Take a good look at the Kno textbook tablet at right because you might not ever see it again. Kno is getting out of the hardware business and, as reported earlier, taking another $30 million from Intel Capital, Advance Publications (owner of Conde Nast), and its previous investors (Andreessen Horowitz, Floodgate, First Round, and SV Angel). The company is now confirming the reports.

Kno started selling its textbook tablets last year, with a $599 single-screen version and an $899 dual-screen. But, as I’ve noted before, competing against the iPad and Android tablets makes absolutely no sense. If a student is going to buy a tablet, they will buy one of those first. Nobody is going to carry around two tablets. Plus, you can’t play Angry Birds on a Kno.

Sales of the Kno tablets were underwhelming, and anyone who bought one will be offered a refund if they want to return it. Or they can keep it (the tablet is actually pretty decent).

As part of the financing, Intel will also license Kno’s hardware design to work with OEMs to build future tablets. Again, unless these future tablets run Android, I don’t see the point.

Kno itself will now focus on recreating its textbooks and associated a software for the existing tablet market. Expect to an iPad or Android app very soon. Of course, this will change the entire economics of the business, especially if Kno now has to split textbook sales or subscriptions with Apple on the iPad.

Just the antidote for a restless Friday morning: A cartoon rendering of the Twitter-tax controversy complete with a groggy Biz Stone masquerading as Twitter’s CEO, the role of Zynga played by a frontiersman, and a cartoony but pretty realistic view of the Tenderloin.

Video on the jump.

Fair warning: This is where I get all MG on you guys.

As someone who just spent forty weeks traveling around the world, there is no category of consumer Web sites that makes me angrier than online travel sites. More than any other category on the Web, the early incumbents– online travel agents like Expedia and Travelocity– rafted on an early tidal wave of massive convenience and cost savings only to get lazy and never innovate again. They equated more inventory with innovation and treated every category of travel like the perishable commodity of booking a flight or a rental car.

But hotels and getaway packages aren’t commodities. The role of a flight is ultimately getting you from point A to point B as painlessly and on time as possible. Aside from racking up miles, there’s little difference between the major carriers: You’ve always got bad legroom, always get a free softdrink, always pay a few dollars for a snack box. And besides, even an awful flight ends when you arrive. But the hotel is your homebase throughout the trip. Even on a business trip, a modest hotel with better food or better service can make a huge difference.

And, no, TripAdvisor doesn’t solve this problem. I’ve found that my experiences rarely match up with the wisdom of crowds. Maybe they hit the property on an off-day, or maybe I did. Or maybe it’s just that hotels are incredibly personal and subjective. While Paul Carr wants every hotel to have a club sandwich, I get sick of the standard room service fare and want something a bit more local and adventurous. Likewise, some travelers want to be smothered with service, others want to be left alone.

As I’ve written before, I’m thrilled by a new wave — finally!– of innovative travel sites that bring curation, editorial and style to the category and boldly aim to be the destination site for a segment of travelers– not all things to all people. The leader in this category is Jetsetter, a sister-site of Gilt Group.

Yes, Jetsetter has phenomenal design, gorgeous photos and detailed write-ups. But what makes me so loyal to the site is I trust it. Several of my favorite properties around the world– places that aren’t particularly well known– have been offered on Jetsetter, and every property I’ve tried from the site has not only lived up the write-up, it’s been a unique experience.

Jetsetter has just launched a new iPad app today and the device is the perfect showcase for what Jetsetter is great at– melding the line between transaction engine and glossy travel magazine. The navigation isn’t completely intuitive, but it doesn’t take too long to figure out. There aren’t tons of new features– the main one being a 360 degree view of several properties that really does make you feel like your standing there and looking up, down and all-around. Jetsetter adroitly makes use of the uniquenesses of the iPad like the intimate touch interface that mimics scrolling through a magazine, the lush screen, and the gyro-effect to use the iPad like a porthole to look around a room. (Actually the latter was promised by the Jetsetter press team. It didn’t work for me, but it might be user error, my iPad or a day one glitch. The app also crashed a few times on me. So there’s a little more technical work to do, it seems.)

But really this app– like a good stay at a hotel– is about the little things, small design touches here and there combined with glossy photos and the company’s expert eye. It’s a world away from commodity transacting; it’s about dreaming.

Jetsetter CEO Drew Patterson describes his target market as the affluent traveler– a huge market made up of 7 million travelers with more than $100 million in liquid assets that’s barely online, because it’s been justifiably turned off by the Wal-Mart approach of the big online travel agents. But I think he limits the company with that description. After all, while I’ve gawked at $40,000 cruises to the North Pole that I could never afford in my wildest dreams, there are plenty of affordable properties on Jetsetter that are comparable in price to a big, boring chain hotel. It’s not about affluence– what Jetsetter has nailed is aspiration.

And because there’s such a range of inventory, Jetsetter doesn’t make you feel like you can only afford the lame trips. No sooner did I get sucked into a Machu Picchu Trek– not exactly practical in my five month pregnant state– than did I fall in love with a totally-doable weekend getaway in La Jolla, a perfect last childless weekend away once I’m banned from getting on a plane.

My only gripe with the app is my same gripe with Jetsetter on the Web– it always leaves me wanting more. I run out of properties to look at and things to do, just when I master the interface and get sucked into full vacation dreaming mode. This site — both the technology and the content– elevates shopping to a time-suck. But if you’re stuck on dreadful commute or on a terminally long layover, it doesn’t give you enough stuff to do with that time.

