few Months”
• Google Instant Will Save 350 Million Hours Of User Time Per Year
• Google Instant For Mobile Coming Later This Fall
• Google Instant: It Searches Before You Type
• Google Now Serving 1 Billion Users Each Week

Periodically we do ‘State of the Unions’

“What we do at Google is one part art, one part science.” “Today we’re going to talk about the importance of fast”.

Marissa Mayer has taken the stage. “Obviously we have a really big announcement, but first…”

-In past few months have passed over 1 billion users on Google each week.
-In 2010 have rolled out more than 500 changes to ranking and UI.

-Google Caffeine, square, stars, other major changes rolling out.

Yesterday’s doodle was meant to tease today’s announcement.

“We see today as a fundamental shift”.

Now talking about Woman with a Hat, a piece featured at MOMA. If you were to look for information in the 30′s, you’d spend half a day looking up information. In the 50′s you might be able to call a librarian, you could get the information in around half an hour. 1995, you had CD-ROM encyclopedia, you could find this information in a matter of minutes. But it was static information.

It takes a user on average around nine seconds to enter a search query into Google. Serving results takes around 300 ms from Google, plus 800 ms total in Network time. Takes around 15 seconds to select a result. A search takes 25 seconds.

At Google we think we have a faster way. Google Instant. And that’s what we’re launching today. Gets search results as you type so search is interactive the whole time you’re typing. Google Instant looks like normal Google search. But as you start typing, you see results — you don’t have to hit enter. You can hit ‘tab’ to complete a word.

You can use up and down arrows to jump between queries. “A lot of people think that Google Instant is search as you type. But it’s actually search before you type.” Instead of searching for exactly what you entered, it searches for the auto-completed suggestion. So you can see results when you’re only a few characters into your search.

In 2000 we thought this idea of searching before someone typed it was our April Fools day joke.

Google Instant will be available on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and IE 8. Will be rolling out over the course of today. Starting today you’ll get this as part of Google.com. Rolling out internationally over the next week to UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Russia.

We estimate this will help Google users save two to five seconds per query. That adds up across all users. “11 hours saved. Each second.”

Johanna Wright – Director of Product Management and Othar Hansson, Senior Staff Software Engineer have taken the stage. Three main features you’ll start seeing today: Instant results, Scroll to Search, Predictions.

Hit “w” — one keystroke. And you get the weather instantly. (audience claps).

Say you want to do a search for The Gril with the dragon Tattoo, but can’t remember the title. Start typing “the gi” and you’ll start seeing results. Gray text shows what Google thinks you’re looking for. “It’s not quite psychic but it is very clever”.

Third feature is scroll to search. After you type in a few characters you can hit up and down to jump between each suggested query with results showing up instantly.

Sneak preview of something coming this fall. Working to get this on mobile. Typing on phone is slower, so feedback is more useful.

Ben Gomes, Distinguished Engineer at Google, is talking about the engineering challenges. First challenge is user interface.
-We wanted to give feedback as you typed your query. If you type “bike h” you get queries that aren’t helpful — partial queries were a waste. So we figured out we had to do autocompleted queries.

Early iterations it was distracting to show results as you type. We tweaked it then dogfooded it, and it was very positive. Eventually did experiments with millions of users. Use eye tracking in lab. People tend to look at search box until the gray text shows what they’re looking for, and they immediately look at results.

Did extensive server and Javascript optimizations. Also had to optimize for load. First optimization: prioritizing searches differently. Next, user state — server keeps track of what browser already has, or what is already being done on another server. Finally is caching system.

Project started with one engineer a year ago, team doubled every six weeks thereafter.

Mayer is back on stage. Interactivity, comprehensiveness, understanding are keys to search. We feel Google Instant is a quantum leap forward in search.

Q&A:
Q: When will this be in the browsers? Google Chrome, etc.
A: Something we’re working on. Next few months.

Q: Impact on AdWords? A lot of impressions, are those counted as impressions?
A: No change in how we serve and rank ads. In terms of counting impressions in AdWords. Google Instant changes the way people search, so we do our best to calculate what a search is. We’ve added a three second pause as an impression. Also if someone clicked on a result/ad on the page. We operate on CPC basis, clicks are largely preserved.

Q: How does this fit into user search history?
A: This operates as you’d expect. Queries where you click will be shown. As will queries where you pause for more than 3 seconds.

Q: Is there a blacklist?
A: We care a lot about child safety, these kinds of issues. Had to think a lot about this. Same policies filtering for violence, hate, and pornography. If you’re typing something that may not appropriate we don’t show the results until you press enter.

Sergey Brin: I’ve been astounded by rate of innovation. Want to make Google third half of your brain. I do think it’s a little bit of a new dawn in computing. Things were fairly stagnant with respect to desktop for a decade or so. I’d say over the past several years, the technology coming of age, people being open minded to trying new things. Lots of exciting work going on.

Q: SEO.
A: Ranking stays the same. Behavior may change over time. Will understand much better over time.

Q about privacy.
Brin: We think a lot about privacy as a company. We spend a lot of time thinking about, making sure we’re secure. I don’t think Google Instant is any different in that respect.

Q: How many users haven’t liked this?
A: Some users decided to turn it off. We have a switch that lets you. Very small percentage. Overall really happy with number people who kept Instant on. Caffeine makes index refresher, we had to come up with a very advanced caching strategy.

Q about making it faster.
A: We’re happy now but I’m sure we’ll go back later to make it faster. “You aint seen nothing yet”.

In May Zynga and Facebook ended their months long fight and entered into a five year deal to use Facebook Credits as the primary monetization engine for Zynga games on the Facebook platform.

Zynga began rolling out Facebook Credits on some of its games months ago. But now they’ve made Facebook Credits the primary payment solution on all of their games across the Facebook platform other than Poker and a few other smaller games. Users can wire transfer cash, or use Facebook Credits, but that’s it. Other third party payment providers have been removed.

The migration has clearly had bumps – a slew of Zynga users are screaming murder in the forums over various payments failures. Which makes sense since Zynga is almost certainly accounting for the lion’s share of the Facebook Credits business.

One thing to note – Don’t expect to see Facebook Credits being rolled out in Zynga’s games on other platforms like Yahoo. Zynga and Facebook have found détente for now, but I don’t see Zynga processing a single dollar through Facebook that they don’t have to.

Zynga and Facebook’s joint statement: “Facebook and Zynga have transitioned Facebook Credits to be the exclusive method of payment for most Zynga network games on the Facebook platform. The companies are committed to working together to provide the best possible customer experience during this transition.”

Update: To clarify, Poker and the rest of Zynga’s games on the Facebook platform will eventually use FB credits, too.

There’s been a lot of speculation about what will be announced at today’s Google search event. Google has been playing around with its logo, which seems to be pointing at the addition of live-updating results. We have received another clue from CEO Eric Schmidt today with a cryptic Tweet: I predict big things happening today at Google. We’re already fast…fast is about to get faster. Schmidt has only Tweeted 24 times since he joined Twitter last December.

Yesterday, Google’s doodle was action-oriented and kinetic, which Google called “fast, fun and interactive.” Today’s logo updates in colors as you type in the search box. And this combined with Schmidt’s message about speed points to Google rolling out the live-updating results-as-you-type feature they’ve been testing.

Search Engine Roundtable notes that people are reporting Google automatically take them to the search results page from the Google home page. And Google could also be launching AJAX-powered search results.

Tune in to TechCrunch to see how fast Google search will be getting at at 9:30 AM PT today.

As Facebook Places becomes a destination for brands and local businesses to connect with Facebook’s 500 million-plus members, there is a need for technologies that help businesses run promotions and track interactions with their Places pages. Context Optional, a SaaS offering that allows users to build, monitor and manage brand presence on Facebook, is debuting a customizable Facebook Places Check-In Leaderboard, a way for brands to recognize users who ‘check in’ to Facebook Places such as retail stores and restaurants.

Places Check-In Leaderboard allows guests who check in to various locations to claim ownership of said locations via specially-designated categories which are tied to frequency of check-ins. Brands who implement a Places Check-In Leaderboard will be able to create Leaderboard categories such as ‘High Roller’ and ‘Shop-a-holic’ and attach special deals and offers to Top Fans on the Leaderboard.

While this is a small feature, I’m sure we can expect many more Places-oriented offerings from Context Optional in the near future. The company recently acquired Buzzeo, a platform for Facebook application creation; and a customized application for retailers to connect with Facebook users.

Of course, it would also make sense for Facebook could start turning on these sort of marketing features for businesses, so Context Optional and others could face competition in the future.

