If you look closely at this shot of the bombs allegedly sent from Yemen to Chicago you’ll notice what looks like a small camera up in the corner. Slide down the side and you see the volume buttons and I suspect the silver area is where the battery holder once stuck to the circuit board. It’s clear that this was a phone – probably of modern vintage – so which phone is it?

Read more…

Editor’s note: The following guest post is by David Marcus, founder and CEO of Zong, a mobile payment provider for Facebook Credits, AT&T and hundreds of leading destination websites and mobile applications

There’s been much hype, crazy valuations, and overall market excitement about businesses that promise to unleash the power of the social graph, location, recommendations and group buying. Facebook’s latest valuation according to SecondMarket is now about $30 billion, Foursquare raised $20 million at a post-money valuation of $115 million while still at a pre-revenue stage, Yelp, short of selling for $550 million to Google, raised over $25 million at an undisclosed but very high valuation, and finally Groupon raised $135 million at a whopping $1.35 billion valuation. So besides their huge success with the investment community, and their users, what do these companies have in common, and what does all this have to do with disrupting Local Commerce?

In an August TechCrunch guest post, Alex Rampell, describes how Online2Offline commerce is a potential trillion dollar opportunity. The gist of it is that we spend most of our disposable income offline, in local stores, restaurants, and shopping malls. But companies like Groupon, Gilt, and other group buying and private sale startups are changing the money flow. People buy online, and redeem offline. But this is just the beginning of a perfect storm brewing that will change the way we discover, shop, and pay for things. Let’s focus on the main function each of these different startups provide to understand how bringing them together will ultimately disrupt multiple trillion dollar industries:

• Facebook: provides the Social Graph, which is fast becoming a utility. Through its open platform, and APIs, we share more about our lives and our interactions online and on mobile every day.
• Foursquare and Gowalla: provide location services and check-ins, along with game mechanics that motivate users to unlock badges, earn mayorships, and get discounts at local stores in the process.
• Yelp: provides crowdsourced reviews of local businesses. Now also provides check-ins, and offers.
• Groupon: provides discounted offers against a promise to increase sales and bring in brand new customers to local businesses.

The interesting thing here is that there’s a lot of overlap between the features offered by these companies. Recently, Facebook launched Places, a mobile geo-location service that mimics Foursquare local check-ins. Yelp also added check-ins, and recently rolled out Yelp Deals, a Groupon clone.

Considering that Local Commerce will be mostly mobile, one of these companies still must bring all of these features together, along with one-click payments (IMHO), to truly tap into the potential of all these disruptive technologies. In my mind, the ultimate product combines all these features in a mobile app. A user would launche the app, see what special deals are in her area (location + group buying), whom of her friends already bought the coupon/item (social graph), local reviews from friends (social graph + reviews), and then she could then buy the desired coupon in one click on her handset. She could walk into the local business with a discount code, barcode, or maybe at some point in the future, an enabled RFID tag, and redeem what she just bought.

All of these companies, with the exception of Yelp, are at an early stage of their product development in this space. Facebook Places is lacking the gaming mechanics of Foursquare, the reviews of Yelp, and the local deals of Groupon. Foursquare is missing scale in its discounted offers. Yelp is missing the reach of the social graph, and the embedded payments. Groupon is lacking core social graph features that would give it better relevance through social shopping.

So which one of these companies will succeed in unleashing the power of Local Commerce by combining the right set of features with the appropriate on-the-ground salesforce? My bet is on Facebook to be first. They have a large advertising sales organization that could reach out to local businesses, already are supposedly testing offers on Places, they have de-facto more distribution and social graph access than any of the other companies, and finally they are building a true payments platform.

Groupon and Yelp also have a decent shot at it, but it will be tough to compete with Facebook’s distribution capabilities and ubiquity. In order to remain relevant, they will have to innovate and come up with original features. Foursquare’s future is probably going to be more challenging with more players entering their space, but it it could end up being bought (once again for founder Dennis Crowley) by Google, which is preparing to aggressively go after the local commerce opportunity.

Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Alex Ahlund (@alexahlund), the former CEO of AppVee and AndroidApps, which were acquired by mobile app directory Appolicious. He is currently an advisor to Appolicious. In his previous guest posts, he gave us his picks for top iPhone apps.

With the ubiquitous media coverage surrounding the iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) app market, it’s important to remember that Android also is making huge headway. More than 100,000 apps are now available in the Android Market. Within the last six months, Android devices have reigned supreme, comprising 32 percent of all new smartphone purchases. There is finally a larger selection of models being manufactured and more carriers offering them. When the first Android device launched, I predicted that the OS would surpass iPhone in the coming years. While this looks to be true, those of us involved in the app industry are concerned with something more specific: Who will have the most active app marketplace?

Currently, iOS is still the definitive winner. There is not enough app interest on the Android consumer front to warrant a mass exodus just yet. I have a pretty simple metric for determining the potential of an app market: Is PopCap involved? If the answer is no, then the market is still too green. While PopCap has yet to enter the Android space, they have noted plans to port some of their game titles in the coming months. This supports the notion that Android has big potential, but it’s still too early.

