Hyperlocal business directory MerchantCircle is getting into the content game today with the launch of a "Local Content Studio.” Merchant Circle, which has been steadily growing, is a business directory for merchants in smaller towns and currently lists 1.3 million small businesses. MerchantCircle has local business members in 95% of the 24,600 U.S. cities and towns with populations over 200.

The Local Content Studio aims to bring bring short-format information and articles that focus on the long tail of consumer local interest. The idea behind the studio is to create in-depth local content designed to connect customers with merchants. And MerchantCircle is encouraging business owners on its site to contribute the content. A typical submission would focus on “the best fishing tips for Five Lake, in Talkeetna, Alaska,” written by a local bait shop owner.

Similar to AOL’s local content factory Patch, writer or local merchants can submit content to be reviewed for approval or corrections, and published to local and topical "Expert Pages" on MerchantCircle. The studio was soft-launched in May and have already seen over 28,000 city descriptions and nearly 12,000 accompanying local photosets. It’s unclear how MerchantCircle is paying contributors (the assumption is according to page views) but the company claims that some writers have earned as much as $700 in one week.

It looks like MerchantCircle has been looking to other startups and companies for inspiration on how to drive more traffic to the platform. Most recently, the company launched a Mayorship feature, which is a take on Foursquare’s network. And clearly, MerchantCircle is adopting a content model similar to Demand Media or Patch. But the content play could work to the company’s favor. According to Compete, MerchantCircle’s traffic has increased since May to 8 million unique visitors in July. And MerchantCircle may be looking to increase traffic as it possible preps for an IPO in the coming year.

A Swiss startup offering mobile visual search and augmented reality technology, kooaba, landed about $3 million venture funding (from undisclosed Swiss investors) the company’s co-founder and chief executive Herbert Bay reported this morning.

Kooaba was spun out of the Computer Vision Lab at a top science and technology university in Switzerland, ETH Zurich.

The company’s mobile phone apps allow users to take a snapshot of print ads, DVD and book covers, movie posters and physical goods, to derive product information, best available prices, and possibly coupons or associated digital extras.

It plans to use this capital to enter into new geographical markets, and pursue partnerships with other companies in the visual search and augmented reality space like Layar and metaio.

The company’s image recognition API debuted in March.

Mobile applications discovery and sharing service provider Appsfire is going social, henceforth enabling users to connect to Facebook in order to bring their Facebook friends in on the fun.

Basically, this allows Appsfire users to easily add their iPhone app collections and share them with their existing social graph, rather than forcing users to build a new one from scratch.

The venture-backed startup has also released some strong figures to back up their reason for being, but more on that below.

Up until today, Appsfire already enabled users to easily import all their apps into the service, using either automatic synchronization or by manually putting together lists of their favorite applications. Users get a vanity URL to share their up-to-date app collection (see myap.ps/bradfeld for an example).

Now that you can sign up to Appsfire using Facebook Connect, the idea is that recommendations and discovery of new apps will be even more relevant to users, provided their friends have similar tastes.

Appsfire says it will include support for more social networks in the future.

They’ve also gotten an official Facebook endorsement for their work, from the company’s Head of International Business Development Christian Hernandez:

"Appsfire leverages the Facebook platform in an innovative way to enable the social discovery of mobile applications. Application developers are seeking to drive distribution, and users are seeking to find new and compelling applications.

We are convinced that the ability to discover applications based on what that your Facebook friends have installed on their device , will spur on a new vibrancy in the mobile developer ecosystem."

AppsFire today also released an app ranking mechanism based on Facebook that updates in real time. The ranking is not so much a popularity one based on number of downloads, but banks on worldwide Facebook activity (likes, comments, shares, etc.) to determine which applications are hot.

The startup essentially scans the public Facebook feed for app URLs of any type and queries for number of likes, shares and comments from users. Appsfire is careful enough to filter what it calls ‘biased activity’ from apps that have naturally embedded Facebook sharing into their system (e.g. photo sharing apps).

For each app, the level of activity is rendered, a top 20 list is cooked up, and the rankings are updated every hour. Appsfire says about 1,000 iPhone apps are discussed on Facebook at any given day, which strikes me as fairly low to be frank.

The startup recently launched a new product called AppTrends, which essentially delivers near real-time rankings of iPhone apps based on the chatter on Twitter.

Since its emergence in January 2010 (the actual launch of the platform was in March this year), Appsfire has grown a lot. Currently, the startup says it is generating a whopping 1.5 million clicks per month to developers’ pages on the App Store, up 4x since its launch four months ago. These clicks result in preview pages, but ultimately lead to a lot of actual app downloads, the company claims.

AppsFire recently released AppStream for iPad (a dynamic wall of real-time clicked apps), which – quite unexpectedly – became the #2 Free App in the US (and top 10 in most countries) with over 1/4 million downloads and over 80,000 sessions per day.

Finally, the company says revenue from affiliate fees and paid placements is coming in nicely, and expects to turn cash-flow positive by the end of this year.

As more businesses look to social media for marketing efforts and to drive sales, there is a need for a comprehensive, yet easy to use platform to manage interactions on social networks. Chicago-based startup Sprout Social is launching its social relationship management platform to the public today.

The startup’s platform allows businesses to connect to customers and monitor key metrics and the overall competitive landscape using social media tools. The Sprout Social platform integrates with social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, LinkedIn and Foursquare and includes lead generation, business intelligence, offer and promotion distribution services, as well as brand monitoring and analytics.

Sprout Social, which has been in private beta for the past few months, allows users to manage promotions, contacts and even target new users on social networks. For example, the platform will integrated with Foursquare, showing a business who is checking in the most at a certain venue, which customers are first-time visitors, and more. While in private beta, Sprout Social has over 2000 users of the platform, including social media friendly pizza business Naked Pizza.

