Text-message advertising startup Placecast is partnering with Location Labs to potentially extend the reach of Placecast's ShopAlerts service to over 180 million potential consumers in the US. Location Labs offers developers an API that gathers location data from carriers such as AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile.

Location Labs’ API will be used for Placecast’s ShopAlerts, which are location-triggered mobile text messages sent from brands to consumers. Consumers can opt-in to receiving text messages in a variety of ways—at the store, online, via text-message, mobile websites or on Facebook.

Once the technology has been activated, consumers will be alerted when they are near a location that they are interested in or when the brand is offering sales and specials. ShopAlerts' technology uses "geo-fences," which are virtual boundaries that can be targeted via location-based marketing. Retailers can customize alerts to fit their brand and strategy.

Location Labs’ APIs will allow Placecast access carrier location for both feature and smartphones of opted-in users. Placecast will source location data is from Location Labs' wireless carrier partners. Of course, access to Lovation Labs’ APIs come at a price, but Placecast declined to reveal the financial terms of the agreement.

Placecast says that North Face, which was a pilot partner of ShopAlerts, is already using the new service. While Placecast is betting big on SMS as an effective marketing campaign for stores and brands, other startups, such as recently launched Shopkick, are using location-based mobile apps to help consumers find deals in retail stores, including Best Buy.

Google TV is, in short, supposed to supplant the set-top box although devices like the Logitech Revue won’t quite work that way. Instead, in a symbiotic relationship akin to a pilot fish on a shark, the device will run in-line to your cable box and act as an overlay to standard programming. They will offer video on demand as well as an app environment but in general Google probably won’t touch copyrighted content – yet.

However, the obvious goal here is for Google to partner with broadcasters to offer video on demand. That part isn’t working out that well.

Read more…

Here’s something interesting I found perusing the most recent job openings posted on Apple‘s website: the company is looking for someone to grow its iTunes business and manage relationships with the record labels in a number of key markets in Europe.

What particularly interested me in the job listing, is that candidates are required to possess “an ability to understand and work across a number of key European markets, among them Scandinavia and Spain“, and would ideally be based in those countries (the job location is marked Copenhagen, capital of Denmark).

This could well be a huge coincidence, but it just so happens massively funded digital music streaming startup Spotify operates – and is booking early successes in terms of new user growth – in those regions particularly, so this specific hiring effort could potentially mark a move by the Cupertino company to ramp up the competition in those parts.

Here’s the relevant part of the job ad:

The key responsibility is to grow iTunes’ business in key international markets by managing the relationships with our content partners: the record labels.

Possessing an ability to understand and work across a number of key European markets, among them Scandinavia and Spain, the candidate is ideally based in any of these countries. Reporting to Carl Ekdahl, head of Pan EU, the responsibilities will include:

- Manage the growth of the overall business by securing comprehensive and innovative promotions around key releases
- Foster the relationship with the key account managers at the record labels, making iTunes the most important partner in helping the label to drive the digital market
- Make sure all key releases are communicated and set up for the iTunes Editorial team
- Help coordinate and implement European wide projects for iTunes
- Support the Editorial team with strategic information, taking into account chart activity, media coverage, broadcast/release dates etc.
- Research sales/customer activity using iTunes reporting tools on a weekly basis

In addition, cross-functional work with iTunes' music, marketing, production, legal and finance teams.

Candidate profile

SKILLS / EXPERIENCE

- A passion for discovering new music across a variety of territories
- Great knowledge of the local music and media markets
- Experience of music account management in the European music industry
- Strategic understanding of key trends affecting the music industry and emerging technologies (digital music, mobile, digital TV etc.); plus an understanding of their different stages of development across European markets
- Good academic background

In addition, Apple last week posted a job opening for the role of ‘iTunes Label Relations Intern’ in London, UK, where Swedish-British Spotify is headquartered. Furthermore, last March, Gem Woolnough was hired for the role of Pan EU Label Relations & Online Content Coordinator in the United Kingdom, according to her LinkedIn profile.

That’s not all. Last June, Apple had posted a job opening for managing iTunes / record label relationships in Southern Europe, including Italy and Spain, and it looks like someone has already been hired for that job.

All in all, it’s fair to say Apple is clearly staffing up on people to manage its relationships with its music industry partners in Europe, and doing so particularly in countries where Spotify is currently gaining momentum among music fans.

