Colorado-based Ascent Solar Technologies (NASDAQ: ASTI) — the makers of flexible, thin film modules under the brand name WaveSol — scored a distribution deal with Cyprus-based SW Solarwatt Ltd. the companies announced today.

The news follows another distribution deal for Ascent Solar, with Polymer Sun a company that will resell its thin film products to solar power systems installers in Singapore and Malaysia.

Government support for the development of solar power systems and business looks strong in both markets.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou frequently touts clean energy developments — like a recently proposed 200 megawatt (MW) capacity solar park that will cost some 600 million euros (more than $800 million) to build atop a spent coal mine — as a way to create jobs, and alleviate pollution in the debt and unemployment burdened country.

The Financial Times noted in late January:

Greece has lagged behind Spain and Italy in developing photovoltaic installations in spite of offering subsidies for renewables investments, because of long drawn-out licensing procedures.

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong is also a proponent of solar power and clean energy in general. According to reports by Channel News Asia, Singapore’s strategy to grow the sector has been:

“To attract high-value investments in manufacturing and build strong research and development capabilities. [This includes] training over 2,000 specialists over the next five years.”

Ascent Solar did not respond immediately to questions about the potential revenue growth from its two, new distributor deals.

Now more than ever, social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook are a integral part of real-time storytelling and journalism. Launched at TechCrunch Disrupt last fall, Storify debuted its content curation platform that brought together Tweets, Facebook Status Updates, videos and more from social networking sites to create a realtime view into a story or issue. Today, the startup is announcing that it has raised $2 million in new funding from Khosla Ventures.

Storify, which is still in private beta, allows you to build and embed a story around a gathering of Tweets, Flickr photos, Facebook status updates, YouTube videos and more (We should note that Twitter offers its own technology to embed Tweets). Within Storify’s platform, you can simple search and drag content into your Storify story. Once you create a story with all of this curated content, you can then embed the actual story in your blog or content management system via single like of Javascript.

It’s fairly simple and easy to read, as you can see from the sample embedded story we’ve placed in this post about Storify’s funding (here’s a Storify post about the recent protests in Egypt) Readers can also Tweet and share from Storify posts. And although in private beta, Storify has signed a number of high-profile partnerships with media organizations, including the Washington Post, Seattle Times, NPR, and Al Jazeera. Since last fall, 10,000 Storify stories have been created by partners, with the stories attracting 4.5 million views.

The new funding will be used to build out new capabilities and publishing options, says the company’s co-founder Burt Herman (who is actually a former journalist). Already, Storify is connected to blogging platforms Posterous and Tumblr, so users can publish stories directly in Storify to Posterous and Tumblr.

And for any journalists or media organizations who are interested in using Storify, the startup’s platform should be opened to the public in the next few months, says Herman.

Storify demo from Burt Herman on Vimeo.

SkyGrid, a startup that offers a powerful business news aggregator, is deviating slightly from the content model into social today. SkyGrid is launching Groups, a social messaging platform that connects conversations people are having all over the web – on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and others, by topic or ‘group.’

SkyGrid Groups are pipelines of real-time, public information about a topic, sourced from news sites, Twitter, Facebook, brands and more. Using SkyGrid’s patented “stream-browsing” technology, Groups will aggregate mentions, photos, news, videos and more from hundreds of services. A group’s creator can filter which videos, Tweets, status updates, or other content they want to include in the group. Users can join groups to follow the real-time conversation around certain topics (but have to be approved by the Group’s creator).

While anyone can create a Group, it seems to be catered towards public figures, brands, celebrities, artists, and news and entertainment organizations, who want to create a centralized hub for all real-time social information about a specific topic. For example, Lady Gaga could create a group for her new album that features not only her status updates, videos, photos Tweets and news but also includes her fans commentary as well.

And via an editors tool, brands can control which content to feature, and which content to not include on the platform. Already, Groups is being used by Lady Gaga, Land Rover and social service organization Ushahidi.

SkyGrid’s take is interesting because it doesn’t want to reinvent the wheel for brands and celebrities in terms of social, but aims to be a hub for all social conversation and content sharing. And the fact that SkyGrid, which has raised $13 million in funding, already has a number of high-profile brands using its Groups platform certainly bodes well for the future success of the new product.

BGR points us to a PDF of a Verizon corporate memo describing plans to throttle heavy data users. They write:

To help achieve this, if you use an extraordinary amount of data and fall within the top 5% of Verizon Wireless data users we may reduce your data throughput speeds periodically for the remainder of your then current and immediately following billing cycle to ensure high quality network performance for other users at locations and times of peak demand.

Essentially, if you download a lot, your speed will be cut at various peak times. They’re calling it VZOptimization, a delightfully Orwellian term. Interestingly, this is the exact opposite of what Mozy just did and, in truth, it makes perfect sense for Verizon: don’t punish the little guys because someone wants to grab an 8GB BD Rip.

Read more…

TripAdvisor, the Expedia-owned travel site, this morning announced it has boosted its mobile travel offering with the acquisition of EveryTrail. The latter, actually a service from GlobalMotion Media, is a GPS-enabled publishing platform that lets people create outdoor walking tours, hiking trails and city guides for mobile devices.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

TripAdvisor originally debuted its mobile website in March 2010, and has since added apps for iOS devices and Android, Nokia and Palm smartphones.

TripAdvisor Mobile allows users to access more than 40 million traveler reviews and opinions on hotels, restaurants and attractions. The acquisition of EveryTrail fits into the company’s plans to enrich the quality of travel information consumers can access from their mobile devices.

In a blog post, EveryTrail founder and chief executive officer Joost Schreve says the community has created over half a million travel experiences in over 160 countries, with more than 2 million geo-located photos, since its launch in October 2006.

The company has raised $1 million in seed funding back in 2009.

Canada's Internet innovation-killing usage-based billing scheme may already be dead in the water. The Toronto Star says the decision has been made to reverse the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission's plan to implement the controversial billing method, which would have led to a situation where people there could have expected to pay up to CDN$2.35 per gigabyte. The CRTC is expected to make its case in front of the House of Commons later today.