While the social CRM space is a crowed arena filled with a number of worthy competitors, including Hootsuite, Radian6 and more; Sprout Social is hoping that a low price point can help differentiate the platform. Sprout Social ranges from $9 to $49 per month. The company recently raised funding from investment firm Lightbank.

Want to stream Netflix shows and TV on a tiny screen? Well now you can. The Netflix iPhone app is now available on iTunes and it offers the same functionality you know and love on the iPad but on the smaller devices.

No huge changes here: you sign-in, pick a video, and start watching over wi-fi or 3G, with obvious quality reduction with bad reception. Click through for the press release.

Read more…

Straight from the Benjamin Franklin department of “waste not, want not” comes upstart AfterDownload with a simple idea about how to enhance those typical download and ecommerce ‘Thank You’ pages … use them to promote more wares.

Good ol’ Ben would surely ask: ‘Why let them go to waste when you can squeeze them for some additional revenue? Am I right, or am I right?’

AfterDownload delivers a convincing pitch: for publishers, the benefit is obvious, as they get to monetize exit traffic with practically zero effort.

Advertisers, which are strictly software vendors, benefit from pay-for-performance (predominantly CPC) so they really have nothing to lose. Users aren’t really hurt along the way, seeing all they are exposed with is yet another ad – no biggie, right?

Under the hood, AfterDownload is a self-serve ad network with all the basic ad-server features you would expect: geo and browser-targeting, reporting, etc.

Currently averaging 15 million impressions a day, I have a feeling Ben would approve.

Here’s a summary of a series of articles I posted over at CrunchGear earlier this week. The occasion: as the first international blogger, I was guided through a special tour of Japanese telecommunications giant giant NTT‘s showroom NOTE [JP] in Tokyo (where I live) last week.

And I can confirm they do have some pretty cool tech. The showroom offers demonstrations for over a dozen of different “next-generation” technologies, but the videos I took focus on these four areas: telemedicine, digital signage, Home ICT, and remote collaboration (hit the links to go to the more detailed posts on CrunchGear).

Demo 1: Telemedicine

The advanced telemedicine solution NTT is showing at its showroom is currently being used by 19 institutions in Japan.

The difference between the telemedicine system set up in the showroom and those used outside is that the former can transfer video in high resolution. In the video embedded below, you can see how an NTT employee "performs" remote pathological diagnosis of cells through a monitor connected to a microscope that's located in a hospital that doesn't have a pathologist.

In the demo, the data transfer is being handled by NTT's proprietary next-generation network (NGN), a high-performance optical fiber network launched in 2008.

Demo 2: Digital Signage

NTT has developed an “intelligent” digital signage system that not only detects the presence of human beings but also takes into account how many people are standing in front of it. For example, if two persons approach the display in the restaurant floor of a shopping mall, a camera installed in the ceiling right above the system immediately detects their presence.

But instead of randomly displaying ads, the system pulls information from restaurants in its network and offers up ads only for those that currently have enough space for two people. The system also detects if a person tries to walk away and reacts accordingly (“Wait, there’s more.”). It’s possible to get discount coupons on your mobile phone through the system, too.

The first video below shows the digital signage system itself, while the second highlights how it actually works:

Demo 3: Home ICT

Home ICT is another technology that makes use of NTT’s next-generation network. The idea here is to organize and control all devices and appliances people have in their houses through a cell phone, TV or other device via a single, unified "Home Gateway".

Practical applications include energy management, remote health care solutions, entertainment (i.e. device agnostic, wire-/and cable-less and remote sharing of content), or or even crime and disaster prevention.

In the case of an earth quake, for example, users will be warned via a message on the TV screen while the system automatically cuts off all gas mains in the house. The system will even close the curtains for users.

Demo 4: Remote Collaboration Apparatus “t-Room”

The so-called remote collaboration apparatus “t-Room” is probably the demo with the biggest wow-factor. The t-Room is essentially a room that consists of multiple video screens and that’s connected to other t-Rooms to share audio and video content remotely (again, over NTT’s next-generation network).

The showroom has two t-Rooms to demonstrate how two or more people can interact with each other over shared video screens. Users see themselves (plus real or virtual objects) and the persons in the other t-room(s) at life-size and in real-time (it’s also possible to program a time lag).

The technology can be used for entertainment, remote education and collaboration, video conferencing, and other applications. Needless to say, all sessions can be recorded.

The main difference between the t-Room and conventional systems is that the t-room “overlaps” screens, removing (in a way) spatial barriers that separate users who are located far away from each other. And it looks much cooler, too (see the video I shot at the showroom below).

Many thanks to NTT Communications for organizing the NOTE tour.

Dell announced this morning that 3PAR has accepted its increased offer to acquire the storage company for $24.30 per share in cash, or approximately $1.6 billion, net of 3PAR's cash. Dell had previously signed an agreement to acquire 3PAR for $18 per share, with a provision for matching competing bids. HP subsequently outbid Dell for the data storage company, offering $24 per share in cash, or also roughly $1.6 billion at the time. Dell and 3PAR have now signed an amendment to the agreement reflecting the new offer price, which brings its bid up to par with HP's offer.

Cisco this morning announced its intent to purchase privately-held and venture-backed ExtendMedia, a provider of software-based Content Management Systems that helps media companies and network operators manage digital video content. Financial terms of the transaction remain undisclosed, and the deal is expected to close in the first half of Cisco's fiscal year 2011.

A week after purchasing Fortify, HP has made a purchase today, acquiring Stratavia, a database and data center automation company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Stratavia develops and markets database, server and run book automation software which helps customers reduce the cost of operating their enterprise environments. The software is designed to control application deployment and management in hybrid IT environments as well as simplify the deployment of applications in the cloud.

Granicus, a privately held San Francisco company that provides solutions for creating, managing and distributing live and on-demand streaming media content for government agencies, has acquired Webcasting.com for an undisclosed sum.

