When Ping launched in early September, the music social network had one major problem: it wasn’t social. Sure, you can share stuff inside of iTunes, but there was no good way to post the songs you liked to the two big social networks: Facebook and Twitter. The truth is that Ping launched with Facebook Connect integration, but it was only for contact importing, and then Apple and Facebook had a bit of a dust up. Today, Apple is bringing Twitter integration to Ping.

As Twitter has just announced on their blog, by connecting iTunes to Twitter, you’ll be able to not only find your Twitter friends on Ping, but you’ll be able to tweet out Ping activity as well. That last bit is a key to making Ping actually work in a truly social way.

Perhaps even more interesting is that not only will each tweet contain a link back to the song or album on iTunes, but these links will work in New Twitter’s right-side pane. You’ll be able to listen to iTunes previews right from there — a huge feature that should lead to a lot of music buying, especially when the 90-second previews kick-in.

Facebook, meanwhile, is still MIA after they cut off Ping a day after launch. There’s talk the two side will hook up again, but so far it hasn’t happened yet.

This first big social integration follows Apple integrating Ping with users’ actual iTunes libraries, an important first step.

Twitter says this iTunes song previews feature will be available on twitter.com in the 23 countries where the iTunes Store offers music.

I have to wonder if this deal is a money-making one for Twitter. Will they be getting affiliate fees for songs purchased thanks to Twitter links? I’ve asked Twitter that very question and will update when I hear back.

Today Wal-Mart is offering free shipping with no minimum on walmart.com on around 60,000 items. The deal will run until December 20th and may continue until Christmas. This is, in short, an attempt to grab commerce through this lucrative month and into the next from other retailers like Amazon and Toys’r'Us.

The holidays are usually an extremely brisk time for online sales and retailers are hoping this year will be better than last. Most retailers reported at least a 16% increase in sales last month, which bodes well for the rest of the season. Another interesting data point is the estimated Kinect sales numbers topping out at 425,000 since launch. This either suggests consumers aren’t ready to dance around in front of their TVs or, a more likely scenario, the Kinect will be the must-have item this season and parents are waiting before they buy.

Read more…

Members-only shopping site JackThreads.com just got a redesign and has begun selling more gadgetry including headphones and Nooka watches. We wrote about these boys back when Thrillist bought the company in May. Similar to Gilt Group, the company sells “hot” and “exciting” items popular with the “kids” for up to 80% off, ensuring that legions of web developers can still find skinny jeans.

Read more…

Oh noes! No more Fox on Google TV! This will surely cause the Pleideans to finally overrun the earth. Clearly us humans are not capable of getting along. Hopefully the aliens above know that two of the world’s largest media conglomerates haven’t taken the same stance as Disney or NBC Universal. Both Time Warner’s and Viacom’s entire web library works just fine on Google TV and will probably continue to do so as the second and fourth largest media companies in the world seemingly embraced the platform.

I’m not backpedaling on my Google TV “wait” recommendation but the platform is far from dead in the water. Both Time Warner and Viacom constitute a major portion of the cable channels and their entire library — from what I can tell at least — still works. These two media giants even have shortcuts to their video sites built into the Google TV backend, seemingly encouraging users to check out their content through the Internet.

This whole thing is silly, really. If News Corp, Disney, NBC Universal, and CBS are going to put their content online for free, then said media should be accessible on any Internet platform. That’s exactly what Avner Ronen said to Erick Schonfeld yesterday in reference to his Boxee Box. The game they’re playing now stifles innovation, leaving the lowly consumer as the primary victim. Google TV isn’t even about disruption. It’s about merging subscription-based TV with the content already provided free by the media companies. Sigh.

Read More

On the heels of announcing a payments partnership with Facebook, PlaySpan is making another announcement regarding the startup’s UltimatePay payments product. PlaySpan is launching UltimatePay Mobile, a virtual currency and micropayments monetization widget for smartphone platforms. The initial private beta launch will support Android phones and Nokia phones with WebRuntime installed.

UltimatePay is a 'Monetization as a Service' platform for apps, games, videos and digital goods. Based on the user's location, the payments platform draws from over 85 different payment options. Because of its vast variety of payment options (which include PayPal, pre-paid cards, and a number of credit cards), UltimatePay is designed for a global audience.

UltimatePay Mobile gives smartphone developers a way to deliver a one-click payment experience to mobile gamers, and provide a comprehensive payments offering. The platform allows players to view their balance and transaction history, while allowing them to purchase items in-app without ever having to leave the game.

Of course, PlaySpan isn’t the first startup or company to bring in-app payments to Android phones; PayPal, Boku and Zong all offer in-app payments libraries to developers.

PlaySpan, which recently raised $18 million in new funding, already has a number of partnerships with a number of gaming and media companies, including Ubisoft, Sanrio and others. Perhaps the company can leverage some of these relationships to offer UltimatePay in publisher’s mobile games.

On December 13, TechCrunch Europe is coming to Moscow, Russia, for our first ever “TechCrunch Moscow”. The event will be held at the first Russian private tech incubator, the Digital October Center, located in a historical manufacturing building Krasny Oktyabr (or “Red October” / Красный Октябрь in Russian). Our event will be part of the official launch of the building, which hopes to become Moscow’s leading digital / media / technology hub.

You can now buy tickets here.

More details on the final program and speakers will be announced soon, but to give you a sneak peek: we think it’ll be pretty good.

Since Paper.li quietly launched in May this year, it’s been building momentum. At first it seemed like a very simple Twitter app which just turned the feed form the people you follow into a rather neat newspaper-style site where you could peruse what was being shared. But coupled with an automatic virality, in that it would make your account tweet the user names name of the people featured in your ‘Paper’, the application has been taking off. Subsequently I have been hearing rumours that it’s traffic was exploding, thus attracting a lot interest from potential investors, although the company denies it is raising financing right now.

