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The enterprise social networking space is competitive; which is why companies like Salesforce, Jive, Yammer, Socialcast and others continue to innovate at a rapid pace. Another competitor, Socialtext, which offers an enterprise social software platform built around microblogging, is launching a new version today only six months after releasing Socialtext 4.0 to the public.

One of the major additions to the platform is a more powerful filters and search interface. With Socialtext Explore, users can find not just links to documents, projects, websites and more, but also see the microblogging messages, pages posts, pictures and files attached to shared work. It essentially combines search with bookmarking, allowing employees to see context around any shared work. Users can search microblogging messages by tag, a person, group, or date range.”>launching a new version today only six months after releasing Socialtext 4.0 to the public.

One of the major additions to the platform is a more powerful search interface. With Socialtext Explore, users can find not just links to documents, projects, websites and more, but also see the microblogging messages, pages posts, pictures and files attached to shared work. It essentially combines search with bookmarking, allowing employees to see context around any shared work. Users can search microblogging messages by tag, a person, group, or date range.

Socialtext is also releasing a new Salesforce Connector that allows users to choose any actions completed within Salesforce’s CRM platform and post them as events into Socialtext's activity stream. The advantage of this integration, says Socialtext, is that an entire workforce (beyond just Sales) can discuss and collaborate over actions on Salesforce. The company also features a similar connector for Microsoft SharePoint, WordPress and Bugzilla.

The Salesforce integration seems similar in some ways to the functions that the CRM company features in its own social networking platform, Chatter. But Socialtext, which is being used by over 6,500 companies worldwide, says that context matters, and adding the ability for an entire workforce to comment on an action outside the platform is helpful to businesses.

Socialtext 4.5 is available on its on-site managed appliance, desktop application,, mobile apps and web-based product. Socialtext’s collaboration tool has a freemium model and a paid service.

Yesterday, a new social browser, RockMelt, launched in a very private beta. You can read my initial review here. But unless you were one of the 500 lucky readers to grab an invite yesterday, or know somebody who did (every user gets three invites), you might have to wait a while before you get to try it out.

In the meantime, you can get a sense of what the browser looks like from this video I shot last week. RockMelt co-founders Tim Howes and Eric Vishria gave me a demo. The demo covers the main ways RockMelt is different than other browsers. The way I think about it is, you can browse with your friends on the left, your favorite sites on the right, and search up top. It is a realtime browser in that you can see when your Facebook friends are online and get notifications when your favorite sites, blogs, and streams are updated with new information.

Some people can’t handle all the notifications. For instance, VC Jeff Clavier wants a leave me the f%$k alone” button, or some way to “turn off all the streams, chats, tweets, etc.” I don’t find it particularly daunting. Maybe he just needs to turn off Growl.

Consider this your best opportunity for Internet fame. We want your take on the Xbox 360 Kinect. It doesn’t have to be deep or insightful. Just a video of you giving your honest take on the motion control system.

You could have your girlfriend hold your iPhone 4 while you give us a 30-second take or setup up a fancy-pants camera rig. We don’t care. We want them all. Reviews by one pundit on a general consumer devices like the Kinect are worthless. It’s not like reviewing a microwave or coffee maker Consumer Reports-style. Is the Kinect fun? Do you enjoy it? What’s your fav feature? Why do you hate it? That’s what we want to know. Click through for the details.

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ConcertIn, built by past TechCrunch Meet-up pitch contest winner Jan Horna, essentially turns concerts into Facebook events, allowing you and your friends to talk up the Freelance Whales as well as buy tickets to their next concert.

The service doesn’t look like much on the surface but this “event” featuring the boy band Baby Lala shows you how it works. You create a concert event, buy tickets via BandsInTown’s API, and then discuss the concert with your friends. Short and sweet.

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Suntech Power Holdings Co. (NYSE: STP) has inked a deal to supply and install another 9.43 MW of solar panels at a plant in Thailand owned by Bangchak Petroleum, the companies announced today. The large scale plant will be grid-connected by late next year with a total capacity of 44 MW.

