The Latest from TechCrunch

Expensify, the startup helps take the endless headaches out of expense reports, is launching a new version of its platform today.

What makes Expensify so easy is that it can pull in your transaction records and automatically categorize them. All you need to do is register your credit cards with the platform, and the site will automatically import E-receipts. You can also take a photo of paper receipts and import it. Once your transactions are in the system, you can tag expenses and then submit the expense report to your business’s bookkeeper for reimbursement.

The new version includes a realtime analytics dashboard to show expenses by category, day, and unreported expenses. Expensify also includes customizable CSV and Excel export. The platform also now supports bulk report operations to better manage employees in large companies.The company has also added performance improvements and a new UI.

Expensify co-founder and CEO David Barrett tells us that growth was flat for the company until late last year when the company exited beta with a new version. Now the bootstrapped startup has around 150,000 users and has spend little to no money on advertising and marketing. And the company recently partnered with PayPal to launch an expense app for PayPay developers.

Pretty much everything is going social these days  and getting a kick of real-time - whether it's for discovering music via Playlistnow or following stocks via StockTwits, etc. Everyone's adding a social layer to their existing platforms and integrating some forms of real-time services- and one of the latest to go this route is Yakaz, who has just announced that its launching real-time social classified ads. The new platform of the Paris-based company is in many ways not that different from Facebook's MarketPlace - even visually, the interface looks a bit like a Craigslist-meets-your-Facebook homepage, chat included. The minute you see an ad for something you're interested in, you can immediately contact the seller online and proceed with the purchase.

Google and Verizon are best buds. Verizon Wireless is the largest Android carrier, and the two companies even joined forces to come up with joint government policy proposals in the Net Neutrality Wars. Today, Verizon is giving Google a boost by signing up its 3.3 million Verizon FIOS TV subscribers for Google TV Ads. The Google ads will appear on live TV across 50 channels, including AMC, ESPN, and Fox News.

It’s been a long haul for Google on the TV front. Verizon FIOS joins DirecTV and Dish in running Google’s data-driven, targeted TV ads. The new deal should help extend Google’s reach on TV to 35 million households by early next year.

But don’t expect any cable partnerships to be announced anytime soon. The cable companies want to implement their own targeted advertising and not be beholden to Google. The satellite and phone companies are trying to take share away from the cable companies, so they are more open to trying new technologies. If Google can prove that its ads are more effective, as it is trying to do through a partnership with TV audience measurement firm Nielsen, then maybe it can give its TV partners a leg up.

Earlier this year, Google announced that it would be rolling out Apps interactivity with iGoogle, YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, and other products in the Google family. Today the search giant is making over 60 of its homegrown products available for a deep integration for all types of Google Apps accounts.

Services like Google Voice, Reader, Analytics and AdWords will now be available on Google Apps accounts. The apps can be accessed through a new interface in administrative control panel for new customers. Existing customers can transition to the new interface at their own pace but Google says it will automatically shift all App customers over to the new control panel early next year.

Administrators can also regulate which tools certain users or groups have access to within their Apps group. And Google provides access to all of these applications from one account, offering a single sign-in across core suite and other Google applications.

Rajen Sheth, group product manager, Enterprise Apps, tells me that the motive behind the introduction of the products to apps relates to the consumerization of the enterprise. He says that we are seeing that the consumer world can shape business world, and it made sense to bring in the products that consumers are interacting with personally, such as Google Voice, Picasa, Checkout, and Reader; to the Apps interface.

For example, Sheth says that an architect can use the Picasa and Drawings integration to share images and albums with coworkers in a secure environment with added storage capabilities. Or an executive could use Google Voice to us one phone number to ring all phones, access voicemail transcription to SMS, email or web on the go, and be able to store all of this as long as needed.

In conjunction with the announcement, Google is also re-naming all of its versions of Google Apps:

• Google Apps (was Standard Edition) is a free service geared towards families, entrepreneurs and other groups up to 50 users.
• Google Apps for Business (was Premier Edition) offers 25GB of email storage per user, a 99.9% uptime guarantee, data migration capabilities, advanced management tools, telephone support, added security features and more, for $50 per user per year.
• Google Apps for Government (was Government Edition) is FISMA certified and designed with local, state and federal agencies in mind.
• Google Apps for Education (was Education Edition) offers many benefits of Google Apps for Business, but at no cost to schools, universities and qualifying non-profits.

The fact that Google has so many apps that are popular with consumers is a huge win for its App product and the company is wise to integrate all of its products with its enterprise product.

You knew these were coming, right? You knew that people were going to hurt themselves playing the Kinect and then instantly upload a video of it to YouTube. It’s the way of the world, really. Compensation for embarrassment through social means. Ah, well. Got to love the Internet.