Today those rumours surface to some extent in the form of news, exlusive to us, that well known investor Guy Kawasaki has joined its advisory board.

Similar to Twittertim.es, part of Paper.li’s appeal is that it presents the links shared in your feed in a highly digestible form, thus giving it quite a lot of mainstream appeal. It’s also been optimized for use on the iPad.

I caught up with CEO and founder Edouard Lambelet at the Monaco Media Forum for the interview below:

Today, General Electric (GE) offered details about its committment to encourage the widespread adoption of all-electric vehicles. The company plans to walk the walk with a purchase of 25,000 electric vehicles by 2015, including an order for 12,000 Chevy Volt vehicles in 2011 from General Motors (GM), a GE business partner.

Within the next three years, GE expects to generate up to $500 million in revenue from the emerging electric vehicles market. GE owns one of the world’s largest vehicle fleets and global fleet management businesses. It also sells consumer and industrial products like the WattStation, an electric vehicle charging station, and circuit protection equipment and transformers.

Chief executive Jeff Immelt made GE’s intentions public through a series of deals and speeches this fall.

As part of its EV push, GE is also setting up “electric vehicle customer experience and learning centers,” to give customers, employees and researchers access to EV technology. One center will be in Van Buren Township, Michigan outside of Detroit, within GE's Advanced Manufacturing and Software Technology Center. The other will be part of GE Capital's Fleet Services business headquarters in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, with others to be announced in 2011.

The centers will monitor and evaluate vehicle performance and charging behaviors, driver experiences, service requirements, and operational efficiencies, while also affording the opportunity to experience a variety of manufacturers and models, and gain insights on electric vehicle deployment.

Angie's List, which offers consumer-focused information and reviews of businesses online, this morning announced that it has closed on $2.5 million in additional financing from its most recent round, which came from multiple institutional investors and totaled $22.5 million.

The additional capital infusion comes from San Francisco-based Saints Capital.

The company says it will use the additional investment to expand its Health and Wellness consumer reviews product, as well as its "The Big Deal" local group coupon program. The company expects to offer local group coupons in more than 50 markets by the end of 2010.

Angie’s List has been around since 1995 and says it now serves more then 1 million paid members, primarily via its website, but still offering a call-in service and a monthly magazine.

With the $2.5 million extension of its most recent round, the company has raised $25 million in venture capital this year alone.

Is Jolicloud preparing to sell a netbook of its own? That’s what we wondered about last month, when the cloud OS maker’s founder and CEO Tariq Krim tweeted some interesting pictures of a customized netbook.

Well, yes, they are. I actually caught up with Krim in Dublin two weeks ago – he showed me the device in action but didn’t want me to take pictures or shoot videos. He also kept mum on pricing, possible launch date and specs of the portable computer.

Now, in an email sent out to users (see below), Jolicloud sheds – a bit – more light on things.

Here’s what’s cooking:

- they’re effectively calling the computer a Jolibook (nothing on that site yet)
- release is planned for this month
- it’s a netbook that runs Jolicloud 1.1, which is the upcoming version of the OS
- it will come preloaded with Chromium, the open source version of Google Chrome
- the whole thing is HTML5-based, which I swear is quite impressive
- the Jolibook will boast a dual-core Atom N550 processor (1.5 GHz)
- it’ll come with a 250GB hard drive, a VGA port and multiple USB sockets
- it will be able to play 720p video

What we still don’t know:

- the exact launch date
- actual measurements (my guess is a 10.1 inch screen) and memory capacity
- the retail price (they say it will be “affordable”, which is what everyone always says)
- how and where the netbook will be distributed
- if people will be willing to spend money on a Jolibook before comparing with the first Google Chrome OS computers, which should hit the market in the near future

Founded in 2008, Jolicloud has raised $4.2 million from London-based Atomico Ventures and Mangrove Capital Partners in July 2009.

We’re keeping tabs on their progress and will update as soon as the netbook goes on sale.

The United States Patent And Trademark Office (USPTO) has extended its Green Technology Pilot Program to accelerate the review of patent petitions for green technologies defined as those pertaining to: environmental quality, energy conservation, development of renewable energy, and greenhouse gas emission reduction.

Applications are usually reviewed in the order they are received by the patent office, leading inventors and companies to delay commercialization of their technologies. This program lets green tech patents jump the queue without any extra fees or paperwork, and the USPTO hopes it will reduce average pendency times for green technologies by a year or more.

The program launched in Dec. 2009 and was to expire on Dec. 8th this year, but the USPTO on Wednesday announced an deadline extension until Dec. 31, 2011. So far, the USPTO had received 1,595 patent petitions and granted 790 of them under the Green Technology Pilot Program.

The program could prove controversial, as the president and founder of IPWatchdog Inc., Gene Quinn, suggests:

When has it ever been bad to encourage exciting new technologies? An argument could be made that the Patent Office could and should expand this acceleration program beyond the green tech space and more broadly define those types of innovations that we as a society need most. A one-size-fits-all patent system, or patent term for that matter, strikes me as out-dated. Bacteria are becoming ever more resistant to Antibiotics and with more and more people in the world we need to continually advance food producing technologies…a one-size-fits-all patent system is out-dated. Whether through acceleration or a longer patent term, we should be doing what we can to encourage those innovations society most needs.

As the iPad becomes popular in the enterprise, business-focused apps have emerged to help perform functions like web conferencing. Fuze Meeting recently launched its online meeting software on the iPad with a new app.

Similar to GoToMeeting or WebEx, Fuze provides a conferencing service that allows users to share screens and run meetings online. As opposed to its competitors, Fuze promises a sleeker more lightweight interface. Today, the company is announcing a new app, set to launch in early 2011, specialized for Android tablets.