Thailand’s national goal is to meet 20% of its total energy consumption with renewable sources by 2022. The country is one of the largest energy consumers in Southeast Asia— according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration it was the world’s 23rd most electricity consuming nation, and was in the world’s top 25 carbon dioxide emitters in 2008.

Upon completion, the plant will generate renewable energy for metropolitan Thailand, primarily, which will be purchased and distributed by the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) and the Provincial Electricity Authority (PEA) under long-term power purchase agreements. In August this year, Suntech won the first phase of this deal, and was chosen to provide 34.5MW of solar panels and technical support for the new, Thai solar facility.

According to a joint press statement, EGAT researchers project that Thailand’s energy demand will grow by an average 4.22% annually by 2020. The country (like the U.S.) seeks to achieve greater energy security through the utilization of local, renewable energy resources.

Though founded in China in 2001, Suntech has North American headquarters in San Francisco, Calif. and operations in Arizona. The company is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. In 2008, it acquired El Solutions— a California clean tech startup that supplied solar power generating systems for Google, Disney and other corporations— in order to build its U.S., residential rooftop and corporate solar business.

Sattahip, Thailand image via: Dmitry Klimenko

According to audience measurement company comScore, the U.S. online display advertising market is growing like a weed. Data from the company’s Ad Metrix online ad intelligence service indicated that nearly 1.3 trillion display ads were delivered to U.S. Internet users during Q3 2010, marking a 22-percent increase compared to the same period last year.

The average U.S. Internet user was delivered more than 6,000 display ads over the course of the quarter. King of the hill is, perhaps unsurprisingly, Facebook.

According to comScore, the social network led all online publishers in the third quarter with no less than 297 billion display ad impressions, representing 23.1 percent market share.

You were right, Tim Armstrong (aka my new boss), about Google (aka his former employer) and Facebook eating away display ad share from AOL – and others, of course.

For what it’s worth, the comScore data is line with some of the things we’ve heard recently from many a Facebook employee, some of them senior level ones: that the company is on track to record $2 billion in revenue this year, mostly coming from display advertising.

For the record, comScore data for display advertising units includes both static and rich media ads but not video ads, house ads and tiny ads (less than 2,500 pixels in dimension).

According to comScore’s data, Facebook’s market share has increased 13.9 percentage points from 9.2 percent in Q3 2009. Yahoo! Sites ranked second during Q3 2010 with 140 billion impressions (11 percent), followed by Microsoft Sites with 64 billion impressions (5 percent) and Fox Interactive Media with 48 billion impressions (3.8 percent).

AT&T ranked as the top online display advertiser in the third quarter with 21.1 billion impressions, accounting for 1.6 percent of display ads. Scottrade ranked second with 14.9 billion impressions (1.2 percent), followed by Verizon with 14.6 billion impressions (1.1 percent).

Rounding out the top ten were: Netflix (1.0 percent), GM (0.8 percent), Walt Disney (0.8 percent), Toyota (0.7 percent), and Procter & Gamble (0.6 percent).

This a guest post by Tim Ocock who first worked at Symbian when the consortium was created in the summer of 1998. Returning in 2001, he worked in a dual commercial/technical role that necessitated almost unrestricted access to both the 'shopfloor' engineering teams and upper tiers of Symbian's management. He left in 2004 to found Symsource, one of the few dev houses specialising in Symbian still in business today. He is currently Technology Director at Steely Eye Digital Media, a full service digital agency in London's Soho, leading the webification of mobile and appification of desktop web. Symbian is the biggest smartphone operating system by market share, the oldest smartphone platform still in use, used by almost every major OEM at one time or another. Yet one could be forgiven for thinking Symbian is dead and buried, with news of layoffs at Nokia, management departures at the Symbian Foundation and rough reviews of the latest flagship N8 device. How does a platform powering 9 million new devices every month have almost no credibility with developers, analysts and press alike? This is the story of one of the most successful failures in tech history.

The Planet and SoftLayer, both giants in the world of dedicated server and Web hosting services, have merged. The news of the merger, which has been subject of rumors and speculation for months now, was confirmed in a (confidential) email that was sent out by The Planet earlier this morning. In the email, the company says that the news will be made public “soon”. But why wait for them, right?

