Snippets Of Internet Show: March 2011

Take A Deep Breath Google, Facebook Isn’t Doing Search Just Yet

I can imagine this post, titled “Facebook Testing Web Search Box At Top Of Site” was flying around Google’s cubicles today. Probably with a few expletives attached as commentary.

This certainly wouldn’t be unprecedented. They targeted Microsoft years ago with their online Office competitor, and Microsoft fired back with Bing and seems to be quite willing to invest billions of dollars for as long as it takes to grab search share from Google. Now Google is targeting Facebook with their social efforts. There’s no reason at all why Facebook wouldn’t go into search. For us users, it’s all good. Competition brings better products to the market at lower prices. And Google needs more competition in search.

But…phew! The screenshot that All Facebook got is a fake, or the result of third party software messing with a user’s browser (my guess is photoshop is the culprit). So take it down to DEFCON 2, Google, Facebook isn’t launching search just yet.

As an intelligent, tech-savvy reader of TechCrunch, you’re probably pretty good at spotting online scams — from Nigerian Princes to friends “stuck” in London, many of us have trained ourselves to mentally rule out any offer that seems too good to be true, especially when it includes words like “Easy Cash”. But there are still plenty of people who fall prey to online scammers.

Back in December 2009, Google filed suit against a number of scamming rings that were rampantly promoting sites promising “Easy Cash with Google” (of course, they offered nothing of the sort). Now the courts are siding with the search giant, ordering the rings to cease their behavior and to pay Google $1.6 million.

Motista an on-demand consumer intelligence solution for marketers, has raised $4.5 million in series A financing led by El Dorado Ventures. El Dorado Partner Tom Peterson will be joining Motista’s board of directors. Motista is not disclosing its total funding numbers, but the company was originally backed by founders Scott Magids and Alan Zorfas and several angel investors, who collectively invested several million dollars, according to Marketing Director Paula Cavagnaro.

Motista also announced that it will be bringing its headquarters to Silicon Valley, relocating operations from Maryland to San Mateo, CA.

Founded in 2007, Motista aims to develop consumer data and connection metrics in an effort to provide marketers with more intelligent ways to help brands reach their customers. Which is basically another way of saying that the startup surveys and collects data on consumer habits, allowing your business to learn more about what kind of products your customers are buying and why — as well as how to better target them.

Finally.

For quite some time now, Android developers have been waiting for the arrival of an in-app payment and billing system. Originally, Google said this was coming last year, but it was delayed by Christmas — or something. A few weeks later, Google showed off how it would work, but noted that it wouldn’t be available until this spring. Well, it’s finally just about here.

As is noted on the Android Developers blog today, Google has just opened up testing of the In-App Billing system. Writes Google:

Last July, after months of rumors and leaked screenshots, Facebook launched a Q&A product called Questions. At the time, I said it had the potential to be “massive”: with 500 million (now 600 million) users, the site had the chance to take on Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers, which can be a huge source of traffic. And it was also directly taking on Quora, the buzzed-about startup that has a contentious relationship with Facebook, in part because it was founded by former Facebook CTO Adam D’Angelo and engineer/manager Charlie Cheever.

But Questions never took off. Facebook has limited access to the product to a small percentage of users, and over the last few months we’ve gotten several tips that the product wasn’t really getting traction. Today comes news that seems to confirm those rumors: Facebook has just announced a revamped version of Questions that has very little in common with the original product. And it’s no longer any threat to Quora.

Yuri Milner, founder of Moscow-based venture firm DST, has purchased quite a home in Silicon Valley, say multiple sources. The 25,000 square foot home, built just a few years ago, sits on a tidy 11 acres. The price? $70 million.

For personal reasons we aren’t going to print the address. But we’ve heard that Milner isn’t there much anyway and has no immediate plans to move to the U.S.

It seems like just yesterday that I was writing about Chrome 11′s awesome new ability to let you speak to the browser by way of HTML5. In fact, it was just yesterday. But that hasn’t stopped a team from coming up with a Chrome extension to get it to work in search boxes across the web.

Speechify is an extension that Dugley Labs churned out in record speed yesterday. With it, many of the search boxes you visit on the web gain the little microphone icon that when clicked, allows you to speak your search. It works on Google, Bing, YouTube, Hulu — a ton of sites. And it works well.

