The Latest from TechCrunch

No, Google hasn’t acquired Groupon (yet). But it does have a smaller, though very interesting acquisition to announce: it’s just acquired Phonetic Arts, a company based in the UK that works on speech synthesis in games.

Phonetic Arts makes technology that can convert lines of recorded dialog into a ‘speech library’ — feed it a few hundred lines of recordings using your voice, and it can then piece together those sounds to generate new sentences that sound surprisingly realistic. Up until now the company has primarily been focused on using this technology for games, but Google intends to use it to make its own automated voices sound more fluid and human.

In case you haven’t noticed, Google has been paying a huge amount of attention to its voice recognition and transcription technologies over the last few years (they’ve been researching it for much longer, but now the tech is making it into products). YouTube now includes automatic voice transcription across millions of videos; Android has voice recognition built through the OS; and Google has other voice search apps for other platforms.

Tinychat‘s super simple messaging service lives on the Web (and then some), but the fledgling company’s Facebook video chat application is clearly seeing some solid growth of its own.

The app is now the single most used video chat application on the Facebook Platform, with roughly 2.4 million monthly active users according to the application page.

That’s about 1.5 million more monthly users than its closest competitor, vChatter, which we’ve covered and likened to a “PG-rated version of Chatroulette” here.

The total base of users who’ve installed the Tinychat Facebook app has grown by a million in November alone, and judging from the chart above, the app’s growth rate appears to be consistent. About 75% of users resides in the United States.

It’s easy to see why it became so popular – the application is designed to spread virally among Facebook friends, as you can invite online contacts to join you in a live video chat in a snap, through Facebook Chat, without the need for your friend to have the application installed.

Eat your heart out, Chatroulette.

comScore released its monthly smartphone mobile report today, which continues to show that the Android OS is eating away at smartphone market share reach from Apple’s iOS and RIM’s BlackBerry OS. The data, which measured smartphone usage from July until October of this year, showed that 60.7 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during period, up 14 percent from the preceding three month period. comScore says that the 1 out of every 4 mobile subscribers are using a smartphone.

Similar to the data from last month, RIM took the top spot as the leading mobile smartphone platform in the U.S. with 35.8 percent share of U.S. smartphone subscribers, which is down 3.5 percent from the last period. Apple followed with 24.6 percent share (up 0.8 percentage points). Google’s Android OS saw the strongest growth, rising 6.5 percentage points to capture 23.5 percent of smartphone subscribers. Microsoft accounted for 9.7 percent of smartphone subscribers, while Palm accounts for 3.9 percent.

Device manufacturers data showed that Samsung took the top spot as the leading OEM with 24.2 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers, up 1.1 percentage points from the previous period. LG ranked second with 21 percent share, followed by Motorola (17.7 percent share), RIM (9.3 percent share) and Nokia (7.1 percent share).

Additionally, 68.1 percent of mobile phone owners users text messaging, up 2.1 percentage points. Browsers were used by 36.2 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (up 2.6 percentage points). Users who used downloaded applications comprised 33.7 percent of the mobile audience, representing an increase of 2.3 percent. The percentage of users playing games and and listening to music also increased slightly, while listening to music increased 0.9 percentage points, representing 15.4 percent of subscribers.

It’s important to note that this data indicates reach as opposed to units sold. That being said, Android phones seem to growing by a number of different measures, including consumer interest, and sales. And this is a reflection of both a greater interest in Android phones as well as a growth in overall smartphone usage.

This certainly changes things. You’ll recall that the Internet flipped out the other day when it emerged that Netflix‘s traffic carrier, Level 3, said that Comcast was taking advantage of its position as one of the nation’s largest ISPs by demanding more coin to pass on Netflix traffic to its customers. It is, in fact, largely boring tosh, but it speaks to something we’ve been talking about for some time. That is, of course, Net Neutrality, which I tend to capitalize for some reason, almost imbuing it with a greater sense of importance. No matter, for nor Comcast has told its side of the story, and things are quite different in its recollection of events.

Comcast, feeling some FCC heat, says that this particular incident is truly nothing more than a plain ol’ commercial dispute. This isn’t Comcast playing the heel, tap-dancing all over the principles of Net Neutrality. In fact, you might even say that Comcast is the victim here.

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LinkedIn has scored a big talent win today, as Google Scientist and Tech Lead Daniel Tunkelang joins the professional social network to work on data initiatives (you can access Tunkelang’s LinkedIn profile here.)

According to Tunkelang’s blog post announcing the new job opportunity, he will be joining the data scientist team at LinkedIn, working under Chief Scientist DJ Patil. Tunkelang writes that he will be working on “products and discover insights from a data collection,” tackling the issues of “information extraction, matching, recommendation, social network analysis, and network visualization.”