The Fuze Android tablet app includes VoIP so users can attend a meeting via their tablet even if they don't have a phone nearby. You can also share your computer desktop, share documents and files via the app and watch and listen to high-quality video and audio.

Fuze says the app will be optimized for the Samsung Galaxy and the app works best on 1024 x 600 tablets for now. Fuze Box also has a specialized app for Android phones.

By way of history, Fuze was formerly known as CallWave. The company was founded in 1998 and went public in 2004, trading on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol CALL. After reaching a peak soon thereafter of over $15 per share, the stock dropped steadily, dipping as low as 50 cents early this year. Deciding to cut its losses, the company delisted itself from NASDAQ after buying back shares from public shareholders at a 44% premium over the current market value and paying out a total of $10 million.

Last summer, the company rebranded itself as Fuze Box and launched Fuze Meeting. Fuze also launched Tweetshare, a platform for branded Twitter channels, and brought on streaming media inventor Dr. Alan Lippman its Executive Vice President of Media Technology.

It’s still unclear is Android tablets will gain the same traction as the iPad; but it should be interesting to compare the popularity of Fuze’s app on both types of devices.

On-demand streaming of movies and TV shows is a booming business, and Netflix is positioned well to further capitalize on its pioneering digital streaming efforts. The company this morning confirmed earlier rumors that it’s going back to Level 3, after three years of Akamai, to serve as its primary content delivery network provider for online streams.

The deal is aimed to accommodate Netflix’ expected future growth and to support storage for the company’s entire, ever-expanding library of content (currently more than 20,000 titles).

As a result, Level 3 says it plans to accelerate investments in its CDN capacity. Level 3 says it intends to effectively double its storage capacity and add 2.9 Tbps of globally available CDN capacity, which is in addition to the 1.65 Tbps that was deployed in the third quarter of 2010.

Over the course of November and December, the two companies will move the content library to Level 3 storage in preparation for serving traffic beginning Jan. 1, 2011.

Netflix in a statement says its subscriber base will exceed 19 million in North America by year’s end, and that they expect more growth and international expansion in future years.

Yesterday’s rumors of the Netflix/Level 3 deal had sent Level 3 Communications’ share soaring, and Akamai’s dropping. Expect that trend to continue.

Video ad network YuMe is taking its ad network and technology mobile today, with the launch of SDKs for iOS devices and two new mobile video ad units to help advertisers, web publishers, and app developers extend their reach to iOS devices. YuMe’s technology places video ad networks dynamically on videos on a number of publishers across a variety of platform.

Publishers and app developers need to integrate the SDK and YuMe will take over video ad operations and centralize ad serving to iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. YuMe's Mobile Connect as unit is a full screen video ad overlaid with 'Tap To Action.' Advertisers can add social network icons, which will take users to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or even the App Store. Brand Connect icons link to the advertiser's website, downloadable coupons, or the contact numbers for their sales or customer service teams.

The second mobile ad format, Mobile Billboard, features a full-screen banner or rich media ad that appears before the desired video content and allows the user to play video or connect with social networking and ecommerce brand destination sites.

Mobile is a huge market and YuMe is probably wise to throw their hat into the billion dollar market. Of course, it is a competitive market, and YuMe will go head to head with Apple, iVdopia, BrightRoll, AdMob and others. YuMe has raised nearly $50 million and is already profitable.

In a talk at the Monaco Media Forum earlier today, Google's Product Management Director, Mobile, Hugo Barra, denied that the search giant is “working on building a traditional social network platform” to compete with those who’re leading the pack in that space, and scrambling to build a variety of social applications instead.

The Telegraph puts it this way: “Google's mobile chief has flat out denied that the search company is developing a 'traditional' social network, called Google Me, to rival Facebook”.

This is all very interesting. Thing is, we’ve heard that song before, from Google CEO Eric Schmidt himself no less, back in September. Heck, Mark Zuckerberg even kinda sorta responded to its rival’s proclaimed strategy soon after Schmidt’s statements, saying ‘social’ doesn’t equal merely putting a social layer on top of existing products.

We also identified Google VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra as the person who will control overall product strategy and execution around Google’s new efforts to find relevance in a quickly changing Internet landscape that is increasingly dominated by Facebook.

Anyway, Barra reportedly told the audience: “We do think that social is an ingredient for success for any app going forward, search and advertising being probably the best two examples that I would mention. So that’s how we’re thinking about the problem.”

He added that he thinks Google Me, the rumored name of the “product”, is ‘awful’.

(That may be, but it’s still much better than Orkut.)

Hopefully Barra’s statements will, once and for all, obliterate the rumors of Google building a full-fledged Facebook competitor anytime soon. I just hope Google’s strategic plans going forward continue to include throwing fighting words at Zuckerberg and co.

As with most things on the web, the insanity surrounding the initial launch of RockMelt died down quickly. The first reactions had some people screaming “eureka!”, while others yelled “Flock 2.0!” The truth, as I see it after a few days of usage, is that the latest social web browser is somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.

I know, it’s boring to say, but RockMelt neither sucks nor is it awesome. It is much better than Flock already for one very important reason: it’s about a billion times faster than Flock was. In the world of web browsing, that’s all that really matters. Flock apparently thought — well, I don’t know what Flock thought. It was just dog slow. And that was in an age when browsers themselves were much slower than they are now.

There’s no doubt that a big part of RockMelt’s speed can be attributed to the Chromium web browser on which it is built. This is, of course, the same browser on which Chrome is built. And, incidentally, it is also what Flock has switched to in recent months (though it’s still lacking in several other areas). RockMelt uses a slightly older version of Chromium, but it’s still plenty fast.