Google TV Product Lead Brittany Bohnet has just announced that she’s leaving Google after four years to try her luck as an entrepreneur, presumably as a co-founder of an as of yet un-named startup.

At Google Bohnet was a Product Marketing Manager who worked on products like Maps, Earth and iGoogle, but most recently Google TV. Before Google Bohnet worked in PR at Apple as well as Marketing at Tiny Pictures. Bohnet has also been a founder before, being the CEO of Median Media which was a PR consulting company for Silicon Valley startups.

$41 million. From Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital, and Silicon Valley Bank. Pre-launch.

That’s how much a brand new startup called Color has to work with. Your eyebrows should already be raised, and here’s something to keep them fixed there: this is the most money Sequoia has ever invested in a pre-launch startup. Or, as the Color team put it, “That’s more than they gave Google.”

But the founding team goes a long way toward explaining it. Headed by Bill Nguyen — who sold Lala to Apple in late 2009 — the company has attracted a wealth of talent. It has seven founders including Nguyen and company president Peter Pham, who previously founded BillShrink. And its chief of product is DJ Patil, who was previously LinkedIn’s chief scientist.

So what exactly is Color?

YouTube Now Helps You Make Movies…Without A Camera

By now you’re undoubtedly familiar with the incredible amount of footage that’s uploaded to YouTube — the current count is 35 hours of video uploaded every minute. And with video cameras integrated into smartphones, tablets, and computers these days (not to mention dedicated video cameras) it’s easier than ever to record that content. Unfortunately, there are still plenty of people who simply don’t have access to recording equipment. Today, YouTube is looking to do something about that.

The site has just launched a new portal at YouTube.com/create where you can design your own video clips using GoAnimate, Stupeflix, or Xtranormal, each of which lets you ‘build’ custom videos featuring virtual avatars, custom speech, and more.

The search wars have officially arrived! That’s right folks, Google’s ongoing quest to make its search results more impervious to spammers has become an infographic, which basically is a badge of honor for any tech bitchmeme.

Closet and not so closet SEO nerds can follow the above flowchart tracing Google’s storied path, from getting rejected by Excite@Home in favor of current Demand Media honcho’s iMail through the chutes and ladders of its algorithmic spam chase to the company’s most recent attempts to quell the rising influence of content farms like um, Demand Media.

Poll Pigeon is a web site where polls can be taken or created and shared. It needs a sign up with an email id or can be connected through Twitter or Facebook. This gives the access to take a poll or create a poll and share it.

After signing up, go to create a poll tabs and create a poll. There is a question bar to add the question. There is an option of uploading an image. The options can range from two to twenty. To add more options there is an add answer icon. Finally there is a choice of language and category, under addition information to promote your poll. My created poll tab has the polls you have created.

There are categories under which the polls are placed. While creating polls, there is an option of what category the poll might possibly belong. These categories include celebs, Disney, fashion, politics, sports, technology and random (those which do not belong to any particular category).

To vote on these polls, click on the tab that interests you the most and pick a poll and vote. There are ‘pigeon points’ to bid for your poll to be promoted to 235,000 followers. It gives 1 Pigeon Point for every poll you take (max 200 per day) and 1 Pigeon Point for every person that takes one of your polls (max 200 per day). These pigeon points can be bought through Paypal or credit card. Poll Pigeon is fun to spend sometime taking and making polls.

Drunk On Licensing Fees And Patents, Microsoft Has Become A Joke

Earlier today, it was revealed that Microsoft was suing yet another company for infringing on their patents. The target this time? Barnes & Noble. Yes, Microsoft is suing a book chain. Why? Because they claim the Nook e-reader (which runs Google’s Android OS) copies status bars from Windows CE. Or something. If you’ll excuse my bluntness, it’s all a bunch of bullshit.

Devin has a good overview on CrunchGear of what the patents in question actually are. The whole thing is laughable. And everyone knows that except one party: Microsoft. The company has become completely drunk on their patents and subsequent lame lawsuits. And as a result, they’re quickly losing the hearts and minds of just about everyone that doesn’t work in Redmond.