Notably, these recruitment efforts come at a time when Apple is hard at work readying its iTunes-in-the-cloud offering. Regardless of what shape this iTunes.com service will eventually turn out to take, it’s going to require a lot of meetings with record label officials, and that’s what Apple is seemingly staffing up for.

Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronic components manufacturer that makes products like certain Dell computers and Apple‘s iPad and iPhone devices, was – as widely reported – hit by a string of suicides among its workers earlier this year.

Apparently, this hasn’t had much effect on their growth rate (surprise): according to Bloomberg, the company plans to hire as many as 400,000 workers in China in the next twelve months.

Bloomberg reports that the Taiwanese company aims to boost its China workforce to 1.2 million to 1.3 million people. Revenue jumped as much as 50 percent in the first half of this year, a company official told them in an interview.

Furthermore, Foxconn will build factories closer to employees' homes, thus declining the headcount in Shenzhen by about 170,000 workers over five years as production moves inland. The Shenzhen facilities will reportedly focus more on R&D, product testing and new-energy technologies.

Earlier today, the Financial Times reported that Foxconn is holding a massive rally for its now 800,000 workers to boost morale, all across China.

People clearly want Apple to make an HDTV. Read the comments in my Apple HDTV debunking post. There are lot of readers dreaming of the day when their whole entertainment ecosystem is made by Apple. Personally, that thought scares the hell out of me but I kind of get it. Assembling a working AV rack, complete with a DVR, DVD player, and a media streamer connected to network-attached storage is a lot of work and is something not everyone can do. People dream of an HDTV they can take home, hook up to their network and have instant access to apps, games, and TV content.

But you know what? Many of these dream features are already available in many TV models from multiple brands. We brainstormed a list of likely Apple HDTV features and then compared it against the features found on some of the most popular HDTVs and set-top boxes. You might be surprised at the results. VOD and Internet apps are alive and well on many HDTVs right now. The list after the jump is no where near comprehensive. Sony, for instance, has 20 current models capable of streaming internet video from a ton of sources, along with hooking up with social networks and accessing local network content. Here are your Apple HDTVs.

Causeon debuts today with a slight twist on the Groupon clone model. Similar in concept to LivingSocial Charities and Groupon’s The Point, not only does the Portland-based company offer up daily deals, but it contributes 20% of its revenue from those deals to a charitable cause.

CEO Craig Barnes explains the pivotal charity element, “We see traditional group buying as a win-win proposition, for the customers and businesses. CauseOn becomes more of a win-win-win."

What sets CauseOn apart from Groupon (other than the CamelCase) is that it allows customers who have signed up for daily deals to contribute 20% of their purchase to the cause of their choice, harnessing the massive group buying trend in order to contribute to worthy charities.

Consumers who are brought onto the site on through recommendation of friends are also automatically signed up to contribute to the enlister’s favorite cause.

"Our cause partners are critical to our expansion plans as well. Cause "ambassadors" working with causes in a number of different cities are laying the groundwork for our entry to different markets,” says Barnes.

CauseOn rolls out today in Portland with five different cause partners; Komen For The Cure, The Dougy Center, Girls Inc, Oregon League of Conservation, Oregon Robotics Tournament and Techstart and hopes to recruit other deserving candidates.

People can currently sign up on the Portland CauseOn for the site’s very first deal. Forthcoming initial daily deals will include yoga classes, bakery goods, tanning, and other lifestyle accoutrements.

Privately funded, CauseOn is planning on hiring between 100-130 new employees in the next year and hopes to expand its presence to over 45 US cities, setting its sights on New York City, Seattle, Denver, Orange County, and Los Angeles.

Providence, Rhode Island-based Swipely, like a Blippy without the prices, has made its transaction tracking service available to the public today, officially leaving private beta.

Swipely, which aggregates social purchasing data, does not reveal pricing on transactions as it wants the actual “swipes,” or what you purchased and where you purchased it, to be the focus of attention. “With Swipely, we’ve created the easiest way for people to start and share these conversations online with their friends” says CEO and former Tellme founder Angus Davis.

Swipely also prides itself on being more secure than other transaction tracking services, especially in the not Google indexing credit card numbers arena.

Some of the Swipely features open to the public today:

* Importing receipts from over 6,000 e-commerce retailers, allowing you to share these “swipes” on Facebook and Twitter.