The Planet Is Now Softlayer

Hello,

It's my pleasure to inform you that the merger of The Planet® and SoftLayer® is complete! There will soon be public announcements about the merger, but I'd like to talk with you firsthand about the new opportunities and capabilities that it brings.

I'll call you in the next few days to answer any questions you might have—there's been plenty of speculation and I want you to hear about the exciting road ahead directly from me.

We highly value your business and trust, and have worked hard to create a seamless transition. Your The Planet accounts and services remain unchanged. Rest assured, the new SoftLayer is committed to the same world-class support and personal service you received as a customer of The Planet.

SoftLayer is already recognized for its automation and commitment to innovative product development. But now, you'll receive new capabilities with increased value. You'll have direct access and control of your solutions through our industry-leading Customer Portal and open API. This will allow you to order, deploy and manage your entire environment on-demand, without the need for human interaction.

Our goal is to provide the best hosting experience in the business and we want you to see it firsthand.

The new SoftLayer provides:

- An expanded product line, with new products and services not available to you before.
- Industry-leading automation, Customer Portal, and Open API, for direct access to more than 150 backend systems and activities.
- Increased geographic diversity and the ability to choose where your servers reside.
- High-speed network and multiple PoPs, providing more than 1,500G of connectivity and direct connections for lower latency.
- Exclusive network architecture that weaves together distinct Public, Private and Data Center-to-Data Center networks.
- Improved Service Level Agreement with 100% uptime and 2-hour or less hardware replacement (failure or upgrade) guaranteed.
- Greater value for your business, including more performance per dollar, a larger international presence and expanded partnerships with industry leaders.

Your existing The Planet services and account are managed and accessed as they were before through Orbit and the Managed Hosting Portal. But beginning next week, you can also access the SoftLayer Customer Portal with your The Planet username and password.

Until this information is made public, please consider it confidential. I'll send you a note this week to schedule some time for a discussion that's convenient for you.

SoftLayer’s management team and investment firm GI Partners had acquired all of the equity in SoftLayer last August. GI Partners also happens to own a large stake in The Planet, hence the rumors about the companies merging that have been swirling ever since.

The Planet claims it is currently the largest privately–owned dedicated hosting provider with more than 20,000 customers around the globe, more than 48,000 servers and 15.7 million websites under management. The company employs more than 500 people.

In fact, four out of five managers profiled on SoftLayer’s leadership team page were previously employed by The Planet, including CEO Lance Crosby. Most likely, Crosby will become CEO of the combined company.

Jointly, The Planet and SoftLayer will have roughly 80,000 dedicated servers under management, which means it would likely come out bigger than rivals Rackspace and 1&1.

This is one company that I foresee taking the IPO route some time next year.

We’re digging for more information, particularly about the financial side of the merger agreement – stay tuned.

Sorry, folks. Someone clearly couldn’t keep their mouth shut and let it slip that Fancast.com was Google TV‘s backdoor to Hulu. The majority of the content no longer streams to Google TV units like it did just last week. NBC, ABC, Fox — it’s all blocked. Only Viacom’s content still works, but that’s too be expected considering the partnership between Google and the media conglomerate.

This is getting a bit frustrating. It’s like buying a fancy speed boat, only to discover when you get home the local wildlife nuts convinced the authorities to impose strict speed limits. It’s no fun even if it does save an endangered species and doesn’t seem like the restrictions will be lifted anytime soon.

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Evernote is rolling out version 2 of their app for Android phones, and it represents the biggest update to functionality on any platform in a single release. Updated home screen, tighter integration with the Google Search widget, background synchronization, and simpler sorting with improved views are all great new features, but the most interesting aspect of this update for current Evernote users will be the marked improvement in speed.

Read more…

The holiday travel season is upon us, and once again, Google is teaming up with the travel industry to offer free WiFi. Today, the Google Chrome browser team is announcing a partnership with AirTran, Delta and Virgin America, to provide free Gogo Inflight Internet to their passengers throughout the holiday season. You can find more information here.