Zoodles, which creates a browser designed for kids, has taken its child-friendly technology mobile today with a free app for Android smartphones. The Zoodles app aggregates hundreds of educational games, videos and puzzles into the app. The app also automatically locks the child into the app, so curious children cannot accidentally make calls, erase emails or access other applications on the phone.

Similar to Zoodle’s web-based app, the mobile app adapts content to each child based on age, skills, the device they are using, and custom parental controls so they can play without needing help from an adult. For example, if a child is not yet able to read, Zoodles will only present content where no reading is required.

Zoodles for Android allows users to create an account, or log in using an existing Zoodles account. Once the app is launched, a child logs in by tapping their picture (no reading required), and selects from a scrolling menu of activities. Zoodles automatically recognizes the Android device and presents the right content for that phone. For example, Android users with Flash installed will have access to games built in Flash, plus videos and more. For those without Flash, Zoodles will videos and others non-Flash content.

The brainchild of Mark Williamson, Zoodles aims to allows children to play and interact with the web through games, puzzles and videos. The inspiration for Zoodles came from Williamson’s four year old daughter, who was having trouble interacting with a mainstream browser. Zoodles is free for all but also offers a premium membership that allows parents the ability to customize and restrict their child’s online learning experience based on their age, interests, educational needs and skills.

Zoodles is steadily gaining traction as parents are looking for kid-friendly ways to introduce computing to young children. The startup has just crossed over 1 million hours of playtime on its products. And Zoodles plans to launch an iPad app soon.

It’s safe to say we’ve reached the pinnacle of humanity with this next bit of news: you’ll soon be able to update your Facebook status using OnStar. It’s the first “entertainment-y” option to be offered by OnStar, perhaps designed to cash in on some of the goodwill that has gone Ford’s way with its Sync system.

In part three of our Super Angel v. VC SMACKDOWN Dave McClure says “I am all about the flip. GREED IS GOOD. I am Gordon Gekko in Silicon Valley.” But is he? Wouldn’t greed be going after the big win not the tiny flip?

In this clip we come to one of the core distinctions between Super Angels and VCs: Are sub-$50 million exits the desired goal in Silicon Valley or are small acquisitions what you settle for when your company doesn’t hit it big?

McClure argues that small flips are more sustainable for the Valley, despite the fact that small flips don’t create the next Googles and Facebooks to acquire future generations of Super Angels’ companies. McClure says he’s counting on non-technology companies to start buying hundreds of technology companies, but do entrepreneurs want to sell to someone even stodgier than a Microsoft or a Yahoo?

David Hornik counters that Sand Hill Road is about changing the world and that’s the business he wants to be in. (For the record, that’s the business I moved to Silicon Valley ten years ago to cover.)

For part one of our series, “Why the Hate?” go here; for part two “Are Super Angels Just a Phase?” go here. And to catch the live debate at Orrick’s offices this Friday go here.

Today at the Google Search event in San Francisco, the search giant unveiled Instant, a huge new feature that allows users to search in real time (without hitting the search button). It looks to be an awesome product that will save users a lot of aggregate time. But that’s on Google.com. I rarely use Google.com anymore. I want it in the Chrome Omnibox.

That’s coming soon, Google’s Marissa Mayer promised. “Sometime in the next few months this is something that will be activated in the browsers,” she said. She didn’t elaborate, but obviously, you can imagine this coming to builds of Chrome (which Google makes) first. And it wouldn’t be surprising to see this in Chromium (the open source version of Chrome) pretty soon.

That said, it’s not yet clear how Google will implement this in Chrome. Currently, when you search in the Omnibox, you still have to hit enter to do a query. That’s important because the Omnibox is also the address bar, so people are typing in URLs here a lot. This should be an interesting problem for Google to solve.

And how Google will implement this in other browsers remains to be seen. You can probably imagine this will be a plug-in for browsers that Google doesn’t make — such as Firefox and Safari. And it will be interesting to see what Microsoft thinks of this seeing as they make both their own browser (IE) and search engine (Bing).

Earlier in the event, Google also noted that Instant would be coming to the mobile experience later this Fall.

The e-book world is slowly evolving into a number of fairly similar, homogenized ecosystems. No one wants to be shackled to using a single device to read their e-books: the Kindle is both a device and an app on your smartphone; Apple's iBook's is an app on your iPad and your iPhone. And today Kobo is following the trend with the announcement of the Kobo Desktop Application. Like its competitors, the Kobo Desktop Application allows you to consolidate your e-book purchases on your computer, shop for new titles that can be synchronized to your Kobo-powered e-readers, as well as read and bookmark your e-books.

Seedcamp Week, the week when the startup programme brings its pan-European travels to a head and lands in London, starts next week and they've released the startups they will be running through their intense mentoring wringer. Over 600 teams applied over the last year of nine Mini Seedcamps, finally coming up with teams from 16 different countries and 19 different cities. Although Seedcamp pinged to South Africa, Israel and even Asia this year, their hard-core remains Europe, and the above data points show just how intense you have to be to suck out startups from such a wide area. If you're just in Silicon Valley, thank your lucky stars you only have to drive up and down the 101. Below is Seedcamp's summary of the contenders.

Here at the Google Search Event in San Francisco, Google engineer Ben Gomes brought up the fact that the search engine serves up billions of queries every day, the average query length being 20 characters and the average time for a user to pick a result being 15 seconds.

“There are billions of queries and tens of billions of documents, getting people from the right query to the right document is fun,” said Gomes.

Google’s latest feature launch is all about speeding up this process. Says Google’s Marissa Mayer,
“Google Instant will save 350 million hours of user time, over a year,” basing her rough estimate on a figure of each instant search saving two to five seconds of user time, in places where Google Instant is rolled out.

When asked about plans to improve speed Gomes replied, “Tomorrow we try to find ways to make it even faster. That’s what we’ve always done. You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Today at their Google Search event in San Francisco, executive Marissa Mayer kicked things off with a big state: Google is now serving 1 billion users each week.

Mayer noted that they have some big announcements coming up today (likely these), but first reiterated that they’ve already done a lot this year. In 2009, Google rolled out 500 UI and ranking changes — in 2010 so far, they’re already past that. “This stands to be the best year ever for Google Search,” Mayer said.

Mayer noted that some of the big things so far this year have been Caffeine (the 50 percent faster results), Real-Time, Spelling Corrections, Questions & Answers, Stars in Search, and the Redesign (the left panel).

Mayer also brought up Google’s first television commercial, which aired during the Super Bowl this year. She also noted their April Fools’ joke (renaming Google “Topeka”). And finally she noted that “over the past few days we’ve been having fun with our logo.” We’ve obviously noticed that. That’s a hint of what’s to come today.

Today is all about “a fundamental shift to search,” Mayer said.

Follow our live blog here.

Update: And here’s Google Instant: It’s search before you type.

Everyone needs an iPhone app it seems, even e-commerce sites. But most shopping sites don’t want to bother with creating their own custom mobile app. So now we are starting to see white-label mobile e-commerce apps. Today, Magento Commerce, which raised $22 million in March for its open-source e-commerce platform, is getting into the mobile game with white-label apps for existing customers who use its e-commerce backend. With 70,000 customers, that a lot of built-in sales leads. Already, 8,000 of them are beta testing the mobile product, including The North Face, the Miami Dolphins, and Flowe(Red).

Magento Mobile is launching today supporting the iPhone, but will soon add the iPad and Android as well. It essentially translates an existing e-commerce site into a mobile app that fits each device, complete with a full catalog, product search, a shopping cart, ratings, and reviews. The iPhone app can be skinned any way the retailer likes, and supports PayPal integration. The product roadmap for later this year includes the addition of barcode scanning, private sales, A/B testing, and analytics. Magento charges an $800 set-up fee and then a $700 annual fee, which is much cheaper than it would cost for an online store to create its own app and integrate it with its back-end systems.

You’ve got to be a really loyal customer to download a North Face or Miami Dolphins shopping app, but for those die-hard customers why not give them a better touchscreen shopping experience? If anything, these apps will serve as good marketing for Magento itself. You can no longer call yourself a full turnkey e-commerce platform if you don’t support mobile apps. And when we get to bigger touchscreens, custom mobile apps become more compelling. Here’s a sneak peak screenshot of what the upcoming iPad app will look like.

It went by largely unnoticed, but directory services provider WhitePages launched a social buying website called DealPop last July, entering a field played by many notable up-and-comers such as Groupon, LivingSocial and Yelp.

Initially, DealPop was only available in Seattle, but the site is expanding to Los Angeles today and to San Francisco in the next two weeks.

