We’re getting down to the wire … only four days to go until we reveal the 2010 Crunchies Award winners! Will you be there to see your favorite startups and founders take home the triumphant monkey? This year’s ceremony promises to be a night to remember, which is why we encourage you to take advantage of our final round of ticket sales, beginning right now. Please visit Eventbrite to snag your pair.

There is also still time to vote for your favorites until midnight PT tonight. So far about 650,000 votes are in, but anything is still possible. Some of this year’s finalists include Groupon, Foursquare, Instagram, Quora, Flipboard, Angry Birds, and Twitter.

We are also proud to announce that our friends at Animoto will be hosting a Crunchies pre-party from 5 to 7:30pm in their brand new offices in downtown San Francisco. Shuttles will be available from Animoto’s offices to the Palace of Fine Arts. Details and tickets can be found here.

As a reminder, doors for general seating will open at 6:45pm and the show will begin at 7:30pm sharp! We have a lot of show to get through together with our co-hosts GigaOm and VentureBeat and you won't want to miss a single second. The ceremony will be chock full of entertainment, featuring the RockJazz of uber-Pianist ELEW, who will also play a special set at our after-party. Red Bull talent DJ Platurn, Pro-BMX Flatlander Terry Adams, and internet dance sensation, the Oakland TURF Dancers, are set to round out the evening’s lineup and keep the energy pumping.

A word about parking—there is free parking at the Palace of Fine Arts Complex as well as a few overflow lots near the Marina, but, remember, parking is very limited. Please read these driving directions so you can plan your visit. We encourage you to get there early and carpool with friends.

We’ve also received numerous questions about the Crunchies’ hardware—our inimitable monkey trophies. In answer to those “what’s the deal with the monkeys?” inquiries, we will direct you to a post written by TechCrunch’s own Mike Arrington announcing the first Crunchies Awards, in which he explains that the monkeys are a nod to Stanley Kubrick's “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Thanks to the presence of a mysterious extraterrestrial monolith, Kubrick’s great apes learn to make use of tools and weapons, marking the beginning of a technological evolution that continues today—and is celebrated by our annual Crunchies Awards. Heady stuff, to be sure. You can see the clip that became our inspiration here.

Lastly, we also encourage both TechCrunch fans and Crunchies attendees to employ our #crunchies hashtag when discussing the event (and when making those last minute award predictions) on Twitter.

And remember: Finalist voting ends tonight, January 19, at midnight, so be sure to support your favorites among the 100+ finalists for the Best of 2010. You can do so here.

Who is going to take home those monkeys? Is the suspense killing you? It’s killing me. We can’t wait to see you there!

As we wrote last week, Zoho was prepping the launch of an online accounting software called Zoho Books. Today, the productivity suite empire is launching Zoho Books to the public.

Zoho’s 26th productivity app, Zoho Books, is an online accounting software that gives business as snapshot of money flowing into and out of accounts. The software allows you to send invoices for payments, receive online payments, record bills and expenses, monitor bank and credit card transactions, deal in a variety of currencies, manage contacts, and share data.

Users can generate custom estimates, quotes and invoices in multiple currencies-complete with company logos and other customizations. Users can also receive payments online, automate recurring invoices and other repetitive tasks, and send out payment reminders.

The software, which costs $24 per month, also allows business owners to track bank and credit card transactions such as deposits, fund transfers, credit card charges, refunds and expenses. Zoho Books is also launching with a designated app in the Google Apps Marketplace, which is free.

Of course, Zoho will face competition from the popular accounting software from Intuit, Quickbooks. But Zoho Evangelist Raju Vegesna says that Zoho Books has deep integration with the company’s twenty-something productivity suite apps (i.e. you can import contacts from Zoho CRM), which gives users a comprehensive experience across many different business applications.

For a company that competes with Microsoft ad Google and has never raised any outside funding, the startup is steadily growing, and now has 4 million users and is adding 150,000 new users per month.

Apple sold almost 15 million iPads last year.  It is outselling Macs in units, and closing in on revenues.  The 7.3 million iPads sold just in the December quarter represented a 75 percent increase from the September quarter, and the $4.6 billion in revenue represented a 65 percent sequential jump. (The iPad launched in April).  By any measure, this is an incredible ramp for an entirely new computing product.  It is so startling that nobody predicted it—not bullish Wall Street analysts, or even wild-eyed bloggers.

