With BBM Music, RIM has thrown their hat into the already crowded mobile music ring. The new service’s focus on leveraging your social connections to score some new tunes is a novel twist, but it begs a significant question. Why would RIM release an ostensibly limited music service when you can shell out a few extra dollars a month for unlimited access?

At first glance, BBM Music seems like a huge hassle. Unless you only ever listen to a few songs, reaching out to your BBM buddies isn’t so much a suggestion as it is a requirement. Even though RIM claims to have a catalog of several million tracks, you can only ever have 50 of them linked with your BBM Music profile.

By connecting with your BBM-using friends, you slowly bolster your music collection by gaining access to their 50 songs, and so on. In short, it requires people to actually work for their music in addition to paying $4.99/month for it.

Competitor RDIO takes a similar approach to its social elements — you can follow fellow users and see what they’ve been playing — but none of that is mandatory to enjoy the nearly 9 million tracks in Rdio’s catalog. You’re definitely paying more for the privilege though: RDIO will run users $9.99/month for unlimited mobile access.

Still, the higher monthly price also grants users full access to the catalog on their computers, as well as on iOS and Android devices. It’s certainly the easier option between the two, but to unequivocally call it the better service is missing the point.

People have been drawing comparisons between these two opposing music models, but it’s very difficult to be fair since they’re geared for completely different audiences. It seems to me that BBM Music isn’t so much a music playing app as it is a music discovery app — it allows people to leverage their social connections to grow their collection, and it does it for less money than a typical Starbucks order.

By tying the music concept into BBM, RIM is capitalizing on one of the stickiest parts of the BlackBerry experience. There’s a strong chance that these users have already built up their BBM contact list, and with BBM Music, those users can finally get more out of their friends than just stimulating conversation.

Instead of trying to release a BlackBerry-specific unlimited streaming service that would drown in a sea of similar competitors, RIM wisely targeted people to whom the service would add the most value. Whether or not BBM Music will survive for long is another story entirely, but RIM took their music efforts in the best direction they could given the circumstances.

Former Google Reader Product Manager Brian Shih has posted a scathing, but fairly accurate, review of the update to Google Reader. The update, which removed Reader’s own social sharing features in favor of Google+, was unpopular among Google Reader’s most active users because it destroyed their niche community built up over the years. But in Shih’s opinion, that’s only one of its problems.

Just as bad is the new visual style, he says, referring to the stark, black-and-white user interface Google has been rolling out to all its products in recent weeks. Says Shih: “it’s as if whoever made the update did so without ever actually using the product to, you know, read something,”

Regular users of Google Reader will likely cheer upon reading Shih’s critique, which hits the nail right on the head:

Reader is a product built to consume information, quickly. We designed it to be very good at that one thing. G+ is an experience built around browsing (similar to Facebook) and socializing. Taking the UI paradigm for G+ and mashing it onto Reader without any apparent regard for the underlying function is awful and it shows.

The second and more obvious change, is that someone took the magic color-removing wand and drenched the whole page in grey. It’s so unbelievably stark, it’s hard to imagine a more desolate experience. Even G+ has blue links for post titles. Blue titles are good enough for Google search. Reader, which is built entirely around posts with titles, does away with this in the name of the almighty grey god.

And the trash-talking doesn’t stop there.

Aside from the horrid visual style, the other head-scratching question Shih poses is why Google chose to remove Google Reader’s internal sharing mechanisms in favor of Google+ instead of building out a more thoughtful integration. As another former Google Reader engineer Kevin Fox previously noted, Google could have made it so that sharing was pushed through Google+’s API, while the ”People You Follow” in Reader became a Reader-specific Circle.

It’s almost seems like Google doesn’t even care what happens to Reader or its community, as niche as that may be. (Except in Iran, that is). In fact, it’s been rumored that as far as Google is concerned, it would love kill off Reader entirely if it could. The horror!

