Pelago knows that just about every location-based app in the world is seeking coverage right now just prior to SXSW where they will all battle Highlander-style. So they approached me with a pretty smart pitch: curing the “social rut.” What they mean by that is these days, despite the prevalence of social networks, people are actually less social than ever because they’re being roped into playing games like Farmville and Mafia Wars for hours on end. Sitting in their rooms. Alone.

While that may be a part of social networking (a rather large, hugely profitably part), it’s not really social. That’s why location-based networks excite me: they have the potential to bridge social networking with actual social activity. And that’s exactly how Pelago is positioning the latest version of its location-based app, Whrrl 3.

The core idea behind the new iPhone app (which launched in the store today) is that people inspire others to do things. So when you see a friend is out doing something fun, you may want to join them. Or it may entice you to go out and do something else, and hope others see it on Whrrl and join in. It’s the grouping of people with similar interests into “Societies” that is a key to Whrrl 3. For example, a basic society is that each venue in the application has its own set of “regulars.” If you visit the place enough times, you unlock the badge making you a regular, and giving you access to member-level activities, such as recommendations and specials nearby.

One of these societies, launching alongside the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas this week is the Austin Underground which “will provide members with at-your-fingertips access to the hottest parties, events, and other fun things to do at the conference,” according to Whrrl. Over 50 merchants in Austin are participating to provide exclusive offers, apparently. To unlock the membership, you have to check-in at some of the following places: Four Seasons Hotel Austin, Outback Steakhouse, Cool River Cafe, Chuggin’ Monkey, J Black’s, Red Fez and Third Base, and others.

Other key features of Whrrl 3 include Recommendations — you create these (with photos, if you choose), to let others in your social graph (or your society) know fun things to do in an area. Ideas, are recommendations served up to you from societies you’re a part of, your friends, or Whrrl’s algorithms. Fun Facts are shown each time you check-in to a venue, with information about it. And of course, there is a point system (Influence Points) that turn the whole thing into one big game. What’s interesting about Whrrl’s game is that you can get point by inspiring others to do things with the app. Points also allow you to level up in your societies for more special deals.

All of this is an extension of the “footstreams” idea that Whrrl launched last December. That’s where they also first introduced the society idea as well. The key to both of those is about real people doing real things in the real world.  That, in turn, shows what you’re interested in, and allows Whrrl to clump you into these groups with out like-minded people.

So that all sounds great, but will anyone use the app? After all, adoption has been a problem in the past and this isn’t the first time Whrrl is pivoting its product. In fact, they actually did exactly a year ago with Whrrl 2 just before SXSW.

Their main problem is convincing people to use Whrrl instead of the current location-based darlings, Foursquare and Gowalla. That’s going to be difficult because those networks are quickly building up social graphs and once those are established, users are less likely to leave. So Whrrl needs something to differentiate itself, and while their pitch to me is good, it’s an entirely different matter convincing users. And the things that would seem to help differentiate networks like Whrrl actually hurt them sometimes. For example, since location-based services are still new to so many people, it’s best to keep things as simple as possible. But Whrrl is piling on features that, while maybe cool, are likely to confuse new users.

Still, if Whrrl is able to secure some solid deals around Austin to get people using the app and checking-in, that could certainly get people using it. Of course, Foursquare and Gowalla have their own deals too. Then the problem becomes one I’ve had this past week while testing out all these location apps: fatigue. I can’t possibly check-in with each of these apps each time I move from place to place. The people I’m with have started rolling their eyes at me while I take my 10 minutes to check-in to all the different apps.

I’m not saying there can be only one. But one would sure be nice.

Find Whrrl 3 in the App Store here.

Regular readers will know my love for all things location. In particular, these check-in location-based services fascinate me, mainly because I see them as a bridge between social networks as we’ve known it, and actual social interaction in the real world. Foursquare has been my app of choice over the past year (it launched almost exactly a year ago at SXSW). But the latest version of Gowalla has me thinking about switching sides. At the very least, I’ll be using both at all times now.

Gowalla version 2.0 for the iPhone just hit the App Store today. With it, you’ll notice a few different things. First and foremost, the overall look has been updated from a sort of Army green, to a more subtle light green that is much easier on the eyes. More significantly, the toolbar has been reworked so that now social activity is front and center when you load the app, while your own activity is the last tab. Both of these changes are things I’ve complained about since day one with Gowalla, so they’re certainly welcome. But that’s not why I’m excited for the app. I’m excited because it takes the idea of the check-in and extends it.

Specifically, you can now add pictures and comments to check-ins in Gowalla. This makes for a much richer social experience both using the app and the website (the data goes over there as well). As founder and CEO Josh Williams describes in the video below, there were a lot of people who wanted to talk about the social activity on Gowalla, but previously they had to text message or email their friends to say something like “hey I saw you check-in at the restaurant, want some company?” Now, that type of dialogue can take place all within the app.

Now, others have tried to add additional layers to check-ins in the past. Why I think it works with Gowalla 2.0 is because they keep it simple. The application is extremely handsome (since the beginning, everyone is quick to note how good the designers are working for the team) and intuitive. There are only a few basic things you can do, and all are obvious from the main screen. You can either check-in at a venue, comment on your friends’ check-ins (with the new chat bubble in the stream), look at the spots around you, see trips (pre-planned venue excursions), or look at your own activity.

Previously, with Gowalla, I thought the focus was too much on their virtual items. Those are now tucked away in your Passport (your profile). They’re still important, and will be increasingly so for Gowalla’s revenue model (trading virtual goods for real-world items), but they’re not in your face, confusing users.