The company has bigger plans for the site than city-by-city expansion too, so its competitors better take notice.

The reason all group buying sites should keep a close eye on the venture, regardless of the lackluster reception by the media, is the sheer size and reach of WhitePages.

The company offers an exhaustive suite of free mobile and Web services that enable people find and connect with each other as well as businesses throughout the United States.

According to WhitePages, its directory offers one-click access to more than 200 million adults, and powers more than 2 billion searches on over 1,500 partner sites including MSN, Ask.com, and the United States Postal Service.

Its DealPop subsidiary, specifically, will build off the 100 million local and business searches conducted by some 20 million people who visit WhitePages.com and 411.com per month.

DealPop says it’s already seeing considerable demand from existing national advertising and WhitePages.com partners, prompting it to roll out nationwide deals (e.g. Groupon’s recent GAP deal) in the coming weeks.

It’s worth noting that DealPop isn’t necessarily a group buying site, as every user gets a deal – there is no minimum of people required for a deal to get unlocked. DealPop has also created a point system that allows members to earn points on future purchases when they share a deal with someone via Facebook, Twitter and/or email who then signs up and purchases that deal. There is no limit on the number of DealPop Points that members can earn.

Two months in, the company is content with the metrics in its home turf of Seattle, where listings have grown fivefold since the launch. WhitePages says over 50% of the people who’ve signed up for DealPop to date have already moved to purchase their first deal, and that every single merchant that has offered a deal on DealPop so far has requested a second run.

Curious to see if they’ll make strides in the rest of the United States as well.

MySpace is adding a new feature today that allows users to embed video streams within their activity streams. Powered by Redux, videos are seen directly within an activity stream and instantly plays video that you or a friend has shared, selected as a favorite, uploaded, and rated from your Stream.

The actual player will show a real-time stream of MySpace videos based on what their friends are sharing and what’s trending on MySpace. The player will also include comments from friends that scroll/change. And users can also see which friend posted the content.

If you want to see a larger view of videos, users can select “TV mode,” which opens into a full-screen view of the player, MySpace has includes a news-style ticker along the bottom that shows users what’s going on in their stream while they’re watching videos.

Redux actually powers its own community around Facebook and Twitter video content but it looks like it is licensing its technology to MySpace. Twitter also been testing in-stream videos and photos on its site, but removed this feature.

Today at their Search event, Google showed of a huge update: Google Instant. As you can probably guess, this is a way to search in realtime simply by typing. While this new feature is rolling out on Google for users in the U.S. today (and the world shortly), that’s only on google.com. But Google gave a sneak preview of what’s coming next: Google Instant for Mobile, coming “later this Fall.”

While Google Instant is awesome on a desktop or laptop, it will arguably be even more useful on mobile. “Typing on a phone is just slower, so the feedback is even more useful,” Google engineer Othar Hansson noted.

This was demoed on stage today, but only on a Android device. It’s not yet clear if this will be available for other mobile phones as well. There will be a Q&A after the event so I’m sure someone will ask about this. I suspect it will be available on other popular smartphones, like the iPhone — Google is all about search, they don’t care where you do it. Stay tuned.

More: Google Now Serving 1 Billion Users Each Week

TCDisrupt finalist ChompOn officially launches its major product foray into the deals space with its platform for publishers going live today. Attempting to take on the saturated deals aggregation space among competitors Yipit and 8coupons, the company offers hyper-targeted white label widgets that are drop-in on any site, which means that publishers can mix and match deals, and anyone can embed daily deals on their site.

ChompOn targets niche buying sites like the Jewish community JDeal (tagline: “You have to be meshugeh not to join”) and present at launch today is a lineup of partners including Sitepoint, Campusfood, Allmenus, Yoopra, and Stanford University. Says founder Samuel Yam, “And why should GroupOn have the monopoly on local business deals? All types of sites already have an audience to sell deals to, they just need to connect them to the right deals.”

Drawing from Yam’s background in advertising (he most notably sold AdWhirl to Admob), the crux of ChompOn platform is entirely ad networks driven, i.e. the deals aren’t stuck on your site. By adding in three lines of code, you can distribute ChompOn widgets throughout your publisher network, and ChompOn’s central analytics system will track all your data, across sites.  “Imagine as a user you’re browsing your favorite content site, and because of targeting data from other publisher sites, the current site you’re on shows you a personalized deal. That’s the aim.”

Here’s what I think is notable: Taking advantage of the fact that group buying is driven by collective behavior, ChompOn allows publishers to track deals shared over social media like Facebook and Twitter. Sites using ChompOn can now incentivize users if they shared a deal on Twitter or if they “liked” a business on Facebook. This could be a killer app for group buying, especially as the ability to share deals will only accelerate a mob mentality.

Yam explains why the world needs another daily deals site, and specifically ChompOn:

“Deals are here to stay. Lots of them. They bring in the money,and there’s no reason any one site should have a monopoly on deal inventory (as long as other sites have audiences). We’re positioning our play from an ad network background, and are providing the technology to start arbitrating and networking these deals right now across numerous properties.”

Well, someone must be making money off these things, or there wouldn’t be so many of them.

AOL has just announced that Jim Wiatt, former chairman and chief executive of the William Morris Agency, will assume the new role of strategic advisor to AOL. Wiatt will be stepping down from his position on AOL’s board of directors to take on the position.

Wiatt will be spending his time helping AOL create content partnerships across the entertainment and media sectors, similar to this deal AOL stuck recently with the Ellen DeGeneres show. AOL also has a deal with the Jonas Brothers for entertainment video network for teens Cambio.

Clearly, Wiatt’s extensive Hollywood-focused rolodex will help strike similar content deals for AOL. He previously served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the William Morris Agency from 1999 until 2009. Before joining WMA, Wiatt was Co-Chairman and Co-CEO of International Creative Management, a talent management company.

I’m sure we can expect more content partnerships for AOL with celebs and entertainers in the near future.

What do you get when you connect your customers to each other? If the customers like your product (and I’d say 10 billions songs sold shows definite positive bias) you get more sales. This echo chamber is what everyone – from Facebook on down – is trying to create and while I don’t believe Apple will pull it off, I think Ping is the first step in the right direction for online sales.

First, take a gander at what El Gruber has to say about Ping. He notes: “One way or another, though, if Ping proves popular, it shouldn’t remain focused solely on music.” He comes at the Ping question from a usability standpoint – shouldn’t there be a separate Ping app? Something completely disconnected from iTunes? In this way, Apple can add books, movies, apps, and the like to Ping and separate it from the lump of code called iTunes.

Read more…

Can a ragtag group of former newspapermen from the L.A. Times help newspapers fight off the content farms of the Web The founders and backers of Ebyline, which has been in private beta for a few months and launches today more broadly, think they can streamline the way news organizations manage freelancers and syndicate their own articles. Some publishers testing out the system include Variety, ProPublica, and The Texas Observer.

Ebyline is a marketplace for freelance journalists and syndicated news. Freelancers must be invited by an editor at a participating publication, or be vetted through an application. They can pitch story ideas into the open marketplace, or take assignments directly from editors they work with. The freelance writer and editor agree on a price, the freelancer submits drafts through the system, and once the editor accepts it after any necessary revisions, payment is authorized. The story can then be dumped into whatever ancient content management system the newspaper uses.

Similarly, publishers can syndicate their own articles to other newspapers and sites> For instance, Variety uses it to syndicate its movie reviews. Ebyline takes an 8 percent cut from each transaction. Ebyline streamlines the process and helps editors manage and discover many more freelancers than through lengthy phone calls or face-to-face meetings. But there is a big emphasis on maintaining quality by restricting access, as opposed to content farms like Demand Media or AOL’s Seed, which are designed to manage tens of thousands of freelance submissions.

The founders, Allen Narcisse and Bill Momary, both used to work at the L.A. Times. Backers include Jeffrey Johnson, the former publisher of the L.A. Times who was famously fired in 2006 for refusing to gut the newsroom, as well as Leo Wallinsky, editor-in-chief of Variety and former managing editor of the L.A. Times.

The idea of news exchanges seem to be gaining in popularity. At our first TechCrunch Disrupt last May, Publish2 launched with ethe concept of a news exchange to replace the AP by letting news organizations and blogs automate their syndication. Tools such as Ebyline and Publish2 are supposed to give print publishers a fighting chance against the encroachments of online media, but these marketplaces will only become interesting once online-only sites start using them too.

