Marketing analytics company MarketShare Partners has acquired JovianDATA, a marketing
and data analytics technology firm. We hear the acquisition price is roughly $8 million but MarketShare Partners declined to reveal the terms of the deal.

MarketShare Partners develops software that evaluates the key parts of a company's business, such as macro-economic factors, product innovation, industry and client-specific data as well as brand buzz to help them make better decisions regarding where to spend their marketing, sales and promotional dollars. The company’s proprietary technology combines analytics and statistical modeling to give clients a qualitative and quantitative view of effective marketing strategies. Clients include Charles Schwab, Electronic Arts and Mercedes-Benz.

JovianDATA provides a powerful data analysis and modeling technology that produces real-time results. MarketShare says the acquisition will allow the company to handle and analyze massive amounts of data volumes at more granular levels and at much greater speed. Additionally, JovianDATA's technology will allow the company to provide its clients with speed and greater data to track and optimize their ongoing marketing campaigns on the fly.

MarketShare Partners has raised and undisclosed amount of funding from Elevation Partners.

People love taking pictures of food. It’s just a fact of life. Don’t even bother arguing about it. It’s just the way it is. Case in point: Foodspotting, the service which asks you to take pictures of your food to share with others. People love this service. Since its formal launch in January 2010, people around the work have “spotted” just about 100,000 different pieces of food.

And now a group of angel investors have decided to put their money where their mouths are — literally. Foodspotting has just secured a new $750,000 seed round of funding from investors. The round was led by Felicis Ventures, Aydin Senkut’s fund and anchored by Dave McClure’s 500 Startups, Shana Fisher’s High Line Venture Partners, Zelkova Ventures, and 2020 Ventures.

Other individual angels include Dave Morin (of Path), Steve Lee (product manager of Google Latitude), Derek Dukes (of Dipity), and Dan Martell (of Flowtown — which also got some funding this morning).

This new money follows a big couple of weeks for Foodspotting. Last week, the new Foodspotting 2.0 website and iPhone app became available. The service was also able to secure deals with both Zagat and The Travel Channel for partnerships that will expand their visibility and functionality.

While Foodspottings website and iPhone app are almost equal in terms of usage, it’s the app that’s really the key to the service. It is what allows people to be out and about taking pictures of their food and geotagging it. So far, the app has seen over 120,000 downloads.

And the 2.0 version of the app is much more robust than the previous version. In fact, it’s the version Foodspotting always had in mind, co-founder Alexa Andrzejewski says. “This is not just for ‘foodies’ — it’s an app meant to solve a practical problem surrounding location: discovery,” Andrzejewski tells us. ”It’s practical augmented reality.” Andrzejewski tells us.

With that in mind, it shouldn’t be surprising that Foodspotting is already thinking about expanding their idea beyond food. The service has already purchased the domains sightspotting.com and goodspotting.com for other services they are planning. Andrzejewski wouldn’t elaborate too much except to say that you can expect them to be based around travel in a more general sense.

Below, find the killer spot The Travel Channel is currently running for Anthony Bourdain’s popular No Reservations show.

I personally love OpenDNS, at least as much as you can love a DNS service. It offers a number of admin features that are usually reserved for bigger and badder ISPs and the service is free, fast, and fun (not really, but I liked the alliteration). If you’ve never used it, it essentially replaces your current ISPs Domain Name Server which is like the Internet’s phone book. To use it, all you have to do is type in two sets of numbers into your network preferences. If you want to get really fancy, you can create an account to control access to certain sites, add shortcuts to sites (typing “cgmail” will get me to CrunchGear mail, for example, in my setup), and stats. It also warns you about malware attacks.

Read more…

It’s finally here. Digg, the social link sharing site that has watched its once-meteoric rise to popularity level off over the last couple years, is relaunching today as it attempts to surge to greater heights — with an added focus on making the site better for publishers as well as users. Digg v4 will be rolling out over the next few hours, and brings some major changes that could totally change the dynamic of the site. Plenty of invites have been distributed over the last couple months, and we posted an exclusive preview back in May, but for most people this will be the first time they’ve experienced ‘New Digg’ for themselves.

The biggest change to come in Digg v4 is the increased emphasis on social. When you first sign in, you’ll be walked through a flow inviting you to begin following other users, both from a series of lists curated by Digg and from friends on your Facebook, Twitter, and Google accounts (which you can easily connect with). Once you’ve done this, you’ll get to the real meat of Digg. Which, as it happens, looks a lot like the old Digg.

As with the Digg you’re used to, you’ll see a stream of recent stories filling up most of the page, with ten top stories in a sidebar on the right. But there’s one key difference: each of these stories has been Dugg by one of your friends (or sponsored by an advertiser). Likewise, the stories on the right hand side of the screen represent the stories that have been dugg most by your friends over the last day or so.

But fear not, Digg diehards — the Digg you’ve come to know and love is still readily accessible at the top of the page, via the ‘Top News’ section. Clicking this tab will transition over to a version of Digg that’s much more like the current version, with recent news and Top News as submitted across all of Digg.

Other key changes include the link submission process, which is much more straightforward than it used to be. Before now if you wanted to submit a link to Digg, you had to provide an image and description to go along with it. Now these will be automatically added, the same way they are when you add a link to Facebook.

Of course, there’s still one big question: will it work? At this point I’m skeptical, but it won’t be clear for some time. In order for this to lead to the resurgence Digg needs, user behavior will need to change, especially among casual users. The site has long been dominated by power users who account for many of the stories that hit the front page — now there’s much more emphasis on what your friends have shared. Which assumes, of course, that you friends are actually sharing things on Digg, which is hardly a given at this point. That said, you can also follow celebrity and publisher accounts, like the TechCrunch Digg profile right here to help flesh out your feed of stories.

This launch has been a long time coming — it was supposed to launch back in 2009. In April, Digg founder Kevin Rose took over as CEO, replacing Jay Adelson — at the time we were hearing that he was unsatisfied with the progress of New Digg, which had already been much delayed.

You know when someone wants to connect with you on Twitter or Facebook and you get an email alert with a little bit more information about them? Those are a pretty useful way for determining exactly who that person is and if you want to interact with them. But those are reliant on whatever service is sending the email. What if every email address could be tagged with similar relevant information?