Nevertheless, Android does have serious potential, and there are some fantastic apps already available! Without further ado, here are my top all-time picks for the Android platform, broken down by top free apps, top paid apps, and top games

Top 10 Free Apps

1. Kindle (review) – bring the book reading experience to your Android device. Read all the same titles from your Amazon account and enjoy the same functionality in a pocket format

2. SkyFire (review) – faster web browsing and video streaming than included mobile browsers

3. Google Voice (review) – take control of your phone by creating a new number, route calls to various paths, and take advantage of tons of advanced features like voicemail transcription, free texting, cheap international calling, and more

4. EverNote (review) – the ultimate, centralized notebook and note creation system that syncs to the cloud

5. Barcode Scanner (review) – scan books, movies, and music to quickly get information and pricing

6. Lookout (review) – the problem with an open system like Android is that you are prone to viruses and walware. Lookout keeps these in check and runs scans on your device for installed apps and downloaded files

7. Facebook (review) – you know the drill, get your social network fix

8. Layar Reality Browser (review) – see overlays on your camera as you scan the real world and get up to date information on it

9. Mint (review) – aggregate all of your finances safely and stay on top of your bank account balances, credit lines, mortgages and more

10. Places Directory (review) – like AroundMe, Places Directory lets your know of restaurants, movie theaters, and more in the area

Top 10 Best Paid Android Apps

1. Root Explorer (File Manager) (review) – a comprehensive file manager to access and manipulate all files on your device

2. Advanced Task Manager (review) – keep all system tasks and apps in line to get the most efficient and speedy phone

3. Beautiful Widgets (review) – customize your device with tons of skins and widgets

4. SetCPU for Root Users (review) – overclock, underclock and tweak your device’s performance

5. MyBackUp Pro (review) – keep everything on your phone backed up and secure incase you need to restore remotely from the cloud

6. CacheMate for Root Users (reviews) – the best cache clearing app currently available, free up tons of space

7. Sound Hound (reviews) – like Shazam or Midomi, find music instantly by letting your device listen

8. Dropbox (review) – sync files between your computers and your mobile

9. LogMeIn Ignition (review) – access your computers remotely from your phone

10. DroidAnalytics (review) – keep on top of all your blogs and websites with this solid Google Analytics client

Top 10 Best Paid Android Games

1. Robo Defense (review) – as a fan of tower defense games, Robo Defense stacks up with the best. Open maps, solid graphics and excellent upgrades, this will make any TD gamer happy

2. Fruit Ninja (review) – like its iPhone brother, Fruit Ninja is all about cutting up fruit and earning bigger points

3. SNESoid (review) – play all of your favorite SNES games right from your device

4. HomeRun Battle 3D (review) – a quirky sports game with online play, multiple game modes, and a casual but exciting experience

5. Abduction! 2 (review) – a Doodle Jump clone with plenty of new features and power-ups

6. HyperJump (review) – launch a creature higher and higher by collecting coins and power-ups along the way

7. Zenonia (review) – a fantastic mobile RPG with all the fixings that’d you’d expect from the genre

8. WOW Keyboard (review) – play World of Warcraft directly from your mobile device

9. Angry Birds (review) – the chart topping, bird tossing game is now available on Android

10. Voice Music (review) – let your voice become a musical instrument as its converted into a keyboard

In addition to the paid offerings available on Android, the platform offers great free game classics like UnblockMe, Bubble Blast II, and Backgammon.

So those are my picks. What have you been using that has become a staple on your device?

Project Diaspora. The open source Facebook-killa. You know the one. Developers got a taste of it last month. And the rest of us were supposed to get a usable alpha build this month. Well, there are only two days left in this month. So it’s shouldn’t be too surprising that they’re pushing the consumer release again.

In a post pointing out some of the progress being made today, the Diaspora team notes:

Our basic feature set is almost done. Once that is stable, we'll set up an alpha server so that anyone, not just developers, can try Diaspora and help us improve it. We're shooting to do this before Thanksgiving.

So what has Diaspora been working on since last month? Here’s some of the latest features they note:

• Public messages are can now be posted to Twitter and Facebook
• Friends can now be in multiple aspects
• Re-sharing of status messages to aspects other than the one originally posted to
• An invite system for inviting your friends not hip to Diaspora yet
• Email notifications on new friend request and acceptance
• Account data is exportable
• A more friendly "getting started" experience

That said, we’ve heard from some developers who built versions themselves that there were some pretty glaring security holes in the initial builds. Hopefully those will be fixed before the public gets any kind of taste.

More than 9,000 square miles of U.S. federal Gulf waters are closed to commercial and recreational fishing today thanks to the BP oil spill. However, government offices today claimed that seafood from the Gulf is basically safe to consume, based on the results from their latest battery of tests.

You gonna eat that? Companies responsible for the environmental disaster spilled about 5 million [Correction: in the original post, I wrote "gallons" and have corrected the typo] barrels of oil, accidentally. They poured about 2 million gallons of oil dispersants into the Gulf waters on purpose, though. The dispersants were supposed to break up the wildlife-choking slicks into droplets that could be more easily digested by oil-eating bacteria. Or at least, they’d make the water look more like water and less like tar while the cameras were flying overhead.

At the time of the spill, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) sent scientists to the Gulf to help with the oil spill cleanup. Even that federal office knew nothing about the dispersants’ likely impact on sea life or humans. USGS director Maria McNutt admitted to her office’s ignorance at last week’s 2010 PopTech conference.

By May, the St. Petersburg Times reported, there were still no federal standards for how much dispersant could be present in seafood consumed by humans, a detail the paper confirmed with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Here’s what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) claimed in their joint press statement today regarding the safety of seafood in the Gulf, though:

Building upon the extensive testing and protocols already in use by federal, state and local officials for the fishing waters of the Gulf, NOAA and FDA have developed and are using a chemical test to detect dispersants used in the Deepwater Horizon-BP oil spill in fish, oysters, crab and shrimp….