Coulomb Technologies, a company setting up electric vehicle (EV) charging stations across the United States, today announced a $15 million series C funding. The round was led by Rho Ventures, Voyager Capital, Siemens Venture Capital, and Hartford Ventures, joined by Harbor Pacific Capital and LS Cable Ltd., and LS Industrial Systems Co., Ltd.

With its recharged coffers, Coulomb will be embarking on a program called ChargePoint America, and providing 4,600 new charging stations to nine regions in the United States: Austin, Texas, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Orlando, Fla., Sacramento, Calif., the San Jose and San Francisco Bay Area, Bellevue and Redmond, Wash., and Washington DC.

Coulomb’s strategic partners in this program are three automobile makers: Ford, Chevrolet and Smart USA.

So far, Coulomb has set up stations (that can power any plug-in vehicle) in cities worldwide including: New York City, Orlando, Detroit, Amsterdam, Sydney and Dublin. The charging systems installed are for consumer and fleet use, both, and run on the company’s proprietary networking technology and software, a system called the ChargePoint Network.

We called it! So Google will be rolling out starting today search results that update while you type, “Google Instant”, a feature which they had tested in the wild. The results stream to you, taking what you’ve typed so far as a cue.

According to Google, the feature consists of three gears:

*Instant Results — Google Results now dynamically change as you type, typing in a “w” will get you a 5-day forecast in San Francisco, instantly.

*Predictions — The search attempts to predict exactly what you want, showing the results that it thinks you want in grey text, allowing you to chose.

*Scroll To Search — Using the down arrow key will let you scroll through each of the suggestions, and the results page will update as you go along.

The search button, which users now will be pressing less often, will now take over the function of showing results for the EXACT query.

You can see “Google Instant” in action above.

Stay tuned for updates.

“So ResearchGATE is Facebook for Scientists?” I asked ex-Facebook exec, current Benchmark Capital general partner and new ResearchGATE investor Matt Cohler. “I bristle at that characterization,” he responded telling me that doesn’t adequately describe the company.

Either way he’s invested in the Berlin based startup, along with Accel Partners, Simon Levene, Michael Birch, Joachim Schoss, Martin Sinner, Ulrich Essmann, Christian Vollmann and Rolf Christof Dienst. Cohler, Levene and Schoss also join the company’s board of directors.

Oddly, the company won’t disclose the size of the round, other than to say it’s a typical series A round, which implies $5 million or so.

We first wrote about ResearchGate in May, when Leena Rao called it, ahem, LinkedIn for scientists (I know, but context is always nice):

On ResearchGATE, scientists can create Facebook-like profiles where users can list their education, work experience, skills and interests and attach research papers. Users can add professional contacts by searching for other researchers who have the same focus. ResearchGATE also gives users the option to engage in online discussions by joining or forming groups. ResearchGATE also offers a few applications that help connect scientists in the virtual world. ReStory, similar to GoogleDocs, allows users to collaborate together with colleagues to write and edit documents. ReMeet lets users schedule meetings and conference calls online and ReVote enables users to create surveys and polls on topics.

There are already half a million registered users on ResearchGate – proving that scientist types need a little social networking, too. Just don’t expect them to start playing Farmville any time soon. They’d probably cheat and genetically modify all the crops anyway.

It seems that one of Google’s latest doodles, a homage to the 25th anniversary of the discovery of Buckyballs was, as we suspected, too clever by half. Two, presumably, unintentional consequences have emerged: costing Google’s users money, while making a heck of a lot of cash for the maker of the Buckyballs desktoy overnight.

The way the doodle itself had been designed put a very heavy load on users’ computers, increasing power consumption at a cost to those users, as well as causing many a browser crash. That’s kind of clumsy and, arguably, irresponsible when you consider how many people have Google as their browser’s default start page.

But more bizarrely was another side effect, which surely Google must have anticipated: sending a massive amount of traffic to GetBuckyballs.com, a site that sells the Buckyballs desktoy, described as “a set of building spheres containing 216 powerful Rare Earth magnets that can be shaped, molded, torn apart and snapped together in unlimited ways.”

That’s because clicking on Google’s doodle brought up search results for “Buckyballs”, and GetBuckyballs.com was one of the top results, sending over 2,000,000+ unique visitors to the site and generating 10,000 unit sales in a single day. Which translates to more than $250,000 in revenue, at least according to the announcement the online retailer distributed today.

That’s one way of making your search engine positioning efforts pay off – but it’s certainly a rare occasion to see Google lending such a big virtual hand.

Amie Street is one of those startups that just got me – love at first site if you will. I first discovered them in 2006, calling it an awesome new music model. Artists upload songs and those songs are free to download to start. As more downloads occur the price goes up. A cent, fifty cents, etc., up to $1.

The price of the song is an indication of how good it is, as friends share the good stuff with others.

Over time a lot of artists tried out the service, songs were downloaded over 10 million times, and the company raised venture capital from Amazon and others.

And today, the company will announce that Amazon has acquired the Amie Street business. Going forward the team will focus on Songza, which they acquired in 2009.

Amazon will redirect Amie Street to a new cobranded Amie Street/Amazon Music Service site and give users a $5 coupon to purchase songs on Amazon. But while the users and the brand are being acquired, Amazon will most likely ditch the business model, say the founders (stressing that they don’t know for sure).

Much like imeem’s acquisition by MySpace, this is more of a traffic acquisition than anything else. The terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed.

The team seems bullish on Songza, which lets users create custom playlists/radio stations and share them with friends. Since relaunching less than a month ago 20,000 stations have been created and some users are listening for an average of half an hour at a time. Here’s a station that Yelp employees in Miami created, for example.

RIP Amie Street. I once had you on the list of products I couldn’t live without. Somehow, I’ll have to find a way to move on. And I’m looking forward to seeing how Songza evolves.

We originally wrote about ZumoCast, a new cloud storage service, brought to us from the folks who brought us Zumodrive. ZumoCast’s application streams music, videos and files directly from your home desktop computer to another Internet connected device. Today, the startup’s free iPhone and iPad app is available in the App Store.

ZumoCast is the brainchild of Y Combinator startup Zecter, which also launched a cloud storage service Zumodrive. Zumodrive creates a drive on your device that is synced to the cloud. But instead of syncing those files with all of your other devices, Zumodrive tricks the file system into thinking those cloud-stored files are local, and streams them from the cloud when you open or access them. HP has tapped Zecter to provide a cloud storage app on netbook devices and Zumodrive offers a number of mobile products.

ZumoCast was launched as a way to avoid cloud storage costs on multiple devices. Via the web and new iPhone app, you install ZumoCast on your devices and tell it what files to make available to the app. You can then stream those files directly from your main computer on your iPad or iPhone. The app allows you to stream video and allows users to play their entire iTunes libraries from their iPads and iPhones. You can also download your videos, music, and other files directly to your devices so you can enjoy them later, even if you are offline.

The app essentially turns your computer into a personal cloud server that streams your media libraries to your mobile devices upon demand. And it eliminates the cloud when syncing video and music on devices. And the service is free, with ZumoCast planning to offer a freemium option in the future.

CEO David Zhao says they use the same technology behind ZumoDrive to automatically adjust for bandwidth fluctuation, and transcoding on the fly means most file types, as long as they don’t have DRM, stream fine.

While Apple’s iTunes products may compete with ZumoCast, Zhao maintains that Apple’s offerings are more oriented towards sharing around the home. He counters that ZumoCast is meant for both home sharing and being able to access and stream files on your devices while you travel or are away from your home computer.

Did you know eight out of ten women wear the wrong bra size? Of course you didn’t. Now, thanks to Israeli iPhone app dev house, Digital Relations, you can celebrate the Jewish New Year with the correct support your loved ones’ bosoms need. Say hello to FITS, the iPhone app that helps you measure breast size. Happy new year indeed!

The story behind the app is that one of the developers at Digital Relations had an “embarrassing session with the saleswoman at the bra-shop”. As he made his cowardly escape, and evidently being a full-fledged dork, he thought to himself “hey, there should be an app for exactly these situations.”

You can either use a frontal photo, or a combination of one frontal and one profile photo. In both cases you can either take the shot on the spot, or browse your iPhone’s photo gallery. You then need to size and position a female silhouette over the body of the woman whose breasts you’re trying to measure. The next step is to superimpose a pink bra over the bust. Then you need to enter height and you’re done.

Bra sizes are given in five standard measurements systems: US, UK, AUS, EU & FR.

I can’t say I thoroughly tested the app, but I tried it out thanks to the kind indulgence of a friend who requested only to be known as ‘Jessica’. See her photo above.