Read More

Automattic is announcing a new feature for the 17 million blogs hosted on WordPress.com—premium themes. The blogging platform giant says that commercial themes have been “thriving” for self-hosted WordPress sites, and it made sense to expand this offering to blogs hosted on WordPress.com.

Today, WordPress.com is making two premium themes available to users: Headlines by WooThemes, and Shelf, by the Theme Foundry. Headlines’ magazine-like theme includes a Featured Post slideshow, multiple menus, and 15 different color schemes. Headlines and Shelf will be available for one-time prices of $45 and $68, respectively. Additional premium themes will be rolled out later in the year.

While not monumental news, premium themes will give millions of WordPress.com users the ability to upgrade the design of their blogs to a more professional looking interface. And for Automattic, this opens up a brand new revenue stream for the company. We’ve heard Automattic makes a little under $1 million a month from all its services, with most of this revenue coming from premium services. Automattic also just announced that its network of sites (including WordPress.com, Polldaddy, IntenseDebate, and Gravatar) crossed over the half billion mark for monthly unique visitors, according to Quantcast.

Mozy, owned by EMC, is a back-up provider. You run their software and they spirit your precious files away to the cloud, on their own (presumably EMC-based) servers. The company, which long offered unlimited back-up of files for a paltry $5 a month, increased their prices and cut the unlimited plan, citing financial problems with the model i.e. it cost to much to transfer and store terabytes of essentially useless information.

We had a bit of an inkling that this would happen but no one wrote about it here because this isn’t ITCrunch and Mozy was apparently as sexy as granny panties to the regular TC crew. We got our first note on January 16 from a Mozy employee:

In the next few weeks, Mozy will be discontinuing their unlimited service offering. Since the EMC acquisition, they have had a difficult time controlling expenses and managing morale and they have lost control of their economic model.

Any Mozy employee can verify this. I suggest you call Mozy headquarters in Seattle, or American Fork, Utah and ask to speak with someone about this. Two of the general managers that are running Mozy: Charlotte Yarkoni, Vance Checketts.

It’ll be announced anyway in a couple of weeks, but it would be fun if you were to scoop it.

And then we got ten more when the actual change happened from people expressing outrage and disgust at the untoward jacking of prices on Mozy’s part from $5/Unlimited to $6/50GB. Heaven forfend that a company retracts its largesse because, as as Howard Marks eloquently puts it, the folks with only a little data are essentially propping up the jerks slapping 600GB into the cloud every night.

But I have come to bury Mozy, not to praise it. The price of hard drives is so low and back-up is so easy that every home user should have some sort of personal storage solution. “But John,” you’ll say, “Mozy helped me keep my stuff out of my house! What if the monster from Cloverfield smashed my neighborhood tomorrow.” Well, first you could call a data bankruptcy and realize that whatever you had in those 600GB of data you were backing up probably wasn’t that important in the first place. Second, you should have kept your special files – 5GB worth of your home directory, your documents, etc. – on a cloud server like Mozy and then kept the rest of the junk – the porn, the movies, the 500 similar images of that one time you went to Scranton – on an external back-up disk. As precious as your memories are, I assure you that you will never print those 10,000 pictures you have stored in iPhoto. Never. Ever.

And don’t give me the old saw about Grandma needing a back-up solution: if you love grandma, you buy her a USB drive and run the built-in Windows or Mac back-up systems in the background. What’s grandma doing that’s so important anyway? Genealogy?

Third, and this is important, Mozy could go out of business tomorrow or, on a whim, delete your files. Flickr deleted some dude’s pictures just for kicks and Youtube shut down our own CrunchGear account recently because of some bogus DMCA claim. These guys are not good at keeping your stuff safe. On that on thine own self depend.

Again, not to belittle the pain of people who got something for essentially free and now are upset when they have to pay a little bit more, but I feel your argument is stupid. Mozy is a business. If you don’t like their practices, vote with your wallet.

Many a video application maker claims to have built a ‘Chatroulette for Facebook’, meaning an app that enables random video-chat connections between Facebook users in real-time. Rounds.com also has such an app, but offers a bit more than just video-based meetings between random people.

Already at 335,000 monthly active users and counting, Rounds’ Facebook app now boasts a ‘Random Rounds’ feature that lets people interact with strangers, but also play games and share photos, among other activities.

Rounds says the biggest difference between their app and other video chat platform providers is that it offers online experiences that mimic real-life personal encounters. Users can play with fun webcam effects, collaboratively watch YouTube videos, play multi-user interactive games, draw on whiteboards, send virtual gifts to one another, write texts and browse websites together, all in a single environment.

The Rounds platform currently offers over 20 different games and activities. The company also debuted an API (launched in May 2010) that enables third-party developers to create additional games and experiences.

To avoid inappropriate behavior using the Random Rounds feature, Rounds says only members with more than 100 friends can use it, usage is restricted to users within the same age group (based on their Facebook profile), and clearly displaying identifying information of other users.

In addition, there’s built-in reporting functionality to weed out the ‘bad’ users.

Rounds.com was founded in 2008 and has raised $2.5 million in venture capital funding.

Q&A platform Answers.com has been acquired by AFCV Holdings, a portfolio company of Summit Partners, for $127 million in cash or $10.50 per share. AFCV will be delisting Answers, which was a public company, from the NASDAQ and taking the company private.

Answers operates a community-generated Q&A site at Answers.com (which had 5.5 million registered members in November) and recently hit its 10 millionth answer and launched an iPhone app, a free fast-paced trivia game dubbed blufr. And the company also began including video answers courtesy of AOL-acquired video network 5min.

Bob Rosenschein, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Answers.com says in the release: "After an exciting six years as a public company, we are very pleased to achieve considerable value for our investors. This agreement is also a positive for our community members. The integrity and commitment of our company to our products remain unchanged, as we continue our mission of creating the ultimate destination for answers.” He adds that Answers.com is the second largest Q&A site in the U.S.

Rosenschein says that the acquisition price was 33% over the company’s average closing stock price over the past 90 days. At the close of business yesterday, Answers’ stock was priced at $9.00. Of course, Answers.com’s stockholders still have to consider and vote on the proposed merger and merger agreement. But the transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2011.