Sadly, today’s alternatives to Google Reader are few and far between, and most don’t serve the needs of the heavy RSS user. Other readers attempt to differentiate themselves with features that appeal to mainstream readers, have interfaces that don’t quite work or run only as a desktop app. For what it’s worth, I’ve experimented with Feedly, NewsBlur, NetVibes, Fever, NetNewsWire, Pulse, and even the newly launched Intigi, but none come close to duplicating the Google Reader experience – they are all their own, very individual, news-consuming products. Fever is probably the best among the “host-your-own” crowd, and Feedly is a personal favorite for its design, but these are not real alternatives to Google Reader, they’re complimentary to it.

The most interesting alternative, HiveMind, is currently in the process of being built by a devout Google Reader user Francis Cleary, but has yet to launch. The hope there is that Cleary has an understanding of what Google Reader did right and what the others still lack. Time will tell.

For now, the best you can do is remain in Google Reader, tricked out with the Google Reader Rectifier Chrome extension, which at least helps fix the whitespace issue. (Reader seems slower after its install, however.)

At the end of the day, the changes Google is now making, both to Reader and otherwise, indicate it has a clear agenda for pursuing social at all costs. It has even shuttered a number of under-performing services, its Labs offerings, and products from acquisitions, so it can focus its efforts on its core products, which now includes social. That may prove the right thing for the company in the long run, but it is coming at the cost of some of Google’s most passionate users.

Image credits: top Google; second Brian Shih

Rockstar Games just released the first trailer for the upcoming GTA V game and it’s good to be home. Grand Theft Auto V is living large back in the beautiful state of San Andreas. The big city of Los Santos, the lovely ladies, and the fast cars — it’s all there. The game still doesn’t have a release date but don’t expect it this year. However, there will likely be a steady stream of trailers, teasers and random marketing until it’s hyped to unreasonable levels.

The Droid RAZR has certainly been the talk of the the town lately, with its 7.1mm waist line, 1.2GHz dual-core processor and uniquely beautiful design. According to the leaks, the RAZR should be gracing shelves by November 10 both here in the States and in the UK. But what about China?

Well, unlike the identical Droid RAZR for Verizon and the UK version (just RAZR), the Chinese model of the phone differentiates itself in terms of design, reports Unwired View. The corners are rounded off a bit more, and a TD-SCDMA radio’s been thrown into the mix, meaning the phone is headed for China Mobile.

It also seems like the bezel material is more of a silver than the gunmetal color we’re seeing here in the States, but that could merely be the flash lightening things up. On Verizon’s model, the ear piece is also silver, whereas this Chinese model seems to lack that finishing touch.

Specs wise, things haven’t really changed. You’ll still find the same 960×540 qHD display, 8-megapixel camera, Kevlar fiber casing, and Android 2.3 Gingerbread. In terms of availability, this version of the RAZR has just made its way through China’s version of the FCC, so it could potentially hit shelves pretty soon.

Many companies have begun to realize that social is not just a new channel or a new fad, it’s a new way of doing business. But learning the ropes, how to use social networks and social channels, and optimize and tailor social features for one’s business is easier said than done. This is where Gigya enters the equation. The startup offers a SaaS technology (or a social CRM platform, if you will) to help businesses make their websites social, integrating their online appendages with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. and consolidating the best social features into one solution.

To date, the startup supports more than 280 million users each month across more than 500,000 sites, with customers that include names like CBS, Fox Sports, Intuit, The Coca-Cola Company, The Home Depot, and Turner Networks, to name a few.

Gigya is big on social widgets and plug-ins, offering businesses the best of both in an effort to increase social registrations to get that much-coveted social graph info on users and customers and make it easier for them to sign up from their favorite social platforms, word-of-mouth marketing, community interaction and engagement — all that good stuff. It may sound like industry jargon, but leveraging this kind of optimized social functionality can be a boon for businesses, increasing the sharing of a business’ content or brand reach on platforms where, let’s be honest, half of the world is now interacting.

While the startup has made a play into social commerce with widgets to integrate e-Commerce platforms with social networks, etc., Gigya is today announcing the launch of an important (and perhaps somewhat intimidating) new technology that has big data implications. Social data implications, of course. The tech has been dubbed the “Identity Management Platform”, and essentially, it enables businesses to better manage user data by providing them with complete, permission-based access to a user’s social, profile, and behavior data culled from activity on their websites.