Prior to joining Google in 2009, Tunkelang was the Chief Scientist and co-founder of Endeca, a vendor of search applications for enterprises.

It’s no secret that LinkedIn is making a big push towards mining data on the network to offer compelling products and visualizations to members.

This isn’t the first Googler to join LinkedIn; earlier this year senior software engineer for the Android platform Cedric Beust left the search giant to work on mobile for LinkedIn.

On the heels of Milo’s $75 million acquisition by eBay; a similar product inventory site, called Wishpond, is throwing its hat into the ring. Like Milo, Wishpond lists the real-time inventory of brick and mortar retail stores and is building its product listings platform around large chains like Target or BestBuy as well as from mom and pop shops in small towns.

On the merchant side, Wishpond’s platform integrates with point-of-sale systems and allows retailers to upload their inventory onto the site. Wishpond will not only list the in-stock inventory on its platform, but will also help the merchant create a storefront on their Facebook page (similar to what Payvment does). The startup says that it will populate the page with new products and promotions when applicable.

Wishpond will also advertise for the retailers inventory and Facebook storefront on Google and Facebook. And Wishpond is opening up its API to users to access the site’s 4 million products from 1400 retailers in over 100,000 locations.

Another unique feature that Wishpond offers is the ability for consumers to name their own prices on products they find on Wishpond. Local retailers can then match these prices or offer promotions for these products.

Milo, which will continue to offer its product listings as a standalone site, offers much of the same functionality as Wishpond. But I think the idea of connecting to Facebook for an online storefront with in-store product inventory is compelling. Right now Wishpond is a small fish in a big sea that includes eBay and now Google as well. But if the startup can actually pull of what it says it plans to do for small retailers (and scale), it could be successful.

Last.fm, the UK-based music startup acquired by media giant CBS in 2007 for $280m (£140m), made a loss for 2009 of just under $4.45 million (£2.84 million), reveal new accounts for the company. The loss posted in 2008 was £17.11 million, reflecting the high costs of streaming music, which the company has now cut. It just goes to show how expensive streaming can be…

Financials published on the UK’s Companies House show the company ended last year with net liabilities of £22.24 million, but parent company CBS is still effectively subsidising the company and will "make available such funds as are needed". We’re hoping that CBS is getting some value out of this relationship.

Over 54% of Last.fm's revenues in 2009 were from the UK, 33.5% from the US, 9.4% from EU countries, and 2.3% from the rest of the world.

That’s a gain on US users but the question is, is it enough to sustain CBS as a sugar daddy?

BMC Software has acquired GridApp Systems, which specializes in the automation of cloud database provisioning, patching and administration. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. With the purchase, BMC is expanding its current offering of application, server, network and client configuration management to include database automation.

My colleagues at CrunchGear tend to romanticize my lifestyle somewhat, and are convinced that I am the most egregious hipster on the planet. It’s true that I have a scruffy chin and hang out at dive bars a lot, but if they’d spent as much time as I on the mean streets of Seattle, they’d know just how mild my hipster qualities truly are. That said, I understand the species somewhat, and have been able to formulate this gift guide for those of you who might have gift responsibilities toward a hipster friend or relative.

It’s important that this hipster gift guide is for 2010 only. I can’t be held responsible for what might occur if you should return to it for recommendations next year — the bright plumage and novelty facial hair of the hipster belie his sanguinary nature, and out-of-season offerings are known to enrage him.

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Intuit-owned Mint.com is beginning its international expansion today with the launch of its personal finance platform in Canada.

Canadians can access Mint at Mint.com/Canada. The main difference between the Canadian version of Mint.com is that it connects to both Canadian banking financial institutions and U.S. banks and credit unions. Canadian users will still be able to aggregate financial accounts and transaction information, categorize spending, access personal financial data and more. Mint.com’s mobile apps for iPhone and Android will also be available on the iTunes Canada app store and Android Market.

The main barrier to Mint.com’s international expansion is bringing non-U.S. financial institutions onto the platform. But once Intuit does this, I’m fairly certain Mint.com will be able to see a significant growth in the number of users outside the U.S. Currently, Mint.com has 4.5 million users and connects to 16,000 financial institutions.

As Aaron Patzer, vice president and general manager of Intuit Personal Finance and founder of Mint states, “Our Canadian launch is just the beginning of Mint.com's global expansion."

Of those of you who aren’t diligently blocking the ads on this page, 63 percent are apparently ignoring them anyway. In fact, a majority of Americans say they ignore Internet advertising the most, compared to television, radio and newspaper ads.