Click through for a collection of the best Kinect injury fail videos so far. The first one made the rounds last week and turned into an instant classic, but the rest are fresh. The tubes aren’t filled with these just yet, but that will likely change post-Christmas morning with videos of Grandpa breaking his hip and little Suzy face planting into the fireplace. At least that’s what I hope to see.

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Charles Schwab doesn’t have an Android app, a Blackberry app, or even an iPhone app. Many brokerages are in the same boat, or if they do have a mobile app it is only on the iPhone. Starting later today, brokerage customers of Schwab, Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and more than 60 other brokerages will be able to track their portfolios on new mobile Android and Blackberry apps from Wikinvest. The apps will launch at about 9 AM PT.

While about half of the brokerages Wikinvest suports have iPhone apps, only about 20 percent have Android or Blackberry apps. There are so many mobile app platforms that it is difficult for the brokerages to support them all. Wikinvest hopes to fill that gap with these apps.

One limitation of the apps is that they are view-only apps. You can track your portfolios across multiple brokerage accounts, but can’t trade from the app. Still, for most people, they just want that little ego boost (or crush, depending on teh direction of the market) every day. Wikinvest’s iPhone app, which launched in August, is currently one of the top 10 finance apps in the App Store, and accounts for a whopping two thirds of Wikinvest’s sign-ups.

Wikinvest is currently tracking $16 billion in assets, up from $1 billion five months ago. Those assets are spread across 62,000 Wikinvest members who track their portfolios, with half on the iPhone. Of those users, 65 percent are active at least once a month. They average 167 pageviews and log about 15 hours a month. People have always been addicted to checking their stocks, and now Wikinvest is riding that wave with its mobile apps.

In the course of researching a book, I’ve been using my iPhone as sort of a “record keeping” device for a while now, uploading items to Evernote and, more frequently, storing images of text for later perusal. What I would love, though, is a real OCR app. I’ve tried a few of the simpler OCR apps available on the iTunes store but I was recently introduced to SayWhat and Scanner Pro, two apps that perform two very different functions. SayWhat is a (purported) OCR and translation system while Scanner Pro is a fully-formed (but not OCR-capable) page scanning solution.

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Stipple, the San Francisco startup that lets people label, share and monetize pictures on the Web, today announced that it has raised a $2 million seed round co-led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Mike Maples’ FLOODGATE, a mere 3 months after launching.

Other contributors to the round include singer/actor Justin Timberlake (yup, that guy who played the role of Sean Parker in The Social Network), Naval Ravikant, Eghosa Omoigui, Global Brain Corporation, Quest Venture Partners, Parkview Ventures, John Ferber and Rick Marini.

Stipple offers free tools to easily label the content of pictures online. Once a photo has been labeled, Stipple connects the label to realtime information, advertising or product offers. The company recently launched a new feature called People Dots (video), enabling users to label people in any photo on the Web, not just those hosted on social networks.

At its launch, Stipple announced partnerships with Six Apart, JIVE Label Group, Atlantic Records and E.W. Scripps Company.

Exclusive – Zemanta, which assists bloggers by providing tips, suggesting content and helping them promote their contributions to the world, has recently secured its largest venture capital round to date. Previous investors Union Square Ventures and Eden Ventures have injected another $3 million into the European startup, bringing its total of capital raised since its inception to roughly $6 million.

The startup, which won Seedcamp back in 2007, says it now expects to be able to reach profitability without the need for further capital injections.

Zemanta has witnessed a strong surge in users this year, cofounder and CEO Boštjan Špetič tells me. Aided by partnerships with blogging platform juggernauts WordPress and Blogger forged last Summer, the company has logged 100,000 active users last month, which is 10x what it saw a year ago. Špetič also tells me Zemanta delivers a staggering 1 million recommendations on a daily basis these days.

The fresh funding will be used for ramping up sales and marketing efforts, and new and better products for bloggers. A demo of its capabilities can be found here.

Fresh off a partnership with Target, Shopkick is bringing its geo-coupon system to Android phones with a free app. Now Android users can access in-store coupons from Best Buy, Macy’s, Target, American Eagle, Sports Authority and more.

Instead of checking in, as you would with a geo app like Foursquare or Gowalla, shopkick automatically recognizes when someone with the free shopkick app on their phone walks into a store. Once a shopkick Signal is detected, the app delivers reward points called “kickbucks” to the user for walking into a retail store.

Kickbucks can then be redeemed across all partner stores for gift card rewards or for Facebook Credits. User can also receive special discounts on specific products at Macy’s, Best Buy or Target. And you can collect kickbacks at American Eagle for simply trying on clothes and scanning a barcode. One compelling part of shopkick’s platform is the ability to earn kickbacks and redeem them at any partner retailer.

