Microsoft Offers Works For Free

Microsoft has released the new version of Microsoft Works as a free, ad supported office package that will compete directly with Open Office and Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

The Works package offers word processing, spreadsheet and slide (powerpoint) functionality partially based on code from older versions of Microsoft Office.

The move by Microsoft to offer a free office suite comes as online office packages including Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Thinkfree Office and Zoho continue to grow market share due to increased broadband penetration, online convenience and lower costs.

It was not disclosed whether the new version of Microsoft Works would sync with or support Microsoft’s online services under the Live brand. Whilst the version was said to be released July 27, it was not clear where it could be downloaded from or accessed.

Microsoft Works first launched as a Mac application in 1986.

StreetAdvisor Launches New Services

StreetAdvisor will today launch a range of new upgrades that will give homeowners, renters, and buyers a more complete picture of where they could live.

The new StreetAdvisor provides a real-life “insider” view that provides users the ability to learn and share vital details about where they live, including noise levels, traffic, neighbors, entertainment, and public services in a similar way to travel review sites. Recommendations and negative experiences about local businesses, entertainment and services will also be supported.

StreetAdvisor’s street based reviews have been expanded to include cities, states, and countries.

Upgraded guidebooks now include four broad categories with the ability to create additional topics in a similar fashion to a Wiki.

Other new features include a member recognition system, “local expert program” and StreetAdvisor Billboards, a service that offers the ability to secure exclusive “run-of-street” advertising opportunities on a per city basis.

The site is currently in public beta and offers coverage for the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

Facebook Outage

Facebook is down, and has been so since at least 10 am PST. Anyone notice it down earlier than that? We’ve emailed the company for their comment.

Update: Facebook is now back up as at 11:30am PST

Update: Statement from Facebook:

This morning, we temporarily took down the Facebook site to fix a bug we identified earlier today. This was not the result of a security breach. Specifically, the bug caused some third party proxy servers to cache otherwise inaccessible content. The result was that an isolated group of users could see some pages that were not intended for them. The site has now been restored and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have

Tangler’s Embedded Discussions

Australian startup Tangler has created a next generation forum product that allows real-time discussions to occur without page refreshes. Their forum product is both synchronous and asynchronous - meaning it competes as much with Meebo (web based chat) as it does with existing forum applications. Users can also easily embed rich media into the discussion

We first wrote about Tangler in February 2006, when it was deep in a development. They’ve been quietly working with beta partners for the last six months, and recently opened their doors to allow anyone to create a new forum. Last week, the 1,000th forum was created on Tangler.

Tangler forums are also decentralized. Any discussion/forum can easily be embedded in a third party website or websites. The discussion occurs simultaneously on all instances of the forum. See here for an example of an embedded forum.

Examples of startups using Tangler as their forum include Weewar, Particls and Omnidrive.

See our recent coverage of Meebo Rooms as well. It is interesting to see web chat and forums colliding towards the same end product.

IAC Up, Ask Down In Second Quarter

A strong second quarter by IAC saw a 78% increase in profits, mostly driven by assets sales and reduced costs. The positive headline results did not flow through to the struggling 4th ranked search engine Ask.com, which saw adecline in revenues. The second quarter decline comes despite a $100 million Crispin, Porter + Bogusky advertising campaign that should be resulting in increased traffic and revenue to the site.

The exact amount of the decline was not disclosed.

FCC Fails To Mark Its Place In History

The FCC released the auction rules on the 700 MHz spectrum today. Google formally requested (and we supported) that the new bandwidth have four requirements: open applications, open devices, open services and open networks. Together these rules could quickly make the U.S. wireless space competitive with European and Asian markets that we have long trailed.

The auction rules include much of what Google requested, including open devices and open applications. But open services and open networks are out, meaning third parties may not get access to the networks at fair wholesale rates. Will we see a tidal wave of innovation in the space? It’s too early to tell. The FCC hedged its bets to keep AT&T, Verizon and other incumbents happy. New players like Google may or may not participate.

This is clearly a compromise decision. History will decide if the FCC commissioners made the right choices. Perhaps their feeble attempts to stand up to AT&T, Verizon and their army of lobbyists will have been enough to get the U.S. back in the race with the rest of the mobile world. Or perhaps not. Just for record keeping purposes, Kevin Martin (Chairman) and commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps are willing to fight for openness. Commissioners Deborah Taylor Tate and Robert McDowell, who are parroting much of the nonsense that AT&T spewed last week, are clearly lining up with the incumbents.