A post on Asymco tallies all the early predictions of iPad unit sales from both Wall Street analysts and tech bloggers. The iPAd ended up selling 14.8 million units in 2010.  The highest Wall Street estimate from April was 7 million (Brian Marshall of Broadpoint AmTech).  David Bailey at Goldman Sachs predicted 6.2 million.  Even Apple table-pounder Gene Munster initially thought they would sell only 3.5 million iPads. The average prediction among the 14 analysts listed was 3.3 million.

Tech bloggers did a little better.  Fox anchor Clayton Morris (is he a blogger?) predicted 9 million, followed by John Gruber who predicted 8 million.  The average among the 8 bloggers listed was 5.5 million.

In other words, the iPad sold three times as much as the average tech blogger predictions, and five times as much as the average Wall Street analyst prediction. Think about that the next time you see a prediction for anything in tech. The newer it is, the less anybody knows.

Here is the breakdown from Asymco:

Professional analysts' first year iPad unit forecasts (sourced from TMO Finance Board)

• Brian Marshall, Broadpoint AmTech   7.0
• David Bailey, Goldman Sachs           6.2
• Kathryn Huberty, Morgan Stanley     6.0
• Shaw Wu, Kauffman Bros.              5.0
• Mike Abramsky, RBC Capital Markets   5.0
• Gene Munster, Piper Jaffray           3.5
• Ben Reitzes, Barclays Capital           2.9
• Keith Bachman, BMO Capital         2.5
• Jeff Fidacaro, Susquehanna           2.1
• Chris Whitmore, Deutsche Bank       2.0
• Scott Craig, Merrill Lynch               1.2
• Peter Misek, Canaccord Adams       1.2
• Doug Reid, Thomas Weisel             1.1
• Yair Reiner, Oppenheimer             1.1

Here are the predictions from Tech Bloggers:

• Clayton Morris: 9
• John Gruber: 8
• Horace Dediu: 6
• Natali Del Conte: 5
• Ross Rubin: 5
• Mike Rose: 4.5-5
• Jason Snell: 3
• Andy Ihnatko: 3

 

Scientific Conservation Inc. (SCI) — a San Francisco company that makes software to diagnose and help stop energy-wasting problems in commercial buildings — raised $15.6 million in a series B investment led by DFJ Growth Fund the companies announced today. DFJ Ventures and The Westly Group also joined the round, which brings the company’s total funding raised to $24.6 million.

SCI’s software-as-a-service specifically analyzes HVAC systems, refrigeration, lighting, controls and renewable energy sources within buildings to help their owner-managers manage them, consume less power, and cut annual energy expenditures. The company’s clients include Harley Davidson, 7-Eleven, Intel and Santa Clara County.

McGraw-Hill Construction’s Green Outlook 2011 report estimated that the U.S. non-residential green buildings market in 2010 rose to $43 billion at the low-end, or as much as $54 billion.

The trend should continue over the next five years, the report said, in part driven by public policy and law. As of September 2010, 12 federal agencies, 33 states and 384 local government programs put green building legislation or policies in place, requiring institutional buildings, like schools and court houses, to be green.

Adteractive, an online advertising company focused on lead generation, has secured about $5.1 million in funding, according to an SEC filing.

Adteractive has been around for a while (since 2000) but this is the first institutional financing ever raised by the company. The performance-based marketing services company says it delivers over 1.5 million customers and leads to clients across select consumer verticals on a monthly basis.

Its clients include US universities and colleges, financial institutions like HSBC and Citi, but also companies like Netflix, eMusic and Time Inc.

We’ve contacted the company to see if we can more details about the funding round.

Today is going to eb a big day for daily deal site LivingSocial. It is offering $10 off any $20 purchase on Amazon.com, and it’s already sold more than $2 million worth of the coupons in the first two hours of the deal. There are about 22 hours left to go. Some people are already noting that this 50 percent deal will “blow away” Groupon’s Gap deal, which resulted in $11 million worth of coupons sold. (That was $25 off a $50 purchase).

But here’s the thing. Amazon is not just the latest retailer to try out the daily deal concept. It is also an investor in LivingSocial. Last December, it put $175 million into LivingSocial for a stake in the company. Now it is helping out with deal volume, and no doubt will be introducing hundreds of thousands of new consumers to LivingSocial, and all with just a $10 discount. It might end up costing Amazon a few million dollars.

But seriously, how many people are going to find something with a price tag of exactly $20? I bet people will end up buying a lot of books and CDs today, but will still end up spending more than $20. And Amazon will more than make up for the $10 discount, or at least cover most of that with additional sales which otherwise would not have appeared. It’s not like Amazon is offering a 50 percent or 25 percent discount on any purchase.