That’s the idea behind Flowtown, a social marketing service that aims to better connect businesses with customers through their email addresses. Today, the service has just raised a $750,000 seed round to expand that idea.

Specifically, the money will be used to hire more people with a focus on more developers who can help build out their technology, co-founder Ethan Bloch says. To be useful to customers, they need to be able to look over a list of email addresses and quickly identify key people on that list that the companies should engage with. They do this by scanning to see what social elements this email address is associated with, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others. This information is then presented in an easy to understand format.

In the age of social media, it’s easy to forget that the email address is often the common bond between all these services. Flowtown is smart to focus on that connection to help brands.

Their seed round of funding has garnered an attractive group of angels. These include: Mitch Kapor (founder of the Lotus Development Corporation), Mark Goines (Mint.com board member), Dave McClure (of 500 Startups), Steve Anderson (of Baseline Ventures), Saar Gur (at Charles River Ventures), Travis Kalanick, Auren Hoffman, Brian Norgard, and Dan Gould.

Bloch launched the company in November 2009 alongside co-founder Dan Martell who is himself an active angel investor.

IBM put out a new report (embedded below) on security threats to enterprise computer networks today from its X-Force security research group. It found a 36 percent increase in security vulnerabilities, with Web applications being the main culprit. Web apps with security exploits accounted for 55 percent of all disclosed vulnerabilities. One of the biggest threats are hidden attacks using Javascript. There was a 52 percent rise in such "obfuscated attacks" in the first half of 2010. The increased adoption of cloud computing and virtualization brings with it its own security threats. For instance, 35 percent of virtualization vulnerabilities affect the hypervisor, meaning that gaining control of one virtual machine can give attackers controls of other machines on the same system.

In January, we broke the news that prolific Silicon Valley angel investor Dave McClure was to set up his own venture capital fund. About a month ago, he formally filed for the ($30 million) seed fund and incubator, naming it 500 Startups.

McClure has now made his first hire for the investment firm, attracting former YouTube and Google product manager Christine Tsai to serve as Principal.

Tsai spent more than 7 years at Google, where she once led product marketing for YouTube and also worked in the AdSense and Google Analytics units, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Most recently, Tsai was the lead for Google I/O, the company’s largest annual developer event. Judging from her Twitter bio, she dances ballet and enjoys a good latte.

500 Startups boasts investments in companies like Medialets, Appbistro, OtherInbox and Rapportive. The entire portfolio can be viewed on the firm’s CrunchBase page.

Online brokerage firm Zecco is one of the participants in Twitter’s Promoted Tweets program – currently in beta – and this morning announced that the ad platform has proven to be very effective for the company to date.

The company says it sampled 50 Promoted Tweets over the past two months and measured their effectiveness, seeing a 50% increase in engagement on average as compared to regular messages posted on Zecco’s Twitter account.

Some of the tweets, which are centered around financial market commentary and new product offerings, even saw a 200% to 300% increase in engagement, the company adds.

Twitter launched Promoted Tweets last April, much to the chagrin of users initially. Basically, the system allows advertisers – only a handful of companies participate in the beta program today – to purchase keywords and select tweets that will appear on top of Twitter Search results for said terms.

Zecco says it plans to use the Promoted Tweets platform to share investment-focused resources, as well as real-time intelligence from the ZeccoShare community, such as “most traded” alerts to make investors aware of new opportunities.

Last April, Zecco announced Zap Trade, a plug-in trading experience for the web, enabling investors to place trades directly from top finance and investing websites. StockTwits, a Twitter-powered financial community, partnered with Zecco to embed the technology into the StockTwits website to allow investors to place trades with Zecco Trading and get real-time quotes directly through the website.

Amazon has announced today that more “next generation Kindles were ordered in the first four weeks of availability than in the same timeframe following any other Kindle launch, making the new Kindles the fastest-selling ever.” While the company didn’t reveal how many Kindles have been sold, it said that in the four weeks since the introduction of the new Kindle and Kindle 3G, customers ordered more Kindles on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk combined than any other product.

The new version of the Kindle started shipping to customers today, which Amazon says is two days earlier than previously announced. The fast growth of the new version of the Kindle isn’t surprising considering Amazon’s recent assertion that it sold three times as many Kindle books in the first half of 2010 as it did in the first half of 2009, with the Kindle continuing to be the number one product sold on Amazon. Amazon says the U.S. Kindle store now over 670,000 books. And the Kindle has reportedly been sold out until the fall.

Amazon announced the new, more affordable Kindle at the end of July. The updated version has a sleeker design with a 21 percent smaller body 15 percent lighter weight, 20 percent faster page turns, up to one month of battery life with wireless off, double the storage to 3,500 books, built-in Wi-Fi for the lower price of $139. The new Kindle 3G with all of these new features plus with free 3G wireless is $189.

Amazon also said today that the Kindle and Kindle 3G are the most gifted and most wished for products on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk combined. The company recently launched a UK Kindle store with more than 400,000 titles, looking to boost growth internationally. So far, customers in 125 countries on six continents have placed orders for the new e-book device.

Of course, while Amazon is touting the massive traction of the device, the company still faces competition from the iPad and even the NOOK. Of course, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos doesn’t seem too worried about the iPad. Bezos explained recently to Charlie Rose that with the Kindle, Amazon isn't looking to "create an experience" — they want the author to create the experience. Bezos believes that this differentiates the Kindle from the iPad and and other devices. And there are those reports that the Kindle is outselling the iBooks store 60 to one.

A new seed fund called Resonant Venture Partners opened its office doors in Ann Arbor, Michigan today.

Founded by Michael Godwin and Jason Townsend (pictured above), Resonant aims to raise $10 million within the next 18 months, and to invest up to $500,000 per seed round in regional firms across a variety of high-tech sectors: IT, life sciences, advanced manufacturing, alternative energy and defense.

Though still in the midst of subscribing, Resonant closed its first deal late last week. It was part of a $1 million investment in Scio Security, a mobile software security startup.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based True Ventures led that round (as reported last week by Xconomy). With Resonant’s previously undisclosed involvement, Scio agreed to maintain its headquarters in Ann Arbor.