Granicus did say the company was able to complete the transaction using existing capital, and in a letter to Webcasting.com customers let it be known that chief executive Mike Pollock will not be joining them as part of the deal.

According to Pollock’s personal website, he’s instead going to focus all of his efforts on LiftTickets.com, a site that will partner with ski resorts across North America to offer discounted tickets to skiers online (see also Liftopia).

Pollock had acquired LiftTickets.com / SkiPasses.com the past winter, he writes.

Granicus says its acquisition of Webcasting.com adds more than 60 government agencies to its current client base, expands the company's reach in several local government markets, and advances its government services portfolio.

Granicus claims that since its founding in 1999, it has helped over 700 government agencies stream more than 25 million webcasts over the Web. In that regard, buying Webcasting.com seems like a good fit, if only for branding purposes.

Well, this is curious.

From our checks, it seems like Google has completely omitted Yelp reviews from Google Places. As you may recall, Yelp has been frustrated by Google’s recent decision to pump up its Places service with Yelp’s content— without Yelp’s consent.

During a recent interview with TechCrunch TV, Yelp’s CEO Jeremy Stoppelman said he was surprised by Google’s move but was confident that it was not a “permanent situation, from what we gather from talking to Google, they are sort of headed in a new direction that which hopefully will be more positive."

It’s unclear whether this is the “positive” outcome Stoppelman was hoping for (we’ve reached out to Yelp and Google for confirmation and comment). The companies’ ambiguous “talks” seemed more complex than the simple inclusion or omission of Yelp’s data but Stoppelman did say that (prior to Google’s data grab) Yelp was content to be excluded from Places and confined to organic results.

File Google and Yelp’s relationship under “it’s complicated” (— and not just because Yelp walked away from a hefty takeover offer in late 2009).

Several years ago, Google paid Yelp for access to its treasure trove of user reviews, as the company developed the precursor to Google Places. Eventually the partnership fell apart and an unsatisfied Yelp walked away. It was a relatively peaceful coexistence until this summer, when Google unexpectedly started to crawl Yelp’s pages for unlicensed content to flesh out Google Places. As Stoppelman pointed out in our July interview, he was also annoyed to see Yelp’s reviews pushed to the bottom, while official partners, like Zagat, got top billing.

While it’s virtually impossible to check every page on Google Places to verify that all of Yelp’s reviews are now excluded, in a July 26 post, my colleague MG Siegler referenced a few sample pages (like this page on SF’s Gordo Taqueria or Pancho Villa) that were heavily reliant on Yelp’s content. Today, they are both stripped of that data.

Arbitrary checks in other cities yielded the same results.

It was strange (actually, downright eerie) to see pages that were once rich with Yelp’s reviews— now completely bereft of them.  Occasionally, when I was searching for a restaurant I would get a snippet of a Yelp review in the preview pane. However, once I clicked through to the restaurant’s page, the review was magically missing— as in the case of the 95th Restaurant in Chicago (and yes, I went through all 355 reviews available):

We’ll update once we hear back from Google/Yelp.

Update: Google has indeed revised its guidelines for Places. According to their updated policy, Google removes “inappropriate content,” including:

-Nudity, Obscenity, and Sexually Explicit Material
-Violent or Bullying Behavior
-Hate Speech or Incitement to Violence
-Impersonation
-Private and Confidential Information
-Intellectual Property
-Illegal Activities or Content
-Spam or Malicious Content

Google classifies intellectual property as: “Don't infringe on the intellectual property rights of others, including patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, and other proprietary rights.

We will respond to clear notices of alleged copyright infringement. For more information or to file a DMCA request, please visit our copyright procedure.”

We are still waiting to talk to a Google representative for further clarification.

Here’s our July interview with Stoppelman, if you’re interested:

Just three months ago everyone was happy. Lithium Technologies, which has a suite of social CRM solutions, picked up Scout Labs for a reported (by us) $20 million. Minor Ventures, which incubated Scout Labs, was able to take a nice, if small, liquidity event.

Things aren’t so happy now.

In a lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court, Minor Ventures accuses Lithium Technologies of intentional misrepresentation, fraud and fraudulent concealment. The Lithium Technologies stock Minor Ventures received in the transaction was only worth half of what Lithium Technologies supposedly promised it was worth. Like many lawsuits, it reads like a good novel:

The entire amount at stake is around $5.5 million (half of the promised $11 million or so in stock received). Minor Ventures is also asking for punitive damages as well. We’ve embedded the full complaint below.

We’ve reached out to Lithium Technologies for their side of the story and will update with any comments.

Earlier this month, we pointed out that social shopping site Blippy had pretty much the best 404 page ever. It was a double rainbow all the way. Tonight, Blippy co-founder Philip Kaplan felt like he had some deja vu. Check out Ben & Jerry’s homepage.

Now, do we really think a giant national ice cream chain is copying a small startup’s 404 page? I don’t know. But between the grass, the sky, and, well, the rainbows, they are pretty similar.

But there is one key difference. “The reason the colors on our rainbow are reversed is because it is technically accurate. Ben & Jerry’s version is not technically accurate,” Kaplan notes. Okay then.

More importantly, hasn’t this double rainbow meme passed already? It’s been like three weeks (and almost 12 million views on YouTube).

Wikinvest today launches its mobile initiative with its iPhone app, now live in the Apple store. As brokerages and the finance industry in general are usually late to the mobile and Internet game, the Wikinvest app is one of the first that allows iPhone users mobile access to their personal portfolios as well as the latest investment news.

From Wikinvest CEO Michael Sha:

“We’ve amassed an incredibly rich set of portfolio data that, when complemented with our unique user generated content, will provide a much better way to manage your investments than what’s found today on traditional finance portals like Yahoo Finance.”

Wikinvest pulls in user-generated stock info as well as aggregate information from a user's brokerage and investment accounts. Aside from portfolio specific content, the app will provide market data, quotes, charts, news, and currency info, including that of international exchanges and over 60 brokerages.

