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Here come the Groupon partnerships. In what may be the first of several big distribution deals aimed at cementing its lead in social commerce, Groupon and Ning are launching an affiliate beta program today. Anyone who runs a Ning social network can now add a Groupon widget with geo-targeted daily deals. They will get a cut of any Groupon deals purchased through their Ning sites, and Groupon will extend its reach potentially to tens of thousands of new sites with strong communities who perhaps would like to start buying things together. The program is in limited beta now, and will be rolled out as an option for all Ning sites by early next year.

Besides Ning, Groupon may soon strike similar deals with Yahoo, eBay and Citysearch. The goal is to become the de facto brand for daily deals.

As we’ve noted before, there is a lot of competition in the daily deal space and there is a real danger that margins could one day collapse. Although, it’s hard to say what the saturation point is for these types of offers. One of the best things Groupon has going for it is its first-mover advantage, amazing economics, and its growing brand. These types of partnerships are all about blowing out distribution even bigger than Groupon can do on its own. The margins will be smaller, just as with all affiliate networks, but it is the same strategy Amazon pursued successfully with its affiliate program, or even Google with AdSense.

Scary or cool? This technology developed by a team of researchers at Technische Universität Ilmenau in Germany is probably both. Their so-called “Diminished Reality” system makes it possible to manipulate video in real-time. As opposed to Augmented Reality, which adds virtual objects to real world images, Diminished Reality removes selected objects from video recordings.

Read more…

Earlier this year, Google announced that it would be deploying its own "experimental" fiber-optic network to at least 50,000 homes, perhaps as many as 500,000. The search giant received a flux of applications from communities across the country, who went at great lengths to show that their city deserved to be Google’s guinea pig. Today, Google is announcing that it has partnered with Stanford University to build an ultra-high speed broadband network to the university's Residential Subdivision, a group of approximately 850 faculty and staff owned homes on campus.

The trial will offer the residents Internet speeds up to 1 gigabit per second, which Google says more than 100 times faster than what most people have access to today. Google will begin the implementation in early 2011.

For those cities who applied to be Google’s test community, not to worry. Google says this experiment is separate from the community selection process for Google Fiber. The winner of this selection should be announced within the next few months.

This small deployment is a test for Google to see how it can implement the broadband network at a larger to scale, to up to 500,000 homes. So essentially Stanford University residents will be the real guinea pig so that chosen community will face a higher quality implementation.

Google says the choice to build the network in the Stanford community was based on the University’s openness to the experiment and the ease of the residential layout for the project. Of course, another key factor is the location of the residential area, which is a hop, skip and a jump away from Google’s Mountain View campus.

Spiceworks, a startup that develops Web-connected social IT management software, is announcing a few milestones today at the company's conference Spiceworld. The company now has 1.2 million IT professionals using its platform, who support 37.5 million workers and manage 66 million computers and devices. Spiceworks, which recently raised $16 million in funding, develops a desktop software suite that helps a company's IT staff collaborate with each other and manage "everything IT." The IT management software, which is free and ad-supported, is mainly used at small to medium businesses to inventory, monitor, troubleshoot, report on and run a help desk for their IT networks.

We wrote last week of realtime search startup OneRiot’s move to recharge its business model; shutting down its search portal and focusing exclusively on its advertising network. Prior to this shift, OneRiot had released a search API to allow partners to integrate realtime search into their applications. Today, the startup is announcing that it has transitioned its search partners to fellow realtime search engine Topsy.

It appears that the announcement is definitely a two-way deal. As part of the relationship, Topsy is using OneRiot's realtime search ads, which will appear within the search platform’s website. Similar to OneRiot, Collecta and other realtime search engines, Topsy indexes and ranks search results based the conversations millions of people are having every day about each specific term, topic, page or domain queried. What differentiates Topsy is that it focuses slightly more on data from Twitter and also holds on to data forever. Topsy results are powered by influencers tweeting about content within the social web.

Currently the Topsy API powers realtime search features on “hundreds” of websites and applications; and OneRiot’s partners will now be able to integrate realtime search powered by Topsy. While the companies didn’t reveal this information, I’m curious how many of OneRiot’s partners made the decision to transition to Topsy’s realtime search. Clearly this consolidates the market slightly, which should be interesting for Collecta, one of the remaining independent realtime search portals.

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In July, Google announced its $700 million acquisition of ITA Software, an essential provider of flight information to airlines, travel agencies, and online reservation systems. But the deal is reportedly being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department over antitrust concerns. When Google originally announced the acquisition, the company said it would use ITA's data to create "new flight search tools." With the deal still awaiting approval from the Justice Department, it looks like ITA took matters into their own hands and launched its its free airfare shopping mobile app, OnTheFly, for Android devices today.