Experts trained in a rigorous sensory analysis process have been testing Gulf seafood for the presence of contaminants, and every seafood sample from reopened waters has passed sensory testing for contamination with oil and dispersant. Nonetheless, to ensure consumers have total confidence in the [emphasis added] safety of seafood being harvested from the Gulf, NOAA and FDA have added [a] second test for dispersant when considering reopening Gulf waters to fishing.

Using this new, second test, in the Gulf scientists have tested 1,735 tissue samples including more than half of those collected to reopen Gulf of Mexico federal waters. Only a few showed trace amounts of dispersants residue (13 of the 1,735) and they were well below the safety threshold of 100 parts per million for finfish and 500 parts per million for shrimp, crabs and oysters. As such, they do not pose a threat to human health.

The press statement follows an investigative report by English Al Jazeera about the dispersants’ impact on people and our environment that concluded:

The Gulf has suffered the largest accidental marine oil spill in history. Compounding the problem, BP has admitted to using at least 1.9 million gallons of widely banned toxic dispersants… Dispersed, weathered oil continues to flow ashore daily…

[Human] health impacts include headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pains, chest pains, respiratory system damage, skin sensitization, hypertension, central nervous system depression, neurotoxic effects, genetic mutations, cardiac arrhythmia, and cardiovascular damage…

One researcher studying the impact of dispersants in the Gulf, told Al Jazeera about dolphins— and people— hemorrhaging from too much dispersant exposure. Gulf residents showed off pieces of their boats that had been eaten away by dispersant-contaminated waters over just a short time.

How could the new FDA-NOAA tests declare the seafood from the Gulf oil spill waters safe to eat in light of Al Jazeera’s (and so many others’) reports?

[UPDATE: Readers requested clarification on "others' reports."] News organizations from MotherJones to the Washington Post and New York Times have run stories that examine the issue of dispersants’ toxicity in a similar light.

According to the press statement, the government labs tested for traces of dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate, a.k.a. DOSS, a component of the dispersants used in the Gulf that’s approved by the FDA for use in various household products and over-the-counter medication at low levels.

They didn’t test for the other stuff that’s included in Corexit 9500 the primary dispersant used by BP and still sprayed over the Gulf these days. [Update: further detail on ingredients in disperants.] The labs also didn’t test the toxicity of oil-and-dispersant combined.

Corexit 9500 includes ingredients like propanols that are used in household cleaners (which one presumably shouldn’t eat) but it is less toxic than some other Corexit dispersants, which include the ingredient 2-butoxyethanol. These other Corexit dispersants were likely used in the immediate response to the oil spill.

BP and Nalco— the company that makes Corexit— for some reason, haven’t revealed the exact ingredients of what they used, how much of it, and when in the Gulf waters. Nalco sticks to the message that it has only been “making” Corexit 9500 for Gulf responders since the start of the spill.

Image via: U.S. Coast Guard 8th District, External Affairs

When Google put their faith in Wave, an ambitious new project last year, they knew it was a gamble. But a big part of it was the team behind the project. A team led by Lars Rasmussen, the engineer best known as the co-creator of the hugely successful Google Maps. And now he’s left the company. And from what we hear, he’s heading to Facebook.

Rasmussen confirmed his departure on his Facebook page. Yesterday was his last day of work at Google. He didn’t give any indication where he’ll be heading next, other than he’d be “a whole big ocean closer” (he was living in Australia where the Wave team was based). But the fact that he put all this info on Facebook is telling. From what we’re hearing, he will be joining Facebook.

Neither Facebook nor Google has returned our request for comment yet.

This is a huge loss for Google and a huge gain for Facebook. But it’s hardly surprising that Rasmussen is leaving Google given that the search giant killed his ambitious Wave project barely a year after it was first unveiled.

Rasmussen’s defection is the latest in a series of moves from Google to the pre-IPO Facebook. But his move is likely the biggest one since Chrome OS lead Matthew Papakipos made the same jump in June.

We’ll be very interested to hear what he’s working on at the social network. No word yet on what his brother Jens, who also helped co-create both Maps and Wave, will be joining him there.

Update from Facebook:

As matter of policy, we do not comment on potential employees until they start.

In other words, when he gets back from his vacation in between jobs, they’ll confirm.

Update 2: It’s also worth noting as well that current Facebook CTO Bret Taylor was heavily involved in the launch of Google Maps.

Were you lucky enough to attend one of the MLB playoff games this month? Then you’ll want to check out TagOramic, a nifty feature on MLB.com that was built to celebrate the Fall Classic. Over the course of the playoffs, MLB has taken some absolutely massive panoramic photos of each stadium — and they’ve taken them at high enough resolution that you can zoom in and see each and every fan.

The site has also integrated support for Facebook Connect, so even if you didn’t get to attend one of the playoff games, you can sign in and see if any of your friends have been tagged in the photo. It sounds silly, but it’s surprisingly fun to see a shot of your friend mid-hot dog, surrounded by a sea of other fans.

The panoramic photos are actually made up of hundreds of smaller photos, which were taken over a 20 minute span at each game. Each panoramic photo has a more specific description; here’s one of them:

Panoramic image from the fourth inning of Game 1 of the World Series at AT&T Park in San Francisco, CA. Photo is made of 280 photos (28 across by 10 down) taken over a 17-minute span and merged together to make a single photo. The final hi-res file is 79,828 X 19,290 pixels or 1,539 megapixels.

 

One other thing to note: there’s a Like button next to each team to show how much support they’re getting on Facebook. The Giants are destroying Texas. No surprise there.

MG earlier wrote a post about Twitter’s rules regarding its trademarks, logos and so on.