Ever since Xobni launched at the first TechCrunch 40, it’s been about Outlook and then Blackberry. But those of us who use Gmail also want to make our inboxes smarter. Today, Xobni is launching aprivate beta for Gmail, and will soon also launch iPhone and Android apps. The first 100 readers to sign up for the Gmail beta will get in (use the code XOBNI-TC100).

The Gmail app comes in the form of a browser extension for either Chrome or Firefox (Safari and IE will come later). Once you install it, a Xobni sidebar appears in your Gmail Inbox. Once you allow it to index your contacts and hook it up to your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts, it starts to show you all sorts of relationship data. Contact search in the Xobni box is hella fast, much faster than searching in the Gmail search box (but only for contacts, it does not index the entire text of your messages).

Heyzap, a monetization and distribution platform for online casual games, announced today that it’s going mobile. Launching a social discovery application for mobile games on Android, the startup will be bringing the 1.6 million users it has already accumulated on its social gaming platform over to mobile.
The company aims to build on its foray into social gaming last year, when it announced a partnership with fifteen social game developers, like Aeria Games, Game Duell, and TheBroth, to name a few. Using Facebook connect, the partnership made the developers’ games available on the 450,000 sites across the Web that had already integrated HeyZap’s platform. Social networking sites and tools Ning and myYearbook are among the sites that host Heyzap games.

The evidence is mounting that Android phones are surging past the iPhone in terms of subscribers and now mobile ad impressions, at least in the U.S. A new report put out this morning by mobile ad network InMobi shows that mobile ad impressions on Android devices eclipsed Apple’s iOS devices in January, representing 37 percent of all U.S. mobile ad impressions on its network versus 23 percent for the iPhone.

Android’s share jumped a full 21 percentage points since InMobi’s last report in October, 2010. (Android actually passed the iPhone for the first time in December). The iPhone’s overall share of mobile ad impressions actually dropped 1.3 percent.

“These are post-PC devices, that need to be even easier to use than a PC.”

That was Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ closing remark as he left the stage having just announced the iPad 2 at an event today in San Francisco. And that comment really summed up the vibe of the entire event. When Jobs was on stage, he made it very clear over and over again that the iPad competition out there just doesn’t seem to get it.

And the iPad 2 is really a bet directly related to that. Apple kicked things off by noting that the iPad 2 was about much more than “marginal improvements”, but the reality is that this is what many people writing about the event will see when they look at the iPad 2. And part of that is Apple’s fault: they go out of their way not give much in terms of specs.

Google was originally set to debut in-app payments support for Android in the fourth quarter of 2010, and recently said that the launch would be delayed until the end of this quarter. Be that as it may, the company is set to launch another much-anticipated (at least by many app developers or publishers) Web-based in-app transactions product in May 2011. (see updates below)

Jambool, the company behind a virtual monetization platform dubbed ‘Social Gold’ that was acquired by Google last August, this morning started sending the following email to users:

(After the jump) Read More

In Two Years, Most Of You Will Be Reading TechCrunch From An Apple Device

In February of 2007, 83.24 percent of users visiting TechCrunch did so from a Windows machine. One year later, in February 2008, the stranglehold remained firm at 80.44 percent. In February 2009, the number was at 74.04 percent. Last year, it was 61.59 percent. And this year? The number of people visiting our site from Windows machines dipped to 53.84 percent.

The writing is on the wall.

Look at those numbers again for a second. In four years, Windows share among TechCrunch readers has fallen 30 percentage points. That’s incredible.

Earlier this month Google launched the web version of Android Market, which lets you purchase applications from your web browser and have them beamed directly to your phone or tablet (it’s very slick). Now, Google has some good news for you bibliophiles out there: The Xoom’s Android Market application includes Google Books, and now the web version does too. You can find it right here.

Buying a book on Android Market works just the same as buying an app — you click on the price (or the ‘free’ label), choose a method of payment, and your new book will show up the next time you fire up the Books application on your Android device.

Today brings two different news items from two huge companies both related to the same thing: check-ins. This morning, All Facebook found an area of Facebook’s site pointing to the ability to check-in to events. And just now, Google has pushed an update to their Latitude iPhone app to allow users to check-in for the first time also. Is a new check-in war brewing?

Well, yes and no.

Neither of these updates today by themselves are huge — just yet. Facebook has had the ability to check-in via their Places service for several months now (though the feature is still rolling out worldwide). Google, meanwhile, added check-ins to Latitude on Android this past February (and noted that it would be coming for the iPhone too). But both of the subtle updates today point to big things.