But the usage of Chromium is also RockMelt’s greatest weakness. RockMelt still feels very much like Chrome — it just feels like a version of Chrome with extensions installed by default. That is to say, the social element of the browser, the key to it, feels tacked-on. And that’s okay, but why couldn’t this just be an extension for Chrome? Why does it have to be a completely separate browser?

I know that the social integration is deeper than it would be with an extension. When you start up RockMelt, it takes about a second longer while it signs into your Facebook account. Then it takes another few seconds (sometimes longer) to load up your social Edges with your connection to Facebook and Twitter. But I’m not seeing anything that really wows me in terms of this deeper integration.

And some of the elements look kind of odd and out of place. Some of the social overlays, for example, look like they belong on Safari and not Chrome (on the Mac at least, obviously).

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the possibility of Google using Chrome as their social layer and/or Facebook building their own browser. I had no idea RockMelt was about the launch, but what I wrote seems even more applicable now that it has. I can’t help but wonder if it’s going to take one of the big players to nail the social browser.

Again, I go back to this feeling of these social elements in RockMelt (and Flock) being tacked-on. What we need is a browser built from the ground up with social elements in mind. That reeks of Facebook. As we’ve heard over and over again in recent weeks from the company, social is not just something you can layer on. If that applies to the web, it also applies to the web browser.

Facebook undoubtedly believes Google can’t build Chrome into a social browser because of their layering mentality. But with 100 million or so users getting automatic upgrades, people would use it if Google did it. It might not be good, but people would still use it. Facebook shouldn’t underestimate that. If Facebook built their own browser, they would have to entice people to download it, just like Google had to do over the course of many months. That’s significantly harder to do then adding some social features.

One of the main reasons why Chrome grew quickly was that it was simply the best browser in many peoples’ minds. A big reason for that was that it was the fastest browser. And it also lacked all the typical UI baggage that browsers tend to come with. Humorously, it lacked much of the chrome, as it were.

RockMelt tacks on a bunch of the chrome. And a Google social Chrome (capital “C”) undoubtedly would too. I’m thinking a social browser will have to be an entirely new experience that melds ultra-quick browsing with social concepts. It shouldn’t be about just adding share buttons.

But it’s important to remember that RockMelt is still very early in its life. The company has already issued a couple of updates to the browser to make it faster and refine a few of the features. They seem committed to iterating quickly, which is good.

They also have one key advantage over Facebook if they were to build their own browser: Twitter. A Facebook browser undoubtedly would not have the option to share on Twitter. And likewise if Twitter were to build their own browser (don’t laugh, what they’re doing with the new two pane view on the site isn’t that far off from one), it wouldn’t have Facebook as an option. RockMelt, as a neutral third party, can offer both.

Interestingly enough, another entrant that can offer both threw its hat into the ring today, just days after RockMelt: Mozilla. The makers of Firefox just released a Labs project called F1. It’s essentially a social add-on for Firefox that allows you to share what you’re browsing with Facebook and Twitter (and Gmail).

F1 is fairly fast and it looks quite a bit nicer than RockMelt. It’s hidden until you call it, and this helps it feel less tacked-on. It also helps that it’s made by the maker of the browser itself so the design is consistant. RockMelt, again, doesn’t have that. And unless they build their own browser from scratch (something probably unfair to ask, even with Marc Andreessen’s involvement), they’re not going to have that.

Incidentally, Mozilla previously worked with Chris Messina (now at Google) in late 2009 to come up with a new concept for a social browser. This type of from-the-ground-up rethinking of the whole browsing dynamic is exactly what I’m talking about. My gut tells me that this is the only way someone is going to nail the social browser.

RockMelt is on the right track with their thinking that Facebook and Twitter (the two leaders in social sharing) have to be intertwined into the web browsing experience. They just haven’t intertwined them very well just yet. Maybe that will improve. Maybe it won’t.

It’s the closest we’ve come yet to a social browser. But it’s not close enough.

I ended my post a few weeks ago by saying, “I have this feeling that web browsing as we know it is about to change.” I feel like RockMelt is a first step in that direction. I suspect changes to Chrome may be a second step. And a Facebook browser may be the third step. And I think people getting accustomed to new browsing experiences on smartphones and tablets will hasten all of this.

A New York state judge has upheld law firm Quinn Emanuel's $13 million payout for representing ConnectU in intellectual property litigation against Facebook, denying the former client’s attempts to stay the award while it challenges the $65 million settlement it struck with Facebook back in 2008.

Ok, that may be a bit of a confusing lede, so let’s tackle this one from A to Z. Trust me, it’s quite worth the read.

Assuming you’ve read up on Facebook‘s origins, or if you’ve seen the movie The Social Network, you know that Mark Zuckerberg and co allegedly stole the idea for the site from fellow Harvard students Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and classmate Divya Narendra.

The latter three men co-founded HarvardConnection, which was later renamed ConnectU, and ultimately took Zuckerberg to court, alleging that he had copied their idea and illegally used source code intended for the site he was hired to create.

The lawsuit against Facebook was filed in 2004, and a settlement agreement for both cases was reached in February, 2008, valued at $65 million. In May 2010, it was reported that ConnectU was accusing Facebook of securities fraud on the value of the stock that was part of the settlement, alleging the stock was worth $11 million instead of $45 million that the social networking giant had proclaimed.

The Winklevoss twins and Darendra then moved to get the settlement undone.

One of ConnectU’s law firms, Quinn Emanuel, didn’t want to wait for their part of the settlement deal, 20% of the settlement fee or $13 million, as part of a contingency agreement. ConnectU subsequently fired Quinn Emanuel and sued the firm for malpractice by failing to obtain recent valuations of Facebook’s common stock before negotiating the settlement.

On August 25, 2010, an arbitration panel ruled that Quinn Emanuel “earned its full contingency fee” and found that the firm had committed no malpractice.