Travelers flying on AirTran, Delta or Virgin America between November 20, 2010 and January 2, 2011 will be able to access free Wi-Fi on domestic flights. In total, the deal brings wifi to more than 700 planes and 15 million expected passengers this holiday season.

Last year, Google had a similar partnership with Virgin America and extended free WiFi to 50 airports in the U.S. Unfortunately, Google has told us that it will not be extending free WiFi to airports this holiday season. Here’s Google’s statement: For last year's promotion we experimented with providing a combination of free Wi-Fi in both airports and in-flight. This year we decided to focus on the in-flight experience and we are pleased to be working with three of the nation's leading carriers to bring free in-flight Wi-Fi to holiday travelers.

On interesting deviation from last year’s offer is that Google is using Chrome as the sponsor of the giveaway. If anything, the free WiFi is a great way to spread brand awareness of Google’s web browser. But you don’t have to use Google Chrome to access the free WIFi on flights. And travelers are sure to be happy to save a few bucks on accessing WiFi on flights. Gogo’s inflight wireless connection costs $11 for a 24-hour period, so this could save travelers at least $20 for round-trip access.

Photo Credit/Flickr/MarinaAvila

Amazon.com has just announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Quidsi, which operates ecommerce sites Diapers.com, Soap.com and BeautyBar.com. The acquisition news first broke over the weekend by Fortune’s Dan Primack, who pegged the purchase price at $540 million.

Primack wasn’t that far off – Amazon says it will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Quidsi for approximately $500 million in cash.

The ecommerce juggernaut will also assume approximately $45 million in debt and similar obligations, bringing the total purchase price to $545 million.

We’ve confirmed with the company that Quidsi was operating at a revenue run rate of approximately $300 million this year.

The acquisition is expected to close by year’s end. Following the acquisition, Quidsi will continue to operate independently under its current leadership team.

Founded by Vinit Bharara and Marc Lore, Quidsi has raised a total of $78.5 million. Its most recent financing was a $20 million debt round last April from investors including Accel, Bessemer Venture Partners, MentorTech, and New Enterprise Associates.

The Quidsi deal is similar to the one struck with online shoe retailer Zappos, which Amazon acquired for $1.2 billion a year ago. The also bought Woot last June for $110 million.

Wireless broadband solutions provider Novatel Wireless has agreed to acquire Enfora, a privately-held provider of wireless asset-management solutions and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, for approximately $64.5 million in cash. The purchase price includes the pay down of all debt. Additional consideration of up to $6 million, depending on certain performance targets being met, is also part of the deal.

Google had originally wanted to launch the Nexus Two device alongside Android 2.3, the next release of their mobile operating system, also known as “Gingerbread”. That’s not going to happen. The Nexus Two has been delayed. But it appears that Google is full steam ahead on the Gingerbread release. In fact, it may be hitting the Nexus One in the next few days.

This news comes by way of a tweet today from one Alvaro Fuentes Vasquez. While Vasquez’s Twitter profile may not show much, his LinkedIn profile reveals that he’s on the “leadership team” of the Open Handset Alliance, one of the governing bodies backing Android. In other words, this guy should know what he’s talking about.

His Tweet today:

Preparen sus Nexus One (Developer version) para la actualización vía OTA de Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) para los próximos días :-D

That translates (roughly) to:

Prepare your Nexus One (Developer version) for Android OTA update 2.3 (Gingerbread) in the next few days:-D

This news, spotted by the blog The Android Phone, goes along nicely with the rumors from last week that Gingerbread would land on November 11. For those keeping score at home, November 11 is this coming Thursday — a few days away.

The Nexus One roll-out plan also goes along with the way Google rolled out Android 2.2, late at night back in May. Further, a strange Flash Player for Android note seems to suggest an Android update is imminent as well.

And remember, a couple weeks ago, the Gingerbread Man landed at Google HQ.

[thanks Artem]

Lately it seems like there is endless news around messaging, VoIP and video calling. Apple recently announced they'd added FaceTime support for the Mac, and had shipped 19 million FaceTime-enabled iOS devices since June. Google Voice also made headlines last week for an outage, but I think the bigger news associated with that downtime is how fast they've been growing. And there's been a flurry of startup activity around messaging and communication as well, such as the super innovative GroupMe releasing an Android App.