Here’s what struck me, going over the guidelines:

Naming your Application or Product, Applying for a Domain

Do: Use Tweet in the name of your application only if it is designed to be used exclusively with the Twitter platform.

Don’t: Use Tweet in the name of your application if used with any other platform.

The reason why this struck me as odd is because one of the most popular desktop and mobile applications with the word ‘tweet’ in its name is TweetDeck, which comes in both native desktop and mobile client forms (Adobe AIR, iOS and Android).

Is TweetDeck “designed to be used exclusively with the Twitter platform”? Well, definitely not.

TweetDeck enables people to interact with their Twitter friends via a unique interface with lots of bells and whistles, but it does much more than that. To clarify, the application boasts support for platforms such as Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, MySpace and Google Buzz.

That’s five major offenses to Twitter’s naming rules right there. Question is: does Twitter plan to effectively enforce these guidelines and lay down the law for TweetDeck (and co)?

I’ve requested a comment from Twitter and will update when I hear back from them.

Update: Twitter responds briefly: “case by case basis”, suggesting TweetDeck has nothing to worry about. The startup’s founder, Iain Dodsworth, echoed that sentiment on Twitter.

Beloved Q & A site Quora has been spotty all day and is now showing a “503 Service Unavailable” error message when we attempt to access the site.

This is the first time I’ve experienced the site going down since it was launched in private beta by former Facebookers Adam D’ Angelo and Charlie Cheever in 2010. Its absence has motivated us to use Facebook Questions to try to get further information about the outage (see above).

It’s a testament to the site’s burgeoning popularity and a good sign that people are actually noticing its service disruptions.

Update: Looks like it’s back up! You can resume asking each other smart questions.

 

Like the Nexus One, the G2 is a unified Google experience, and it excels because of that. The vaunted HSPA+ is fast as hell and there is very little to criticize from start to finish. That said, it’s also a brick and the form factor isn’t for everyone.

Read on for our full review of Google’s latest flagship handset.

Continue reading…

Facebook has just sent us an invitation to a special event that’s happening this Wednesday. The theme? Mobile.

We don’t know what Facebook is planning to launch (though we’ll do our best to find out beforehand), but we have a few guesses. The most obvious is the company’s long-awaited iPad application (it still doesn’t have an official app). It could also include more features that involve Places — Facebook has recently been testing a Deals service that’s connected to Places, and mobile is obviously the best place for users to access those.

And, of course, it could be related to the elusive Facebook Phone, though when we spoke with Mark Zuckerberg about this last month it sounded like the Facebook’s (unconfirmed) custom version of Android was still a ways off. Perhaps it’s a deal to integrate Facebook more deeply into some partner handsets?

Facebook’s last big event was on October 6, when the company rolled out a totally revamped Groups feature.

Oh, and try not to look too hard for hints on the invite. Everyone who did that last time was totally wrong.

Last November, Google announced that it had acquired leading mobile ad network AdMob for a whopping $750 million. Today, less than a year after the deal closed, AdMob founder and CEO Omar Hamoui is leaving Google, we’ve confirmed with the company. Google says Hamoui is leaving for personal reasons.

It sounds like Google is getting the short end of the stick here — Hamoui has actually only been able to work at the search giant for five months, because the AdMob/Google acquisition was held up by an endless federal investigation that stretched on from November 2009 through the end of May 2010. That’s an eternity in this highly competitive space.

From what we’ve heard AdMob’s employees had their incentives begin to vest as soon as the deal completed in October/November 2009, not when it was ultimately approved in May 2010. In fact, we’ve heard that Hamoui isn’t the only AdMob executive to leave after a short stay — we’re working to get a more detailed list of other personnel who may have also left Google.

A Google spokesperson gave us this statement:

“Omar has decided to leave AdMob and Google for personal reasons. He built a fantastic business in a short period of time, and we wish him all the best. Mobile advertising – across search and display – is now a billion dollar business for Google, with AdMob a key part of that. Google is fortunate to have a great team of leaders who are driving the next phase of rapid growth and innovation across all our mobile ads products.”

Update: Other AdMob departures include:

• Ali Diab, AdMob’s VP of Product Management and Business Operations, who founded Caturra Capital, LLC, a hedge fund specializing in the tech sector
• Niren Hiro, AdMob VP of Business Development, who left in May to become the CEO of CrowdStar

Today on the Twitter blog, the company wrote a post that was all of three sentences to let people know about their new logos. Yay!

But there’s actually quite a bit more to it then it seems.

If you follow the link they provide to Guidelines page, you’ll find some interesting tidbits. Among them:

• Don’t: “Use anything other than the most current versions of the Twitter logos.”
• Don’t: “Use screenshots of other people's profiles or Tweets without their permission.”

Both are interesting because both are broken all the time. Well, okay the first one doesn’t quite count yet because Twitter just officially launched their new logos. But hundreds if not thousands of sites around the web have been using old or fake Twitter logos to represent the company for a long time.

The latter rule is definitely more troublesome. Tweets are known to be public items, but Twitter is saying you can’t use screenshots of them without permission. We do this all the time. So does just about every other publication. We’ve never been told this is wrong, it seems to reek of fair use, but now Twitter is saying it’s a no-no. (Update below from Twitter)

A few months ago, Twitter tried to come up with their own solution for this with their own Blackbird Pie tweet embed tool. It’s interesting that in their post on it, they never said this screen-grabbing of tweets was wrong. In fact, they note “Mostly, we just think it's a pain to take screen grabs of tweets.” Notice they call it a “pain”, not “wrong”.