* Integration of purchase data with geo-locational services.

* The ability to easily view your friends’ buying patterns and figure out what you should be spending money on (unless you’re friends with Chris Sacca, in which case, Chris, why are you buying all those wigs?).

* Badges and social rewards, based not only on amount spent, but frequency of purchase.

While the end goal of Swipely, like Blippy, is to get you to spend more money, a substantial part of the service’s future, according to Davis, is eventual integration into existing store loyalty services in order to make it easier to save, “You’re already swiping your card at places, so no one has to change their behavior.”

To celebrate today’s launch, Swipely is offering free music, free books, coffee and more to users who earn the “Turntable,” “Bookworm” and “App Storeaholic” badges over the next four weeks.

And while Davis realizes that the concept of badges might be played out, he thinks the idea might be good for Swipely, “everybody’s doing badges now, but the truth of the matter is that what we’re doing that’s different is that we’re tied into the payment network.“

Davis is also aware that the e-commerce space is saturated and ripe for disruption; “What’s really interesting about social commerce is that you’ve already seen the content industry be disrupted. There’s a general belief that commerce will be next, there’s no one in the space who has really cracked the code. We’re all still trying to figure it out and get feedback.”

Funded by Index Ventures, Greylock Partners, First Round Capital, to the tune of $7.5 million, Swipely might be uniquely poised to crack that code.

Mobile ad network Millennial Media is releasing its monthly mobile mix report today. According to Nielsen, Millennial’s ads reach 63 million of a total of 77 million mobile web users in the U.S., or 81% of the U.S. mobile web. In July, Android OS grew at a faster clip than in June, with requests increasing by 47 percent, compared to a 23 percent growth in the previous month. Since January, Android OS requests have grown 690 percent. Android has also surpassed RIM to became the number two OS on the Millennial network (surpassing RIM).

Apple ad requests increased 24 percent month-over-month, and are up 15 percent since January. However, iPad requests continue to show massive growth, rising 327 percent in July. RIM ad requests increased 18 percent month-over-month, rising 66 percent since January.

In terms of ad impressions, Apple’s OS remained the leading Smartphone OS on Millennial’s network in July with a 55 percent share of impressions and an 1 percent drop month-over-month. Android was the second largest Smartphone OS, representing a 19 percent share of impressions for June, increasing by 8 percent from last month. RIM’s OS fell to third place after 11 consecutive months in the second spot, representing 16 percent of impressions, dropping by 1 percent from June

When splitting ad impressions by device manufacturer, Apple remained at the top of the list with approximately 35 percent share of impressions in July. RIM maintained its number three position in the Top 15 Manufacturers for the fifth consecutive month and represented over 10 percent share of impressions for the month. Nintendo broke into the manufacturer list for the first time, which Millennial attributes to the introduction of school age games on its devices for the summer.

Android devices represented six of July's Top 20 Mobile Phones. The Motorola Droid moved into the top three with 5 percent impression share. The Motorola Cliq Android device also entered into the Top 20 for the first time. Of the top 20 mobile phones on Millennial’s network, 12 were smartphones, which represented 47 percent impression share in Jule. RIM took the number two spot on the device list with the Curve.

This month, the U.S. Carrier Mix data showed diversity of the Mobile Web. In July, five different carriers, including Verizon, Sprint and At&T all had a 10% share of impressions or greater on Millennial’s network.

In terms of mobile app interaction, RIM apps represented 11 percent of the U.S. Developer Platform
Usage Mix in July, up 9 percent since June. Last month, Apple’s platform was used 100 percent of the time by multi-platform developers. Android came in second with 75 percent and RIM in the third position with nearly half developing for their platform.

Gaming apps placed in the number one spot for the third consecutive month and accounted for 47% of app revenue on Millennial in July. Music–related apps moved from the sixth position on the Top Mobile App list in June to the number three spot in July, representing nearly 9 percent of app revenue. Shopping & Retail–focused apps jumped into the Top Ten Mobile App Categories for July at number eight. And Home & Family apps entered the Top Ten App Categories for the first time since May.

As one of the largest mobile ad networks in the space, the under-the-radar Millennial has been growing like gangbusters. Millennial bought mobile metrics and analytics firm TapMetrics earlier this year and is planning to make more acquisitions in the future. And the Baltimore-based company is now planning to IPO next year, CEO Paul Paulieri told us last month.