All that said, there are two downsides still to the service. First, the social activity stream includes everybody that your friends with. With Foursquare, the people currently in the same city as you are highlighted; Gowalla doesn’t do that. I suspect that will be very annoying to my friends not going to Austin this week for SXSW. Their stream will be a constant reminder that they’re not there — and they likely could care less about my check-ins, since they can’t possibly come and meet me.

The second downside is that Gowalla’s API remains read-only. That means while other services can pull out Gowalla’s data, they can’t put anything back in. That means there will be no Gowalla apps besides the ones they make (at least for now). Williams explained the rationale behind this as Gowalla wants to stay in control of the user experience (a rather Apple-like argument). That makes some sense, since there are all these virtual goods that will be flying around, and it will be hard to make sure every third-party app is implementing them correctly. Also, Gowalla is much more strict about its location-based check-ins then say, Foursquare. They’re so strict, in fact, that it’s been an issue in the past (and in some cases, still is), with people not being able to check-in places they’re actually at because the GPS is wonky. At the same time, this helps a lot with gaming the system, and that will be increasingly important as Gowalla strikes deals with partners based around check-ins.

Listen to Williams talk more about the new app, as well as his thoughts on AT&T’s network, some SXSW specials, rivals, and yes, even the news that Facebook is apparently looking at federating some of Gowalla’s (and Foursquare’s) data for its own location offering. He also notes that with the new release, Gowalla is expanding the idea of checking-in to be more of a bucket of elements now, including images and comments. Interesting. (Sorry in advance that I shot the video vertically on my iPhone — gotta stop doing that.)

You can find Gowalla 2.0 in the App Store here. It’s a free download.

Google has just released an alternative player for Google Reader that gives those with a penchant for browsing news the ability to do so in an image-heavy, TV-like fashion.

Dubbed Google Reader Play, the new tool is an experimental Google Labs project that presents stories one by one — based on their Recommend Items technology — using enlarged photos and auto-playing videos (in lieu of text) on a black backdrop. Viewers can redefine categories and star, like or share stories, with those behaviors further contributing to what Google displays.

Google Reader Play could be both an entertainment utility for browsing the web and a complement to your Google Reader experience. Actions that you take in Reader or Reader Play are shared between the two products, and the recommendations in Reader Play are personalized based on the people you’re following in Reader.

Google Reader Play is certainly eye-catching, but it’s more pop than it is substance. In fact, given that Google Reader appeals to fairly narrow audience today, we believe the product was intended to up the entertainment factor and introduce Reader-esque features to a much broader set of users.

It’s nice to look at and worth a try; whether or not that’s enough to attract the attention of those outside the web/tech realm remains to be seen. We do, however, think that Google Reader Play on an iPad or actual TV set, say via something like Boxee Box, would be worth watching.

Tags: Google, google reader, google reader play, tv

Since the announcement went live yesterday about the Google Marketplace, we've had a number of companies come to us about how its applications will fit with the service.

We'll do a fuller look at these companies this week but for some immediate perspective we decided to take a look at Zoho, a service that competes with Google Apps. So it is it interesting that the company joined Google Apps Marketplace in its launch.

Sponsor

Buy why would Zoho offer its applications to integrate with Google? Yes, the companies compete. But Raju Vegesna of Zoho says that it is far more important to complement Google Apps. Over the past few years the company has worked to make it simple for Zoho customers to use its services in tandem with Google Apps. Zoho offers Google Sign-in, Google Apps Sign-in and recently it integrated with Google Docs.

Vegesna gave us three reasons why Zoho decided to be part of the launch. His perspectives should provide some insights about the symbiotic relationship Google Apps Marketplace will foster.

Extending The Relationship

For many developers, integrating with Google Apps represents a significant business opportunity. Google announced at its launch that it passed the 25 million customer mark over the weekend.

Vegesna:

"First, we have 50% more apps than Google, especially on the business side (CRM, Project Management, Web Conferencing etc). This means, these additional apps can really complement Google Apps. Google has over 20 million users on G Apps and our Business apps can be sold to those customers. "

Google Dominates The Landscape

To play in this era, you have to play with Google. They dominate as much as any company has in the past 30 years. The domination in large part is now solidified by its investment in its cloud infrastructure.

Vegesna:

"Second, we understand that this is going to be a Google dominated eco-system (IBM dominated Mainframe era, Microsoft dominated PC era and Google will dominate the web era) and we wanted to be an important player in this web era. We talked more about this here and here."

A Platform Built On Email, Not CRM

Yesterday, we touched on why the marketplace makes sense for companies standardized on Google Apps. With all the contacts in one place, people can add applications to fine tune Google Apps. Does a company start with the same foundation if the platform is built on CRM?

Vegesna:

"Third, when someone builds a platform, email is a great app to build the platform around, rather than CRM (which salesforce did). We think it'll be a good and succesful platform for online apps which will move the web app momentum forward and we want to be a key player (the same way Adobe was a key player in PC era)."

For more about the Zoho integration:

Discuss

Google launched a new service today in from its Labs called Google Reader Play. It is a more visual way to browse through the most popular items being saved and shared on Google Reader. When you launch it, you are presented with a large photo, video, or text excerpt on the main part of the screen, and can flip through by clicking on arrows or selecting an item from the filmstrip at the bottom of the screen.

