Zoho’s suite of productivity apps is undoubtedly comprehensive, with over 20 different products available to users. Apps include Zoho Mail, CRM, Projects, Planner, Meeting, and more. But a calendering app is an important layer that can sit on top of and unify all these applications. Zoho Calendar, which was launched into beta last year, is existing beta today with a host of new features and functionality.

One of the primary additions to Zoho Calendar is the ability to now privately share your calendars with other users with a Zoho account. You can share your calendar in a read-only mode so that users can view only Free/Busy times or all of your events and meetings. Read-write mode allows other users to edit your existing events or event create and edit events on your calendar. Similar to Google Calendar, you share your calendar with other users by adding their email address to the account and then setting preferences.

While Zoho Calendar allows you to import events by file or URL, you can now also “subscribe” to another calendar, which will update your calendar regularly. You can subscribe to 'internal' calendars (calendars from Zoho applications) or subscribe to any other calendar in ICAL format by providing the URL, which will update your events a couple of times a day. You can also subscribe to your friends' public calendars using their email addresses.

If you want to make your calendar completely public, Zoho is now allowing you to embed your calendar on an external site. Other new features include an event based view (vs. calendar/date view), the ability to clear a calendar and more.

Of course, Zoho Calendar faces formidable competition from Google Calendar, as well as Microsoft Outlook and iCal. But for Zoho’s 2 million plus users, a unified calendering application across all of the suite’s applications will certainly see heavy use.

This year, Zoho has added a number of updates to its applications, including an upgrade to Zoho Wiki, unified search across applications, integration with Facebook Connect and the addition of an app in the newly launched Google App Marketplace.

This type of growth is impressive from a startup that competes with tech giants like Google and Microsoft and has never received outside funding. So is there any possibility of an exit through an acquisition? Zoho’s Raju Vegesna tells me that the startup has no intention of selling right now.

A lot of venture money is chasing social commerce startups right now because group buying sites are chasing a lot of money (in the form of consumer spending). Groupon kicked things off with its $135 million mega-round last April. LivingSocial has raised $49 million so far. And now BuyWithMe just closed a $16 million B round led by Bain Capital Ventures, bringing its total raised to $21.5 million. Matrix Partners also invested.

“This reminds me a lot what online travel looked like in 2000 with so many players,” CEO Cheryl Rosner tells me. “It is a large opportunity, and the market is organizing.” There are literally dozens of daily deal sites in the U.S. alone, and it is a city-by-city fight for mindshare with consumers and local merchants. Rosner, who was just recruited as CEO in April from TicketsNow (where she was CEO after stints at Expedia and Hotels.com), plans to use the cash to expand to 20 cities by year end from five today—Boston, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego, and Washington, D.C.

BuyWithMe offers daily discounts on products and services from local merchants such as pilates classes, massages, and restaurants. The main target market is urban females, but some deals have universal appeal. For instance, right now in New York City, which is suffering under a brutal heat wave, the deal is ten small ice cream cones at Tasti D-Lite for $21. As with Groupon, deals only become active once a minimum threshold of consumers agree to purchase the item or service, but each deal lasts for a week (versus the 24-hour time-limit on Groupon).

As with any sale, putting a time limit on the deals gives potential buyers a greater sense of urgency. But the real key to the growth of these social commerce sites is the social aspect. Deals are shared through email, Facebook, and Twitter. “Great deals create great viral brushfires,” says Rosner. “If you have the right opportunity and right value people will share it with their friends.” The phenomenon is very different from one-by-one coupons or even more traditional group buying clubs of the past. “The social aspect of the Web over the last couple of years created this great tipping point for value shopping, and for savvy shoppers to be exposed to great deals,” explains Rosner.

The average deal price on BuyWithMe is around $30 to 35, which is up from the mid-$20 range just a couple months ago. Even after the discount, which is typically 50 to 70 percent off, the local merchant splits the 35 to 50 percent of the remaining revenue with BuyWithMe. While that doesn’t sound like a great deal for the merchants, most of these deals are for excess, unsold, perishable inventory such as classes, restaurant reservations, or other services. It is really more of a marketing opportunity for local businesses to get exposed to new customers and get people to come into their shops who otherwise wouldn’t think of it.

“It is an extremely profitable business model,” notes Rosner. She is plowing all her cash back into the business right now, however. BuyWithMe was founded only a year ago in May, 2009, and already employs 52 people. A BuyWithMe sales rep personally visits each merchant that runs a deal (building a local marketing business, even one online, requires a lot of legwork).

But can BuyWithMe hope to compete with Groupon, which is already offering daily deals in 150 cities in 18 countries (75 cities in the U.S.), employs more than 300 people, and has raised a lot more cash? Social commerce may very well turn out to be a winner-take-most market because of the network effects at play. The more active buyers there are in each city, the faster deals spread virally through social networks and sell out faster, thus attracting more merchants and better deals.

It is still early days, though, and the potential market is huge. Is there room for 100 daily deal sites? Probably not. But there is room for at least four or five to carve out decent-sized businesses, even if Groupon ends up taking the lion’s share of the market. The land grab is on, and BuyWithMe is in the race.

