As we’ve written in the past, 404 pages are an opportunity for startups and companies to have a little bit of geeky fun. Twitter has the Fail Whale, Google had its own version of the Fail Whale for Google Books Digg chose to go with the Fail Ox, and Blippy took inspiration from Double Rainbows. Google appears to be flirting with a new 404 page nowadays, featuring a very sad robot.

The 404 page, which you can find here (http://www.google.com/blah), includes a robot with the message “404. That's an error. The requested URL /blah was not found on this server. That's all we know.”

The robot, which looks so forlorn because it seems to have lost its legs and an arm, is a kind of a boring choice for the search giant, but I guess the company doesn’t really have a mascot and how do you make search funny? But the new page is definitely an improvement on Google’s previous simple 404 page.

Are you ready for the next iPad? Because Apple is. At least, that’s what we’re all assuming, given that the invite for the press event has a big ol’ iPad on it (with an even bigger number 2 right on top of that.)

What’s new in the iPad 2? What else does Apple have up their sleeves? Find out over at our up-to-the-second Live blog.

Simple blogging service Posterous is taking its recently launched Posterous Groups function mobile this morning with the release of the Posterous 2.0 Android and iPhone apps. Along with the app’s previous functionality (including universal auto-posting), users can now create and participate in a Posterous Group over the phone, with the added advantage of setting up a permanent Posterous site to archive this information.

Posterous marketing manager Rich Pearson tells me that Posterous’ mobile efforts have more than doubled its userbase since its launch in December. Group sharing seems to be all the rage and this is Posterous’ most ambitious Group sharing endeavor yet.

Indeed, its newest build is sort of like a Group-texting app with a website attached, the ideal use case being people who need to quickly share media like photos and videos with  friends, family or coworkers and want to have some sort of easy accessible and lasting web record, which photo-sharing services like Instagram currently lack.

Those who want to create a new group in Posterous 2.0 can, go to “Groups” and hit “New Group,” choose a group name and address. You can also conveniently add group members from your phone contacts. Subsequently, you create posts and can upload as many videos or photos as you’d like to the group, all in one fell scoop.

The app, which now supports landscape mode, allows all group members interact with each other’s posts on mobile –You can heart and making comments on individual posts via the app. By default the app emails the other group members of activity when there are new posts and comments.

Posterous, who recently landed a deal with The Gap to power its blog, is planning to add even more functionality with regards to Groups and hopes to launch Posterous Events, which builds Groups around events, right before SXSW.

You can download the app in the iTunes store here, or by searching for “Posterous” in the Android market.

As gift card companies vie for consumer dollars, Plastic Jungle, Cardpool have been consistently innovating around the gift card model. For example, Cardpool recently launched the ability to sell a gift card online without having to mail it in via snail mail. And today, the Y Combinator-backed startup is launching a new feature today which should sake things up in the gift card marketplace—Cardpool Gift Cards.

So now anyone can purchase a Cardpool gift card that will allow them to buy cards on the gift card marketplace. So instead of giving family, friends, and coworkers, a gift card to a store they may not like, the startup’s branded card allows you to give them the option of choosing where they want to spend the gift card money. You simply enter the gift recipient’s email when purchasing the card, and Cardpool will send the recipient a code they can use to purchase a gift card on the site.

And because Cardpool allows you to buy card at discounts (which vary depending on the store), users get more for their money. For example, for a $30 BestBuy card you will receive a 6 percent discount.

It’s similar in theory to buying an American Express gift card (though without the credit card fees). The Cardpool gift card makes a lot of sense for the startup and is sure to be a popular way to gift gift cards.

Cardpool has raised angel funding from a number of well known investors including Jeff Fluhr, Ron Conway, Max Levchin, Mitch Kapor, Alfred Lin, Naval Ravikant, Chris Dixon, Chris Sacca, and Paul Buchheit.

According to Verizon’s Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo, speaking at a Morgan Stanley conference, Verizon’s current unlimited data plan is untenable and cannot remain in place forever, a bit of news that is disconcerting at worst and obvious at best.

The operator currently offers a $30/month “unlimited” (but potentially throttled) data plan.

Read more…

When Apple first announced its video calling application FaceTime on June 7, 2010 at the WWDC event, in conjunction with the iPhone 4, it quickly became apparent that there was a potential trademark conflict with a company called FaceTime Communications.