Google Reader Play doesn’t require you to sign in, but if you do then you can star, share, and like items, and it starts to recommend things to you based on what your friends share, star, and like in Google Reader. The user interface seems to borrow a lot from StumbleUpon, with its concept of randomly flicking through the best stuff on the Web. In particular, it’s very similar to StumbleVideo, except it includes more than just videos. It is very image-heavy. The user interface reminds me of some elements of enjosythin.gs as well in the way that it presents images and text excerpts in a blown-up manner. The arrows are very Fast Flip, another Labs experiment for the Google News in making magazine and newspaper articles more visually browsable.

Like many of its other recent efforts, especially with Buzz, Google Reader Play is an attempt to encourage more direct sharing and to capture that sharing data. More and more Website referral traffic is coming from sharing service such as Twitter and Facebook. Google wants to be in the sharing game as well.

Editor’s note: In the following guest post, Fliqz CEO Benjamin Wayne reveals some of the secrets of using video to help boost the search results rankings of your website. Fliqz is an online video platform.

As most search engine optimization (SEO) experts are aware, getting a first-page Google result is harder than ever. Not only do Google’s search and indexing algorithms continue to evolve in complexity, but Google has given over more and more of its search results real estate to “blended” search results, displaying videos and images towards the top of the first page, and pushing down—and sometimes off the page—traditional web results that would have otherwise competed for top rankings.

But where problems arise, so do opportunities. Although Google’s newfound enthusiasm for video has created more competition for fewer traditional search results, it has enabled sites with video assets—even sites that would otherwise score poorly in the Google index—to successfully achieve first-page rankings. In fact, Forrester Research found that videos were 53 times more likely than traditional web pages to receive an organic first-page ranking.

Here’s what a blended search result looks like for the search query “777 built in 4 minutes“:

Those images at the top of the search results are video thumbnails, and today, there’s only two ways to get there:

1. Upload your video to YouTube.

The advantage of this is that you are 100% certain to be indexed into Google’s search engine. This does not guarantee you’ll get a first-page result, but at least it ensures that Google knows your content exists.

The drawback, of course, is that anyone who clicks on a YouTube result will be taken to YouTube, which may be fine if your goal is branding (i.e., you only care that people watch your video). If your goal is driving traffic, as is typically the case with SEO, this won’t be a successful strategy.

Your other alternative is:

2. Video SEO

Video SEO is a set of techniques designed to make sure that:

• Google finds your video content
• Google successfully indexes your video content
• Google will display your video content when specific keywords are entered as search terms

Here’s how to make it work:

You Need Video Content

Google is fairly flexible in what it considers to be video content. You can use actual video footage, but screen captures, slide shows, animated PowerPoint slides, and other content will work just as well. Google can’t actually “see” what’s inside the video content, so it relies on title and other meta-data to determine what content your video actually contains.

Submission, Not Discovery

With traditional web pages, Google utilizes crawlers to discover and index web content. Unfortunately, Google can’t read Flash very well (although it is trying), and as a result, most video content is invisible to Google’s search crawlers. Therefore, the best way to appear in Google’s blended search results is to submit your video to Google using a Video Sitemap. This is similar to an XML sitemap, but is formatted specifically for video, and only contains information about your video content. It is submitted using Google’s Webmaster Tools.

The most common error in Video SEO is to assume that because you have submitted the web page on which a video resides, that the video content itself is being indexed.

You’ll also need to make sure that you have a robots.txt file on all video pages, to ensure that Google can easily verify that the locations on the Web you’ve submitted do in fact exist, and that they contain embed codes which indicate the presence of a video.

Title and Title Tags

When ranking videos, Google primarily considers the match between search keywords and the video title. Although Google allows you to submit other meta-data such as description and keywords, these currently don’t have much influence on your search ranking. Google likes it when the title tag of the page matches the title of the video, and will give a higher weighting for results where this is the case.

Video SEO is Long Tail

Like traditional SEO, you’re much more likely to see results with Video SEO if you target more specific, or longer tail, search terms. A video titled “Dog” is unlikely to produce a first-page ranking, while a video titled “German Shepherd Police Dog” will be more likely to score well in Google’s algorithm. Since Google can’t determine the actual content of the video, you might consider submitting the same video multiple times with different titles that match potential search terms.

New and Small Don’t Matter

With traditional SEO, the age of a website is an important consideration for Google in deciding its ranking. Google also considers things like the number of pages on the site, and the number of links to the site, along with the importance of the places those links originate.

In Video SEO, none of this matters. This means that even new sites and small sites can compete on equal footing with larger and more established players. Publishers who are too small or too new to even consider traditional SEO can still be taking advantage of Video SEO opportunities.

For the Foreseeable Future, Video SEO is a Winning Strategy

As time goes by, Google’s discovery and indexing of video content will no doubt become more sophisticated, and as competition for video results increases, it will become harder for sites to achieve these first-page rankings. However, the number of web pages still massively outnumbers indexed video assets, and for as long as that continues, publishers will have an opportunity to jump to the top of Google’s search results through Video SEO.

Uh, whoa. When we heard Google's threatened pullout of China had prompted Motorola to seek out an alternative search provider for its China-bound handsets, we can't say we were expecting a partnership with Microsoft to result. But here we are, staring at a press release announcing the Bing search and Maps will be the default on Moto's Chinese Android phones starting in Q1 -- and the partnership is described as "global," so there's a chance it could spread. That's just one more slap in Google's face from Moto, following the release of the Yahoo-powered AT&T Backflip -- and another step away from the tight relationship that produced the Droid. And does this mean Motorola might yet build a Windows Phone 7 Series device, despite a very public commitment to Android? We'd say Eric and Sanjay have some unresolved differences to work through.