Google Licenses Gmail In Japan

Google has licensed Gmail to Japanese mobile operator KDDI Corp.

The email service will be branded by KDDI and work on the “auone.jp” domain. Google will provide the backend for the service and account holders will have the same functionality as provided by Gmail itself, including 2GB of storage.

The announcement continues a recent string of deals in Asia for Google as it attempts to build market share and presence in countries it does not dominate. More recently, Google has licensed search to a number of Chinese search portals.

KDDI is currently Japan’s second largest mobile operator behind NTT DoCoMo. Third ranked mobile operator Softbank owns Yahoo Japan, which according to Smart Money is not as strong in search, but leads Google in other services including email.

Action Engine Raises $20 Million

Mobile applications developer Action Engine has raised $20 million in new round led by Baker Capital.

Previous investors Northwest Venture Associates and The Spangler Group also participated in the round.

The company develops mobile device software that allows media companies and mobile operators to provide music, video and other content on mobiles. Action Engine’s ODP platform incorporates intelligent mobile advertising, support for mass market handsets and broad management capabilities that are claimed to “increase profitability, lower cost of ownership and drive brand-awareness.” Existing clients include MSNBC, TiVo, Sprint and Verizon.

Action Engine’s total funding to date is now $65 million. The company plans to use the funds to accelerate its sales, marketing and distribution efforts.

50 Cent Gets Down With YouTube

YouTube has announced a new music competition that will be judged by leading artists 50 Cent, Common and Polow da Don.

YouTube OntheRise Rap Edition is a follow up to last year’s YouTube Underground contest and seeks to discover the best rap and hip-hop artists in the United States.

Unsigned talent who aspire to be professional artists have until August 17 to submit their videos. The final winner will be announced September 7.

The winner will be awarded a trip to New York City to professionally record a single for G-Unit/Interscope Records, a $10,000 gift card from Guitar Center, and their video will be featured on the homepage of YouTube.

Further contest information is available here.

Are Terrorists Using Second Life To Plan Attacks?

OK, so sensationalistic headlines targeted at Second Life are so last week; from FBI related gambling bans to animal sex, we’ve seen a lot. Now there are allegations being printed by News Corp in Australia that suggest that the next major terrorist attack on a Western country could be being planned in Second Life, and yes, as can be seen in the picture to the right, 9/11 is being used as a reference point as well.

The report describes in detail various griefer operations as being terrorist attacks and goes on to say that:

On the darker side, there are also weapons armouries in SL where people can get access to guns, including automatic weapons and AK47s. Searches of the SL website show there are three jihadi terrorists registered and two elite jihadist terrorist groups.

The fear factor is so thick, it can’t be easily paraphrased

With the game taking such a sinister turn, terrorism experts are warning that SL attacks have ramifications for the real world. Just as September 11 terrorists practised flying planes on simulators in preparation for their deadly assault on US buildings, law enforcement agencies believe some of those behind the Second Life attacks are home-grown Australian jihadists who are rehearsing for strikes against real targets. Terrorist organisations al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah traditionally sent potential jihadists to train in military camps in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Southeast Asia. But due to increased surveillance and intelligence-gathering, they are swapping some military training to online camps to evade detection and avoid prosecution.

The terrorists must get broadband in their caves now.

Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside al-Qaeda, says it is a new phenomena that, until now, has not been openly discussed outside the intelligence community….”They are rehearsing their operations in Second Life because they don’t have the opportunity to rehearse in the real world”

Be alert, but not alarmed

“Community representatives are relied on to report suspicious or inappropriate behaviour to the owners or the SL authorities, just as in the real world.”

Retrevo’s “Snapshot” Graphs Products By Price And Features

Retrevo, one of a number of automated, aggregate review sites we previously covered, is releasing an alpha version of a new product comparison feature called “Product Snapshot”. The feature helps find the greatest “bang for your buck” by visually displaying how a product’s price and features stack up against others in its category. CEO Vipin Jain will demo the feature at tomorrow’s Stanford Summit. The feature will go public at the end of September.

“Product Snapshot” maps a product’s place on a price/feature graph relative to other products in the category. The mapping of the product is based on a statistical analysis of a number of major features and prices drawn from across the web. Products with fewer features for their price fall at the bottom left of the chart, while products with high prices and many features are placed toward the upper right. For example, this search for a Samsung LN-S4696D shows where the LCD TV places relative to other mid-range TVs.

The snapshot also includes links to products with better features, similar products, and cheaper products. These features will be released at the end of September when the full feature is pushed live.