But if the promotion works out, you can also see this as a first step, with Amazon going back to the daily deal well as a way to drive sales during slow periods. The question is, how big will this promotion end up being? Give your best guess as to how many coupons will be sold by the end of the 24 hour period. We are already up past 222,000

First the good news: Nintendo’s 3DS will hit the US on March 27, 2011 for $249. That’s less than the speculated $299 price but still $70 more than the current most expensive Game Boy. The 3DS comes packaged with a charging dock and a 2GB SD card. Cosmos Black and Aqua Blue are going to be available in North America at launch, which are the same colors available at launch in Japan.

The 3DS is the next-gen Nintendo DSi. The form factor is the same and it still uses a touchscreen for the bottom screen with a unique glasses-free 3D screen above it. There’s an analog nub above the traditional 4-way pad and the top screen is 10% larger. The 3DS is backwards compatible with DS and DSI games but they’ll just work in boring ol’ 2D. There’s even a Blackberry-ish notification light on the top corner to indicate if data is incoming or outgoing.

Read More

Washington DC-based SocialCode is the latest Facebook-focused marketing agency on the planet. The company helps brands advertise on the popular social networking site, monetize their respective fan bases and also develops custom applications for the platform, and much more.

Peculiarly, the agency was established by The Washington Post Company, the media company behind (evidently) The Washington Post, Slate, TheRoot and other publications.

The obvious link: Don Graham, CEO and chairman of the board of The Washington Post Company, sits on Facebook’s board.

According to their boiler plate, SocialCode actually has its roots within the media company, where it ran internal Facebook performance ad campaigns.

One thing led to another, apparently:

We realized that this was something that could be useful to brands everywhere and decided to take that skill set out to the marketplace. We have since expanded our expertise to include engagement and fan monetization strategies. Our skilled front-end creative team and performance-driven analytics team allow SocialCode to run faster and smarter on day one on any Facebook campaign.

Perhaps it’s just me, but a prominent media company setting up a Facebook-centered advertising agency just strikes me as a bit odd. Maybe I’m just getting old.

Not completely unrelated: The Washington Post really likes Facebook.

Video conferencing company Vidyo has raised $11.5 million in funding, an SEC filing reveals. Less than a year ago, the company raised $25 million from several VC firms – this financing round brings its total to $73.5 million.

Vidyo enables multi-party video conferences that feature HD-quality, face-to-face interactions over regular IP networks using commodity desktop systems as endpoints. Its technologies leverage the H.264 Scalable Video Coding (SVC) standard.

Vidyo has built a considerable business licensing its technologies to large electronics companies such as HP, Intel and Hitachi. Vidyo's technology is also used by Google to power video for Google Chat.

In a recent conversation with TechCrunch, Vidyo CEO Ofer Shapiro said the company was betting big on bringing enterprise-class videoconferencing to the iPad and the iPhone.

You can see a video here.

We’ve contacted Vidyo to learn which investors participated in the new equity round – previous backers include Menlo Ventures, Sevin Rosen Funds, Star Ventures, Four Rivers Group and Rho Capital Ventures.

Nicholas here, live from Nintendo’s big press conference in New York. The star of the show will be the 3DS, and Nintendo is expected to announce launch details: exact release date, price, games, etc. The stuff you’ve been waiting for. Like with the IBM Jeopardy challenge last week, feel free to refresh this post every minute or so; I still don’t know how to use fancy live-blogging services.

Read More

Anssi Vanjoki, who you'll recall was supposed to be the saviour of Nokia before he dramatically resigned the day before a major show, has clearly decided not to retire into history, head off into the sunset and play golf. Instead, it would appear that after many years at the top of Nokia's hierarchy, he has built up enough personal wealth to turn his hand towards startup investing. He's now invested not in his golf swing, but in Finnish start-up called GameBook, a social technology for golfers created with golf pros. Vanjoki is joining the board, but the terms of his investment have not been disclosed.

If you had to guess what the top downloaded iOS app of all time was, what would you say? You’ll probably get it. It’s an obvious one. It’s Facebook. Number two is fairly easy too: Pandora. But did you know that number three is the Google Mobile App? I wonder what Apple thinks of that?