Motorola partners with Microsoft, will use Bing search and maps on Chinese Android phones originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Last week, an App Store error got the latest version of Foursquare for the iPhone into a few users hands a little bit early.

That hiccup resulted in the app briefly disappearing from the App Store before finally returning early yesterday. Now the newly designed version of the app is in the App Store and available for everyone to check out.

Foursquare 1.7 features a new design, faster checkins and shouts, plus an easy way to view your checkin history. The app also features pull-to-refresh, a la Tweetie 2 for the iPhone. The app is a lot more responsive in our tests and the new interface is a big enhancement.

This is a nice improvement from the old release and a fitting first-birthday gift of sorts as the app is arriving just before SXSW 2010 — where the app made its first big splash last year — begins.

What do you think of the new Foursquare app? Let us know!

Tags: foursquare, foursquare iphone, iphone apps

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Scordit

Quick Pitch: A social site where you share the stuff you’ve bought or want to get, and win prizes by doing it!

Genius Idea: It’s nice to share your new purchases or “scores” with friends or to let people know what stuff you really want to score in the future. Likewise, it’s fun to see what your friends are scoring or adding to their wishlists. Scordit handles both tasks, plus integrates with Facebook and Twitter, making sharing and wishlisting easy.

Similar services to Scordit exist — we covered one called Hollrr last month — but Scordit is a little bit different in that you can browse or search for items (and it can poll places like Amazon.com for images or product names) you both have and items you want.

Scordit also issues users points for doing certain tasks — like adding scores or wishes to your profile, inviting a friend to the service, or discussing products you already have. Each point gets you a chance to win a $50 Amazon Gift Card each week and towards a bigger prize each month. The prize this month, for example is an iPad.

In the future Scordit will also let you earn coupons and discounts on items in your wishlist, based on the points you a have earned.

We like that Scordit supports account creation with both Twitter and Facebook and that you can selectively tweet or share your scores or wishes on those services.

Like Hollrr, we do wish that there was a bookmarklet that could make adding items to your scores or wishes even faster. These sorts of sharing sites have a lot of potential but being accessible from outside the main app is something we really want to see.

How do you share your scores with friends? Let us know!

Disclosure: Scordit is founded by Shane Snow, who has contributed to Mashable.

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Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

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BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

Tags: getglue, hollrr, product sharing, scordit

Sure, Opera Mini may (or may not) already be the most popular mobile browser in the world — but why stop there? Following up on the Android release of Opera Mobile 4 just over a year ago, Opera has just launched Opera Mini 5 for Android into public beta.

The jump from version 4 to version 5 is pretty huge, introducing a handful of features that Opera says “makes your mobile browsing experience as close as it can be to your desktop experience.”

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

Sonos, the Santa Barbara, California based startup that develops of wireless multi-room music systems, is taking a new round of financing from London-based Index Ventures, we’ve heard from multiple sources. Partner Mike Volpi, a forcer Cisco exec who found himself in the middle of a huge drama last year around eBay’s Skype spinoff, will join the board of directors of Sonos.

Volpi will bring real expertise to the Sonos board. As recently as 2007 he ran an $11 billion routing and access products busines for Cisco. He clearly knows how to sell products at scale.

Sonos has been around since 2003 and has raised some $40 million from private angel investors and BV Capital. Until last year the company sold very high end music products that users loved passionately, but the mutli-thousand dollar price point for a complete system made mainstream penetration difficult.

But in 2009 Sonos began selling a new product, the S5 music system, that users control via their iPhone. The S5 is just $400 and has driven “massive growth” says the company.

Like Flip last year, Sonos likely had a choice between selling now or raising new money for major expansion. Flip sold to Cisco. Sonos, it seems, is taking more money, but adding an ex-Cisco exec as well. Perhaps they’ll get their cake and eat it, too.

Sonos wouldn’t comment on this story. But we believe the deal will close and be announced in the next week or two.

Last night at its Campfire One event, Google officially launched the Google Apps Marketplace. The Google Apps Marketplace offers third-party developers and services a way to integrate directly with the Google Apps platform and sell that integration at whatever price point they choose. This is a huge win for the cloud because it finally allows other cloud services to tap into some of Google’s APIs for things like Gmail and Google Docs at a much deeper level, which can benefit their own customers, as well as offering additional value to Google Apps itself.

Although the launch was yesterday, many companies and developers have been preparing for this event for quite some time and a number of very cool and useful apps are already available in the Marketplace. Here are just a few that stand out to us.

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1. Zoho for Google Apps

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Zoho and Google Apps actually offer a lot of the same services: hosted email, word processing, spreadsheet and presentation tools, wikis, chat, etc. However, that doesn’t mean that Zoho doesn’t benefit from Google Apps integration.

Plus, because Zoho also offers services that go beyond what Google Apps can do, direct integration can be a nice way for Zoho to keep customers using their product (or even make them more interested in checking it out).

Zoho has two products in the Google Apps Marketplace: Zoho CRM and Zoho Projects. Zoho CRM is free for up to three users and then $12 per month per user starting with the fourth user. Zoho Projects is free for one project and starts at $12 per month for unlimited projects.

Both tools allow users to plugin Google Apps into the Zoho CRM or Zoho Projects system.

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2. Intuit Online Payroll

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Intuit, makers of Quicken and Quickbooks, has an online payroll tool called Intuit Online Payroll. Intuit Online Payroll for Google Apps was one of the applications demoed at the Campfire One event yesterday and it lets users access their payroll or paychecks from anywhere in Google Apps.

For instance, paychecks can be retrieved from Google Calendar, users can print checks or E-File their taxes and run the payroll application from directly within Google Apps.