In a decision filed Monday, Judge Richard Lowe of the Supreme Court of the State of New York concluded that Quinn Emanuel has waited long enough for its contingency fee, although he refused to bump the interest on the award from 6 to 9 percent as requested by the firm.

ConnectU had urged Judge Lowe to stay confirmation of the arbitration award until the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rules on the validity of the Facebook settlement, claiming a successful appeal would obliterate Quinn Emanuel's claim to its portion.

"The respondents have waited over two years for its fee, and have had to oppose several attempts to delay the payment," Judge Lowe said. "To continue to stall payment of the award would be to frustrate the very purpose of and reason for the arbitration."

TL;DR ConnectU retains law firm, sues Facebook and reaches a settlement with them for a reported $65 million. ConnectU later appeals for a higher settlement fee and delays payment to said law firm, Quinn Emanuel. Law firm doesn’t want to wait for its money and gets sued by ConnectU. A judge has now awarded Quinn Emmanuel its $13 million contingency fee.

(Source: Law360 – image from The Social Network movie)

Well, that was exciting wasn't it? Less than 24 hours after we, and twenty billion other media outlets, reported on the presence of a "guide to pedophilia" on Amazon, it looks like the retail giant may have decided to withdraw it from sale.

If the reports are true then parents can sleep easy in their beds: with the removal of one putrid, misspelled ebook, the Internet is now completely free of pedophiles.

Except, of course, it isn’t.

I was going to leave this story alone. Partly I wanted to avoid the frothing ire of the "YOU'RE JUST DRAWING MORE PUBLICITY TO SOMETHING BAD" crowd (yes, drawing attention to bad things is what we’re supposed to do). Partly, too, I didn’t want to write another post that puts me at odds with my esteemed TechCrunch colleagues. Mainly, though, my reason for wanting to give the story a wide berth is because – for all the sound and fury over this sick, twisted little tome being on sale – I still haven't heard anyone  adequately explain what all the fuss is about.

Please don’t misunderstand me here. I'm not asking what the fuss is about pedophilia – that's an easy one, I hope – but rather I'm unclear what is achieved by forcing Amazon to ban a single disgusting ebook from sale. Or, indeed, what precise harm we think will result if they refuse.

Are we, as intelligent adults, really suggesting that other less intelligent adults who have until now never so much as considered the idea of molesting a child are going to download a copy of ‘the Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover’s Code of Conduct’ and think to themselves "by golly, this pedophile stuff sounds like fun – I think I'll give it a try?". Surely not. If we're concerned that a book glamourising man-child love is going to bring about the downfall of society then we'd better demand the removal of Lolita too. At least Nabokov could spell.

Maybe, then, those supporting the ban are concerned that the book might act as a dummies’ guide for the enthusiastic non-practicing pedophile: men who are already grotesque sexual deviants but haven't yet figured out the practicalities of turning thought into action. If that's the concern, then I fear that particular ship has sailed. I admit I haven't looked – no-one needs that on their Google search history – but I'm pretty sure there's enough of that kind of information available on the web that doesn't require a potential child rapist to plunk down his credit card information and thus leave a paper trail back to his lair.

Or perhaps the concern is simply that the author is profiting from his vile fantasies. But then again, if that is the worry, maybe the YOU’RE DRAWING ATTENTION TO IT crowd has a point.

Before the book hit the headlines today, its author claims it had sold precisely one copy. After we, the media, had done our work, it had shifted enough units to make the top 100 list. That’s annoying, but does this mean the nation is about to be overrun by newbie pederasts? It seems unlikely: judging by the reviews of the book on Amazon, most purchasers ordered it only to determine the precise level of contempt they have for its author. By the end of the week it will have been forgotten about again and author Philip R Greaves II will return to his poverty; the only difference being that a few million people will know his name and the authorities will know to keep a very close eye on him, particularly when it comes to his proximity to schools.

And that's exactly how things are supposed to work in a free society. Since the advent of the printing press –  hell, since the advent of speech – morons and criminals have used words to espouse their despicable views. Meanwhile, right thinking people have had the choice to either ignore those views or listen long enough to dismiss or demolish them in public forums. We make laws to protect against specific incitement and certain types of hate speech, but otherwise our ability to debate broader ideas – no matter how abhorrent we believe them to be – is what separates us from the apes.

Despite what some (including Amazon) have suggested, the company’s decision to pull Greaves’ “book” from their virtual shelves (if that’s what they’ve done) was neither censorship nor a curb on free speech, but rather a perfectly rational economic decision by a public company in response to a threatened boycott. And perhaps that alone is worth celebrating: however indirectly, Amazon was profiting from this vile little book (much as they do when they sell copies of Mein Kampf) – and now, it seems, they're not.

But what the ban most certainly is not is an anti-pedophile victory of any meaningful kind, any more than YouTube's decision (under pressure, in part, from the British government) to remove hate speech by Anwar al Awlaki was a particularly meaningful triumph in the war against terror. In fact, if either ban has achieved anything (and it probably hasn't) it's simply to drive another vile little man further underground, to join the thousands of other vile little men (and the occasional vile little woman) who ooze far below the surface of the Internet, in private chat rooms and IRC channels and password protected forums. Philip R Greaves’ fetid little fantasies haven’t been destroyed, but rather will now be added to the countless other sick fictions and how-tos – not to mention the far more troubling, and illegal, images and videos of actual criminal acts – that lie in the darkest corners of the web, away from the glare of public derision.

It’s that other material – the truly vile and illegal stuff, hidden from public view – that represents the true threat to the fabric of decent society. And it's that material that we need to figure out how to banish from the Internet before we start congratulating ourselves on a job well done. Anything else is just a self-congratulatory meme. Misdirection accomplished.