Patterson talked about how the site is moving into more of a curator role, with a high-end concierge travel planning service now in beta and a catalog of past Jetsetter-recommended properties. But with an iPad app that makes you want to waste time on the site, the company needs to run in this direction faster.

When Larry Page accepted the resignation of senior VP of product Jonathan Rosenberg on Monday, that was just beginning of a shakeup in the top ranks of Google. Page is ending his first week back as CEO by naming the senior team who each will run a different part of Google and report directly to him.

If you want to know what Page’s priorities will be for Google, just look at this team and the products they run: search, ads, YouTube, mobile, Chrome, and social. Team Larry consists of six key people at Google: Andy Rubin (Senior Vice President of Mobile), Salar Kamangar (Senior Vice President of YouTube and Video), Vic Gundotra (Senior Vice President of Social), Sundar Pichai (Senior Vice President of Chrome) Alan Eustace (Senior Vice President of Search), and Susan Wojcicki (Senior Vice President of Ads). Each will run their respective parts of Google independently, with a direct line to Page. After all, extra layers of management just get in the way. (Conspicuously absent is Local, which is currently under VP Marissa Mayer)

Search and Ads, obviously still remain supreme, and Page put two of his most seasoned execs in charge of those (Google started in Wojcicki’s garage, and her sister is married to co-founder Sergey Brin). YouTube is finally coming into its own under the leadership of Kamangar, another vet who wrote Google’s first business plan, launched AdWords, and previously was in charge of all the Web apps). And putting all of Mobile under Android chief Rubin is a no-brainer. The Web is going mobile and Google needs to be there in a big way. These are all sizeable businesses already.

But Chrome and Social? Aren’t these just experiments? Apparently not. Putting Gundotra in charge of social last summer was already an indication of how seriously Google is taking it (he was previously helping Rubin lead the Android charge, especially among developers). But now with his promotion and the recent launch of +1 (Google’s most recent foray into social), it’s getting more attention from up top.

How much more? Page is so focussed on it that 25 percent of everyone’s annual bonus at Google, reports SAI, will be tied to how well it does with social. That’s how much Facebook scares Page. But he’s not crazy. Social is critical. If people shift from search to sharing as the primary means to find information, then Google needs to figure out how to tap into social, and fast.

Chrome is perhaps the biggest surprise of the lot. It’s always been a strategic priority for Google—both the Chrome browser and the Chrome OS. But the Chrome OS hasn’t even shipped yet and is viewed by many outsiders as another outlandish engineering side project. That would be underestimating how important Chrome is to Google. Pichai, the newly promoted VP in charge of Chrome, was heavily recruited by Twitter earlier this year to become its head of product. Google countered with an almost unheard-of $50 million in stock grants, and now they want their money’s worth.

On the browser front, Google is gaining with Chrome in terms of market share, but more important to the company is simply to keep pressure on all the other browser makers to speed up the Internet experience for consumers. The faster people can move around the Web, the more they search. It’s as simple as that. Making a full-fledged OS is a longer-term project which aims straight at Microsoft. But the idea is similar. If all of your applications and data are in the cloud, your main mode of computing will be to always be in the Internet, in your browser, searching.

Photo credit: Flickr/Laughing Squid

Finding the right vendor for mass scale language translations can be confusing for content owners. Clearly, in the matters of translation, quality is key. Cloudwords, startup founded by ex-Salesforce.com employees, has quietly launched a cloud-based application that helps companies improve their translation process and find the right translation vendor.

The startup, which launched in mid-February, allows customers to find vendors that will translate any type of content, including marketing, website, documentation and product, from any language to any language. Cloudwords goes beyond just connecting customers and vendors.

The application actually stores and manages a customers prior translated content in the form of a database, commonly known as Translation Memory, helping them improve the quality of their translations, while reducing the time and cost to produce translated material.

In terms of connecting clients to vendors, Cloudwords levels the playing field through total transparency. Buyers and vendors share all the same information and the starup ensures that customers are getting exactly what they want most in the transaction. Buyers want knowledge of how prices between vendors compare, and a central place to view and manage all of their translation projects. Vendors want a steady flow of project opportunities. The Cloudwords Community of thousands of translation vendors are globally distributed across Europe, Asia, Americas and Australia

As co-founder Michael Meinhardt tells us, what Salesforce.com did for managing the sales process, Cloudwords will do for managing the translation process.

And the startup raised $3 million in Series A funding from individuals including, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com Founding CTO Dave Moellenhoff, Current Salesforce CTO Craig Weissman, and CEO of Okta Todd McKinnon. Early customers include SuccessFactors, Veeva Systems, Calypso Technology and Coupa Software.

Meinhardt says that the translation Industry is a $20 Billion market and growing at 15 percent each year, which shows that there is indeed a market for a distributed marketplace like Cloudwords.

More investors pouring more money into Spanish group buying site Groupalia as the company just announced that it has landed $15 million from current shareholders and new backers like General Atlantic, Insight Venture Partners and Index Ventures. The round follows a 5 million euros investment secured back in October 2010 and a 2.5 million euros round secured back in May 2010. Groupalia is a site that features a daily deal, in the form of a discount coupon, on the best things to do, see, eat and buy in the cities where it is present. The company expects a turnover of $150 million in 2011, which would be 16 times the turnover booked last year.

Facebook, as I’m sure you know, is blocked in China.

And being banned in a country that boasts roughly 500,000,000 Internet users is, of course, not exactly an ideal situation for a company aggressively looking for growth worldwide.