But Apple struck a deal with the company to transfer said trademark over to them, and FaceTime Communications subsequently changed its company name to Actiance.

As of very recently, ownership of the domain name FaceTime.com was also transferred over to the Cupertino company. It doesn’t resolve to an Apple-operated website yet, but it’s definitely now owned by the company, as the WHOIS records show. Unlike iPad.com.

Back in late January 2010, I wrote that Apple didn’t own a single iPad related domain name.

Fast forward 13 months, and they still don’t.

Out of Cupertino’s hands, at least for the time being: iPad.net, iPad.biz, iPad.info, iPad.fr, iPad.es, iPad.eu, iPad.se, iPad.cn, iPad.be and iPad.jp. To name but a few.

They also don’t own iBook.com, iBooks.com or iBookstore.com or anything like that, in case you were wondering.

It’s not that Apple doesn’t care about domain names. It paid heavily for iPhone.com back in 2007, and it owns iPod.com, iMac.com, iWork.com, iTunes.com etc. (but not MacBook.com, curiously). Run a search on UDRPsearch and you will find that Apple regularly fights to (re)gain control over relevant domain names that carry one of their trademarks – which it doesn’t have for ‘iPad’ (yet), just to be clear.

Run a search for ipad.com now, and you’ll notice Apple has yet to oppose the ownership of the domain name, even though it now actually does own the trademark (Apple actually acquired the rights to the term from Fujitsu in March 2010).

I have no idea why they haven’t made an attempt to claim rights over ownership of the domain name so far. It’s entirely possible that they’ve tried to acquire the domain name directly from the owner, but this person has stopped responding to my emails entirely so I’m unaware of any negotiations between Apple and the registrant of ipad.com (Enero 6 Corp).

Either way, Apple clearly has plans for FaceTime.com. The timing is, of course, interesting.

Later today, the company is expected to unveil the second generation of its popular tablet computer, and it’s likely to boast a front-facing camera for FaceTime video calling.

A few more hours, and we’ll know what’s up.

Before all the buzz and acquisition offers, Foursquare was just an idea in Dennis Crowley’s head. He recently sat down with Chris Dixon to tape an episode of Founder Stories. Above is the first video clip from that interview (we will post the rest throughout the week), in which Crowley talks about the origins of Foursquare and its predecessor, Dodgeball.

The company incorporated just so that it could get into iTunes. And when he raised his first $1.35 million angel round in 2009, Foursquare didn’t even have a bank account. He remembers (at the very end of this clip, around 6 minutes in) having to run to a Chase branch office in Manhattan, and telling the bank officer, “We need to set up a business account and we are going to wire in, like, a million dollars. Is that okay?”

Almost a decade before that, Crowley was bored at work at Jupiter Research when he first came up with the idea for a mobile social network, and then during the dotcom crash, he says, Dodgeball started as a way to “find out where all of our laid off friends are hanging out during the day.” However, it was pretty primitive, relied on WAP mobile browsers, and perhaps was too early. “It was really pretty lousy,” admits Crowley. Then he went to NYU’s ITP program kept developing the idea with Alex Rainert. Before they could raise money, Google bought Dodgeball in 2005 and then went on to essentially mothball the service. After Crowley left Google, he worked at mobile gaming startup area/code. Then in 2009, he teamed up with Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai to resurrect and rethink the mobile location service.

Dixon also asks Crowley why Google was not able to capitalize on social, despite employing, at one point or another, people like Twitter founder Ev Williams, Instagram’s Kevin Systrom, and himself. Social was just never a priority for Google, says Crowley.

(Now you can subscribe to Founder Stories on iTunes)

Barnes & Noble this morning announced that it has settled a lawsuit it was served by Spring Design back in November 2009 in connection to the latter’s Alex Reader (which, perhaps not so coincidentally, is in the process of being phased out).

Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Spring Design will grant B&N a “non-exclusive, paid-up royalty free license” for the entire portfolio of the company’s patents and patent applications. Other terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

The settlement agreement announced today resolves all claims brought by Spring Design, which will be dismissed with prejudice.