Of course, shopkick is rolling out the Android app just in time for the holiday shopping season and Black Friday. The company says that by the Friday after Thanksgiving, more than 1,000 individual stores and over 100 of the country’s largest malls will have fully deployed shopkick’s technology.

Shopkick faces competition from Stickybits, Facebook Places and others.

Tippr, which provides white-label services for group buying, is proposing a new potential technology standard for the group buying industry today, dubbed the “Open Deal Format” or ODF. The company is inviting interested parties, which include group buying service providers, publishers and social networks, to a meeting in Seattle next month.

It will then formally propose the standard to its peers, once it has finished beta testing ODF with publishers in its PoweredByTippr network, the company adds.

Ultimately, its goal is to have an industry spec published by the end of this year, Tippr says.

Here’s what Tippr is proposing: a specification that streamlines the open exchange of group deal information between deal parties (merchants, group buying services, publishers, aggregators etc.), essentially enabling advertisers to promote deals across multiple platforms with multiple audiences. An open standard would make it easier for publishers to “select, run and financially reconcile” group commerce offers, Tippr believes.

Martin Tobias, founder and CEO of Tippr’s parent company Kashless, which is backed by $5 million in venture capital, comments:

"Publishers launching group buying sites need access to the richest set of national, local and online offers to augment their own sales efforts. Similarly, deal sourcers selling directly to local merchants need to maximize the revenue potential of their sales effort by widening their distribution potential.

The problem is everyone uses a different format to submit their deal information. This makes it extremely difficult and time intensive to exchange information between these parties, resulting in slower time to market and, often, more redemption errors."

Once there is a standard in place, a merchant would be able to submit its offer to any group buying site (including Groupon, LivingSocial, and of course, Tippr) if they adopt the standard, without too much effort. The group buying service provider would, in turn, be able to quickly add the deal to its offer pipeline, and provide its audience a larger breadth of deals.

Tippr has invited representatives from AOL, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Yipit, Groupon, LivingSocial, DealPop and TravelZoo, among others, to its December meeting.

It will interesting to see how much attention they get from industry players across the board, and if the group can reach an agreement on an open standard. It would certainly make things much more interesting than they already are in the red hot space.

Friends, we are going to get to the bottom of this Four Loko mess the only way we know how: through journalism! Tomorrow at 10am Eastern/7am Pacific I will drink a full can of Four Loko and report on the results live and in living color. Why am I doing this? Because I support the sale of horrible malt liquor beverages? Because I believe that every producer of sickly green liquids deserves an even break? Absolutely not. I personally consider Four Loko an affront to the long tradition of the delicious tipple but I find the media scare around the drink to be unpalatable and ridiculous and this gives me an excuse to drink a can of 12% booze at 10am on a Friday. It’s something I can tell my grandkids… if I survive.

I’d like you, dear reader, to choose the color I’m drinking tomorrow. I don’t know the actual flavors – it’s something like orange-berry and the other, green one, is like florida-mango or something. I’ll be streaming the experience live via webcam and liveblogging the results. Hopefully, after this momentous media event we can put this long, dark period of national sorrow behind us.

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Startup Milo had previously commanded one aspect of the online to offline shopping experience by highlighting local inventory at brick and mortar stores in online inventory search. But earlier this year, Google Product Search launched Blue Dot, on mobile search. Similar to Milo, Blue Dot allows users within search to see if a product is in-stock at nearby stores. However, Milo countered back then that Google doesn’t have the inventory reach that Milo has. This week, Google unleashed a new version of Product Search, with more inventory listings from 70 retail brands. And today, Milo is striking back by adding coupons to the mix.

For example, if you searched for a car part on Milo, you would see a coupon for $20 off a $50 purchase. Milo is offering two types of coupons—printed coupons (some offer mobile scanning as well) and buy online, pickup in-store coupons. These coupons are exclusively for using the online buy online, pickup in-store checkout on the retailer’s website.

Although Google is now the main competition, Milo co-founder and CEO Jack Abraham feels pretty confident. “We’re in good shape,” he says. Regardless, having Google as your main competitor is daunting. And Google could easily turn on a coupon feature as the search giant already offers coupons via Places.

But Milo is still offering a wide variety of inventory on its site, tracking the real-time availability and prices of more than 3 million products at over 50,000 stores across the U.S., including Target, Macy's, Best Buy, Crate & Barrel and more. And as the "online research, offline buying" consumer market represents a $917 billion in consumer spending, there’s plenty of room for a few players in the space.

Techies like to fly by the seat of their pants, iterating and breaking rules as they go. But at some point, you need industry stability and standards if you want to build a big business– especially if you want to build a big advertising business.