Results of a new Adweek Media/Harris Interactive survey of about 2,100 U.S. adults show that over six in ten respondents say they tend to ignore or disregard Internet ads. Among those who ignore online ads, two in five say they ignore banner ads (43 percent) the most, and one in five say they ignore search engine ads (20 percent) the most.

(Meanwhile, Internet ad revenues in the U.S. are at an all-time high.)

Compare that to the percentage of people who said they ignore ads on other media: television ads (14 percent), radio ads (7 percent) and newspaper ads (6 percent).

Of course, it’s a bit trickier to skip those ads or make them go away, but I digress.

Only 9 percent of Americans say they don’t ignore any of the listed types of ads.

According to the survey, there are few gender differences, although the age of the respondent in question did make a difference.

Older Americans say they ignore ads on TV the most – one in five of those 55 years and older say they ignore TV ads (20 percent), compared to 14 percent of those aged 45 to 54, 13 percent of those 35-44 years, and just 9 percent of those 18-34 years.

As far as I know, the poll didn’t take into account actual media consumption – I’m thinking younger people probably don’t watch television as much as the previous generation, which could be an easy explanation for the variation in percentages. Put simply, it’s easier to say you don’t ignore TV ads when you hardly ever actually watch television anymore.

But Adweek Media / Harris Interactive also found that younger Americans are more likely to ignore radio ads the most, compared to older people – 11 percent of those 18-34 years do, compared to 6 percent of those 55 years and older).

Also, while over two in five in all age groups say they ignore Internet banner ads the most, those aged 35-44 are most likely to say this, as almost half ignore these ads (47 percent) compared to between 42 percent and 43 percent of the other age groups.

So what does all this mean? Not much, really, as none of the results are to be deemed terribly surprising. The kids will be alright, so to speak.

In my mind, the Internet has evolved a lot since it started becoming a mass medium, and the Web will continue to change and morph and transform. Digital advertising will, too.

Which, of course, is no guarantee that the percentage of people who ignore ads will eventually increase even more. I’m just saying the ads will be different from today’s.

Besides, in these times of accelerating media convergence, why would we bother to keep stamping the ‘television’, ‘radio’ and ‘Internet’ labels on the media we read, watch and listen to? I’ve seen the future of media, and it’s one big melting pot.

As for Web advertising – one can only hope brands and publishers alike realize that they need to get more creative and work on better targeting, not try and find ways to make surfing the Internet even more of a nightmare by throwing more intrusive advertising units and more fucking “welcome screens” our way.

And marketers, Hugh MacLeod and myself would like you to never ever forget:

Q&A site Quora is officially reticent about sharing usage metrics which leads Quora fans to make some interesting calculations and guestimations. In fact there’s a fascinating topic section on Quora called “Quora usage and statistics” that attempts to parse all Quora related minutae from “Who has the most edits? to “How much time does it take for a question to come in” to “What’s the longest Quora answer?” to yes, “How many people use Quora?”

The quest for some definite Quora analytics has gone so far that one enthusiastic Quora fan and TechCrunch reader has attempted to plot Quora’s growth by looking at the unique user ID numbers in its source code and plotting them against when Quora follower emails were sent as well as when specific questions were asked, compiling the data into the two graphs above and below.

Going by code IDs alone the user graph and the one plotting Quora questions look pretty accurate at about 320K users and 110K questions to date. A new user ID # on an account I created today registered me as Quora user #319,848 and the source code ID of the latest question asked is at #111,416.

When asked about these bootleg ways of determining metrics, Quora CEO Adam D’ Angelo disparaged the validity of their methodology, “User ids don’t correspond to total # of users. In the early days they did, but we changed the way our databases work at one point (all evidence points to a month ago) and since then they’re not the same.”

The gist? Somewhere between when this was posted and November 2nd Quora changed the way it recorded user ID numbers rendering all UID related metrics a mystery. D’Angelo did not comment on whether the 110K questions statistic was accurate.

Angelo also disputes the Compete numbers many cite as reason to believe that Quora’s biggest spike was in September and that the site has since then suffered a subsequent dip. According to Compete, Quora hit a record high of 210, 938 unique visits in September, only to drop down to 94,443 in October. Says D’Angelo, “Compete is wrong, there is no dip in usage for October or November. Our growth is steady and we had our biggest day of usage on Tuesday.”

Judging from the spate of “———— is now following you on Quora,” emails I’ve received in the past couple of days that sounds about right, even though the site still probably isn’t anywhere close to StackOverflow’s 10 million monthly uniques in terms of traffic.