As they countdown to 10 billion total app downloads, Apple has unveiled a page within the iTunes Store that shows the top app downloads of all time. These are broken into four categories: Top Free iPhone Apps, Top Paid iPhones Apps, Top Free iPad Apps, and Top Paid iPad Apps.

At first, it seemed a bit surprising that Apple would rank them in order, but we’ve spoken with a few app developers who assure us that this is exactly what they’re doing. Below, find the full top 10 list for each category. As you can see, the lists are pretty strong and obvious, except for paid iPad apps, which seems oddly weak (iFart Mobile, seriously?). In other words, there’s a huge opportunity out there developers.

All-Time Top Paid iPhone Apps

1. Doodle Jump
2. Tap Tap Revenge 3
3. Pocket God
4. Angry Birds
5. Tap Tap Revenge 2.6
6. Bejeweled 2 + Blitz
7. Traffic Rush
8. Tap Tap Revenge Classic
9. AppBox Pro Alarm
10. Flight Control

All-Time Top Free iPhone Apps

1. Facebook
2. Pandora
3. Google Mobile App
4. Shazam
5. Movies by Flixster
6. The Weather Channel
7. Google Earth
8. Bump
9. Skype
10. Paper Toss

All-Time Top Paid iPad Apps

1. SoundHound
2. StickWars
3. FlightTrack
4. Backbreaker Football
5. Calorie Tracker
6. BlocksClassic
7. iFart Mobile
8. GoodReader for iPad
9. Cro-Mag Rally
10. Ambiance

All-Time Top Free iPad Apps

1. Pandora
2. Google Mobile App
3. Movies by Flixster
4. Google Earth
5. Yelp
6. Fandango Movies
7. Remote
8. iBooks
9. Bible
10. Solitaire

This last list is particularly interesting. You’ll notice one glaring absence: Facebook. If the social network had a native iPad app, it would undoubtedly be the top app of all time on the platform. Instead, they’ve gone months without one now, letting other paid apps like Friendly Plus (in the Top 30 all time) take their thunder.

Other surprises include that Echofon (a Twitter client) has more downloads than Twitter itself. (Though it’s not really fair since Twitter only got their own native app when they bought Tweetie.) Loopt is far, far ahead of rival Foursquare — and AroundMe kills them both. Meanwhile, Urbanspoon beat Yelp. And Tic-Tac-Toe beat Checkers.

Zynga is preparing to launch RewardVille. No, it’s not another ‘Ville’ game, but a rewards program apparently designed to let users earn rewards for playing Zynga games – which you can then use earn virtual currency, which you then use for purchasing in-game items.

Ok, let’s take a step back.

Earlier this month, domain industry vet and blogger Elliot J. Silver wondered whether it was Zynga who acquired the domain name RewardVille.com from its previous owner, for $4,500.

Fusible.com then pretty much confirmed Zynga made the purchase, by uncovering that the social gaming juggernaut had registered a European trademark for ‘Rewardville’ last month.

Fast forward to today, and Rewardville.com now resolves to a website that announces the rewards program in beta – the same website appears when you visit rewards.zynga.com, by the way. There’s a login screen, but you need to have a Zynga account (which, as far as I know, is usually created by connecting to your Facebook account) to get in.

There’s more.

If you look at the menu at the bottom, you’ll see a link to a now deleted FAQ item about RewardVille, which is set to launch in the next few weeks, as you can tell from the screenshot above.

I did some digging, though, and found a blogger that cleverly took screenshots of several pages Zynga put up about RewardVille – the links all return errors at this point, however.

The screenshot of the overview page is the most revealing:

It reads:

“RewardVille is a new rewards program which lets players earn rewards for Zynga games! Each time you play a participating Zynga game, you’ll earn Zynga Points (zPoints) and increase your Zynga Level (zLevel). At every zLevel, you’ll earn Zynga Coins (zCoins) to use on free, exclusive in-game items in RewardVille!”

I sincerely zHope that was as zConfusing for zYou as it was for zMe.

Participating games include FarmVille, FrontierVille, Mafia Wars, Treasure Isle and Zynga Poker (and not hit game CityVille), although Zynga states that they’ll activate zPoints on other games in the near future.

On another – now removed – page, Zynga specified that users automatically earn zPoints for playing Zynga games, but will need to register for a Zynga account in order to redeem zCoins.

From the looks of it, players will be eligible to earn a maximum of 80 points per game per day, with a maximum of 300 points across the entire Zynga network each day.

We’ve reached out to Zynga for more information, but didn’t hear back immediately.