Imagine if you had to code a TV commercial for people who have a Toshiba versus a Sony, or if there weren’t standard ad units and technologies for display ads online. Do you think big New York media buyers would launch mega-campaigns? Of course not. And rich-media ads in mobile apps and on the mobile Web won’t become a big multi-billion business without standardization either. In short, the industry needs a truly agnostic DoubleClick– a company that serves ads without a preference of ad network.

But who will drive this standardization? Well, a group of rich media mobile ad companies and publishers are giving it a go with a new consortium called ORMMA or the Open Rich Media Mobile Advertising Initiative. It launches today and founding members include The Weather Channel, Crisp Wireless and TringApps and has the support of PointRoll and Jumptap. It is currently being reviewed by the Mobile Marketing Association, and needs the endorsement of that body and the Interactive Advertising Bureau if it is going to succeed, admits Boris Fridman, CEO of mobile ad platform Crisp Wireless.

The MMA will release a white paper on the standard in the next three months. “We have to remove friction otherwise we won’t grow the industry,” Fridman says. Crisp clearly is a for-profit company, so there’s a selfish agenda here, but it’s made efforts to get enough others on board and generally worked to push the issue in the tech industry. And that seems to be good for the industry generally, whether ORMMA itself gets traction or not.

The aim is to be a vendor-agnostic HTLM5 standard that can work on any platform, on any handset, without a dozen or so SDKs and constant updates and tweaks, Fridman says. It is open for all publishers and developers to join and weigh in on. The more heavyweights, the greater likelihood it becomes the standard.

But it seems obvious there needs to be a standard. “Publishers can’t be held ransom by SDK solutions,” says Cameron Clayton, senior vice president of mobile and digital applications for the Weather Channel. “If Apple or any OS launches a new version, we can’t wait on rich media vendors or analytics providers to conform to the new version of the OS. We need to provide the best solution to our customers ASAP. ORMMA allows that to be possible. It’s still early days but ORMMA shows a lot of promise, and as an open source solution it also allows for the industry to make it much better and truly a ‘standard’. We are not there yet, but we are close.”

There’s never a 100% win-win in the tech business, and there is no doubt some big mobile ad networks that thrive by eliminating existing chaos will ruffle at a standard that lessens the need for pricy middlemen. Others have claimed the ORMMA folks are talking up a problem that isn’t there. But the bottom line is everyone will make more money if advertisers can get scale across handsets and platforms with minimal work and the industry will gravitate towards a fair option– too much is at stake not to. Mobile advertising is roughly a $500 million dollar industry now compared to online rich media which is north of $20 billion. And smart phone apps have a lot of endemic advantages– they are boredom killers and people are more likely to respond to ads when they are bored. Likewise, they can measure all sorts of things when it comes to engagement and location in a way even the Web cannot.

Right now, there aren’t enough eyeballs on most apps to justify huge ad campaigns, whether there is a standard or not. But without better standards all the eyeballs in the world won’t make mobile advertising a billion dollar industry.

Location based social network Gowalla has struck a pretty significant partnership today—Disney. The startup is teaming up with Disney Parks to create a branded, Gowalla-powered destination for park-goers to explore Walt Disney World and Disneyland Resorts.

People are able to view park happenings with custom Gowalla Disney Passport pages for Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resorts that include maps featuring a check-in stream, a list of popular places, curated trips, and more.

Various destinations in the park will have their own custom stamps, (Gowalla says this is the
largest number of custom Gowalla Passport Stamps ever developed for a brand). So you’ll be able to check-in to the Magic Kingdom or Epcot and unlock a special stamp for visiting the destinations. The Stamps are collected in users’ Gowalla Passports and checking-into locations will also unlock special rewards and virtual goods.

The startup says Disney will be publicizing the partnership throughout its parks, encouraging users to use the Gowalla-branded applications.

This isn’t the first major brand partnership for Gowalla but it’s certainly the largest, says Andy Ellwood, Gowalla’s business development director. In fact, Ellwood says that it is the most comprehensive branded deal formed out of all the location-based apps, including Foursquare. Gowalla’s other partnerships include Whole Foods Market, Larry King Live and Nike/Livestrong.

It seems like a win for Gowalla—Disney is a huge brand and any publicity the media giant can throw the startup’s way should help expand the location-based service’s userbase.

Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak was being his fascinating self again this morning, revealing in an interview with Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf that the company he helped get off the ground actually developed a smartphone in partnership with a well-known Japanese electronics company as early as 2004, but shelved the project prior to its debut (via Engadget).

Apple introduced the first iPhone on January 9, 2007 at Macworld.

Wozniak in the interview with De Telegraaf touted the iPhone as a quality device, but went on to say that he thinks Android will eventually become the dominant mobile platform, and slammed Nokia for being a “brand of the previous generation”.