Twitter does say it’s fine to use others’ tweets that you have permission to use. But again, isn’t this stuff already public?

Also interesting:

• Do: Make sure that if mentioning “Tweet,” you include a direct reference to Twitter (for instance, “Tweet with Twitter”) or display the Twitter marks with the mention of “Tweet.”

This would seem to be all about Twitter gaining the trademark to the word “tweet”, which they’ve been trying unsuccessfully to do. They also later note, “Please remember to capitalize the T in Twitter and Tweet!” As a commenter notes, it’s funny that they don’t even capitalize it in their own logo!

Update: Okay, we’ve clarified some things with Twitter.

From their spokesperson regarding the new logos:

The purpose of the update was to provide access to our new resources and to better clarify some guidelines.

We’re encouraging people to use the new marks. It’s okay for them to continue to use the old ones, but we’re hoping people will use the new ones. We said this before too, as this isn’t the first time our marks have changed.

And regarding the screenshots:

This isn’t a new part of the policy and was stated in the guidelines before. This serves primarily to protect users from their tweets being used as endorsements without their knowledge. Public tweets are public. But if you’re going to use tweets in static form (e.g. in a publication), you should have permission from the author/user. For instance, if someone famous were to tweet about liking something and then it was used on a billboard.

This doesn’t apply to broadcast — there are separate display guidelines about that. Our policies also don’t attempt to control the appropriate use of tweets in news reporting.

That’s a bit confusing (and I’ve asked for further clarification), but it sounds as if they won’t be enforcing the rule for individuals (including reporters) taking screenshots of tweets. It’s more for advertisers attempting to use tweets as endorsements without permission.

Update 2: More clarity from Twitter:

For news, whether online or print, it’s okay to use screenshots of Tweets. The permission applies more to merchandise, billboards, etc. Users’ rights are key.

In other words, screenshot away, bloggers. Which is good — but basically they’re just saying they won’t be enforcing the rules. That’s still a bit troubling going forward. They could enforce them anytime — why not just make the specific rules more clear? This reeks of the legal department covering asses here just in case they have to drop a hammer.

Regarding the capital “T” in tweet:

We view Tweet as meaning content on Twitter, rather than a generic word. With that, it should be capitalized when it’s a noun. This isn’t new, and it’s not something we enforce.

Again, that seems to be all about copyright — and mainly when used in publications.

New York-based file sharing site Drop.io has just posted the breaking news of its acquisition by Facebook on its company blog. This looks like it is the latest in a series of talent acquisitions by the social giant. Before its exit, Drop.io had $9.95 million in funding, led by RRE Ventures.

From the Drop.io blog:

“Today, we're proud to announce that we've struck a deal with Facebook.  What this means is that Facebook has bought most of drop.io's technology and assets, and Sam Lessin is moving to Facebook.

In the coming weeks, we'll be winding down the drop.io service. As of this week, people will no longer be able to create new free drops, but you'll be able to download content from existing drops until Dec. 15. Paid user accounts will still be available through Dec. 15 and paid users will be able to continue using the service normally.  After Dec. 15, paid accounts will be discontinued as well.”

Drop.io allowed users to exchange files or “drops” privately with their friends through web, email, or phone. The company will be shutting off all accounts after December 15th.

As this has all the markings of an acqui-hire, founder Sam Lessin will be joining the Product Management organization at Facebook, where his fellow Harvard alumnus and friend Mark Zuckerberg is CEO. We’ve got no word on what will happen to the rest of the team.

From Facebook, “We can confirm that we recently completed a small talent acquisition for Drop.io and acquired most of the company’s assets. We’re thrilled that Sam Lessin will be joining us at Facebook.”

Search engines like Bing and Google will swear up and down that their natural search results are determined by one thing and one thing only: the all-knowing, all-powerful Algorithm. Sure, paid results might pop up at the top or to the side, but they are always highlighted as such. But sometimes the temptation is too great and the natural search results, which are supposed to be sacrosanct, are used to promote a product or service owned by the same company that operates the search engine.

That certainly appears to be what is happening on Bing right now if you do a search for the term “datamarket.” The top result is for Windows Azure DataMarket, a product which just launched a couple days ago. Don’t get me wrong. It sounds like a cool product. It is a cloud-based service where people can upload and sell data in a consistent way.

But in terms of link juice, you’ve got to wonder whether Datamarket.com, the second result on Bing, is getting a raw deal. The Azure DataMarket result appears as a natural result, not a sponsored link (which both Microsoft and Google do for their own products but highlight them as such, see “Azure”).

If you do the same search for “datamarket” on Google, Datamarket.com is the top result, and the Microsoft site is nowhere to be found on the first page of results, which is also suspiciously convenient. It is pushed all the way to the second page. Are Google and Bing allowing their algorithms to do their magic, or is something else going on here?

And if you think that Google never promotes its own products, just search for any place such as the “Gramercy Park Hotel.” The second result is a module with a map, links, and data from Google’s Places. Google shows these kinds of Onebox results for many types of search, but in this case the most prominent link goes to a Google Places page.

There’s a lot of talk about how web apps and the cloud are heralding a new age of computing, but for the forseeable future many people are still going to be relying heavily on desktop software — especially as operating systems start to bake in their own App Stores.  And while desktop apps may offer advantages in terms of performance and user experience, in some ways web apps are actually better for developers — it’s much easier to track how people are using your application and iterate accordingly.

That’s where DeskMetrics comes in. The Brazilian startup, which launches today to the public, offers developers a set of components that will allow them to analyze how their desktop applications are being used, down to each click. This means developers can analyze which buttons users are clicking, how far along in various sign-up flows they’re getting, and more — just like web developers have been doing for years.