For any Q&A site, $127 million is a large chunk of change and shows the strength of Q&A sites as acquisition targets. Rosenschein says that the mission of Answers.com, which is to provide the best Q&A product on the web, will stay the same and the company will continue to focus on product development and improvement.

PocketGear, an independent marketplace that billed itself as the "World's Largest Mobile App Store,” is rebranding today to Appia and shifting its business model. PocketGear was formerly a consumer focused app marketplace that sold apps for Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian, and Java phones.

Now, as Appia, the startup is powering a white-label content and commerce platform for everyone who needs an app store. And the company now powers mobile app storefronts for more than 40 partners, including four of the world’s top five handset manufacturers (Samsung, T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon Wireless).

Appia's white-label offering is attractive to manufactures because enables its partners to deliver apps to more than 3,200 different mobile device makes and models. Via its partnerships, Appia currently powers more than 500,000 downloads a day from a catalog of 140,000 apps with projections to double by mid-2011.

PocketGear, which recently raised $15 million in new funding, was bought out from mobile phone software platform Motricity by Jud Bowman, who was CTO and co-founder of Motricity and now acts as CEO of PocketGear.

Shifting to a white-label platform was probably a wise move for Appia. While there is still a large and growing market for mobile apps across multiple smartphones that are not made by Apple, many of these manufacturers and carriers want to launch their own independent app stores. And rather than develop these marketplaces in-house; it’s much faster to just plug in to Appia’s technology.

Three years ago I created the concept of the GeeknRolla annual conference to bring together Europe’s technology startups to network with investors and talk about how they create and build themselves. This year we are stepping on the gas pedal. We want to launch 15-20 brand new startups there and our tagline this year is this: “Investor Dealflow. Startup Exposure”.

As with last year there is a special emphasis on launching startups and connecting them with investors, who will comprise our judging panels. There will also be a DemoPit for startups to showcase their products. We have some interesting plans to give exposure to even more. The now legendary GeeknRolla Afterparty will also do a lot to help the networking. I’d strongly advise you get a ticket. Last year we more than sold out shortly after GeeknRolla was announced. You can follow any specific updates on the GeeknRolla twitter feed.

We’re initially announcing our first wave of speakers, and more are coming. But here’s who we have so far: Iain Dodsworth (founder of TweetDeck), Tariq Krim (founder of Jolicloud), Morten Lund (early investor in Skype, now of Tradeshift and Everbread), Wendy Tan White (founder of Moonfruit), Martin Varsavsky (founder of Fon).

If you are a European startup in stealth or in private beta and want to launch at GeeknRolla, then fill out this form. The deadline is February 24. Any startup selected to pitch on stage will get one free ticket (for the person pitching) and there is no charge to pitch.

Mobile search company Poynt has acquired the local advertising publishing platform assets of Go2 Media.

The latter raised $3 million back in July 2009, and lists General Catalyst, Borealis Venture Partners, Lighthouse Capital Partners and Hancock Technology Partners as investors.

Poynt says it acquired all source code, related documentation and all of Go2′s transferable publisher and advertiser agreements related to the monetization or distribution of location advertising, for a purchase price of only $450,000.

Go2 Media is led by CEO Dan Smith, former SVP of Product and Operations for 80108 Media, a local SMS business that merged with Go2 in 2007.

Poynt points out that the company’s ad publishing operations are producing revenue, and says it aims to leverage its position in the local advertising space to accelerate the revenue growth.

The business line will be led by Matt Kojalo, who Poynt recently hired as VP of Global Advertising Solutions.

Says Andrew Osis, chief executive of Poynt:

“This transaction provides us the opportunity to expand our business from an app with publishing capabilities into an ad publishing platform with the ability to publish to multiple mobile applications. This clear and direct route into ad publishing provides yet another revenue stream for the company.”

For big brands who have local branches (i.e. Starbucks, BestBuy), managing Facebook, Twitter and other social media pages for the national brands as well as for the local shops can be a challenging process. With social media compliance, workflow, content upload options and analytics, Hearsay is launching to provide a dashboard for national businesses and their local branches to manage Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter pages. In conjunction with the lunach, Hearsay is announcing a $3 million investment from Sequoia Capital, Michael Abbott, Steve Chen, Dave Morin, and Aaron Sittig.

Hearsay Social is optimized for “corporate/local” enterprises to allow local representatives, agents, advisors, franchisees or store managers to manage social media pages while ensuring local representatives stay in compliance with brand guidelines, and content regulations. Hearsay Social SaaS application puts compliance, workflow, content management and analytics on top of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

The central dashboard for brands features message archiving, keyword flagging and filtering, workflow and approval capabilities. Users can also suggest tailored campaigns to local branches and reps and access analytics on Facebook, Twitter and Facebook pages by region or sub-region.

In terms of the local branch view, Hearsay Social offers branch managers to see suggested content, and a 360-degree view of Facebook fans and friends, LinkedIn connections and Twitter followers. The platform will also allows local branch users to post updates and check if their page updates (i.e. a profanity filter) are in compliance with a chain’s social media policies. The company also inked a deal with LinkedIn to collaborate on sales and marketing efforts, as well as a full integration between Hearsay Social and the LinkedIn messaging API.

Of course, there are a number of social media management platforms specifically tailored for businesses, but Hearsay Social is really targeted towards a certain type of company that needs to manage a number of franchises or branches and also has strict compliance policies. For example, social media adoption in financial services, for example, is dramatically curtailed by compliance concerns. Hearsay’s research shows that while 64% of insurance and financial professionals have eadopted Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn for personal use, only 21% use social media for business. Of those who said they do not plan to adopt social media for business use, more than half volunteered that company policy, compliance and security concerns prevent them from doing so.

Founded by former Google and Salesforce employee Clara Shih and former Microsoft staffer Steve Garrity, Hearsay has convinced some financial services companies already and is being rolled out to more than 30,000 users at companies including State Farm, and Farmers Insurance Group of Companies(as well as fitness chain 24 Hour Fitness).