Interestingly, the charismatic übergeek says Apple co-developed a smartphone in collaboration with an unnamed Japanese electronics company that was way ahead of its time, which ultimately led to the phone being shelved. Translated, here’s what he told the reporter:

“Apple was satisfied with the quality of the smartphone but wanted something it could amaze the world with. When Apple releases products, they need to be groundbreaking. Companies should hold off on entering markets until they have a seriously compelling product to offer. Products like that need to be be developed in isolation from the rest of the company, and it requires developers to steer clear from paths already traveled.”

Wozniak also said in the interview that he believes Google’s Android platform will become the dominant mobile OS over time, rather than Apple’s iPhone. He likens Android’s success to that of Microsoft’s Windows operating system, along with the flaws and challenges of that model.

The cofounder of Apple said there’s work to be done on Android in terms of quality and user satisfaction, and he also said the platform isn’t always as consistent as it needs to be. He did acknowledge that Android in time will grow up to rival Apple’s iOS in terms of quality, touting its openness and larger feature-set compared to the iPhone, which he added “isn’t for everyone”.

In his words:

“The iPhone has very few weak points. There are no serious complaints or issues. When it comes to quality, the iPhone leads the way. Apple has shown the world what direction we’re going. Android phones do come with more options, though.”

At the end of the interview, Wozniak also comments on Nokia, saying that the Finnish company struggles with an image problem and calling its brand that of a “previous generation”. He suggested Nokia should launch a new brand specifically for youngsters.

Big numbers coming out of Nokia land this morning. The company says its application store Ovi Store continues to gain traction, this week reaching the 3 million downloads per day milestone, up from 1 million downloads per day in the beginning of this year and 2.3 million downloads per day last month. In addition, Nokia revealed that the total number of users of Ovi now exceeds 165 million people across more than 190 countries. Furthermore, Nokia says it is adding some 250,000 new Ovi users on a daily basis, which means roughly 7.5 million new users per month.

Mobile ad network Millennial Media is releasing its monthly data on mobile devices and OS marketshare for October today. Millennial, whose ads reach 63 million of a total of 77 million mobile web users in the U.S., or 81% of the U.S. mobile web; is reporting that Android is now tied with iOS as the largest Smartphone OS on
the network, with an 8% increase month-over-month and 37% impression share. Apples iOS also took a 37% impression share, and dropped from a 49% impression share in September. RIM followed Android ad iOS for a 20% impression share in October.

Android ad requests grew 65% month-over-month, and since January, Android has grown 2182%. In contrast Apple requests only increased 12% month-over-month and since January, Apple requests have increased 32%. RIM ad requests grew 43% month-over-month. The iPad saw the biggest growth, with requests rising 112% month-over-month.

General smartphone impression share increased 3% month-over-month and accounted for 61% of the mobile phone impression share in October. Feature Phone impression share only increased 1% month-over- month and represented 28% of the Smartphone, Feature Phone
and Connected Device mix.

In terms of actual manufacturers, Apple once again took the top spot for the thirteenth month in a row, representing 25% of the manufacturers impression share in October. Samsung came in second with 17% and Motorola followed closely as third, with a 15% impression share.

RIM devices represented six of the top 30 Mobile Devices on Millennial’s network but Samsung saw the highest growth, adding three new devices to the list, Vibrant Galaxy S, Samsung Smooth and Samsung SCH-R451. Interestingly, Millennial added connected devices, like the iPod Touch, Apple iPad and the Sony PSP, and all three devices made the list. In fact the iPod Touch was number 3 (ahead of phones like the Motorola Droid).

One data point worth noting is that impressions outside the U.S. on Millennial’s netwok have grown 20 percent faster than U.S. impressions. The top 4 countries on Millennial’s ad network are United States, UK, Canada and South Korea.

All signs point to the fact that Android is eating away at the smartphone marketshare that Apple and RIM once commanded. It’s certainly interesting to see that trend continue in terms of ad impressions. In terms of Millennial’s data, this is the first time that Android has actually caught up to iOS in terms of impressions. Does this mean that Android devices could overtake iOS in the next few months?

Apple has announced that it will be launching its iAd mobile advertising network in Europe shortly, as expected. First up are the UK and France, which will be getting iAd this December, with Germany following next January.

Apple has also announced which advertising partners it will launch in Europe with – the list includes L'Oréal, Renault, Louis Vuitton, Nespresso, Citi, Evian, AB InBev, Absolute Radio and Turkish Airlines.

Rumor on the street is several of them have gotten a discount on what iAd clients in Apple’s home country pony up – several brands have committed over $1 million (the minimum spend for iAds) to have interactive ads placed inside iPhone and iPod touch applications in the United States. The European launch has reportedly also been delayed twice.

This isn’t the only planned international expansion of the mobile ad network – a partnership forged with The Dentsu Group will bring iAd to Japan in early 2011.