<img src=”http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/solarimpulse1.png”/>A solar-powered airplane, named the Solar Impulse, means to prove, once and for all, that harnessing the energy of the Sun is a good and practical idea. I mean, why would we try to capture some of the energy put out by a completely free nuclear reactor hanging in the sky? The plane took off from Switzerland a little bit ago, and will try to fly for 24 hours without stopping. Here’s hoping it’s a great success.

ThredUP, an online exchange for children’s clothes, has raised $1.4 million led by Trinity Ventures with Founder Collective, High Line Ventures and NextView Ventures participating. This brings the startup’s total funding to $1.7 million.

ThredUP aims to bring affordability and convenience to the children’s clothing market, which is estimated to be valued as a $1 billion space. The platform allows parents to exchange boxes of outgrown kids clothing and shoes for new items that fit. Since launching a few months ago, thredUP has accumulated 12,000 members and saved families an estimated $195,000 in children's clothing. The startup’s co-founder James Reinhart tells me that ThredUP is adding 1,000 new members per week.

The new funding will be used to build out the startup’s engineering team, to further product development and to acquire customers. And Reinhart says that ThredUP is expecting increased transactions on its platform in preparation for the Back to School season and Halloween. ThredUP will be holding its first costume swap on halloween.

The startup has a solid idea. Many parents end up donating old kids clothes to charity (which is a worthy cause) but ThredUP gives families an alternative to this and at the same time save families money on further spending.

A couple of months ago, Russian gadget blogger Eldar Murtazin posted a review of a new Nokia phone, the N8 – the first to feature the Symbian^3 platform – before it was officially announced. This thing happens all the time, but there’s much more to this story.

A day after the review, Nokia posted a message on its blog titled ‘One of our children is missing’, positing that Murtazin somehow got his hands on a very early, pre-production prototype with dated software that was far from ready. The company also added that it was “determined to protect its intellectual property”.

Nokia is now making good on that promise.

In a blog post published moments ago, the Finnish mobile juggernaut explains that it had formally requested Murtazin the return of “all unauthorized Nokia property”, which he apparently didn’t respond to.

As a result, Nokia says it has now contacted Russian authorities to assist the company in the return of the goods.

For what it’s worth, from what I can gather from Murtazin’s blog posts on the matter (in Russian), he has tried to contact Nokia over the past few weeks to no avail. He also claims the whole ordeal is now doing damage to his reputation.

Going back to Nokia’s statement, the company claims its move is unrelated to Murtazin’s recent criticism directed at the company and its products, and that it has no intention to have his blog Mobile-review.com shut down.

But the company does seem keen on exploring legal actions against Murtazin, as well as casting more doubts over his objectiveness with regards to the mobile industry he covers:

To be perfectly clear, we are defending our intellectual property by asking for the return of all unauthorised property in Mr. Murtazin's possession.

This is not about attacking bloggers or people who give critical reviews of our products. So as we don't confuse the issue, while this individual does operate a blog, he is also very public about being a 'consultant' to other international mobile manufacturers. He has confirmed he is in possession of unauthorised Nokia prototypes and other intellectual property, and we have asked for their return. Whether Mr. Murtazin's actions were as a blogger, or whether he is acting in the capacity of a consultant in order to provide information to his clients is an open question.

We're not able to comment on what would or would not happen if the unauthorised property were returned. It would be inappropriate to speculate on future actions at this stage. However, you can be sure that we are prepared to take all appropriate and legal measures to protect our intellectual property. We believe every individual or organization has the right to protect itself.

Nokia says it will let the Russian authorities determine what the most appropriate course of action is going forward.

Update: Murtazin shares his side of the story, claiming Nokia is trying to make him look like a blogger and not the professional journalist he really is, in an email. He also explains that the story we linked to at the beginning wasn’t an N8 review per se, but rather a weekly column piece called birulki64is.

Murtazin says he has never received any letters from Nokia, and that the company is thus lying. He also reiterates that he’s been trying to reach Nokia’s PR team, but hasn’t heard back from them for months.

To be continued, no doubt.

Internet security company Webroot today announced it has acquired BrightCloud, a Web content classification and security services provider. Webroot aims to integrate BrightCloud's technology with its own proprietary malware detection and security-as-a-service (SaaS) technologies. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but the BrightCloud team will join Webroot's Cloud Engineering team with an expanded focus on hosted security services.

There has been a lot of talk the last couple of days with Apple’s stance on the gigantic Chinese market. The Lenovo’s chief and founder stated “We are lucky that Steve Jobs has such a bad temper and doesn't care about China. If Apple were to spend the same effort on the Chinese consumer as we do, we would be in trouble.” Well, good sir, your troubles might soon begin.

Apple plans on opening three stores in Shanghai and is considering more locations in other first and second-tier Chinese cities as well. The first Chinese Apple Store opened in 2008 in Sanlitun, Beijing but these new locations mark a strategy shift for Apple. In fact, The Oriental Morning Post stated this morning that Apple plans on having as many Chinese retail outlets as Louis Vuitton – that’s over two dozen.

We’ve had our fair share of outages around here, but we’re not nearly as big as the Gawker blogging empire is, so it’s worth noting that every site in the Gawker Media blog network is currently down and out.

From Gizmodo to Gawker.com, Kotaku, Jezebel and Lifehacker, every visitor to the sites operated by the new media company is being served a dry message that reads ‘Http/1.1 Service Unavailable’.