The long-term effect of Apple’s iAd platform on the space is still a big question on everyone’s minds. While some advertisers are praising iAds for performing well for both advertisers and publishers, some developers are frustrated with the how controlling the platform is when it comes to design and creativity.

And there is still the looming question of how Apple’s apparent iAd policies on outside networks advertising will play out. While the policy initially was thought to have excluded Google’s AdMob from serving ads on the iPhone, we heard last month that AdMob ads are still being served the iPhone.

But Millennial seems confident with its place in the mobile advertising space; and doesn’t seem to be worried about iAds or competing against Google.

(Click image for full size)

Roughly a year ago, TwitPic was the undisputed king of Twitter photo sharing services, with 4 to 5 times the traffic of its closest competitors.

Today, the picture looks way different, at least according to web analytics company Compete. TwitPic is still big, mind you, but has clearly lost some of its shine.

Competitors like TweetPhoto (review) and yfrog (review), meanwhile, have experienced rapid growth in the past 12 months and are now about as popular as TwitPic judging by Compete’s traffic estimates – which are admittedly often way off in terms of absolute numbers but are pretty decent at depicting trends.

Photobucket’s TwitGoo (review), meanwhile, has so far failed to make strides.

For what it’s worth, TwitPic founder Noah Everett seems to have focused at least part of his attention away from the core product to other things of late, launching a stealth startup called Heello and setting up TwitPic Labs to showcase side projects.

Which horse do you ride?

Off-line, watching video is more often than not a social experience as friends and family gather around the telly. Whilst, arguably, online and in the age of the laptop or smartphone, it's very much a solitary exercise. Attempts at making the online viewing experience more social aren't anything new but video monetization platform Invideous has perhaps a novel solution: something it's calling a 'social playhead'. Installable as a plug-in for most of the popular video hosting platforms, in the same way that a regular video playhead lets a viewer see at what point they are in the video, the social playhead lets users see who else is watching the video and, specifically, at what point they are at too. Users can then initiate a conversation by clicking on the person's avatar displayed within the playhead upon rollover which launches Invideous' own in-video IM client.

Deskarma, which describes itself as a "business expertise sharing platform", launches in beta today. It's designed to enable professionals to share their "business insights", with the motivation to do so partly driven by the user's ability to build an online reputation as an expert via the site's karma-based points system. Basically, users can write posts, comment, and answer questions, while the quality of their contributions are peer rated so that the more interesting content and users become more visible. Related to this is the fact that Deskarma doesn't sit behind a walled garden and therefore is indexed by Google et al, meaning that a user's newly forged reputation might end up appearing in search results. That's the idea anyway.

Marlin Equity Partners, a Los Angeles-based private investment firm with over $1 billion of capital under management, has agreed to acquire all outstanding shares of core systems software company Phoenix Technologies common stock for $3.85 per share in cash, or approximately $139 million in total consideration. The purchase price represents a premium of approximately 27% over Phoenix's closing share price of $3.02 on August 17. The company is listed on NASDAQ under the symbol PTEC.

I know, I can’t let it go. I’ve been fascinated by the France.fr saga since it’s “launch” day and its nearly immediate crash. It’s supposed to be a grande multi-language portal for French culture and tourism, generously paid for by French taxpayers.

The site was down for over a month (even French entrepreneurs were laughing) and finally went live on August 16.

Anyway, it turns out the whole project went just a tad over budget and will end up costing around €4 million euros. Which is pretty awesome because I can’t figure out how in the world someone could bill that amount while keeping a straight face.

If any other countries out there want their own “grande cause nationale,” we’d like to bid on the project. I’ll assign a TechCrunch intern full time for at least two weeks to the site, and it’ll only cost you, say €3 million euros. Which is, like, a million euros in your pocket.

And with that I officially end our coverage of France.fr until at least next year. Le Web is coming up in Paris in December, and I can’t be having the French all up in arms against TechCrunch when I get there. Thanks for the tip, Cyril.

Earlier today, it was revealed that development of the Chrome Web Store is well underway, and Google hopes to deploy it around October. That’s good news, and the fact that Google apparently only plans to take a 5 percent of revenues from developers is great news. But look closer at the screenshots leaked from GDC Europe. See that area in the store called “Apps your friends like”? Yes, it appears that this new store will play nicely with Google’s new social strategy.