Update: Zynga provided us with this blanket statement:

“As a company focused on innovation we’re constantly testing new products and features. When experimenting with new products we take the feedback we receive and apply it to deliver the best possible user experience. We look forward to hearing how our users like RewardVille.”

The company confirmed that the beta product will slowly roll out to a small group of users in the coming weeks.

Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing business of Amazon.com, this morning announced a new offering dubbed AWS Elastic Beanstalk, aimed to simplify the deployment and management of AWS cloud applications developed by third parties.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk is designed to let developers upload their application and then keep their hands off while the system automatically handles the deployment details of capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and health monitoring, although AWS points out that they can still access and fully control the underlying resources at any time.

Best part of the announcement is the price: there is no extra charge – customers pay only for the AWS resources needed to run their applications.

Elastic Beanstalk evidently leverages other AWS services such as Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon Simple Notification Service, Elastic Load Balancing, and Auto-Scaling. For more information, check out the FAQ and Documentation sections.

The first release of Elastic Beanstalk is built for Java developers using the Apache Tomcat software stack, which AWS says ensures easy portability if developers decide to move their applications at any point in the future.

The company specifies that the system was designed so that it can be extended to support multiple development stacks and programming languages in the future.

AWS says it is actively working with solution providers on the APIs and capabilities needed to create additional Elastic Beanstalk offerings.

John Dillon, CEO of Engine Yard, is quoted in the press release thusly:

"We're working with AWS to provide an Elastic Beanstalk Ruby on Rails container that leverages the optimized Engine Yard stack which has been battle-tested by thousands of high-growth companies."

Amazon Web Services acknowledges that there are plenty of app containers or platform-as-a-service solutions available today, but claims they not only reduce the amount of programming required but also significantly “diminish developers' flexibility and control”.

Developers, speak up.

“Yahoo is poised to let people use their Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. identities to sign on to Yahoo,” says this article from earlier today.

In fact Yahoo has let users create new accounts on Flickr with their Google credentials since last summer. It’s been tested as part of an internal Yahoo project to spur user signups. A lot of people apparently bail out during the account creation process at various Yahoo sites. Part of the problem is that the process is lengthier than it needs to be because you’re also effectively signing up for a Yahoo email account, too. Even if you never use that account. There’s so much spam with email that there are a lot of extra steps with account creation.

We’ve heard from sources that test has worked spectacularly well. After the addition of Google, account signups have increased by more than 20%, apparently, which is more than 10,000 new accounts daily that they otherwise would have lost. There’s no promotion of this, that extra 20% is just from higher conversions during the signup process. Fewer people are bailing out.

Facebook comes next, an obvious step. Which should increase conversions a whole lot more.

You just shouldn’t text while you drive, even if you are a dextrous teen used to multitasking all day long. Yet people still do text (and Skype and email) while they drive, and not just teens (cough, Michael). There’s not too much you can do about it. But Location Labs is coming out with an Android app for T-Mobile called DriveSmart Plus which plays on the fear of parents everywhere that their kid is going to wreck the car or worse while texting.

DriveSmart Plus uses the phone’s GPS to determine when a subscriber is in motion and likely in a car. It then disables the ability to read or send text messaging while driving and transfers all calls to voicemail or handsfree Bluetooth. The app is $4.99 and they are going to sell a ton of these, but it is not going to stop any teens who want to keep texting. The app has a big override button, which teens will be using a lot, even if they have to explain to their parents why they were overriding the controls. Parents get notified when the app is overridden, but I can already hear the excuses: “That wasn’t me, Mom. It was Rufus. I was giving him a ride home and he grabbed my phone.”

Building on the parental surveillance theme, Location Labs is also launching another geo app that works on all T-Mobile phones called FamilyWhere. This one allows parents to locate any family member on the family phone plan. They can also set up location alerts to make sure their child is at school or home before a certain hour. I’m sure it works great on spouses too, although it is not being marketed as a way to spy on adults. It’s all about safety, folks.

Location Labs, formerly WaveMarket, creates geo-fencing apps for carriers and also offers its platform to developers. DriveSmart and FamilyWhere are examples of the types of apps that can be create don its platform.

ReneSola (NYSE: SOL) a major manufacturer of solar products based in Jiashan, China announced this week that its new silicon-based wafer, dubbed the Virtus, boosts multicrystalline solar cell efficiency to 17.5 percent.