The Onion: Facebook “Is Truly A Dream Come True For The CIA” (Video)

You did know that Facebook is a ‘massive online surveillance program run by the CIA,” right? And that Mark Zuckerberg is a CIA agent codenamed the Overlord? Just watch the Onion video above. It explains the whole thing.

I especially like the Congressional “testimony” from the deputy CIA director:

After years of secretly monitoring the public, we were astounded so many people would willingly publicize where they live, their religious and political views, an alphabetized list of all their friends, personal emails addresses, phone numbers, hundreds of photos of themselves, and even status updates about what they were doing moment to moment. It is truly a dream come true for the CIA.

Confirmed: Facebook Acquires Snaptu (For An Estimated $60 – $70 Million)

According to several Israeli business newspapers (TheMarker, Calcalist) Facebook has acquired Snaptu for an estimated $60 – $70 million, although some reports peg the price lower, at around $40 million.

Update: a Snaptu executive has confirmed the acquisition to our friend Orli Yakuel, but declined to discuss the purchase price or other terms of the deal.

Update 2: and the confirmation is up on Snaptu’s blog. The acquisition is apparently expected to close within a few weeks.

As Facebook Eyes Online Deals Space, Groupon Plots Facebook Ad Blitz

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Facebook is looking to shake up the social ecommerce industry with yesterday’s expansion of Deals, its location-aware rewards program. The company is expected to turn Deals into a serious rival to online coupon, collective purchasing and location-based daily deal sites like Groupon and LivingSocial.

We’ve learned that Groupon, in turn, has tapped a startup called AdParlor to exclusively manage their advertising spend on Facebook. The group buying site will let AdParlor run “tens of thousands of ad variations” on the wildly popular social networking service.

New Facebook Valuation Record As Shares Surge 5% To $31.50

A little over $8 million changed hands in this week’s SecondMarket Facebook shares auction. And the price surged $1.50 per share, or about 5%, over last week’s record price of $30/share. 257,422 shares were bought and sold.

That values Facebook, with roughly 2.5 billion shares outstanding, at $78.75 billion. Or, 17 Twitters and change.

The confidential (lol) email and part of the attached report is below, and we’ll soon be updating our Facebook valuation chart.

Intel Buys Egypt-Based SySDSoft To Boost Its 4G LTE Efforts

Intel, through stand-alone subsidiary Intel Mobile Communications, today announced that it has acquired most of the assets of SySDSoft, a Cairo, Egypt-based software company to accelerate its 4G LTE efforts.

The privately-held company develops embedded wireless systems. Intel says it will hire roughly 100 of SySDSoft’s electrical engineers and computer scientists.

Tier 3 Lands $8.5 Million For Its ‘Enterprise Platform As A Service’

Tier 3, which bills itself as an enterprise platform-as-a-service (PaaS) company, today announced that it has scored $8.5 million in Series A funding from Ignition and Madrona Venture Group. John Connors from Ignition and Matt McIlwain from Madrona will join the company’s board of directors.

Founded in 2006, Tier 3 provides infrastructure services for nearly 100 customers across consulting, e-commerce, SaaS and e-discovery industries, serving customers such as Exterro and Microsoft.

Imation Acquires Encryption And Security Solutions Company ENCRYPTX

Imation, a global developer and marketer of branded products that enable people to store and protect digital information, has acquired ENCRYPTX Corporation, which provides encryption and security solutions for removable storage devices and storage media.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but approximately 10 employees will transfer from ENCRYPTX to Imation.

Big Pay Day For Big Data. Teradata Buys Aster Data For $263 Million

In the old days, big data used to be called data warehousing. But that was when corporations stored all their own data on their own servers. Today, it’s just called big data and it generally refers to the vast reaches of data in the cloud. Old big data is buying new big data today, as data warehousing powerhouse Teradata just announced it will be acquiring Aster Data Systems for $263 million.

Teradat already owns an 11 percent stake in Aster Data, which it bought last September. The $263 million, which is “net of debt and other expenses,” will purchase the remaining 89 percent, giving Aster Data a final valuation of $295 million. ASter Data has raised $53 million from Sequoia, First Round Capital, and IVP. Ron Conway, David Cheriton, and Anand Rajaraman were angel investors.