The key word in the area is “friends.” If you look at Google’s current social products (Buzz, Reader, Wave, etc) none of them use the term “friend” to indicate a connection with another user. Instead, social connections are all “followers” or “contacts” or “connections.” Hell, even Friend Connect (which, let’s face it, no one talks about anymore) doesn’t really use the term “friend” too often outside of its name.

The only Google property that seems to use “friend” regularly is Orkut, Google’s social network which is only really widely-used in Brazil. Something tells me the Chrome Web Store isn’t going to be built around Orkut’s social graph. Call it a hunch.

Instead, we can probably expect the Chrome Web Store, like many other Google properties, to take advantage of the new social project Google is currently working on. While the company still won’t officially talk about it, they have acknowledged such a project exists, and we believe executive Vic Gundotra has been tapped to oversee it.

If you look even closer at the pictures, you can see that Google will serve up recommendations in the Chrome Web Store based on games your friends “like.” Whether this is through some sort of Facebook-esque Like button, or simply through some kind of rating system isn’t clear. But clearly Google plans for the Chrome Web Store itself to be a social experience. Some games have notes stating they were “liked by SOMEONE and X others.”

Interestingly, if I’m not mistaken, it also appears that Google is using first names to distinguish who liked something. This seems to suggest the social graph intended to work here won’t be that big. But who knows, this could just be a mockup to demonstrate the intended funtionality.

During the GDC presentation, representatives from Google talked about the opportunity in social gaming as it relates to the Chrome Web Store. Obviously, they need the social aspect to make that work.

Craigslist, embattled over the most recent allegations of sex trafficking and underage prostitution, pointed their finger at eBay yesterday. Craigslist has put significant efforts into moderating inappropriate listings on their site, says CEO Jim Buckmaster. But eBay continues to accept the worst kind of ads, depicting “young Asian females engaged in unprotected sex” on its Spanish subsidiary Loquo. He points to a number of listings that showed graphic pictures of sexual acts, and also pointed out that eBay aggressively markets upsell opportunities to listers, effectively taking part in the transaction.

How did eBay respond? By blocking access to Loquo from IP addresses originating in the U.S. But the site, and the listings, are easily accessible – just copy the URLs into an IP anonymizer, for example. The extremely NSFW listings are still up and active.

A post on Aimgroup says eBay is also planning on eventually taking down these types of listings as part of its “process of ensuring all of its sites are in alignment with its family-friendly values.”

For its part, Craigslist has taken a disproportionate share of the heat over prostitution and sexual trafficking claims. A half page ad was recently run by two “survivors of Craigslist sex trafficking” in the Washington Post, for example. And last year South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster targeted Craigslist as part of his run for governor.

And recently a new Facebook group emerged called “Stop Craigslist Human Trafficking – Choose Ebay Classifieds.” Buckmaster seems particularly incensed by the fact that eBay is being seen as family friendly, when they’re running ads far worse than anything you see on Craigslist and have historically been quite fine with selling pornography and other adult materials.

It’s over a year ago when we covered the launch of 6rounds, a consumer-facing video chat platform with a couple of interesting twists that made it a lot of fun to use.

Henceforth, the startup and service will be called Rounds – they’re now leasing the domain name rounds.com, which is far more memorable.

The company is today also debuting a cool video chat application on the Facebook platform that I’m pretty sure will be appreciated by many.

The app, which is called Video Chat Rounds, lets you interact with Facebook users over video, not only to chat but also to play games, enhance conversations with effects in real-time, share Flickr photos, watch YouTube videos, exchange virtual gifts and much more.

Essentially, it’s video chat on steroids.

For now, effects and gifts that users can pull from the interactive menus inside the application interface are free of charge – you can simply earn ‘coins’ by being active in various ways – but in time Rounds will start charging for a subset of them.

The startup also hopes to generate revenue from letting advertisers plug branded experiences (check the Heineken-sponsored Truth Or Dare game to see how that would work).

Rounds is also keen on letting third-party developers build stuff around the platform, both the regular Web app and the Facebook Platform application.

Check it out and tell us what you think.

Based in Tel Aviv, Israel, Rounds was founded back in 2008 and has to date raised $2 million in venture capital funding from investment groups Rhodium and Startup Factory.