What sets the Identity Management Platform apart from other user management systems is that it combines both social data and on-site activity data (like commenting and sharing). The point is to help businesses solve a big hangup inherent to data collection/management, being that many big businesses struggle to keep their customer registration up to date. Most often, they have to rely on the registration info provided by customers during their initial sign up, which tends to change with the tides.

Otherwise, businesses might be forced to go out and purchase customer data from third parties, which can be expensive, often lacks interest graph info, and just, well, puts a bad taste in your mouth. As a customer, you might be thankful that your interest graph info isn’t included in the third party-packaged identity info (that’s yours) being bought and sold, but for businesses this represents a customer targeting, retention, and service goldmine. And, let’s be honest, this is the norm.

By putting social and on-site activity data in the cloud, Gigya allows its clients to access their visitors’ up-to-date social data, leveraging it through email marketing campaigns, content recommendations, and even segmentation for hyper-relevant ad targeting.

Importantly, users are authorizing sites to access their social/behavior graph data when they authenticate (with their social identities) when they register or login through Gigya’s social plugins that are integrated onto the business’ site. Again, potentially scary for users, but a huge time and money saver for big retailers, media companies, etc. The new platform also offers a cloud-based user registration system so that sites can maintain a unified user database across a network of sites by way of single sign-on for both social and traditional authentication.

The Identity Management Platform is also integrated with Gigya's suite of social plugins, including social login, ratings and reviews, comments, sharing, and game mechanics, so that clients can target their users all the more efficiently. For example, using the platform, marketers can easily create a list of all users who have a college degree, like travelling, and are socially influential.

Obviously, the social web provides businesses with the opportunity to understand their customers in more granular and focused ways, and by allowing these clients to access (and map) their users’ social data in the cloud, this has the potential to have a high value proposition for brands and their team of marketers. So look out, these teams are now becoming armed with realtime social data and tools that facilitate the personalization of ads and content, and soon they’ll know how to use it — and know who you are. Always?

Womply’s “Efortless Offers” is a new offers platform that links local merchants’ discounts to all major credit and debit cards, including Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover. Live now in the D.C. area, with plans to roll out to five additional markets by early January, the service feels like a daily deal site for consumers, but works like targeted advertising for local merchants.

The key differences between Womply and something like Groupon are that the offers are personalized for the consumers and are directed towards specific audiences. They don’t require a certain number of buyers in order to “tip,” and there are no coupons to print.

The company, which just launched last week in the D.C. area, was founded by former GM and Head of Sales at LivingSocial Brandt Squires, whose old startup, BuyYourFriendADrink was acquired by LivingSocial in 2009, and Toby Scammell (yes, him, but lets not doom Womply on a 24-year-old’s mistake, shall we?)

Womply has raised nearly $1 million from Dave McClure of 500 Startups and Deebek Ventures, LLC.

Here’s how Womply’s Effortless Offers works:

Upon signup, via Facebook login typically, Womply can tap into the customer’s Facebook profile data to initially locate and display the best offer in the neighborhood. To claim the deal, the customer will purchase it on their credit or debit card. Later, when they visit the merchant, they pay the full price for the goods or service provided. Womply, which has partnerships with banks and other financial partners, can spot the transaction and then credit the difference. The credit shows up within two days.

Although Womply means customers spend more money upfront, there are several benefits to the service, both for consumers and merchants alike. Consumers don’t have to remember to print out coupons or carry them around with them – they can just use their credit or debit card as usual to receive the deal. Also, because the deals require the additional upfront investment, consumers are less likely to buy a deal on impulse, and are more likely to purchase only those deals they plan to use. The targeting and personalization helps cut down on the noise created by daily deals, too, which is the same route Google is now going with its Google Offers product.

For merchants, Womply’s ability to spot the transactions means it knows how many offers were redeemed with 100% confidence. In addition, because of Womply’s personalization capabilities, merchants don’t view Womply as a “daily deals” service – they view it as something more akin to targeted advertising.

Further down the road, Womply will be able to use its transaction-spotting capabilities to further refine the deals it pitches consumers and reward their loyalty to specific merchants. This is likely the basis of its next, still undisclosed, second product which will roll out in a few weeks.

D.C. area residents can sign up for Womply now here.