Leveraging ITA's airfare pricing and shopping technology, OnTheFly is a airfare comparison shopping engine that promises vast airport selection, an “intuitive travel date selector” and many search filters, including number of passengers, class of seat, type of seats, and more. You can search for domestic and international trips and the app will detect your location when choosing departure and arrival airports. The app will also include charts that compare between carriers, number of stops, travel dates, airports, plus total mileage and carbon emissions for each trip.

The app is also available for the iPhone; and the company says a BlackBerry app is in the works. I’m assuming that Google has helped ITA make the app fit natively into the Android OS, so it should be a useful tool for airfare comparison on the device.

Of course, we are still waiting to see if the regulatory agency will sign off on the ITA acquisition (as a side note Google says it will honor all existing agreements ITA had with previous partners). As we’ve written in the past, travel is a huge segment of search and online commerce and clearly Google wants to build out its travel search product, perhaps to compete with Bing Travel.

How many mailing lists are you on that fill your email inbox every day? Figuring out how to unsubscribe from all of them can be a pain. From that frustration was born Unsubscribe.com, an LA-based startup that just closed a $2.1 million Series A financing. Charles River Ventures led the round. Other investors include Ron Conway's SV Angel, First Round Capital, DFJ Frontier as well as angel investors including Matt Coffin, Tim Ferriss, and Matt Brezina.

Unsubscribe.com was started by James Siminoff (who previously founded PhoneTag/Simulscribe, which is now part of DiTech), Joshua Roth, and Wil Schroter. It adds an "Unsubscribe" button to every email. If you want to unsubscribe from an email or marketing list, all you need to do is click the button, and Unsubscribe takes care of the rest. In order to use the service, you first need to download an extension for your email client. Right now, it supports Outlook and Gmail, or you can forward emails to mail@unsubscribe.com if you have an account. (Yahoo, Hotmail, and AOL are coming soon). You get five free unsubscribes per month, or can pay $20 a year for unlimited usage. VC Fred Wilson tried it and he loves it, although he is not an investor.

Siminoff explains the problem he is trying to solve. "Currently people use the delete or spam button for emails that they receive from mailing lists that they do not want. This creates two big issues; it puts good companies on blacklists, and when people use delete they continue to receive emails."

Each unwanted email might have a different way to unsubscribe. Most people just don't bother.. Clicking one button makes it a lot easier. "I am calling the space we are in Email Hygienics," says Siminoff. Unsubscribe.com won't get you all the way to Inbox Zero, but it can help get rid of a lot of the garbage.

Groupalia, a Spanish group buying site, has raised 5 million euros in its second institutional round after securing 2.5 million euros back in May. Again, the funding comes from Nauta Capital, and Spanish bank la Caixa's venture capital division.

Windows, Microsoft’s ubiquitous operating system, sits firmly in place.

One year after launch, licenses for the successor of Windows Vista, Windows 7, have gone over the counter no less than 240 million times.

As Microsoft points out, that makes it the fastest selling operating system in history, which is not super surprising when you consider how many were clamoring to upgrade from Vista, and XP for that matter.

Still, that’s nearly a quarter billion licenses, folks.

Microsoft says that, as of September 2010, Windows 7 was running on 93% of new consumer PCs, although we’re left guessing as to what constitutes a “new consumer PC” here.

In contrast, Windows 7 ‘only’ boasts 17% global OS market share (according to Net Applications), which means a lot of computers are still running XP and Vista.

On the bright side, growth seems to be accelerating. Last June, Microsoft announced that they had sold 150 million copies of Windows 7, so that translates to sales of about 90 million licenses in the past 5 months. A lot would have to go wrong for Microsoft not to hit 300 million copies sold by year’s end.

On a personal note, 99% of my online activities, work and play, are done on a Windows 7 PC.

It’s a genuine pleasure to use, period.

IBM is announcing the acquisition of yet another company today: Toronto-based financial governance software company Clarity Systems. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Clarity Systems' software allows organizations to automate the process of collecting, preparing, certifying and controlling financial statements for electronic filing with the SEC and other regulatory agencies. The software also helps CFOs automate budgeting, forecasting, planning, consolidation, scorecarding and other financial business analytics. CFOs can combine financial statements, operational details, commentary, notes, charts and pictures into a single document. Customers include British Airways, WSFS Financial Corporation, Young & Co.'s Brewery plc, Five Star Quality Care, Inc., Oglethorpe Power Corporation and Sempra Energy Utilities.