The news comes a few months after Barnes & Noble failed to dismiss Spring Design’s lawsuit. Spring Design claimed the bookseller illegally copied its screen design for the nook electronic book reader, accusing the company of misappropriating trade secrets, breach of contract and unfair competition.

Alex is, or rather was, an e-reader device that combined two displays (an e-Ink display mainly for reading, and an LCD screen for browsing). One could view content on either of the screens and use a button to flip the display back and forth between the touch color screen and EPD screen.

In its complaint, Spring Design said it had shared the dual-display design of the device with Barnes & Noble when the companies held potential partnership talks back in 2009, prior to the launch of the nook. The company said Barnes & Noble later incorporated features of the Alex Reader into nook, breaching a nondisclosure agreement.

Spring Design on its website says it is discontinuing retail sales of the e-reader in order to focus its resources on developing “next generation eReader products and services” with ReadMate, the underlying technology used in the Alex Reader.

The Yocto Project, a working group of the Linux Foundation, is likely something most of you have never heard of. It’s “an open source collaboration project that provides templates, tools and methods to help you create custom Linux-based systems for embedded products regardless of the hardware architecture.” The Yocto Project has been compatible with OpenEmbedded, “the build framework for embedded Linux,” and today comes the announcement that Yocto is aligning more closely with OpenEmbedded, including shared governance.

The Linux Foundation will continue to provide support and guidance to the newly merged efforts, and today’s announcement comes with an impressive list of companies committed to the technology. It’s no surprise that MontaVista Software, Texas Instruments and Intel are involved: they’re established players in the embedded Linux world. But to see folks like Dell and LSI in the list is interesting, and says a lot about the health and success of Linux in embedded devices.

Read more…

Apple is announcing the iPad 2 today. That’s a fact, jack. But the Internet has been busy pushing out leaks — or fakes — the last few days. First is this pic that surfaced a few days back that’s likely the latter, but that was just the start. There’s a whole new set of supposed leaked info for your to waste your day debunking. Well, at least until Apple themselves unveils the new iPad sometime after 10 pst.

First is this convincing set of photos from the seedy Chinese gadget scene. Even the source isn’t all that sure they’re legit, but even if they’re fakes, the mock-ups are right in line with all the rumors. There’s a larger backside speaker, flat back, slightly slimmer casing, and dual cameras. However, there’s no Thunderbolt port to match up with today’s other major leak straight from Amazon.

Read More

D2 Technologies, which markets embedded IP communications software platforms, has acquired Webia Technologies through an all-stock transaction. Headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan, with development centers in Taiwan and Shanghai, China, Webia was one of the first software vendors to introduce set-top box media player platforms based on Google's Android OS. Webia recently unveiled what it claims is the world's first Android TV solution at Broadband Taiwan 2010.

Mobile Q&A service Opinionaided has raised $1 million in funding today from General Catalyst, SoftBank Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Mark Wachen, Jonah Goodhart, Karl Jacob, ENIAC Ventures and Vince Monical. This brings the startup’s total funding to $1.2 million.

Opinionaided is a free iOS app that allows users to get advice and opinions on the fly. Within the app, users can input a question, determine a category and submit it for other Opinionaided users to answer. The startup says questions range from "Does this outfit look good?" to "Would you switch to the Verizon iPhone?"

After a question is posted, fellow Opinionaided users can comment on the question and the app will calculate the percentage os users that responded positively or negatively and will list all comments/ From there consumers can reply back to the comments or create a new question for peers to vote on.

Since a private beta launch last June, the app has garnered 40 million responses to about 500,000 questions. Opinionaided faces competition from Mahalo and ChaCha. Opinionaided plans to use the new funding to expand the service beyond the iOS platform.

The iPhone and fart applications. It’s hard to imagine one without the other. One of the companies that’s been on the forefront of the stinky mobile applications revolution for the iOS platform is now up for sale, and you can ‘buy it now’ on eBay for $1 million.

So what does that money get you?

In a quite humorous press release, the creators of the iFart Mobile app, first released in the App Store in December 2008, acknowledge that you can buy the entire iFart intellectual property and technology, including the iPhone and iPad application, add-on fart packs, all raw code, back-end server code,the iFartMobile.com website and all associated content and copyrights through the eBay auction.