Runa Capital, the Russian VC fund that launched in August last year, has announced that it's increased its fund from 30 to $50 million. Runa Capital's mission is to back early-stage Russian and CIS-region technology companies so that they can compete globally, a vision that has attracted other investors both in Russia and globally (including the U.S.), says the VC firm, hence the increase in the size of the fund. Specifically, Runa targets startups in the "rapid growth tech sectors" of cloud computing, machine learning, virtualisation and mobile/Internet applications.

Rdio, the social music startup founded by Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, isn’t exactly waiting around for Spotify to make its way to the United States (or Google Music for that matter).

TechCrunch has learned that the company has secured $17.5 million in funding from new investor Mangrove Capital Partners, along with earlier backers Skype, Atomico Ventures and Friis himself through some of his investment entities.

Ironically, Friis co-founded Rdio as well as most of its current list of investors, apart from Mangrove Capital Partners, which did famously back Skype during its very early days and made a ton when the company was eventually sold to eBay.

Rdio has also gained a new board member, and not just anyone; the company has appointed Warner Bros. Records Chairman Rob Cavallo as its new director. Cavallo is a Grammy-nominated producer known for his work with artists like Green Day, Dave Matthews Band, Fleetwood Mac, Jewel, Kid Rock and Alanis Morissette.

He joined the Rdio board specifically to help further strengthen Rdio's relationship with the music industry, something rivals Spotify and even Google have been struggling with, particularly in the US. Rdio already has relationships with EMI Music, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group in place, as well as agreements with thousands of indie labels.

Users of the unlimited, on-demand social music service (such as myself) can currently build and share online music collections from a catalogue of over 8 million songs.

Rdio offers a Web-only music streaming music service for $4.99, and a premium version that adds mobile access for $9.99 per month.

Rdio will use the additional capital to expand to new platforms and new regions in the course of this year. Part of the funds will also go towards hiring new employees, ramping up marketing efforts and product development.

On a funny sidenote: word about Mangrove’s investment in Rdio leaked out last week, albeit without the size of the round or any other details, when Mangrove partner Mark Tluszcz sent a tweet to MC Hammer before any public announcements about their involvement. Doh!

Businesses live or die on their ability to react to the market in realtime. The faster you can get information, the faster you can make decisions. If you operate a Website, Chartbeat gives you a dashboard that shows you what is happening on your site right now. But what if you could add realtime data from all sorts of services into one place? Then you’d have Geckoboard, which launches publicly today.

“It’s Chartbeat for everything else,” says founder Paul Joyce, “CRM, helpdesk, sales, brand awareness . . . ” Geckoboard lets you add realtime widgets from about 20 different services, including Basecamp, Freshbooks, Get Satisfaction, GitHub, MailChimp, Googke Analytics, Highrise, Uservoice, Zendesk, and, yes, even Chartbeat. Companies can add their own data using Geckobaord’s API. It also lets you bring in Twitter and RSs feeds, and Foursquare checkins (so bosses can see which employees are in the office without actually getting up and walking around). You can aso get put a calendar, clock, and email there.

Since it uses no Flash, the dashboards can be viewed on iPads and iPhones, as well as on HDTV screens. After a 30-day free trial, Geckoboard charges between $9 and $19 per device per month, with the main difference being the speed with which the widgets update.

Geckoboard shares the same sensibility as Chartbeat’s. The two startups also share a couple of investors: Index Ventures and Dave McClure’s 500Startups. Geckoboard recently raised a $300,000 seed round. Angel investors Alexander Bruehl and Christoph Janz also participated.

Here is the full list of services it supports at launch:

Basecamp (Project Management)
Calendar
ChartBeat (Web Analytics)
Clock
Email ( IMAP/POP, Gmail, Google Apps Email)
Foursquare (Social Location Based Service)
Freshbooks (Invoicing)
Get Satisfaction (Customer Service)
GitHub (Distributed Version Control)
Google Analytics (Web Analytics)
Highrise (CRM)
Images (Custom images refreshed regularly)
MailChimp (Email Marketing)
Mixpanel (Web Analytics)
Pingdom (Server Monitoring)
Prefinery (Beta Management)
RSS Feeds
Shopify (Ecommerce)
Text (Custom Alerts and Messages)
Twitter (Social Media)
Uservoice (Customer Service)
Zendesk (Helpdesk)

In response to the escalating Mubarak protests, the latest release of WikiLeaks have been Egypt or MENA related. One cable from November 2008 is particularly interesting, revealing that the State Department spoke to YouTube in 2007 regarding the takedown of videos posted by Egyptian bloggers. The cable is an action request for the State Department to contact someone named Pablo at Google (their General Counsel perhaps?) in order to have Google reinstate access to an Egyptian blogger who had complained about removed videos and access when he reported on police abuses.

Apparently this action request has a precedent. According to the cable, YouTube and the State Department talked about the removal of video content that exposed abuses in Egypt before, in December of 2007.

¶3. (SBU) In December 2007, DRL and Embassy Cairo worked to convince Google to restore XXXXXXXXXXXXX’ YouTube access after a similar incident. We believe that a similar Department intervention with Google representatives could help in restoring XXXXXXXXXXXXX’ access again. XXXXXXXXXXXXis an influential blogger and human rights activist, and we want to do everything we can to assist him in exposing police abuse. XXXXXXXXXXXXX’ post of a video showing two policemen sodomizing a bus driver was used as the main evidence to convict the officers in November 2007 (ref C).

The cable does not reveal why the video content was taken down, and it could be anything from a specific request from the Egyptian government to enforcement of YouTube’s Terms of Service, specifically, “Graphic or gratuitous violence is not allowed …” The TOS violation charge is probably applicable to a video of policemen sodomizing a bus driver, someone being shot and a woman being abused, the examples referred to in the leak.

Apparently Google was convinced to restore the content in 2007, which means it probably had to make a TOS exemption in the cases of content that could be used as evidence in human rights abuse cases.

The State Department has contacted American Internet companies about restoring service in times of political turmoil before, most notably in the case of Twitter and the Iran election protests. But at the time Egypt was a major non-NATO ally to the United States, so even the smallest attempts to intercede on behalf of democracy are impressive.

I have contacted Google and YouTube for more information as to what actually happened here and will update this post if I hear back.