Dave Gross, an entrepreneurial engineer who was the founding chief executive of Internet advertising company Fastclick (acquired by ValueClick in 2005), is at the helm of a new company called Connexity that just landed an undisclosed amount of seed funding from early-stage venture fund Persistence Partners (formerly Great Pacific Capital).

That’s kind of a given, as the fund was co-founded by Gross himself, although the firm lists five other portfolio companies where he’s not listed as a member of the management team.

Connexity promises to bring publishers and advertisers together “in a new way”, but to be frank the description of the service leaves me in the dark as to what that new method is, exactly:

Connexity is introducing advertisers and publishers to audience networking and cross-channel connectivity. Connexity applies social networking architecture, recommendation engine learning, and best-of-breed targeting & optimization technology to media representation and media buying.

Lots of rich words, but I’m still not quite sure why this isn’t just another ad network with added social media bells and whistles. I guess we’ll have to wait for the startup to grow up to see if its unique value proposition will become clearer, because the mission statement and the visualization of its methodology below make me none the wiser.

Intel Capital, the investment arm of Intel, has just announced a $3 million investment in OpenFeint, the comprehensive mobile social gaming platform from Aurora Feint. This latest round brings Aurora Feint’s total funding to $12 million. Earlier this year, the company also took a $5 million investment from Chinese gaming company The9.

OpenFeint's plug and play mobile social platform and application for smartphones includes a set of online game services such as leaderboards, virtual currencies and achievements running in a cloud-based Web environment.

OpenFeint has taken a cross-platform approach to its social gaming platform, first launching on the iPhone and iPad and more recently adding Android game developers to its rapidly growing community, launching its plug and play social game development to developers to the public a few weeks ago. The startup also released PlayTime, a set of technologies that will allow developers to make real-time multiplayer games with voice chat across iOS and Android.

And OpenFeint has seen considerable traction with its platform, adding 3,400 games and over 45 million mobile gamers to in just over a year. Additionally, the company just struck a deal with Verizon, Rogers Wireless and Bell Mobility to offer their mobile consumers Android game recommendations on their Verizon phones, all curated by OpenFeint.

This is actually Intel’s first investment in a social gaming platform (the firm invested in game streaming company Gaikai). So why is Intel investing in OpenFeint? Intel tells TechCrunch that there are a number of reasons. First, social gaming is a huge segment in the consumer space; and second, OpenFeint has shown expertise and success in the market. While OpenFeint’s high traffic numbers also contributed to the decision, one of the main factors Intel considered was the cross-platform nature of OpenFeint.

OpenFeint will actually use the new investment to expand its social gaming SDK to other platforms and devices.

Peter Relan, chairman of Aurora Feint, says that games can actually be a driver for the adoption of new devices as consumers look for richer experiences for social gaming. He says the company will be looking closely at four to five new platforms for possible expansion beyond iOS and Android, including Windows 7, BlackBerry, and a number of tablets.

Of course, Apple recently launched its own gaming platform, GameCenter, for developers which poses competition to OpenFeint. But Relan doesn’t seem to be worried. He says that multiplatform strategy is the way to go as users want to be able to play games across a variety of devices from different manufacturers. He explained, “The user is king at the end of the day.”

Scrapblog, a startup that lets you build rich Flash-based online scrapbooks, is announcing a deal with DreamWorks Animation to feature graphics from the "Shrek" film series. Shrek and other characters from the movie will be added to the Scrapblog Virtual Marketplace to allow users to add stickers, backgrounds and themes to scrapbooks.

Scrapblog, which raised $2.5 million from Disney’s Steamboat Ventures earlier this year, offers an online editor that allows users to decorate their scrapbook with text, images, colorful themes, and other embellishments, which can then be shared on the web or printed out. Scrapblog recently brought on a new CEO, Jill Braff, to lead the company after startup's founder and CEO Carlos Garcia, stepped aside.

The startup is also launching a new product to its printed offerings: a 12" x 12" square glossy hardcover scrapbook. The company was first introduced back in 2006, briefly went offline, and relaunched in March 2007.

According to Compete, Scrapblog only had 84,000 unique visitors in September. The online scrapbooking space is tough considering that Flickr, Apple iPhoto and other popular photo sharing sites now offer high-end scrap booking options for consumers. But the scrapbook business could be a $2 billion market, and with potential acquisitions. Most recently, digital scrapbooking startup ScrapHD was bought by craft store chain Michaels.