Here’s the gist of the pitch:

Stories of its great success became international headlines in tech blogs and mainstream news. A firestorm of controversy continued surrounding the app as people debated whether Apple should have allowed a novelty app like iFart in the store in the first place.

Despite controversy and criticism, iFart has earned its placed in Apple history as the definitive novelty app. It continues to receive attention as big-name celebrities air their delight at using the app.

On the iFart auction page on eBay, creator Joel Comm details why he wants to sell off his smelly mini-empire:

I have launched, run and sold a number of successful technology properties in the past sixteen years. I was the co-creator of the web site that was acquired by Yahoo and is now known as Yahoo! Games. I have written best-selling books on the topics of Google AdSense and Twitter. I speak internationally and domestically to Fortune 500 corporations and small businesses alike.

As creator of iFart, I have leveraged this simple novelty app into worldwide fame.

However, I am now focusing on my latest agency offering, IMDirect.com, and it is time to pass the baton to someone who wishes to own iFart and take it to the next level.

The app features a hilarious sound machine that simulates the sound of flatulence. Fart sounds include titles such as The Wipe Out, Dirty Raoul, Brown Mosquito, Jack the Ripper, Bombardier and Burrito Maximo. Each sound has it's own texture, duration and personality.

The auction is set to end on March 11, 2011. We’ll evidently keep an eye on it.

Cisco this morning announced that it has completed its acquisition of privately-held Pari Networks, a provider of network configuration and change management solutions, in an effort to complement its own 'smart service' capabilities. Pari Networks, notably, was founded by a group of former Cisco executives. Cisco originally announced its intent to buy Pari Networks on January 26, 2011. Financial terms of the deal remain undisclosed, but Pari Networks employees are to become part of Cisco's Technical Services.

yaM Labs, a Russian startup not to be confused with Yammer, has secured $500k from Foresight Ventures. The company has developed Cloud-based software to make meetings - both face-to-face and virtual - more efficient by enabling participants to collaborate on the planning, running, and execution of a meeting. The premise being that traditional offline tools make for a lot of wasted time because meetings lack focus and 'memory' - you have to be there to know what went down and even if you were, often the answer is not a lot or there at least exists no actual record. Shifting these tools to the Cloud - the yaM app runs completely in a web browser - and improving them along the way is supposed to help with this. The startup broke cover at our recent TechCrunch Moscow event.

On the heels of its recently announced $1.75M round led by Mangrove, SohoOS is today announcing the roll-out of SohoOS.me, a new product that allows SMBs to create simple business profile pages for themselves—very similar to how About.me allows individuals to do so.

Creating a profile is painless. Businesses can include their logo and contact information, as well as links to their Twitter profiles, Facebook Pages and collateral, for example, PDF’s and videos. Businesses can also customize the look & feel (see screenshots).

On the face of it, it’s a simple product, however, it could have significant impact on the company and its customers. Here’s how…

From the customer perspective, beyond the fact that these profile pages serve as ‘business cards’, every page has a built-in contact form. Instead of treating it as a simple contact form though, SohoOS built the functionality to serve as lead-generation for its customers. This means that when information is plugged-in, it’s pushed into the CRM portion of SohoOs, as a lead to be followed-up on. Very convenient and effective for small businesses.

It’s also the only way the product can be truly differentiated from the plethora of quick-and-dirty yet useful website building services out there (Wix, Yola, Jimdo, Weebly, Webs and Moonfruit leap to mind, but there are of course loads more).

For SohoOS itself, the new product offers a couple of upsides. First, if there is customer uptake for the product, the company will find itself sitting on a directory of small businesses that could be monetized in a number of ways (advertising, lead-gen, etc.). Second, considering that SohoOS is based on a freemium model, the product which is today offered free of charge, could be offered at a premium for the option of allowing small business to host their profile pages on custom URLs. A win-win for both SohoOS and its customers that could become a nice little money maker.

Additional functionality will continue to be rolled-out, the first being more themes and the ability to embed the contact (lead) form externally.

We’re now just hours away from the unveiling of Apple’s next big thing at an event in San Francisco. And while Apple hasn’t officially stated what they’d be showing off tomorrow, a picture has been worth a thousand words. Right on the invite to the event is the tease of an iPad covered by the date, which probably not coincidentally prominently displays a big “2″.