Retrevo distinguishes itself by focusing on consumer electronics and finding a great deal of auxiliary material on products. Searches return PDF product manuals, aggregate user ratings, product previews, written reviews, forums & blogs, and shopping links. The data is pulled from thousands of sites including those of manufacturers and retailers. Retrevo’s depth of information makes it best suited for initial product research instead of quick price comparisons.

While Rome Burned, Amp’d Used Venture Capital On Porn

You just know that this is going to end in a Hollywood movie.

Matt Marshall at Venture Beat has the scoop on what the Amp’d team were spending part of their $360 million in venture capital on: porn.

According to the asset list from the Apm’d fire sale, the company acquired at least 100 porn DVDs; least that’s the number listed for the auction (we’d presume additional DVD’s were probably taken home).

As Matt put it so well “We’re still wondering how venture investors such as Redpoint (which lost $25 million in this) and Highland (which lost $50 million) could have let this happen.”

Amp’d declared bankruptcy June 2 owing $100 million.

Full coverage of the Amp’d meltdown on TechCrunch here.

UPDATE: A correction printed at Venture Beat notes that these might not have been DVD’s, but some sort of X rated content Amp’d produced, they look like DVD’s and certainly we are unwilling to repeat the names of them here to prove the point. Aside from the still very valid questions about how Amp’d blew $360million in funding and ran up $100million in debt, there are now some interesting questions as to why a company primarily marketing to teens was producing X-Rated content.

More Information On That Secretive Twitter Financing

When Twitter announced a round of financing last week they mentioned most of the investors - an A list crowd that includes Union Square Ventures, Charles River Ventures, Marc Andreessen, Dick Costolo, Ron Conway, and Naval Ravikant. But they didn’t disclose the amount raised, even though it is customary to do so. We sniffed around and heard that the the company held a special meeting with their new investors and specifically asked them not to disclose the amount raised. We heard that it was a small round, between $1 - $5 million, but frankly I suspected it would be on the low end of that range.

Other startups, notably Technorati, have also tried to keep venture rounds quiet. But inevitably they leak because so many of the limited partners who invest in these funds must disclose information to the SEC. That hasn’t happened yet with Twitter, but the numbers are leaking. As best as we can tell, the company raised a $5 million round, on a $20 million pre-money valuation.

NowPublic Gets $10.6 Million For Crowd Sourced News

“Crowd sourced” news network NowPublic.com has closed a $10.6 milion series A round of financing led by Rho Ventures with seed investors Brightspark and the Working Opportunity Fund participating.

Crowd sourcing is part of the widely expanding “citizen journalism” category, which encompasses all the new ways non-professionals can participate in the news reporting process. Examples range from commenting, voting on stories, to full out blogging. News commentator Jeff Jarvis has written extensively on the subject. NowPublic is a website that provides these tools to the public so they can report on what is going on around them. Many other news startups also incorporate these tools in different ways, such as NewsVine, OutsideIn, Digg, CitizenBay, recently Topix, and the now defunct Backfence.

On the spectrum of citizen journalism, NowPublic is considered a “crowd sourced” news network since stories rely on many bits of contributed content instead of a small group of users.

On NowPublic, anyone can sign up for the site and start contributing to stories in the usual categories (politics, culture, entertainment, …) or even local news. Users can write their own stories and upload their own photos (mobile), or simply submit a story from somewhere else on the web. Each of the submissions ranked in the category based on the number of votes they get. Editors can also come in and adjust the rankings based on breaking news and spamming.

Traction is one of the hardest things to build in community based startups. Citizen journalism startup Bayosphere was shut down after it couldn’t attract enough contributors. However, NowPublic reports to have over 118,000 members from over 140 countries and 3,800 cities. The site does over 1 million uniques per month. They have a hardcore audience of about 15 - 20,000 exceptionally active contributors that put up anywhere from 2 to 5 stories each month.

NowPublic seems to work best in times of crisis where it can serve as a hub for reports from people on the ground. During Hurricane Katrina, the site received over 2,000 people writing and posting about what was going on. NowPublic also reportedly broke news in the Virginia Tech shooting, the grounding of an Alaskan ferry, a bombing drill gone wrong in New Jersey and a murder in Vancouver.

The ability to be places where news media aren’t always present has led to a partnership with the Associated Press. AP has started purchasing stories and photos from the site based on the submitters asking price. NowPublic can cover areas AP’s 4,000 staff members aren’t and will be particularly focused on hurricane prone parts of the country as hurricane season approaches. While they are currently not taking any portion of the proceeds, in the future NowPublic plans on taking 25% cut. They have 7 to 10 other major partnerships lined up as well.