Wikinvest has done well in its web incarnation, tracking over $3 billion dollars in assets. And the launch of an iPhone app is the next step in the company’s growth, which is moving away from the user-generated wiki aspect.

According to Sha, “Our portfolio tracker has been so incredibly successful that much of our product roadmap is focused on building technology to help people track their portfolios and make better investment decisions.”

You can download the app here.

Facebook is big — massive, really. But I don’t care if a social network has 100 million users, 500 million users, or a billion users — and I don’t care if there’s a major Hollywood movie coming out about it. You haven’t made it until you have a Turkish pop music video about your service. That’s exactly what “Cilgin” by Ismail YK is.

I have basically no idea what is going on in this video, but it’s awesome nonetheless. It appears to take place in two IKEA showrooms that have been completely whitewashed. In these rooms, a man and woman seem to stalk one another on Facebook, and then start chatting. Are they using WebTV? I’m not sure, but I’m not ruling it out.

Actually, those are Mac keyboards — maybe it’s the first sighting of the new iTV product?!

Then the main characters put on colorful shirts and go dance in another completely white room. And then they invite some friends to dance too — and use their computers. Then the action moves outside in what I can only describe as a version of TLC’s “Waterfalls” with men in ski masks. Yep.

Not speaking Turkish, the only word I can understand is “Facebook” — though I think I caught an “Internet” in there. Someone please clue us in.

The video is actually a bit old — from January, but BuzzFeed just picked it up a couple days ago and it’s now traveling around the Internet as it should have the first time. Enjoy it below.

Update: Commenter Mesut below has provided us with some lyrics:

I went to internet cafe
Logged in to my Facebook page
I called my self "Crazy" (Cilgin)
I'm a member as of now
I met with a sweetheart
We've been writing each other everyday
It's like a medicine to my heart
I become a loving person

She deserves to be be loved
And has beautiful eyes
It's hard to find someone like her
Everyone is asking how I found

Facebook Facebook I've been seeking everyday
Facebook Facebook where I found her
Facebook Facebook It's a love at first sight
Facebook Facebook I think I'm falling for her

[thanks Sarah]

So I’ve been waiting for the new Chatroulette to go up for three days now and no dice. In the meantime I’ve been getting a slew of emails and tweets from people trying to get me to switch over to their to their random “chat with strangers” services (Hi Omegle!). However none have been particularly compelling, UNTIL NOW.

We’ve been running in stealth for the past few months, as we’ve negotiated deals and developed software (that’s done), but it seems you’ve broken the seal on the jar of kind bud, so we’re announcing on TechCrunch:

http://HighStranger.com
“Chatroulette for High People!”

Peace,
Dude

PS: We’re in LA and we’re looking for our head of marketing, PR, and social media. Maybe a hot designer, too :)

The above comment is from (where else?) last night’s “Dude I Am So High Right Now” post, the venue where Dude, who I am assuming is the HighStranger founder, has chosen to announce his “Chatroulette For High People!.”

But wait, isn’t Chatroulette a “Chatroulette for high people”? I’ve emailed Dude for further information, and have not yet received a response, which is not surprising.

A quick trip to the homepage reveals that HighStranger is currently in beta (if not a complete practical joke) and will be launching officially on November 2nd. And they’re hiring!

While Chatroulette spinoffs are a dime a dozen, this one seems noteworthy if only for the inevitable cheesy pot jokes that will ensue in the comments.

Like, “This might be the first employer to require that you fail a drug test,” or whatever. I’m sure you guys can come up with something better. They basically write themselves.

Remember back in June when we wrote about Twitter’s update to their Facebook app that allowed you to see which of your Facebook friends were also using Twitter? Remember when Facebook blocked that functionality about five minutes later? At the time, both sides noted that they were working to resolve the “issue.” Well, two months later, you can forget about that resolution as Twitter has just updated their app once again, removing that functionality.

To be clear, the Twitter app on Facebook still works — it just works basically as it did before. That is, allowing you to post tweets to your Facebook Wall (for both your profiles and pages) and to sync your profile photo.

For the five minutes the friend look-up feature was alive, it was actually a very useful way to find Facebook friends also on Twitter and follow them with one click (though they had to have the Twitter app installed for you to be able to find them). And my understanding is that Twitter was using the Facebook API the same way that any other third-party app might. So the only conclusion I can draw is that Facebook didn’t like Twitter building their social graph on top of their own.

Facebook has yet to respond to my inquiry into this. Meanwhile, Twitter has this to say:

Several weeks ago, Twitter released an update to its Facebook application: The ability to see which of their Facebook friends have attached their Twitter and Facebook accounts and choose which of those friends to follow on Twitter.

Facebook blocked the ability to access a user’s list of friends within the application. As we’ve not yet been able to come to terms on a solution, we have removed references to the update in the application to avoid user confusion.

Come to terms on a solution? Again, ridiculous. The solution is to let users do this as long as it’s not in violation of the API.

This seems reminiscent of the whole Facebook/Google Friend Connect debacle of 2008. In that situation, Facebook began blocking Friend Connect from accessing their data due to it redistributing the information without a users’ knowledge. Or something. It couldn’t have been because Facebook had just launched the similar Facebook Connect. No.

Obviously, Facebook and Twitter have a somewhat tumultuous history. Ever since Facebook tried and failed to acquire the messaging startup in 2008, relations have been strained. In a recent interview, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that he “paid too much attention” to Twitter for several months as Facebook evolved its core product to be more about sharing.

It’s also a bit ridiculous that while you can push tweets into Facebook, you can’t pull status updates out to use as tweets. While you can do this from Facebook Pages, you can’t from your actual profile. Facebook has been thinking about enabling this for sometime — and was even testing it — but ultimately decided against turning it on.

