A month ago, we detailed a new location-based realtime chat service called Yobongo. At the time, co-founder Caleb Elston didn’t want us to show shots of the app in action because it was still a work-in-progress. But now he’s finally comfortable enough with everything that he’s asking beta testers to do just that. And he should be, as the app both looks great and needs to be ready to go for the upcoming SXSW festival in Austin, Texas.

Elston realizes that SXSW is a big opportunity for the app. And assuming all goes well with App Store acceptance, they’ll be ready. And having used the app for a few weeks now myself, I think it’s safe to say that it will definitely be in the running for one of those addictive apps that could catch on at the conference.

The stars seem to be aligning for one of the so-called “group texting” apps to be big in Austin this year. The obvious candidates there are GroupMe, textPlus, Beluga, and a handful of others. But some of the offshoots of that space have to be included too — like HeyTell and Yobongo. The purpose of each is fairly similar: keep up to date with a group of people while on the go. But Yobongo, perhaps more than any of them, focuses on location.

Actually, Yobongo’s location features aren’t fully turned on yet, so it’s hard to judge the app that way right now. But Elston says they will be turned on shortly — they’ve just been waiting for enough people in the beta for it make sense. The plan is to open the beta more this week after seeing some good early stats (an average of 10 app opens per day per user and usage within 60 seconds of joining).

You can sign up for access to the app on their website (note that it’s iPhone-only for now). And check out the screenshots and video below for a better sense of how it works. And again, read more about the service here.

Restaurant review company Zagat
is best known for its print surveys that review and rank the best restaurants, bars and more in a particular city or region. But with the success of user-generated review site Yelp, Zagat has steadily been upgrading its online offerings, striking partnerships with Foursquare and Foodspotting and releasing mobile apps. But for the most part, the company’s content has been behind a paywall, with in-depth reviews and features available exclusively to paying members. But today, Zagat is adding more free content to the site, including lists, third-party reviews and more.

Zagat is now allowing users to surface reviews in a easier way with enhanced search capabilities. New interactive maps allow diners to search by clicking on any neighborhood, drawing an area on a map, or indicating a popular landmark. Zagat has also compiled hundreds of lists of restaurants based on editor picks, and other topics, which users can access for free.

Zagat restaurant reviews now will also include new stats that show how each restaurant ranks in its cuisine category and in its neighborhood. Plus, Zagat reviews also include ratings and links to third-party reviews from other local and national sources.

With the updated site, Zagat is encouraging users to build up restaurant profiles with photos. Members can now upload photos of dishes and restaurants and view photos submitted by others. And Zagat has added a new metric, a simple “like,” to show users the percentage of diners in Zagat’s community that enjoyed a particular establishment.

Additionally, members’ quotes in reviews will now be recognized. Previously, Zagat restaurant reviews featured select anonymous quotes from reviewers. Now Zagat is revealing the people behind the "quotes" by linking to members' profiles. And a new badge system rewards active members for being "First on the Scene," a "Good Neighbor," "Witty," etc. Members can also achieve "Foodie Status" and be featured on Zagat’s homepage. And Zagat has redesigned its restaurant news and buzz blogs.

Zagat co-founder Nina Zagat said in the release announcing the new version of the site, "Zagat has always been a brand powered by people and passion. Having listened to our users, we've re-envisioned ZAGAT.com…We've greatly expanded our free content, Buzz dining blogs and innovative search tools as a result. The free content allows any user to get search results as potent as anywhere else on the web. We have an ambitious plan for the site's future and will launch more exciting features in the coming months."

Premium members still have access to Zagat’s full-fledged reviews, but now any user can surface more useful information about a restaurant or bar. For Zagat, this is a huge upgrade in terms of its digital offerings. In order to compete with sites like Yelp, the company had to not only free up content but also add more interactive elements (i.e. badges, photos) to encourage users to add content to the site.

But is it too little, too late for Zagat? In January, Yelp drew 26 million unique visitors in the U.S., according to comScore, whereas Zagat only saw 269,000 unique visitors in the same time period (according to a New York Times report, Zagat has roughly 1.2 million users worldwide). While Zagat Survey has a trusted name when it comes to quality restaurant reviews, Yelp, CitySearch, and even Google Places has long been offering free reviews and content to the public for some time now. Partnerships and more free content will certainly help Zagat draw traffic, but it’s unclear if reputation alone will help Zagat reach the mass scale that Yelp has been able to achieve.