Godwin and Townsend are recent graduates of the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. As students there, they managed the $5.5 million Wolverine Venture Fund at The Samuel Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies growing it from $3.5 million to $5.5 million within two years, with a couple of successful exits.

Jason Townsend says there are no other seed funds in the state of Michigan at this time, and that the 17 venture funds he knows about in the state will be happy Resonant has formed and can help companies get to the stage where they’re ready for a bigger, series B investment.

Another reason it’s a good time to be an investor in Michigan, Townsend explains: “The Midwest garners 45% lower valuations for companies compared to coastal startups and investments. You have a lot of money chasing a few deals out there. And even if the exits are higher on the coast, there's still a 25% premium.”

The fund is co-located within the offices of EDF Ventures in Ann Arbor.

Digital Chocolate, a leading publisher of casual games for the iPhone (and a bunch of other mobile phones), the Web, Facebook and Xbox LIVE, has apparently filed suit against its high-profile rival Zynga.

We don’t have any details on the specifics of the lawsuit yet, but the nature of the suit indicates that this is a dispute over intellectual property and/or trademarks.

Zynga has already commented on the suit, but declined to share details about its subject at this point. The company says it is “surprised and disappointed by Digital Chocolate’s lawsuit” and that the timing of the action appears to be opportunistic.

Zynga added that it will defend itself vigorously.

A quick check reveals that Digital Chocolate holds a couple of trademarks in the U.S., and an equally quick Google Patents search reveals only one U.S. patent issued to Digital Chocolate, namely no. 2006/0281553. Said patent was published back in 2006, listing William ‘Trip’ Hawkins – founder of Digital Chocolate and former founder and CEO of Electronic Arts – as one of the inventors.

We’re still digging in order to learn what the suit is about, specifically.

Update: TG Daily got a look at the court documents and reports that Digital Chocolate is suing Zynga because it “falsely claimed to the public, the United States Patent Office and the courts that it ‘coined’ the Mafia Wars mark and owns superior rights to the mark.”

The gaming startup indeed holds the rights to the name Mafia Wars, although its eponymous mobile game(s) are largely unknown compared to Zynga’s smash hit with the same name.

Digital Chocolate goes on to allege that it notified Zynga of the name conflict last year and was subsequently told, in writing, that Zynga would stop using the Mafia Wars name. Except it did not, hence the lawsuit.

We’ve contacted Digital Chocolate but have not heard back yet.

Video recommendation startup Taboola has been having quite a year, signing up major Web publishers such as the Huffington Post and the online editions of Bloomberg and The New York Times. The driving force behind the company’s continued traction is their Text2Video product.

In fact, its most recent coup, Revision3, has seen a whopping 90% video uplift since adding Text2Video to their non-video pages.

Adam Singolda, Taboola’s CEO, explained to me that while Taboola’s initial product was purely Video2Video recommendation, the company realized that although video CPMs are higher and publishers want more video views, most Web traffic is still mostly textual. Put simply, folks on the Web read much more than they watch video.

To use Text2Video, publishers must also add the Video2Video module, allowing Taboola to crawl the publisher’s video inventory for title, thumbnail, description, etc. Then, the Text2Video module analyzes page content to offer video recommendations. Revision3 saw a 90% uplift in video views when Text2Video was added to its non-video pages, such as DiggReel. See it in action on Bloomberg.com as well, here.

Singolda went on to explain that Text2Video’s ‘secret sauce’ is its ability to measure user engagement after the click on a video recommendation. This means that unlike purely contextual/semantic analysis solutions that can tell that page content happens to be about the iPhone, and consequently ‘pull’ iPhone videos, Taboola can tell that for iPhone page content, only short videos keep users on the site. Taboola can also determine that for iPhone page content, users are likely to be more engaged with off-topic videos (travel, for example).

It seems the benefits of increased engagement and additional inventory publishers can monetize at higher CPMs are not falling on deaf ears. Taboola tells me that it’s now running on hundreds of millions of pages a month, doubling traffic every couple of months. Perfect timing for the video advertising ‘Frenzy Point‘ we recently wrote about.

In general updates, since we last covered Taboola, the company has moved its headquarters from Israel to NYC. It has also brought on Lior Golan to run Product/R&D. Golan co-founded Cyota, which was sold to RSA for $145M. Liz Hughes also joined the company as VP Business Development. She previously held the same position at RealNetworks.

Adblock Plus, the wildly popular Firefox browser add-on that, well, blocks ads, is not going to get the plug pulled out of any time soon, and might eventually turn into a self-sustaining venture, even.

That’s the gist of this blog post by ABP developer Wladimir Palant (hat tip to @CleverClogs), who has apparently raised enough capital – courtesy of an unnamed Samaritan – to quit his day job at Songbird and work on the project full-time for the next two years.

Granted, it doesn’t take all that much capital to sustain a single developer full-time for that period ($90k – $110k?), but it’s the mystery surrounding the partner in question that intrigues me, personally.

Writes Palant:

At least as far as my availability is concerned — I think I found a solution. A while ago I started talking to somebody who shares my passion for the web and agrees that the current advertising model needs fixing (no names for now, he first wants to see how things work out).

Any guesses as far as his identity goes?

Later in the blog post, Palant says he’s still very much in charge of the project, but that he now has the opportunity to solicit help from people who have “better business sense” than him. Interestingly, he references the fact that he’s apparently been receiving business offers that he’s had to ignore so far, which will now be evaluated more seriously.

Palant does say some commercial offers will remain off-limits, such as bundling unrelated extensions with Adblock Plus or replacing ads with other ads – which would be super ironic – and that any means of monetization will not come at the expense of ABP’s many users.

Finally, Palant says the funding will be used to help Adblock Plus grow its already significant market share and “influence the web in a positive way”.

God, I hope he’s talking about an imminent Trollblock Plus extension.

Editor's note: The following is a guest post and endorsement written by Timothy C. Draper, Founder and a Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

Seventy years ago, Stanford grads David Packard and Bill Hewlett took $538 dollars, opened up shop in a Palo Alto garage and, as they say, the rest is history.  Ever since, Silicon Valley has been a place where talent and imagination spur innovation.