Now Facebook is rumored to have recently inked a partnership deal with a Chinese Internet giant in a move to enter the country (which, as some have pointed out, won’t be a walk in the park any way you look at it).

The rumors originate from a message posted on Sina Weibo, a Chinese Twitter-type micro-sharing service, by Hu Yanping, a director of the Data Center of China Internet, a respected Internet business analyst and former journalist.

Thomas Crampton translates his message, posted a few hours ago, thusly:

"Facebook really is about to enter China, the agreement is signed. A domestic website will work with Facebook to create a new site. This new site is not interlinked with Facebook.com. Will this live or die in China?"

At the end of last year, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg traveled to China, quite visibly. Though labeled as a personal vacation, he met with a bunch of interesting business people there, including Robin Li, the billionaire co-founder of Baidu, China Mobile CEO Wang Jianzhou, Sina.com CEO Charles Chao and the head of Alibaba Group, Jack Ma.

The Wall Street Journal noted at the time:

The trip appeared to be an effort by the 26-year-old to learn more about the Chinese market, rather than discuss any specific business proposals. But it came as the Facebook founder openly has discussed a desire to get into China, where the government has blocked access to the site since last year.

At an earlier talk to aspiring entrepreneurs at Y Combinator's Startup School, Zuckerberg indeed expressed hopes to figure out the “right partnerships that we would need to do in China to succeed on our terms.”

“Before we do anything there, I’m personally spending a lot of time studying it and figuring out what I think the right thing to do is,” he said, according to the WSJ. “It’s such an important part of the world. How can you connect the world if you leave out 1.6 billion people?”.

So which partnership, exactly, has been signed, at least according to YanPing? If the rumors check out, Facebook likely reached an agreement with Sina, the largest Chinese-language infotainment web portal, or Baidu, the Chinese search engine juggernaut, or perhaps both.

Establishing a partnership with a local Internet giant would be the right way for Facebook to enter China in a way that appeases its restrictive government.

It’s also worth noting Facebook would still have to compete against the likes of Tencent’s PengYou and QZone, 51.com and RenRen and Kaixin001. Coincidentally, the latter is rumored to shoot for an IPO in the United States, the WSJ reported this morning.

We’ve contacted Facebook for comment and will update when we hear back.

For your further reading pleasure:

TC: Chinese Social Networks ‘Virtually’ Out-Earn Facebook And MySpace (April 2009)
TC: When Will China's Internet Giants Open the Acquisition Wallet? (December 2010)

Forbes: Facebook Should Be In China, Says Baidu (December 20, 2010)
TechRice: Why Zuckerberg Came to China and Why Facebook Will Not (Dec 27, 2010)
Forbes: Will Facebook Follow Zuckerberg To China? Inevitably (December 28, 2010)
Fast Company: The Facebooks of China (January 12, 2011)
Bloomberg BusinessWeek: China’s Facebook Syndrome (March 10, 2011)
PCWorld: Twitter Won’t Be Able to Ignore China, Co-founder Says (March 24, 2011)

Rolling up video advertising is the order of the day its seems. UK advertising tech company and network Burst Media has been acquired for £18.5 million ($30 million) in cash and shares by video indexing and advertising company Blinkx.

Burst was the 16th largest ad network in the U.K. in February 2010, reaching nearly 12.3 million unique viewers, and itself acquired ad network OTP Media, as well as entertainment ad network Giant Realm for $2.1 million, both last year.

As Google cracks down on low-quality content in search results, content farm About.com says that it is going to make a significant expansion of its existing premium content. The New York Times Company-owned property plans to grow its family of topic sites (called Guides) and will double its high-quality video content over the next year.

According to a release, About.com plans to increase its roster of Guide sites it hosts by approximately 25 percent across categories such as food, health, home, parenting, and automotive. About.com has actually redesigned its homepage to feature this how-to guides more prominently. Video is also a big focus for About.com and the site will more than double the number of how-to and do-it-yourself videos. The company also vaguely said that it will provide advertisers with new ways to reach its “search-driven” users.

Part of the expansion includes the launch of a Spanish-language channel, About en Español, which features nine topics including movies, music, kids, dogs, Internet for beginners, personal computers, literature, makeup and spreadsheets, with nearly 100 more expected by the end 2011.

As Google cracks down on low-quality content farm content in search, About.com is clearly trying to increase its “premium” content. Google has tweaked its algorithm to reduce rankings for low-quality sites, ‘sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful.’ But is it too little too late for About.com to jump on the premium content bandwagon?

A test: A Russian buyer goes to a “rogue” electronics dealer on the Russia-China border to pick up a 500GB portable hard drive. He takes it home and plugs it in. It shows up as a 500GB drive but when he tries to put files on it doesn’t work. Feh, he says, and when he returns to the market the trader is gone.

Rather than give up, the intrepid victim takes the HD to another shop. They open the case and find what?

a) A naked mole rat
b) An empty box
c) Bees
d) None of the above.

Read more…

Social product recommendation site ShopSocially is debuting its "Social Connect" product for online retailers, that allows shoppers to recommend products from the retailer’s site on Facebook.

Social Connect aims to turns shoppers into brand ambassadors by allowing users to share their favorite products to Facebook from a retailer’s site. It’s similar to the Like button, but ShopSocially says that it gives merchants the ability to access conversion rates on the links shared, number of clicks and more.

Social Connect also helps retailers monetize their fan base by creating a shopping community called Shoppers" on their Facebook fan page, where fans can see what their friends and other shoppers are buying at the retailer site. The Shoppers tab also shows who the top shoppers are for a retailer and the top products bought. A number of online retailers have signed on to use Social Connect, including Sephora, CafePress, Zales, Rawlings Gear and several others. Paid subscriptions to use Social Connect start at $49 per month. Custom pricing is available for large merchants.