We’ve already been over (and over and over and over and over) Apple’s new iOS subscription rules. And the initial backlash has seemingly cooled down as everyone has moved on to the next hot topic of the hour. But it’s pretty clear that this issue is going to keep surfacing, because it really does screw a lot of developers. And sure enough, it’s already back today.

Readability, a service which takes text on the web and strips out ads and other distractions to make posts more readable, had been planning to bring an app to the iOS platform. In fact, they worked with Instapaper creator Marco Arment to build it. It seems like it would be been a pretty popular app. Except it was rejected on the grounds that it circumvents Apples in-app subscriptions today.

Readability details the rejection and their feeling on it on their blog today (which is down at the moment). But let’s just say they’re not happy. The point of Readability is to give the majority of the earnings (70 percent) back to publishers. If Apple is taking a 30 percent cut, the service will either have to cut those payouts to 40 percent, or cut their own take down to 10 percent — neither of which they want to or are willing to do.

The team is angry because they’re not actually selling any content. Instead, they simply offer a service with a monthly fee. In other words, they’re software-as-a-service. And based on what we’re hearing, they’re hardly the only such app getting rejected on the same grounds. But when things like Salesforce apps start getting rejected, will heads really start to roll?

What’s perhaps most crazy about the Readability rejection is that they’re actually a key Apple partner on a piece of their own software: Safari. Last year, Apple decided to build Readability into their web browser. Now they’re rejecting their partner’s app. Nice.

Opinions on this issue vary greatly, but mine is that Apple has every right to implement a subscription service that they want you to use, but there’s no way they can charge a 30 percent fee for many of the services they wish to use it. SaaS is one example, music streaming services are another. At 30 percent, most of these simply could not afford to stay in business. It’s ridiculous. And Apple needs to either wave the fee or cut it down to some low single digit percentage in circumstances beyond traditional media publishers.

So what is Readability going to do? Well for now, they’ll stick to the web. Apple can’t regulate that.

Threadless, one of the original crowdsourcing sites that pioneered the idea a decade ago and is now paying out more than $1 million a year in artist fees, is not just for T-shirts anymore. Today, the company is introducing a crowdsourcing platform called Threadless Atrium, which is initially targeted at causes and cause-based marketing campaigns. “Threadless Atrium will allow other organization to use community-based design to further their mission and causes,” says CEO Tom Ryan.

The first two examples of organizations using Atrium can be found on Threadless Causes. The DNA (Demi and Ashton) Foundation is using Threadless to solicit T-shirt designs to raise awareness about child sex slavery, and the Oceanic Preservation Society is crowdsourcing the artwork for its upcoming documentary Singing Planet about mass extinction. On the product side, Threadless is also working with fashion designer Steven Allen to come up with patterns for a future line of clothing which will also go towards helping DNA.

Threadless hosts and manages the crowdsourcing platform. and can manufacture any of the resulting products. In cases where Threadless manufactures the finished product, the causes get 25 percent of the retail value of anything sold. The causes or brands also take care of whatever the prize may be. Right now, causes and brands must submit an application to be hosted on Atrium, but eventually it will be self-serve. Threadless Atrium will also support widgets that can be embedded on other sites, as well as Facebook and iPhone apps.

The causes can tap into the 100,000 graphic designers and 3 million to 4 million monthly vistors who are already part the Threadless community The challenges don’t need to be T-shirt related, but for now Threadless is focussing on causes and cause-based marketing initiatives. “One thing is that it is very important is to present challenges that are inspirational to the creative community,” notes Ryan. “It lets the artists get excited about what they are designing.”

The key to making crowdsourcing successful is to make it personal, adds founder Jake Nickell. “I've seen a lot of crowdsourcing companies say, ‘I have this problem in my business let's see the crowd solve it,’” he says. He doesn’t think that is the right approach, at least with artistic types. Better to see what activities and causes they are already rallying around and then give them a better way to express themselves.