The Vancouver-based company was originally started in 2005.

Cisco and Click.tv?

I picked up a juicy rumor this weekend that Cisco may have acquired Click.tv, a video annotation and deep tagging service that launched in 2006 and then shut down last month. When Click.tv closed down last month they said in an email to users “While I regret this shutdown, I am very excited by the reason behind it. You’ll be seeing Click.TV technology very soon doing *much* bigger and better things.” Thiscertainly suggested a complete relaunch or an acquisition.

Was it Cisco? Maybe. They’ve been making some interesting plays in the web space, with acquisitions of Five Across, Tribe and WebEx. Five Across and Tribe are both in the social networking space. I’m not sure how Click.tv would fit into those plans. So for now I’m going to label this as possible but not more. I’m digging for additional sources.

BuddyTV Takes $2.8 million Series A

Seattle based BuddyTV (Advanced Media Research Group Inc.) has taken $2.8 million in Series A funding in a round led by Gemstar-TV Guide International.

BuddyTV is a television focused content network with a team of dedicated entertainment writers producing content that is complemented by users. The service also provides broadcasting tools. See our previous coverage here on the space.

NASDAQ listed Gemstar- TV Guide is best known in the United States for its TV Guide publication. Their involvement in the round is significant due to Gemstar - TV Guide’s background; this is a serious long term player in the television industry investing in a new media TV related startup. The expertise and depth of knowledge BuddyTV will now have access to should bide them well in an increasingly competitive vertical.

Meebo Hits The Live Music Promotion Road

Web based instant messaging platform meebo has announced a new partnership with Live Nation and The Firm to promote “Family Values,” a series of live music events billed as “this summer’s biggest tour.”

The partnership includes concert promotion and concert presence. Music fans visiting meebo.com, the Family Values Tour website and featured band websites have a chance to win 2 free concert tickets and backstage access to every day of the tour.

At the live concerts, fans can share videos and pictures in the official Family Values “Circle Pit” meebo room and win prizes based on their submissions.

Meebo follows in the footsteps of Buzznet, who is promoting their service on the Vans Warped Tour. It would seem that live music events are becoming fertile ground for promoting startups and networking related sites.

The 2007 Family Values Tour is co-headlined by Korn and Evanescence.

Alibaba.com IPO Confirmed

Chinese ecommerce group Alibaba has confirmed preparations for an IPO of Alibaba.com.

Alibaba.com shares will be listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in the third quarter and the IPO is expected to raise HK $7.8 billion (US $1 billion). Alibaba has said that they would be using the additional capital to expand their international footprint.

The IPO will see the partial spin-off of Alibaba.com from the Alibaba Group, the China based holding company that owns sites including Alipay, Taabao.com and Yahoo China.

Yahoo Inc is currently the largest shareholder of the Alibaba Group, having acquired a 40% stake in 2005.

iPhone Class Action Lawsuit

A Cook County, Illinois resident has filed a class action lawsuit against Apple and AT&T over the iPhone.

Jose Trujillo is claiming that Apple and AT&T misled iPhone buyers by not clearly informing them that the iPhone battery was sealed, and could only be professionally replaced.

According to the papers:

Unknown to the Plaintiff, and undisclosed to the public, prior to purchase, the iPhone is a sealed unit with its battery soldered on the inside of the device so that it cannot be changed by the owner…The battery enclosed in the iPhone can only be charged approximately 300 times before it will be in need of replacement, necessitating a new battery annually for owners of the iPhone.

The suit would appear to have little credibility; the sealed battery issue was reported extensively prior to the iPhone being launched and was certainly never kept as a secret.

Looking at the phone prior to buying it and noticing it was a sealed device was would also appear to have been a difficult task for Mr Trujillo; perhaps it needed a sticker warning of the fact, something along the lines of “Presuming nothing, ask questions first” or “Not to be purchased by people chasing a quick buck and 15 minutes of fame.”

Dear Podtech: I’m Not Your VP Marketing

So Podtech is apparently unhappy with the post I wrote last evening - What’s Really Going On With Podtech? First Podtech subsequeCEO John Furrier emailed me repeatedly this morning asking for changes, then later Robert Scoble wrote on Twitter that much of my post was incorrect. It may well be incorrect, but it is certainly what I believe to be true after the extensive research I did on the company.

This is a post that Podtech pleaded with me to write, to counter the massive negative publicity they’ve been getting around the blogosphere. I agreed to write after two phone conversations with Furrier and some independent digging suggested that the whole story was not being told.