I’ve been checking out some of the Twitter feeds of said blogs, as well as that of founder Nick Denton (whose personal blog is also down), but it appears they’re either not yet aware of the issue – rather unlikely – or too busy getting things back up again to let their respective audiences know what’s up (or down, rather).

Update: and they’re all back – Gawker tech is holding the servers differently now :)

I’m not sure just how big Gawker Media is, but in terms of reach, it’s very big. The last report I can find on its traffic numbers date back to November 2009, when Denton said the company’s network was at nearly 400 million pageviews a month, with not a single blog getting under 20 million pageviews per month.

Borders has been rather marginalized in the e-book wars thus far, not having the primacy of Amazon nor the sexy Nookiness of B&N. I liked their official e-reader, the Kobo, but until my opinion counts for points in the market, that doesn’t really improve their position. As promised, Borders is at last rolling out their e-book store today; it’s “powered by Kobo,” which I believe translates to “is Kobo with a layer of paint on top.” The selection should be the same as the existing Kobobooks site, but Borders has their own look and is launching its own versions of the Kobo e-book app (now available for iPhone, Blackberry, and Android).

Back in the olden days I read a paper book called The Cuckoo’s Egg by Clifford Stoll. That book was one of the best I had ever read about computer security. It told the tale of a kind of cool/kind of nerdy astronomer who caught someone rifling his networked computers. After months of investigation he discovered a hacker working for the Russkies who was after our precious bodily fluids and he defeated him by shaking his keys over the network switch. It was, in short, the first hacker sting tale and he was running the whole thing over what amounted to dial-up.

Cliff, who now makes these great Klein bottles, was, for a while, an Internet pundit. Luckily, it didn’t work out but a buddy pointed me to this great article from 1995 where Stoll derides the Internet and says it’s a dead end.

Read more…

Short version – a false report about renowned Dutch DJ Tiësto dying in a car accident spread via Twitter, was talked about so much that it ended up in trending topics, and was ultimately denied by the man himself via his own Twitter account.

I increasingly find it disturbing that false information can make the rounds so quickly these days, and I’ve sadly long realized this is an unstoppable, irreversible yet disheartening trend.

Somewhat longer version – At the risk of flogging a dead horse (pun intended), I’m saddened by the fact that this is the umpteenth case of a celebrity being declared dead on one or more social networking sites, without anyone seemingly being able to determine the actual source of the ‘news’ and thus unable to verify the information with absolute certainty.

Granted, most people seemed to be simply echoing the rumor – hitting the retweet or like button is oh so easy – and asking themselves and/or their Twitter followers whether it’s really true or not, seemingly in an attempt to locate a solid source for the news – in vain.

Meanwhile, I wonder how much longer this would have been kept going if Tiësto (né Tijs Michiel Verwest) didn’t have the chance to use his own presence on Twitter to squash down the rumors of his passing as swiftly as he did.

I wonder what his family and friends, assuming they’d pick up on this through Twitter or other media that base themselves on these false reports, go through if they wouldn’t be able to reach him instantaneously.

I wonder what the experience was and is like for him, seeing his fans, peers, close and less-close friends or even relatives disseminate and attempt to verify the false information of his tragic death. Emotional roller coasters abound, I can imagine, and all because somewhere, someone decided it’d be fun to trick people into believing he died in a car accident.

But most of all, I wonder if this is a trend, similar to the online mob phenomenon Michael talked about in the past, that is unequivocally here to stay. I fear it is, and I can’t think of a way to reverse or prevent it.

Actually, scratch that. I know it is, and I can’t think of a way to prevent it, and no longer believe it is possible at all.

Am I being a pessimist, or a realist?

(Image via nestland on Flickr)

Two months ago, we unveiled Cupidtino to the world. Yes, a dating site for Apple fans. At the time, it seemed like a bit of a joke, but the creators were taking it seriously. Apparently, now so are the users.

The niche site has already attracted over 22,000 members since it launched last month, we’re told. Yes, 22,000 Apple fanboys/fangirls gathering in one spot to fall in love. Android fanboys everywhere must be puking their guts out.

And that’s not all, Cupidtino is actually bringing in some money. While they’re still playing around with the pricing plan, currently, they’re charging $4.79 a month if users want to exchange messages (signing up is free). As they note on the site, “Our membership costs the same as a venti Mocha but lasts longer than 20 oz.” Even that slogan will likely make people cringe — but thanks to that pricing scheme, they’ve already hit five-digit revenues. Sure, that’s nothing huge, but not bad for three weeks either.

They’ve also provided us with a breakdown of their usage by country:

• US 62%
• DE 8%
• CA 6%
• RU 5%
• GB 5%
• ES 4%
• FR 3%
• BR 3%
• AU 3%
• IT 2%

Clearly, the U.S. is dominating, but Germany, Canada, Russia, and Great Britain are all pretty strong as well.

So what’s next for Cupidtino? They’re starting the process to raise funds so they can hire up and scale to reach all the Mac lovers out there.

How long until we see an Android dating site? Androidgyny, perhaps?

A couple of months ago we first covered Soho OS, describing its offering as a soup-to-nuts “hybrid of Quicken + Zoho + SalesForce”. Today, the company is announcing that it has secured $1 million in funding from The Time. This is on top of the $250K the company had raised in its pre-seed round.