So what should we expect? And what does the iPad 2 actually need in order to please the masses?

The locks at this point seem to be a faster processor (probably a custom dual-core ARM chip, perhaps the “A5″), a front-facing camera, a better speaker, a thinner build, a lighter weight, and a new built-in Verizon 3G option (alongside the AT&T option).

The good bets include a back camera, an anti-glare screen, a new material for the shell, and more RAM.

And the wildcards include a DisplayPort/Thunderbolt output, a different starting price point, and maybe even a white color option.

The one thing clearly missing from that list is a “Retina Display”. That’s not coming tomorrow. This rumor has been debunked quite a bit recently after reports to the contrary started appearing months ago. About a month ago, a good source told us not to expect this in iPad 2 — the same source that pointed to another iPad version launching in the fall.

But the lack of a Retina Display will not harm the iPad 2. Even if it just has the “locks” listed above, Apple is going to sell a ton of units. And if it dips into the “good bets” as well, it will sell even more. The fact of the matter is that over a year after the unveiling of the first iPad, the device had no real competition.

The only thing that remotely resembles a competitor out there right now is the Xoom. And if people are actually buying it in any sort of meaningful quantity, they curiously don’t seem to be talking about it.

But more Honeycomb-powered Android tablets are approaching. And Apple knows that they can’t rest on their laurels. The iPad 2 announcement may not need to be a blow-out blockbuster, but it needs to be rock-solid.

Actually, the more interesting aspect of tomorrow may be on the software side of things. Apple is probably going to unveil iOS 4.3 tomorrow as the shipping software for the new device. But again, it’s unlikely to be a huge upgrade. We’ve already seen some of the cooler, tucked away possibilities in iOS 4.3 (like new gestures), but those may or may not remain in the background for now.

More likely are other, more mature features. We do know that several publishers are likely to be on hand for the event tomorrow. And you can bet Apple is going to talk a bit more about the in-app subscription service that should be baked into iOS 4.3. Don’t be surprised if we hear something about iBooks and Random House too.

And there may be a wild card on the iOS side of things as well. Earlier today, Business Insider reported on some vague rumors about a new “social app” that could launch alongside the iPad 2. They were sure to make it clear that these were very much rumors. But curiously enough, we’ve heard something similar from one of our own sources.

Our source isn’t too firm on details either, but they suggest that Apple may have something new to show off tomorrow, and it may be around the location space. Early looks at the code in iOS 4.3 suggested a feature called “Find My Friends” may be a location-based network for people, similar to the “Find My iPhone” feature for Apple devices. But another source thinks it may be more along the lines of “Find My Kids” — as in a tool for parents to remotely monitor their children when they’re away.

You may think that such a new location service would be tied into MobileMe, but remember that Apple took steps with iOS 4.2 to separate “Find My iPhone” from MobileMe. And that may matter because another source says a MobileMe upgrade isn’t a part of tomorrow’s event. That may seem odd given the disappearing MobileMe boxes from store shelves, but that’s what we’re hearing right now.

There are also other whispers out there of different social elements being worked on for iOS as well, such as simple photo-sharing. But the latest word there is that this is unlikely to be ready for tomorrow’s event.

Still, the “one more thing” moment tomorrow could well be a first glimpse of iOS 5 (following a timeline we predicted a couple months ago). Apple has traditionally held events to walk developers through the latest version of the iOS software in the spring before a summer launch. But Apple may indeed kill two birds with one stone here.

If that’s the case, we may hear about some various advanced things that Apple has been working on for the new mobile OS. What kinds of things? Hard to say. But improvements in social, notifications, and a wide-range of new APIs all seem to be good guesses at this point. Oh — and the cloud.

Other questions that will likely have to wait for a few more hours include when the iPad 2 will go on sale — maybe as soon as this week or next week? And what will happen to the iPad 1 — price cut or end-of-life? And what about this guy — will he be there/on stage?

Stay tuned. We’ll shortly know if the iPad 2 is bi-winning or not.

kaufDa is one of Germany's leading "promotion search" sites. What’s that? It helps you look for the best sales and mobile couponing running near where you live. So instead of retailers needing to send out huge catalogues, Germans have warmed to kaufDa’s targeted nature.