Barnes & Noble this morning announced that its NOOK eBook Reader will be sold in 2,500 Walmart stores and Walmart.com. The devices are expected to hit Walmart shelves beginning as soon as October 24, in advance of the holiday shopping season, the company said. B&N also said many Walmart stores will feature a NOOK-branded eReading area where shoppers can see and touch a demo device, although it didn't specify which and how many stores.

Nokia this morning reported a third-quarter profit that handily beat analysts' estimates. The company also said it would cut 1,800 jobs worldwide, sending shares soaring.

In the first results since the company named Stephen Elop CEO, Nokia reported net income of 529 million euros, from a loss of 559 million euros a year earlier.

Sales rose (again) to 10.3 billion euros from 9.81 billion euros, and the company shipped some 110.4 million devices.

In a separate statement, Nokia said it will henceforth focus solely on the Qt framework framework and support for HTML5.

Nokia says the decision to focus on Qt as the sole development framework will ensure that apps will continue to be compatible with future evolutions of Symbian as well as upcoming MeeGo products.

Nokia Ari Jaaksi VP, the guy in charge of MeeGo devices, recently resigned from the company, following in the footsteps of Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia's former smartphone champion.

Nokia also announced that it will “streamline operations” in product creation in Nokia’s Symbian Smartphones organization, as well as Nokia’s Services organization and certain corporate functions. The plans are expected to result in a reduction of up to 1,800 employees globally.

At September 30, 2010, Nokia says it employed a total of 131,553 people, of which 66 090 were employed by Nokia Siemens Networks.

In Symbian Smartphones, Nokia says it plans to increase responsiveness to consumer demands and reduce time to market:

This includes expanding the use of common tools for application development, streamlining software development, simplifying and consolidating operations and placing greater focus on adding value to consumers. The changes target increased competitiveness and support building an attractive and sustainable platform for application developers.

In addition, the company’s Services organization will henceforth be focused on delivering an integrated Ovi experience across its full range of devices in an effort to provide more compelling Ovi services to consumers.

As certain activities are planned to be discontinued and integrated, Nokia says it will also cut certain corporate functions and corporate research activities.

As you probably know, Nokia continues to struggle to keep pace with rivals like Apple and Android-device makers, retaining its focus on Symbian while Android is growing and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 just entered the field. Recently, the company started shipping its new line-up of smartphones based on the upgraded Symbian^3, including the flagship Nokia N8.

Big changes are needed, but today’s announcements bring forward the billion dollar question: too little, too late?

To conclude, here’s the quote from Nokia’s new CEO, Stephen Elop:

“In the five weeks since joining Nokia, I have found a company with many great strengths and a history of achievement that are second to none in the industry. And yet our company faces a remarkably disruptive time in the industry, with recent results demonstrating that we must reassess our role in and our approach to this industry.

Some of our most recent product launches illustrate that we have the talent, the capacity to innovate, and the resources necessary to lead through this period of disruption. We will make both the strategic and operational improvements necessary to ensure that we continue to delight our customers and deliver superior financial results to our shareholders.”

We recently wrote about a new startup operating in the social commerce space, called ShopSocially. Founded in late 2009 by entrepreneurs Jai Rawat and Samir Palnitkar, ShopSocially’s tagline is “where friends help friends shop” as the site taps into your social graph (on Twitter and Facebook) for product recommendations.

The company this morning announced that it secured $1.1 million in Series A financing led by Valhalla Partners, with additional participation from angel investor Raman Khanna, Ashish Gupta and Dharmesh Thakker.

ShopSocially is essentially a site for friends to exchange shopping recommendations and discover new products. According to the company, more than 10,000 product recommendations have been created by friends in a few months since its launch.

Announced last week at a global press event, Opera Software has now debuted the next version of its desktop browser, aptly named Opera.

The new browser, which is dubbed Opera 11 and is currently in ‘alpha’ mode, features extensions for the first time in the history of the company / product.

Extensions will allow users to customize their browser by adding features and functionality directly into the browser itself, rather than as standalone Opera Widgets or Opera Unite applications.

Starting today, third-party developers can start building add-ons using Opera APIs, HTML5 and JavaScript and upload and share their extensions for Opera 11 directly.

Opera Software says there are more than 50 million Opera desktop browser users, so that’s an audience any developer should reckon with.

The company stipulates that it will check all extensions before they are made public to ensure the catalog is exempt from defects and malicious software.

They’re pretty late to the add-on game, but I guess at least they’re still in it.