The company plans to sell the Virtus Wafer to manufacturers of multicrystalline solar cells. Its earlier customers in this segment have included: Suntech Power, JA Solar, and ARISE Technologies. JC Solar, a wholly owned subsidiary of ReneSola which makes multicrystalline solar cells and modules, will both test and use the Virtus in its products, of course.

Why is ReneSola shouting their un-verified wafer claims to the rooftops? Is this really a huge breakthrough?

Companies like SunPower in San Jose, California or SunGrid in Australia have been producing monocrystalline solar cells for years that are even more efficient than 17.5 percent. However, monocrystalline cells and panels have tended to be more expensive than polycrystalline varieties due to more complicated manufacturing requirements.

ReneSola’s Virtus Wafer could help bring the cheaper-to-make variety of solar tech — multicrystalline solar cells and panels — to be about as efficient as monocrystalline varieties, without being as costly to manufacture. (Making solar power more affordable, eventually to the point where solar is at parity or better versus coal and oil, remains a holy grail within the sector.)

ReneSolar plans to embark on pilot production of their Virtus Wafer in early 2011, according to a company press statement. Thus far, the wafer has been tested in solar cells made by some of the company’s clients, and in their own labs. However, it has not been tested by the U.S.-based National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a verifier of cell efficiency claims, nor by an NREL equivalent in another country.

The wafer still has yet to be tested in use within solar panels in any lab. Those initial tests of panels incorporating this wafer are under way, a company spokesperson confirmed.

ReneSola’s competition in the quest to build a better wafer — one that improves the efficiency of solar photovoltaics, but is not more expensive to manufacture — range from the venture-backed Boston startup, 1366 Technologies to a fellow, major solar manufacturer in China, LDK Solar.

Earlier today, Apple announced their earnings for Q1 2011. The record-breaking numbers saw revenue surge to $26.7 billion — over $6 billion ahead of their previous best quarter (which was Q4 2010). But even more impressive may have been how much profit grew. Apple’s net income was also a new record for them at $6 billion for the quarter. That’s a full $1.7 billion above their previous record (again, Q4 2010). And it begs the question: could Apple have passed Microsoft in the one remaining financial stronghold this quarter as well?

For years, we’ve all heard how Apple was so pitifully small compared to the behemoth that is Microsoft. Then something funny started happening: Apple started growing. Fast. But instead of focusing on market share growth, Apple focused on bottom-line growth. And soon Microsoft wasn’t laughing anymore.

Last March, when I predicted that Apple would soon pass Microsoft in market cap, initial reactions were “it will never happen” (they were over $50 billion behind at the time). Then when it became clear that not only was it going to happen, but that it would happen soon, the defense shifted. By the time it did happen in May, the defense became “so what? Microsoft still makes so much more money than Apple.”

By October, that argument went out the window too. Apple’s revenues rocketed past Microsoft’s — and it wasn’t even close. So the defense shifted again. “Who cares about revenues. Look at the profits.” It’s true that Microsoft still did hold an edge last quarter in profits: $5.41 billion to $4.31 billion. Despite Apple’s higher revenue, the margins are much better in software, obviously. But still, it’s only a matter of time.

With the $6 billion profit posted today by Apple, they’re ahead of the $5.41 billion Microsoft posted last quarter. But Microsoft hasn’t yet announced their most recent earnings (they will next Thursday). And like Apple, Microsoft should see a healthy jump in both revenues and profits because it’s their holiday quarter (technically Q2 2011 for them). But will it be enough to once again hold off Apple?

It seems pretty likely. Looking over Microsoft’s previous results, their Q2′s are typically their strongest quarters (again, holiday time). From Q1 2010 to Q2 2010, profit jumped from $3.57 billion to $6.66 billion, for example. Yes, it almost doubled. But that was a bit of an odd quarter as Microsoft recognized a ton of Windows 7 upgrade revenue after much of it was deferred after launch. In other words, it was an abnormally strong quarter.

Two years ago, Microsoft actually saw a modest decline from Q1 to Q2. But the entire country was in an economic meltdown at that point too.

Still, even with a relatively modest quarter, Microsoft should be able to add a few billion to the bottom line. They’d only have to add $700 million to surpass Apple’s $6 billion profit. So again, it shouldn’t be an issue. …This quarter.

The real test will come next quarter (Apple’s Q2 2011 and Microsoft’s Q3 2011 — confusing, I know). While Apple CEO Steve Jobs will still presumably be on sick leave, Apple is poised to unleash the Verizon iPhone and the iPad 2. Both could mean new bonanzas for the company. And while revenues and profits typically fall after holiday quarters, those two products could be enough to blunt the fall enough that Apple could well surpass the also falling Microsoft.