In our initial post, the company offered 1000 beta invites to TechCrunch readers, and in response, 7000 signed-up. Today the company is removing the closed Beta gate, opening up the service to all. Soho OS is sweetening things up for TechCrunch readers with $20 towards communication services for all new TechCrunch registrants. Just follow this link: http://www.sohoos.com/welcome/techcrunch/

The company has already begun putting the money to good use. As noted in the initial post, “the interface could certainly use a UX overhaul,” and it got one, and a new logo to boot. With a new color scheme, layout and consolidation, the new interface’s look & feel is softer, more pleasant on the eye, and more convenient to use. A definite improvement on the interface we previously reviewed.

Soho OS also beefed up communications features with video chat, SMS, VOIP, voice messaging, as well as improved conference calling and broadcast emails.

I really like where Soho OS is going but would like to see them charging a tiered service fee rather than rely exclusively on cutting commissions off their 3rd party integrated services. There’s no shame in charging your customers kids, especially if you provide them with clear value. Tattoo that please.

Something tells me that Fast Company’s Comscore numbers are going to shoot way up in July. I’ve seen some audacious things before, but this is the most ingenious link bait pyramid scheme I’ve come across to date: The Influence Project.

It’s a contest to find the most influential people online. To compete you give them a picture of yourself and they give you a unique link to Fast Company. To win you get people to click on that link. The more clicks, the bigger your picture gets among the hordes of others:

ABOUT THE PROJECT

We started with a simple question: Who are the most influential people online right now?

That’s what The Influence Project is designed to answer. By participating, you will have your picture appear in the November issue of Fast Company magazine as part of an amazing photo spread. The more influence you demonstrate, the bigger your picture will be.

You may discover that you’re more influential than you think.

Influence is not only about having the most friends or followers. Real influence is about being able to affect the behavior of those you interact with, to get others in your social network to act on a suggestion or recommendation. When you post a link or recommend a site, how many people actually bother to check it out? And what's the likelihood of those people then forwarding it on? How far does your influence spread?

This is the type of influence we're looking for. We want to find the most influential person online.
Who knows? It might even be you.

Yes, this is a contest to see who can send the most traffic to Fast Company. And the winner gets to have a big picture in the November print issue. I’m guessing the most influential person will also be on the cover.

The best part is the pyramid scheme bolted on top – you get extra influence if people sign up for the project after clicking your link.

HOW WE MEASURE INFLUENCE

The scale of your influence, and therefore the size of your photo, is based on two measures.

1. The number of people who directly click on your unique URL link. This is the primary measure of your influence, pure and simple.

2. You will receive partial “credit” for subsequent clicks generated by those who register as a result of your URL. In other words, anyone who comes to the site through your link and registers for their own account will be spreading your influence while they spread theirs. That way, you get some benefit from influencing people who are influential themselves. We will give a diminishing, fractional credit (1/2, ¼, 1/8 etc ) for clicks generated up to six degrees away from your original link.

I’ve accidentally nominated Chevy Chase from Fletch (video clip here) to be the most influential person online. It’s currently my Facebook picture (in honor of the Lakers winning the championship), and the handy Facebook Connect sign up form just made it all so easy. I don’t have any real hopes of winning, though. This Fast Company article from 2008 tells me all about how there’s no such thing as influencers anyway.

Err, what? Then why the contest? Yeah nevermind. We’ve got links to click. Join me in my quest to put Chevy Chase, with an afro, on the cover of Fast Company Magazine. My work will then be done here.

And join us next week at TechCrunch when we’ll hold a contest to see who can click the most ad units on our site. Winner gets called “The Most Awesome Person Online” and we’ll put their picture on our home page for a day! And a free tshirt!

For the past week or so, it seems that every sports talk radio program and just about every show on ESPN has been talking about a billboard that just got put up in New York City. Technically, it’s a giant mural painted on the site of a building on 34th & 8th in the city. Why are people talking about it? Two reasons. First, it features the giant faces of new New Jersey Nets owner (and Russian billionaire) Mikhail Prokhorov and Nets minority owner (and hip-hop star) Jay-Z. Second, it overlooks Madison Square Garden, home of the New York Knicks basketball team.

So why are we talking about this on TechCrunch? Because the mural also prominently features a tech company. If I told you it was a tech company in the check-in space, you’d probably assume it was NY-based Foursquare. But it’s not. Instead, in huge letters at the bottom of the mural it reads, “Check in with Gowalla to get a special item.“

Yes, the Austin, Texas-based Gowalla is living large in the Big Apple. With this mural, they’re looming over New York, a town dominated by rival Foursquare — just as the New Jersey Nets are looming over New York, a town dominated by the Knicks.

This partnership was the work of VaynerMedia. The company, run by brothers Gary and AJ Vaynerchuk, does new media consulting for a wide range of clients, including the Nets. Gary Vaynerchuk also happens to be an investor in Gowalla, so the partnership was an obvious one.

And the mural isn’t all just for show. As it indicates, there’s actually a Nets’ Blueprint for Greatness venue on Gowalla (created at the spot of the billboard) that users can check-in to in order to receive a special collectable item. And because Gowalla, unlike Foursquare, requires you to position yourself with GPS when you check-in, it’s basically impossible to cheat in order to get the item — you have to actually go there.