Opera today also launched an open developer API for the Opera Link browser synchronization service. Using this API, developers can integrate Opera Link data with other services online and build applications with libraries made available for Java and Python.

I’ve done it. I’ve worn the battery completely down on one of the new MacBook Airs. As such, I thought I’d post some initial thoughts about the machine. This isn’t a huge all-encompassing review — I haven’t even used it outside of my apartment yet — but rather my initial thoughts for those of you thinking about rushing out to buy one.

All day, I’ve been testing out the 13.3-inch model. After playing around with the 11.6-inch model in the demo area after Apple’s event today, I decided that while it is freakishly, insanely small, I’d rather carry the extra .5 pounds and get the extra 2 hours of battery life that the slightly larger model offers. And I think that was the right choice, I’ve been using it all day and the battery just wore out.

The iPad has spoiled me. I often look at my 5.6 pound MacBook Pro with dread now. It’s simply too bulky. And considering I have never used the optical drive on the thing, I can’t figure out why I need some of that bulk. This new MacBook Air eliminates it.

Bottom line: so far, I love this thing.

In my initial view, the MacBook Air is a killer product both literally and figuratively. The optical disc is now all but dead at its hands for the reasons I laid out here. But the Air is also a killer product because I think it’s the type of computer that a lot of people are looking for. Namely, an ultra-portable Mac that’s affordable.

Some people will point to the fact that the original Air wasn’t a huge success as a reason why this won’t be either. But while they may look similar, the two are really two different machines. The original MacBook Air was underpowered and overpriced. This new MacBook Air definitely has enough power for most consumers and with prices starting at $999, it is priced to move (this model costs $1,299).

After using it pretty much non-stop for the past 7 hours or so, I’m happy to report that I couldn’t find one task in my regular routine that the Air wasn’t able to handle with ease. I did some work, I did some regular browsing, I edited some pictures, I played some videos, etc.

To be honest, it makes me feel a little silly. Why on Earth have I been lugging around a machine that’s twice as heavy if I didn’t need it? I’m not sure. The lure of the 2.8 GHz i7 chip, 8GB of RAM, and dual graphics cards got to me, I guess. But I really don’t need that. And I’m sure most people don’t either.

Of course some people will. And that’s why Apple sells the various MacBook Pro models. But at this point, I’m thinking Apple should just replace the standard MacBook with the Air. It’s better in pretty much every way. Unless you’re an optical disc aficionado, I’m not sure what the reason is to buy one.

The 13-inch Air’s 1.86 GHz Core 2 Duo with the standard 2 GB of RAM and single NVIDIA 320M graphics chip seems to hum along. I keep thinking I should look into the model that has been upgraded to the 2.13 GHz chip with 4 GB of RAM, but again, all day this configuration has been just fine.

In fact, the only thing that ever seemed to stress the system out a little bit was, what else, Flash. But that only meant that a few times when I had a couple YouTube windows open, the machine started to heat up a bit. When I closed those windows, it cooled right back down. Humorously, Apple doesn’t include Flash in its pre-installed software on the Air, so you’ll have to download it on your own if you want to use it (or download Chrome, like I did, which has it built-in).

Speaking of heating issues, Flash heat-ups aside, the Air sits noticeably cooler in the lap than the MacBook Pro does. And the thing runs absolutely silently. Even when I had Flash blaring, there was just heat, no noise.

As promised, the boot up time of the machine is awesome. I find that from power-on to computing takes about 10 to 15 seconds — significantly faster than any of my other Macs, by far. This, of course, is due to the machine’s new flash (not to be confused with Flash) memory. This also allows the device to go to sleep and wake up instantly as advertised. In fact, the only thing you have to wait for is for your WiFi to reconnect.

The keyboard and trackpad are both rock solid. If I didn’t happen to be sitting here with 2.5 pounds less of machine on my lap, it would seem just as if I’m typing on my MacBook Pro.

And the most surprising thing about the 13-inch Air may be the screen. At 1440-by-900, the screen basically matches the one on a standard 15-inch MacBook Pro. I even opted for the higher-resolution screen on my MacBook Pro, and this smaller screen still seems to suit me just fine. I was pretty surprised by that. I thought I’d miss the extra real estate, but I barely notice it’s gone.

One thing I will say is that because there is no glass in front of the screen as there is on other MacBooks, the Air does feel slightly cheaper if you touch the screen. Of course, that lack of glass also helps keep the weight down and eliminates a lot with the glare problems that the other MacBooks with glossy screens have.