I just wonder when Apple has passed Microsoft in market cap, revenue, and profit, what the next defense is going to be? I suspect market share. That’s just about the only thing left.

[photo: flickr/amagill]

Whenever you’re dealing with premium video content that’s going to be distributed online, the most important question is always about money. Or, rather, how exactly the TV show or film you’re distributing is actually going to make any. Case in point: YouTube Mobile didn’t have any of VEVO’s music videos for months despite the tight relationship between the companies, because YouTube didn’t have a way to present them with ads. Then YouTube enabled pre-roll ads for some mobile devices, and now Android users can watch VEVO from their phones. Simple enough, right?

But inserting ads into content isn’t always as easy as it seems, especially when you’re dealing with HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), which is typically used on iOS devices and plenty of other players. One company that’s working hard to change this is mDialog. The mobile video platform allows content owners to upload their assets, flag when in each video they want an ad to appear, and then distribute that content to users. And today the company is announcing that it’s added support for the Roku media player.

So what does that mean for Roku? The Roku box uses HLS to stream video to customers — now the company will be able to give publishers another way to monetize content they push to Roku users. And that in turn means Roku will be able to attract more content partners.

Roku just announced today that it’s getting its first “linear stream” of content through a partnership with WealthTV (which will stream content 24/7 like a cable channel, instead of on demand like Roku’s other content partners). WealthTV is going to charge $2.99 per month, but Roku may be able to attract partners willing to offer free linear streams provided they can insert their ads using platforms like mDialog.

One other interesting thing to note about mDialog: CEO Greg Philpott says that the system has been set up so that ads are injected into the HLS stream without any kind of buffering, so it’s a lot more like watching TV than many of the ads that appear on other streaming services. Of course, it’s not all roses: even if you get to skip the buffering, you still have to sit through an ad.

As of today Twitter users in North and South Korea can view Twitter.com, the mobile site and the iPhone and Android apps in Korean characters. Twitter has partnered with Korean web portal Daum to display Korean tweets on its homepage and Korean telcom service LG+ to make Twitter available on SMS.

Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, who is apparently in South Korean capital Seoul at the moment, celebrated the milestone with the above tweet, which translated means “Twitter is a real-time global information network.”

Twitter’s announcement post also suggests Korean users to follow, in Korean. Translation below:

“By making Twitter available in Korean, people will be able to more easily connect with people and accounts that are most meaningful to them. There are plenty of great Korean users to follow already, including:

• @oisoo posts witty Tweets, some of which were published in a best-selling essay last year.
• @moviejhp shares insight on his life as a movie actor.
• You can find comedian and TV show host @keumkangkyung and TV anchor @kimjuha on Twitter.
• Super Junior band members: @donghae861015, @heedictator, @siwon407, @shinsfriends, @special1004, @allrisesilver, and @ryeong9 are on Twitter.

If you want more ideas for Korean accounts to follow in politics, business, technology, sports and other areas, check out these lists, organized by topic. (Make sure your language is set to Korean to see Korean accounts.)”

Twitter users in South Korea have grown 10x since only a year ago. There is no mention of North Korea, and its somewhat conspicuous official Twitter presence, anywhere in the post.

Korean is the seventh international language Twitter now supports, joining English, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. Twitter plans on adding more languages by the end of the year, which makes sense as 70% of its user base is international.

You can change your language to Korean by going to “Settings > Language > Korean.”

Digital marketing startup HubSpot is close to closing a new round of financing, we’ve confirmed, that may put a valuation on the company in the $200 million range. Google Ventures is likely to invest, we’ve heard from multiple sources. And Sequoia Capital, which has recently shown an increased willingness to invest in later stage funding rounds, is rumored to be interested in the company as well.

The company last raised capital – a $16 million round led by Scale Venture Partners – in late 2009. They’ve raised a total of $33.5 million to date.

With Tumblr recently experiencing a 24-hour offline stint and a reported single 9 of service reliability, there are plenty of jokes about the microblogging service’s infamous downtime (most I’ve heard have at least a tenuous WikiLeaks connection).

Here’s the most elaborate Tumblr satire piece yet: Go to http://wellbebackshortly.com/ and hit refresh. Hit refresh again, and again.

Created by Adam Hemphill, the site is a riff on the Tumblr “We’ll Be Back Shortly” page and generates over a hundred hypothetical excuses as to why Tumblr is down so Tumblr doesn’t have to. (Tumblr is currently UP, at the moment.)