It's hard to believe that just 130 miles from Silicon Valley is Sacramento, home to what has to be among the nation's most dysfunctional state governments; a place where partisan gridlock and status quo-thinking produce inertia.

The most successful companies that have sprung from the valley have each exhibited a unique mix of visionary leadership, efficient teamwork, and timely execution of bold plans.

In the valley, we see complex problems as opportunities, a reason to try something different and take a new road. In Sacramento, they see complex problems as obstacles, an excuse to stick with the old ways and never rock the boat.

It's time for fundamental change in Sacramento. Today, we could use a big dose of the innovative valley mindset in state government.  We need a leader who has a plan and the skills and talent to execute. We need a leader like Meg Whitman.

I served on the state's Board of Education and can say with authority that California is broken.  The budget is in disarray, and there is a disturbing lack of accountability.  Our schools are failing our children, and the business climate is driving companies out of state.  This status quo is unsustainable.

I'm supporting Meg Whitman because she is the only candidate who has the fortitude and forward thinking to get Sacramento out of its downward spiral.

Meg knows firsthand from building a start-up into a Fortune 500 company that no organization will reach its full potential without a thoughtful and thorough plan of action. Meg has a plan for California, and on Day One she will put the wheels in motion to begin changing the way business is done in Sacramento.  This plan is realistic and achievable, not the usual pie-in-the-sky, election-cycle political promises.  Her vision represents a pathway to substantive change in California.

Through her years at the helm of eBay, Meg exhibited the rare character traits that are seen only in the most effective leaders.  Her ability to build a consensus amongst a diverse group of stakeholders while still forging ahead with the tough decisions is something that is sorely lacking in our government.  True leaders will bring people together to follow as they lead by example, putting in the hard work needed to succeed.

Meg also knows well such a big task requires a talented team. The best leaders are the ones who know how to effectively hire the best and the brightest.  Meg knows how to find the right people for the right job and create the environment in which they can thrive. Sacramento is a place where political appointments are made on the basis of campaign promises and backroom deals. Meg has a plan in place to fill her administration with only the best and the brightest, and she plans to recruit private and public-sector candidates with track records of consistent success. We are long past the point where we can tolerate failure at any level.

Another best practice that Meg will bring to Sacramento is her detailed, results-driven management style.  For too long there has been no accountability in California's government.  We reward people for longevity rather than performance.  Meg has pledged to set standards and goals for all departments and agencies, and then do the follow up — measuring results and holding people accountable.

In business, employees are held accountable for their performance through regular reviews. Managers are, in turn, held accountable to shareholders every quarter, reporting their progress in executing the business plan in quarterly earnings statements. Government workers and programs must be evaluated on the results they deliver, as well.

There's no question that Meg is the right person to bring this type of accountability to government; it is in her CEO fiber.

I watched Meg lead eBay for many years.  She may have been recruited there initially for her marketing skills, but she's become a visionary valley leader with the full breadth of talents.

I am excited about this election.  For the first time in recent memory, we have the opportunity to elect a different kind of leader, one who is a planner, an innovator and has the chops to deliver what she promises.

California is on a path that is unsustainable, and unless we make significant changes, our government will collapse under its own weight.  Meg is a Silicon Valley business leader who is well equipped to use those best traits to turn Sacramento on its head. It's time to bring some Silicon Valley sensibilities to the state Capitol.

Dr. Usama Fayyad has worn several hats at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, Microsoft, his startups DigiMine and DMX, and of course, at Yahoo where he was their Chief Data Officer for four years.

It’s a rich resume with one unifying theme: data. Few people have spent as much time as Fayyad ruminating on this one subject. From finding volcanoes on Venus to creating better algorithms for ad targeting, Fayyad has made a career on crunching massive data sets and creating elegant algorithms to make sense of white noise. It’s somewhat ironic then, that for a man who lives in data, there is actually very little known about what makes Fayyad tick as an entrepreneur and how he shaped the companies he worked for.

In a rare video interview, SGN founder, Shervin Pishevar, recently spoke to Usama Fayyad in Jordan for TechCrunch TV. During this entrepreneur-to-entrepreneur fireside chat, Fayyad opens up about his obsession for data, how he sold his company to Yahoo (after the 6th offer), how Yahoo made an $800 million mistake (that may have triggered the giant’s ugly tumble) and how he almost became the CTO of Google.

While there are golden nuggets scattered throughout this interview, the discussion on Yahoo is particularly rich and focuses on the rocky period leading up to Microsoft’s now famous (and failed) takeover bid.

Fayyad describes a torn management team that was searching for direction and clear priorities. At one point (presumably mid-2007), Jerry Yang, then CEO, tried to reassemble a list of 7 priorities, ranked according to importance. One of the top debates was whether Yahoo should focus on becoming an ad network or an ad exchange. Fayyad, the chief data officer, thought it was a misplaced debate, that Yahoo should be paying more attention on the growing gulf between Google and Yahoo’s revenue per search (RPS).

At the time, Yahoo was making roughly “1/6 the money that a search on Google was making,” he says. Fayyad was ready to go to war, with roughly a dozen development projects lined up to “close the gap.” According to his calculations, through these initiatives, Yahoo would have pulled in $800 million in incremental revenues within the year.

Those “close the gap” plans were never fully executed, as management went a different direction—- still captivated by the prospect of gold at the end of the ad network/exchange rainbow. As Fayyad explains:

“I was on the camp that said ad exchange is the wrong thing for  Yahoo to do, primarily for two reasons:  because Yahoo is a big publisher itself so it’s a competitor so how could it run an exchange, can we expect Google to put its inventory on Yahoo, or Microsoft?  The other one was that, exchanges as we all know, publishers will never put their premium inventory on exchanges they only put their crap inventory, so to me an outlet of crap inventory is not necessarily a very interesting thing.

But at the time, through a debate between the execs, it was decided that of the seven priorities, of the company, CTG or close the gap fell from #2, which is where i thought it should be  (#1 being business up, site up meaning the site is up…) it fell to #7, while ad netowrks and exchange taking up… 2 and 3. So to me that bypassing of 800 million revenue of extra cash in the hands…like i said 20/20 hindsight… at the time people were very worried that we would lose the opportunity to take the leadeship in ad network and in ad exchange and they valued that much more than immediate cash. Now me being the pragmatic, startup scruffy guy, I wanted the cash in the bank, give me the cash and then later let me fight my war. I claim and this is my explanation, once we missed that 800 million in additional revenue, stock goes down, Mr. Ballmer shows up, bad offers, cycle, cycle, cycle, expectations of the street goes down, and it was a really bad spiral that the company got into.”