No need to take this app too seriously of course… Just a bunch of geeks developing a dorky iPhone app that could be a hit with frat guys. Sometimes, putting a smile on people’s faces is good enough. Better yet when you can also put a cartoon character over their bodies.

You can download FITS, here for $0.99. Remember, beads not included.

Shana Tova everyone!

Symantec this morning released two new security software products, Norton AntiVirus 2011 and Norton Internet Security 2011.

Coinciding with the release, the company has also published its latest cybercrime report, dubbed The Norton Cybercrime Report: The Human Impact. The company claims two-thirds (65 percent) of global Internet users have already fallen victim to cybercrimes, which includes computer viruses, online credit card fraud and identity theft.

I’ll say it right off the bat: Symantec just so happens to sell security software, and they have new products to promote, so it’s in their best interest to scare people into awareness and try and push them into purchasing mode. Take any research findings from commercial companies with a big grain of salt, always.

That said, cybercrime is prevalent, there’s no question about that. I can imagine the 65 percent of global Internet users is likely close to the truth, and suspect that percentage to increase for the foreseeable future.

Zooming in on nations, Symantec claims almost three-quarters (73 percent) of U.S. Web surfers have fallen victim to cybercrimes, ranking it third according to Symantec (fourth according to myself), behind China (83 percent) and Brazil and India (both 76 percent).

The company also surveyed 7,000 Web users in order to assess the emotional impact of cybercrime. The study shows that victims’ strongest reactions are feeling angry (58 percent), annoyed (51 percent) and cheated (40 percent), and in many cases, they blame themselves for being attacked.

Only 3 percent don’t think it will happen to them, and nearly 80 percent do not expect cybercriminals to be brought to justice, which Symantec says ironically results in a reluctance to take action and a sense of helplessness.

Only half (51 percent) of adults saying they would change their behavior if they became a victim. Fewer than half (44 percent) reported the crime to the police.

Also, nearly half of respondents assume it’s legal to download a content such as music and movies without paying, which Symantec posits opens people up to a range of security threats.

Again, Symantec wants you to buy Norton products, but it’d be foolish to dismiss that cybercrime is a genuine security threat, and a growing one at that. Buy (or use any free) security software you wish if you haven’t already done so, and make sure to update it regularly – it’s worth the money and hassle. And if you do get hit with a virus or malware, or fall victim to identity theft, sexual predation or credit card fraud, report it to the authorities.

There’s no way cybercrimes are going to be stopped any time soon, but we should at least try and stop making it easier for scammers by not taking action.

Jesper Buch who co-founded Just-Eat, the European company that took fast food online, has launched his latest venture: Mentaline, a platform for therapists, life coaches and psychologists to deliver services to clients. Ambitiously, it's not a marketplace in which sessions eventually take place offline but instead the whole thing operates on the Web. Users browse the site by specialism to identify the right therapist and then book and pay for an online consultation which is delivered via webcam. In addition, the system scales so that sessions can be delivered to groups of people or couples, and a separate section of the site is tailored to 'Masterclasses' or life coaching-style lectures.

Asymco, a Helsinki-based app developer / industry analysis advisory firm, ironically founded and led by a longtime Nokia manager, just posted this telling chart on its blog:

According to the firm’s research, iTunes download rates for music and iOS apps are both still growing, but accelerating much faster for the latter. In fact, Asymco posits, based on data from the recently updated Music and App Store, that the total number of app downloads has already reached the same level as that of songs in less than half the time.

Assuming Asymco’s numbers are correct, it took roughly 2.2 years for the App Store to serve up 6.3 billion apps, while it took approximately five years for the iTunes Music Store to reach that same number.

If current trends persist for both, Asymco considers it likely that app downloads will overtake song downloads by year’s end.

Cumulative unit rates aside, Asymco last weekend posted another graph, depicting how music downloads continue to slow, particularly compared to apps.

Asymco says iOS users are currently downloading 17.6 million apps compared to roughly 7.5 million songs per day, on average.

(Thanks to @ScepticGeek for the pointer)

Marc Andreessen is normally enthusiastic about the startups he’s invested in. Still, when I spoke to him last week about Kno, he surprised me by saying it will be “the most powerful tablet anyone has ever made.” And he’s backing up that claim with a new investment – Andreessen Horowitz has put even more capital into the company as part of a new $46 million debt and equity round. Silicon Valley Bank and TriplePoint Capital also invested in the round. Kno has now raised over $55 million.

The company is still planning on getting its first dual-screen tablet computer to market by the end of the year, says CEO Osman Rashid, although he won’t get specific on the price. It will be less than $1,000, but that’s as close as they’ll get.

Why is the device compelling? Andreessen and Rashid talk about how Kno is offering a total product – software, hardware and services – that will be compelling to the college user. They can purchase textbooks and view them just as they look in printed format. Users will be able to take notes, draw on the pages, etc., just like the print versions. And they’ll be able to access those books on a variety of devices – even eventually their desktop and laptops – because Kno’s software is built on webkit and designed to run on a variety of hardware setups. And there’s a normal web browser too for the Internet in general.

As for textbook pricing, Rashid says the model will work. Imagine an iTunes for college textbooks, he says, and users who purchase the tablet and all their books will be paying about the same amount v. just buying print books over the first 13 months. That means individual books on the Kno will be priced lower than the average of $100 for the print versions.

Will it all work? It’s probably best not to bet against this founding team. Rashid also cofounded Chegg, which rents textbooks to students. No one thought the idea would work, but the company is absolutely killing it right now. The best evidence so far that Kno may work is this – Early student testers are telling the company that they’ve stopped bringing their laptops to class and just use the Kno now.

Online monetization platform gWallet, which offers social gaming developers a variety of ways to monetize their apps and boost engagement, is debuting a new mobile ad offering today. Mobile app developers can now integrate virtual currency offers within their apps. However, instead of signing up for Netflix or other offers that gWallet uses on its web platform; the mobile offers ask for users to download an app in exchange for earning virtual currency.

For example, within an iPhone app, a user will be given the opportunity to earn virtual currency if they download the Netflix iPhone app. To expand reach of the new format, gWallet is partnering with mobile ad exchange Mobclix to allow developers integrate the branded offers within their apps. Developers purchase installs via a bidding system, with gWallet bringing in the brands to the platform. gWallet Mobile will be available on iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and other smartphone platforms.

gWallet launched late last year, positioning itself as a more trusted alternative to other ‘Offers’ companies in the wake of Scamville. One of the company’s more popular products is the video offer, which can reward an app user virtual currency in return for watching a video ad (they also have more traditional offers). But clearly, gWallet sees potential in bringing offers to the mobile advertising world, which is a $1 billion industry and is still growing.

As we’ve written in the past, the offers space is highly competitive; major Offers company OfferPal recently had to downsize in the wake of Facebook deciding that TrialPay would be its preferred Offers provider for Facebook Credits. But gWallet CEO and founder Gurbaksh Chahal says that Facebook offers only accounted for 15 percent of his business, so gWallet wasn’t seriously effected by Facebook’s move.

Still, there’s plenty of room to innovate give developers a compelling way to earn revenue from their mobile apps. Competitors OfferPal and Super Rewards also offer mobile offers to brands and developers.

How businesses and brands deal with social media has become one of the defining issues of the recent web era. Today a pretty big leap is taking place which may define the next phase. Two of the biggest players have come together to create certainly one of the slickest and most seamless integrations I’ve yet seen of the realtime social web and enterprise worlds. Seesmic is to integrate Salesforce’s internal Twitter-like app, Chatter, into their platform. That makes Seesmic the first realtime social consumer app to go directly into the enterprise space. Seesmic will also suddenly have the potential to access to over 20,000 Salesforce customers who have used Chatter so far.

The news was unveiled at a 3,000-strong Salesforce conference in London today. Below we have an exclusive interview with Loic Le Meur of Seesmic and Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.

Once you see Seesmic working with Salesforce’s Chatter it make perfect sense. Suddenly you can be having internal and external conversations at once.

It’s clear this is part of a long term strategic partnership between the two companies, and the rapport between the two CEOs is evident. While Seesmic has made a virtue of its ability to develop strong social clients on Adobe Air, Android, BlackBerry, Windows and (via Silverlight) Mac, Salesforce is clearly gunning for the space opened up by ‘enterprise social’ services like Yammer. We’re seeing the first integration of the realtime web and the enterprise, and there is plenty more to come.

At an interview in London, Seesmic’s Loic Le Meur told me “It’s not enough to have these two worlds silo’d any more… What we bring is the connection to the outside world without making it scary. With chatter you can directly send someone on the social web [via Seesmic] directly into the enterprise.”

For Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, it’s all about the movement to what he calls Cloud 2: mobile, social, realtime.

Indeed, he wrote a TechCrunch guest post this year, “The Facebook Imperative”, where he said “New realtime cloud applications, platforms, and infrastructure offer the path to redefine the future of collaboration.”

So how will the integration work?

Here’s an example: A Salesforce user on Seesmic will be able to push, for instance, a Tweet onto the Chatter wall of someone inside a company. That could mean pushing it to a sales rep or a social media response team. You name it. The upshot is a great ability to respond, in realtime, to social conversations around brands or products.

That could mean much better customer service – or more some interesting sales pitches, depending on which side of the fence you are on. But suddenly, instead of needing to physically cut and paste a reference to a Tweet or a Facebook Group or whatever, people who monitor social media can bring that data directly into the enterprise and work out a response. It’s going to make a lot of social media community managers pretty happy – at least the ones who use Salesforce (for now).

When companies need to respond to customer complaints on social media, they need to see context in terms of the prior conversation, internal company feedback etc – this Salesforce Chatter/Seesmic integration effectively makes the whole process a lot easier. It’s like the Missing Link between the enterprise and the realtime social web just got invented.

And by moving first on this plane, Seesmic is in a prime position to open up a completely new front against its competitors, like Tweetdeck, which remain locked in the social web and not at all integrated into enterpise systems.

Seesmic’s integration with Chatter has been made possible by its switch to the Miscrosoft Silverlight platform which allows for plugins. Adobe Air does not afford this, so, on the face of it, competitors could well struggle to create the same kind of ecosystem around their core product.

Much of this is discussed in our exclusive video interview with Benioff and Le Meur below.

As Salesforce's foray into social collaboration, Salesforce Chatter, gains traction amongst enterprise users, it makes sense for the company to launch complimentary mobile apps to the platform. And as the enterprise increasingly relies upon mobile devices for connectivity; there is a strong demand for native mobile use of Chatter. Today, Salesforce is taking Chatter to mobile phones; unveiling Chatter Mobile apps for the iPad, iPhone, Google Android and BlackBerry devices. Salesforce Chatter, which was originally announced last November, was launched into public beta in June after four months in private beta. In the realtime collaboration platform's firts three months open to the public, Chatter has been adopted by 25,000 companies; with 25 percent of Salesforce's client base using the platform. .

It has been roughly one year since Yahoo! made waves in the Middle East, by buying Maktoob, the region’s largest web portal for $164 million.

From Silicon Valley’s observation deck that may seem like small peanuts— these days we barely bat an eye when HP and Dell get into a multi-billion dollar tug-of-war game. However, for the Middle East and in particular Jordan, the Maktoob takeover was a flash point for the fledgling tech scene.

That’s not to say that Jordan has become a premiere tech hub overnight. Indeed, the region still suffers from a dearth of angel investors. But there is a palpable rise in confidence among the region’s entrepreneurs, like Ammar Ibrahim founder of Asuaq.com. The young site, which touts itself as the Craigslist of the Middle East (minus the “censored” controversy), has only garnered about 300,000 unique visitors since its launch earlier this year, but it’s growing at a healthy clip. Traffic has doubled in the last five months.

On this week’s episode of Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur, SGN Founder Shervin Pishevar talks to Ibrahim about his new site, Jordan’s startup community, the Maktoob deal’s effect and the challenges of funding. See video above. Many thanks to Shoo Fee TV, a content provider and aggregator of Arab satellite channel listings based in Jordan, for shooting this video.

For all the progress in Jordan, it was interesting to hear Ibrahim discuss the ongoing challenges of raising capital in the region. Although he says the investment environment has improved significantly in the last 2-3 years, a site rich in traffic is still tough sell in this traditional market: “The thing that is still happening today is that people are still evaluating internet businesses on the balance sheet. So it’s pretty much like a grocery store, like gasoline station… So this is one of the biggest problems, if you’re a website and you do have significant traffic…it’s a bit difficult to monetize traffic…[so] internet businesses are undervalued because of the internet business model.”

To see episode one of Entrepreneur To Entrepreneur, featuring Yahoo’s former Chief Data Officer, Dr. Usama Fayyad, click here. On next week’s episode, we’ll meet the man Pishevar calls the “Ron Conway of the Middle East.”

The most interesting thing about Campus Dibs, a recently launched GroupOn clone, is its choice of vertical i.e. college campuses. If you don’t think this is notable enough to merit another (albeit brief) GroupOn clone post then just remember how Facebook got a heads start towards world domination, by strategically targeting social networks in the Ivy League and slowly expanding outward.

Facebook has proven that colleges are hotbeds of virality in more ways than one, and thus are extremely interesting when thought of  in terms of a market for GroupOn clones. If you doubt Campus Dibs’ chances for setting itself apart from the 800 or so daily deals sites out there, just imagine the power of the 50k plus populations of college campuses and alumni coupled with the mob mentality of group buying sites.

Picture briefly what a deal tie-in might mean for the student store, especially at campuses with pretty fanatical populations and hopping college towns. I’m looking at you USC, Penn State, Arizona State, Michigan State, OSU, and UT Austin who are among the campuses covered by Campusdibs.

Right now the USC deal (my alma mater) is “50% off Timbuk2 messenger bags and backpacks.” Perfect for back to school! But no joke, college campuses are serious business, no matter how niche they might seem. And as history has proven, no niche is too niche; Just ask GroupOn CEO Andrew Mason, who once sold slippers with flashlights. Enough said.

Former head of Google China, Kai-fu Lee, insists—insists—that he is not happy that Google imploded its business in China. “Seeing the work that I put in, how could I be happy to see that?” he says. In fact, in a press release all about his incubator’s companies being built on top of Android he doesn’t use the G-word once. “Given the pull out, we’ll accept the situation and do our best,” he says humbly. Yeah, accept the situation like a fox.

As Lee begins to open up more about the types of companies being created at his incubator, Innovation Works, there’s a consistent theme—Android. Whether it’s address books, music programs, video games, maps, eCommerce marketplaces or e-readers, many of Lee’s companies are hoping to take advantage of the good things about Android—namely that it’s a free, robust operating system—but customize the core smartphone applications in a way that Google won’t or can’t.

It’s interesting that I had a conversation with Lee about this topic right about the time Google CEO Eric Schmidt was delivering a keynote touting that more than 200,000 Android-powered smartphones are activated daily, going beyond just the smartphone wielding “elite.” Lee would agree with everything his former boss said. It’s just that Google isn’t well positioned to make money off the apps and services in the world’s largest market. Oops.

Lee philosophically may have issues with the lack of openness in the Chinese Web, but it’s also giving him an advantage: The most popular applications for the Android phone like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or Pandora aren’t available in China, and Google’s native apps may not be the top choice of manufacturers given the search engine’s stance on doing business in the country. So Innovation Works is collectively trying to build a new Web on top of the platform that’s customized for Chinese tastes.

For example, music services that show song lyrics as they play—an essential feature for China’s karaoke loving audience. Another example is a program that automatically enters different dialing prefixes that save money on calls to certain regions. Because 3G is so expensive in China, a video program called Wonderpod downloads videos onto your phone from your laptop at work, so you can watch them without having to stream them on the commute home. An eReader software company lets you read 60% of the book for free then asks for a payment to read the rest. Because of rampant piracy, there’s no chance of selling eBooks without giving anything away for free, but once people are hooked, if they enjoy it, they’ll pay for the rest of the book out of convenience, Lee argues. The incubator is making a few, broad platform plays with an Android-based operating system called Tapas, an analytics tool for developers called Umeng and Ascending Cloud, a publisher of social games.

At most, Lee’s mobile companies are getting a couple dollars per user for these apps so these ideas only become huge companies with massive scale. This can’t be just a game played for the top of the pyramid. And there’s no question in Lee’s mind that Android will be bigger in China than the iPhone, because the cost differential is much more pronounced. Because there aren’t many Android models in the US, hardware makers can price the phones close to the iPhone, but in manufacturing-heavy China prices will almost certainly be driven down much faster.

Lee says the Android devices coming out next year—including manufacturers his companies are working with—cost $200 to $300 per phone. He expects that to fall to around $100 the next year, and possible fall below $100 the year after that. The iPhone will never experience that kind of competitive pressure because only Apple makes it. (Although I could show you plenty of cheaper versions with the an Apple-like logo in the dodgy markets of Shenzhen…)

And there are no carrier subsidies in China, because 80% of phones are bought independently from airtime. So an iPhone will cost around $600. Already Android will enter the market at half the price. For a big swath of the Chinese population that will make a difference, especially if those prices can get under $100 per phone in just a few years with features more tailored for the market.