The resounding theme from all these seemingly disparate announcements is that messaging, voice, video, and chatting applications are on fire. Sure, we all use social media, but it sure hasn't dampened people's affinity for texting or making a call.

More revealing, all of this innovation seems to be happening at the application layer, far from the AT&Ts of the world, who are missing another wave of innovation which is happening on top of their networks. It's very evident that Google and Apple are making overtures to become your de facto voice and messaging provider, and the carriers are sitting with their pants down, struggling to plan how they stay relevant.

Why the Carriers Will Become Irrelevant in Voice and Messaging

It's easy to bash carriers. I recently wrote about the technical reasons why AT&T's network is so awful which got their higher ups to contact me and whine about what I'd written. Truth is, there are long-standing reasons behind AT&T's failures—network decisions take many years to unfold, especially since the telco monopolies are, by their very nature, slow to respond to change and innovation.

But forget the past, let's look at why the carriers are poised to become more and more irrelevant beyond being pipe providers in the future. And let's do so specifically around voice and messaging, the bread and butter services that they evolved to provide.

Imagine the future of communication on your smartphone: you're on a video call with your significant other across the world on different networks, you tap your screen, and instantly their phone screen mimics yours as you flip through photos of your trip while continuing your call. Or imagine sending out an MMS to a group, and when each of your friends open it they immediately tap into a live HD audio/video stream which you're broadcasting to everyone. No delays, no dialing, and no going in and out of different apps—it just works.

All of these amazing use-cases, and more, will be enabled by 4G wireless standards. This is because 4G is 100% IP-based, which is what the internet was founded upon. Today, voice is routed separately from data on mobile networks due to legacy "circuit-switched" architecture. With LTE, the first phase of 4G, voice and video sessions will be packetized and sent over the network from your smartphone just like any other application layer data, which will open a range of new capabilities.

LTE Now; Voice in 2013 – Are You Kidding Me?

But there's a roadblock to realizing this vision of ubiquity. Right now the carriers can't agree on what's happening with respect to voice. In classic fashion, they are stuck in endless consortium meetings arguing about standards instead of moving forward, picking one, testing, and deploying.

Some carriers are behind a voice technology called IPMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem), which is 100% IP-based, and others are clinging to VoLGA (voice over LTE via generic access), which splits mobile voice and messaging apart from the IP-based LTE network in a technique called "circuit-switched fallback".

Guess when they plan to resolve all this? 2013! Per this AT&T slide from a few weeks ago. And it's easy to envision any resolution extending years past this date, which is crazy considering what's at stake for the carriers as they struggle so stay relevant in voice communication.

FaceTime best foreshadowed their dwindling relevance, since video calls over WiFi bypass the carrier network entirely. And though FaceTime doesn't yet work on 3G you can see the writing on the wall. Meanwhile Google Voice still requires you to dial out using your carrier's network, but Google's acquisition of Gizmo5 last year foretells this will go away in favor of full VoIP too. Then of course there's Skype, which now works over 3G, bypassing the voice network of your carrier too.

The Bureaucracy Behind Why The Carriers are Missing Out

Carriers are in the process of transitioning from a telco model, which is closed, to the internet model, which is open. In the old days it was deemed acceptable for them to stew over standards for multiyear periods, but innovation on the internet doesn't work this way.

Recently at CTIA, Verizon declined to discuss the VoLTE situation because they simply don't have anything cohesive to communicate. This is embarrassing, considering their LTE network is supposed to be ready by the end of the year. What this means is that voice will be routed over their old network for years to come—fabulous.

This is absurd, and is symbolic of how consortiums and standards bodies work in telecom—anyone who has ever sold to or interacted with a carrier understands the glacial pace at which they move. What the carriers really need to do is get out of bed and resolve how voice will be packetized, then move forward and deploy it. It's simply embarrassing that they can't do this, but it's not surprising, since they still receive so much revenue from voice plans.