As we wrote in our review of ShopSocially’s consumer facing site, the startup brings your Facebook friends into its system, and you can choose which friends you’d like to “shout” your potential purchase to get feedback on the site. You can also publish your purchase to the site, a la Blippy. In order to publish your desired product, you simply publish the link to the item and ShopSocially will include a picture and link in the update. Users can post comments on friends’ items and you can push your posts to Facebook.

The startup is also revealing a few statistics from its data that supports the notions that e-commerce and Facebook are becoming increasingly complimentary. ShopSocially says that Facebook posts generate 3 times more clicks compared to Twitter (after normalizing for number of friends/followers).Each shared purchase is worth $3.08 to $5.56 on Facebook and worth $1.27 to $1.89 on Twitter (the numbers vary by product category).

Shared purchases by influencers drive 40 to 60x more clicks compared to average. And conversion rate from friend referred traffic is 48% higher than average. Finally, ShopSocially claims that enabling Social Connect creates an immediate revenue lift of between 2 and 6.5%

While we haven’t seen the actual revenue spikes to prove that lift, the new product is just another confirmation that Facebook is steadily becoming an integral part of e-commerce.

Another day, another Honeycomb tablet. This one comes to us courtesy of Acer and looks nearly identical to its European cousin, the Acer-made Packard Bell Liberty Tab. The Iconia costs an acceptable $449.99 complete with 16GB memory and a microSD card reader. The 10.1-inch tablet runs Honeycomb out of the box and can display 1280×800 video thanks to a 1GHz Tegra 250 processor.

The Iconia is DLNA complaint and Acer is offering video docks, keyboards, and cases to round out the offering. It weighs 1.69 lbs and is .52 inches thick. It will not support Flash out of the box but, like the Xoom, it will support it in a further update.

You can pre-order the device on April 8 from Best Buy and it will ship on April 24. It will cost $449.99.

Read More

Earlier this week, Google registered a slew of .com domain names related to music and clouds.

A tipster points out that the Internet company registered names like GoogleBass.com, GoogleAlto.com, GoogleSoprano and GoogleTenor.com along with GoogleNebula.com, GoogleThunder.com and GoogleLightning.com.

None of them resolve to an actual website (at least not yet), but WHOIS searches reveal they were all registered by Google last Wednesday.

Alto, bass, soprano and tenor are of course well-known human singing voice types (although, technically, alto is not a voice type but in fact a “designated vocal line in choral music based on vocal range”). Lightning, thunder and nebula all have something to do with clouds (nebula is Latin for ‘cloud’).

This doesn’t mean anything, but I thought it’d be fun noting the domain name registrations because of Google’s imminent introduction of a cloud-based music service, ya know.

A TechCrunch t-shirt if you can find more domain names Google registered on April 6.

Update: that didn’t take long. Other domains registered by Google last Wednesday: GoogleChill.com, GoogleChills.com, GoogleColossus.com, GoogleHangout.com, GoogleHangouts.com, GoogleIon.com, GoogleIons.com and GoogleSparks.com.

[Picture of (a wax statue of) world-famous operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti courtesy of Flickr user cliff1066™, and the hat tip goes to Fusible.com editor JB.]

It was a pretty exciting at 500 Startups Demo Day part deux today, namely because the accelerator had two sessions — one at 10am and a later one at 5pm, both drawing in a lot of startup mentor and investor attendance.

For those of you have not yet visited the 500 Startups office in Mountain View, the view is impeccable and the layout and interior design is extremely well thought out. For example a Spock painting by Twitter Fail Whale artist Yi Ying Lu adorned the wall of the conference room where I spent all day talking to startups.

While we’ve got our own “Best Of” list — including video interviews with some of the startups we find most interesting — going out tomorrow, Angel investor Mike Edwards has decided to create his own defacto list, by basically putting his money where his mouth is. Edwards has decided to invest $150K in three of the startups on the spot, CrowdRally, Punchd and Rewardli (hi George)– $50K each on sheer “damn, I’m impressed with your pitches” factor.

Punchd is a startup that takes loyalty cards mobile, letting users finally aggregate all those business card-like pieces of paper with punchholes that they randomly collect. CrowdRally brought video brand endorsement into the Facebook platform until Facebook sent them a cease and desist six weeks ago, after which they pivoted into a social video sharing startup. Rewardli enables small businesses to take advantage of group buying discounts in order to collectively save.

All three were 500Startups accelerator companies, which means that the incubator went in for $50K at a $1 million valuation and has the option of moving on when the three raise their Series A. All three are continuing to flesh out their seed rounds at between $300 to $500K.

Whipping out your checkbook on the spot is a precedent set by 500 Startups founder Dave McClure, who isn’t your father’s incubator founder. McClure calls all 22 of the startups demonstrating (out of 110 portfolio companies) his “little monsters” a la Lady Gaga, and people are encouraged to heckle the startups who demo, presumably toughening them up for the harsh world of refining, revamping, failing and succeeding. And, as today proves, success does sometimes happen on the spot.

Images and video of the celebrations via Speakergram’s Sam Rosen, below.

It was another fast-paced day at 500 Startups’ open house in Mountain View today, as Dave McClure and company officially introduced the world to its first batch of killer startups. One of the many stellar demos came from Ninua, a startup that is building social apps around news, blogs, and social media.