In a lot of ways, this is a strategy that would only work in China—it’s all about volume and counts on a market with hyper-aggressively competitive gadget manufacturing. But with billions of dollars in venture capital sloshing around China, the market to build the best mobile apps could be as cutthroat as the competition to win the hardware wars. Lee has recently inked some strategic partnerships with Foxconn, Chunghwa Telecom, MediaTek Inc and a raft of global investors to help his chances of being the one to profit from the opportunity.

He’s also moved Innovation Works from Google China’s building to a new location that features what any incubator needs—a hologram that greets you at the front door. I’m not kidding. He told his designer he needed it to look different than any other office and from the look of the pictures, he succeeded. His mobile bets are less certain. But if he wins he’ll have at least one guy to thank: Sergey Brin. A big juicy market opportunity is a lot better parting gift than a watch.

The ongoing saga of Google’s logo continues. The search giant has just changed the doodle on google.com once again this evening, leading up to their search event tomorrow. And once again, it looks as if the logo points to what they’ll be announcing tomorrow.

Whereas yesterday, the doodle was more kinetic, which Google called “fast, fun and interactive,” today’s logo updates as you type in the search box. This points to Google rolling out the live-updating results-as-you-type feature they’ve been testing.

When you load Google.com right now, you’ll see the logo grayed-out. When you start typing, the colors come to life one character at a time. If you backspace, the logo goes back as well.

Join us bright and early at 9:30 AM PT for coverage of the event tomorrow. Just in case you can’t see the new logo yet (last night it seemed to roll out slowly), I’ll include a video below.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to see how yesterday’s doodle worked, check out the recreation Rob Hawkes made using only HTML5.

Update: And here’s Google tweeting about it:

Well, power to the people, I guess. Yesterday we announced quite innocently that we’d be changing our logo every day for 50 days to salute a different startup. We thought it would be fun based on doing it last week with an old Twitter logo.

Fun it was not. Reddit, it seems, has been doing exactly the same thing for the last eight days. Within moments of our post going up we were slammed for copying them. And then demands were made that we stop, and/or give them credit for inventing the silly idea. I scoffed, and then things went crazy. We get more than our fair share of crazies in our comments, but this was over the top even in our experience. We banned dozens of hateful comments, but they’re coming faster than we can stop them. And I certainly have no intention of doing this day after day as each new logo goes up.

So, Reddit, you win. Making fake logos is your territory from here on out. Some things just aren’t worth fighting about. And believe me, if we actually ever visited Reddit and saw that they had begun doing this we never would have done this, too.

Hope everyone enjoyed our 1 day of logos.

Update: Interesting – After mildly mocking us earlier, Reddit Cofounder Alexis Ohanian says “Seriously, @reddit? Not cool. We stole the idea from google anyway – the world needs more customized logos”

Firefox just launched its fifth Firefox 4 beta, which includes a more streamlined interface, faster graphics and a new audio API that exposes raw audio data (see video above).

What’s new in this latest iteration of Firefox?

* The introduction of an audio API which uses HTML5, allowing developers to visualize the sound data in a browser and creating novel ways to experience sound while web surfing.

* Emphasis on faster graphics with default graphics support from Direct2D, a 2-D graphics API for Windows 7, on machines that support Windows 7.

* Implementation of the HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), a security protocol that increases the chances for a secure connections.

A stable version is set to be released by Mozilla in November. You can try out the latest beta here.

By now, you’ve likely noticed the interesting, kinetic logo Google has had up today. While there is still no official word from the search giant as to exactly what it means, they are letting out some hints. And based on those hints, a good guess seems to be that the logo has to do with what they’ll announce at their big search event being held in San Francisco’s MOMA tomorrow morning.

Earlier today, Google tweeted out: “Boisterous doodle today. Maybe it’s excited about the week ahead…” Meanwhile, a Google representative told Search Engine Roundtable that “today’s doodle is not related to a birthday but is fast, fun and interactive, just the way we think search should be.” This led the blog to speculate that three things may be announced tomorrow: AJAX-powered search results, 30 results per page, and streaming results as you type. In the case of AJAX and streaming, Google has been testing both of these (in the AJAX case, since early 2009).

In terms of the search event itself, Google sent out invites to members of the press last week with the title “Search on.” The fact that it’s at an art museum is interesting, though perhaps not entirely relevant.  But the speaker line-up definitely is:

• Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience
• Johanna Wright, Director of Product Management
• Ben Gomes, Distinguished Engineer
• Othar Hansson, Senior Staff Software Engineer

As Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan pointed out last week, the first three are all heavily involved with Google’s search user interface — so again, expect a revamp. A revamp that is “fast, fun, and interactive.”

One other side note is that Google has quietly launched a new tool in Labs called Google Scribe. As Google Operating System notes, it’s a tool that auto-suggests phrases in documents as you type. Yes, this is similar to what Google currently offers with their search box. And yes, it’s also fast, fun, and interactive, like Google’s odd logo.

We’ll be at the event tomorrow to cover it live.

And more: Google Updates The Doodle Again; Points To Live-Updating Results

Gather up a group of people who make their living through web design, and they’ll probably all agree on at least two things: A) touchscreens aren’t going anywhere, and B) designing web stuff for touchscreens sort of sucks. Native apps have, in a sense, spoiled users; with things like drag-and-drop and basic touch gesture recognition almost laughably simple to implement in native apps, web app developers are left to hack in such features themselves or risk having their app seem dated from the get-go.

Today Yahoo! is looking to make things a bit less painful with the latest release of their open-source User Interface library, YUI.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

Brendan“I made an iTunes icon for you” Alan Clarke

Iain “I am better than Steve Jobs because my icons have even more photoshop effects” Henderson

Kanwa “iTunes10 icon from JAPAN” Nagafuji

Mike “Steve Jobs is colorblind” Potra

Daniel “Steve Jobs has more money than me, but only because I refuse to wear mock turtlenecks” Reneer

EyeTunes (get it?) logo by reader who wanted to remain anonymous.

Dario” iRaptor” Fisher

Claes “vinylTunes 2.0” Kallarsson

Alessio  “I am better than Steve Jobs — Not really” Zito Rossi

Chris“The Replacement” Carlossi

Is it just me or has there been a lot of logo hate going around lately? Apparently hell hath no fury like an armchair graphic designer scorned, if you go by some of the comments on the “Hate The iTunes 10 Logo? Think You Can Do Better?” post. Along with haters doing what they do best (hint: it’s hating) we also got a ton of alternative submissions. Here are ten of the most noteworthy above. And in case you want to switch the current iTunes 10 logo out, here’s how to do it on a Mac and on a PC.

I remember my first iPod very well. Shockingly, I was a little late to the party, waiting until the fourth generation iPod (now called the “iPod classic”) in 2004 to join the revolution. And I only bought one because I was planning to drive out to California (from Ohio) and I wanted enough music storage to last me the entire trip. I remember unboxing it and thinking: “wow, I can store all my music on this tiny device?”

Today, six years later, I still have that old iPod. But I no longer consider it “tiny.” In fact, it’s more of a “brick” both in size and weight. It held 40 gigabytes of my music on its miniature hard drive platters. Today, the latest high-end iPod touch holds 24 more gigabytes and is a sliver of the size and a fraction of the weight. And it plays music for 28 more consecutive hours. Oh, and it has a color screen. One you can touch. One you can multi-touch.

With the unveiling of its new iPod line last week, Apple has made it very clear what the future is: touch. The iPod classic, while still around, wasn’t updated at all for the first time in nine years. At the other end of the spectrum, the iPod shuffle underwent a return to form — literally — as in, its form factor is now the same as it was two generations ago.

These are now the last two remaining iPods without touch screen integration. And both are clearly moving out to the pasture.

That’s not to say the shuffle is dying yet. It still fills an important niche for Apple — the cheap niche. At $49, it is by far the cheapest iPod available — by $100. But it’s clear that if it was feasible, Apple would put a touch-screen in this device too. Amazingly, it’s now almost the exact same size as the iPod nano (more on that in a bit), the major difference is the lack of a screen. Instead, the shuffle focuses on its VoiceOver capabilities (the carry-over from the last generation, which fully relied on them).

But again, this iPod refresh, which Apple CEO Steve Jobs called their biggest one yet, clearly points to the future of the line — and really, the future of Apple in general: touch.

The two big updates in the iPod lines this time around are the iPod nano and the iPod touch. First, let’s talk about the nano.