Threadless has long been doing one-off Threadless Challenges for causes and brands, but it was having trouble keeping up with demand. So the company decided to build Atrium instead so that it could scale it s a new line of business. The platform is built from the ground up on an entirely new Web software stack that includes Django, MySQL and Amazon Web services—and theoretically could one day also power Threadless itself.

The Embedded Mobile House at the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2011? It sounded like science fiction to me or like one of those old IBM commercials hype-ing RFID for transportation logistics. It sounded painful…just where exactly was it embedded? Seriously, I figured it would be a "flying cars/kitchen of tomorrow" type thing where all the devices in the house were controlled by a central computer with a fabulously attractive voice telling me my soufflé was finished.

Nope. It was way more boring than that. But boring is not to say without value. In fact sometimes the things that work well are not flashy nor eye-catching. They are instead the kind of things you don't notice at all (or at least don't notice until they stop working). I think that was what I took away from the Embedded Mobile House. I took away that when this kind of concept reaches the masses—the concept of small simple tools and devices “embedded” with the ability to communicate their status—it would be a transparent experience.

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European streaming music startup Spotify is in the process of closing a very large financing, say multiple sources. DST, the venture firm that has backed Facebook, Groupon and Zynga, is said to be leading the deal, which values Spotify at around $1 billion.

The size of the round will be $100 million or more, say our sources. The company has raised at least €82.3 million to date, including a relatively small round of financing a year ago from Founders Fund.

This new round, though, is at a much higher valuation. The Founders Fund round was rumored to be at a similar valuation as the previous round, a 2009 financing that valued the company at around €200 million.

Spotify has yet to launch in the U.S., although label deals are apparently, finally, coming together.

Unlike previous DST deals, we’ve heard, this will not be a secondary-type financing where founders are taking money off the table.

Is it a good investment?

DST is known for writing big checks at big valuations, but they aren’t known for throwing stupid money around. They spend a great deal of time, they’ve said in the past, looking at a company’s growth metrics and spreadsheeting out where they might end up. Often their projections end up being much more aggressive than even the company’s. And apparently DST is usually right – Facebook, Zynga and Groupon all look like brilliant investments.

No word on how much Apple’s new subscription pricing model, which particularly impacts music streaming services like Spotify, has freaked out the company or investors. It isn’t a problem with the new funding, we’ve heard from our sources.

Right now Yahoo engineer Jeremy Johnstone is my hero. Frustrated with with Flickr’s lack of HTML5 support on the web, Johnstone — whose position is currently “Technical Yahoo!” on the Yahoo For Good team — has decided to take his employer to task, where else? In his Flickr stream.

Earlier today Johnstone posted the above image, with the following barb.

“No Flickr, you have it wrong. I don’t need to install anything. I just need to use a different site to host my video which properly supports modern web technologies.”

Right now Flickr video does support HTML5, but apparently only if it detects you have an iPad. And while the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari and even IE9  are compatible with HTML5 (which does not require you to install a plugin to view video), people who want to watch Flickr videos without having to download Flash are out of luck. It’s enough to make a Technical Yahoo! go to Vimeo!

And yes I’m pretty sure this outburst is out of pure passion for innovation on Johnstone’s part, as his loyalty to Yahoo (which owns Flickr) is clear — At least judging from what he did to his car.

Looks like Bill Gross’ UberMedia has had its API access reinstated for at least two of its apps this Sunday afternoon, after a dramatic turn of events led to them being shut down on Friday under the auspices of privacy, monetization and trademark violations.

In the their return, Blackberry client UberTwitter will be changing its name to UberSocial and Android app twidroyd will be making no name changes — Both have complied with Twitter’s requests to remedy the offending violations.

From Twitter Support:

“We’ve given the developers of twidroyd and UberSocial for Blackberry (formerly UberTwitter) access to the Twitter API again. Our initial review indicates that steps have been taken to remedy the violations for these applications.

When the developer updates twidroyd and Ubersocial, you’ll be able to download their updates to access Tweets again on these applications.”

No word yet on whether the apps are actually functioning as it’s now up to UberMedia developers to provide updates, and users will have to download the new versions of the apps in order to see tweets. The iPhone apps UberCurrent and UberSocial (formerly UberTwitter) have not yet been sent to Twitter for review.