Exclusive: Cloudera founder Christophe Bisciglia is debuting his new startup today, called Odiago. Odiago develops a product called WibiData, which leverages Apache Hadoop to manage and analyze large amounts of data. And the company is launching with a number of major backers including Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, Cloudera CEO Mike Olson, and SV Angel.

For background, Bisciglia founded Cloudera, a developer and commercial distributor of Hadoop, the open source software that powers the data processing engines of the worldʼs largest and most popular web sites. Prior to Cloudera, Bisciglia was a senior engineer at Google where he founded and led Google's Academic Cloud Computing Initiative, which provides Google hosted computational resources to facilitate education and research to universities around the world.

Bisciglia left Cloudera earlier this year to pursue other opportunities, which included Odiago. The startup, which includes a number of Bisciglia’s former colleagues from Google’s personalization team, is launching WibiData to help manage and analyze complex business data about users so you can predict how they are going to interact with the product in the future. Specifically, Bisciglia explains that the technology can be used for personalization for a number of web companies, including consumer web, e-commerce and gaming companies.

Bisciglia says that customers can also use the data analysis to create personalized products and services. And the technology easily integrates with business intelligence and database offerings. The company already has a number of high-profile customers using WibiData, including Wikipedia, Rich Relevance, and Atlassian.

As Bisciglia explains, Cloudera was a great opportunity to go wide in the application space. With WibiData, he is able to hone in on a specific business function for companies with massive amounts of data.

Stay tuned for more.

Stealthy email security startup Agari has raised $2.5 million in Series A funding led by Alloy Ventures with participation from Battery Ventures, First Round Capital and Greylock Partners.

Agari’s technology, which was developed by former IronPort/Cisco employees, assesses, visualizes, and protects against email threats to brands, such as phishing and other fraud. The startup collects terabytes of data to figure out what are the legitimate online identities in email and which ones consumers shouldn’t see in first place. The startup partners with email companies and senders to make sense out of what the company calls the ‘wild west of email.’

The company will use the funds to scale its cloud- based Email Trust Fabric to protect brand reputation, eliminate email threats, and prevent the loss of sensitive data. Agari developed its Email Trust Fabric to provide real-time processing of 1.5 billion messages daily to protect major brands in the Financial, E-Commerce, and Social Media sectors at more than a billion consumer mailboxes.

The company’s product will be widely released later in November.

Over a year passed since we covered powerful video editor LoiLoScope, but instead of resting on its laurels, maker LoiLo has kept innovating on the product. Aptly named LoiLoScope 2, the updated software for Windows PCs (system requirements) still has the same key value proposition: combining an easy-to-use UI (geared towards pros and amateurs alike) and a ton of editing functions with a technical “killer feature” (instead of letting the CPU do the heavy lifting, the editor uses the GPU for video processing).

Thanks to the “GPGPU editing engine”, LoiLoScope makes it possible to edit and preview videos in HD in real-time. In other words, users don’t need to wait for the software to process and then reflect the changes they make to the videos but can track them without delay (LoiLoScope supports a long list of input and output video formats).

Apart from editing videos the usual way (trimming, re-sizing, etc.), users can also add graphics, stamps, photos, sound, and other effects to them (new tools found in LoiLoScope 2 include various transitions, time remapping, or scrolling text). When you’re done, you can share videos online or burn them on DVD or Blu-ray, directly from within the software (which is also a new feature).

There are lot more improvements to version 2, for example with regards to the UI, which has been completely overhauled (but which still has a drag-and-drop-driven, game-like feel to it). LoiLoScope 2 now also offers a guide feature that helps beginners complete tasks: just choose the task in question and let the software “guide” you through the process.

Windows users who want to give LoiLoScope a spin can download the software here. LoiLoScope 2 costs US$98, but is discounted to US$79 until December 25 this year. A free, 30-day trial version is available, too.

This video shows a few key features of LoiLoScope 2 in action:

Alright BlackBerry fans, the time has come for you to experience BBM Music. If you haven’t heard of it yet, it’s a somewhat inexplicable music subscription service that integrates BBM. As of yet, the app has only been available to beta zone members, but today the app went live in the BlackBerry App World for all to enjoy. And by all, I mean users in the U.S., Canada, and Australia.