Much of Furrier and I talked about in our two conversation was off record at his request. But if Scoble, and executive with the company, is going to publicly state that the post is inaccurate I’m not sure its appropriate for me to keep that information non-public. Also, I’ve kept most of my personal opinions about Podtech to myself so far. I haven’t for example, said that I personally find 90% of Podtech content just slightly more entertaining than watching paint dry.

I stand by my opinion that Podtech is on the right track by focusing on aggregating third party content under its Flash player and advertising network and moving away from the highly-competitive content creation game. I assume that’s what they are focusing on, since John told me that repeatedly.

I write stuff how I see it, which is not always what the companies involved want to see. Never confuse TechCrunch with your PR or marketing team. And if your messaging isn’t clear, don’t shoot the messenger. Clean up your own mess first.

How Much Is A Facebook User Worth? At Least $0.30

People aren’t wasting any time trying to figure out how to monetize all those thousands of Facebook apps that have sprung up over the last couple of months. At least three advertising experiments have launched - the most promising, by far, is RockYou.

fbExchange

The first out the door was FBExchange, a copycat of the LinkExchange idea from the nineties. It was created by the 30Boxes Calendar team - Narendra Rocherolle, Julie Davidson and Nick Wilder. Display others’ ads on your facebook application and build up credits, which can then be used to run your own ads on other apps. It’s a cheap and easy way to get exposure for your application, should the viral Facebook machine not create enough growth to keep you happy. See GigaOm for more. The company says they’ve booked $200k in revenue after just two weeks live.

Lookery

Lookery, founded by serial entrepreneur Scott Rafer, is a straight up advertising network targeted solely at Facebook applications. They say they’ll have access to deep demographic data on users and can therefore target ads to users with very specific characteristics - a woman between the ages of 20-25 in New York, for example. That theoretically will lead to much higher advertising rates. I like the idea, but Facebook itself has access to the same data and more and has had trouble selling high CPM ads at scale. Lookery needs big scale to be successful, and so will likely struggle in the early days. For now, Rafer says, they are passing 100% of revenue to content providers and will start to take a cut in a month or so when the economics support it.

RockYou

RockYou has been quietly testing their own idea of an advertising network - selling “users” to other applications. They’ve had a tremendous amount of success building viral applications on Facebook so far. Their Super Wall app, for example, has nearly 3 million users and is adding hundreds of thousands of new users each day. It’s basically what it says - a better “wall” where friends can leave messages. With Super Wall, people can add pictures, video and other rich media.

They’re offering to promote third party applications on Super Wall, and charging on a per-user-acquired (CPA) basis. When a user is signing up for Super Wall they are asked if they’d like to also add a additional application (the advertiser). See the screen shot to the right (click for large view).

The test so far are going very well. CEO Lance Tokuda told me today that they moved $30k in inventory in just four hours. They are testing various price points, but the low end seems to be around $0.30 for each user they sell to another application, and they believe they can get as much as $1 over time. The effective CPM (or revenue per 1,000 pages) is a “multiple of $20″ he says. This make them possibly the first Facebook application to have found a real way to monetize users and pageviews.

Tokuda also says they have developed an API for Super Wall and will give free access to other applications to build their functionality into it. This can make your head spin a bit - Facebook is now widely considered a platform, and now Super Wall is a platform on top of a platform. It’s a good thing I guess that no one is slowing down long enough to really think too hard about how quickly the online world is evolving. Instead, they’re experimenting wildly. And some of this stuff is going to stick.

eSwarm: Group Buying Online

Boulder, Colorado based eSwarm aims to bring buyers and sellers together with a model that is similar to bulk buying clubs.

Buyers register for a free account then join current swarms (groups of buyers) or create new ones. Swarms can be focused on any consumer good, debt refinancing, pre-paid gift and debit cards and even insurance products. Sellers then bid for the business.

The theory is that the larger the swarm, the more attractive it will be to sellers. Once a seller lodges a first bid, membership to the swarm is frozen and other businesses have 48 hours to counter bid.

eSwarm also provides charities and organizations with a fundraising tool; creators of swarms can stipulate that a percentage of the total sale is donated to their charity of choice.

There is not a lot of activity on the site as yet, but it is growing. CEO Tim Newcomb says that eSwarm is a “global economic revolution;” it’s not, but it does have potential.