As you can see on the page, Gowalla users are also taking advantage of that services’ features by posting multiple pictures of the mural to the venue page.

It seems unlikely that the 225 x 95 foot wall is going to help the Nets lure LeBron James to New Jersey (and eventually Brooklyn, where they hope to move in a few years). But it has certainly worked in generating buzz about the team. And Gowalla was smart to hitch a ride on that in a city that their rival owns.

The Hitachi Life Studio is supposed to be the next generation of portable drives. Aside from the odd addition of a magnetic flash drive to the front of the case, this clever little drive includes media management software from Cooliris that essentially offers an “easier” way of browsing all the media on your computer.

The drive also includes Hitachi’s own back-up software, although you can simply format the drive and turn it into a Time Machine back-up volume.

Read more…

WakeMate’s quest to help you kiss your groggy mornings goodbye continues. The Y Combinator-funded startup has become something of a poster child for the mantra “Hardware is hard” — when the company debuted its gadget in November, it promised to start shipping devices the following January. That didn’t happen, and the company didn’t have a concrete date for when the first batch might ship. A few units shipped in April, but the company wouldn’t say how many, so it probably wasn’t a very encouraging figure. Now, it looks like there may finally be a light at the end of the tunnel.

WakeMate has posted an update to its blog that indicates that it’s optimistic about having a large chunk of orders out close to the end of the month (though it sounds like that may slip a bit). From their post:

A lot has happened since April, besides what we've shown on the blog. To highlight, we've:
Lined up a local manufacturing partner for faster turnaround
Designed and implemented a new board layout that gives vastly improved Bluetooth performance as well as battery life
Sourced all parts for said board
Designed and prototyped a new wristband, currently in its final production revision
Expanded and improved phone support
Iterated on the Analytics site, making it more useful and eye-catching
Dealt with regulation, Apple approval, packaging, etc.

So where does this leave us in terms of shipping by the end of July? We remain optimistic—if we don't make it by month's end, we'll definitely get close. We're addressing a couple minor snags but the hard problems have been solved and it's now a matter of urging the gears of industry to turn more quickly; something they're not accustomed to doing. In April, we felt it extremely conservative to say we'd be shipping by July 30th; as any new company can tell you, things never happen the way you think they will and we were no exception.

WakeMate’s product consists of a $50 wristband that you wear while you’re sleeping, which can analyze your sleeping patterns and wake you up at the opportune time so that you can beat morning grogginess (also see the pricier Zeo Sleep Coach and Fitbit, which can track your sleep but doesn’t have the wake-up alarm). Data from the wristband is relayed to your phone — WakeMate is developing companion applications for the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry. WakeMate’s delays have resulted in plenty of frustrated users, in part because WakeMate collected a five dollar downpayment for its pre-orders.

AdSafe Media, a brand verification platform, has raised $7.25 Million in Series B funding, led by Atlas Venture with participation from existing investors Founder Collective and others participating.

Launched in May 2009, AdSafe Media uses algorithmic modeling and human verification to rate and verify the brand safety of content on commercially supported Web pages via a proprietary system. The rating then allow advertisers to properly place display advertising campaigns of sites.

AdSafe plans to open its Content Rating API late this year to integrate with real-
time-bidding and demand-side ad platforms, giving advertisers information and data about the brand safety of every impression available for purchase.

The company recently released a report that provided an analysis of the key display advertising brand safety metrics and industry insights, which shows that 47% of traffic was served by exchanges, real-time-bidding (RTB) or demand-side (DSP) platforms. According to the report, premium brand advertisers seem to be shifting a larger percentage of their display adverting spending to exchanges, RTB and DSP platforms because of increased media efficiency and broader reach afforded by these channels.

AsSafe faces competition from DoubleVerify, AdXpose and others.

In terms of interesting backgrounds among people in the tech space, Jeff Ma has one of the most interesting. If you’ve read the book Bringing Down The House or seen the movie 21, the main character is based on Ma — yes, in the movie he’s a white guy, but still, that’s him. He was a member of MIT’s now famous blackjack team for seven years. From there, he went on to co-founder a sports startup, Citizen Sports, which Yahoo acquired this past March.

Ma is actually the only one of Citizen Sports 30-some employees that didn’t go over to Yahoo with the deal. Instead, he decided to take some time off to help promote his new book, The House Advantage: Playing the Odds to Win Big In Business. The book is an extension of talks Ma has given around the country relating risk-taking (or rather, calculated risk-taking) in both gambling and sports to advantageous moves in business.

Below, find a conversation I had with Ma on TechCrunch TV today. We talk about everything from blackjack, to the new Facebook movie (based on a book written by the same author who wrote Bringing Down The House, Ben Mezrich, whom Ma knows well), to Yahoo, to Ma’s own book, to where LeBron may be going.

You can find The House Advantage on Amazon here.

Last week, we noted that Best Buy was looking into firing the employee that made the hilarious EVO versus iPhone 4 video (and the rebuttal video). The employee, 25-year-old Brian Maupin, was placed on suspension as Best Buy decided what they wanted to do. Today brings some good news: they’ve decided not to fire Maupin. But Maupin has decided not to return to work just yet, as he’s not sure he’s comfortable with the situation.