D2 Technologies Buys Android TV Box Maker Webia

D2 Technologies, which markets embedded IP communications software platforms, has acquired Webia Technologies through an all-stock transaction. Headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan, with development centers in Taiwan and Shanghai, China, Webia was one of the first software vendors to introduce set-top box media player platforms based on Google’s Android OS.

Webia recently unveiled what it claims is the world’s first Android TV solution at Broadband Taiwan 2010.

Motorola Acquires IPTV Software Company Dreampark

Motorola Mobility has acquired Dreampark, a Swedish IPTV software provider. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Motorola says it expects the acquisition to close in the second quarter.

Dreampark is the company behind Dreamgallery, a software suite for operators aiming at providing services over TV networks.

Sprint To Launch Anti-Texting-While-Driving Service For Android

Back in January, T-Mobile launched DriveSmart, an Android app which automatically disables the ability to text whenever it detects that you’re driving (or, really, just moving at a certain speed. If you’re just bein’ a passenger, you can override it — but make sure you’re really just a passenger. It sends a text to your ‘rents [or whoever set it up] letting them know its been overridden).

That launch, it seems, has started a trend.

T-Mobile Makes G2x Official, Announces 42Mbps 4G In NY, Orlando, Vegas

T-Mobile kicked off CTIA with a few announcements today, first confirming the G2x, a rebranded Optimus 2X with the specs we heard about way back in December. You can check out our hands-on with the LG original here, but of course the new device will be slightly more T-Mobileish. It’s running 2.2, no word on 2.3.

They’re leaning on 4G pretty hard. More devices and news inside.

AT&T Gets Two New Toys: The HTC HD7S and the LG Thrill 4G

Man! Here I am sitting in the airport on the way to CTIA, and the news is already breakin’. Lookin’ to get in before any noise that the show might generate and possibly ride the tide of their absolutely monstrous merger with T-Mobile, AT&T has just announced that they’re picking up two new toys: the Windows Phone 7 powered HD7S, and the Android-powered, glasses-free 3D-enabled LG Thrill 4G.

Hop behind the ol’ jump for all the deets*.

In The Race For More Spectrum, AT&T Is Acquiring T-Mobile For $39 Billion

As anyone who has read a tech blog in the past few years will know, AT&T has been under attack for not being able to match the network capacity of larger rival Verizon. And when they won the majority of the bids for the open spectrum in 2008, Verizon also had a clear path to the future. Now AT&T is taking another path: buying T-Mobile.

Here’s the release with the details of the deal. AT&T will pay roughly $39 billion to Deutsche Telekom for T-Mobile USA. Deutsche Telekom will also get a roughly 8 percent ownership stake in AT&T as a result of the deal. And a Deutsche Telekom executive will join AT&T’s Board.

Speed Test: HTC Thunderbolt vs. iPhone 4

Third-party wireless retailer Wirefly (who has been all about the HTC Thunderbolt for the past few days) has just shared the video up above, which seeks to answer question that’s on just about every geek’s mind (or, at least, that I’m going to say is on every geek’s mind for the sake of this post): just how much faster is the data speed of the 4G-powered HTC Thunderbolt compared to the 3G-powered Verizon iPhone?

Turns out (in this test at least), it’s about twice as fast on the download count, and about six times faster on the upload. That’ll do, Thunderbolt. That’ll do.

Sprint Announces the HTC EVO 3D; Dual-Core 1.2 Ghz CPU and 4.3″ Glasses-free 3D display

Oy vey. Love it or hate it, glasses-free 3D is here to stay.

Just yesterday, AT&T announced that they’d be snatching up LG’s Optimus 3D and bringin’ it stateside as the “Thrill 4G” — and today at CTIA, Sprint’s following up with the announcement of the second 3D smartphone in the US, the EVO 3D.

Even if 3D isn’t your thing, though, the specs on this thing definitely make it worth lookin’ at. Follow us behind the jump for the details.

Sprint Brings The HTC Flyer Tablet Stateside As The EVO View 4G

Remember the HTC Flyer, that 7″ tablet that HTC debuted at Mobile World Congress last month? Have you been hopin’ and prayin’ that it would come stateside? Well, friend your wildest dreams have just come true.