To get DeskMetrics working, a developer needs to integrate special native components into their application, which will allow them to track both clicks and when their users are installing, running, or — heaven forbid — uninstalling their application. All of this data can be followed from the DeskMetrics web interface, which updates in real-time and also features geo-mapping so you can see where in the world your app is taking off.

DeskMetrics isn’t the first company to tackle this problem. Founder Bernardo Porto says that competitors include Eqatec and PreEmptive Solutions’ Runtime Intelligence. But he says that DeskMetrics differentiates itself in a few ways. First, he says that DeskMetrics has support for more programming languages, including C, C++, Delphi, Visual Basic, and .NET (C#) (he says the competitors only support .NET). He also says that DeskMetrics is the only one of the three that reports data back in real-time.

Pricing is based on how many applications a developer is tracking and how frequently they’re used. A basic startup plan runs $49/month for one app and 20,000 sessions, and a premium plan goes for $669/month for 10 apps and 1 million sessions (there are a few price points between those).

I’m still a bit skeptical about how much real-time matters in this case — after all, developers can’t iterate on desktop software nearly as quickly as they can on the web. But the company has the endorsement of OpenCandy cofounder Chester Ng, who says that this was actually a problem OpenCandy wanted to solve early on (they provide add-on installs for desktop software) but haven’t gotten around to it yet — and they say DeskMetrics is the best solution that’s currently available.

Have you heard the news? The Verizon iPhone is coming. Today, Fortune has the 15th or so confirmation that the device will launch in early 2011. There’s way too much smoke now for there not to be a fire. But even more interesting than that tidbit is Fortune’s interview with Ivan Seidenberg, the CEO of Verizon. He wouldn’t speak directly about a Verizon iPhone launch, but he still had plenty to say about the device, and Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs.

The most interesting thing he had to say was the last bit about the iPhone in the piece:

According to Seidenberg, Jobs told him during a December 2009 meeting, “Decisions you made [at Verizon] are decisions we would make at Apple.”

That sounds like it’s Jobs more or less saying that he respects Verizon because they stood up to him. They wouldn’t compromise on their vision.

And that, of course, implies that AT&T was the “easy” company in that scenario. That is, they’re the ones who were easily romanced into bed. It only took a few drinks. And it sounds as if Apple was fine to have their fling with AT&T while they waited on Verizon, the company they wanted to marry. The company of their dreams. And now the two finally appear ready to tie the knot.

The fact that Apple approached Verizon first (this has been reported before), way back in 2005, says it all. The company originally wanted to partner with Verizon instead of AT&T, but neither Verizon nor Apple were willing to compromise. Here’s the key blurb:

Seidenberg’s soon-to-be-unveiled Verizon iPhone almost didn’t happen. Verizon executives say they passed on an opportunity to be the exclusive network for the phone back in 2005 largely because they felt that Apple and CEO Steve Jobs wanted too much control over how and where the devices would be sold — and too big a cut of the monthly service fees. Verizon didn’t want to give up maintenance of its devices or its relationship with its customers, and it sought to distribute the phone through multiple retail partners. So Apple went with AT&T, of course, and conversations between Apple and Verizon about a phone essentially ceased for two years.

AT&T was willing to compromise, which Apple undoubtedly appreciated, but perhaps didn’t respect. Before the launch of the iPhone in 2007, Seidenberg went back to Jobs to break their scorned lover silence. While Apple was already dating AT&T at that point, they agreed to keep flirting on the side.

After the iPhone’s successful launch, problems with AT&T began to arise almost immediately (this has also been reported before). And so in December of 2007, Lowell McAdam (an exec who will be the next Verizon CEO) called the then more vulnerable Jobs to rekindle the flame:

He called Jobs in December 2007 and told him, “We really ought to talk about how we do business together. We weren’t able to [reach an agreement] a couple of years before, but it’s probably worth having another discussion to make sure we’re not missing something.” Jobs, according to McAdam, replied, “Yeah, you’re probably right. We have missed something.”

But with both sides still wanting their way, and the AT&T contract in their way, not much tangible happened until this past month when the iPad went for sale in Verizon’s stores. This was sort of like Price Charles making an official appearance with Camilla Parker Bowles for the first time — but only as an “unofficial companion”. The wedding is soon to follow.

AT&T, meanwhile, is already playing the “you’ll never love them as much as you love me” card:

AT&T wishes its rival good luck with that. “We carry half the U.S. wireless data on the fastest 3G network,” says Larry Solomon, an AT&T spokesman. “Verizon’s network hasn’t been battle-tested yet, so you don’t know if they can handle the data load or not.” In anticipation of competition, AT&T has been signing customers up for new, two-year contracts to discourage defectors to Verizon.

Don’t worry AT&T, you’ll still get some action on the side. But your role will now be that of extramarital lover. You just weren’t good enough in the sack, and Apple’s mind was always elsewhere — on they company they truly love, Verizon. Let’s just hope Apple doesn’t do anything irrational in order to consummate the union. You know, things like the village bicycle, Google, are doing.

[images: Dreamworks Pictures]

We are hearing reports that Facebook is weeks away from launching a new, redesigned dedicated gaming portal. Details are sparse at this point, but the portal will present a new, more feature rich way to both find games and play games within the social network. We are told that Facebook will launch the portal with a number of game publishers as partners.

With 200 million Facebook users playing games on the site monthly (or 40% of its userbase), it’s not surprising that Facebook is ramping up its gaming initiatives. The company alluded to launching a new dashboard at its gaming press event held in September, with the social network’s product manager for the games team Jared Morganstern telling the press that there will be a wave of innovation around the dashboard. At that time, Facebook announced changes with gaming applications in relation to the news feed and bookmarks.