Validas to Help You Understand Your Cell Phone Bill

It’s sad to say it, but it’s true: most cell phone bill are so complicated that it is nearly impossible to understand exactly what you are being charged (and perhaps over charged) for. A new site called Validaspromises to make sense of the chaos, help you understand where you are spending money, and what you can do to lower your bill. It hasn’t launched yet, but there is an overview video on the site.

MediaWhiz Buys Another Ad Startup, AuctionAds

Performance marketing company MediaWhiz has snatched up eBay affiliate marketing service AuctionAds, which launched back in March. The price was not disclosed. AuctionAds is an advertising widget that serves contextually relevant eBay auctions based on tags supplied by the publisher.

MediaWhiz had previously purchased another sensibly named advertising startup, TextLinkAds, last November (TextLinkAds is a long time TechCrunch sponsor). Since the acquisition TextLinkAds expanded into RSS ads on top of direct website linking.

AuctionAds has been paying out 100% of eBay affiliate fees to publishers. Since eBay pays fees based on the total business a partner drives, AuctionAds can generate their own additional revenue from a combined network while still paying out the same rates affiliates would receive on their own. Since launch, they have registered over 20,000 publishers on their network.

Similar services to AuctionAds include BooBox and FavoriteThingz.

AuctionAds was launched as a partnership between Shoemoney Media and MediaWhiz. MediaWhiz has purchased Jeremy Schoemaker’s majority ownership to fully acquire the company.

iPhone v. BlackBerry: Side By Side, Two Week Comparison

With the Wi-Fi-equipped BlackBerry 8820 coming soon to an AT&T store near you, business folks around the country will be faced with the decision of switching to the trendy new iPhone or upgrading to a more iPhonesque version of theirtrusty CrackBerry. To determine whether the grass really is greener on the iPhone side of the fence, we have chronicled the experience of a venture capitalist (who wishes to remain anonymous) who has been using an iPhone and a BlackBerry 8800 side-by-side for the past few weeks. His conclusion: despite the overall attractiveness of the iPhone, it lacks too many vital features to replace the BlackBerry as the corporate weapon of choice.

For starters, a BlackBerry set up with Microsoft Exchange Server sports intelligent push email while the iPhone does not. When an email is sent to an account on a BlackBerry, the message is downloaded immediately and an LED on the phone notifies the user that he or she has a new message. The iPhone, on the other hand, recognizes new messages at most every 15 minutes and must be checked actively to see if anything has arrived. This deficiency makes handling email on the iPhone slower and less efficient; it also translates into wasted battery power as users need to perform the extra step of opening the iPhone’s email program every time they want to check for new mail.

Perhaps even more significantly, the iPhone fails to synchronize as well as the BlackBerry. When a BlackBerry user changes a calendar event or some contact information on his or her desktop computer in Exchange, the changes automatically appear on the BlackBerry. This makes keeping track of basic business information a snap because one never has to worry about acting on outdated data or manually updating one’s handheld. In contrast, the iPhone does not synchronize calendar and contact information wirelessly, which makes it less dependable for information ultimately stored on a server.

In addition to these major drawbacks of the iPhone, our venture capitalist cites the following as reasons to prefer the BlackBerry:

• The BlackBerry 8800 possesses GPS, which makes Google Maps much more useful, especially for turn-by-turn directions
• The iPhone lacks basic cut and paste capabilities
• Despite Apple’s reputation for superior user interface design, the BlackBerry possesses keyboard shortcuts that make navigation around and between applications a breeze
• The BlackBerry’s phone quality is better than the iPhone’s
• The Safari browser is certainly more stunning than the BlackBerry’s primitive browser, but the iPhone seems to load even text-only pages more slowly than the BlackBerry over the EDGE network
• The BlackBerry possesses a general contacts application that makes contacting people by any given method more convenient
• The battery runs out faster on the iPhone simply because it is used for more tasks. This makes it less reliable for when one must take the device somewhere overnight without the opportunity to recharge.

Despite all of these criticisms of the iPhone, our venture capitalist admits that he would switch over to the iPhone if only it supported push email, calendar and contacts synchronization, and GPS. For him, the prospect of ridding his pockets of a separate device for music (an iPod nano), as well as enjoying all of the iPhone’s slick features (such as full-featured web browsing, stocks and weather apps, and its YouTube program), makes the iPhone very tempting. However, until Apple resolves these shortcomings (and perhaps Google makes its applications, especially Gmail, work as seamlessly with the iPhone as Microsoft makes Exchange work with the BlackBerry), others are going to have to pry his BlackBerry from his cold, dead hands (his words, mind you, not ours).