Assuming Fayyad’s $800 million estimate is correct (it’s not that outlandish when you consider he grew Yahoo’s behavioral targeting business from $20 million to $500 million in four years), that’s a fascinating “what if” scenario. There’s no doubt that Yahoo could have used that cash in hand while it chased the two birds in the bushes.

Interestingly, despite his deep disappointment with the reorganization, he stayed on a little longer after a talk with Yang. The soon to be ex-CEO convinced Fayyad that a new strategy was underway. And indeed, that summer Yahoo rolled out an exciting vision at a splashy corporate event. Yahoo even tapped Steve Jobs as the keynote speaker, to deliver his inspirational story about how he turned around Apple. Unfortunately, for Fayyad, expectations never quite lived up to reality, as he says in an almost plaintive tone: “We came up with a beautiful plan and there was no execution because the company had gone through so much turmoil.”

In total there are roughly 30 minutes of footage of Pishevar’s interview with Fayyad, which I’ve divided into five topics: the development of his startup, how he made the case for data at Yahoo, that $800 million-dollar mistake (see above), his brush with Google and finally his latest venture, Oasis 500, a startup accelerator for entrepreneurs in the Middle East. If you want to see parts one to five from end to end, check out the last clip.

Watch out: The globe trotting Pishevar, who has just wrapped up a tour of the Middle East and is preparing to meet new entrepreneurs in Asia, will be submitting future entrepreneur-to-entrepreneur videos to TechCrunch TV.

In part one of this series, Fayyad talks about how his early years at NASA influenced his ideas on data and how DigiMine came together.

Fayyad discusses how made data/analytics matter at Yahoo:

If Fayyad took a left turn, he could have been the CTO of Google. In this clip, he recalls a conversation with Sergey Brin, when Google was in its infancy. The blunt Fayyad told Brin that Google had no business plan.

In part five, Fayyad discusses his new investment fund Oasis 500, which will help budding entrepreneurs in the Middle East. Although entrepreneurs have decent access to VC money in this region, there is very little capital available for young companies.

Parts one through five:

Just in from WeedMaps (think Yelp for Pot) CEO/owner Justin Hartfield: an email letting us know that Tim Draper at Draper Fisher Jurvetson isn’t going to invest in his startup. That’s ok, says Hartfield. He’ll just keep “growing organically” for now. Har!

Email is below. Just because it’s awesome. Also, we have no idea if Tim really sent this email or ever even met with WeedMaps. But we like to think he did.

From: Justin Hartfield
Date: August 24, 2010 3:14:45 PM PDT
To: tips@techcrunch.com
Subject: Tim Draper “Chickens Out” On Funding WeedMaps

The latest poll data shows that, Prop 19, the referendum to legalize marijuana in California this November, is current passing between 4% – 10%. Even if Prop 19 doesn’t pass in Nov, assuming present trends continue, a similar initiative will be put to voters two years later and will probably pass then.

One start-up company positioned to take advantage of this hot new industry is WeedMaps.com, which TechCrunch reported on in March ’09.

WeedMaps is one of the hottest web properties in California, which is home to over 1,500 medical marijuana dispensaries. Boasting over $1 million in sales just six months into monetization, the site is now home to over 43,000 medical marijuana patients and receives more than 25% of its revenue outside of California, mostly in emerging medical marijuana states like Colorado and Nevada.

WeedMaps isn’t just a Yelp clone anymore either — it’s built a unique business model based on the concept charging dispensaries for the ability to post their menu of items for sale on the site. Menu items are posted via an AJAX interface called the WeedMenu, which is specifically designed to categorize the products commonly found at cannabis dispensaries, eg edibles, concentrates, indica, etc. Currently, WeedMaps is tracking 15,703 items across 630 dispensaries in real-time via the WeedMenu. The WeedMenu is searchable, filterable, and shows the products prices (if entered by the dispensary). Businesses pay anywhere between $195 – $395 per month to post their menus online with WeedMaps, depending on region population. Over 75% of the listings update their WeedMenus at least once per week.

WeedMaps has gone on a funding tour of Silicon Valley, engaging with high profile venture capital firms like Draper, Fisher, Jurvetson, Oak Investments, True Venture, top tier legal firms and several white-shoe accounting firms.

But for all the Sand Hill rhetoric about creating innovation and fostering disruptive technologies, the general consensus is that Sand Hill is not yet ready for legalized marijuana. After courting WeedMaps for three weeks, Draper officially passed on the business, but offered this to WeedMaps founder Justin Hartfield, “I am going to chicken out. You have an awesome business, and it will probably be worth a ton someday, but I can't pull the trigger. Sorry,
Best, Tim”

WeedMaps has been a hotly debated company in the Valley recently, and we’ve heard from several high profile sources at Cooley that the company was discussed at the general partner meeting, with all the partners under 40 supporting involvement with the company, while the white hairs had an “aneurism”. Meanwhile, WeedMaps is continuing to seek funding but are comfortable growing organically for now. The company plans to release WeedVote.com, a site to promote the legalization initiative, sometime early next month.

-Justin Hartfield

The service is down for almost everyone we know, and many people we don’t. The official response from Facebook:

“We have turned Facebook Questions off for some beta users while we conduct a few tests. You may be in the group that has it turned off, but it is still on for other users.

We are running tests to ensure high quality of questions and answers and we hope to roll it back out to more users as soon as possible.”

Facebook Questions rolled out to between 3-5 million users in late July and has fallen short of being a "killer app” of any sort. Compared to Quora, which was founded by Facebook's former CTO Adam D’Angelo, the quality of the answers to Facebook Questions has been relatively low, perhaps because of the latter service’s lack of anonymity and/or a culled userbase.

Many users have complained that addition of the Facebook Questions option on the status bar adds clutter to Facebook’s already overwhelming user interface.

This is what my status bar looks like right now. I can’t say that I’m sad to see them go.