The 13-inch Air also comes with an SD card reader built in to the side. This is a nice perk over the 11-inch and I’ve used it a few times already — that’s how I pulled in the images for this post.

Basically, after one day, this new MacBook Air seems to be the exact laptop I was looking for. At least in my daily workflow, it’s just like using my MacBook Pro, but much, much lighter. It’s hard to exaggerate just how light it really is. I already can’t see myself going back to the MacBook Pro.

We’ll see how I feel in a week. Maybe I’ll feel cramped by then. Maybe I’ll feel the need for more horsepower. Maybe I’ll really want a way to play that old Gin Blossoms CD. But I doubt it.

Stop. Take a deep breath. Before my headline gets you all worked up, consider what I’m saying here. The CD and other optical discs, like DVDs and Blu-rays, are obviously going to live on for a while as a way to transport media. But make no mistake that today, with two unveilings, Apple has effectively sealed the fate of the optical disc in the computer industry. Soon, it will go the way of the floppy disk.

Last week, I wrote a post laying out what I hoped Apple would bring with a revamped MacBook Air. I came to the realization that I had never once used the optical drive in my current MacBook Pro, and it was simply taking up a lot of space and was making my computer unnecessarily bulky. I wanted to replace it with a MacBook Air. And now I can. And I’m not going to be the only one that does.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: but the MacBook Air has been around for a couple of years and it hasn’t killed off the optical disc yet. That’s true, but a couple key ingredients were missing the last time around.

First of all, the first-generation Airs were a bad combination of underpowered and overpriced. That is no longer the case. Second, they required some convoluted desktop computer CD syncing system to be able to install something from an optical disc to the Air (or an optional USB add-on). That is also no longer the case (though both still exists).

When you get your MacBook Air and you open the box, you will find exactly zero optical discs inside. Normally, Apple includes at least one back-up DVD to reinstall OS X and other software if your computer fails. But now, that has been replaced with a super-slim USB stick. This stick, packed in with your manual, is all you need to reinstall your system now.

This makes a lot of sense. CDs were replaced by DVDs because they offered a lot more storage. But flash memory cards, such as the one Apple includes with the Air, are already blowing DVDs out of the water when it comes to storage. They may still be more expensive to produce, but Apple has clearly figured out a way to make it work. I suspect we may see more drives like this one (which use much less plastic than typical USB flash drives — and appear to even use less plastic than optical discs).

But that’s only one half of the future.

The other half is a potentially much bigger announcement Apple made today: the Mac App Store. While Apple didn’t give a ton of details yet, it appears that this store will work pretty much just as their App Store does on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. There will be free and paid apps. There will be one-click downloads. There will be automatic updates. All that.

What there won’t be are any optical discs.

Up until now, the vast majority of software (at least the legal variety) has been distributed by way of CD or DVD. The Mac App Store could very well change that. Every app found on that store, undoubtedly including the big ones we all know and love and use on our computers today, will be distributed over the Internet. This is long overdue.

Plenty of companies have tried Internet distribution for a long time. Some have success, and some don’t. But none have the type of central repository that Apple is offering here. This is going to be huge.

If it sounds similar to what Google is working on with the Chrome Web Store, or what Mozilla is proposing with their Open Web Ecosystem, remember that those are only web apps. We’re talking native applications for the Mac App Store. We’re talking apps that run on your computer, just like you have now, they’re just distributed in a way that makes a lot more sense.

They’re distributed in a way that makes the CD, DVD, and every other optical disc obsolete. And that’s good, since soon the optical drives will start to fade out of existence as well.

With the launch of the iTunes Music Store seven and a half years ago, Apple put the wheels in motion to kill the CD. Today, they kicked off their final assault. There will be no survivors.

More: Free As A Bird: Initial Thoughts After A Day With The New MacBook Air

[image: flickr/stuartpilbrow]

Do you use Facebook? Do you use Twitter? Well then here’s SmartTwitter. You’re welcome.

Yes it’s true that Twitter already has its own clunky status updating app on Facebook and there are plenty of apps that do this, like Tweeter.

But what sets SmartTwitter apart, aside from its simplicity of use, is the fact that Twitter language kruft like hashtags, retweets, @replies and @mentions look so out of place on Facebook and many people end up disabling these apps to stop the Twitter jargon from appearing in their feed and annoying their non-Twitter using friends.

Built by Michael Hoisie in one weekend using the GO programming language and Redis, the app currently has over 90,000 users. As easy and effective as it is to use (interface below) I wouldn’t be surprised if that number hits 100K by the end of this month.