The Cupertino company touts the success of the iAd platform in the United States, where it says over half of the top 25 leading US national advertisers have signed up in just four months after its July debut. Apple projects to hold roughly 21 percent share of US mobile display advertising revenue for 2010, citing research firm IDC’s findings.

(On a sidenote, IDC analyst Karsten Weide also told the Financial Times: "Five to 10 years out, I think Android and possibly others will crush Apple.")

iAd is baked into iOS 4 and lets users stay within their current app while engaging with an ad, giving developers of free applications another way to bring in revenues. Apple says user iAd engagement times average more than 60 seconds per visit.

Apple retains 40% of iAd revenue, in line with what CEO Steve Jobs called the “industry standard”, with the other 60% going to the app developers.

The company originally announced the iAd platform back in April, following its acquisition of mobile ad platform operator Quattro Wireless in January 2010. Obviously, it rivals Google’s ad network AdMob, among many others.

Star Wars and video games go hand-in-hand. There is a long line of Star Wars-themed games going back to the days of arcade games, and continuing through home console and mobile games. Now, the first augmented reality Star Wars game for the iPhone just hit the app store. It is called Star Wars Arcade: Falcon Gunner ($4.99, iTunes link).

The game starts with the scene from the original Star Wars inside the Millennium Falcon after they escape the Death Star and the TIE Fighters attack. You are Luke Skywalker in the gunner’s turret below, and you turn the iPhone to rotate around and shoot the attacking TIE Fighters while Han Solo and Princess Leah either encourage or heckle you depending on your skills. (“Let me guess, you are trying not to hit anyone.”) In the 360-degree background is the Death Star and an earth-like planet, which come into view depending on which way you turn. The game is completely immersive, and works especially well while sitting in a swivel office chair.

The game also has an augmented reality mode which replaces the computer graphics background with your camera view. So you can play in your room or outdoors and the spaceships look like they are coming in from the distance. (see video below, which was taken from the Empire State Building). Be careful doing this in public, otherwise you might become that guy depicted in this other promo video showing what you might look like if you play the game in public. The augmented reality mode is fun to show people, but for pure gameplay I prefer the full-graphics mode. I’ve been playing a pre-release version of the game for a few days. I am not a game guy, but there is a real Wow factor here.

Falcon Gunner is licensed from Lucasfilm and published by THQ Wireless, but it was designed and developed by Vertigore Games, a startup incubated at Futurity Ventures. “It is like bringing Star Wars into your world, which is what a lot of people want to do,” says Edo Segal, the CEO of Futurity. The game is built on top of Vertigore’s immersive game engine, which was also used to build a previous game called Pacific Defense. “We pulled it the second we did the deal with THQ, which has the Star Wars license,” says Segal of Pacific Defense. He and CEO Josh Shabtai wanted to put all of Vertigore’s efforts into the Star Wars game instead. “Having a branded property in a world of 500,000 apps is worth more than however creative we could have become,” says Segal.

Star Wars Arcade is not a two or three-man effort. It took about 30 people, many of them contractors, to build the game. The total development budget ran into the high six figures. That is a lot for an iPhone game. “We are getting to this inflection point where you can put production values into an iPhone game,” says Segal. The entire game was written in C from the ground up, with the 3D models designed specifically with the retina display of the iPhone 4 in mind. Obviously, the game really needs to be a hit for all that expense and effort to pay off, but it could also set a new benchmark for games on the iPhone platform.

An iPad version will come out soon, and Vertigore hopes to create more Star Wars-themed games in the future (hence, the “Arcade” in the name), which will tie together different immersive adventures across the Star Wars universe. Unrelated to Star Wars, Vertigore is also creating immersive iPhone games for Hasbro’s upcoming 3D View-Master.

Up until now augmented reality apps have been nothing more than cool gimmicks. Vertigore wants to popularize 3D-immersive technology by taking it mainstream. Segal sees two approaches: you can go for complex augemenetd reality tricks, or just make it fun to shoot things. He is taking the latter apparaoch

MindJolt, a gaming and advertising platform acquired by MySpace cofounder and former CEO Chris DeWolfe, has been busy these last few months. It was just last March that DeWolfe announced his team and the acquisition of MindJolt, along with a $20ish million round of financing from Austin Ventures.

MindJolt remains profitable, says DeWolfe, and has maintained user numbers despite Facebook policy changes that drastically affected viral growth of all game developers. They’ve focused on revenue per user growth over this last period, making the already profitable company even more so.

They’re now releasing new monetization tools for third party game developers called AdJolt. These include highly targeted ads and, more interestingly, a virtual currency product that developers can use for power ups, virtual goods, etc.