Here’s how it works: For $4.99 a month, you’ll have the ability to store 50 songs on your “BBM Music Profile.” Powered by Omnifone, the BBM Music app lets you add friends through BBM integration, at which point you can then get access to the 50 songs on their profiles. So theoretically, you could end up with access to way more than 50 songs, but past your own music, the tracks you’ll be rocking out to won’t necessarily be your style. Oh, and you can only swap out 25 songs a month from your BBM Music Profile.

Then, of course, there’s a free subscription model. But the catch with this free lunch is big: instead of access to 50 full songs, you’ll only be allowed to listen to 30-second clips. I can’t imagine that the free model will do well — I mean, who enjoys a preview of a song?

In any case, you can’t blame RIM for trying, especially in such a viral way. The more friends you invite and add to the app, the more bang you get for your buck. Not a bad idea, but only time can tell if this app will fly or die.

Earlier this year, Square debuted a virtual card case that consumers fill with 'cards' of all the merchants they visit and buy from who accept Square. These mobile cards include locations, merchant contact info, coupons, order and purchase history and more. One of the more interesting features was the ability to 'pay with your name.' In a merchant's card within the case, you can press a "use tab" button which allows the frequent customer to essentially put a purchase on their virtual tab with Square at the merchant. Today, Square is launching a new version of its Card Case iOS app that integrates iOS5 support for geofencing.

So once you opt-in one time to the geofencing feature in the app, when you (and your phone) are within 100 meters of a Square merchant you can simple walk into the store, say your name at checkout and you are good to go with the payment. You don’t need to pull your phone out at all or open the app.

Here’s how it works. Once Square’s technology detects you are near a merchant enabled store, the Merchant’s Square app will open a tab for the customer and show that customer’s account, name and photo as nearby. When the customer purchases an item, they say their name, and the cashier can verify the photo matches the customer and press the transact button and the charge will go through. The customer will get a push notification with the amount of the charge as well.

With the new version of the card case app, merchants can also add more information on the actual loyalty cards for each business, which Square’s Megan Quinn calls ‘dynamic representations of the business.” While previously you could see the merchants’ names, location, and contact info, Square has added the ability to add menus, photos, click-to-call functionality, directions to the business. Square has also added Twitter integration to link their Twitter account and Tweets, see comments and reviews from customers.

Additionally, Square has launched a new way to discover merchants on the app. Previously you could see a directory of merchants nearby, but today, Square has added to the app a list of the most popular spots that Square customers are frequenting.

Quinn says that to date, over 20,000 merchants have joined the directory since it opened up to the public in August. And Square has seen steady growth in the number of transactions taking place via the card case since the app came out of beta. Square is also in the process of extending this new functionality to the Android app for Card case.

As mobile payments heat up, Square is doubling down on product development and new features. In early October, the company announced that it would be dropping its new user limits. The payments service is now processing $2 billion in payments volume per year and t date, Square has been activated by 800,000 merchants which is up from 500,000 card readers shipped in May. Square's merchants are now 10% of the reach of the Visa/MasterCard world. In August, Square updated its mobile apps for a more fast, and seamless payments experience.

Next up could be international expansion. Already European competitors are popping up, so it should be interesting to see where Square can launch its payments technology next.

Honda isn’t the only Japanese car maker active in robotics (with Asimo etc.), Toyota has been active in this area for quite some time, too. Big T showcased a total of four robots yesterday, all with the healthcare and nursing markets in mind. It’s not a surprise Japan’s biggest car company is focusing on these areas, as its home country has the oldest society in the world (23% of the population are 65 or older).

Here are the robots Toyota showed during their press conference in Tokyo:

Independent Walk Assist (help paralyzed people walk)

Walk Training Assist (supports return to natural walking for people with impaired walking)

Balance Training Assist (trains people who have trouble maintaining their balance while standing)

Patient Transfer Assist (the most advanced and unique robot of the four, helps caretakers lifting and moving patients)

Toyota considers commercializing these robots sometime “after 2013″.