Its recently launched Ninua News Reader is a news-sharing application for Android that recommends articles and blog posts that people in your network are writing or sharing. It allows for the automatic curation of what appears in your stream, based on your interests as well as your friends' interests. Not another news aggregator, you may be muttering. Well, yes, but it has a slight twist. It’s Facebook enabled — and built on a blog platform.

The Facebook app is something Ninua has had success with in the past. The Ninua News Reader is built on top of the startup’s first app, NetworkedBlogs, an application that allows you to syndicate your blog to Facebook and to embed social widgets on your blog. It’s designed to help bloggers build a presence on social networks like Facebook and Twitter who might not be able to otherwise. After all, the bottom 98 percent of blogs get 3 pageviews a day, so social network reach changes the game. Part MyBlogLog and part RSS feed, NetworkedBlogs has gained some serious traction and currently has just under 1.7 million active monthly users.

For the first release of its reader (which you can see in the image above), Ninua will be purely serving recommendations from the 700K feeds on NetworkedBlogs. While that leaves out a few services, it’s perfect for blog enthusiasts. And considering Networked is the largest news community on Facebook, it has sizable reach and a dearth of content from which to serve you your daily news soup.

As an interesting aside, in a turn away from the Web 2.0 naming standard, Founder and CEO Waleed Abdulla told me that startup derives its moniker from an ancient Assyrian city of the same name. Ninua was home to one of the largest libraries of the ancient world, with some 30K clay tablets in store. Using its namesake as inspiration, the startup is aiming to serve you with news and information that is topical and informative to you, specifically. While it leverages Facebook’s social graph, it does so only with the intent of suggesting relevant social connections — your friends and people with similar reading habits.

Both NetworkedBlogs and the Ninua Reader are free, but NetworkedWorld offers premium upgrades for $20. And at some point in the near future, Abdulla said, the reader will offer premium upgrades as well, like in-app purchases. These premiums have allowed the startup to become cash flow positive in recent months.

Ninua has raised $150K from both the fbFund and 500 Startups.

Ask a VC has been sporadic with my travel schedule, but we’re back this week. My guest is Izhar Armony of Charles River Ventures. He brings a different perspective to the show for a few reasons.

For one thing, he’s from the East Coast. And as a former member of the Israeli army– aka the country’s entrepreneurial finishing school– and a former exec for Tel Aviv-based Onyx Interactive, he’s well versed in what has worked so well in one of the world’s most surprising entrepreneurial hot spots.

Armony is also on the board of Intellectual Ventures, an invention factory set up by Nathan Myhrvold. Intellectual Ventures has been lauded by some, but is incredibly controversial in Silicon Valley where insiders lob one of the biggest possible insults at Myhrvold: A patent troll.

Lastly, a good deal of Armony’s experience is in enterprise software. So questions about the new developments in enterprise are fair game too.

We tape mid-morning tomorrow, so send your questions now to askavc(at)TechCrunch(dot)com.

A reader who works at Best Buy just told us that there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding between the electronics retailer and Apple. Apparently, Best Buy was holding off on selling the iPad 2s it had in stock, telling customers there weren’t any when in fact they had just reached their quota of sales for the day.

Not the smartest business decision I’ve seen. Apple retail roll-outs aren’t really something you mess with.

Continue reading…

Dave McClure’s seed fund, accelerator, and incubator, 500 Startups, held an open house in Mountain View today to officially introduce the world to its first batch of companies. The group of mostly consumer-focused startups (not much advertising to be found) at Demo Day put forth quite a few interesting ideas and business models. We’ll be posting a roundup of the best startups (with interviews) later tonight.

Among those nifty ideas presenting today is Motion Math, a startup creating a suite of educational apps intended to give kids a more interactive (and fun) way to learn challenging topics. The startup (which just raised an undisclosed seed round from 500 Startups and a flock of angels) wants to leverage the engaging physical aspects of the mobile experience, like the touch interface and accelerometer, to create that interactive quality which will help kids internalize what they’re learning.

The iOS app’s gameplay (and at this point the only one in the suite that is currently live) has the gamer follow a bouncing star, prompting answers to mathematical questions and equivalencies, while following the number line. The game focuses primarily on fractions, as the startup is of the mind that fractions are a critical foundation in early math.

Thus, the game teaches kids how to turn fractions into percentages, then into decimals, and so on; the idea being that, the more young people are able to solidify these important, fundamental mathematical concepts in their heads, the likelier they will be to do well in future mathematical and academic pursuits. Not to mention, fractions are a pain in the ass, and many kids struggle to learn how to add and subtract them, etc.

The startup’s founders, Jacob Klein and Gabriel Adauto, are both graduates of the learning, design, and technology graduate program at the Stanford School of Education. At Stanford, they studied a theory called “embodied cognition”, which is essentially the belief that the mind and body interact on the fly as a single entity, and movement is based not on internal reactions, but the immediate interaction with physical environment. What does that mean? Well, it’s essentially academic research that gave birth to one of the startup’s principle ideas, which is that physical experience of intellectual data — like fractions — leads to increased understanding and digestion.

As such, the gameplay experience is important to Motion Math, and the founders said that they want there to be no separation between that gameplay and the learning. (To me, this sounds like an excellent way to persuade kids to enjoy math games.)

After all, kids love tablets, and they love phones — almost as much as they love stealing them from their parents. So, trying a tablet app — that involves physical interaction — and makes learning fun? I think kids might be into that idea. And parents might be into the fact that the app is supported by scientific educational research. There’s a bit more thought behind Motion Math than, say, The Count from Sesame Street. (As much as we love him.)