Mochi Media launched a similar product last year that greatly increased revenue per thousand games, from $0.50 to $6.50 or so. MindJolt isn’t getting specific about their results, but one third party developer, Adam Jones Productions, says “AdJolt has dramatically increased our revenues.” MindJolt shares revenue 50/50 with developers.

The biggest benefit of MindJolt, beyond monetization, is the cross promotion of games across the network. Third party developers can effectively join a federation to get some of the same cross promotion benefits that big players like Zynga have within their own network of games. It’s as simple as a scrolling visual unit on the top of apps that shows a few other games on MindJolt. These are chosen editorially, algorithmically and via paid promotions, says DeWolfe.

The company, we hear, has revenue in the $20 million range and is profitable. And in the next few weeks we may be seeing their games become available on the iPad and iPhone.

The line between content and commerce is blurring. Refinery29, a fashion news and trends site with a local twist, just launched a daily/weekly deal site called Refinery29 Reserve. The deals are for “high-end local fashion,” as CEO Philippe von Borries describes it.

The combination of an editorially-driven media site and a commerce business is a trend that is picking up steam. For instance, last May, guy-site Thrillist bought JackThreads, a flash sales site for men’s clothing and gear.

Funded with only $500,000 in seed capital last February, Refinery is growing fast and already profitable. The 15-person company is on track to quadruple revenues this year to $2 million, with about 85 percent of that coming from advertising and the rest from affiliate sales and events. The daily deals could ad a whole new engine of growth to the niche fashion site.

The first Reserve deal is from New York City designer Steven Alan, who according to Borries is “like a young Tommy Hilfigger or Ralph Lauren.” (I’m sure). People who sign up on Refinery29 Reserve can get a voucher worth $100 at one of Steven Alan’s six New York City boutiques for $50, essentially getting 50% off a $100 purchase. Refinery29 takes a cut of that $50 (typically 35% to 50%), and Steven Alan gets fashionista fanatics (Refinery29′s readers) going to his stores. After only one day, the deal is already three-quarters sold out.

In the next couple of weeks, the site will feature deals from the French Connection and Rag & Bone (which, I guess, is expensive clothes for skinny women). In general, high-end brands avoid the flash-sale sites because they don’t want to dilute their appeal. But Borries thinks Refinery29 can get over that objection because it draws such highly sought-after, fashion-conscious shoppers with its news and editorial coverage.

The 102-year-old car company General Motors (GM) is set to go public on Thursday after a government-forced bankruptcy and bailout in November 2008. The bailout cost taxpayers about $50 billion. Analysts estimate the stock price would need to hit $53 dollars before the government can recoup its investment. GM plans to sell about half-a-billion shares for $33 each in its IPO. The company’s overall valuation stands at $20.1 billion to $23.1 billion.

In a press statement late Wednesday, The U.S. Treasury Department revealed that it sold 358.5 million shares of GM, raising $11.8 billion, and hanging onto a 37% stake of the company. With underwriters chomping at the bit to buy more GM shares to cover over-allotments, the Treasury could reduce its stake to 33.3% and sell 412 million more GM shares raising a total of $13.6 billion.

The L.A. Times reports that the GM IPO would set a new record:

A $23.1 billion total would surpass not only the record set by the Agricultural Bank of China but also easily break the $19.7 billion record for a U.S. company, set by Visa Inc. in March 2008. However, Visa’s deal was all common stock, leaving it as the largest by that measure.

In other company news, GM unveiled its 2011 Chevrolet Camaro Convertible at the Los Angeles auto show today. Earlier in the week its new, electric vehicle (EV) the 2011 Chevy Volt won the title of car of the year from two trade magazines, Motor Trend, and Automobile magazine.

The Volt is not a pure EV because it has a 1.4 liter gasoline engine-and-generator that produces power and gives mechanical assistance to the motor that drives the car. The gas engine assists the vehicle in situations where a driver has gone more than 40 miles, and is operating at highway speeds around 70 miles per hour company representatives have told several media outlets. That said, the Volt still qualifies for government tax credits provided to EV-buyers, and primarily runs on electricity.

GM reported its 2010 third quarter earnings last week including a net income of $2 billion, and revenue of $34.1 billion. By comparison, Tesla Motors, a Nasdaq-traded company that makes truly all-electric vehicles saw $31.2 million in revenue, but a net loss for the third quarter of 2010 thanks to hefty research and development costs according to its earning reports. Shares in Tesla Motors traded just under $30 ahead of the GM public offering.

2011 Chevy Volt Image courtesy of (c) GM Corp.

Google has been ramping up its product search and advertising efforts just in time for the holidays. Case in point: At Web 2.0 Summit Google VP of Product Management Susan Wojcicki challenged herself to demo the 5 pretty important Google ad products the company’s released in the past two months or so, in under 10 minutes.