It’s hard to believe, but in the days before blogging and Twitter plenty of people still found a way to record the personal (and sometimes mundane) details of their daily lives. But instead of sharing them with the world, they simply jotted them down in a book kept hidden in the sock drawer or under a pillow. Turns out, the personal journal is still alive and well, and now Y Combinator-funded startup OhLife thinks that it can make it even more popular by bringing it to your inbox.

The service is as simple as they come. After filling in a standard signup form, you’ll receive an email inviting you to submit your first journal entry. Simply reply to that email message and you’ll have your first journal post. Your posts are all archived on the web for future reference and are kept totally private — this is all meant to be kept private, so you won’t find any Facebook share buttons here.

Granted, some people have no inclination to record their daily thoughts (myself included), but there are definitely plenty of folks who have attempted to keep a personal journal, only to forget about it a few days later. This site is for them. After signing up OhLife will promptly email you every day at 8PM to remind you to add an entry — to do so you simply reply to the email message you’ve received. To help keep you engaged, each email prompt you receive will also include a random past entry, which can help you reflect on where your life was a few weeks or months or (eventually) years ago.

It sounds far too basic, but the OhLife team says that it works: they report that 50% of users who complete their first entry have continued to add an entry at least once every other day. It probably helps that, despite the spare feature set, the site is very nice to look at. At this point OhLife isn’t doing anything to monetize, but if it can get traction then the  team will consider freemium options.

OhLife faces a few obstacles. For one, the site is inherently private, so it may be difficult for it to spread virally. The basic feature set also makes it easy for other companies to reproduce, and there isn’t much of a lock-in effect because there’s no social component. That said, it does one basic thing very well, which may be enough for it to gain traction.

OhLife is actually the third startup to come from this YC team — the founders previously built IDidWork and MeetingMix, the latter of which is still alive (though it doesn’t have a sizable user base).

Though it has only been out for a few months, it seems as if Facebook’s Like button is all over the web. And despite some initial backlash, a lot of people seem to like it (see what I did there?). It now appears that Facebook may already be testing a new version of the Like button. [Update below]

As you can see in the screenshots in this post, the Like button now has the like count on the right side of the actual button in its own smaller box. When you click on this new button, it brings the number inside the actual Like box. Previously, it remained outside the box and the Like box simply turned dark blue indicating you had clicked on it. Now the box remains light blue — but again, this count is inside of it stating that “X people” liked the item.

A few quick things: this new Like button now appears to be the same size as both the Buzz and new Tweet buttons (and it looks more like each of them) — something which publishers will definitely appreciate. Also, this new button makes it hard to accidentally unlike something because you don’t just click the button again, now you have to hover over the thumb icon to bring up an undo arrow — this is something everyone should appreciate.

It seems to be completely random which pieces of content Facebook is testing these new buttons out on. For example, some our our posts have the old button, some have the new button. We’ve reached out of Facebook for clarification about the new button and will update when we hear back.

Update: Facebook has just confirmed the roll out of the new button. ”We’ve begun rolling out new variations of the Like button to make it more seamless for people to like content and share it with their friends. We’ll have additional details to share in the coming weeks,” a representative tells us.

After your initial surge of people connecting to your social graph what do you do to strengthen it? Launch a “who to follow” feature. It worked for Facebook. It’s working for Twitter. And now Google Buzz is going to give it a try.

As they announced tonight in their Buzz feed, the next time users load up the Buzz tab in Gmail, they should be greeted with a box suggesting other people to follow. Google says these will be based on people you frequently email and/or chat with. It also depends on your social connections on other networks (aka your social circle), and activity on Buzz. Only people with public profiles will appear as suggestions, Google says.

If you find a person you like, you can click a button to follow them. Or if you don’t like a suggestion, you can click an “ignore” button and they won’t show up again. Pretty standard stuff at this point, but it works. What was so great about Twitter’s implementation of this a few weeks ago was that it was front and center on Twitter.com. I started noticing a huge uptick in people following me, and I found a lot of people to follow that way as well. Of course, they still need a way to collapse that box so it doesn’t always have to be in your face. It looks as if Buzz’s box will have a close (and “Done”) button.

Buzz’s implementation may be slightly more controversial because once again they’re looking at your email/chat habits to suggest people to you. Sometimes these aren’t people you necessarily want as friends on social networks. But the ignore button should work fine there.