The second half of Motion Math’s business will be the aggregation of the data it collects from users playing the game. The startup plans to track scores, trends, or, say, fractions that are problematic, and parents will be able to follow their child’s progress in a dashboard.

“We’re currently using Flurry for our analytics, we’ll soon build our own data collection platform for drawing insights on individual and aggregate learning and for giving feedback to kids, parents, and teachers”, Klein told me. “Many parents are very curious about how their kids are progressing – we already have very rich data”.

Klein also told me that they had been experimenting with price points for the iPhone, between $1 and $2, and between $3 and $4 for the iPad. Android apps will be coming later this year. And for you Android, iOS platform engineers out there, the startup will be using its seed funding, among other things, to step up hiring efforts.

Motion Math is based on a very interesting concept, and I look forward to the startup’s future game releases. I hope grammar is next. After all, it’s about time someone started thinking of the children.

This past weekend, I headed down to Mexico with a group of friends for a bachelor party. It was a lot like The Hangover — if you replace tigers, Mike Tyson, and Zac Galifianakis with Macs, iPhones, and iPads. Clearly, we’re all in the tech scene. I bring this up because sometimes it can be telling to see what applications people actually use when they’re away from the normal routine. And surprisingly, our most-used app was probably Color.

I know what you’re thinking: Color?!

Yes, the insanely-hyped-due-to-a-$41-million-pre-launch-round app was a major companion of ours in Mexico. And we weren’t just using it in an ironic or novelty way, we were actually using it sincerely (well, as sincerely as one can use something in drunken party mode). And it made sense.

After the initial launch of Color, everyone was quick to jump on the “$41 million for this?!” bandwagon. It was both predictable and silly at the same time. This started a mere five minutes after the initial posts came out — the app wasn’t even live yet — and people were bashing it. This continued for a few days.

But a funny thing happens when you actually use the app in the way that it’s intended: it works really well.

Over the weekend, there were five of us that were using the app to quickly take pictures of what we were doing and sharing them with others within the app and via Twitter and Facebook. A bunch of us got messages from other friends and family noting how cool it was that they could follow along in real time.

You might think: who wants to follow along in real time? Well, friends and family, obviously. But it goes beyond that as well. It’s the same reason why people want to see your tweets or Facebook status updates and pictures or Instagram photos — it’s social voyeurism. And Color is perhaps the pinnacle of it so far.

It’s an extension of the reason that apps like Qik quickly rose to fame a few years ago. But the problem was that the mobile networks weren’t powerful enough yet for realtime video streaming to fully make sense. And to be honest, they still really aren’t. You’ll notice that the newer guys doing video in this space, like Color and Path, stick to short, 10 second long videos. But pictures remain the real opportunity.

The key to Color is the right combination of behind-the-scenes set-up and quickness. Once the update was released over the weekend with a navigation that actually made sense, a major obstruction was lifted and the actual usefulness became much more apparent.

Whereas apps like Instagram, Picplz, and Path are great for sharing one-off photos, that’s not what Color is doing. Their specialty is the ability to rapidly document an event with multiple pictures (and short videos) from multiple perspectives. The result is actually quite fascinating when it all comes together. You get a sorta living, breathing photo album for an event.

Some of the photos are good, but many of them are mediocre to bad. But it doesn’t matter. It’s about the album as a whole, not a single picture.

I’ve always believed that one of the key things Instagram got right (and has spurred their quick growth) is speed. Unlike other photo-sharing apps that focus on things like picture quality and tagging, Instagram lets you get it out there as quickly as possible (with filters effectively negating the quality aspect). That’s the most important element of mobile photo-sharing, speed. And Color nails it as well.

You hit the button, take a picture, see the preview, and then the picture goes live. The entire process only takes a few seconds. Other photo apps can take upwards of 60 seconds once all is said and done — or more. With Color, there’s no need to tag your location (that’s done for you), tag your friends (that’s sort of implied by who else is Coloring with you — though it should get better as more people use the app), no need to create albums (done for you), there are no filters, and captions are optional (and not emphasized).

Speed, speed, speed, speed. With a side of automation and ease.

Don’t get me wrong, the app is still far from perfect — and I think their team would be the first to say that. But when used as intended in an appropriate setting, it does work really well. I’m looking back at the Colors we took last weekend, and they’re great. It’s like a photo scrapbook that was really easy to make. I wish I had Color at parties when I was growing up, or in college, that I could look back on now.

Maybe Color owns this space, maybe they don’t. But it has given me the strongest indication yet that there is a space here worth owning.

It's almost funny: between iOS, Android, and the Mac App Store, we've entered the age of the App, where standalone programs often specialize in doing a handful of things very well. There's an app for looking up baseball schedules, an app for finding the nearest gas station, and so on (you’ve seen the commercials). But despite the increasing ubiquity of these handy Apps, actually finding what you're looking for can be incredibly difficult, because search tends to be really, really bad across the most popular platforms.

Enter Quixey. The startup, which is still in private beta, has been built from the ground up to specialize in app search. And instead of searching for an application's name (which is sort of difficult if you have no idea what to look for), Quixey lets you search by what you're trying to do. The company has raised a $400K seed round led by Innovation Endeavors — which is outgoing Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s investment firm — with participation from Archimedes Ventures. Yep, Schmidt’s firm is investing in a search engine.

Quixey's search engine lets you type in a query, like "Crop photos", and get a list of applications that should fit the bill — which you can filter by platform. And it doesn't just support iOS and Android. Quixey also has support for browser extensions, Windows and Mac apps, iGoogle, and more.