While Twitter and Facebook are obviously two different services, they’ve both been making moves in recent months to become more like each other. Why? Both want to be the center of sharing on the web. They are two large rivals on a collision course. I, for one, think Facebook has to become even more like Twitter with the ability to have “followers” alongside your friends.

It would just be nice if the two could get along for the sake of the users of both.

[photo: flickr/monkeypuzzle]

Is America losing its edge? This was the rather depressing subject of this year's Aspen Forum, the annual event put on by the DC-based Technology Policy Institute. Attracting speakers as illustrious as former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, Intel CEO Paul Otellini, Verizon EVP of Public Policy Tom Tauke, Intuit CEO Brad Smith, the author the National Broadband Plan Blair Levin and Linkedin co-founder Reid Hoffman, the event focused on the public policy side of technology, addressing the political challenges of making American technology companies more competitive in the 21st century global economy.

It's perhaps appropriate that the event was held at Aspen's St Regis hotel up in the breathlessly high altitude of the Rockies. For all the broad public policy challenges facing the technology industry, the persistent issue in many of the discussions here – what Verizon's Tom Tauke described as the "elephant in the room" – is the unresolved Network Neutrality issue. As Tom Sugrue of TMobile remarked, the network neutrality issue is "sucking the energy out of all the other issues. Sugrue is correct. This issue – defined by the often byzantine and seemingly endless public debate between the carriers, the FCC, Congress, technology companies and the pro network neutrality lobby – is threatening to derail the longer term challenges to American edge in the global technology marketplace.

At Aspen, I interviewed a number of leading policy makers, entrepreneurs and senior figures in the telecom industry to discuss technology policy, American competitiveness, broadband policy, and, of course, network neutrality. Most of these conversations were frank and, at times, depressing. If America is indeed losing its edge, it's clear that policy makers aren't exactly sure how to reestablish this competitiveness in a 21st century global economic environment entirely foreign to that of the 20th century.

Blair Levin, the author of the National Broadband Plan, on the future of broadband in the US.

Scott Wallsten, Senior Fellow at the Technology Policy Institute, on why we can get Network Neutrality sorted out.

Reid Hoffman, Partner at Greylock, on how Silicon Valley can help DC resolve the Network Neutrality wars.

Tom Tauke, EVP of Public Policy at Verizon on the background of the Google-Verizon agreement. This video was recorded in a location with a loud background noise. We apologize for the poor audio quality, but believe the content is worth watching.

Blair Levin, Senior Fellow at the Aspen Institute, on how Woody Allen has the best explanation for the Network Neutrality impasse

SkyFire. Heard of it? It’s the smartphone browser that was chewing through Flash video and other rich media long before any of the built-in browsers were supporting such things — and on a number of platforms, it’s still the only option.

We’ve known that SkyFire Labs was crackin’ away at an iPhone port for some time now — the company confirmed it after Opera got a surprise App Store thumbs up. But when would it be done? More importantly, when would it be submitted for that oh-so-important stamp of approval?

Soon, say our sources.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

On May 22 this year 300 hackers converged in New York at TechCrunch Disrupt for a day and half long hack day before the conference itself started. At least one of the projects created at the hack day has now become an actual business, and has raised an angel round of funding from top tier investors.

GroupMe launches today. What is it? It’s a dead simple way to create a private SMS group with your friends. Just go to the site and type in your mobile number (U.S. phones only at this point). You’ll then get a text message from a unique phone number assigned to your new group that says “You just created a new group on GroupMe! Now add some friends by replying #add with your friends’ names and numbers.”

To add another person just add them via text message and they’re part of the group. Any text messages any member send go to all other members. And there are a variety of commands to mute groups, change topics, list other members, etc.

And the fun doesn’t stop there. Members can also initiate a group conference call to all members at any time. Just call the group number and everyone’s phone will ring.

GroupMe is working with Twilio, who was a sponsor of the hack day, to power the SMS and calling. And they are also working with Location Labs to integrate location/presence features in the future.

The company was founded by Jared Hecht (previously Tumblr) and Steve Martocci (previously Gilt Groupe).

GroupMe is pretty interesting from the start, but the founders have plans for a lot more. Says Hecht: “We think we’ve got a great direction for GroupMe as a group communication platform. We’re pursuing some very interesting data in/data out plays (eg, think about what happens when you invite Madison Square Garden into your group with a #MSG command). We plan on taking our hack day demo of contextual group advertising to help drive decision making and building it out, too. There are also some neat app-to-app and group buying plays.”

Hecht and Martocci caught the eyes of investors fairly quickly. They’ve closed an $850,000 round of financing from Betaworks, SV Angel, First Round Capital, Lerer Ventures and a number of prominent angels.

We’ve got a guest post coming up from the founders talking about their experience at Hack Day.

In response on to a question on Quora yesterday afternoon about why the Facebook Places logo looks like it contains a “four” in a “square,” Facebook Design Strategy lead Aaron Sittig confirms our belief that any similarities between the two logos were accidental.

“We sure got a laugh from the news stories, but could only wish we’d been so clever.”

You know what’s cool? That I seriously do post these things to get people to laugh (and think). Rumor has it that a link to TechCrunch’s “Facesquare” post has made the rounds of at least one Facebook Product Designer’s wall, along with the note “Wish we could actually say this was intentional.”

Hmmm … Wonder what that means for the folks over at Foursquare.

Update: SearchEngineLand’s Danny Sullivan and others have pointed out the logo also seems like it borrows from the Google Places pin as well. No word yet from Sittig on whether that particular appropriation was on purpose.

What is it with the combination of video games and hot chicks? Oh yeah, they both appeal to young, sweaty men. Playboy.com is getting into the online video game business through a partnership with Bigpoint Games. The first game will be Poisonville, which is kind of like a browser-based version of Grand Theft Auto, except that the characters are “beautiful, Playboy-caliber women.”

Poisonville is a 3D, massively multiplayer game where you are part of a gang of Playboy models who shoot the cops and blow things up. Yeah. Enjoy the trailer below.