After a Summer spent in “Lockdown”, Facebook apparently got quite a bit of work done. They’ve already had a number of events just in the past few weeks. And now they’re having another one.

We’ve just been alerted about an invite-only press event taking place next Monday, November 15 at 9:30 AM in San Francisco. At the bottom of the invite, it notes that “This special event is in advance of Mark Zuckerberg’s conversation on 11/16 at Web 2.0 Summit.”

So what will Facebook be talking about? Who knows. The invite has chat bubbles on it, but as we’ve learned in the past, these often have nothing to do with the event.

After Facebook’s last event, in which they unveiled some big updates to their Places product including Deals, we asked Zuckerberg if the company had any other big things to launch this year. He indicated that more was on the way, but at least one more big thing was coming soon.

Is this the big thing or a smaller thing? Tune in Monday to find out.

Update: Actually, looking at their icon again, you’ll notice it is their Inbox icon (at least on the iPhone) and not their chat icon. Could this be the unveiling of the new Facebook mail product — Project Titan? Let the speculation begin!

Less than an hour after it hit the Amazon Bestsellers list and the controversial topic of its existence made the Dr. Phil show as well as other mainstream media, it looks like Amazon has taken down the infamous pedofile how-to book. The link to buy The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure now results in the above 404 error and the book is no longer #96 on the Amazon Bestseller list replaced by Ken Follett’s A Dangerous Fortune.

You win, Internet.

Update: The book seems to be back up. And is now at #80 on the Amazon Bestseller list. And now it’s down again. And no longer in  the #80 slot.

Sheesh, this pedophile book is having more ups and downs than Chatroulette. And like Chatroulette, we’re guessing its days are numbered.

TechCrunch reader (and former Amazon intern) Sainath Mallidi has the following theory on why the book seems to be performing a disappearing/reappearing act.

Earlier today TechCrunch reported that Amazon is selling a book titled The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure, and later in the day Amazon defended its sale. More sickening, people are actually buying it – it’s broken the top 100.

As this disgusting saga plays out, something really interesting is going on behind the scenes. Guess who Amazon just acquired last week for $545 million?  Diapers.com. Guess who Diapers.com sells products to? Yep – Moms and Dads with little kids.

Take a look at this FaceBook thread with an official response from Diapers.com. Moms are in outrage. And Diapers.com wants no connection.

“Hi Everyone. While our parent company has been purchased by Amazon.com we have NO control over what is sold on their site. If there are any complaints or concerns please send them to Amazon.com”

It's evident that the timing on this acquisition could hurt both companies. But the linkage to selling such an awful book could be even worse for Amazon for a more subtle reason.

It's extremely likely that there is a high overlap in the customer base between Diapers.com and Amazon, since both are dominant e-tailers. Diapers.com customers are not only less likely to buy diapers from either Amazon or Diapers.com (to boycott the pending acquisition), but they are also less likely to buy ANYTHING from Amazon. And there's no doubt they shop online at both places.

It's also ironic timing, because I can guarantee that if Diapers.com were still independent, they'd be ALL OVER this story to pound Amazon in to a pulp by saying something damning publicly. Remember, prior to last week's acquisition, the two companies were in all-out pricing war.

Here's the financial background on why this could be material for Amazon. Companies – ranging from Starbucks to Amazon – relentlessly track "customer lifetime value" or CLV, which depends on the cost to acquire a customer, and the retention rate (or churn) of that customer over her lifetime. The biggest determinant in maximizing CLV is – by far – retention. When you lose her, CLV falls off a cliff.

This kind of stuff is a big deal in the brand sphere as well. In 2010 Interbrand declared Amazon the 36th most respected brand, with only Apple and Google notching a larger year-on-year increase than Amazon of the top 50.

When the news of this pedophile saga goes mainstream it could be the type of thing that permanently tinges Amazon's image. Right now, a search for "pedophile amazon" on Google news is returning more and more hits to mainstream news sites like LA Times.  And pretty soon people will discover some of the other totally insane books that Amazon sells.

So, addition to it being disgusting that Amazon is defending its actions, as Mike writes, it may be a pretty bad financial decision too. Personally, I am considering cancelling my Amazon Prime account and shopping elsewhere. What do all the Moms out there think?

Mixed Media Labs, the developers of social photo sharing service Picplz, has just raised $5 million in new funding from Andreessen Horowitz. Marc Andreessen will be joining the startup’s board of directors

Developed by Imeem execs Dalton Caldwell and Bryan Berg, Picplz aims to be a dead simple way for users to share the photos they take on the phone on the web. Pictures taken with picplz are synced to your profile on picplz.com and tagged with your location and place. And you can post directly from the app to Facebook, Twitter, and can also check-in to Foursquare when you take a picture. The app also allows you to follow other users’ photo streams, similar to the Twitter model.

The startup initially launched an Android app in May and then rolled out an iPhone version in August. Between the two apps, Picplz has seen over 100,000 downloads.

PicPlz most recently rolled out updated apps with the ability to add special affects to pictures, a new UI and improved photo upload speeds.

Caldwell notes that the funding will be used to expand the scope of what the startup is doing in terms of monetization and new products. It’s unclear what the details are at the moment, but we’ll keep you updated on any new developments.

Back in August, we broke the news about AngelPad, a new incubator started by a group of seven ex-Googlers. A day later, we sat down with one of those ex-Googlers, Thomas Korte, to talk a bit about the project. At the time, the logistics of how everything would work were still being ironed out. Fast forward to today, not even three months later, and they’re having their first demo day.

In total, eight startups are ready to graduate from the program today. We got a chance to sit down with each of them for a bit, and overall the quality of the companies is very impressive. This shouldn’t be too surprising given how many of them are also ex-Google or former employees of several other high-profile tech companies.