Update: Gawker’s Adrian Chen points out that the blogger in question in the 2007 case was Wael Abbas who has been documenting prisoner abuse on YouTube for years.

This morning Google held an event to showcase Android Honeycomb, the new version of the mobile OS that is focused on tablets. There wasn’t much news around the OS — we’ve seen it previewed in a few demos — but the team did show off some of Honeycomb’s slickest features, like widgets and an improved 3D rendering engine.

But what about actually using the tablet OS? For all the whiz-bang previews we’ve seen, very few people have actually written about what it’s like to use these tablets. Unfortunately today’s event wasn’t the ideal place to do a full hands-on, either — there were dozens of reporters and only four tablets (most people got to play with one for maybe five minutes). But I wanted my fill of Honeycomb, so I stuck around til the crowd finally died down, put on my blinders, and took the Motorola Xoom for a 20+ minute spin. Apologies to the guy waiting behind me — I honestly didn’t realize you were there.

Here are some of the features and apps that stood out — be sure to check out the video below for some of these in action.

The Action Bar

One of the most drastic changes is the move from dedicated hardware buttons to access Menu options to the ‘Action Bar’ — a UI element at the top of the screen with options that change depending on whatever application you’re using.

If you’re in the tablet’s browser (which is based on Google Chrome) then this is where you’ll find your open tabs. If you’re in the movie editing app, it’s where you’ll find buttons to import a new clip — but if you hold your finger down on a section of a clip then the Action Bar will populate with options to add a transition or text overlay. In other words, the Action Bar changes dynamically based on what you’re doing in an application.

Most applications also include a Settings button in the far righthand side of the Action Bar, though this is only a convention and not a rule.

In practice the system seems to work well, and you’ll find that you instinctively look toward the Action Bar whenever you want to find an application option or setting that isn’t part of the main UI. Of course, developers are in complete control over what appears in the Action Bar so there could be some consistency issues. But at least people will actually be able to find these options, which is more than can be said about the options hidden behind the ‘Menu’ button on current versions of Android (which many people never hit).

Browser

Kicks the pants off of the iPad’s browser. Tabs are great, and the fact that the tablet browser syncs with your desktop version of Google Chrome is very nice. Scrolling felt smooth. And there’s Incognito Mode.

Gmail

We’ve seen it showcased a few times now, but Gmail for Honeycomb is awesome — it’s like the iPad-optimized web version of Gmail, but without the slight lag you still find on browser apps. I want it badly.

Copy And Paste

I’ve never cared about copy & paste nearly as much as the people who spend their time complaining about its implementation on the web. But I know you’re out there, so here’s some good news: it’s works well on Honeycomb.

If you’ve used Android Gingerbread you’re already familiar with the orange arrows that appear when you go to highlight text. These work pretty well, but there’s one problem: there’s no button to choose what you want to do with that text (the solution is to simply tap the highlighted text, which copies it to the clipboard, but some sort of menu overlay would be nice).

Things are much better in Honeycomb: when you highlight text, the Action Bar changes from its current options to let you Cut, Copy, Paste, or Select All. Is it exciting? Not at all. But it’s a good example of how the Action Bar changes depending on what you’re doing, and I’m sure some of you are going to be over the moon about this.

Android Market

The UI of Android Market has been revamped for the tablet. I think it’s pretty ugly: the ‘Android Green’ striped lines feel almost like placeholder graphics and it doesn’t look nearly as attractive as iOS’s App Store. But it gets the job done.

Movie Studio

It hasn’t gotten much press, but there’s a new application included as part of the Honeycomb suite of Google applications: Movie Studio. I didn’t spend too much time in this, but it includes the features you’d expect: transitions between clips, text overlays, and so on. The UI isn’t what you’d call pretty and it may leave some people scratching their heads, but it’s a nice app to have.

Performance

In general Honeycomb felt snappy — you can see in the video that there’s never really any lag. I did notice some slight jittering when dragging widgets, but was later shown a more recent build of the OS that seemed to fix this. And the fact that the Xoom has 1GB of RAM means that you aren’t going to find your browser tabs emptying the way they do on the current iPad.

Ease of Use

One of my biggest questions about Android tablets concerns usability. I believe that the iPad has been a hit in part because it is a simpler alternative to normal desktop operating systems, while still providing plenty of functionality for people who primarily surf the web, email, and watch videos. Many people buy iPads not just because they like the form factor, but because they want a computer that won’t prompt them with endless security alerts, software updates, and confusing installation processes.

Android Honeycomb is decidedly more complex than the iPad. Instead of a single hardware button used to jump back to the home screen, as there is on iOS, Honeycomb uses a soft button in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. And maybe it’s just me, but the home button doesn’t even look that much like a home button (it could pass as an ‘up’ arrow, especially given the fact that the adjacent Back button is an arrow pointing left).

And some of Honeycomb’s improvements over iOS could also be considered possible stumbling blocks. If you long-press the desktop, you’ll bring up the widget/wallpaper selector, which some people will undoubtedly activate accidentally (and promptly panic). The third button in the bottom left corner lets you jump between recently used applications — a feature that I’ll love, but could confuse people who aren’t sure what’s going on.

But overall the OS is pretty easy to get the hang of. I’d still feel more comfortable handing an iPad to my mother (who absolutely loves hers, for what it’s worth), but the learning curve with Honeycomb isn’t very steep.

And For Those Who Like A Bit More Power…

If you’re comfortable doing more on your computer than email and browsing the web — and have ever felt a little restrained using an iPad — then Honeycomb may feel like a breath of fresh air.

Your home screen is no longer simply a grid of your favorite applications — it’s a dashboard populated with content, like your recent emails, favorite chat buddies, weather, to-do list, and more. Widgets aren’t anything new for Android, but they’ve always been cumbersome on mobile devices because screen real estate is so limited (I’ve found myself debating between keeping my Calendar widget or giving myself an extra row of apps on my phone’s home screen).

On Honeycomb this is much less of an issue. Widgets are the sort of thing that prove their worth over time (as opposed to during a 20 minute demo), but my initial hunch is that people will love them.