I don’t think they got the formula quite right. What Playboy should do is team up with GameCrush, and charge their young, sweaty customers a gazillion dollars to play Poisonville against real live Playboy bunnies.

This morning, Google officially unveiled its Voice/Gmail integration, which will allow users to make Google Voice calls from the browser. It’s a pretty nifty service that is gaining traction in the TechCrunch SF newsroom. Another product we’re eyeing? That shiny London-esque phone booth with the “vintage” 1957  phone that makes free domestic and long distance Google voice calls.

Of course, as the Google Voice team explained this morning, the kitschy phone booth is not available for purchase but the company will be installing these functional billboards at several universities and airports later this fall.

I dropped by Google’s SF office to get a full tour from Jason Toff, the product marketing manager for Google Voice who spearheaded the phone booth project. (See video tour above). According to Toff, Google has already manufactured five phone booths and is zeroing in on several high-trafficked venues. No contracts have been finalized yet but he expects Arizona State University will be one of the first (with its student body of 54,000 strong).

The booth itself is bare bones. The exterior is comprised of a sturdy metal frame that is designed to be less vulnerable to phone-booth-tipping (logical for college campuses). Meanwhile, the phone itself is designed to look like a 1950s throwback, with futile coin slots and a rotary formation for the keypad. There are some hidden surprises, the interior light is run by a solar power panel (assuming it’s available outside) and calls will time out at 20 minutes to discourage phone hogs.

Free Goog-wear alert: Google has also given us 7 Voice T-shirts for readers who have always wanted to look like a living, breathing Google icon. We have several tees in size M and L. Give me a good reason to send you one in the comments section (be sure to use your real e-mail address) and we’ll ship them off.

Some companies keep a playbook of product tips, tricks and trade secrets. Zynga has an internal playbook, for instance, that is a collection of “concepts, techniques, know-how and best practices for developing successful and distinctive social games”. Zynga’s playbook has entered the realm of legend and was even the subject of a lawsuit.

SCVNGR, which makes a mobile game with real-world challenges, has a playdeck. It is a deck of cards listing nearly 50 different game mechanics that can be mixed and matched to create the foundation for different types of games. I’ve republished the accompanying document below, which should be interesting to anybody trying to inject a gaming dimension into their products.

Rght now, that should be a lot of people. Every six months or so, a set of features sweeps across the Web and every site and app feels the pressure to adopt it. We’ve seen this with social, geo, and now game mechanics. Of course, all games on the Web have some sort of game mechanics—those elements of game play which make them fun and addictive. But game mechanics are spreading to all kinds of apps, most famously Foursquare (which makes you check into places for badges and rewards). At our Social Currency CrunchUp in July, we had a panel which explored how game mechanics are invading everything. (One of the CEOs on the panel was SCVNGR’s Seth Priebatsch). Every site from Mint to the Huffington Post now has some sort of game mechanics.

SCVNGR’s playdeck tries to break down the game mechanics into their constituent parts. Some elements are as basic as “achievements,” “status,” and “virtual items.” But there are also more complex ones such as the “appointment dynamic” (a player must return at a specific time and perform an action to get a reward, like in Farmville), “free lunch” (a player gets something because of the efforts of other people,like in Groupon), “fun once, fun always” (a simple action that maintains a minimum level of enjoyment no matter how many times you do it, like Foursquare’s check-ins), and “cascading information theory (give out information in the smallest dribblets possible to keep players guessing and moving forward). SCVNGR employees are instructed to memorize the flash cards. Now you can too. There will be a quiz.

SCVNGR Game Dynamics Playdeck

Guide To This Document: This list is a collection of game dynamics terms, game dynamics theories that are interesting, useful and potentially applicable to your work here at SCVNGR. Many of them have clear applications within the SCVNGR game layer (progression dynamic, actualization), many of them don’t… yet (status, virtual items). Many of them are just interesting for your general education on game dynamics theory (epic meaning, social fabric of games). Many of these game dynamics concepts are well known and are sourced from all over the internet and from researchers such as Jane McGonigal, Ian Bogost and Jess Schell and articles on gamasutra (which I highly recommend reading). Others are used exclusively internally here and won’t make any sense outside of HQ. Along with a link to this document, you will have received these dynamics in a set of flash cards. Please memorize those. If you’re on the engineering / game-design team you can access our internal game dynamics visualizer (with the most up to date dynamics) through your account. Download the SCVNGR app for iPhone& Android (if you haven’t already) and start playing. Find places where these game dynamics exist or places where you could implement them by building on the game layer using our tools, or others.

1. Achievement

Definition: A virtual or physical representation of having accomplished something. These are often viewed as rewards in and of themselves.

Example: a badge, a level, a reward, points, really anything defined as a reward can be a reward.

2. Appointment Dynamic

Definition: A dynamic in which to succeed, one must return at a predefined time to take some action. Appointment dynamics are often deeply related to interval based reward schedules or avoidance dyanmics.

Example: Cafe World and Farmville where if you return at a set time to do something you get something good, and if you don’t something bad happens.

3. Avoidance

Definition: The act of inducing player behavior not by giving a reward, but by not instituting a punishment. Produces consistent level of activity, timed around the schedule.

Example: Press a lever every 30 seconds to not get shocked.

4. Behavioral Contrast

Definition: The theory defining how behavior can shift greatly based on changed expectations.

Example: A monkey presses a lever and is given lettuce. The monkey is happy and continues to press the lever. Then it gets a grape one time. The monkey is delighted. The next time it presses the lever it gets lettuce again. Rather than being happy, as it was before, it goes ballistic throwing the lettuce at the experimenter. (In some experiments, a second monkey is placed in the cage, but tied to a rope so it can't access the lettuce or lever. After the grape reward is removed, the first monkey beats up the second monkey even though it obviously had nothing to do with the removal. The anger is truly irrational.)