Well, at least we know that the most popular question on Quora is “What is the most useful, shortest and most generally applicable piece of wisdom you know?” to which the top answer is “Always improve” or “Breathe” depending on what you’re looking for. Which is why we keep coming back.

There was a good crowd at the TechFellows event tonight in San Francisco. I ran into a lot of people I don’t see all that often. Among them were two entrepreneurs that have made a ton of money by selling their companies in the last couple of years. They’re both working on a slew of new projects, and the way they’re doing it is fascinating.

What does a person do after becoming fabulously wealthy?

Sometimes the type A pirate personality that got them to where they are just doesn’t stop. They move on to a new challenge, and try for an even bigger win. They keep working, keep creating.

Sometimes they just retire out of tech. Maybe do some angel investing. Or buy a basketball team. Or a formula 1 racing team. Occasionally they go into politics, which never ends well. Brute force of personality doesn’t get stuff done in politics, these people usually fail at it.

Sometimes they vanish from tech entirely, never to be heard from again. We need a VH1-style “where are they now” show to track these people down.

But I’m hearing more and more about people who are simply setting up an office somewhere close to their multi-million dollar home in Silicon Valley or San Francisco, hiring a handful of hackers, and just building stuff to see what happens.

In many ways it’s analogous to the gentleman farmer – someone who farms, sorta, but doesn’t really worry about profit because they are independently wealthy.

It doesn’t take much capital. You already have a name that will attract developers, or you pull them out of their old jobs working for you. A million dollars or so will get you an office and a handful of hackers, and keep them well paid for more than a year. Get someone really young who wants responsibility and they may even work for next to nothing in exchange for big equity stakes in their projects – sort of a modified Y Combinator model.

Then, you build. Whatever you want, for no other reason than you feel like it. Michael Birch, one of the people I spoke with tonight, is doing this through an entity he calls Monkey Inferno. He’s got gobs of cash from his $850 million sale of Bebo to AOL two years ago. His projects include an expansion of Birthday Alarm and Charity Water, which we wrote about here.

But Birch has quietly moved a political site, called Jolitics, into private beta in Ireland. Some details are here.

The other entrepreneur I spoke with tonight hasn’t given me permission to say his name. But he also had a multi-hundred million dollar exit recently. And his plans are much the same. Open up shop with a bunch of hackers and just build stuff. Some will turn into businesses, others won’t.

Having fun, helping the world and focusing on doing what you want seems to be the key differentiating factor with these guys. And the fact is that the same forces that are allowing startups to get off the ground for next to nothing these days – open source stacks, hosting and computing services like Amazon Web Services, and the ability to plug in services like Facebook Connect to make community building significantly less frictional than just a year or two ago. That means a couple of guys messing around with a crazy idea for a year while working for Michael Birch may just churn out something interesting. Something that may be a real business.

Image credit.

Tonight in San Francisco, many of the Valley’s stars are coming together for the second annual TechFellow Awards, a fellowship designed to help recognize some of the most accomplished leaders in technology — and to help foster further innovation by granting them $100,000 to invest in startups.

The awards program, which TechCrunch co-hosts along with Founders Fund, has been expanded this year to include New Enterprise Associates. Together, Founders Fund and NEA will grant each TechFellow $100,000 to invest in a start-up of their choice, which more than doubles how much each winner is being granted. The fund structure has also been adjusted to allow each TechFellow to share in the success of all 2010 TechFellow companies. Last year's TechFellows helped fund and found fFlick, Bidfire, Quora, Flipboard, HipChat and others (you can see a list of last year’s winners here).

The awards this evening were broken into four categories, encompassing Engineering Leadership, Product Design and Marketing, General Management, and Disruptive Innovation. Below is a listing of the winners by category.

Disruptive Innovation

This category is meant to highlight the visionaries, the starry-eyed fools who believe when no one else will. They are undaunted when told NO by stern parents, when told it WON'T WORK by a thousand dismissive VCs, when failure after failure would dash the hopes of lesser mortals. These are the men and women whose incredible ideas burst forth like Athena from their foreheads, and they know what it means to make Fire, the Wheel, and the Printing Press.

Omar Hamoui

David Friedberg

Jeff Lawson

Paul Graham

Jack Dorsey

Engineering Leadership

Engineering Leadership candidates are people who have demonstrated technical excellence, built amazing technology infrastructure and products, or led teams that together built complex and elegant solutions that changed our lives. They are the uber geeks who calculate 10-digit squares in their heads, and write a thousand bug-free lines of code on the fly without skipping a beat.