Our experimental Hack Day at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York a couple of months ago was wildly successful – more developers than you can shake a stick at showed up, drank redbull and pizza (care of sponsors). A number of projects were featured on stage in front of a live audience of nearly 2,000 people, and tens of thousands more watched on the live stream. And at least one project has become an actual startup and received funding (more on that later).

So we’re going to make this a regular part of TechCrunch Disrupt. For the day and a half before the regular schedule begins on September 27, 300 developers will be admitted to the event to run amok and create something out of nothing. The marathon 24-hour hack will run Saturday to Sunday, September 25th – 26th. After a lightning round of demos and judging Sunday afternoon, the winning teams will present onstage at Disrupt on Wednesday, September 29th. This is a great opportunity to share the spotlight alongside the top startups chosen from Disrupt's Startup Battlefield.

The event is being organized by Daniel Raffel and Tarikh Korula – the same team of hacker experts that pulled off our New York Disrupt Hack Day. Participants will conceptualize, create and present their projects/apps/hacks in 24hrs. Anything goes as long as it's created onsite.

Space for the Hackathon is limited to 300 developers. Applications will open September 1 on the Disrupt website and will remain open based on availability. If you're not a developer/hacker/designer we will be inviting press and fans to come and watch the final demos on the Sunday. You'll receive a confirmation email as the date approaches.

If you’d like to be notified by email the second applications are being accepted, just type your email in here. We’ll use it once to notify you and then delete the email, promise.

To make it all happen, we’re teaming with Kosmix, SendGrid, Mashery, Alcatel-Lucent, Media Temple and a growing list of others who are sponsoring and sending and sending a team of veteran hackers too. There are lots of ways to support and participate in the Hackathon. Please contact Heather Harde or Jeanne Logozzo to learn more.

API workshops will be hosted on Saturday afternoon by a great line up of companies. They’re optional to attend but full of insights and answers for makers. Workshop hosts include: eBay / Paypal, Yahoo!, Facebook, Google, SimpleGeo, Twitter and Mashery.

Additional details and fine print are on the Disrupt website.

The more computers you have (mobile, laptop, desktop), the bigger hassle it becomes to get your media when you want it, on the device you want it. Apple deals with this by making you constantly sync your iPhone with your laptop. It involves cables and transferring files. Microsoft’s answer to effortless sync is Mesh, but that is still in beta after two years and is Windows-only. An Israeli startup called Libox thinks it has a better way and it is available right now on your desktop, on the Web, and on the iPhone.

Libox is a peer-to-peer application that scans all the media on your primary computer (photos, videos, music) and then streams it to other devices with a Libox app or browser. The iPhone app just went live in iTunes a few hours ago. You can see all your photos, and play all your videos, and even listen to your entire music collection. It is all streamed from your laptop, which acts as a server.

It does require some set-up. First, you must download the desktop app from Libox, which scans your computer for all your media (photos, videos, music). This can take a while, and of you have a lot of media (as in thousands of photos and songs), it might take a few tries before you the scan gets everything. This part is still a bit buggy.

But once you scan your computer, all of your photos, videos, and music is available from any computer with a browser, and now on your iPhone via the new app. It works exactly the same on the mobile Web in both iPhone and Android browsers. Whenever you add more media to your computer, it is automatically available everywhere else without any cables. Libox transcodes the files into formats that can be streamed to whatever device you are on. The catch is that your host computer must be on (the Libox app works in the background). Eventually, Libox will supplement this by making the media you access the most often available via the cloud as well.

Because of the way the iPhone works, media that you create on your phone such as photos or videos still have to be manually synced to your computer before they can then be made available again via Libox. With the Android app, which is in the works, it will just sync wirelessly via WiFi. For mobile phones with relatively limited memory, you can offload your videos and photos, but still be able to see them on the phone.

Being able to get to your own stuff is very useful, as long as your keep your main computer on. But you can also share your media with other Libox users. For the most part, this does not present an issue with photos or personal videos, but with music or Hollywood content that could raise the attention of the copyright enforcers. However, Libox is not really designed for mass sharing, so it might not be a problem.

A bigger risk for Libox is that Apple, Google, and Microsoft will end up doing the same thing and baking it directly into their products. It is time to get rid of those syncing cables and they know it. Until then, though, there is Libox.

The company’s founder is Erez Pilosof, who also founded Walla!, the Israeli equivalent of Yahoo! He has raised only $2 million in seed funding from Evergreen Venture Partners and Rhodium.

Oh, this is a huge mess in the making. A company called Freevi that has already had it’s hand slapped for securities laws violations by the State of California is trying to raise funds from investors by promising to “secure” the investment with Facebook stock. How did I find out about this? Via a spam email that hit my inbox, which is a general solicitation if I’ve ever seen one (that’s very relevant to the Securities Act of 1933).

The founder of the company, Neil Chandran, spends a great deal of time talking up Facebook’s value, saying that an IPO is “imminent” and noting that Google shot from $85 to $500 after their IPO. He also says that Facebook should hit $120, no problem.

This is a general solicitation of securities by an underwriter under the Securities Act. But it’s being done without disclosure of information required by the Act – namely, a prospectus. This is exactly the kind of thing that the SEC salivates over as they sharpen their legal claws.

In 2001 Chandran was issued a Desist and Refrain Order by the California Corporations Commissioner for offering and selling securities in Freevi via solicitation by post and other means. “The purported purpose of the offerings was to raise funds to finance a company that would broadcast video programming into nightclubs and other entertainment venues,” says the order – that’s exactly what he’s doing again in this new offering.

“Neil Chandran, Freevi Corporation and Freevi Capital Ltd. are hereby ordered to desist and refrain from the further offer or sale in the State of California of securities…unless and until qualification has been made under the law or unless exempt.” PDF is here.

Earlier today, we received a tip from a reader in Canada that Facebook Places had started to go live there. Considering Facebook had said the feature would be U.S.-only for the time being, we asked for screenshots to verify it, which the reader happily sent. Sure enough, Facebook Places appears to be working in Canada (or at least parts of it).