5. Behavioral Momentum

Definition: The tendency of players to keep doing what they have been doing.

Example: From Jesse Schell’s awesome Dice talk: “I have spent ten hours playing Farmville. I am a smart person and wouldn't spend 10 hours on something unless it was useful. Therefore this must be useful, so I can keep doing it.”

6. Blissful Productivity

Definition: The idea that playing in a game makes you happier working hard, than you would be relaxing. Essentially, we’re optimized as human beings by working hard, and doing meaningful and rewarding work.

Example: From Jane McGonical’s Ted Talk wherein she discusses how World of Warcraft players play on average 22 hours / week (a part time job), often after a full days work. They’re willing to work hard, perhaps harder than in real life, because of their blissful productivity in the game world.

7. Cascading Information Theory

Definition: The theory that information should be released in the minimum possible snippets to gain the appropriate level of understanding at each point during a game narrative.

Example: showing basic actions first, unlocking more as you progress through levels. Making building on SCVNGR a simple but staged process to avoid information overload.

8. Chain Schedules

Definition: the practice of linking a reward to a series of contingencies. Players tend to treat these as simply the individual contingencies. Unlocking one step in the contingency is often viewed as an individual reward by the player.

Example: Kill 10 orcs to get into the dragons cave, every 30 minutes the dragon appears.

9. Communal Discovery

Definition: The game dynamic wherein an entire community is rallied to work together to solve a riddle, a problem or a challenge. Immensely viral and very fun.

Example: DARPA balloon challenge, the cottage industries that appear around McDonalds monopoly to find “Boardwalk”

10. Companion Gaming

Definition: Games that can be played across multiple platforms

Example: Games that be played on iphone, facebook, xbox with completely seamless cross platform gameplay.

11. Contingency

Definition: The problem that the player must overcome in the three part paradigm of reward schedules.

Example: 10 orcs block your path

12. Countdown

Definition: The dynamic in which players are only given a certain amount of time to do something. This will create an activity graph that causes increased initial activity increasing frenetically until time runs out, which is a forced extinction.

Example: Bejeweled Blitz with 30 seconds to get as many points as you can. Bonus rounds. Timed levels

13. Cross Situational Leader-boards

Definition: This occurs when one ranking mechanism is applied across multiple (unequal and isolated) gaming scenarios. Players often perceive that these ranking scenarios are unfair as not all players were presented with an "equal" opportunity to win.

Example: Players are arbitrarily sent into one of three paths. The winner is determined by the top scorer overall (i.e. across the paths). Since the players can only do one path (and can't pick), they will perceive inequity in the game scenario and get upset.

14. Disincentives

Definition: a game element that uses a penalty (or altered situation) to induce behavioral shift

Example: losing health points, amazon’s checkout line removing all links to tunnel the buyer to purchase, speeding traps

15. Endless Games

Definition: Games that do not have an explicit end. Most applicable to casual games that can refresh their content or games where a static (but positive) state is a reward of its own.

Example: Farmville (static state is its own victory), SCVNGR (challenges constantly are being built by the community to refresh content)

16. Envy

Definition: The desire to have what others have. In order for this to be effective seeing what other people have (voyeurism) must be employed.

Example: my friend has this item and I want it!

17. Epic Meaning

Definition: players will be highly motivated if they believe they are working to achieve something great, something awe-inspiring, something bigger than themselves.

Example: From Jane McGonical’s Ted Talk where she discusses Warcraft’s ongoing story line and “epic meaning” that involves each individual has motivated players to participate outside the game and create the second largest wiki in the world to help them achieve their individual quests and collectively their epic meanings.

18. Extinction

Definition: Extinction is the term used to refer to the action of stopping providing a reward. This tends to create anger in players as they feel betrayed by no longer receiving the reward they have come to expect. It generally induces negative behavioral momentum.

Example: killing 10 orcs no longer gets you a level up

19. Fixed Interval Reward Schedules

Definition: Fixed interval schedules provide a reward after a fixed amount of time, say 30 minutes. This tends to create a low engagement after a reward, and then gradually increasing activity until a reward is given, followed by another lull in engagement.

Example: Farmville, wait 30 minutes, crops have appeared

20. Fixed Ratio Reward Schedule

Definition: A fixed ratio schedule provides rewards after a fixed number of actions. This creates cyclical nadirs of engagement (because the first action will not create any reward so incentive is low) and then bursts of activity as the reward gets closer and closer.

Example: kill 20 ships, get a level up, visit five locations, get a badge

21. Free Lunch

Definition: A dynamic in which a player feels that they are getting something for free due to someone else having done work. It’s critical that work is perceived to have been done (just not by the player in question) to avoid breaching trust in the scenario. The player must feel that they’ve “lucked” into something.

Example: Groupon. By virtue of 100 other people having bought the deal, you get it for cheap. There is no sketchiness b/c you recognize work has been done (100 people are spending money) but you yourself didn’t have to do it.

22. Fun Once, Fun Always

Definition: The concept that an action in enjoyable to repeat all the time. Generally this has to do with simple actions. There is often also a limitation to the total level of enjoyment of the action.

Example: the theory behind the check-in everywhere and the check-in and the default challenges on SCVNGR.

23. Interval Reward Schedules

Definition: Interval based reward schedules provide a reward after a certain amount of time. There are two flavors: variable and fixed.

Example: wait N minutes, collect rent

24. Lottery

Definition: A game dynamic in which the winner is determined solely by chance. This creates a high level of anticipation. The fairness is often suspect, however winners will generally continue to play indefinitely while losers will quickly abandon the game, despite the random nature of the distinction between the two.

Example: many forms of gambling, scratch tickets.

25. Loyalty

Definition: The concept of feeling a positive sustained connection to an entity leading to a feeling of partial ownership. Often reinforced with a visual representation.