Google’s Chrome Web Store is launching this October, giving users the ability to purchase premium web applications (and developers an easy way to sell their wares). And, in an apparent attempt to make sure that users are as comfortable as possible with this new web-app market, Google is drawing inspiration from the best. Actually, “blatantly copying” would probably be a better choice of words — the Chrome Web Store looks nearly identical to Apple’s App Store.

The image above, which was captured by 1Up.com at a recent gaming conference, shows just how similar some portions of Google’s Chrome Web Store are to the iTunes App Store: colorful panels of featured apps at the top, scrolling thumbnails further down, with top ranked apps on the right side of the screen. The only major differences are the left nav-bar and garish ‘top rated’ and ‘hot games’ logos in Google’s version.

Still, blatant as this may be, it’s probably a wise choice on Google’s part. Chrome’s Web Store will only thrive if a lot of people are actually buying apps and games on it, and Google is giving people what they’re familiar with.

Update:: In Google’s defense, the profile pages for apps do look different from the App Store’s (I actually like Google’s better):

Our favorite digital coupon group buying site Groupon has cemented its foray into Japan and Russia today with the acquisitions of Japanese and Russian deals sites Qpod and Darberry respectively.  Groupon has a tendency to acquire and rebrand its better outfitted clones, most recently buying the German startup Citydeal as an outpost of its European expansion.

Groupon, which has the dubious distinction of being a startup with a built in business model, recently raised $135M in Series C funding lead by DST and Battery Ventures. The site also just launched “personalized deals,” which are also in line with the company’s push towards expansion.

Groupon Japan and Groupon Russia are the latest notches in Groupon’s belt of world domination; The company now serves up deals to more than 13 million subscribers in 29 countries and employs more than 1,200 people worldwide.

When asked at last month’s Social Currency CrunchUp about reports that the coupon company is now generating $1 million in revenue a day, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason did not confirm, responding, "it's a cool business".

Google’s app store for the web is almost ready for business.

Gaming portal 1Up.com has detailed a presentation given by Google developer advocates Mark DeLoura and Michael Mahemoff at GDC Europe that contains new details about the Chrome Web Store — a feature first announced at Google I/O that will allow users to purchase web applications from their Chrome web browsers. During their talk, the Google employees revealed that the Web Store is going to (probably) launch in October, and they gave more details on how the web store’s payments would work.

One key piece of news: when the Web Store was first announced, Google VP of Product Sundar Pichai indicated that there would be a standard 70/30 (developer/Google) split — the same as on Apple’s App Store and Android Market. However, the slides from the 1Up report say (in bold text, no less) that Google will take only a 5% “processing fee”, with no additional revenue share.

This is a very interesting change, because it means that developers now have a strong incentive to develop and promote the web versions of their applications over their native counterparts. Google may make less money from this in the short term, but if it helps the web win out over native apps then it’s a decision that will pay off for Google in a big way.

The slide also indicates that the store will launch with support for free trials, subscriptions, and other in-app payment platforms. At launch you’ll be able to purchase apps from anywhere in the world using Google Checkout, but only with US dollars (multiple currencies and in-app transactions are slated for the first half of 2011).

Also interesting: applications will be auto-approved and published “most of the time” (the report doesn’t indicate what the exception to the rule might be). Each application profile will include customer reviews including those left by your friends.

Dear Internet, please stop clicking on the damn Twifficiency link. In case you’re unaware by now given the 4,000 tweets in your tweet stream, it’s not the coolest app ever, it just automatically tweets out your results.

Yes, it alerts you that it will do this with some tiny red text at the bottom of the page, but clearly no one is reading this. According to Twitter Search, a new sucker is born almost every second.

The most humorous example is Google executive Marissa Mayer who a few minutes ago tweeted out her total failure of the exam to her 35,000 followers. “My Twifficiency score is 0%. What’s yours?,” Mayer tweeted. Something tells me she wouldn’t have tweeted the absolute failure on purpose.

What is Twifficiency? It’s a score based on how many people you follow, how many people follow you, and how often you tweet. In other words, it’s yet another meaningless metric that is attempting to trick you into thinking you’re using Twitter wrong if you don’t have a good score. Mayer is actually on Twitter and uses it somewhat regularly, which is more than you can say about most high-profile executives. And yet, she got a 0 percent on the exam. Why? Who cares.