We’re at Sprint’s press conference, where ol’ yeller has just announced that they’re bringing the Flyer stateside as the EVO View 4G. If you want a tablet, but don’t want an iPad or a Xoom, and don’t mind running Android 2.2 rather than 3.0 for the next few weeks — that’s getting pretty niche, isn’t it? — this is the tablet for you.

Sprint To Fight The AT&T and T-Mobile Merger

Want to know something crazy? If you put AT&T and T-Mobile together — as would happen if AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mo goes through as planned — the new, shiny, two-headed super-carrier that emerges would account for 42% (130 million) of the US’ wireless market share. Nearly half of the country’s wireless subscribers, all under the same subscriber. With Verizon in second, the top two carriers in the US would account for 79% of the market share. That’s nuts.

So nuts, in fact, that Sprint plans on trying to fight it. According to Bloomberg, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse has expressed his intensions to file a complaint to Congress. Why? It’ll “stifle innovation”.

The fact that it would more or less permanently cap Sprint in their current third place spot probably doesn’t help, either.

Samsung Galaxy Tabs 8.9 and 10.1 Are Official

Samsung just announced their two new Galaxy Tabs, the 8.9 and the 10.1. Both are just 8.6 millimeters thick and support 4G and WiFi. Click through to watch the live video launch of these two Honeycomb tablets (with TouchWiz on top).

The new tablets have “HD displays” and Samsung is moving into more services like something called ReadersHub, an ebook solution for the Gal Tabs, and MusicHub, a music solution. It has 3 megapixel rear camera and a 2 megapixel and supports Adobe Flash 10.2.

Both have WXGA 1280×800 pixel displays (compared to the iPad 2s 1024 x 768 display). The GalTab 10.1 is available in 16GB and 32GB for $499 and $599, respectively. The 8.9 will cost 16GB for $469 and 32GB is $569, both in Wi-Fi. The 10.1 is available June 8 while the 8.9 will be available in early summer. It looks like the Xoom has a competitor.

Chumby 8 On Sale Tomorrow For $199, Ships April 5

Everyone’s favorite extra screen/robot/app platform, Chumby, is back for another round. They showed off their new model at CES (where we interviewed them) but there was no sign of pricing or availability. No longer! The Chumby 8 (named for its 8-inch screen) will ship on April 5th, and you can pre-order starting tomorrow (the 23rd) for $199. Good deal? You be the judge.

Actually A Good Idea: Toothbrush With Built-In Toothpaste

Tired of keeping around a tiny toothbrush for travel, or leaving nice ones at the hotel by accident? Don’t like to have to keep little 3-oz toothpaste tubes in a drawer in the bathroom? This thing might be fore you. Now, I do like this concept, though there are a few issues that come to mind.

How To Make A Pseudo-Antique Light Bulb Organ Controlled By A Midi Keyboard

Musical acts can always do better if they have some sort of gimmick. The band Future Dancing is using a nostalgic-looking light organ as theirs. There is an Instructable on the neat light organ showing off the organ’s 12 bulbs that correspond to 12 notes in the octave (minus the octave note). The lights are positioned where the pipes on a pipe organ would be and the bulbs light up whenever a key is pressed on the MIDI keyboard. Also, the sustain pedal is recognized and can hold the light accordingly.

In The Cards: Why Amazon Has To Make An Android Device Now

When I first heard that Amazon was going to be making an app store for Android (we broke the news in September of last year), I laughed. Just what Android needs, another app store, I thought. Further, I didn’t see what Amazon could bring to the table with such a store that Google themselves couldn’t. That was stupid. I was wrong.

Now that Amazon’s Android Appstore is out there in the wild, and I’ve had a chance to play with it, I see the brilliance of the maneuver. In many ways, Amazon just came out of nowhere and beat Google at their own game — on their own devices. At the same time, some of the processes involved in Amazon’s Appstore are laughable. And they point to a very obvious fact: Amazon needs to build their own Android devices. Pronto.

Google Plays To Its Strengths, Succeeds Brilliantly, With Lady Gaga Interview

As the battle for Silicon Valley engineering talent intensifies, it seems as if hot tech companies like Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter have launched some sort of ridiculous competition as to who could can score the biggest Hollywood talent for an onsite appearance, in order to wow current and future employees.