The funny thing is, Facebook is adamantly denying that it is live at all in Canada. They suggested that perhaps the tipster was right on the U.S./Canada border — or maybe he had been to the U.S. recently as as such was able to check-in. He assures us that neither is the case. He says that he was simply able to check-in at his local Yorkdale Shopping Centre in Toronto, Ontario a few hours ago. (See, the “centre” is even spelled the Canadian way.) This is roughly 80 miles from the U.S. border.

Further, from another screenshot, it looks like 13 other people have been able to check-in to this same shopping mall. When I asked Facebook about this, they suggested that the 13 check-ins were likely Facebook employees, as this mall is “reasonably close” to their Toronto headquarters. But the tipster isn’t a Facebook employee, and again, he was able to check-in.

Facebook’s response to this? “It's still possible that he came to the US or that Toronto is close enough to the border. To be clear, we have not launched in Canada or any other country outside of the US.“

Okay, except that people are checking-in in Canada.

Update: Facebook didn’t like me using the term “fake check-in” so I changed it. They’re awfully touchy about this.

Update 2: And the tipster says the functionality has just vanished after working for several hours.

If you’ve used Foursquare, you’ve likely seen the little badge that appears in the corner of your mobile phone’s screen when a deal is nearby. It’s a good way to alert someone to a location-based offer, and it seems to be working well for the company. A new startup, TappLocal wants to take that idea and expand upon it to create a new location-based ad network.

The way this works is that TappLocal uses their backend to create a geofence around certain partner venues. When a user crosses that boundary and happens to be using one of the partner apps, a deal indicator will pop-up. A quick click on this area will open a larger area explaining exactly what the deal is. Simply click one more time to verify you wish to use the deal, show it to the store that it’s valid at, and you’re good to go.

Co-founder William Kasel fully understands that this is a hot space right now, and that’s why he and his team behind Jumpfox, a mobile app development company, wanted to pour resources into this new project. And thanks to their developer ties, Kasel says they’ve already signed up mobile apps that have a combined 1.5 million users to be a part of their beta test (though he won’t list any of them individually).

And it’s not just these proximity deals that TappLocal is working on. Another good idea is their flash deals: a way for local merchants to move certain items quickly. Say some product is going to go bad, or it’s a slow time of the day in terms of foot traffic, a merchant could trigger this deal and have it distributed across TappLocal’s localized network.

Kasel is quick to note that they don’t want to spam users. But at the same time, they’ve seen the incredible usage rates that SMS deals can get. They hope to find a good middle ground — and they think they’ll have that thanks to their distributed network.

Currently, the TappLocal service can be integrated with iPhone and Android apps, but they’re working on other platforms as well. The real key for the team is to get localities up and running. Currently, they offer deals in San Francisco, but New York, LA, and Chicago are all coming soon. They’re in the process of building up sales staff in each of those areas.

When asked what’s to stop the big competitors like Google or Yelp from wiping them out, Kasel says that their system is easier to implement than anything Google is likely to do soon. “It’s all about getting momentum now,” he says. Yelp, meanwhile, “is like the mafia,” Kasel says indicating that they’re trying to fight the good fight for local merchants.

He notes that they will be very transparent with the costs for using TappLocal. There will be a one-time fee up-front, followed by smaller monthly fees and a cost-per-conversion rate.

The service is still in closed beta testing, but you can sign up on their site to find out more. They hope to fully launch sometime in the next few months. Kasel founded the service alongside Laura Castaneda and Guilherme Carvalho.

YCombinator-funded company Leftronic launches today, offering up software that makes it easy for companies to aggregate data in their ambient displays, i.e. a displays mounted on a wall. Founded by Lionel Jingles, Rajiv Ghanta and Jyotindra Vasudeo, the company is in the same space as Geckoboard.

While many companies will squander programming time and money building their own mediocre display software, Leftronic provides ready-made ways of visualizing various types of data aesthetically.

In terms of future plans, Leftronic wants to be the leader in ambient displays, which have become more prevalent due to cheap monitors and more data streams and are valuable because they reduce complexity and aid people in understanding sometimes confusing data.

The company’s competitive edge is, according to co-founder Jingles, the fact that “very few people are trying to incorporate multiple data sources, like those of Zen Desk, Salesforce, and Pingdom into their displays.”

Having already made dashboards for companies like YCombinator, WePay, Cloudkick and others, Leftronic is profitable, “People pay hundreds per screen for our visualizations.”

And Jingles hopes that the operation will one day expand beyond web companies to finance, operations and marketing, “One day everybody in a company will have their own display, like having an iPad on your desk showing stats in realtime.

The company is currently in private beta, and you can snag an invite here.

Elevation Partners’ strategy to own large– even if late stage– chunks of leading Internet companies isn’t going away. We’ve heard from sources close to Elevation that the firm has signed a letter of intent to acquire a large chunk of shares in a “leading online music company” from an early investor, and Pandora spokesperson Deborah Roth has confirmed, “We’re aware that Elevation has been interested in buying Pandora shares.”

Earlier sources close to Elevation had told us that there was one more large secondary deal brewing to invest in a well-known, established Internet brand and that the deal size would be around $100 million. It’s a decent assumption this is the deal in question. Especially considering how long some early investors have been in Pandora, and the general meh-ness of this year’s IPO market. We’ll report more details as we get them.

It’s that time of year again: dozens of Silicon Valley’s top investors have packed Y Combinator’s offices in Mountain View, CA for the eleventh Demo Day, where the latest batch of YC companies show off what they’ve built (and look to secure their next round of funding). This is the biggest Demo Day yet, with 36 companies presenting — and the event has become so popular with investors that YC is now offering three different sessions spread across two days.

My notes on the presenting companies are below, along with links to any relevant stories we’ve already written about them. Note that some of the companies presenting today are off-the-record, so they aren’t listed.

FutureAdvisor — See our launch coverage here — Gives you personal recommendations on financial planning. The company says that human advisors won’t give some of this advice, because advisors want to keep getting their commissions. Why hasn’t anyone done it before? It took Mint to train people that it was okay to hand over real login credentials. 12% of visitors so far give full, real credentials to sign up. Over $170 million assets under analysis so far.

AdGrok — See our launch coverage here — Online marketing for the masses. Install it, and you’ll see a tab on the left hand side of the screen when you browse to your site. Clicking the tab will allow you to edit your AdWords campaigns as you’re looking at the products and content you’re serving ads against.