Honeycomb also features a new notification system that reminds me of Growl on Mac OS X. New updates slide into view in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, and you don’t have to squint to see them the way you do on Android phones. Again, very nice.

This is a big advantage for Android now, but I’ll be surprised if the next version of iOS doesn’t include widgets and notifications. Then again, I was surprised that the last version didn’t include them, so who knows.

The Xoom Hardware

The first Honeycomb tablet is the Motorola Xoom, which will probably ship in the next month (the release date hasn’t been announced yet). From a hardware perspective the tablet feels fine. It’s not great — it feels a little too heavy for its size, and I wish the screen resolution were higher — but it’s good enough for people itching to get their hands on an Android tablet.

And if you don’t like the Xoom there will be plenty of other choices in the coming months. Judging Honeycomb based on the Xoom would be like judging Android based on the G1 (okay, okay — maybe the HTC Hero).

Outlook

During the last Apple earnings call, Apple COO Tim Cook dismissed existing Android tablets as “bizarre“. And rightly so — they took an OS that was designed with mobile phones in mind, scaled them up to larger screens, and told consumers they were good to go. The Galaxy Tab was supposedly selling anyway, until it was revealed that previously released figures were misleading and that actual sales were quite small. Which shouldn’t surprise anyone who actually used one. Update: Apparently the Samsung exec who said sales were “quite small” was misquoted — he said “quite smooth“. I still don’t think it’s nearly as good as the iPad.

But Honeycomb changes all that. It’s a solid competitor to iOS — better, even, in some ways. I won’t be at all surprised if we see Honeycomb explode on tablets the way Android has exploded on mobile handsets since the original Droid launched in November 2009. Yes, carriers and OEMs will undoubtedly add their own skins and bundled applications, but provided they don’t do anything too outrageous to the user experience, Honeycomb feels like a winner.

Related:

Honeycomb Is The First Shot Fired Along Apple's Bow

In-App Purchasing Finally Coming To Android; Disney Brings Tap Tap Revenge To Take Advantage

Google Unveils Android Market Webstore. It's Already Live!

Android Honeycomb Livestream Is Happening Now

Live From Google's Android Honeycomb Event

Here's What Pulse Will Look Like On Android Honeycomb

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From Wikipeda (2010-2011)

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From Wikileaks (Now)

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From Wickedleaks (Coming soon)

If you’re like me you’ve been seeing Facebook newsfeed notifications from something called Branchout more and more frequently lately. The status updates don’t lie: Branchout, a LinkedIn for Facebook, has seen explosive growth in January growing from 10K to 250K monthly users, with a total usership now in the hundreds of thousands.

We brought CEO Rick Marini into the TCTV studio to talk to him about why exactly the Facebook app was growing exponentially six months after launch, namely because of the network effect after “super connectors” like Mike Arrington and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman joined.

Says Marini, “A lot of the super connectors, people with a thousand, 2000, 5000 friends, have found Branchout, are getting value out of it as a recruiting service and are starting to invite all their friends. These are the infuencers and the tastemakers as they’re inviting people those people want to join … It sort of snowballs.”

Marini says that the app’s popularity is now expanding beyond Silicon Valley and into the Scandanavian countries as well as Italy, France and Germany. Marni is also excited at the currently under-explored potential of the Facebook platform for career utilities, as competitor LinkedIn has 90 million users to Facebook’s 600 million.

Another reason the app has gone viral is that Branchout takes advantage of the inherent social structure of Facebook to make career networking on the platform both a utility and fun, incorporating elements like gamification, career quizzes and contests like The Ultimate Internship Contest in order to appeal to a younger “more tech savvy” crowd.

After all those college kids posting drunken photos now will be looking for a job someday.

After weeks of simmering tensions, finally the Egyptian situation has erupted into violence. Even the media has been caught up in vicious battles.

No, we’re not talking about Anderson Cooper being punched in the face, but rather this week’s episode of Why Is This News in which our disagreement over social media’s role in prompting or assisting revolution descends into a full-on fight.

Video below. And in case you’re wondering, yes, after the cameras stopped rolling, Sarah punched Paul in the face. Now he knows how Anderson Cooper feels. The difference is, Paul might have deserved it.

Yesterday, I made a 45-minute phone call from my office.

This seemingly unremarkable statement is remarkable for two reasons. First, I was able to place a call from my office — something which was impossible for me to do a week prior. Second, I made it through the entire 45-minutes without the call being dropped once. Again, this was impossible a week prior.

So what changed? Well, my iPhone changed.

I’ve been an iPhone user since day one: June 29, 2007. Over the course of the past three and a half years, the coverage I’ve gotten from my service provider for the device, AT&T, has gone from bad to worse. AT&T would talk about how much money they were putting into upgrades for their system, and would continually promise that things would get better soon. But for whatever reason, in major cities like San Francisco and New York City, the situation has continued to deteriorate.

It’s so bad, in fact, that in the TechCrunch office in the SoMa district of San Francisco it’s impossible to make or receive calls. Perhaps our office is a Faraday cage — one that only seems to affect AT&T — I’m not sure. But what I am sure of is that our office is hardly the only place in the city where the same is true. And even outside of the Bay Area, there’s a reason why there’s so much excitement for the Verizon iPhone.

And now it’s here. And yes, it works. Beautifully.

Build

I’ve had a chance to carry around a Verizon iPhone for the past week or so. It’s a bit odd to write a review about it now because, well, I’ve already reviewed this product before. This initial Verizon iPhone, of course, is just an iPhone 4. It’s the same phone that was released on AT&T’s network last summer. But it has been slightly reworked to make room for a CDMA chip that Verizon’s network requires, replacing the GSM chip that AT&T’s network requires.

But holding it in your hand, most regular users would have no idea that there’s any difference. In fact, the only physical difference is that the single rivet at the top of the device near the headphone jack has been replaced by two matching rivets on either side of the top of the Verizon version of the device. While Apple won’t talk specifics, presumably, this is a change made to the antenna of the device, which is the metal band that wraps around the iPhone 4. As you’re probably aware, Apple had an antenna issue shortly after the iPhone 4′s launch this past summer. As I’ve said time and time again, the issue was real, but it wasn’t a really big issue. And the millions of iPhone 4s that Apple has sold so far are testament to that.