Froms Hoise, on his motivation for building the app:

“Smart Twitter was written out of the frustration with the existing Twitter-to-Facebook apps. They either copied everything, or required an arbitrary hashtag to post updates. It should be possible for a computer to figure out which Tweets should be copied to Facebook and which ones should remain on Twitter.”

And so it was. Also, I no longer have to visit Facebook.

For those of you that might visit Facebook more than I do, there’s also a SmartTwitter for pages.

Via: HN

 

 

Ever since the meteoric rise (and subsequent downturn) of Chatroulette, there’s been a major influx of startups and mashups looking to capitalize on the thrill of being flung into a conversation with a random person you’ve never met. We’ve seen group chats with strangers, text-only chats with strangers, and, of course, a Chatroulette clone “for stoners”. So it comes as little surprise that tonight, a matter of hours after Apple’s FaceTime was released for the Mac, we’ve come across a little service called Facelette. It’s exactly what you think it is.

The application is extremely basic (in fact, on a Hacker News thread announcing the product, Zach Holman says he whipped it up in around an hour — he also calls it the “dumbest experiment ever”). Visit the site, and you’ll be prompted to enter the email address or phone number associated with your Apple account. Be warned: This data isn’t hidden at all, so if you want to check out Facelette you’ll probably want to associate a throwaway email address with your Apple account, otherwise you may have to face a bunch of spam. Hopefully if the site gets any serious traction the developer will figure out a way to obfuscate this, or at least make it harder for spammers to scrape.

Once you’ve entered your Email/phone number, the site will randomly display a link to someone else’s account info — click it, and you’ll be thrown into a FaceTime call with them. The contact information you entered will be shown to other users as well, so don’t be surprised if you get an inbound call.

From then on, you’re on your own. I chatted with two people — one who would only show his fingers and another who was quite friendly (and I think may have introduced me to his parents). And no, there doesn’t appear to be a penis problem yet. And while this probably isn’t going to spawn a blockbuster business, it’s a great chance to see what FaceTime is like if you’re itching to try it out.

Just to reiterate, here’s the privacy notice (or warning) on the site:

Privacy policy: dude, you’re submitting an email or phone number to a public site for strangers to call you. Let that sink in. Cool! That said, this is fun. If you stop using Facelette for more than two minutes, Facelette will consider you “signed out” and won’t display your FaceTime ID to anyone else, ever. I’ll regularly purge all inactive accounts for good measure.

Privacy tl;dr: you’re submitting your stuff publicly, so watch out. But Facelette will absolutely protect your info otherwise.

Since I’ve blocked out communications from Fast Company ever since their linkbait Influence Project started in July, I didn’t see this below email sent to all “participants” of the project signaling its close (thanks Danny Sullivan!).

The Influence Project’s basic goal was to get people click on Fast Company links — the more links you personally got people to click on, the bigger your “influence.”

Blogger Jeremy Schoemaker heroically got enough people to do it, beating out Internet biggies like Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, video blogger iJustine and even our own Michael Arrington in online influence according to the Fast Company rules.

iJustine did get her place in the Fast Company sun however, in a sprawling six page photo piece called “The New Faces of Social Media,” which actually included none of the top Influence Project influencers. (A much shorter article about those guys here).

Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan points out the discrepancy between the two sets.

Online influencers according to The Influence Project

1. Jeremy Schoemaker
2. Shefqet Avdullau
3. Tod Sacerdoti
4. Cory Boatright
5. Greg Clement
6. Frank Kovacs
7. Sebastian Saldarriaga
8. James Dunn
9. Richard Lee
10. Pace Lattin

Online influencers according to the Mark Borden “The New Faces of Social Media” piece

1. Justine Ezarik
2. Jill Fletcher
3. Gary Vaynerchuk
4. Christopher Poole
5. Greg Allan
6. Jonah Peretti

Truth be told, it’s taken tl:dr.it about 20 minutes to summarize “The New Faces Of Social Media” so I haven’t actually read it, but the very fact that it’s paginated probably means that there’s nothing in it you as TechCrunch readers don’t already know.

Key takeaway: Instead of an article of any substance or a spot on the cover, non- web celebrity participants in the project got the following email …

Bob Safian here, the editor of Fast Company.

I want to personally thank you for participating in our online experiment, The Influence Project, last summer. More than 30,000 people signed up, and more than 1.5 million individuals came to the site to show their support.