Admittedly it doesn’t sound that exciting a business. But today European media giant Axel Springer has acquired a 74.9 percent equity interest in the business for $40US million, thus generated a tidy, and significant, European-style exit for the investors concerned.

The story behind the price is that traditional publishing companies are quite simply terrified of kaufDA. It targets the $3bn retail advertising market in Germany, much of which is poised to transfer online, long after classifieds in jobs or car search did so. Some 30% of traffic is mobile already: kaufDA’s iPhone Navigator App has been installed on over 15% of all iPhones and over 20% of all iPads in Germany.

Perhaps the most beautiful Kickstarter project I have ever seen (sorry Detroit RoboCop statue) LetterMPress is a virtual letterpress app for the iPad, created by designer and typographer John Bonadies. Already in prototype, Bonadies is seeking $15,000 in crowd-sourced funding to release the world’s first tablet letterpress envirnoment, aiming for the end of the summer.

LetterMPress allows you to arrange type on the iPad much like an original letterpress, using the touch screen to arrange, lock and ink type on the “press bed,” er iPad screen.  The app uses virtual cut and ink graphics, copied from actual vintage press sets. And while you can print out your creations using AirPrint or by uploading the files to your computer, part of Bonadies’ plan is to buy actual vintage sets and offer authentic letterpress prints from the designs submitted by LetterMPress users.

So why put all this effort into virtually recreating something as obsolete as letterpress printing, other than because you love it?

“Actually, a letterpress and an iPad operate similarly when it comes to manipulating objects in a composition. Just like placing blocks of wood type on a surface, you drag the type images across the iPad, and then move them around to create your design. This is why the iPad would make an ideal platform for people to experience the creative aspects of letterpress and typography.”

When I reviewed the original iPad last year, I wrote that one of its greatest flaws is that it “paralyzes its user from engaging with the Net as a content creator.” And while a year later, on the eve of another iPad launch, we’ve got a ton of light photo-editing apps like PhotoShop Express, there’s as of yet no tool that a creative professional would prefer to use on an iPad than on a Mac.

LetterMPress could be the first of these sort of apps, that take advantage of the touch tablet interface’s inherent potential for artistry and creative work. I mean imagine a hardcore Photoshop designed for touch. As I’m hearing that tomorrow’s iPad launch will increasingly focus on the iPad as a tool for creation not consumption, perhaps Steve Jobs and Bonadies are on the same page, a digital one.

Watch LetterMPress in action, below.

The dreaded “B” word is on the tip of many tongues these days. Are we or aren’t we in a bubble? Everybody has an opinion.

Yes, Facebook’s valuation lingers around $50 billion, Zynga’s is close to $10 billion, and Twitter is valued at $4.5 billion with comparatively tiny revenues. But do these soaring valuations a bubble make? A couple of weeks ago, Eric Schmidt weighed in on the great overblown bubble debate to say that the high rate of valuations do, in fact, mark a clear sign of a growing bubble.

While, in contrast, Paul Graham said last week that, compared to late ’90s when every company even remotely associated with this hot, newfangled “Web” was valued higher simply by being associated with it, today’s high valuations are more localized and the companies more deserving. Yet, perhaps the question is not whether this is a bubble exactly like that of the dotcom era, but whether or not it is, simply, a bubble.

Fellow TechCruncher MG Siegler weighed in on the issue to say that, while smaller angel investors do seem to be getting squeezed out of deals because early stage valuations are (in some cases) getting ridiculously high, there’s really no sure sign that a Web 2.0 bubble exists. And Paul Carr and Sarah Lacy would likely fight you for hinting that there’s anything remotely bubbly going on in the Valley.

In particular, there’s also been a lot of talk recently about a tech IPO bubble. Back in the late ’90s many companies rushed into public markets even when they knew they might not become profitable for as long as two years after an IPO. Yes, Groupon is likely to IPO soon, and yes Pandora and LinkedIn recently filed to go public, but these are healthy companies that need capital for expansion and have a good chance at profitability in the next year or so. What’s more, Facebook even pushed the Securities and Exchange Commission for an exemption that would allow it to stay private. Not something you do if you’re in a bubbling rush, right?