Tom Conrad

Christophe Bisciglia

Sep Kamvar

Ross Fubini

Joseph Smarr

Product Design and Marketing

Product Design and Marketing candidates are people who have designed insanely great products, who have made technology beautiful, who have created the marketing campaign that blows you away and make you want to go out and buy ten of them for your whole family. These are the storytellers, the artists, the people who make our dreams come alive.

Aaron Sittig

Matt Mullenweg

Khoi Vinh

Courtney Holt

Dave Morin

General Management

General Management candidates are people who have built the teams and organizations that create and deliver great technology and products to the world. They are company builders who provide foundations and processes for all the rest of the geeks and dreamers to make their dreams reality. They are the folks who wake up at 6am and open the doors, make the donuts, play reveille, and lead the charge to take the hill. They make it *happen*.

Neil Roseman

Patrick Chiang

Dave Schneider

Sebastien de Halleux

Maria Thomas

Aaron Patzer

Once again TechCrunch has partnered with Founders Fund and newcomer New Enterprise Associates to present Silicon Valley’s best and brightest with TechFellow Awards, which recognize the top high tech entrepreneurs in four categories, Disruptive Innovation, Engineering Leadership, Product Design and Marketing and General Management.

This year’s TechFellows will receive $100K to invest in a startup of their choice and a new fund has been created that will allow each Techfellow to have a stake in all the Techfellow 2010 companies. The Techfellow Awards ceremony it self will take place at Dogpatch Studios at 8pm and you can watch all the festivities on the live stream above or here.

What is Google Cloud Picker? According to these Blogger Forums, Sites Forums, and others, Google has been testing a new online storage tool called, you guessed it, Cloud Picker.

From these accounts, it appears that the tool is connected somehow to Google Apps, Docs, and Sites, and was presented to users when they tried to insert a file or image into a Google site. When they tried to embed the file, a “Google Cloud Picker” window opened and asked users to log-in to their Google Accounts.

Many users flocked to the forums because Cloud Picker wouldn’t work with any Google Apps account. When used with a regular Gmail account, the Cloud Picker brought users to a Google landing page with “Profile” and “Personal Settings” at the top and “My Products” at the bottom.

One user posted an image of Cloud Picker, which does shed a little more light on what the product is. It appears that it is a new storage product that allows users to organize and search photos, documents, videos and more that are stored in the cloud. From the looks of it, it seems more consumer focused as opposed to an enterprise tool.

Of course, this is all anecdotal so we are surely missing key elements of Cloud Picker. But when we contacted Google to learn more about the new product, we received this response from a spokesperson:

Oops… looks like someone pushed some code too quickly. It’s not quite ready for prime time yet but stay tuned!

So I think we we can expect a product either named Cloud Picker or something similar to Cloud Picker in the near future.

It’s been my experience that Google Maps has always been the most legible of the online map services, though even the worst have come a long way since the early days. I figured it was just the same magical Google power that returned search results so fast and pushed email to my phone in seconds. But while the juice that makes those things go is largely behind the scenes, the optimizations Google has made to the Maps interface are staring you right in the face every time you use it. But you might not have noticed them.

This post at 41Latitude, a blog dedicated to this kind of analysis, is a minute examination of those optimizations, and what competitors might look like if they did the same thing. It sounds dry, but I found it an interesting read, and it’s also one of those things that you can’t un-see.

(click for a larger version)

The primary difference seems to be the way the city labels are placed and weighted. The low-contrast background and various levels of white outline to the type make larger cities pop, and looser rules on where the city label is relative to its dot allow for better spacing between items. And there is apparently a sort of “halo” around larger cities that suppresses labeling of smaller items, the better to highlight the big cities and routes on the map. There are illustrations of these techniques at the post, and I recommend taking a look if you’re at all interested in psychovisual optimization and UI planning.

I don’t mention it just to give Google a pat on the back (though they deserve, and I give it to them — now), but also to bring up the fact that little things like this do add up. Superiority you can see, as Google Maps shows, is important to retaining users. If they know why they like your service, that’s good; if they don’t know, that’s also good. Of course, a different user might prefer Bing’s maps, with their different aesthetic — as long as it’s done with the same attention to detail.

A site like Flickr would quickly be put out of business by a competitor if they didn’t put the photos front and center, in high resolution, with good compression and simple navigation. The best feature set in the world won’t matter if your potential users ricochet off the site instantly because of something that can’t quite put their finger on. Like the idea in Gladwell’s Blink that you can do an extraordinary amount of processing in a fraction of a second, you can do quite a thorough evaluation of a service like Google Maps or Flickr in the same amount of time.