This Verizon version of the iPhone 4 seems to have none of the same antenna issues. Try as I might, using the “death grip” and every other grip I can actually do, I can no longer reproduce the same attenuation problem that the previous iPhone 4 model had. I death grip the thing, and no bars drop. More importantly, calls don’t drop and data doesn’t stop. Again, Apple won’t comment, but problem, apparently, solved.

Moving on.

(Quickly, as an aside, I have noticed that the back of the Verizon version of the iPhone 4 is missing some of the FCC, etc symbols usually found at the bottom of the device — no clue why those are gone, but it’s another small change in the design. It makes the back look even cleaner!)

Service

The single most important thing that would-be AT&T switchers and some new iPhone customers will want to know is: how does it compare to the AT&T version in terms of signal, dropped calls, data, etc. The answer, at least in my neck of the woods (again, San Francisco), is very, very good.

It’s funny, if you spend time in various parts of this city, you’ll know where you can and cannot use an iPhone. Huge swaths of SoMa, for example, are awful. Some parts of the Mission are even worse. Then there are random streets throughout the entire city where AT&T service seemingly disappears into a black hole. I’ve more or less trained myself to know not to even try to use the iPhone in these parts of the city. So it was very, very odd to test out the Verizon iPhone in many of those areas. But guess what? Nearly across the board, the Verizon version of the iPhone worked — as both a phone and a mini data-sucking machine.

I can’t tell you how wonderful it has been to walk through the city while being able to maintain a phone call, or Internet connection. Naturally, there are still a few places I was unable get service, but they’re typically places where it’s understandable — like underground.

Many skeptics will be quick to point out that things may change when Verizon’s network gets swamped with iPhones in the same way that AT&T’s was. The difference is that Verizon’s network is already swamped with data-sucking Android devices. Millions of them. Maybe I’m being naive, but I really don’t expect there to be a problem with Verizon’s network in the same way that there was with AT&T’s. And neither does Verizon. We’ll see, I guess. But the early results are very promising.

Speed

AT&T, in their PR scramble to attempt to hold on to some of their disgruntled users, has been playing up two key things that are advantages of their network over Verizon’s. The first is the ability to make a call and surf the web at the same time. It’s true, you definitely cannot make a call and surf the web at the same time on the Verizon iPhone. To some people, this will matter. But I have really never seen this as a huge issue. If I’m talking on the phone with someone, I’m concentrating on talking with them, not surfing the web. But I realize that everyone is different. But apparently some 90+ million current Verizon subscribers don’t have too much of a problem with this either — as none of them have that capability.

The second issue AT&T has been playing up is the speed of their network. It’s “the fastest 3G network” according to their ad campaigns. In my tests, when both phones have had signal, that is also true. There’s no question that AT&T’s network is faster than Verizon’s for data transfers — both up and down. I’ve tried this all over the city a number of times. AT&T is faster. But — and this is a very big but — in order for AT&T to be faster, it needs to have a signal. And again, that’s simply not the case in large parts of the city. So speed or not, Verizon still wins this battle hands down in my book. I’ll take Verizon’s coverage over AT&T’s speed any day.

As sort of an aside, the one other issue brought up when taking about CDMA versus GSM is that the CDMA version of the iPhone won’t be able to roam internationally. For many countries, particularly those in Europe, that is true. One can only hope that Verizon or Apple come up with some sort of way around this — perhaps partner with another carrier for a deal on a per-use MiFi card to carry around in another country. Or better, just make a CDMA/GSM version of the phone. For now, if you’re going to be doing a lot of traveling, you’re likely to be out of luck.

Hotspot

The big new feature that was touted at the press conference unveiling the Verizon iPhone was the “Personal Hotspot” option. This allows you to turn your iPhone 4 into a WiFi hub that can accept up to five connections. I’ve previously done a walk-through of how this will work. And in the field, it’s just as easy as it initially seemed.

I’ve used this feature a number of times over the past week. It’s brilliant. It could not be any easier to set up and manage. Once you enable it and connect, a blue bar will appear at the top of the phone’s screen letting you know that the hotspot feature is enabled. And it will tell you how many devices are currently connected.

Unlike with phone calls, other data can also come in at the same time you’re using the phone as a hotspot. For example, Push Notifications still stream in when you’re connected. If you receive a call, the phone will ask you if you want to connect. If you do, it will sever your data connection, ending the hotspot capabilities. But when you hang up, you can push one button to resume.

Yes, I realize other phones have had this hotspot capability for some time now. In fact, when I reviewed the EVO 4G, it was pretty much the only thing I liked about the device. But the iPhone 4′s Personal Hotspot blows it away for one reason: battery life.

The EVO’s battery lasted something ridiculously low, like 90 minutes, with the hotspot feature turned on. In my tests, the iPhone 4 can give you a solid 4 hours of hotspot/tethering time. That’s from a fully charged battery, all the way down to zero. I’ve run it down fully twice. Both times, just about four hours.

Verizon plans to charge an extra $20 for the hotspot feature. That’s on top of the $30 you’ll pay for data for the iPhone 4 (which is currently unlimited, unlike AT&T’s capped plans). But if you’ve ever owned a wireless dongle, you’ll know that $20 is well worth it — the dongles usually cost you upwards of $60 a month for the same 2 GB of data usage.

The Verizon iPhone Versus The iPhone On Verizon’s Network

A few months ago, before the Verizon iPhone was announced, I wrote a post entitled: The "Verizon iPhone" Versus "The iPhone On Verizon's Network". The main idea behind the post was to wonder what the Verizon version of the device would be like when Verizon and Apple finally came to terms they could agree upon? As I said at the time, Verizon would undoubtedly love to load the device up with crapware in the same fashion that they’ve done with their Android devices, and all of the other devices they’ve sold over time. Apple, on the other hand, obviously would not want that. But would they have to make any concessions to get a deal done?