In their statement about the situation (below), Best Buy humorously refers to Maupin as “the aspiring film-maker.” The company notes that they took their time coming to a decision about what to do because they wanted to ensure they were maintaing a supportive environment for employees, while also making sure employees couldn’t openly disparage customers, vendor partners, and other employees.

Best Buy says that three video in particular caught their attention, and that those videos have now been taken down. What’s interesting here is that the three videos apparently don’t include the two most popular ones. Maupin originally told us that there were a “couple other videos” on his account that did reference Best Buy in a comical manner and that he took those down immediately when the company asked. He said they were also asking him to take down the more popular videos, but he refused to do that, as they don’t mention Best Buy in any way (but do mention brands Best Buy carries).

But Best Buy is now apparently doing a 180 on what they initially told Maupin. Now, they’re indicating they only cared about the other videos in question (which, again, mentioned Best Buy specifically). But that wasn’t the case last week, according to Maupin. “According to the statement BBY issued, the videos they were offended over are gone, but 2 of them they took issue with are up, so maybe they’ve realized those two don’t mention Best Buy or maybe they’re just settling, considering the spotlight on them,” Maupin tells us.

Undoubtedly, without the two popular videos, which now have nearly 4 million views combined on YouTube, none of this would have been brought to Best Buy’s attention in the first place.

At the end of their statement, Best Buy notes that Maupin is scheduled to return to work on Friday. Unfortunately, they apparently didn’t clear that with Maupin himself. “I’m not planning on returning to work — immediately, anyway. Honestly, I don’t know how I could return considering some of the things that were said to me and not have a lot of awkwardness on the job. I’m looking at possible jobs in graphic art — nothing definite yet, but I’m searching,” he tells us.

Below, find Best Buy’s full statement on the matter and then Maupin’s official one. And, of course, the videos below that.

Best Buy:

We have completed our investigation into the videos created and posted by Brian Maupin, the aspiring film-maker and Best Buy employee.  This is an important situation for us because it involved balancing our social media guidelines with a commitment to creating a supportive environment for our employees.  It’s important to note that our investigation involved three videos that were posted in late June because they were openly disparaging of our employees, our customers and our vendor partners.  Our investigation is over, and these videos are no longer on the web.  Contrary to rumors, Brian has not been fired, and is scheduled to return to his job at Best Buy this Friday

Maupin:

Right now I’m planning on taking a leave of absence so I may survey my current career plans and the future. I’m not sure if it would be comfortable returning to Best Buy considering the circumstances, but I will definitely consider all options

ReadWriteWeb had a solid scoop last week when it uncovered Twitter was set to go live with an account called @EarlyBird. Well, it has just gone live, with a tweet pointing to this page where the company explains what it’s all about.

Looks like Twitter is about to start offering users exclusive, time-bound deals, events and sneak peeks, for which it has partnered with a number of (yet unnamed) advertising partners.

Those advertisers will distribute offers via the @EarlyBird account, and they get to determine the terms of the offer, including availability, amount, and pricing. And you? You get to opt in to them.

If you want to get access to said exclusive deals, you need to of course follow the @EarlyBird account, although you may also see offers if someone you follow retweets a tweet from that account. Yes, that means exclusive deals are bound to get viral pretty quickly, which will be interesting to observe given that many of the offers distributed via the account will be time-sensitive of nature (otherwise it wouldn’t be called Early Bird, of course).

Twitter outlines that it has deals with select advertisers in place, but welcomes suggestions of a product/event sent by @reply to @earlybird. Nevertheless, since Twitter clearly looks at this like a significant potential revenue stream, they are keen on emphasizing that it will be selective about the type of deals they highlight.

Also worth noting: the company suggests that deals will come mostly at the beginning of the day (it’s safe to assume that they mean the start of the day throughout the United States, at least at first).

As for internationally available offers:

Will these deals be targeted toward Twitter’s many users outside the United States?

At first, many of the advertising partners will be large, international brands or focused on the U.S. market. As @earlybird grows beyond this first early phase, so will the deals in different places.

Finally, it’s worth pointing out that at the end of the list of questions presented on the introductory page, Twitter makes it clear that while it is kicking things off with US-wide offers, the company will explore location-based and even thematic (e.g. fashion or music) deals in the future. This could get pretty big, pretty quickly, in my opinion.

Now let’s see how many followers the @EarlyBird account gains in the next few days. At the time of publication, it had 833 followers.

For Twitter, this is far from the first or only attempt at generating revenue. It currently rents out access to its data ‘firehose’ to notable Web giants such as Yahoo, Google and Microsoft and is actively experimenting with Promoted Tweets and Trending topics.

For the record, Twitter has raised a staggering $160 million in funding to date, and we believe the valuation of the company to run up to $1 billion.

Do you think it’s worth that much?

I’d been living under Apple TV hegemony for about two years I bought an early 40GB model, upgraded it to 80GB, and then hacked it. When hacked, the Apple TV is actually useful. Hacked it was, in short, one of the easiest ways to get video on my NAS or networked Macs to my TV. Unhacked it’s sort of like a really nice guy who works in insurance sales: you want to like him but he keeps trying to sell you stuff and he’s really boring.