Ustream.tv Now With More Interactivity

Earlier this month we tackled the evolving space of online live video. In its raw form, live is a very different format when compared to recorded video. There’s no post productionediting to cut out your gaffs or nab the best parts. Pushing the most interesting content in front of viewers in real time is a challenge. But there’s an audience to interact with, and that makes all the difference.

Ustream’s version 3 redesign released today is focusing entirely on the audience-host relationship. They’ve added three new interactivity features to the platform: shout meter, live polling, and a video archive widget. They are all solid additions to the service.

Shout Meter

The new shout meter is meant to solve the problem of bringing the best content to the audience. Picking the best content is a serious problem. Ustream says they produce over 3,000 hours of programming a day and deliver 25,000 hours of video feeds.

The shout meter lets users vote for the current channel’s content by clicking vigorously on the sidebar. More clicks from more users pumps up the shout bar, tipping Ustream off to something good happening on the channel. The bar on the right reflects your own shout level (red) and the crowds (yellow). There’s no word on how they’ll use the shout meter data.

It’s another take on what Justin.tv has been doing with their Tips feature, which lets viewers vote up segments of a live video stream. The top Tips are organized in a top list available on all the publisher pages.

Live Polls

Ustream has incorporated live polling into their Broadcaster Console, letting the publisher throw a few questions to the audience in real time.

Polls are on a transparent layer over the stream, so you can still see the show. Viewers point and click on the answers they want or can opt out by closing the box.

It’s a more rigorous version of simply posing a question to the chat room, or soliciting emails from viewers.

Archive Gallery Module

Ustream not only produces live video, but also maintains an archived library of past footage. Their new archive widget will let viewers flip through old shows without affecting the current video. Archived content was previously stored just on plain pages.

I’m guessing Ustream will be incorporating the “shout” feature into this module to help filter the content by date and interestingness.

Evolution amongst live video sites has turned into a kind of an arms race, as sites seek to nail down the right look, feel, and features to draw the best publishers and crowds of viewers. Live video is still out of the mainstream, even for sites like Stickam that were around during the YouTube boom. I imagine we will see even more innovation in the coming months as live finds its place in the spectrum of online video.

Facebook In Court With ConnectU; Press Conference at 3 PM PST

The Facebook/ConnectU litigation is moving ahead steadily - lawyers for both sides are in court today arguing over a preliminary motion to dismiss portions of the case. ConnectU has scheduled a press conference immediately following today’s hearing, roughly scheduled for 3 PM PST. We also expect some sort of statement from Facebook shortly. Stay tuned.

Microsoft Now Selling Digg’s Ads

Kevin Rose writes a somewhat cryptic blog post announcing that Digg has done an ad deal with Microsoft. He says it’s a deal similar
to the one Facebook signed with Microsoft last year. That probably means that, as with Facebook, Digg is getting a guarantee, and Microsoft will be losing money on the deal.

The status of Digg’s relationship with Federated Media is somewhat up in the air right now. Rose says that they will still working with FM (he calls them an “awesome partner”) but in a slightly different capacity. From what we gather, FM will still be selling as many high-CPM ads into Digg as they can.

Update #1: We received this email from FM. It doesn’t clear things up much.

Dear FM Authors,

Our partners at Digg are announcing some wonderful news. Microsoft has agreed to use its technology and sales force to manage Digg’s advertising. It turns the two-way FM-Digg partnership into a three-way one, with FM primarily responsible for selling the conversational and integrated marketing deals that have been so successful for Digg in recent months. It also opens up new doors that will help FM build opportunities for all of our authors’ sites.

We at FM have always been clear about what’s important to us. That’s why our logo includes the words “Author Driven.” So we’re very happy for the team at Digg, as this affirms their success in building a great idea into a great media business in a very short time. We’re proud to have helped Digg grow to this point and prove the value of a true conversational media site. This is also an endorsement of the value of what all FM authors do, and a sign of the great potential for all of your sites.

So please join us in congratulating Digg. Here’s their blog post about it: http://blog.digg.com/?p=89. A joint release from them and Microsoft will be issued shortly.

New Forum Site To Gossip About Work

I’m just going to touch on Wurkpal briefly. It’s a very simple forum site that is designed specifically for people to gossip/complain/etc. about their work environment anonymously. The site takes a guess as to where you are logging in from based on a reverse hostname lookup and tries to direct you to the correct company forum. You can also view the directory and go from there. The site badly needs a search function and the ability to add new companies.