Example: fealty in WOW, achieving status at physical places (mayorship, being on the wall of favorite customers)

26. Meta Game

Definition: a game which exists layered within another game. These generally are discovered rather than explained (lest they cause confusion) and tend to appeal to ~2% of the total gameplaying audience. They are dangerous as they can induce confusion (if made too overt) but are powerful as they’re greatly satisfying to those who find them.

Example: hidden questions / achievements within world of warcraft that require you to do special (and hard to discover) activities as you go through other quests

27. Micro Leader-boards

Definition: The rankings of all individuals in a micro-set. Often great for distributed game dynamics where you want many micro-competitions or desire to induce loyalty.

Example: Be the top scorers at Joe’s bar this week and get a free appetizer

28. Modifiers

Definition: An item that when used affects other actions. Generally modifiers are earned after having completed a series of challenges or core functions.

Example: A X2 modifier that doubles the points on the next action you take.

29. Moral Hazard of Game Play

Definition: The risk that by rewarding people manipulatively in a game you remove the actual moral value of the action and replace it with an ersatz game-based reward. The risk that by providing too many incentives to take an action, the incentive of actually enjoying the action taken is lost. The corollary to this is that if the points or rewards are taken away, then the person loses all motivation to take the (initially fun on its own) action.

Example: Paraphrased from Jesse Schell “If I give you points every time you brush your teeth, you’ll stop brushing your teeth b/c it’s good for you and then only do it for the points. If the points stop flowing, your teeth will decay.”

30. Ownership

Definition: The act of controlling something, having it be *your* property.

Example: Ownership is interesting on a number of levels, from taking over places, to controlling a slot, to simply owning popularity by having a digital representation of many friends.

31. Pride

Definition: the feeling of ownership and joy at an accomplishment

Example: I have ten badges. I own them. They are mine. There are many like them, but these are mine. Hooray.

32. Privacy

Definition: The concept that certain information is private, not for public distribution. This can be a demotivator (I won't take an action because I don't want to share this) or a motivator (by sharing this I reinforce my own actions).

Example: Scales the publish your daily weight onto Twitter (these are real and are proven positive motivator for staying on your diet). Or having your location publicly broadcast anytime you do anything (which is invasive and can should be avoided).

33. Progression Dynamic

Definition: a dynamic in which success is granularly displayed and measured through the process of completing itemized tasks.

Example: a progress bar, leveling up from paladin level 1 to paladin level 60

34. Ratio Reward Schedules

Definition: Ratio schedules provide a reward after a number of actions. There are two flavors: variable and fixed.

Example: kill 10 orcs, get a power up.

35. Real-time v. Delayed Mechanics

Definition: Realtime information flow is uninhibited by delay. Delayed information is only released after a certain interval.

Example: Realtime scores cause instant reaction (gratification or demotivation). Delayed causes ambiguity which can incent more action due to the lack of certainty of ranking.

36. Reinforcer

Definition: The reward given if the expected action is carried out in the three part paradigm of reward schedules.

Example: receiving a level up after killing 10 orcs.

37. Response

Definition: The expected action from the player in the three part paradigm of reward schedules.

Example: the player takes the action to kill 10 orcs

38. Reward Schedules

Definition: the timeframe and delivery mechanisms through which rewards (points, prizes, level ups) are delivered. Three main parts exist in a reward schedule; contingency, response and reinforcer.

Example: getting a level up for killing 10 orcs, clearing a row in Tetris, getting fresh crops in Farmville

39. Rolling Physical Goods

Definition: A physical good (one with real value) that can be won by anyone on an ongoing basis as long as they meet some characteristic. However, that characteristic rolls from player to player.

Example: top scorer deals, mayor deals

40. Shell Game

Definition: a game in which the player is presented with the illusion of choice but is actually in a situation that guides them to the desired outcome of the operator.

Example: 3 Card Monty, lotteries, gambling

41. Social Fabric of Games

Definition: the idea that people like one another better after they’ve played games with them, have a higher level of trust and a great willingness to work together.

Example: From Jane McGonicgal’s TED talk where she suggests that it takes a lot of trust to play a game with someone because you need them to spend their time with you, play by the same rules, shoot for the same goals.

42. Status

Definition: The rank or level of a player. Players are often motivated by trying to reach a higher level or status.

Example: white paladin level 20 in WOW.

43. Urgent Optimism

Definition: Extreme self motivation. The desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle combined with the belief that we have a reasonable hope of success.

Example: From Jane McGonical’s TED talk. The idea that in proper games an “epic win” or just “win” is possible and therefore always worth acting for.

44. Variable Interval Reward Schedules

Definition: Variable interval reward schedules provide a reward after a roughly consistent amount of time. This tends to create a reasonably high level of activity over time, as the player could receive a reward at any time but never the burst as created under a fixed schedule. This system is also more immune to the nadir right after the receiving of a reward, but also lacks the zenith of activity before a reward in unlocked due to high levels of ambiguity.

Example: Wait roughly 30 minutes, a new weapon appears. Check back as often as you want but that won’t speed it up. Generally players are bad at realizing that.

45. Variable Ratio Reward Schedule

Definition: A variable ratio reward schedule provides rewards after a roughly consistent but unknown amount of actions. This creates a relatively high consistent rate of activity (as there could always be a reward after the next action) with a slight increase as the expected reward threshold is reached, but never the huge burst of a fixed ratio schedule. It’s also more immune to nadirs in engagement after a reward is acheived.

Example: kill something like 20 ships, get a level up. Visit a couple locations (roughly five) get a badge

46. Viral Game Mechanics

Definition: A game element that requires multiple people to play (or that can be played better with multiple people)

Example: Farmville making you more successful in the game if you invite your friends, the social check-in

47. Virtual Items

Definition: Digital prizes, rewards, objects found or taken within the course of a game. Often these can be traded or given away.

Example: Gowalla’s items, Facebook gifts, badges