Koduco — See our coverage on their launch here — Multiplayer iPad games that focus on collaborative gameplay. Most games today don’t really take advantage of the tablet — Koduco is making games that are specifically built for it, allowing you to play with multiple people simultaneously using a single device. The studio released a new game yesterday, and also has an array of older board game apps.

FanVibe – See our launch coverage here — FanVibe, which was formerly known as FanPulse, is a sports-focused site that gives you a way to interact with friends and like-minded fans online. The site also offers stats and game schedules.

GinzaMetrics – See our launch coverage here — Provides a dashboard for monitoring your SEO performance, showing you how your keywords are performing without forcing you to manually compile your data. SEO is worth 9x Google Ads. SEO is a big market — companies across US spend $3B a year, due to grow to $5B in 2014. Currently, the service only scans data from Google and Yahoo, but Bing is coming soon.

HireHive – See our launch coverage here — Video prescreens for hiring. Have had 400 people already apply to jobs on HireHive.  Airbnb has already used HireHive to collect written resumes and video. “Video hiring is going to happen and companies are willing to pay for it.”

Hipmunk — See our launch coverage here — Hides flights that you probably aren’t going to be interested in. In our first week alone we’ve sold $350,000 worth of flight tickets. In addition to that we’re easily profitable. Founded by former Reddit founder and youngest O’Reilly author ever (he wrote a book for them when he was 16).

PagerDuty — See our launch coverage here — “We wake you up when shit breaks”. Take alerts from your monitoring systems and call, SMS, email when something is going wrong. Track issues using a control panel. We’re profitable, growing 21% month over month revenue. Just broke through $10K/month. Have AdMob, 37Signals, StackOverflow for alerts. They either pay us or have to build it themselves. There are 3 million sysadmins x $500 per seat per year, is $1.5B market.

The Fridge — See our launch coverage here — ”Facebook without Facebook”. Sharing your content without having to worry about accidentally sharing it with someone you don’t mean to have see it. Can be used for specific interests, temporary networks, sharing party photos among close friends. Soft launched in early July, growing 30% organic growth week over week.

Chart.io — See our launch coverage here — Founded by former TechCrunch Research analyst Dan Levine and Dave Fowler. During his time at TC, Dan worked on CrunchBase, would run custom queries, pass off to someone to put data into charts which was expensive and time-consuming. Spent a few months coding a solution. There should be a tool for everyone that can do this. There are other companies that do this — Tableau, costs a lot and requires consulting, training. Chart.io is real-time.

Gantto — See our launch coverage here — Trying to replace Microsoft Project, which doesn’t let users present directly from the app (you need to make them by hand in PowerPoint). Former VP Engineering and CTO of a public medical robotics company (Hansen Medical). MS Project makes $1 bilion a year. Launched 10 days ago 2000 signups since.

Brushes – Premiere illustrations done with iPad. 250K paid users. “You hold the record for the most profitable startup on Demo Day” — Paul Graham. Both are Apple veterans. “We will be the Adobe of touch devices”.

OhLife — See our launch coverage here “The personal journal you’ll actually keep.” 50% of people who write one entry on OhLife will keep writing at least every other day. We don’t have to wait for people to come to our site — we can email people every day and we can put a targeted ad in each email. Active users is steadily going up. 25% of support emails have actual word “love” in them.

Simperium (SimpleNote) -See our launch coverage here – Have the simperium platform and then simple products built on top of it, including Simplenote . 10K users earlier this year, now over 145K users. Over 400 third-party developers. Revenue earned through promotions and subscriptions. Started with simplenote as a showcase for the platform. Now we’re expanding our products to attract even more third party products.

GazeHawk -See our launch coverage here— Bringing eye tracking to everyone. It used to cost $40K to get custom hardware. Our technology lets you do it with web cams. Launched three weeks ago, already profitable. Clients include Ikea, Mozilla, Fandango. Going to eventually help use this to fix brand advertising.

Rapportive -See our launch coverage here — “Rich contact profiles inside Gmail”. See who a person is, recent tweets, LinkedIn. Third startup from the team (built and sold company before). Just raised a seed round. And they can now show you a company’s investors and recent news directly from your Gmail using CrunchBase.

MessageParty – See our launch coverage here — Chat+Location. In scenarios where groups and location are tied (high school students want to talk to each other, not the world). Another example is here at YC. First version arrived in App Store on Thursday. How come nobody has done it? It wasnt until recently that we’ve been able to take for granted that people have location-aware devices. MIT team.

Whereoscope — See our launch coverage here — There are 20 million families times $100 dollars a year is $2B market. Millions of parents have already paid AT&T, Sprint, Verizon for their tracking services. There’s a technology shift happening as location services move from carrier network to devices. 400 families using service.

Leftronic —  Making large-screen dashboards for companies to see key metrics. Dashboard in YC office shows live Hacker News stats. We have all kinds of visualizations. WePay is another customer — shows where customers are coming from, how much they’re spending, and what they’re saying online. Companies are making dashboards themselves. We save them time and money. We are profitable, it’s viral. People pay hundreds per screen for our visualizations. Right now they’re in space for web dashboards for web companies, but could see it expand to finance, operations, marketing, CEOs.

inDinero — See our launch coverage here —  inDinero can import data from bank accounts to create one financial dashboard. 3,000 businesses have signed up. We’re profitable. Startups in our space do well because businesses have no problem paying for someone to handle finances like this. Want to be single place for every business to manage finances. What Mint did to Quicken, we are doing to Quickbooks.

Teevox —See our launch coverage here —  Turns mobile devices into remotes for the Internet. We don’t make users download software or acquire hardware. First product is a remote for watching things online. Released the app on Thursday. 1200 users in first 24 hours. Our technology allows us to remote control any website. Today announces will soon release API.

1000memories — See our launch coverage here — Front page of site has big photo, navigation at the top. Users can submit stories. Friends and family can share photos and stories. Memory pags are doubling every 14 days. Over 1,300 pages. Viral coefficient of 1.5, doubling every 14 days.. Obituaries cost $1,300 to put in the chronicle. What people want o pay for are custom domains, design templates, media storage. Goal is to become “the place” where everyone is remembered.