Pricing is $39 per month for one employee filing taxes in one state, each additional employee is $1.50 per month and each additional state for filing taxes is $12 per month.

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3. Manymoon

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Manymoon is a team collaboration application that integrates with Google Apps. Think of it as a project and task management tool.

The Manymoon app was built to deeply integrate with Google Docs, Google Calendar and Gmail. The company has also created a Google Gadget for managing and monitoring tasks.

Manymoon is free and is currently the highest rated app in the Google Apps Marketplace.

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4. Aviary

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Aviary offers web-based tools for things like image editing and creation, vector graphics, and audio editing. Now Aviary can integrate into Google Apps, which lets you use Aviary to create graphics that can be used and accessed within things like Google Docs and Google Sites.

The free app lets you do all kinds of stuff, like edit images for business cards, presentation slides and labels, create scalable vector art, record and remix audio and even edit the markup from websites or slides.

This is the sort of functionality that Google doesn’t have the resources to offer, which is why it’s great that Aviary can just plug into existing Google Apps accounts!

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5. Expensify

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Expensify is a service designed to make expense reporting less painful. Expensify’s Google Apps app integrates directly with Google Apps, which eliminates one more step in the expense-report creation process.

Once reports are submitted and approved, they can be exported to QuickBooks or other accounting solutions in one-step. Expensify is always free for report creation and submission and for two submitters a month, the approval process is free too. After that, approval for each individual submitter is only $5 a month.

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6. Box.net

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Like Zoho, Box.net shares some features with Google Apps. Box.net has really morphed from a file storage service into a full-fledged cloud-based content management system akin to something like Microsoft SharePoint. Many of the companies that are creating apps for the Google Apps Marketplace also have apps for Box.net’s OpenBox platform.

However, while there is some overlap in terms of services offered (especially since Google Docs added file storage support in January), there is even more opportunity for users of both services.

Box.net is offering a Cloud Content Management app for Google Docs that will let you basically access and integrate your Google files directly within the Box.net ecosystem.

That means you can create a Google Doc or Google Spreadsheet as a file type within Box, which means you can then utilize the collaboration tools of both platforms. You can also access and manipulate your Box content directly from within Gmail and Google Calendar — which really makes this attractive for companies that want to look at replacing both Exchange Server and SharePoint.

Existing Box.net users can call their account manager to start the setup process of integrating the two systems and new users can sign up for a free trial of Box.net and automagically add it to Google Apps, plus get 30% off upon sign-up.

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More to Come

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We’re only scratching the surface in terms of what the Google Apps Marketplace can potentially offer users — as well as developers and other providers — but just looking at some of the apps and integrations that already exist, we have to say, this is exciting.

The power of the “cloud” really isn’t realized until you can see how easy it is to not just access files from various places (like on mobile phones), but also when you can easily share and integrate with other services. For small business users especially, the extensibility options offered to Google Apps via the Marketplace makes Google’s platform even more compelling.

Have you tried any of the new Google Apps apps? What do you think? Let us know!

Tags: Aviary, box.net, cloud computing, Expensify, google apps, Google Apps Marketplace, intuit, manymoon, Zoho

The App Store censorship horse may have been beaten to death, but mainstream German media—whose iPhone applications have been censored by Apple because of its content—are not surrendering. I'm glad. In fact, I hope they win this war. More »

Google just launched a new Google Labs product for Google Reader: Google Reader Play. Reader Play is a new, highly visual way to browse your Google Reader subscriptions that is somewhat reminiscent of Google's Fast Flip. It replaces the busy Google Reader interface with an interface that focuses on a single story. Whenever a post includes videos or images, Play with highlight these and give you the option to read more of the text as well. This new interface allows you to browse through the feeds you already subscribe to, but Google Reader Play also emphasizes Google Reader's ability to recommend items from around the web for you based on your preferences.

Sponsor

Big on Recommendations

As Google notes, Play will learn from your preferences, based on the articles you read and "like." You can also choose from a set of categories (tech, entertainment, arts, business, etc.) and Google Reader will create a personalized stream of items just for you. According to Google, Play uses the same algorithm as the Recommended Items feed in Google Reader.

Play will even work if you don't have a Google account. While you can't star, like or share items, you can still browse interesting posts based on the categories you choose. This should make it a good tool for those users who don't want to go through the effort of setting up a feed reader and subscribing to hundreds of different feeds.

Get Started

To use Google Reader Play, just head over here or look for "View in Reader Play" in the folder settings in Google Reader. You can switch stories by using your arrow keys or choose the slideshow mode that will automatically forward to the next story after a few second.

Discuss

It seems like every city in America wants Google Fiber. And who can blame them? Ever since Google announced its plan last month to bring ultra-high speed Internet connections (as in, up to 100x faster than what most of the country has today) to between 50,000 and 500,000 people, cities across the U.S. have been clamoring to curry the favor of the search giant.

First there was Topeka, KS, which renamed itself by proclamation to Google, KS. Then Duluth, MN upped the ante by promising (comedically, we hope) to name all the town’s first-born children after Google. Then Greenville, SC entered the fray with their all-out “We Are Feeling Lucky” social media campaign that included a landing page, YouTube channel, Facebook events, and Twitter hashtag.

But will any of these efforts be enough?

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The Competition

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Topeka, Duluth, and Greenville are not alone in wanting Google to trick out their municipalities with super fast Internet speeds. A growing number of American cities are making their pitch to Google in advance of the March 26th deadline, and some of them are pretty creative.