Update: Mayer quickly followed up with a tweet:

Lesson learned! RT @adamrofer my twifficiency is “I don’t trust them to tweet on my behalf”

In 1997 Wired Magazine declared the browser dead. “Sure, we’ll always have Web pages. We still have postcards and telegrams, don’t we?” said Kevin Kelly and Gary Wolf.

They were wrong, of course. The browser is still the killer app of killer apps. It’s the single most important way that we interact with the Internet. From Wikipedia to webmail to YouTube, it’s the universal virtual machine that has made pc operating systems irrelevant. If all you have is a browser, you’ll be just fine.

Fast forward to today and Wired is once again saying the browser is dead. “Over the past few years, one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display,” says Chris Anderson.

And about that 1997 article: They weren’t wrong, they were prescient. “The point was altogether prescient,” Anderson says now of that article. Overheard on the TechCrunch Yammer stream: “Possibly the greatest explanation for being dead fucking wrong that I’ve ever seen.”

Wired is still wrong. Way wrong.

The new article is based on a foundation of data supplied by Cisco that shows web traffic, as taking a smaller piece of total Internet traffic. The chart itself is misleading, as BoingBoing pointed out. But even taken at face value, it’s still wrong.

Wired’s argument, based on the data, is that the browser is dead and apps, like iPhone apps, are taking over. “This is not a trivial distinction. Over the past few years, one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display.”

Um, ok. But the data doesn’t show this at all. Sure, video traffic is expanding. Which makes sense because it’s a heavy load. But most of it is also being transported via Flash and HTML right through a web browser. And most app data is counted under “web” in Wired’s graph, meaning its all lumped together with normal browser data.

In other words, Wired took a misleading graph and then drew all kinds of conclusions based on it that don’t even make sense in their make believe world. It’s like they showed a picture of a banana and said it explains the rising cost of gasoline.

In fact, the only thing Wired’s chart really shows is that video files are really big, and people like to watch them in browsers.

The browser isn’t dead. Web pages aren’t dead. HTML works really, really well. Check out Facebook’s iPad “app,” for example. You don’t download it from an app store, you just point your browser to touch.facebook.com. Not only does it work really well, Steve Jobs doesn’t get to have a veto right over people using it. It’s no wonder that we’re seeing a surge of traffic from the iPad to our site, via a browser.

Apps are great on mobile phones with small screens. But they are a pain to install and keep synchronized. Eventually having less local software will make sense on phones, too. All you really need is that browser virtual machine and you can pull everything else from the cloud. This is obvious. Only a bunch of hipster tech journalists checking email on their iPads all day* would think otherwise, and then make up a bunch of data to support their argument.

*Wired, not us.

Google made their “opt out of street view” service live in Germany today, giving select Germans until September 15th to exclude their properties from being mapped when the Street View service launches. The function will be available for a limited time in the 20 cities that are mentioned which includes Berlin, Dresden and Hamburg and then extend to all cities covered as Google Maps Germany rolls out.

While I’ve contacted Google for analytics on the number of people who have requested building camoflaging, the fact that private citizens can mass opt out of certain Google search functions is unprecedented until now. Why not give people the option to opt out of search entirely? After all, a hypothetical “Opt out” or rather “Do not index these pages I swear are about me and harmful” is considerably less far-fetched a privacy solution than Erick Schmidt’s suggestion that people change their names.

Bear in mind that there is no specific German law forcing Google to do this, and buildings, experts have assessed, do not count as person-related data in Germany. The general privacy greyzones of the strict German Bundesdatenschutzgesetz (Federal Data Protection Act) and the fact that German citizens and the newspaper BILD are up in arms over the risk that their data will be used maliciously pressured the search giant into providing this special service.

The German Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maizière is currently proposing a new law that would specifically target Google Street View and issues surrounding privacy. It is actually against the German constitution to enact a law that targets a specific company.

Google Maps has already launched in 23 countries and has experienced turbulance in Spain and Austraila as well as various strange use cases. Google insists that the service will provide value to Germany, “Many German users are already using Street View to visit other European countries virtually.”

On a side note: German Chancellor Angela Merkel has revealed that she will not opt out of Street View.

Image: Cologne Blog

Translation from German: Philip Mertens