Slowly but surely, however, the ATV hit its limit. I ran out of disk space and didn’t want to upgrade and XBMC was choking on larger files. The device itself was as hot as a griddle most of the time and I worried that at some point I’d have a bricked device on my hands. I went on a quest for a networked device to do two things: stream audio from multiple sources, including my library of MP3s, and to play video from a NAS drive over the network. If it could play Netflix that would be gravy. I put a number of devices to the test and have come up with a real winner.

Read more…

A patent applied for by Amazon in 2006 has been made public today as a consequence of its being granted, and its language is rather more wide-ranging (and forward-thinking) than we might have expected. Depending on the interpretation, Amazon’s patent may be broad enough to justify a lawsuit over devices like the Nook and Alex, both of which sport a design clearly claimed by Amazon.

The relevant language in the patent starts off thus:

5. A handheld electronic device comprising: a first display for presenting visible representations of content, the first display comprising an electronic paper display; and a second display positioned alongside the first display, wherein the second display includes a plurality of graphic elements that correspond to portions of the first display, and wherein the second display is responsive to user input to one of the graphic elements to perform at least one action on content shown in a portion of the first display that corresponds to the one graphic element.

That alone would be be sufficient to give pause to the designers of similar devices — and unfortunately for them, it gets worse.

Continue reading…

Last week, the Feds shut down nine video sites for piracy and copyright violations. The enforcement was a combined effort by the Department of Justice, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and a the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center under the Department of Homeland Security. It is the new Intellectual Property Police, and they are fighting to save Hollywood.

The press release announcing the online raid included this choice quote from U.S. District Attorney Preet Bharara: “If your business model is movie piracy, your story will not have a happy ending.” The following domains were seized TVshack.net, Movies-Links.tv, FilesPump.com, Now-Movies.com, PlanetMoviez.com, ThePirateCity.org, ZML.com, NinjaVideo.net and NinjaThis.net.

Of course, it only took a few days for at least one of the sites to reappear at a different domain. TVshack.net, for instance, is now at TVshack.cc. There you can watch full streams of bootleg versions of The Twilight Saga:Eclipse (filmed in a theater with people standing up and casting shadows on the screen, see below), Toy Story 3, True Blood, and other movies and TV shows. The .cc domain is administered by the Cocos Islands, which is a territory of Australia. The company is based in Stockholm, Sweden. Another one of the shuttered sites has reappeared at www.watch-movies-tv.info, but it no longer offers streaming movies.

You get what you pay for with these sites. The video quality is predictably awful, and you have to endure pop-up ads for Russian mail-order brides blocking part of the screen. But some people don’t mind. We’ve been noticing spikes to our Crunchbase directory from people looking for info on TV Shack (our Crunchbase entry is the second result on Google). Who wants to guess how long the .cc domain will stay up?

Oh those jokesters over at the AP — the fun never ends! Last night, we wrote a post noting that Woot was (humorously) calling out the AP for not following their own ridiculous rules when quoting from content. By Woot’s calculation, using the AP tool, the AP owes them $17.50 (but Woot was nice enough to offer them the chance to buy some headphones off of Woot instead). The AP didn’t like that story — neither our’s or Woot’s.

This morning, Paul Colford, the Director of Media Relations for the AP sent emails to both me and Woot CEO Matt Rutledge. Here’s what we got:

MG Siegler:

Surely you'll also want your readers to know that The Associated Press INTERVIEWED Mr. Rutledge, as this version of the "newsy little thing" you cite makes clear: http://bit.ly/cl8JlX

Meanwhile, AP staffers across the Gulf region and in Washington continue to provide comprehensive coverage of the oil spill.

You'll find highlights of that coverage here: http://www.ap.org/oil_spill/

Cheers,

Paul Colford

Did he really just pull out the oil spill card? Yes, he did.

A few minutes later, Rutledge got the same basic email, minus the oil spill coverage reference. The emphasis of both is that the AP actually interviewed Rutledge about the story. Sure enough, they did. Here’s the quote the AP used from that interview:

“I’m really excited,” he said.

Yep, that’s it. So that’s 24 words lifted from Rutledge’s post (which wasn’t linked to, by the way) and 3 words from the AP’s reporting.

So, if I’m interpreting this correctly, the AP’s stance is that it’s fine to lift excerpts from others’ work as long as you interview them — even if that interview only results in a three word quote and the quotes you’re lifting are much longer. Just to make sure, I emailed the AP about it:

so I’m confused, you’re allowed to quote all you want for free from a blog post if you do a phone interview with the person and quote three words from that interview? so if I do a phone interview with the AP, can I then copy and paste an entire AP story free of charge? serious question.

I didn’t get a response. But I did send it to Rutledge (remember, the interviewee here). Here’s what he wrote back, “I was just mulling over how to respond to similar confusing email here, but I think I like your response better.” A couple hours later I wrote a quick follow-up to the AP:

Hi Paul — Just following up. No statement here about this? Happy to hop on the phone.

About 20 seconds later Colford writes back:

Root of this non-”story” ($17.50 for quotes) is 2 yrs old, as AP noted again in 2009: http://bit.ly/9ehJGZ

Thanks.

Ouch. Someone is a little cranky. A few things here.

1) Interesting that Colford didn’t note that position at all in his original email. Instead, his position was that they were free to lift passages from Rutledge’s post because they “interviewed” him.