This video, shot by Diginfo TV on location, provides more insight (in English):

If you’ve found yourself yearning for a new memory card but all your options are just too pedestrian, then Monster and SDJ Technologies may have just brightened your day. The two companies have just announced that they have inked a long-term licensing deal that means Monster Digital flash memory products will soon hit store shelves.

That’s right — although neither company has gone into specific product types, we can hazard a few guesses as to what they’re working on. SDJ CEO Jay Tandon mentioned that people are focusing more on “mobile computing, smart phones, digital camera and video recording devices,” so expect some funky Monster-branded memory cards and flash drives to debut soon. Of course, these will bear Monster branding, so be prepared for a premium price tag too.

The thing to remember here is that it’s just a licensing agreement, so SDJ will actually make the products while the folks at Monster will do what they do best: market the hell out of these things.

Readers are probably already aware of Monster’s M.O., but those who have never had the pleasure, Monster takes commodity products like cables and uses their marketing prowess to give them something of a premium aura. There always seems to be a debate raging as to whether or not Monster products actually perform better than a run-of-the-mill replacement (I don’t think they do, personally), but enough people are Monster fans that the company keeps churning things out.

The first spate of Monster Digital products will be unveiled next month at the CES Unveiled event in New York City. Monster fans will also be glad to know that a wider rollout of Monster Digital goods will begin soon afterward.

It’s a big day over at ST-Ericsson. The chip maker, which has yet to turn a quarterly profit, just scored a major deal with Nokia to power its Windows Phone handsets. This deal effectively ends the monopoly Qualcomm has had over Windows-powered devices, and should also allow Nokia to sell lower-priced smartphones in new territories, reports Reuters.

We’d been hearing rumors of this deal for a while now, but as ST-Ericsson’s press release crossed the wires this morning the new partnership was officially confirmed. It’s still unclear which processors Nokia will employ, but Ubergizmo speculates that we’ll likely see the U8500 dual-core SoC’s sometime soon.

Nokia recently unveiled its first Windows-powered handsets: the Lumia 800 and the Lumia 710. While both show promise, especially with Mango at the helm, the verdict is still out until we get a chance to do a proper review.

Confirming earlier reports, luxury deals site Gilt City, a subsidiary of Gilt Groupe, Inc., is acquiring the assets of failed daily deals site BuyWithMe, after the latter saw massive layoffs following its failure to raise additional funding. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Former members of BuyWithMe will now have access to all of Gilt’s offerings, including women’s, men’s and children’s apparel, plus accessories, home decor, travel experiences, and gourmet food and wine.

During the transition period, BuyWithMe will carry out the sales previously scheduled in markets that Gilt City serves, and afterwards, members will continue to receive offers via Gilt City and Gilt Groupe.

The acquisition will now allow Gilt City to expand further into its ten markets and expand quickly into new markets over the next year, Gilt City said in a statement. However, Gilt City will not operate in all of BuyWithMe’s markets after the transition is complete.

BuyWithMe, said to be the third largest daily deals site behind Groupon and LivingSocial, previously operated in 13 markets in the U.S. with a customer base in the millions. It had raised around $21.5 million in venture capital from Boston VCs Bain Capital and Matrix Partners. (Reports from BetaBeat put the funding at $30 million).

BuyWithMe began lay offs earlier this month, after having been unsuccessful in its attempts to grow its company through the acquisitions of other daily deals players. The company made its sixth acquisition in September, with its purchase of San Francisco-based TownHog. It previously acquired NYC's Scoop St, Chicago deals site DealADayOnline, San Francisco deals site Swoop, loyalty company Edhance, and deals site LocalTwist.

BuyWithMe’s domain is already redirecting to buywithme.giltcity.com/city, and lists the 13 combined markets BuyWithMe and Gilt City serve, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, L.A., Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.C. BuyWithMe members can now access the site using their same username and password and can use their unused credit at Gilt Groupe, Gilt Taste, Park and Bond or Gilt City.

Asana, the web-based productivity service that counts Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz as one of its founders, is launching to the public today. No, it isn’t anything like Facebook, but if you’re looking for a productivity solution with a new twist, it may be exactly what you’re hoping for.