Of course, there are already plenty of other search engines that can search for apps. But many of these, like Apple’s App Store, rely on the titles and descriptions submitted by developers. Quixey draws from a variety of sources as it attempts to determine what each application can be used for, including blog posts that have been written about the app, user reviews, and more. The company isn’t talking too much about these data sources, explaining that it’s part of their special sauce.

The service is still in private beta so it's a bit early to judge it on accuracy, but I ran a few test queries and the results showed promise. The top match for my query for "crop photos" in Android Apps was something called "Crop Image Tester" — which says it's "for developer purposes". But the third hit, called "Share Image" was right on the mark, promising to resize, rotate, and crop images.

I had less luck looking for an iPad application that would let me highlight or annotate documents (the word "highlight" returns no results). But, again, there's still time for Quixey to hone their algorithms before launch.

One other thing to note. Quixey sounds similar in some ways to Chomp (an app-focused search engine), Appsfire, and other app directories. But Quixey has another trick up its sleeve: it can power search for other applications and websites, in much the same way that Google Custom Search does. In fact, they go as far to say, “We’re not competing with Chomp.”

In Twitter’s attempt to monetize, there’s no question that a key factor is brand support. That is, brands utilizing the network effectively to interact with customers and spread messages. Twitter knows it’s a potential goldmine. But it’s also not where it needs to be yet. And that’s exactly why Twitter loves SocialFlow.

SocialFlow is a social media platform that essentially teaches brands how to use Twitter most effectively. And they actually do more than that — they use data analysis to use Twitter most effectively on their behalf. Brands come up with the tweets they want to send out, then send them SocialFlow’s way so they can determine the best time to tweet.

It’s all about maximum exposure — but maximum exposure with the right users.

And it’s a model that already working. Revenues have been pouring in for about a year now. That’s exactly why investors are pouring a $7 million Series A into the company today. And it’s also why Twitter has signed a long-term agreement with them as well.

In order to best determine when to send out brands’ tweets, SocialFlow needs to analyze the data flowing through Twitter. To do that, they obviously need access to the full firehose. And with the Twitter partnership, that’s exactly what they’re getting. Yes, the 155 million tweets a day that are currently flowing through Twitter now go through SocialFlow as well.

To be clear, SocialFlow had access to Twitter’s data before, but only on a trial, month-to-month basis. But Twitter loved what the company was doing with the data enough that both sides decided to formalize the agreement today. “It’s like a promise ring,” SocialFlow co-founder Frank Speiser quips.

Neither side would comments on the terms of the relationship — but it’s clearly beneficial to both.

“This is exactly what we want to see out of the ecosystem,” Twitter Platform lead Ryan Sarver adds. “These guys are building a real business,” he continues, clearly references the most recent (and controversial) ToS changes.

Both this SocialFlow deal and the recent Mediasift partnership point to the future of the Twitter ecosystem. It’s no longer about building new clients, it’s about utilizing the information that’s already there and augmenting it. The Mediasift deal is about the re-syndication of content, the SocialFlow one is about the production of great content, Sarver notes.

The Series A round was led by Softbank, with Softbank NY, RRE Ventures, Betaworks, High Line Venture Partners, AOL Ventures, SV Angel and some individual angels investing. This follows a seed round just about a year ago from Betaworks and Dan Porter (the CEO of OMGPOP).

Speiser notes that the new money gives them enough room to do the things that they want to do. That includes a lot of research on the data they’re both receiving and creating. “We realize this is something that people will pay for and they really need,” he says.

The NYC-based SocialFlow now has 17 employees and came out of Betaworks.

Travel search and booking giant Expedia, which is traded on the Nasdaq under ‘EXPE,’ is spinning off trip reviews site TripAdvisor as a public company. In a release, Expedia said that its Board of Directors has preliminarily approved the plan to separate Expedia into two publicly traded companies.

Expedia/IAC must feel that spinning off TripAdvisor as a public company could be a financially lucrative move. TripAdvisor, which was founded in 2000, was originally bought by IAC in for $212 million in 2004. IAC spun off Expedia, which included TripAdvisor, in 2005. The newly formed TripAdvisor would include all of the domestic and international operations, including its flasghipsite and 18 other travel media and advertising brands.

According to the release: It is anticipated that the transaction will take the form of a distribution of stock of TripAdvisor to Expedia stockholders or a reclassification of Expedia stock, with the holders of Expedia stock receiving a proportionate amount of TripAdvisor stock, in either case in a tax free transaction. It is expected that Expedia’s dual-class equity capital structure and the governance arrangements between Barry Diller and Liberty Media will be mirrored at TripAdvisor following the transaction.

The transaction is still subject to final approval by Expedia’s Board of Directors and the company says that it will probably seek stockholder approval of the transaction. The proposed spin-off is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2011.

Do we really need another book about Google? If it's as richly researched, memorably anecdotal and as finely written as In The Plex, Steven Levy’s new book about how Google thinks, works and shapes our lives, then the answer is: yes we do!

In The Plex is the most comprehensive and carefully researched book to date about Google's various businesses – from search to Android to YouTube to AdWords. In addition to writing what he calls "a biography" of the Google search engine and the company's data centers, Levy also offers a fascinating account of Google's failed China policy and its seemingly Sisyphean struggle to keep up with Facebook in social media.

Steven not only came into TechCrunch's San Francisco plex yesterday to give us his first online video interview about In The Plex, but he's also given TechCrunch readers five free copies of his new book. If you want one, “like” us on our TechCrunch Facebook page and tell us why you want a copy on that page. We’ll pick 5 winners tonight at 8pm PST.