Peoria, IL, for example, is playing off its reputation as the prototypical middle American town and the famous “Will it play in Peoria?” catchphrase. They’ve launched Google Plays in Peoria in an attempt to convince the company that their town is the perfect test-bed for Google’s new technology.

Perhaps taking a cue from Topeka, on the other hand, Sarasota, FL has also renamed itself… to Google Island. Their site includes the standard YouTube videos, Facebook Fan Page, Twitter account, and cleverly, a “Declaration of Independence from Narrowband Networks.”

Other cities have also pulled out all the stops in their campaign to get Big G to invest in their infrastructure. Baltimore, MD thinks a petition is the way to go, and presents their case using a Google Maps mashup, YouTube videos, and a list of local startups that could use a few more bits on their BmoreFiber.com pitch page.

Austin, TX, Charlottesville, VA, Greensboro, NC, Portland, OR, Grand Rapids, MI, and Indianapolis, IN are also in on the action with either official or citizen-led campaigns to catch Google’s attention.

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Who Wins? Google, For One

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Google has yet to reveal how it will pick where its magical fiber will be implemented — glitz and numbers may ultimately have nothing to do with it. However, no matter which city wins the ultimate prize of having Google come to town and pimp out their Internet connections the way Xhibit pimps out cars, Google itself is a big winner in the process. So are social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Google wins because they get to further their agenda. The stampede among cities to compete for Google’s trial has already demonstrated the desire that people and municipalities have for faster Internet infrastructure and “open access” networks. “It’s obvious the ISPs and incumbent utility providers don’t feel the incentive they need, the pressure they need, to keep themselves up to date,” wrote a commenter on a blog post from Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn’s office declaring their intention to compete for Google Fiber. Making the public more aware of the issues that Google cares about (better/faster infrastructure, universal access, net neutrality) is a win for Google, whose plans for the cloud-based computing hinge on faster and more ubiquitous broadband connections.

Facebook, meanwhile, has proven to be one of the most popular meeting grounds for Google Fiber advocates. Most of the campaigns already mentioned in this post have a presence on Facebook, and some communities and citizen-led groups have put the entirety of their energy on promoting the case to fellow citizens through the social network. There are growing Facebook groups for Google Fiber in Ventura, CA, Columbia, MO, Davis, CA, Huntsville, AL, Buffalo, NY, Baton Rouge, LA, Rochester, NY, Fresno, CA, Cincinnati, OH, San Luis Obispo, CA — to name just a few. In fact, a Groups search for “Google Fiber” on Facebook this morning yielded almost 250 results.

Other cities and towns are turning to Twitter to make their case. Madison, WI, for example, has a Twitter account and is using the hashtag #madfiber to spread the word about Google Fiber to other Madison residents. And Memphis, TN mayor A.C. Wharton, Jr. is using his Twitter account to tweet about his city’s pitch and encourage citizens to get involved using the #memphisgoogle hashtag.

Social gathering places like Facebook and Twitter are used all the time for campaigns bigger than the Google Fiber competition, so it may seem naive to call those sites winners here. But like Google, social networks would benefit immensely from faster, more universal broadband access, so getting their brands entangled in the movement early might be a major boon down the road.

Is your city gunning for Google Fiber? Which of these campaigns do you think will best catch Google’s attention? Let us know in the comments.

Tags: facebook, Fiber Optic, Google, google fiber, Google Kansas, ISP, isps, social media, tech, twitter, youtube

At the powerhouse Abu Dhabi Media Summit here at Yas Island in Abu Dhabi, two of the biggest third-party search deals are being negotiated behind the scenes, we have learned. It just so happens that all the players involved were here for the last day or so: Google (NSDQ: GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt, News Corp (NYSE: NWS) contingent of Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch and Jon Miller, and AOL (NYSE: AOL) CEO Tim Armstrong.

The public posturing of News Corp-vs-Google and AOL-poaching-execs-from-Google aside, there is a lot at stake here. Between News Corp.‘s MySpace deal and AOL deal, those are the two biggest third-party deals Google has on the search side, and both are being talked about separately by the parties here, a source told us. Also, both AOL and MySpace deals are expiring this year.

The biggest absentee from the conference: Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT). Early on during the planning of this conference, MSFT CEO Steve Ballmer was supposed to speak but it didn’t come through. One could argue that with the MSFT-Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) deal now in implementation stage, it could be that its hands are full with any “smaller” third party search deals, and that both AOL and MySpace deal will probably go to Google again, though on radically different—read reduced—terms than when they were first done.

The MySpace-Google three year deal, done at the height of MySpace’s popularity, is expiring in August, about six months from now, so likely a bit further along in renegotiations, than the AOL-Google deal, which is expiring later in December.

Web-based Twitter client Brizzly has three major developments to report: a new free iPhone app, a new Brizzly Guide (which gives trending topics on Twitter their own hub pages as permanent resources for information on the top Twitter discussion items over time), and the acquisition of WikiRank.

The Brizzly Guide is a user-editable area that fleshes out the backstory and adds contextual information to Twitter trends. Loading up the Guide shows the top 10 current trending topics at the left, and either a description of that topic or a prompt to be the first to explain the trend.

Taking cues from wiki-style user-editable sites like Wikipedia, the Brizzly Guide encourages users to curate the landing pages that will act as resources for current and past Twitter trends over time.

The free Brizzly iPhone app is available now in the App Store, featuring multiple account support, lists, photo uploads, saved searches syncing, classic-style retweet functionality, and support for the new Brizzly Guide with user-editable trends and news topics.