Tiny optimizations create a friendly environment for users, something sites don’t care enough about. Sloppy UI and poor presentation get picked up on by many who don’t even realize they’re doing so. So, a lesson to the competition: the little things don’t take care of themselves, but they might take care of you if you’re not careful.

If you’re interested in the usability of maps thing in particular, 41Latitude is full of posts on the topic.

[via Metafilter, where a commenter points out the interesting Fata Morgana]

Yesterday, after some digging, we were able to confirm that the internal codename for Google’s upcoming social project is “Emerald Sea“. Despite some confusion that it may be called “Emerald City“, it is definitely “Sea”, we’ve confirmed with several sources. But there’s more.

As one of our sources told us yesterday, these codenames quickly evolve. And in fact, it now looks like Emerald Sea may already be a slightly older name. And Google may be close to picking the final name for the product. As of right now, we’re hearing it’s being called “Google +1″ or “Google Plus One”.

Our source on this wasn’t sure if this will end up being the final name, but it is definitely the one they’re using internally right now with the thought that it could be the final name. The “Plus One” name apparently is derived from some of the functionality of the project. In this case, you could think of  ”+1″ as being Google’s version of the “Like” or “Retweet”. It also speaks to the the fact that you’re not doing something alone on the web. It’s social, get it?

Another source suggests another possible name Google is considering: “@Google” or “At Google”. Yes, that would seem to be a total Twitter rip-off, but several other social services have since adopted the @reply syntax since Twitter made it popular a few years ago.

More interesting than the name though is who is said to be taking a very active role in the development: Sergey Brin.

One source says that Google’s co-founder has moved the project to an area of the Googleplex called “Building 2000” (which is also home to a new Google campus store and a slide!) and that the area is now in a state of lock down as they prepare the project.

Other sources suggest that “there is still a lot of grumbling” surrounding the project internally. This seems to sync up with previous reports of internal disagreement that has led to delays. As we first reported, Google VP Vic Gundotra has been leading the project, so it’s not clear how or if Brin’s hands-on involvement has altered that.

In its current state, Google +1 is said to be a toolbar that appears across many of Google’s services. That is said to include their Chrome web browser. Though one source says they believe it will be a Chrome extension, rather than being fully baked into the browser — at least for now. And while +1 should start on Google properties, the idea would be get other sites to implement it too — perhaps like Facebook’s Like button and other social widgets.

Google clearly really, really wants to get this social stuff right, this time. And to that, I say “+1″.

[photo: flickr/jurvetson]

Stocking stuffers are a must. These little, often trivial items, can make or break a Christmas morning. Whether you’re shopping for a fledgling nerd-in-training or one with a bit more XP, these stocking stuffers will certainly bring them a bit of joy and happiness. All items are under $13, giving the frugal gift giver a bit of breathing room in your holiday budget. Even if you don’t have a stocking to stuff this year, there’s probably something here to satisfy your requirement as a Secret Santa to either someone at work, or even as just a little gift to yourself.

Continue reading…

The rumors are true! Amazon and daily deals site LivingSocial have just officially confirmed their partnership, with the e-tailer investing a whopping $175 million in the latter. This comes at an interesting time for both companies, amidst even more rumors that competitors Google and Groupon will hook up to the tune of $5.3 billion in the coming weeks.

Earlier today, Hitwise drew up some comparison stats on group buying and released data which showed among other things that Groupon commands 79 percent of U.S. visits to the group buying category, whereas No. 2 in the category LivingSocial only commands 8 percent of the market. While that is a formidable gap in marketshare, LivingSocial is on track to bring in $500 million in revenues next year which is a really positive sign.

In addition to the hefty Amazon financing, the company has also received a $8 million in investment from Lightspeed Venture Partners bringing the entire round up to the $183 million mark. Some are saying that this most recent funding has skyrocketed LivingSocial’s valuation to over $1 billion which would mean that Amazon now has something under a 17.5% stake.

Full press release below:

LivingSocial Announces $175 Million Investment by Amazon.com

WASHINGTON, Dec. 2, 2010 /PRNewswire/ — LivingSocial (www.livingsocial.com) has secured a $175 million investment from Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN). LivingSocial has also secured an additional $8 million investment from Lightspeed Venture Partners. LivingSocial will use this investment to maintain a steady drumbeat of worldwide launches and overall business growth while continuing to serve more than 10 million subscribers across the U.S., Canada, UK, Ireland and Australia in more than 120 locations. Because of LivingSocial’s rapid expansion, the company is currently booking revenues of more than $1 million a day on average and is projected to book well over $500 million in revenue in 2011.