The Internet Wins Again – Go Back to Sleep Carriers

The future in mobile communication is being written at the application layer—both by innovative giants like Apple and Google, and smaller startups such as GroupMe and Twilio—not at the infrastructure layer by the AT&Ts and Verizons of the world. The carriers had a chance to provide a better voice and messaging experience with 4G, and to charge a toll for that experience, but they are missing that window.

Apple and Google are closing it fast. Back in June, when iPhone 4 was released, people wondered why Apple made FaceTime an open standard. Here is one important reason why: A closed standard may have caused an overly fragmented market for video-calling, which would definitely benefit the carriers. This is  likely, at least in part, why Steve Jobs decided to open up FaceTime, as any open standard’s success in video/telephony limits the power of the carriers.

The funny thing is, they seem to be screwing it all up without Steve's help. There is simply no doubt that the future of voice and messaging is with companies innovating at the application layer, and my guess is there is going to be a ton of investment activity and M&A in this space as new realtime communication tools are developed over the next few years.

 

On the afternoon of Halloween, a New York based blogger spotted a group of kids lined up at the side of a road, throwing rocks and eggs at passing cars. After calling 911, he went home and searched for the kids on Facebook, adding them as "friends". Sure enough, before long the tiny (alleged) thugs were boasting about their crimes in status updates, which the blogger shared with the world.

Two days ago, another blogger – this time a woman who works at a major Internet company – was (allegedly, and that word is very important) sexually assaulted at a conference by a man who works at a different Internet company. Again, the (alleged) victim contacted the police, but again she then turned to social media to name and shame her (still alleged) attacker.

In both cases, the Internet's response was swift – with bloggers and Twitterers and Facebookers leaping in to repost the allegations and to demand justice be done.

Welcome to today's cyber vigilantism.

Of course, I – like most right thinking people – am appalled when I read comments suggesting that the victim of an alleged assault may have invented or exaggerated the incident. There is a special circle of hell reserved for those who assume, without evidence or legal finding, that someone would invent a sexual assault. They're the reason why so many sex crimes go unreported.

And yet, that same circle also has room for another group of folks: those who assume that everyone accused of a crime is guilty.

As a Brit, one of the things that amazes me about American popular culture is Nancy Grace. I mean, obviously Grace herself amazes me — just, wow — but more than that, the first time I saw her show, I couldn't believe my eyes and ears. Here was a woman, on prime-time television no less, openly discussing ongoing criminal trials and opining on whether the accused was innocent or guilty. Holy shit, I thought.

Back in the UK (and, one might argue, in any just society) Nancy Grace would be in jail. The media is simply not allowed to opine on guilt or innocence while cases are still sub justice (after an arrest is made). To do so is considered contempt of court. Likewise, journalists are not allowed to report, or republish, or even reblog, other people making similar claims. There are loopholes, of course, once the case has gone to trial (statements made in court can be reported, as long as they're clearly marked as allegations) but by and large the principle of innocent until proven guilty in a court of law is held to be sacrosanct.

Today, though, even in the UK that principle is fast being rendered meaningless. Thanks to social media, anyone can publish the name of someone accused of a serious crime before they have even been arrested (which used to be the first time an allegation was reported), let alone appeared in court.

And when that naming happens, the case is over before it's begun: no matter whether the accused is guilty or innocent, they are handed a life sentence. Until the day they die, whenever a potential employer or a new friend Googles their name – up will come the allegation. And, prison terms notwithstanding, that allegation carries the same punishment as guilt – a lifetime as an unemployable, unfriendable, outcast. There’s a reason why the Internet is a great way to ruin someone with false allegations – and it’s the same reason why falsely accused people are just as likely to harm themselves as guilty people.

Of course, it's very possible that in any given case, the accused will turn out to be guilty. They very often are. And in those cases it's hard to argue that a victim did anything wrong by naming their attacker – especially if doing so encourages others to come forward. Certainly after guilt has been established in a court of law, it's open season on the perpetrator, both online and in traditional media: such is the price of crime.