Further evidence of Brizzly’s adoption of wiki-style philosophy comes with the announcement of the company’s acquisition of Wikirank, an app that visualizes Wikipedia data and will soon, presumably, help visualize Brizzly data and build out a more robust Brizzly Guide. Wikirank displays popular and trending pages in a clean and easy-to-use interface. CEO Jason Shellen said of the acquisition, “We will be integrating Wikirank technology into the Brizzly Guide over the coming months,” so we should expect to see more from the Twitter client surrounding trending and data visualization in the near future.

Are you a Brizzly user? What do you currently use to monitor Twitter trends?

Tags: brizzly, iphone, iphone apps, twitter

While California and New York tend to get the most attention as technology hubs, other states are quietly hosting their own vibrant communities around technology and innovation. Utah is one of these states. Utah is home to tech giants Omniture (which was acquired by Adobe for $1.8 billion), Novell, Symantec. And today, Utah is getting its very own startup incubator, BoomStartup, which is a seed capital and mentor-focused investment program for web and software start-ups based in Utah.

Based in Orem, Utah at the Canyon Park Technology Center (the original site of WordPerfect Corporation), BoomStartup is a full-time program that will run from May to August and provides each selected company with seed capital (up to $15,000), mentoring from entrepreneurs and technologists, free office space and resources, and education that takes them through the various steps of getting a tech startup off the ground. For its first rounds, the organization will choose eight startups to participate in the program. Applicants for BoomStartup must have a founding team (two or more individuals) and an idea with a focus on web, mobile, software, and non‐hardware tech. Startups can apply here.

BoomStartup was founded by Utah angel investor John Richards who invested in Omniture. BoomStartup is made up of seven other mentors and investors in the fund. Each investor-mentor has contributed $15,000 in the fund. Investors include Omniture co-founders Josh James and John Pestana, Ralph Yarro, Nobu Mutaguchi, Martin Frey, and Rod Watson.

It’s always great to see investors and former tech executives investing time (and money) in promising startups and ideas. And we are seeing a plethora of innovative startups emerging from a variety of incubators around the country and world, including Y Combinator, TechStars, The Founder Institute, Launchbox Digital and more.

Continued Richards: “This group of investor-mentors has a track record of growing successful businesses and creating innovative technologies. Their expertise and vision will be invaluable to the selected companies, and give them the know how to overcome the obstacles they might confront, whether that be on the business or technological side.”

BoomStartup will host a series of “Meet the Investor-Mentor Days” through the April 12, 2010 deadline; the first will be held Friday, March 12, 2010 at 4 p.m. at the Canyon Park Technology Center, Building J (1401 N. Research Way, Orem, Utah). Investors-Mentors will be on hand to talk with prospective applicants about business, technology and discuss strategies for their businesses.

As the cloud is getting more players and interfaces, best and worst practices are emerging. As the market grows and more companies try to plug in, the cloud may benefit from guiding principles.

Similar to new technology movements in the past, a natural process is underway to define "what is good", which, for some in the industry, equates to "what is open". Like religion itself, open can be defined in ways that are uplifting, or on the other side of the coin, restricting. Also, we learn again, nothing is free.

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Cloud APIs Must Walk on Water

If you've been part of a software development project, you know that sometimes it's hard to get the team to all agree on best practices for interface design, database optimization, or even what technology to use. In this analysis, we take a look at some of the movements in cloud computing that start to lay a framework of good as it relates to this technology.

In this context, API designers for cloud applications need to think ahead and avoid common pitfalls. For several reasons, more than ever before. First, because many people will be accessing your one piece of code. Second, is that in this world of open APIs, it's easy to compare your code against another.

We notice that data management practices are at the core, and details matter when provisioning in platforms. At the same time that groups are forming to align practices and forms of virtualization and cloud standards, a voice whispers that perhaps this is a free-market problem. People who benefit at solving it, will; others will ignore it or compete directly. We enjoyed this post from Joyent on where standards matter in a practical sense.

In essence, the question raised: If a vendor makes it easy and bakes in the ability to "just do it", do you know or care about the standards? This seems to mirror an iPhone development paradigm, which is to expect work from the vendor SDK or libraries. The SDK wraps standards implementations, which is done in the way best understood by that vendor.

Do Unto Others as You Would Have Done To You

We know the cloud is big - perhaps it will inevitably be bigger than the Internet itself as it usurps our conception of location, space and time.

Where power forms, rules, groups, and organizations do as well. In information technology there is always tension between open standards and defacto standards. The former are crafted through agreements, the latter through leadership and market dominance.

We asked in a prior series "Will a single company become the dominant provider in the cloud?" Today we look at the more practical side of "who is winning now" - who is setting the rules and who is in the trenches.

Quite a number of the responses to our earlier posts emphasized that "the cloud should be free", meaning that it should have governing principles to avoid one vendor from owning the landscape.

Here are a few groups that have emerged to provide some context in how this may come together, both philosophically and practically. In both, the devil is in the details. A good summary of some of the current combining of forces is by the Open Grid Forum. (In our opinion, grids have given way to clouds as the dominant concept in this technology makeover).

• A resource directory of initiatives is located at the Cloud Standards Wiki, which in itself was formed by a handful of organizations and movements working to align around setting rules and patterns for cloud computing.
• The Open Cloud Consortium is organized around developing practices around sharing resources and has recently focused on a developing a test bed.
• The DMTF is working at the core definition of virtualization. It recently focused on the 1.1 version of the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) specification that focuses on packaging virtualization instances and creating a portable mechanic distribution by defining envelope and collection parameters around the virtual machine and its services. The organization, which contains members of IBM, Microsoft, Dell, VMware, XENSource, Sun, and NEC, has submitted 1.1 for consideration as an ANSI and ISO standard.
• The efforts by the federal government in its data.gov initiative shows that there's a market that's starting to see the value of raw government data formats. Soon, we would expect this to be powered by a mesh of computer resources that allow all sorts of jobs - integrated jobs - to work with these data sets. It would comprising an active government cloud.