Some of the best:

“Does anyone know how to fix a “database cluster”? #lazyweb”

“Cocaine is a hell of a drug”

“Squirrels”

“We’re a free service. Goddamn.”

“Did we mention we re-hired Jakob Lodwick this weekend?”

“The rent is too damn high”

“I am away from my computer right now.”

“Eduardo froze the accounts”

Oh hell, every single one of these is good. See for yourself.

Squirrel teaser image: Buzzfeed

One thing that intrigues me about Path is that they’re attempting to do things by thinking outside the box. There are too many services, especially in the mobile photo-sharing space right now, that are basically doing the exact same things. Path isn’t. And this opens them up to some ridicule. And today’s latest feature could very well continue that trend.

Path has just added emoticons to the service. These allow you to respond to pictures your friends take with a smiley face, a winky face, an “O” face, a frowny face, or a heart.

Nope, I’m not kidding. :)

This does fulfill something that Path users have been asking for since the service launched: a way to give feedback to their friends on their pics. Previously, Path added the ability to text someone directly from the app if you wanted to say something about the picture they just uploaded. But this is much less intrusive. And it should lead to more social interaction on the site because it’s really some of the first true social interaction you can do beyond viewing.

The reality is that the feature is similar in concept to the “Like” button which has been popularized by Facebook and others. But it’s obviously more granular. You don’t have to just “like” something or not “like” it. You can express a bit more about it the way you might in an IM chat.

The move follows the addition of short, 10-second video clips last month. And the addition of Facebook Connect before that.

Look for the latest version of Path (1.3) in the App Store shortly — find it here.

During the earnings call following Apple’s blockbuster Q1 2011 results, a questions was asked about Apple’s Mac business as it relates to the iPad business. The iPad business, after all, is growing much faster (and just overtook the Apple portable computer business in terms of revenue). So is it affecting the Mac business by eating into it?

“Was there any cannibalization? Honestly, I don't know for sure. But yes, I think there is some cannibalization,” Apple COO Tim Cook (who is the acting head of Apple while Steve Jobs is on medical leave) said in response. This echoes the thoughts Jobs had last quarter when asked the same basic question. "The iPad is clearly going to affect notebook computers," Jobs said at the time.

But Cook also said that he thought there was a “halo effect” as well. That is, just as is thought to have happened with the iPod and the iPhone, certain Apple products are helping the company sell other products. So Cook believes that while the iPad may be eating into some of the would-be Mac sales, it’s also fueling other new Mac sales.

He also noted that it’s likely that the iPad is not only cannibalizing Mac sales, but also sales for the larger PC industry. Cook pointed out that Apple still has a relatively small share of the overall market. “So the other guys lose a lot more,” he noted.

He said that internally, Apple doesn’t worry about cannibalization or even think about it. “The iPad team works on making their product the best. Same with the Mac team. Both teams think they can continue to grow,” he said.

“If this is cannibalization, it feels pretty good,” he quipped.

Apple just finished its quarterly earnings call a day after announcing that CEO Steve Jobs is taking a medical leave of absence. Yet not one Wall Street analyst on the call asked a singel question about Jobs well-being or even when investors might expect to learn more about the situation. It is as if the analysts knew that no such questions would be answered so they didn’t even try.

The closest we got was Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster who asked, “How far out do you guys actually plan?” COO Tim Cook wouldn’t even give him a straight answer to that one. Here is his response, from MG’s notes (bolded parts mine for emphasis):

Q: Long-term business planning. How far out do you guys plan? Product roadmap?

TC: That's a part of the magic of Apple. I don't want anyone to know our magic, so they don't copy it. In my view, Apple is doing its best work ever. We're all very happy with the product pipeline. Steve has driven this. "Excellence has become a habit." We've done outstanding in our Mac business — 19 quarters straight of growing faster than the market. But we still have a low share. There's still huge opportunity there. We have a low share in the handset market too. Huge opportunity there too. And incredible momentum there. iPad just got started — it's a new category. Almost 15 million sold so far. I don't know what to predict. We believe it's a huge market. We're in some great markets. We feel very confident.

The closest he comes to answering the question is that “Apple is doing its best work ever” and he feels “very confident” it can continue to penetrate markets where it still has relatively low share, including PCs and mobile handsets.

Any other questions? Just bark into the phone.

Photo credit: Flickr/ Eric K. Veland