“To be the biggest player in the local commerce space there is no one better to work with than Amazon,” said Tim O’Shaughnessy, CEO of LivingSocial. “As the social shopping space continues to heat up, LivingSocial is committed to staying focused on providing the high level of quality that consumers and merchants have come to expect when working with us.”

As the online source to find amazing experiences at an unbeatable value, LivingSocial lets anyone experience the hottest restaurants, shops, activities and services in their area. The company has dedicated area experts on the ground in every location working directly with business owners, and constantly researching the best in local adventures to bring a savings of 50% to 70% for consumers.
Recently, LivingSocial expanded its business by acquiring adventure company Urban Escapes, and launching three new verticals including LivingSocial Family Edition, Campus Deals and LivingSocial Escapes, a travel site that offers unbeatable savings on curated adventures. In addition, the company continues a regular flow of launches – on average one per day – and has expanded its reach in Australia with a controlling stake in Jump On It, making it live in five countries.

About LivingSocial

LivingSocial is the online source for people to find handpicked experiences at a great value, inviting anyone to save up to 50% to 70% each day on their favorite restaurants, spas, sporting events, hotels and other local attractions in major cities. LivingSocial has an extensive subscriber base of 10 million, and is headquartered in Washington, D.C. To sign up for Deals in your location, or to find out more information about LivingSocial, visit www.livingsocial.com. You can also follow LivingSocial on Twitter at www.twitter.com/livingsocial.

About Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth’s Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home & Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel, Shoes & Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial. Amazon Web Services provides Amazon’s developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon’s own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Kindle and Kindle DX are the revolutionary portable readers that wirelessly download books, magazines, newspapers, blogs and personal documents to a crisp, high-resolution electronic ink display that looks and reads like real paper. Kindle and Kindle DX utilize the same 3G wireless technology as advanced cell phones, so users never need to hunt for a Wi-Fi hotspot. Readers who don’t need the convenience of free 3G wireless can choose Kindle Wi-Fi for a lower price. Kindle is the #1 bestselling product across the millions of items sold on Amazon.

Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, www.amazon.cn, and www.amazon.it. As used herein, “Amazon.com,” “we,” “our” and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.

Forward-Looking Statements

This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management’s expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com’s financial results is included in Amazon.com’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.

Flying out to attend TCDisrupt in New York, a bunch of us were delighted to discover we were all on the same plane together, the infamous #VX22. Let’s face it, being on the same flight with someone you know is pretty fun most of the time, as a plane flight is a pretty unique shared experience and oftentimes results in a lasting bond. Don’t believe me? Shortly after sharing #VX22 with TechCrunch staff, I too started working for TechCrunch.

Planely co-founder Nick Martin is trying to tap into precisely this effect with his Copenhagen-based startup Planely. Travellers can connect with Facebook, enter their flights and see what other users will be at the same departure airport, on the same flight and/or at the same arrival airport.

This is great especially in the use case of massive early adopter attracting conferences like LeWeb, which is the first conference to partner up with Planely. Conference attendees can share rides, information or simply get better acquainted while travelling.

Planely users can also message each other beforehand, and start building a relationship before they even leave for the airport. So if anyone else is leaving for Paris on Sunday, you know where to find me.

Greetings programs! I have the ultimate TRON interview for you: Jeff Bridges. I had 3 minutes with Bridges, so I asked him this question from TechCrunch fan “itbedave”:

I’m curious as to what Jeff Bridges thinks of blue screen acting then (original TRON) vs. now (TRON Legacy) – and if it’s “advancement” has enhanced or ruined acting in big Hollywood films?

Jeff, who plays Kevin Flynn, loved this question and went into detail about his feelings around motion capture. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to ask him if Flynn abides or if he drinks White Russians, but I think you’ll love his response. He’s not a TechCrunch reader yet, but maybe we can convert him. I’d love to see some Bridges in the comments, wouldn’t you?

Jeff’s interview takes place in the beginning of part 3 and he’s followed by Olivia Wilde who has some awesome advice for women who want to get into technology. I asked Olivia if she was aware of quora.com and she was not, but I’m sure that the folks over at Quora are stoked. Her name in the movie is spelled Quorra, but I imagine there will be a lot of people typing it in with one R. Regardless, it is always nice to have a super sexy, smart and kick-ass woman have a similar name to yours. That’s the kind of brand confusion we can all get down with.