Do Not Covet Thy Neighbors Network Resource

When looking for things to avoid, we found a lot of philosophical questions around data ownership, logging and portability. These discussions are alive and well and seem to be being absorbed into vendor solutions and consortiums like the ones mentioned earlier.

For a more practical view, we turned to a friend of ReadWriteWeb, Thorsten von Eicken, and have summarized his thoughts from a recent post, "Top Cloud API Sins. Bold items are our (loose) mapping to biblical terms.

• Do not covet your neighbors resources.: Listing of resources without the details, e.g., a list-servers call that doesn't return all the details for each server. This makes it very expensive to poll for server state changes ...
  
• Do not make cast idols: Not returning a resource id on creation. Some APIs don't give you a server i.d. when you request a server...
  
• Labor six days, rest on the seventh: Providing a task queue. Several APIs I've seen have a task queue that is supposed to provide updates on tasks that are in progress E.g., you launch a server and you get a handle onto a task descriptor. For us that's just overhead...
  
• Though shall not bear false witness: Not returning deleted resources in a "list resource" call. In particular, terminated servers must be returned in a list servers call for a certain duration, probably at least for an hour. Ouch!...
  
• Shall not covet his neighbor (or force me to repaginate): Pagination that goes page-wise instead of using a marker, e.g. where you get page one or the first 100 resources and then issue a query for "page 2″ or "from 100 on". Explain to me how a client can get a consistent resource listing when resources can be added and removed concurrently...
  
• Randy Bias added to Torsten's post: Treat others as you want to be treated Your UI MUST use your API so you understand how to be a consumer of your own API...
  

We plan on keeping up with this list and seeing how it intersects with implementations and standards that evolve. Please let us know your thoughts below.

Nirvana: Smells Like Services Orientation

Torsten goes on to describe a picture of the future. "Now here's what I'd really like to see. This is what we're working on for internal purposes and it's not easy, which is an event based interface instead of a request-reply based interface... " This sounds like a vision where we all win.

Smart services in the cloud, rather than resources alone. This starts to get us closer and closer to an object-orientated network. Maybe that's what the cloud will be for platforms, infrastructure and software. The industry has been quick to identify the layers. But perhaps the point is piecing them together in a smart transactional framework.

A way to engineer highly reliable systems around these architecture challenges may sound familiar to those who monitor existing data centers today.

Torsten continues, "We run a good number of machines that do nothing but chew up 100% cpu polling EC2 to detect changes. Fortunately cpu cycles are cheap :-)".

This is practical intervention between vision and get it done. We find it refreshing to hear this type of dialog in the industry and see a fresh opportunity for defining efficient patterns for this next generation of the cloud infrastructure.

Perhaps a new concept is forming: "Divine Computing". Where do you sit in the "just do it" spectrum?

Photo credit: tsarkasim, Amsterdam Esogna

Discuss

Twitter now lets people see maps of where geotagged tweets were sent from on its website. (They briefly showed this feature yesterday. It’s now turned on permanently.)

The story began last year, when the company enthusiastically launched a location API that let users attach their location to tweets. “Everyone should do this!” co-founder Biz Stone told VentureBeat in an interview.

Startups like Seemic and Tweetdeck were quick to build features around the new data. But it’s taken months for Twitter to finally show geotagged tweets on its own web site.

Starting today, if you see a tiny blue location icon next to the attribution on a tweet, you can hover over it and a map will pop up, showing where the tweet was published from. It’s a nice addition based on the Google Maps API that helps the website catch up to the experience other companies already provide based on Twitter’s data.

But Twitter’s current method of geotagging is far from what Twitter needs to be a real player in location.

First, the new maps feature isn’t turned on for Twitter’s search results. The whole point of location-based search is to be able to find what’s actually happening around you right now. Instead, Twitter tosses a few such tweets into a wash of noise for any search in downtown San Francisco. For example, here’s a search for tweets in VentureBeat’s ZIP code. It makes a pretty demo, but you’ll get a mix of results —  tweets that were actually sent from downtown San Francisco within the last hour, drowned out by tweets from people who claim on their profiles that they’re in downtown San Francisco (even if they’re really on a business trip in New York.)

By contrast, try the ‘Nearby’ feature on Google Buzz’s mobile web site. You’ll get content that’s actually been sent from around you because it’s verified by GPS. Buzz doesn’t have anywhere near as many mobile users as Twitter, but that’s all the more reason that Twitter’s location features should be even better than Google’s.

Furthermore, Twitter needs to make geotagging much more mainstream. Only people who tweet from their phones, and who learn that they can go to their account settings and click the button “Add location information to my Tweets” will have their location attached to their mobile updates. For everyone else, Twitter uses the location set in their account profile for search, which means a lot of noise for curious searchers.

Tags: geolocation, geotagged, location, tweets

Companies: Twitter

During the second half of 2009, internet users signing into web sites using third-party logins preferred Facebook and Google by wide margins, according to user management platform provider JanRain. Google Leads All Third-Party Logins Analyzing the behavior of users performing third-party login to the roughly 173,000 websites using the JanRain RPX turnkey solution, Google is the clearly [...]