We promised to highlight all participants who submitted photos in the November issue of the magazine; that issue is now rolling out on newsstands across the country. (The cover image is of Lance Armstrong.) You can also view the final results of The Influence Project–and zoom in on specific photographs–at www.fastcompany.com/influence.

I hope you found The Influence Project a worthwhile experience.

Thanks again,

Bob Safian
Editor
Fast Company

Well, no Bob, as a participant, I most certainly did not find The Influence Project a worthwhile experience, not in the slightest. First of all you all but ignored the guy who actually won and picked your own winners, presumably because a vignette of iJustine will drive more traffic to your website than a profile of the unknown outside of the tech industry Jeremy Schoemaker.

And then, to add insult to injury, and despite your previous promises of this thing actually having some real world impact (a.k.a influence), you end up putting cyclist Lance Armstrong on the cover of what was vaguely designated as your Fast Company Influence Project issue because what? Oh, that’s right, while they may generate traffic, online influencers (even your self-designated “New Faces Of Social Media”) don’t necessarily sell hard copy magazines.

Fast Company’s worldwide unique visitor traffic (in thousands) below, presented without commentary via Comscore.

It’s been nice sleeping in my own bed, reconnecting with the good, ol’ echo chamber and actually getting to see my husband for the last six weeks, but I’ve been in one place too long. I am hitting the road again, hunting for good startups and entrepreneurs.

If you didn’t follow my 40-weeks of travel for my book, here’s how it works: I don’t make a schedule and I usually don’t announce where I’m going beforehand or read a lot of pitches, I just try to find cool people to write about by asking around on the ground. Now that my book is done, expect more posts on TechCrunch about who and what I find in each place I visit.

If you’re an entrepreneur thinking of pitching me, you should know I tend to get excited about four things: Wacky almost futuristic science projects that actually work, companies that are trying to address huge domestic or regional needs in innovative ways that the West wouldn’t have thought of; the role that culture, history, education and even the government and social structures play in giving rise to this new culture of high-growth entrepreneurship around the emerging world; and really, really awesome local food.

Friday night I leave for Singapore and, as I learned on Twitter today, will be headlining this event. Come say hi. In Indonesia I’ll be speaking at this event. I’ll be in each place a week and will cram as many startups in as I can.

Enterprise video communications company, Kontiki, has raised $10.7 million in series B funding led by the company’s earlier backers, MK Capital, and joined by New World Ventures and Cross Creek Capital. Kontiki aims to give big corporations their own private Youtube, or a way to use video to connect and teach employees, decrease travel expenses and increase productivity.

Kontiki’s chief executive Eric Armstrong says his product could ruin the reality TV series “Undercover Boss.” That’s the show where CEOs from massive, public companies go work in the ranks for a week, and surprise their employees with an identity-reveal at the end, bestowing gifts upon their favorites, and changing corporate policies to make everyone work better together. Why ruin a good thing? It’s not intentional. But one of the most popular uses of Kontiki’s video delivery software-as-a-service is to broadcast quarterly CEO meetings live, and then offer them again on-demand, so all employees can put a face to the name of their leader.

Gartner researchers predict that video will grow to represent two-thirds of traffic over enterprise networks by 2015. Another enterprise video use-case that’s popular among Kontiki’s customers, Armstrong said, is the delivery of training and compliance materials by video-on-demand.

The Sunnyvale, Calif. company says it has been gaining ground in the enterprise market because its technology doesn’t require companies to upgrade their networks to accommodate online video traffic, and it doesn’t require equipment expenditure, or IT maintenance.

Kontiki’s software as a service costs about $1-$3 per user, per month. Kontiki’s customers span a wide variety of industries, including Starwood Hotels, Wells Fargo Bank, Charles Schwab, United Technologies, Coca-Cola and most recently Nationwide UK.

Armstrong says Kontiki will spend its new-found capital on hiring engineers, marketing and sales talent. The company has 34 employees today but expects to become a 50-person operation within a year. It plans to deliver a product release that works on iOS and Android mobile devices within the year.

For years, Microsoft’s mobile OS was plagued with a reputation of being, for want of a better word, stuffy. As competing smartphone platforms rocketed past it in both popularity and functionality, Windows Mobile 6 fell further and further into a realm of obscurity, damned by a shoddy interface, a painfully bad touchscreen keyboard, and a downright atrocious application store.

Microsoft’s next move was really their only option: scrap everything, and start anew. The result? Windows Phone 7. Built from the ground up, it’s about as similar to its predecessor as I am to a head of lettuce. Of course, different doesn’t necessarily mean better — so how does this new offering stack up? Join us after the jump for our full review.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>