@PerezHilton
Perez Hilton

@Twitter Hey, Twitter! Can you please resolve this issue with @UberMedia ASAP???? Please!!!!

February 19, 2011 4:30 pm via webRetweetReply

Twitter has given us the following statement:

“Today Twitter reinstated access to the applications twidroyd and UberSocial for Blackberry (formerly UberTwitter), which were suspended two days ago for policy violations. Our initial review indicates that steps have been taken to remedy the violations for these applications. We will review these applications on an ongoing basis for compliance.

We will review UberSocial for iPhone and UberCurrent, two other applications suspended on Friday, when they are provided to us.

Developers using the Twitter API have a responsibility not to violate the rules designed to protect our users and the long-term health and vitality of the Twitter platform. If you use the API that we support at great cost with our infrastructure and engineers, you sign up to abide by the rules for its use. While we don't pre-review every application the way, say, Apple does in its App Store, that is no excuse to violate the rules or see what you can get away with.

Hundreds of thousands of developers who use our API daily do so within the framework we set up, without the need for close oversight, threats or actions that impact users.

We closely evaluate our relationships with developers that don't work within this framework.”

Update: Bill Gross tells me via DM that the app updates should be available very soon, “We are recompiling and testing and we’ll let you know as soon as it’s ready.” Stay tuned!

Update 2: Twidroyd’s ready! You can find it here http://bit.ly/Twidroyd5DL UberSocial is also now available at http://bit.ly/UberDL.

With 45 million monthly active users on Facebook, CrowdStar is now the second largest social gaming network behind Zynga (which has 275 million monthly active users). Second in line in the social gaming race isn’t bad for a startup that has received only $100,000 in funding and is one-tenth the size of Zynga in terms of employees. And with a new CEO at the helm and a fast growing set of popular games, CrowdStar is gearing up for a big 2011 to help the company grow in terms of users and games.

We sat down with Peter Relan, newly appointed CEO of CrowdStar to talk about how he plans to move the company forward in 2011. Relan is also the chairman of the incubator YouWeb (where CrowdStar first received funding), but stepped into the CEO role recently.

CrowdStar, which is best known for producing Facebook social games Happy Aquarium, It Girl, Happy Pets and Mighty Pirates, is currently seeing 50 percent of its traffic coming from international markets. Relan says that expanding globally is going to be a huge market opportunity for CrowdStar in the coming year.

One way CrowdStar is hoping to expand to additional markets is through mobile initiatives. But Relan says that it’s not as simple as just putting CrowdStar games in native apps for smartphones or feature phones. “Social gaming on Facebook is totally different than interacting with a game on a mobile phone,” says Relan.

He says that with Facebook, users tend to stumble upon games either through advertising or notifications whereas with mobile versions, users actually have to take the action to download the game. This action, he explains, makes a mobile gaming app more of a destination and make the games more hit-driven as a whole.

While Relan couldn’t get into too many specifics around product features, he did shed light on how the startup is planning to create this potential mobile gaming hits. First, CrowdStar’s mobile games will take into account location. Geolocation is a key component of mobile interactions, says Relan, and he believes that this technology can seamlessly fit into social gaming.

CrowdStar’s mobile games also have a lot more focus on push notifications and will also monetize in a slightly different way from the Facebook economy. Relan says that monetization will still be around virtual goods, but the economic designs are different on mobile apps.

Zynga’s expansion strategy has centralized around acquisitions, adding new games, mobile technologies and talent by buying a number of game studios, both in the U.S. and internationally. Relan says that over the next year he plans to build up CrowdStar’s social games on Facebook with a few select acquisitions and would consider raising capital for these purchases. But he’s hesitant to buy game studios that are specializing in mobile technologies, explaining that ‘mobile is still young’, and no one has really figured out what will succeed in mobile gaming yet.

Another area where Relan will be focusing his efforts on is building talent. CrowdStar has around 75 employees, mostly made up of developers and artists, and plans to double its employees this year. Acquisitions can help in this department, but Relan says that the competition for talent is a challenge in Silicon Valley. One advantage CrowdStar has over companies like EA’s Playfish or even Zynga, is more of a startup culture. We have more access, and can offer much more equity to employees, he says.