Below, find a rundown of the initial 8:

MoPub

MoPub is a startup aiming to reshape mobile monetization. The easiest way to think about their approach is as a DoubleClick for mobile applications. Essentially, they’ve created a system to serve up ads from several different ad networks depending on a variety of factors including inventory and targeting.

The startup is founded by a group of ex-Google and ex-AdMob guys and one of the first things they showed me was Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s quote from our own TechCrunch Disrupt conference where he said that mobile monetization hasn’t been optimized yet. That’s absolutely the case, and one reason is that a really good system to run different types of ads hasn’t been created yet. That’s what MoPub is trying to do.

They noted that a few companies have hacked together their own systems for showing various types of ads in their apps, but this can be tough because all of this stuff has to be approved, particularly by Apple. MoPub’s system would be an easy-to-integrate solution that would take care of everything on their end.

The team notes that eCPMs are really low on mobile right now because there is basically no targeting. Obviously, a lot of startups are working on this issue but at least two of them, AdWhirl and Mobclix, are starting to drop the ball because they’ve been acquired. MoPub sees a massive opening and opportunity here.

RollCall

RollCall is an application to help small groups of friends get together while on the go. While there are no shortage of startups and larger companies that are taking on event planning, very few of them are doing it solely focused on the mobile space. And that is perhaps the best way to make plans these days.

Using one of the service’s apps (they’ll have an iPhone and Android app out in a few weeks), you look for friends you want to invite to hang out and message them. You can then have conversations inside of this app as well as do things like vote on activities and eventually get recommendations for what to do.

But the best part about RollCall may be that you don’t need all your friends to have the same app to use it. The entire system works over SMS or via an HTML5 web app. In that regard, it’s a bit like the group texting app Fast Society. But it seems like it’s much more robust, and should even be simpler to use.

Recommendations are a big part of the plan down the road as they want to be able to give you and your friends things to do based on what you’ve done in the past.

Curated.by

Curated.by has been making some noise on Twitter for some time now. Currently, they give Twitter users a way to curate tweets around a particular topic. This has been particularly useful during big events, like TechCrunch Disrupt.

Using a browser extension, a user or a group of users can select tweets with a click to bundle them together. These bundles can then be viewed on Curated.by’s website or embedded on any other site.

While they’re currently in the process of redesigning their service, they’ve apparently had over 20,000 tweets curated by users in just the past few weeks — and they’re still in closed beta. But this type of usage makes sense since they’re solving a big problem that Twitter has when it comes to the surfacing of particular content based on quality and not time.

Eventually the plan is to move beyond just Twitter content to be a curation platform for many things on the web.

AllTrails

AllTrails is the Yelp for people who enjoy the outdoors. You know, hiking, skiing, camping, all that stuff. They’re building up a database of all the best stuff to do in the wild with a major focus on trails right now. So far, they have over 42,000 trails around the world in their database. And they have some 19,000 reviews about those trails.

The service has been up and running for a few months now with a website, but the next component they’re working on is the mobile experience. An iPhone app is currently in beta testing, with an Android app coming soon after that. The idea here is that you’d be able to take all the information you want about a trail on the go so you can see it when you’re actually on that trail.

And if you don’t have a connection out in the wilderness (or in San Francisco for that matter if you’re on the iPhone), the app stores all the data it needs locally so you can have it all on you. And even if the data connection isn’t working, the GPS likely will be, so you can still follow a map of your trail.

The service has some 27,000 registered users so far who have logged over 94,000 miles with the mobile app in limited testing.

Adku

Adku wants to fundamentally change the e-commerce experience by making it more intelligent. Currently, if you visit a site like Zappos, you’ll see them highlighting winter gear for you. But what if you live in an area like Texas where it’s warm? Or what if it’s just unseasonably warm where you live at the moment? Most companies don’t have a good way to change their targeting on the fly. That’s what Adku wants to do.

Using a bunch of signals, Adku would be able to dynamically change your e-commerce site to sell inventory that matters the most to the people visiting the site. For example, the San Francisco Giants just won the World Series, so people in San Francisco are obviously excited about that. Wouldn’t it make sense for online retailers to push Giants gear towards those people? But people in Texas (who the Giants beat) wouldn’t want to see that stuff, obviously.

eBay apparently spends around $110,000 every time they want to change the main page of their site. With Adku, this could be done for much cheaper and much faster. And it’s not just about product inventory, they can do advertising targeting as well.

This is another startup founded by a bunch of ex-Google guys who are most pleased with the prediction engine they’ve created. This engine can power the dynamic shifting of all sorts of things, even content on websites, they say.

The craziest part may be that they’ve built this entire system in only 3 months.

EggCartel

EggCartel wants to take what we all do on eBay and Craigslist and make it about a thousand times easier. That is, they want to greatly simplify the process for buying and selling stuff online. And they want to do it using the hot elements of the web today: social and mobile.

The group of ex-Google and ex-eBay guys note that currently it can take something like 10 steps to list an item on existing services. With EggCartel they bring that number down to a few simple steps. In some cases, it’s as easy as taking a picture of an item from your mobile phone or scanning its barcode to get a listing up.

And they realize the importance of pictures. When most people scan eBay or Craigslist, all they really care about is seeing pictures of the item they’re looking for. EggCartel puts an emphasis on the pictures.

A couple of examples they give for where this type of system is perfect is the buying and selling of tickets on game days. Say you have a ticket that you’re not going to use. You can easily put it up on EggCartel simply by taking its picture. People around you can then check their phones and see that someone is selling a ticket nearby and ping you to start the transaction process.

The company did an alpha launch about 9 weeks ago, and they’re already seeing about 40 percent of their 1,000 registered users coming back to buy and/or sell more items.