Part 4 includes interviews with the director, co-producer, vehicle designer and the VFX team. TRON: Legacy is the first released feature length film that Joseph Kosinski has directed, which is a huge break from making commercials (Halo & Gears of War). Kosinski is also working on a remake of the 1976 science fiction film Logan’s Run. The original TRON light cycles were designed by Syd Mead who was also responsible for the city backgrounds and vehicle designs in Blade Runner. The light cycles got an upgrade and we got a few minutes with a member of the design team to discuss if light cycles could exist as real motorcycles in the real world. After the interview, Parker Brothers Choppers announced it had made functional replicas and for 55K, you can have your very own. Unfortunately, it looks like they aren’t the best at turning and they lack light trails, but hey, as long as you drive straight where ever you are going, you are good to go!

In case you missed Part 1 and 2 of our TRON Legacy coverage, those interviews with cast and crew can be seen in this post.

Interviews below:
Part 3

Part 4

As Groupon weighs a $5 billion+ acquisition offer from Google and LivingSocial is believed to be about get a $100 Million to $150 million cash infusion from Amazon, it is instructive to look at the difference between the two companies. Hitwise looked at a 81 group-buying sites and came up with the chart above, which shows that Groupon commands 79 percent of U.S. visits to the group buying category, whereas No. 2 site LivingSocial only has an 8 percent share.

This is what market leadership looks like, and explains why Google may be willing to overpay for Groupon. In general, the Internet coalesces around market leaders for different categories—the gorillas. And the gap between No. 1 and No. 2 is usually vast. It was true in auctions (eBay), e-commerce (Amazon), search (Google), and social networking (Facebook). And it will happen in social commerce as well.

Although, earlier today, a LivingSocial executive noted at the SAI Ignition conference that LivingSocial is on track to do $500 million in revenues next year (it wasn’t clear if he was talking about the gross value of deals going through LivingSocial or the actual revenues that will be booked by LivingSocial—whereas Groupon will do well above $500 million in top-line revenues this year). What do you think? Will social commerce be yet another winner-take-most market?

UPDATE: LivingSocial just confirmed a $175 million investment from Amazon.

Now that people are just starting to get comfortable with the concept of the check-in for geo-location, it is starting to spread to other areas like product check-ins, TV show check-ins, and website check-ins. Just a couple weeks ago, Meebo introduced website check-ins as a new feature for its Meebo Bar. And before that, at our last Disrupt conference in San Francisco, two of the startups (Badgeville and OneTrueFan) launched entire companies around the concept of the website check-in.

So why would you ever want to check into a website? I ran into Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg today at SAI’s Ignition conference in New York City, who explains in the video above. The Meebo Bar is an IM and sharing extension that increasingly is appearing on many Websites. Meebo is now testing the concept of website check-ins, where you can check into any site you are on by clicking a button and sharing that on Facebook or Twitter. This is not the same as sharing a specific link, although it supports that as well. It is more just telling everyone you know that you like a certain site and it acts as an implicit endorsement. As a result, you will be able to find new sites through people, kind of like you can with StumbleUpon. A check-in in this respect is very similar to a Stumble.

People who check in the most become “VIPs,” with the idea that individual publishers could then reward their most loyal visitors with recognition or extra perks. You can sign up for the alpha version of the Meebo extension here (for Firefox and Chrome only) to check out the check-in feature.

Chrome 8 is here! Chrome 8 is here! The latest greatest version of Chrome! Joyous day, right? Don’t tell Google that. The search giant announced the (stable) launch not on their Google blog, and not even on their Google Chrome blog, but on their Google Chrome Releases blog. And in the post, they devote a whole two sentences to it. The rest is all about bug fixes.

But to those who follow Chrome closely, this shouldn’t be a big surprise. Ever since they shifted their strategy to release a new version of the browser every six weeks or so, the version numbers have become a mere afterthought. Before today’s update, the Chrome stable build was version 7, the beta was version 8, and the dev was version 9. And I’m sure Chromium (the open source browser on which Chrome is built) will hit version 10 shortly.

Back in the day, Google used to give these Chrome launches much pomp and circumstance. Next thing you know, there will just be a tweet about it. Then just a retweet. Then maybe a Plurk update to announce Chrome 14.

Of course, all of this doesn’t mean Chrome 8 is without any new features. Google highlights the built-in PDF viewer as one. The other big one not stated is that it’s likely to be the release that makes the forthcoming Chrome Web Store possible.

And, of course, the latest version is stated to be the fastest and most stable version yet.

Here’s the meat of Google’s Chrome 8 post:

The Chrome team is happy to announce our latest Stable release, 8.0.552.215.  In addition to the over 800 bug fixes and stability improvements, Chrome 8 now contains a built in PDF viewer that is secured in Chrome's sandbox.  As always, it also contains our latest security fixes, listed below.  This release will also be posted to the Beta Channel.

Chrome 8 is here. Shhhh.