Earlier in the year, the social network launched an updated Games dashboard for users but we’re told that this new platform will be a centralized place for users to both find and play games. While we don’t know who the partners are at launch, we can only assume that Facebook would want to have the game publishers who attract the most traffic (i.e. Zynga, Playdom) on board for a new portal. We understand that Facebook will announce a number of initial partners at launch and will steadily be adding partners along the way as well.

We hear the launch of the platform is slated for mid-November.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment and we’ll update the post when we hear back.

Update: A spokesperson for Facebook responded to us with this: As we announced in September, we have a games team working on building features to make it easier for people to discover and re-engage with games. We have nothing further to share at this time.

That’s not a denial, so I’m pretty sure something is in the works.

It’s pretty easy being green if you’re a Silicon Valley notable apparently. We just got word that Paul Buchheit, creator of Gmail, Friendfeed and now a Facebook employee, has surpassed Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz’s 70K contribution to the Yes on Prop 19 campaign.

Buchheit’s 100K donation, in celebration of the 41st anniversary of email, joins that of industry heavyweights Moskovitz, Sean Parker, Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel and Steve Silberstein in the effort to legalize marijuana in California. Voters will have a chance to weigh in on the measure November 2nd.

Buchheit was the originator of the term “Don’t Be Evil” while he was at Google. His current employer Facebook rejected advertising from marijuana activists over the summer.

Update: Buchheit explains his motivation behind supporting the controversial proposition and why it seems like Silicon Valley has come out particularly strong in favor of marijuana legalization.

“The essential issue is that prohibition not only strips us of our personal liberty, but it also funnels billions of dollars to violent criminal organizations. Prop19 obviously won’t solve all our problems, but I believe that it could be the turning point that leads us towards a more safe and sane drug policy. On this issue, the politicians will follow where the voters lead.

Prop 19 is popular in many areas, but the support in Silicon Valley is more visible because people here tend to have a greater degree of independence, and are therefore more likely to publicly express their support for what has historically been a controversial issue.”

Buchheit goes into the issue further in a post on his own blog here.

Bryan Hansel, chief executive of Smith Electric Vehicles U.S., headquartered in Kansas City, Mo., almost disdains the word “green.” His company makes all-electric trucks for medium-duty commercial and industrial use. They compete against brands like Ford, Peterbilt and Hino.

Smith’s EV technology is also constantly compared to traditional diesel, gas and alternative fuel combustion engines. Hansel believes his trucks have to dominate based on performance and cost savings in light of this. Even the company’s logo is orange not green.

The CEO emphasizes the relative price predictability of electricity over liquid fuels instead of strictly environmental benefits. In 2008— the year Hansel joined Smith Electric—  the transportation sector used 13.88 million barrels of liquid fuels per day, and the industrial sector used 4.75 million in the United States according to the Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy. Liquid fuel demand is expected to increase, with those sectors using 14.27 million and 4.82 million barrels of liquid fuel per day by 2015.

The cost of liquid fuels (primarily petroleum-based) fluctuates more dramatically than electricity’s. The prices are impacted by crude oil production, world oil pricing, taxes, and advances in fuel technology. Meanwhile, electricity can be generated from renewable sources, on or off the grid (like a rooftop solar array) and purchased from a utility at a price that’s locked in over the long-term.

For every gallon of gasoline used, according to the U.S. EPA 2,421 grams of carbon dioxide (CO2) are emitted into the atmosphere, and 2,778 grams per gallon of diesel. The greenhouse gas emissions could also be taxed in the future.

Hansel’s cost savings message resonated with some major corporations, including Staples, Frito-Lay and Coca Cola. Currently, The Smith Newton is the only all electric, medium-to-heavy truck offering on the GSA schedule, which means soon Smith Electric may count the U.S. military a large customer.

Hansel spoke with TechCrunch this week about how Smith is convincing American fleet managers to try electric trucks, and some of the challenges the company faces as it scales to meet the demand. (Interview after the photo.)

Smith Electric Vehicles was founded in 1920 in the UK. How and why did you join the company?

I never thought about designing vehicles, or woke up and said ‘I’ll be the electric truck guy,’ but I had been around mechanical engineering and manufacturing my entire life. I ran a product development company for more than 15 years where we helped bring products to market for Fortune 500 companies— that was Virdev.

This particular opportunity came about for me when a friend of mine acquired Smith [in the UK] and had brought its technology and business to the strong state that it is in today. He said, ‘hey, you need this technology that I've got [in the United States].’ He knew that I understood what it takes to scale product, drive costs out, and that this was in my fiber.

It really happened this quickly. On a Friday, I sold a business making medical devices in October 2008. By Monday, I was thinking about bringing electric trucks to North America. I had closed a deal to license the technology by January of 2009.

How do you deal with “haters,” people who don’t believe electric vehicles will ever be on par with combustion engine vehicles, or worth the investment?

Personally, I don’t run into these people. That’s because I’m not in a consumer environment. I’m not telling anyone ‘Here’s an electric vehicle that’s going to replace the sports car or family sedan you’re so emotionally attached to already.’ In the business to business environment that we focus on, people make logical financial and operational decisions.

We talk to customers about the ten-year total life cost of their fleets and individual vehicles. We ask them, ‘Can you predict diesel fuel costs for ten years? How would you like to do that versus buying electricity at a more predictable level?’ If they buy a new diesel truck today— Smith Electric vehicles end up being 80% cheaper on a per mile basis from fuel savings.