2) That AP release from 2009 completely disregards the fact that in 2008, the AP did in fact try to bully Drudge Retort into taking down excerpts from their stories that ranged in length from 39 to 79 words. After some big backlash, they quickly tried to back away from that, and their 2009 statement basically rewrites their position stating that they’re not going after bloggers for using excerpts from their stories (even though they clearly went after Drudge Retort).

3) Wouldn’t a “non-’story’” be a story? The quotes around story already indicate Colford’s belief that the Woot issue isn’t a story. So a non-non-story is a story.

Anyway, whatever. I’m a little confused by this whole thing. So is Rutledge. I think the AP is too. But I’m going to go with what I can only assume is their policy now. Since I technically “interviewed” Colford for this post, I’m going to copy an AP story below. I’ll go with an oil spill one since he was so quick to point those out. And sure, I only got a few words out of Colford, but since that doesn’t seem to matter, I’m just going to paste an entire AP story below. I like this new policy.

Jun. 24, 2010 5:47 AM ET

AP check: Shoddy disposal work mars oil cleanup

JAY REEVES, Associated Press Writer

ORANGE BEACH, Ala. (AP) — A leaky truck filled with oil-stained sand and absorbent boom soaked in crude pulls away from the beach, leaving tar balls in a public parking lot and a messy trail of sand and water on the main beach road. A few miles away, brown liquid drips out of a disposal bin filled with polluted sand.

BP PLC’s work to clean up the mess from the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history already has generated more than 1,300 tons of solid waste, and companies it hired to dispose of the material say debris is being handled professionally and carefully.

A spot check of several container sites by The Associated Press, however, found that’s not always the case.

Along the northern Gulf coast, where miles of beaches have been coated with oil intermittently for two weeks, the check showed the handling and disposal of oily materials was haphazard at best.
A mound of oily sand sits in an uncovered waste container in a parking lot at the crown jewel of Alabama’s park system, Gulf State Park. Water from the previous night’s storm drips out of the bin into a brown pool on the asphalt.

In Pensacola, Fla., along the road through Gulf Islands National Seashore, trash bags from the debris removal hang over the side of big storage bins.

A waste collection area dotted with numerous bins full of spill debris stands in what seems like an odd spot: Smack in the middle of the tourist section in Gulf Shores, Ala., directly across the street from a seafood restaurant hungry for customers because of a lack of tourists.

Cleaning up a spill is an undeniably messy job, particularly when crude oil or tar balls are washing ashore in varying amounts in four states. The debris isn’t classified as hazardous waste, so it can be placed in landfills that accept ordinary household garbage, including table scraps.

Yet Jerry Kidd, doing maintenance work at a condominium, couldn’t believe it when he saw a Waste Management Inc. truck pull away from a collection site in Orange Beach piled with loose sand, oil-smeared protective gear and oily boom pulled out of the water. It was trailing pollution of its own.
The company says it is using 535 containers lined with what amount to huge black trash bags to collect debris from Mississippi, Alabama and part of the Florida Panhandle under a contract with BP. But not all of the bins really are lined, and liners have failed in others.
“They’re going down the road leading to the landfill; they take the same route every day. They’re leaking onto the roads, into the storm sewers,” said Kidd. “There’s no telling where it’s going.”

The Alabama Department of Public Health, which regulates the transportation of such wastes in the state, said it wasn’t aware of the problem until contacted by AP.

“This needs to be taken care of, and get these things sealed tight,” said Pres Allinder, director of environmental services for the department. “There’s no point in collecting this stuff if they’re just going to spread it around.”

Waste Management is taking solid wastes from the three states to landfills in Vernon, Ala.; Pass Christian, Miss.; and Campbellton, Fla. Spokesman Ken Haldin said the company would be more careful, having drivers check bins for problems and possibly using a new type of liner, because of the AP findings.

“It is something we are going to be addressing,” he said. “They’re probably isolated situations, but we are still early in the process with all this work.”

Despite problems, Haldin said Waste Management is trying to make sure oil spill contamination isn’t spread inland.

“There are a whole set of steps we are taking to make sure this operation is safe,” he said.

Liquid waste, such as oily water left from the cleaning of oil-blocking booms or the mix of oil and water picked up by skimmer boats in the Gulf, is handled separately. The oily residue is processed for sale where possible and the water is reused or injected underground.

The amount of waste being generated sounds staggering, but it’s not unusual in the disposal business.

“This whole spill is going to be a drop in the bucket for its impact on landfills,” said Vic Cullpepper, technical director at River Birch Landfill, near New Orleans. “A lot of people are trying to blow this up and say it’s going to be a problem for landfills, but it’s not.”

BP says 761 tons of crude-contaminated waste already has been buried at the two landfills in Alabama and Florida. Some 13,100 cubic yards of oily waste have been buried in Louisiana, where the amount is being tallied by volume instead of weight.

Marlin Ladner, a supervisor with Harrison County, Miss., is angry about spill waste being buried in his coastal county, which still is trying to recover from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The county could use the dumping fees from the disposal operations, he said, but there are too many uncertainties.

“I just don’t think it’s worth it,” he said. “I just have a problem with BP, in effect, polluting our beaches, bays and estuaries and then turning around and hauling that stuff and dropping it just four or five miles from the coast here.”

BP says no oily material will be sent to the Mississippi landfill.
___
Associated Press writer Melissa Nelson contributed to this report from Pensacola, Fla.
Associated Press
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.