Yet, even so, the tech press can’t seem to help itself when it comes to bubble mania. If one is able to pin down an Angel for a conversation, inevitably the “B” word is raised — especially when that Angel was party to the infamous Angelgate.

Today, at the DEMO Conference in Palm Springs, Co-founder and Partner of Floodgate Funds Mike Maples gave the audience his own personal view: “Is there a tech bubble? Rounded off to the nearest yes, yes", he said. Echoing Schmidt’s sentiments, Maples said that the super-sized valuations of Facebook, Zynga, and Twitter have spawned a host of imitators and that, as a result, there is now a huge crowding effect (read: bubble). “It’s like a soccer game for 9-year-olds, where everyone crowds around the ball,” he said.

Like Paul Graham, Maples hinted that the big companies leading the charge (those he calls “Thunder Lizards”) are deserving of high valuations, while the clones, who are not trying to solve big problems or disrupt an entire space and are instead simply copying these companies and pasting their business models into the same space, are the real problem.

Because of this, while Silicon Valley may not currently be in a bubble, he said, it’s well on its way. So, if the bubble is indeed growing, what can we do to counteract it? Instead of adding to crowded spaces (and the bubble), Maples encouraged startups to build wacky, unusual ideas, even if at first they don’t seem to have obvious application. “When I first invested in Twitter, before they were Twitter, people thought I was crazy” and that it was a “rinky-dink business”. Not so much. The Angel-turned-VC is known for investing in early-stage, potentially “risky” startups, and much of the time, he said, it doesn’t work out. But when it does, these ideas can change the world.

When there’s not a lot of obvious competition in a particular space, and the startup hoping to take advantage sees a big “potential” market, those can often become the true disruptors. And when it comes to looking for the right VC, he advised entrepreneurs to look for someone who knows when to pivot and how not to panic when that time comes. Look for those who are familiar with (and comfortable in) the near-death experience, he said, which you will definitely have — just because “you’re a startup”.

About a month ago, we covered HeyTell, an iPhone/Android app that made me feel like a kid again. Why did it make me feel like a kid? Because it turns your iPhone into a walkie talkie. Yeah. Awesome.

But the app is also a serious business. Created by the husband-and-wife team, Steven Hugg and Jen Harvey, they’ve managed to bring in revenues from day one thanks to a combination in in-app advertising and purchases (add-ons, like voice modifiers). And while a month ago, they were going strong with 3 million registered users, things have picked up quite a bit since then: they’re now past 4 million users.

While everyone is talking about group texting apps being poised to explode at SXSW, HeyTell is the type of fun app that could sneak up as well. And the service is preparing for that possibility with a fun new feature: public relays.

The feature, which is included in the just-released 2.2 iPhone app update, allows you to HeyTell message any other users within your immediate proximity. In other words, it’s location-based random voice chat. But since none of the chats are one-on-one, it could happen with thousands of people at a place like SXSW where everyone will be gathered close to one another.

Imagine hitting the talk button and that message being immediately received by every other users around you. That’s the idea.

Your HeyTell privacy settings dictate who can message you with this feature. If you have your settings on “Low”, you can get messages from anyone, even strangers. If you have the settings on “Medium”, you’ll only hear messages from friends and friends of friends nearby. And if you have your settings on “High”, only your friends will still be able to reach you this way.

The SXSW relay isn’t live just yet, but HeyTell will turn it on in time for the conference. And then we can all get the “party in room 1135!” message together. See you there.

You can find HeyTell in the App Store here. Or search for it in the Android Market.

[photo: flickr/k0a1a.net]

Are you ready for the next iPad? Because Apple is. At least, that’s what we’re all assuming, given that the invite for the press event has a big ol’ iPad on it (with an even bigger number 2 right on top of that.)

What’s new in the iPad 2? What else does Apple have up their sleeves? We’ll be bringing back all the details with our up-to-the-second liveblog, which will begin at 10 A.M Pacific (1 P.M Eastern) on March 2nd. If all goes well, we’ll start piping in with color commentary and photos from the scene a bit earlier than that. Be sure to bookmark this page and tune in early so you don’t miss a thing!

Read the Liveblog over at MobileCrunch >>

Genomatica, a San Diego based producer of chemicals from renewable sources including sugar, raised $45 million in a new round led by VantagePoint Venture Partners, a fund that has committed $2.5 billion to cleantech.