The best part of the Verizon iPhone is that no, Apple did not have to make any concessions. The Verizon iPhone is not a “Verizon iPhone” — it’s an “iPhone on Verizon’s network”. There’s no Verizon branding anywhere on the device aside from the upper left of the screen which shows you the carrier next to the signal strength. There are no pre-loaded Verizon apps. There are no apps that work on the AT&T iPhones that won’t work on this model. Every app you’ve bought in the App Store will install and work on this Verizon version of the device. FaceTime is interoperable over the two devices. So is Game Center.

Will Verizon have their own apps in the App Store that they’ll want you to buy? Undoubtedly. But this is very clearly Apple’s device. Not Verizon’s.

So Is It Worth It?

If you’re an AT&T iPhone customer at the end of your contract who lives in an area with poor AT&T service, you need to get to an Apple or Verizon store next week to get this updated device. Seriously, mark down February 9 on your calendar so that you pre-order it. Then show up at a store on February 10 to pick it up.

If you’re an AT&T iPhone customer still on contract who lives in an area with poor AT&T service, I would definitely consider getting this updated device. It may be a few hundred dollars out of pocket, but think of that compared to what you’ve paid to AT&T over the years. If you’re anything like me, it makes you want to scream.

If you’re an AT&T iPhone customer still on contract who lives in an area with good AT&T service, then no, this probably isn’t the device for you.

If you’re a non-iPhone user who is interested in checking it out but has been waiting for it to come to Verizon, this is absolutely for you.

The caveat to all of this is that it’s well known that Apple releases a new version of the iPhone every summer. Expect this summer to be no different. So if you buy this iPhone 4 on Verizon right now, know that there’s a good chance that an iPhone 5 will be out in six months or less. One can only hope that Apple and Verizon would do the right thing and allow the early Verizon iPhone adopters to upgrade to the iPhone 5 for a heavily discounted (if not fully subsidized price). But it’s still very much up in the air.

Hell, we don’t even know for sure that Verizon will get the iPhone 5 this summer. Perhaps it will be AT&T-only based on some sort of contractual agreement. But the latest rumors suggest that a CDMA/GSM hybrid iPhone 5 that works on both AT&T and Verizon may be the most likely bet. So again, it comes down to how badly you want an iPhone on Verizon right now — and the hope that Verizon and Apple will do the right thing for customers in a few months.

For me, as someone who has spent three and a half years fed up with AT&T, the Verizon iPhone is absolutely, 100 percent worth it. I’ve already cancelled my AT&T contract (by way of Google Voice, actually) and I cannot forsee a future where I ever go back.

There’s long been a slogan that goes along with many Apple products — “it just works”. It’s also the best way to sum up this review. The iPhone 4 on Verizon: it just works.

You guys aren’t going to believe this: We’re hearing that daily deals site Groupon has been aggressively trying to acquire local Q&A site Hipster for a number below $10 million, and that’s before Hipster has even formally launched! A slew of press coverage originating here has turned the site with a funny name into a media darling.

One source is telling us that Hipster has been making the rounds of Silicon Valley VC firms as well as boardrooms and was talking with Google about a possible talent acquisition (who isn’t?) before the talks turned into more of an investment prospect for Google Ventures than an acqui-hiring prospect for the mothership due to Hipster’s desire for a better return.

According to our source, Hipster is currently raising a seed round in the valuation range of $6 – $8 million. The acquisition talks with Groupon have continued as Groupon has a pretty good chance of increasing its $15 billion valuation within the next couple of years after an IPO, presenting itself as a more lucrative deal to the ramen-fed entrepreneurs.

Why the interest in Hipster? Groupon, which has received much success as an ecommerce site, still hasn’t become the go-to local destination for consumers it aims to be. Our source says that the company is considering potential expansion into a Yelp-like recommendation service, which is why the Hipster acquisition might make sense. Hipster, like a Quora + Yelp, allows users to ask, route and answer questions about any location in a city from a small coffee shop to something city-wide.

Groupon has not yet returned our request for comment and Hipster CEO Doug Ludlow gave us this statement,

“All I can say is that the team here at Hipster is busy both building a product that people will love, and putting together an angel round led by top-tier investors.  Although it’s true that we’ve been approached about early acquisition by all of the usual suspects, the Hipster team is focused on building a world-class company, and we’re not interested in a quick flip.”

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Hulu has just struck a content partnership with Viacom to return “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” to the content platform.

The deal also includes other TV Shows from Viacom’s media networks, including Comedy Central, MTV, BET, VH1, Spike TV, and TV Land to the Hulu Plus subscription service. Viacom had previously pulled the two Comedy Central shows from Hulu last March. Financial terms of the new agreement were not disclosed.

From the release: Under the agreement, current full episodes and clips of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” will be available on the free ad-supported Hulu.com service and through the Hulu Plus subscription service beginning February 2, 2011. In addition, Viacom will make available to Hulu Plus subscribers a selection of current programs, like Jersey Shore, Tosh.0, Teen Mom 2, Manswers, Let’s Stay Together, and Hot in Cleveland 21 days after they air. Viacom content availability on Hulu Plus will vary on a show-by-show basis.

This is a big deal for Hulu. Even when Hulu first convinced Viacom to distribute Colbert and The Daily Show back in June 2008, it was a major milestone for the then young video service. Viacom subsequently pulled the content, deciding that they needed Colbert and Jon Stewart more than they needed Hulu, especially since Vicacom wasn’t really monetizing the content on Hulu.

But with Hulu’s subscription plans and massive advertising, Viacom sees the potential for pulling in revenue now that Hulu is pulling in hundreds of millions in revenue. Hulu’s subscriber count is expected to pass 1 million this year and Hulu Plus as a business will have a revenue run rate north of $200 million this year. And Hulu now has 30 million monthly users, traffic which Viacom simply cannot ignore. Clearly, there must be some sort of revenue share but neither company is revealing the terms.

Of course, Viacom has not brought CBS’ content to Hulu. Yet. Perhaps the media giant is testing the waters before bringing all of its television content to the platform

But with Viacom putting its content back into Hulu, this shows that big media companies have confidence in the platform once again. And this is surely going to help Hulu’s planned IPO in 2011.

For Hulu CEO Jason Kilar’s take on the new partnership, check out his post on here.