Wojcicki insisted that umbrella theme of all these launches was merging both the online and offline shopping worlds. To mirror the brevity of Wojcicki’s presentation, here is a laundry list of Google’s most recent ad related efforts, below:

1. “In Stock Nearby” Now you can search and receive information directly from local stores to see what’s available and where.

2. “Hyperlocal Mobile SEM” New ad integration shows users distance to the advertiser's business or location as well as the advertiser’s phone number.

3. “Google Shopper Updates” — Google Shopper, the Google mobile shopping app, now shows you reviews as well as allows you to scan barcodes.

4. “Google Goggles Print Ad Integration” – Links ads in magazines (offline) with online information and sites.

5. “Google Ads Call Tracking Analytics” — Advertisers can now track how many phone calls come in to through Google search, through Google’s own system.

Wojcicki brought up multiple times that most people still think of online shopping and offline shopping as different channels and that Google is trying (really hard) to technologically change this perception. While 42% of in-store sales are motivated by online shopping searches according to Wojcicki,  7% of purchasing is currently done online while 93% is still done in IRL stores.

Google very very obviously wants to be a point of control on that other 93%, see above.

It’s time to meet the latest Zynga game that’s destined to join the ranks of Facebook’s most popular applications: CityVille. It’s SimCity meets FarmVille, and it’s got plenty of competition. CityVille isn’t quite finished yet — Zynga says we can expect it to go live globally in the coming weeks — but I got a chance to see a 45 minute demo, which was enough to get the gist of what users should expect. When it does launch, the game will be internationalized in German, Italian, Spanish and French, which will mark the company’s first global launch.

Zynga’s entry into this genre isn’t a surprise: Digital Chocolate’s Millionaire City has 12.6 million monthly active users, making it one of the top games on Facebook; other competitors include Playfish’s My Empire, Crowdstar's Hello City, and Playdom's Social City, along with many others. But despite the fact that it’s joining the fray months after its competition, CityVille is sure to see at least some success, because Zynga will be able to steer players of its existing mega-hits to the game.

So does it look any good? Before I get into that, I should make it perfectly clear that I’m not the sort of person who enjoys FarmVille or FrontierVille — I like my games to involve a bit more strategy and thinking. And, from what I can tell, CityVille comes a little closer to what I’m looking for. It’s no Civilization or SimCity, but this is probably Zynga’s ‘smartest’ game yet.

If you’ve played SimCity or any of the aforementioned social city building games, CityVille will feel pretty intuitive. After firing up the game you’ll be walked through a series of introductory missions the instruct you to lay down roads and plot out your first houses and businesses. As your population grows you’ll see an increasing number of people wandering around your town, and you’ll gradually gain access to new, more impressive looking buildings that will help you evolve your town into a virtual metropolis.

And you can’t just start arranging your city willy-nilly, either. Well, actually you probably can, but if you put some thought into it, you’ll find it grows more quickly. That’s because each building and decorative item you place can affect the value of the area around it. There’s also some basic micromanagment around each business’s supply chain. And from a visual perspective this is Zynga’s best looking game — buildings are rendered as 3D sprites, and you can rotate them depending on where you want to place them (this is the first Zynga game to use 3D).

Zynga claims this is their most social game yet. As with Zynga’s other games this social element is still asynchronous (i.e., you aren’t actually playing the game with a friend in real-time). But there are a few additions that boost your interaction with friends. The biggest is the ability to allow a friend to run a business located in your city. They have to ask for permission, but once you’ve granted it, your friend will control that business’s operations. I’m told that they can’t really run the business into the ground (it will still do fine even if they never log in), but if you work with friends who are especially attentive, you’ll benefit more. You can also exchange goods with friends using the game’s transit system, which includes trains and ships.

One interesting point: in FarmVille and most of Zynga’s other popular games, you get punished when you don’t log into the game frequently enough (in FarmVille your plants start to die off). CityVille isn’t employing this kind of punishment mechanic — your city won’t grow as quickly if you aren’t tending to it often, but it doesn’t start falling to shambles over time, either.  That sounds less stressful, but it could possibly lead to less engagement over time. One thing I’ve learned from my experience with other city simulations is that once you’ve achieved a decently high level — enough to access most of the more impressive buildings — the appeal of the game wears off quickly.

But Zynga has a few tricks up its sleeve to keep gamers interested. The biggest is a mission system — from the moment you start playing the game, you’re given tasks to complete. These run from the very basic (build a coffee shop) to much more involved — one story arc involves an archeological dig, which of course requires you to revamp the layout of your city.

One last, completely hilarious, thing to note: Zynga says CityVille will let you uproot trees and plant them somewhere else on your plot of land instead of demolishing them, allowing for a more eco-friendly experience than FrontierVille, which only lets you chop them down. I think they’re serious.