Bright Capital, the venture arm of RU-COM group in Russia joined the round as well with Waste Management, a large provider of waste management services in North America, and the company’s earlier investors including: Alloy Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Mohr Davidow Ventures and TPG Biotech. Altogether, Genomatica has raised $85 million in venture capital.

The company will use its new round to bring its first, commercial product mass market. The product is “Bio-BDO,” a chemical that can replace oil or natural-gas derived 1,4-butanediol (regular BDO) in the manufacture of spandex, automotive plastics, running shoes and more.

Bio-BDO is made from renewable feedstocks — a range of sugars— according to the company’s website. Genomatica expects its commercial-scale plant to make Bio-BDO will become fully operational in late 2013. The company will also spend part of its latest round developing additional chemicals from renewable sources.

As tech companies fight for ubiquity, it’s no surprise that there should be disputes like this. Using common words for product names is always a risk, as is establishing generic traditions (like Apple’s “i-” prefix) that are difficult to regulate. At stake today is Apple’s trademark on “App Store,” which as I’m sure our readers are aware, was established in 2008 as arguably the first real platform through which independent developers could offer mobile applications, games, and so on.

They filed for the trademark at the same time. Since then, however, it has been contended by Microsoft in particular that Apple has no exclusive right to so generic a term, one which arguably could apply to any other mobile application store. It’s as if Kleenex trademarked “tissue” as well. Apple just turned the argument around, however, noting that Microsoft itself is maintaining a plainly generic term for its most prominent product: Windows. Is it a fair comparison?

Continue reading…

In terms of hot spaces at the moment, you’d be hard-pressed to find anything hotter than the mobile photo sharing space. Instagram, PicPlz, and Path all have gotten huge amounts of funding recently. And the latter even turned down a massive $100 million+ offer from Google. So the space is just minting money and everyone is riding high, right? Well, not exactly.

It can be easy to forget that despite the early success stories (or irrational hype, depending on how you perceive it), there are many more startups out there that aren’t taking off for one reason or another. And one of the earlier players in this latest wave, Treehouse, is sadly no more. The service has entered the Deadpool.

We first covered Treehouse in June of last year as perhaps the perfect app for capturing “bros icing bros”. And while it lasted longer than that trend, Treehouse is now shut down, co-founder Chrys Bader has confirmed to us.

But it’s not all sad news. One of the reasons Bader decided to shutter the service now is because he got recruited by Google to help them build out whatever it is they’re building in the social space. Bader declined to give details, but says he’s leading an “exciting new project” alongside the Slide team that Google acquired last August.

“I’m really excited about working with some proven entrepreneurs and to see what we’ll be able to accomplish as a small team within Google,” he says.

Treehouse was technically a part of Fliggo, a Y Combinator-backed startup that had originally set out to be one of the “Twitter for video” plays. They had also been known as Vidly. But Bader correctly predicted that mobile photo sharing was poised to take off, and thus we got Treehouse. The service was well executed, and had an interesting sharing model that was sort of a hybrid of Path and Instagram. But again, for whatever reason, it just didn’t catch on in the same way.

Perhaps Bader will be able translate some of what he learned in the space to whatever Google releases.

Update: In an email, Bader had a bit more to share, looking back on Treehouse and the overall space:

We were indeed the first to really identify the market for mobile photo sharing.  It all started when we asked the question “What if you could see your friends’ camera rolls?” So many people take pictures on their iPhones that never see the light of day, so by being able to see your friends’ camera rolls, then you can see what your friends are up to.

At first, we decided to focus on privacy and creating a comfortable environment for people to share photos without worrying who sees them. Initially we had great traction in small groups, but quickly reached the realization that private sharing is difficult in groups of friends that do not all have iPhones.  This is a problem that Path is facing right now. Hyper-privacy does not work and moves against the natural motion of social products now, which is to be more open.

I’m happy to see Instagram’s success because it will bring forward the possibility of mobile photo sharing in people’s minds which will pave the way for new apps to have a chance to blow the lid off of the space.  We’ve barely scratched the surface of the potential of the mobile photo space, and I’m excited to see Instagram lock-down a long-term vision and watch Path slowly become more open.