Over ten years, for total life cost, if you’re driving about a 50-mile route every day, and coming back to the place to recharge overnight, at a central depot, then they’re at least 50% cheaper.

What about your business keeps you up at night?

I’ve been overwhelmed by corporations saying ‘We're ready to go, we'll take thousands of vehicles! Can you build em?’ There's nobody ready to supply those parts. People are telling them the battery supplies and motors are just around the corner. It’s not quite that easy.

We have to sell our suppliers on the fact that we have orders. We work with one company that was a supplier to the EV-1! They have hung around and maintained in the industry this long, and they've heard every story. One company in the industry said it would build 200,000 hybrid-electric vehicles. They only made 25,000. So suppliers have reason to be cautious, I understand.

We have to do everything we say we'll do to win them over. And we have to trust them. What has kept me up is trying to give them disclosures. Should we put them in touch with our customers, directly? We’ve done so with Frito-Lay, Coca Cola and Staples. We’ve had our clients and suppliers— and some of them regard each other as competitors— in the same room, talking about their various challenges of adoption.

How many Smith Electric Vehicles are operating in the U.S. already?

There are more than a hundred out there already. Hundreds more will be on the road domestically by early next year. We also have a Department of Energy grant to deliver 510 vehicles that will ship before the middle of next year. We’re certainly ramping up production. The vehicles each have on-board data collection. We're real time downloading data to understand how they're being deployed, how they’re working and what’s optimal for our customers.

Who have been your most important customers to date and why?

They’ve all been pioneering and important strategic launch partners. We actually said no to potential clients, at times. When you are a company that’s new to the U.S., it’s hard to say ‘We're not selling to you yet. At this time, we’re only selling to launch partners.’

A focused strategy has worked for us, and created a level of demand that's unprecedented in the sector here. It was a magic bullet. Prospective clients wanted us to electrify other things, or sell quantities we wouldn't sell. A more focused strategy helped us maintain a higher quality overall.

Our largest order came from Frito-Lay. I have to give them credit for being visionaries. They have dedicated staff, engineering and fleet managers to bring their electric vehicles program online, and make electrification work in their business.

Your trucks can’t plug into the wall, or recharge at EV stations that are becoming more pervasive in the U.S.— would you ever go into building EV charging stations for trucks?

We have a three-phase, 60 amp service requirement, and all the charging technology is built into our trucks. Today, it’s true that there is no commercially available charger for our trucks. EV charging station companies [like Coloumb or ClipperCreek] don't have a product available for us yet.

If they do bring something to market, that would help push our customers in that direction. Right now, customers have a central depot or warehouse setup. The trucks go back and charge at the same place when they’re not in use. While commercial availability of EV charging stations is part of the evolution of our business, we'll never build charge points. It’s not part of our service offering.

It’s true. AOL is planning to launch a new homepage design next week. There have been reports, but no screenshots. Until now. A source close to AOL (but not, you know, us) provided the screenshot below.

As you can see, it maintains a consistent look and feel with the current homepage (second one below). But there are a few major differences. It’s going from a two-column to a three-column layout, with more splashy feature items above the fold. Instead of a single main column with rotating features at the top and news sections below, now the whole middle column will become featured items with bigger photos. The search box at the top is also more prominent, with tabs for web, image, video, maps, and news search.

The directory to other AOL sites in the left sidebar is pushed down to make more room for the featured items (which drive more traffic). The first columns is still news, with latest headlines first, but the second spot now goes to “Local News” and neighborhood picks (hello, Patch?)

The new, right-hand column is more focussed on discovery, with trending topics and most-shared stories. If you log in with AOL Lifestream, you can see the links and stories your friends are sharing across several social networks including Facebook,Twitter, MySpace, and YouTube. At least, that’s what it looks like from the screenshot.

New homepage

Current homepage

Google Ventures has invested in Austin, Texas based HomeAway, a vacation home rental service, at a $1.4 billion valuation, we’ve heard from a source. The New York Times first broke the story, but doesn’t have details on valuation or amount invested.

Our source says Google Ventures invested somewhere around $25 million in the company.

Google Ventures bought stock directly from existing shareholders and the money isn’t being injected into HomeAway. The valuation was set in the last round of financing, a massive $250 million raise in 2008.

The company has been growing rapidly since launching in 2005, partly through acquisitions. We’ve estimated revenue to be in the $200 million range, with $70 million or so in profit.

Around half a billion dollars has been invested in HomeAway to date.

Google gets a bad rap for missing the boat on social. You know, all that stuff Facebook and Twitter do with friends, followers, and activity streams. But many of its products have had social features for a long time. YouTube reminds us of this fact by pointing out that people have subscribed to other people’s video channels more than one billion times. They are even celebrating the milestone on the YouTube logo today.

If you think about it, the subscribe button on every YouTube video is very much like a follow button on Twitter. By subscribing to another user or video producer, you get all of their new videos in your personalized homepage stream when you are logged in. And you also get an email notification. It’s not quite the same as a status update, but one billion emails a week is quite a lot.

There are 15 video YouTube video producers who have more than one million followers, er subscribers. To encourage more subscriptions, YouTube is releasing a subscribe widget that people can put in their blogs and websites.

"[W]ebsites and hosting services should not be 'fads' any more than forests and cities should be fads – they represent countless hours of writing, of editing, of thinking, of creating. They represent their time, and they represent the thoughts and dreams of people now much older, or gone completely. There's history here. Real, honest, true history." And thus did the Archive Team set out to save the entirety of Geocities.