Between Ashton Kutcher and Chamillionaire at Y Combinator launches and conferences, Silicon Valley isn’t lacking in star sitings. But if we’re keeping a tally, the most recent celebrity visits making waves were Snoop Dog at Twitter and Katy Perry at Facebook, both of which seemed like a stretch when considering either company’s goals.

Digital Textbook Startup Inkling Nabs ‘Multi-Million Dollar’ Investment From McGraw-Hill And Pearson

Inkling, a startup that develops an innovative digital textbook platform, has scored a ‘multi-million dollar investment from educational content giants McGraw-Hill and Pearson. Current investors Sequoia Capital, Felicis Ventures, Kapor Capital, and Sherpalo Ventures also participated in the financing. The company, which previously raised an undisclosed Series A round of funding in August 2010, declined to reveal the exact amount of funding raised in this round.

Inkling’s technology delivers interactive textbooks that include the ability to collaborate, add multimedia and communicate within content. The startup adds another layer to online textbooks by adding 3-D objects, video, quizzes, and even social interaction within the content. Inkling’s sync technology lets students collaborate in real time by sharing their notes and highlights with one another. And students can see comments from their friends and professors right alongside their own notes.

On Firefox 4 Day, Chrome 11 Hits Beta With The Ability To Talk To Your Computer!

As you’re aware by now, earlier today Mozilla officially unveiled Firefox 4 to the world. At first glance, it’s a great update with massive speed improvements. And that’s good, because that’s exactly what they need to combat the fast-rising Chrome browser from Google. But Google isn’t sitting still either.

This afternoon, Google pushed Chrome 11 into beta. On the surface, users might see this as little more than the version which brings the new Chrome icon. But underneath, there are a couple awesome new things going on as well.

Netflix Shares Soar, Site Goes Down

It’s not a great day for the Internet, folks. Web services seem to be dropping like flies. For several hours today, WordPress.com’s back-end was nowhere to be found, causing several TechCrunch writers to consider writing on legal pads and posting on Craigslist. Some even considered posting on HuffPo. Don’t worry, they’ve been fired.

On top of this, and much to the chagrin of the video-on-demand watching public, Netflix went down for what seemed like a century. I subscribe to Netflix Instant, and as you can see from the message above, I was not allowed to watch my “programs” this evening when I wanted to. Not cool, Netflix. Not cool.

Some Quick Unpaywalled Thoughts On Writing Behind A Paywall

Unless you’ve been living behind a paywall for the past few weeks, you’ll know that there are big changes afoot at the online edition of the New York Times.

Starting March 28th, American visitors to NYTimes.com will only be able to access 20 stories a month, unless they’re willing to plunk down between $15-$35 every four weeks for unlimited access.

Gallons of digital ink, mixed with no small number of tears, have been spilled over the news: whether it will result in greater or lesser profits for the Times, whether other publications are likely to follow suit, and whether any of that matters when paywalls are so easy to circumvent.

I, on the other hand, have found it hard to care. Another grand publishing experiment: it’ll work, it won’t work – it’s really too early tell.

And then came an email from the Times. Suddenly I cared.

MetaLab Launches Flow, A Beautiful Tool For Task Management

You may not be familiar with MetaLab, but you’ve definitely come across their work: they designed sites for Qik, Sugar, Texts From Last Night, and the ubiquitous Tumblr theme ‘Fluid’, among other things. And today they’re launching a new app of their own: Flow a new simple tool for managing and delegating tasks.

The first thing you’ll notice is that the app is beautiful (and I don’t throw that word around lightly). This isn’t a huge surprise given MetaLab’s background, but the web app looks and feels a lot like something you’d expect from a polished native iPad application (in addition to the web app, there’s also a native iPhone app available right here).

Google Joins The Patent Madness With “Methods For Enticing Users To Access A Web Site”

I guess the USPTO felt they were leaving Google out of the game, what with Apple suing over the phrase “App Store,” Microsoft suing for showing the status of a download, and Paul Allen suing for everything else. So they went ahead and granted Google’s request to patent the Google Doodle.

Yes, that’s right: among other things, they are claiming the method of creating a special logo and then providing special results if you click that logo. In their defense, the patent was filed for in 2001. Of course, that’s not much of a defense.

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