Similar to Zynga, Facebook is a central part of CrowdStar’s social gaming platform, as the network brings the social component to the actual games. Relan says that Facebook’s changes in the news feed, most notably eliminating game updates from the feed, definitely had a negative impact on traffic for CrowdStar’s games.

But he sees the potential for the ecosystem to be recharged with the now mandatory Facebook Credits, which the gaming platform has adopted. One way in which Credits could help increase virtual goods transactions, says Relan, is if the virtual currency became an entire ecosystem, and brought a more seamless experience to social gaming. Relan envisions Credits becoming a frictionless platform, similar to the way iTunes is across the Apple platforms.

There’s no doubt that for CrowdStar, 2011 will be a pivotal year. The gaming company has a long way to go to catch up to Zynga, which is rumored to be raising $500 million in funding in advance of an IPO in 2012. And there are a number of other players with deep pockets, including EA’s Playfish, and Disney’s Playdom that are also competitive with the bootstrapped gaming company. A large round of funding would certainly help the company keep up in terms of acquisitions.

But being the underdog can be a good thing for a startup. Clearly, Relan has a clear plan for how CrowdStar is going to increase traffic and games to its platform and it should be interesting to see if the new CEO can execute on this vision. And while social gaming is seeing massive traction currently, Relan sees a tremendous amount of future growth in arena. “Social gaming is sitting on perfect storm,” add Relan, “And the storm revolves around three basic areas-mobile, internaional and Facebook.”

Last night at the dinner table we wrestled with the next generation in the form of our 17 year old. It all began when she asked to borrow my iPad for “a second.” We had been discussing Lady Gaga’s new single, which Naomi insisted was a direct cop of a Madonna 80's hit, Express Yourself. OK, there might be some similarity — like the whole verse, 75% of the chorus, and the fact that Lady Gaga is in fact Madonna.

But I maintain that Lady Gaga is the first and only artist to appear since the Beatles were thrown off the rooftop in London with sufficient gravitas to allude endlessly to in articles about technology. So I did the adult thing to do in this parenting opportunity. I distracted my daughter and grabbed my iPad back. Things got worse fast.

Background: everybody in our house has an iPad of their own. Since the kids got their iPads I have never seen them be used. All questions are now adjudicated by “borrowing” the closest iPad which is invariably mine. Google is always used, which is why Android will never run out of subsidy money. I also believe that my daughter’s friends have infiltrated Wikipedia and rewritten all the answers to support pointless arguments they gin up at the dinner table.

Within seconds Naomi was back with her own iPad. I had taken the moments she was away to download Born This Way and two new iTunes special releases from the remixed Beatles Love album, Girl and Fool on the Hill. My desperate logic was that I could use the Love remixes, which took elements of original session recordings to refashion new versions of songs, to illustrate how all pop songs are based on the same three cords, or in the case of Born This Way and Express Yourself one chord or two tops.

But my daughter was way ahead of me (you think?). Dad, she asked using the formal Dad instead of the silent sneer, Dad, is this how I play this song on the stereo? She was pointing to the little icon to the right of the volume control in iTunes, the one that only appears when you are in Landscape mode as she quickly told her little sister. Suddenly I realized she was about to take my Airplay home theater control away. Yes, each of the four iPads now could push their selection up to the big speakers. Express Yourself now boomed throughout the house.

You see, this iPad virus is self-replicating. The horror of it is that my kids are using it to actually learn more about the technology than I can keep up with. Now Ella was displaying her photos on the Sony while Naomi was DJing her music. The two of them were singing along with some ex-Disney rehab star and my wife was hunting down a Simon and Garfunkel live concert I’d given her a few years ago in lieu of actually writing out a Valentine’s day card. I pathetically played a track from the last Little Feat record, selected because it was six minutes plus long and supported one of my interminable war stories about having been at the session for a David Sanborn overdub. This actually worked, because Naomi could only take three minutes of it and retreated to her lab for more hacking. I take solace from the knowledge that she was Born This Way.

Now it’s Sunday morning and I’m ten minutes past my deadline. The house is quiet as I scan the Times on the iPad. Techmeme is sprinkled with the usual mix of Apple and social stories. Twitter is stomping on its developer community and all is right with the world. The Fool on the Hill sees the sun going down and the eyes in his head see the world spinning ’round.