Hug Energy

Hug Energy wants to help consumers track and cut their energy usage. But rather than doing this by way of a complicated smart meter system, they’re using a simple computer application for connected devices.

Currently Mac-only, the app allows you to see exactly how much energy your computer is using throughout the day. You can also see more detailed analytics to show the trends of your usage. And you can send these results to your friends. The idea is that most people simply don’t realize how much energy they’re wasting. If they know, they’re likely to change their habits. But no one has created a good system to show them yet.

While right now the focus is on computers, the next move is into the living room as more of those machines are connected to your network as well. Video game consoles and media players are the obvious plays here.

Aside from getting people to change their wasteful energy behavior, the bigger idea may actually be getting people to upgrade (or even downgrade) their systems to more energy-efficient devices. Hug Energy would recommend new devices for consumers to get to help save the environment.

This upgrade market will be a $54 billion by 2014, they note — that’s bigger than the entire Internet ad market.

Snip.ly

On the surface, Snip.ly may sound like a simple company. They offer a group of tools (extensions, bookmarklets, and a website) to allow you to easily share small snippets of content from your favorite articles online. But their goal is actually much bigger. They want to cure filter failure and content fatigue.

In the age of Twitter, most people simply aren’t going to read full articles in the same way that they used to. They need a way to find the best parts of an article — and if that’s good enough, they might decide they want to read the entire thing. That’s the service Snip.ly is providing.

When you’re reading something on the web and you find something you like, you simply use their tool to make note of it and share it on Twitter and/or Facebook. You can share a quote or a larger passage and you can include your own comment about why you like it. A users who clicks on it will be taken to a page with the full article in the background but with your snip overlaid for them to read.

The larger play here is to be the “Pagerank for pages”. That is, they want to be a database for the best small bits of content online. Currently, Google and others show the initial blurb on a page below a search listing — Snip.ly would like to replace that blurb with the most popular snip from the page.

The service has been live for about six days and people have already shared over 10,000 snips.

Joining Aesop’s Fables and the 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People this evening on Amazon’s Top 100 Bestsellers list is a very unlikely contender, The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure.

Earlier today both Mike and MG used their TechCrunch power to rail against the fact that the pedophile guide is on Amazon at all (Devin has a different take). These efforts have had quite an unintended effect, namely a 101,000% sales boost for the book.

In testament to how fast something goes from zero to meme these days, the unlikely Kindle best seller has gone from #158,221 to a coveted #96 spot on Amazon’s Top 100 list.

The book has also gone from 50 reviews to 1,525 reviews, most along the lines of “This is absolutely disgusting and needs to be removed immediately. I will not be buying a single item from your store until it is removed.” A newly minted Facebook Protest Fan Page currently has over 2,500 “Likes.” Middle America is about to find out about this thing and it’s not going to be pretty.

Amazon has responded to our original post, emphasizing that they will not be taking the book down.

“Let me assure you that Amazon.com does not support or promote hatred or criminal acts; we do support the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions."

"Amazon.com believes it is censorship not to sell certain titles because we believe their message is objectionable.”

Following this censorship logic, Amazon should be keep the book up on the Bestsellers List as well as long as the numbers say it belongs there. Something tells me this isn’t going to happen. We are minutes away from this hitting mainstream coverage and once the Red States get involved there’s no turning back.

Which brings me to the paradox of media — We first posted on this because some of us weren’t cool with the fact that a book that made it easier for pedophiles to commit their crimes was so easily accessible via Amazon. Our post drew awareness to how sketchy this was but also attracted thousands of Internet looky loos who thought it might be funny to buy the book. Amazon is now playing a game of chicken with the entire Internet (I wouldn’t be surprised if 4Chan is involved).

Whether Amazon eventually removes the book or not, guess who makes money when you ironically buy The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure? Mr. Phillip R Greaves, a guy who wrote an entire book with the endgoal of “liter sentences” for pedophiles. Amazon, please take this book down.

From the launch of Apple’s iAds to Google’s acquisition of AdMob a year ago, it’s pretty clear that the next frontier of advertising is mobile. And today, another mobile advertising company called Rhythm NewMedia has landed a big new round of funding. The ad network is announcing that it’s raised a $10 million Series C round led by QuestMark Partners, with participation from existing investors LightSpeed Venture Partners, Morgenthaler Ventures, and Rembrandt Venture Partners.

You may not have heard of Rhythm NewMedia, but the company has some major clients — in fact, it only works with top brands both on the advertising and publishing side of things, and has worked with over 100 Fortune 500 companies this year. Publishers include CBS and Fox; advertisers include Best Buy and FedEx, and Rhythm NewMedia CEO Ujjal Kohli says that the company doesn’t deal with longtail content at all. Most of Rhythm’s business revolves around its video ad network, which is responsible for most of the pre-roll interactive video ads that you see on iOS and Android applications.

So what does that mean? Oftentimes video-centric applications from major publishers, like the TV networks for example, feature brief-pre roll ads in front of video content. The ads served by Rhythm are interactive in the sense that users can tap on something during this pre-roll ad to visit another website, or view a longer video clip (like a movie trailer). Kohli says that, like Apple’s iAds, all of these interactive video ads keep users within the app they’re using, which means they’re one tap away from getting back to the content they were viewing originally. In addition to its video ads, Rhythm is also responsible for some web ads, including some of the full-page ads you see in photo slideshows on large publisher sites.

Rhythm says that its mobile video ad network was averaging 425 million impressions a month in the third quarter, which was a 30% jump from Q2. The company has been around since 2005 and has raised a whopping $37 million since then, including this new round. Obviously mobile video ads weren’t nearly as promising back when Rhythm first started as they are now — Kohli says that the company was  ”a bit early”, but that things have taken off since the launch of the iPhone.