But in the meantime, for the sake of the mercifully small number of people who are falsely accused (by accident or design) of crimes they didn't commit, surely it's beholden on all of us to resist our natural impulse to repeat potentially life-ruining allegations until the law has been allowed to run its course.

Which brings me neatly to a brief backstage postscript.

Some sharp-eyed readers have noted that TechCrunch was one of the publications that covered the alleged sexual assault story, shortly after it broke. The post has subsequently vanished from the site, leading to some slightly comical accusations that our new corporate owners had demanded that Mike Arrington pull the story (comical because I'm not entirely convinced anyone at AOL reads TechCrunch).

In fact what happened is that, for all of the reasons above, Mike decided it was right to delete the post – and Alexia, the post’s author, agreed with his judgement. Mike has written before about how our community is better off without us reporting on unproven personal allegations, no matter how juicy the story. Deleting the post is consistent with that policy.

Am I disappointed that the story appeared on TechCrunch in the first place? For sure. But at the same time I know that the reporters here are under huge pressure not to miss stories, and it's impossible to get it right every time. At best, hopefully episodes like this make everyone pause a bit longer in future before posting things that could ruin lives.

More than anything, though, I'm proud to write for a publication that firmly stands its ground when it knows it’s right, but is brave enough to do the right thing when it knows it isn't.

If you are going to create a new browser from scratch and go up against the Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Apple, you might as well make it really different. RockMelt, a company backed by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen which has been under wraps until today, is trying to build a new browsing experience from the ground up. Are they crazy? “The big thing,” says Andreessen, “is that the browser world is very much in flux right now.”

RockMelt is built first and foremost for sharing. You browse with your friends (the first thing you do is log into Facebook and your favorite friends and their latest status updates are always available along the left rail). And there is a big “Share” button up top, which lets you share any webpage, along with images and a preview, on Facebook. You could call it a Facebook browser, but it really is more than that. I’ll get into my full review shortly, but if you want to try out RockMelt for yourself, be one of the first 500 TechCrunch readers to click this link and you will get an invite before anyone else).

The three biggest changes to the browser that you notice with RockMelt is that it is built around friends, feeds, and search results. The left rail is for friend. The right rail is for sites. And the top rail is for search.

Your Facebook friends browse with you along the left-hand rail. You can select your most important or closest Facebook friends, and their faces are always there with you along with an indication whether they are online or not. If you hover over a face, their latest status update pops up. click on their face and you get a box showing their Facebook stream in the top half, and a chat box in the bottom. So it acts as an IM client using Facebook chat (see screenshot below). You even get inline images and video, which you don’t normally get in Facebook chat. If your friend is offline, you can send him or her a Facebook message.

Along the right rail is where you organize all your news feeds and streams from your favorite sites. This is kind of like a bookmark bar, but when you save a site here, it also includes notifications every time new content has been added. This is very convenient for news sites, blogs, Gmail, Twitter, and your own Facebook profile. (See screenshot below). Click on a site icon, and you up pops an overlay window with an RSS feed with all the articles, or Twitter stream, or your email headlines, depending the site. Click on a headline and it takes you to that page (or email or Tweet) in the main underlying browser window. There is also a share button for every feed item, which works just like the big share button up at the top of the browser.

When you do a search from the search box, instead of taking you to Google, you get a column with the first ten results. You can tab through each result, which is pre-loaded into the browser, so you can actually see the Web pages behind each result in the full browser. This is designed to speed up searching, although at least initially I find myself tabbing through each link, if only for a second or two.

Overall, RockMelt seems really fast. It is built on Chromium, the same open source browser that forms the foundation of Google’s Chrome browser. Given the fact that it is backed by Andreessen (and Ron Conway, Bill Campbell, Josh Kopelman, and Diane Green to the tune of $10 million) and its principle architect was also the principle architect of the Netscape browser, this is a pretty significant vote of confidence in Chromium as the future of browsing. “Chromium is a newer codebase,” explains Andreessen. “It is state of the art. The performance increase is unbelievable.” He’s not one for nostalgia.

The basic browsing functions are familiar, and the sharing, streaming, and search overlays don’t seem too obtrusive. This is not Flock, the browser experiment which never really caught on because it strayed too far from most people’s browsing comfort zone. RockMelt will face similar challenges, but at least it is starting out simple.