The iPod nano

The previous version of the nano was nice with its elongated form factor. That said, every time I used one, I had to fight the urge to touch its screen to navigate through it. Finally, I can do that. And just as the way Apple killed off the need for a physical keyboard with the iPhone’s touchscreen, here, they’ve killed off the need for the old standard click wheel. As such, they’ve been able to make the nano much, much smaller.

As I noted above, it’s crazy but the nano is now almost the same size as the shuffle. It’s now the same square form factor, just a bit bigger. And it’s a good thing it’s a little bigger because Apple needs the room to squeeze four different apps on the various nano pages.

Yes, like the iPhone and iPod touch, the nano now has apps — sort of. Don’t get too excited, Apple says there will be no third-party apps for the nano (at least not yet), instead, they have some standard apps they created to use on the device. These include “Now Playing,” “Playlists,” “Radio,” “Clock,” “Photos,” “Fitness,” and a few others mainly to give you quick access to your content.

So how do you control a touch screen device with such a small screen? It’s quite simple, actually. Most of the time you’ll be traveling through music which is done with the on-screen controls. But when you need to return to the main menu, you simply hold one finger down for a few seconds on the screen and the main screen fades in. Just as with the iPhone/iPod touch, you flick left and right to get to other pages of “apps.”

Album artwork is nicely displayed when music is playing, and touching the screen once will bring up controls. Swiping to the right here gives you more options (such as Genius and Shuffle).

But the most interesting little feature of this nano is that you can use multi-touch to rotate the album artwork. Why would you want to do this? Because like the shuffle, the nano now comes with a clip on the back to easily attach it to a piece of clothing you have on. By putting two fingers on the screen and rotating, you’ll ensure your controls and/or album artwork are just the way you want them. This is one of the little things that makes Apple, Apple.

The sound quality on the device is solid — in line with previous generations of nanos. And the 24 hour audio playback that Apple lists in the specs seems about right. I have been unable to wear the battery down all the way over several days.

One unfortunate side effect of this new tiny size is that Apple had to remove video support. This means the iPod nano can no longer play videos, nor can it record them (there is no longer a camera). I suspect people may be disappointed by this until they see the actual device. Can you imagine watching a video on this screen? Because I sure can’t.

The removal of the camera itself will disappoint some people, but it was always a bit odd anyway as it only recorded video and not still images. I think the new size and touch screen in exchange for the video capabilities is a good tradeoff. Especially when you consider the new iPod touch.

The iPod touch

What the new nano lost in video capabilities, the iPod touch gained — and then some. The latest version of this device is not only the first with a camera — it has two cameras, one in the front and one in the back. And the one in the back shoots 720p HD video.

For some people, that alone will be reason enough to part with at least $229 for the 8 gigabyte version. But when you add in the fact that it has the same “Retina” display that Apple made for the iPhone 4, and the A4 chip which Apple included in both the iPhone 4 and the iPad, and of course, FaceTime support, there’s no question that this thing is going to be a massive hit for Apple.

Obviously, everything I said in my review of the iPhone 4’s 960-by-640 resolution Retina display is the same here. Simply put: it looks amazing. What’s great is that despite the same basic specs, the iPod touch is tiny when compared to the iPhone 4. Putting them side-by-side, the iPod touch is significantly thinner and also a little shorter.

It also trades the all-glass back and controversial antenna siding for a more conventional silver metal backing. While obviously the iPod touch doesn’t need the cellular components of the iPhone, it still is interesting that Apple has done away with the outside antenna (which also handled the WiFi, which the iPod touch does have).

The metal back is also slightly curved around the edges on the iPod touch, this makes it feel even slimmer. As with previous generations of the device, the headphone jack is at the bottom, while the top only contains the screen on/off button (which is actually a little easier to hit thanks to the curved sides).

People are now likely to use the iPod touch for three main reasons: music, gaming, and video.

For music, the song remains the same. This iPod touch seems inline with previous iPod touches. Apple says it has upped the battery life a bit (about 10 hours more of audio playback and 1 hour more for video playback), which is likely a result of the power saving techniques of the A4 chip. I wasn’t able to run the battery into the ground; it seemed solid — not iPad-good, but better than the iPhone.

For gaming, the combination of the A4 chip and the Retina display makes this an awesome machine. Jobs noted during the keynote that when you consider iOS devices as portable gaming devices, they’re outselling the entries by rivals Nintendo and Sony — combined. That’s likely to continue, if not accelerate from here. Every game I tried ran smoothly and looks brilliant with this screen.

Video is the big new addition here though, obviously. When taken outside (or in good light), the 720p videos look excellent. Inside, in low light, at things things can be a bit murky, but that’s probably to be expected (and there is no flash on the iPod touch). Just as with the iPhone, you can use the iMovie application (sold separately) to edit videos right on the device. All in all, it’s a great little HD movie machine — one that’s insanely small.

Photos, however, are a different story. Sadly, the lens in the iPod touch is not the same 5 megapixel variety found in the iPhone 4. Because of that, Apple limits still-image resolution of 960 by 720 pixels — very low. I found still pictures taken with the iPod touch to be grainy — again, especially in low light. The iPhone 4 performs much, much better as a camera.

When I asked Apple why they were limiting the camera to such a low resolution, they noted that the focus here was primarily video. The picture-taking capability was simply a bonus feature they tacked on for people who wanted the ability to take some quick shots, they said.

With that in mind, it may have been wise for Apple to make video capture the default mode for the camera on the iPod touch (it is still picture capture).

(Above: An image taken with the new iPod touch in medium light.)

Having a full 5 megapixel camera that is as good as the iPhone 4’s would have also undoubtedly required Apple to make the iPod touch a bit bulkier (and added a little bit to the manufacturing costs, undoubtedly). To me, it would have been worth it, but they clearly felt it wasn’t.

The other big component of the camera is FaceTime. On the iPod touch, things work a little differently because there is no cellular service to latch on to (that’s how it works on the iPhone 4 — you first place a call to the person you wish to FaceTime with). To work around this, Apple has made email addresses the new way of doing this with the iOS 4.1 update (due this week). Sadly, I wasn’t able to test this new link-up ability on my demo unit, but I did try it in the demo area right after the Apple event last week, and everything seemed to work fine. Once you establish the initial FaceTime connection (in this case, via email address), the device remembers connections so it’s one-click from then on.

This addition of a second device that does FaceTime is important for Apple. Clearly, they feel this is a major feature their portable devices will have going forward (they sure are promoting it enough). And by making it an open standard, they hope others will adopt it. With FaceTime on the iPod touch, millions more people will have access to the feature. In my opinion, Apple still needs a better management system for FaceTime calls (something like FacePlant), but when you connect, it’s very, very impressive.

Touching

The transition is taking place before our eyes. The click wheel, once the signature of the iPod line, is all but extinct now. Instead, Apple is continuing their march forward into touch.

This shouldn’t be surprising give that last week, Jobs revealed on stage that the iPod touch is now the most popular iPod Apple makes. As sales of other iPod models have been in decline for some time, the iPod touch was going the other direction. With its new touch capabilities, Apple undoubtedly hopes the same will be true for the new nano as well.

And with the iPod touch, the iPod nano, the iPhone, the iPad, and Macs (with the Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad or MacBook trackpads) all now using multi-touch in one way or another, Apple is slowly but surely aligning itself to be the leader in touch computing going forward. The writing is on the wall — it’s hand-written.

According to recent SEC filings, it appears that Chris Sacca’s newly launched fund, Lowercase Capital, has raised over $20 million in funding. Under the name Lowercase Industry Fund, Sacca has quietly raised over $11 million in a filing from early August and $10 million in a filing from June. It’s unclear who the investors are from the SEC filings.

This funding adds to Lowercase Capital’s $8.5 million raised earlier this year at the launch of the angel fund. Some of the fund’s previous investments include SimpleGeo, Fanbridge, DailyBooth, Posterous and Stickybits. And Lowercase has been on an investment roll lately, participating in a number of recent rounds in hot startups, including Embed.ly, Chartbeat, and Backupify.

As we wrote in our initial coverage of Lowercase, Sacca’s investment philosophy is fairly simple – It’s cheap to create new companies relative to ten years ago, and there are lots of investors to choose from. He promises to invest more than money, though and will take on a larger role than simply an investor. From the fund’s mission statement, “Rolling up our sleeves, we help design front pages, invent new services, prioritize product features, negotiate partnerships, and deal with the everyday professional and personal challenges of startup life.”

Besides the early-stage fund, Sacca also operates a four other funds, so the $20 million could be used in his other investment vehicles.

For more entertainment from Lowercase, check out this witty call for an intern.