Why we really do need another book about Google

How does Google shape our lives?

Is Google a monopolist?

Editor’s note: Reggie Bradford is the CEO of Vitrue, a social media marketing platform based in Atlanta.

Do serious tech companies still need to be based in Silicon Valley? There seems to be an endless debate about this among founders everywhere. My own startup, Vitrue, turns 5 this week. That's forever in startup years, and it's got me to thinking about my friend Ron Conway. Ron invested in Vitrue on October 28, 2006. He's a true industry legend (noteworthy enough to have his own Wikipedia page) and a long-time Valley resident. At the time, we had several late-night, semi-sober conversations about moving the headquarters to Silicon Valley. Five years later I'm glad I stuck to my guns and kept the company in The Big Peach.

We have quite a vibrant startup community here with companies such as MailChimp, MFG.com, and Scoutmob, and Solo Health. Vitrue is now a large and growing provider of social marketing (SaaS) software for brands and agencies worldwide. We tripled revenues last year, added more than 90 new employees during Q1 alone and are expanding worldwide. Our platform is currently managing more than 500 million fans. This is my third startup. The first two—WebMD and N2 Broadband—were both acquired. All from right here in Atlanta.

So with all due respect to my good friend and uber-Angel investor Ron Conway, here are five reasons why I'm glad I didn't move us from Atlanta to the Valley. And why Silicon Valley, despite still being the capital of the technology world, doesn't necessarily make or break a company.

1. Social media is a global phenomenon.

Many of the world's most iconic brands use our products. How many of them do you think are headquartered in Silicon Valley?

2. Today you can find talent everywhere, not just the Valley.

Having said that, however, there is no doubt that the sheer concentration of incredible talent within the Bay area is unmatched. No one is disputing that. But there's a price (literally) for that concentration, and looking outside the valley for the key personnel to build your company can be cost effective and just plain effective-effective.

In Atlanta we have a massive geek-generator called "Georgia Tech" that keeps us well-stocked with talented, young, enthusiastic, affordable software engineers. Think Radian6, which was recently acquired by Salesforce.com for $326 million. It's headquartered in New Brunswick, Canada. And how about Omniture? They were based in Orem, Utah. Look for this trend to continue.

3. Cities are getting it.

Other cities have come to appreciate the value of innovation and are providing the resources and environments for companies to find success and scale in the technology space. Cities that have historically never been considered particularly innovative are fostering startup after startup. Think Austin, Boulder, even Indianapolis.

For example, in Atlanta, our home base, we had much success working with non-profit organizations like Atlanta's ATDC (Advanced Technology Development Center), a partnership with Georgia Tech, which offers tremendous resources for technology companies and entrepreneurs to grow and develop. And cities across the nation have similar incubator programs to encourage technology.

4. You don’t have to live in the Valley to experience it

You think it matters for access? There are airplanes, phones, Skype, and heck, Facebook. For funding? So far we've raised $33 million. For recruiting board members and other upper-level participants? Former Facebook Ad Sales Chief Mike Murphy recently joined us as my special advisor. Not a bad get for an "Atlanta-headquartered" company.

I will, however, note here that access in the Valley is pretty special…and technology companies must spend time networking there. We do. We're not fools. I spent the first two weeks of the year in the Valley raising capital. The ability to network and get 10 meetings per day is extremely productive. But I don't have to live there to experience it. We don't have to be headquartered there. I can visit regularly via modern innovations in transport. Like the airplane.

5. College Football.

Okay, not everything is about business. No offense to you Pac-10 fans but that is hardly respectable football. I mean, come on, you realize that, right? You'll find the most elite football being played every Saturday in the fall on campuses across the South, especially a short 40-minute drive up the road from Vitrue HQ to Athens. Go Dawgs. Baseball? Even Buster Posey, the pride-and-joy of the Giants and last year's Rookie of the Year is a Georgia boy. Of course I would be remiss if I didn't mention my amazing family – all with strong Atlanta connections. Not to mention sweet tea, Chick-fil-A, great weather, Coke, CNN, Gladys Knight's Chicken and Waffles, and brunch. Atlanta loves brunch, let me tell you. It's been a hell of a ride over the last five years at Vitrue, and I can hardly wait to get started on the next five. From right here in good ol' Hotlanta.

The comments on yesterday’s post concerning the Xoom’s bungled launch stated loud and clear that people want inexpensive Android tablets — or at least that the high MSRP was the Xoom’s undoing. The thought is that if you’re going to spend over $500 on a tablet, the iPad is the only choice, which therefore makes the $800 Xoom a no-sale. I sort of agree with that even though I still feel the Xoom is a fantastic tablet. Still, I feel the poor marketing and product placement doomed the tablet rather than the price alone. Motorola never publicly justified the price.

That said, the Xoom would be a similar, but still different fail whale even if it launched at $300. It wouldn’t be the same Xoom. The dual core CPU, lovely screen, and abundant amounts of memory would be the first options on the cutting board. From there Moto would have probably slash the build quality from solid to cheap along with opting for a weaker battery. A lower-priced Xoom tablet would not be a more successful tablet. The vertical iTunes ecosystem opens up a huge revenue stream that allows Apple to price products different than most Android tablet makers. It’s not fair, really.

Still, it’s disingenuous to say companies are ignoring the low-end Android tablet market. It’s actually alive, well, and more than thriving. But please, don’t call the tablets after the jump iPad or even Xoom competitors. They’re not even in the same league. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth a look.

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