The biggest change RockMelt is trying to introduce is to bring in different streams as a natural browsing experience and starting point. In fact, these stream overlays (your friends updates, feeds, and even search results) take over the screen more and more.

A year and a half ago, when whispers of RockMelt first surfaced, I wrote a post with a wish list of features I’d like to see in a social browser.  I am happy to say that some of them made it into RockMelt in some form or another.  From that wish list:

• It would have multiple modes for browsing, search, following social data streams, and launching Web applications
• The home page would be a stream reader which brings together real time streams from across the Web (which Facebook now has with Friendfeed).
• IM, email, and public messages (status updates and Tweets) would be always accessible in the toolbar or a sidebar
• It would support a variety of Web apps which could be launched seamlessly within the browser without going to a Website and logging in.
• Real-time search and alerts from across the Web (social stream, news, finance sites, sports sites, etc.)

Last week, I asked Andreessen if he thinks RockMelt is a harbinger of the end of the webpage. He wouldn’t go so far:

The webpage stays primary for decades to come. It is a universal canvas for any application or service. I think you want to retain that, but you want to enhance it. That is why we keep the page front and center but draw in these things people care about: friends, feeds, updates, search results.

Maybe that’s true for now. But eventually, the stream takes over. It is simply a more efficient way to browse.

But here’s the thing about RockMelt. You log into it, and it knows everywhere you go on the Web, who all your friends are, and what your search habits. It also knows what you share with your friends. Combine those three: social sharing, search, and actual browsing behavior, and you’ve got one hell of a way to target ads at people. RockMelt doesn’t do this now, and its founders tell me they will never do so because it would destroy whatever trust people place in them. (Damn straight). “We are not going to run an ad network. We actually don't know where you go,” says co-founder Tim Howes, “that information does not leave your browser.” Hopefully, it never will.

Okay everyone, let’s calm down. Currently making the rounds on the Internet is that Twitter is about to launch a Foursquare-killer, Twitter Places. The only problem? They actually launched it about five months ago. They wrote about it, we covered it, so did just about everyone else on the web. That said, there is one potentially new element of Places that we haven’t noticed before: the ability to claim a place.

We’re not entirely sure how new this is, and have reached out to Twitter about it (update below). But what’s interesting is that it appears that Twitter’s headquarters is the only venue that has been claimed so far (by @twitter, naturally). And looking over the site, I can’t find a way to claim any other venue. Here’s the TechCrunch headquarters, for example, unclaimed.

Since the launch of Places five months ago, Twitter hasn’t done much in the geolocation space. Meanwhile, rivals Facebook and Google have been moving fast to build up and own their own Place databases. Being able to claim a place on Twitter would seem to suggest that the company is thinking about adding to their offering. Google, Facebook, and Foursquare all allow venue-owners to claim their places. And those that do get (or will get) analytics about their venues on those services.

A more robust Twitter Places offering could also be another potential revenue-generator for Twitter. Again, location-based analytics are the obvious play here.

Update: Here’s what Twitter has to say:

Claiming Twitter Places is not available at this time. We’re experimenting with a variety features. Allowing businesses to claim a Place is a natural thing to consider for the future.

From AdaptiveBlue to Zazzle, everyone has startups they go fangirl and fanboy over (hi Quora). To save you the trouble of obsessively scanning your RSS feed or setting up individual Google alerts, StartupFollower lets you subscribe to TechCrunch news about your favorite startups via email.

Using the Crunchbase API to find news, StartupFollower has a Google Instant-inspired interface which enables you to add and edit which startups you want to receive stories about. Just reply to the StartupFollower confirmation email and you’re all set to never miss Facebook’s next status update .

Creator Tim Suzman tells us that he plans on adding other publications as well as TechCrunch and eventually wants to set up email alerts for official company blogs, Techmeme, Hacker News and (of course) Quora.

Suzman explains that he’s waiting to do it right i.e. find a way to dedupe multiple stories, “It seems like TechCrunch gets you pretty far in the meantime though.”

Word.