We’ve covered a few companies that are roughly in this space - see BossBitching, Ovehear.us and JobVent. For entrepreneurs who want to rip into venture capitalists that have turned them down, TheFunded is always entertaining. None of these hold a candle to what FuckedCompany was back in the day, but it’ll take a major downturn before that type of site can see the glory days again.

Wurkpal is based in San Jose and says they’ve received angel funding.

ConnectU Given Two Weeks To Finalize Facebook Complaint

A Massachusetts District Court Judge has given ConnectU two weeks to revise their complaint against Facebook, according to a CNet News report.

ConnectU is due to give a conference call at 3pm PST. We’ll be back with more as we get it.

Conference call Live notes

3pm ConnectU Counsel states that they can’t talk about the litigation in the intro aside from what is in the public domain. Not a good start.

3:05pm: one of ConnectU’s founders claims that they are not trying to shut Facebook down.

3:10pm: explanation on background. They don’t like Mark Zuckerberg; the claim is that Zuckerberg worked for ConnectU and stole the idea

3:13pm: ConnectU’s founders claim that the case is not about the money

3:15pm: Q&A, first question isn’t answered due to “legal issues.”

3:16pm: current action was filled in March 2007, although it wasn’t made clear why there was a new legal action. Obvious question: if it’s not about the money why was it refilled in 2007?

3:20pm: Q&A from conference call participants. Simply ConnectU wont discuss anything remotely interesting.

3:25 conference call ends. Yawn.

Conclusion

I’ve had a number of people tell me today that ConnectU doesn’t have a leg to stand on; I’ve tried to keep an open mind to date and whilst there may still be some chance that ConnectU has a case, this conference call will have done them no favors. ConnectU’s founders and Legal Counsel gave nothing interesting in the call and were indeed elusive when it came to the questions the media asked; questions that in a proper presentation of ConnectU’s case should have been answered. It should be remembered that ConnectU called this conference: this was their opportunity to defend their case and instead they wasted the time of a slew of Tech Journalists.

Previous TechCrunch coverage of ConnectU vs Facebook here and here

UPDATE: Facebook responds:”We are pleased with the outcome of the hearing today. We continue to disagree with the allegations that Mark Zuckerberg stole any ideas or code to build Facebook.”

Entropia Universe Licenses CryENGINE

Second Life competitor Entropia Universe has signed an agreement to use the game engine CryENGINE 2.

According to Entropia Universe, the CryENGINE 2 platform will deliver the “closest-to-reality looking massively multiplayer online game ever seen.”

The move towards realistic 3D rendering in virtual worlds continues to gain pace. Second Life acquired Windward Mark Technology in May, delivering realistic wind and clouds to their platform.

Entropia Universe has been on a role lately, having passed 500,000 users and expanding into China. The new version of Entropia Universe is expected to be available by mid-2008.

Sample pictures below. Previous TechCrunch coverage here.

AdPinion: Vote for the Ads You Want

Adpinion is a new startup trying to get rid of the antagonism between advertisers and web surfers by letting you vote for the ads you want. How you vote determines what ads you and other visitors see when visiting an Adpinion network site.

The most basic types of online advertising (banner ads) are widely disliked; an example of this is the increasing interest in ad blockers (40 on Firefox alone). In response, Google and others are continuing to evolve their contextual advertising engines. Adpinion’s solution is to empower users to choose their advertisers.

Adpinion collects your preferences through a voting bar that sits along the left hand side of their embeddable ad unit. You can vote an ad up or down using the thumbs up or thumbs down buttons. How you vote on each ad contributes to a profile of your ad preferences and the ad profile for the site overall. Adpinion serves ads based on your own preferences, but also recommends ads based on the ads liked by of users similar to you.

Advertising rates will be based on clicks and related to how close ads match your preferences. Rates vary by how closely the ads relate to your preferences, with ads costing more as they become less relevant.

The ad banner does have the drawback of being wider than standard units, 468 x 60 units, due to the voting bar. They have additional unit sizes planned.

The user feedback model leaves me wondering if they’ll get enough feedback to do a better job than automated systems or highly targeted sites. The big question is whether people are interested enough to use Adpinion’s voting system or will simply ignore it.

For their launch, they’ve lined up only a few advertisers (37 Signals, CrazyEgg, Mint, …) and have filled the remnant space with auto generated Amazon ads. They plan on building out the network to a self serve model, but haven’t finished the publisher and advertiser management tools. Adpinion is a Y Combinator company based in Boston and started last year by the three founders Luke Iannini, Mike Jacobs, and Kevin Corcoran.