You’d be forgiven for thinking Asana had already launched, since you’ve been hearing about it for a long time — because it was founded by Moskovitz and early Facebook employee Justin Rosenstein, the company has been closely tracked by tech pundits since its earliest days.

In November 2009 the company announced that it’d raised $9 million from Benchmark Capital and Andreessen-Horowitz, following a $1.2 million angel round the previous spring. From there, the service entered a lengthy private beta. They gave a peek behind the curtains in February of this year — two years after they first got started — and have continued to iterate on the product since then. Just weeks ago the site saw another major UI refresh, and today, they’re finally ready to let the masses in.

I’m going to include a few high-level details on how the product works, but the reality is this: you really need to try it out for yourself to see if it’s your cup of tea, as much of Asana’s potential stems from the fact that you can mold it to suit your needs. You’ll also want to check out the video below, which does a good job showing off some of the basics. With that said…

The first time you log in, there isn’t going to be a new feature that immediately jumps out and dazzles you. Let’s be very clear: this is enterprise productivity, and it is not particularly sexy. But it’s powerful all the same. At the bottom of the screen you’ll notice several videos that explain how to use Asana in various ways — and the use cases are diverse. In a call to discuss the news, the founders, along with employee Kenny Van Zant, explained to me how it’s been successfully used to manage everything from inbound employee applications to agile software development.

Asana doesn’t have any chat or status update features, and you won’t find your coworker’s employment history on it, either. It is not a social network. Instead, rather than building a network that revolves around people, Asana’s founders say that they set out to build a network that puts your work items at the center.

On the left side of the screen you’ll find the main nav bar, which includes a listing of company projects, tags, and people in your company. At the top you’ll find an item with your tasks, which is what you’ll be using to plan out (and tell everyone else) what you’re working on.

In the main, right panel, you’ll be able to browse through the tasks. Projects can include a hierarchy of tasks, each of which can be delegated to coworkers and teams. Clicking on a task will bring up a new pane at the right side of the screen with additional information: who’s involved, any relevant file attachments and emails, and so on.

One thing you’ll notice throughout the experience: Asana is fast. The founders say they’ve obsessed over making Asana’s HTML5-based app feel native, and it shows. Integrated keyboard shortcuts are (mostly) intuitive, and there’s little-to-no lag as you navigate around. There’s also some other nice features including deep email integration — you can forward messages from your inbox to a special email address to assign it to a certain project, or even a certain person. This also helps in companies where only a fraction of employees have signed up for Asana proper, as the employees who haven’t signed up with be able to participate through email.

The service is free for groups of up to 30 people — beyond that the company will eventually start charging. Down the road they may also offer additional features for a premium.

I’ve been tinkering with Asana for the last couple of days, and I’ve liked what I’ve seen so far, to the point that I’m eager to see if we can work it into TechCrunch’s internal workflow (we rely almost exclusively on Yammer, which isn’t so great for collaborating around individual tasks). With that said, there’s definitely a learning curve, though the service is doing everything it can to make sure the experience doesn’t require a day-long training session before new users can figure out how it works.

AOL reported third-quarter earnings this morning. Revenue was down 6 percent to $531.7 million. The company swung to a loss in terms of net income, losing $2.6 million, or $0.02 per share. Analysts expected a loss of loss of 7 cents per share. Disclosure: AOL is the parent company of TechCrunch.

But AOL was able to grow global advertising by 8%, driven by 28% and 15% growth in third party network and global display advertising revenue Tim Armstrong, Chairman and CEO said in a statement: “We continue to build strong consumer experiences as we execute our strategy to build the premium branded media company for the internet. Our share repurchases underlie our belief in the value of AOL and our strategy.”

Search and contextual revenue declined 15%. In local, Patch surpassed 10 million monthly unique visitors and 10,000 bloggers on its platform. Armstrong added about Patch, “We believe it’s a very good investment.” He added, “We’re headed to being one of the largest local and national providers of content.” The platform also has around 5,000 advertisers.

The Huffington Post launched or relaunched 18 properties and surpassed 35 million monthly unique visitors in Q3. AOL’s traffic as a whole was flat for the quarte; properties saw 107 million average monthly unique users, up 1 percent from last year. Traffic to the Huffington Post Media Group came in at 97 million unique users per month, flat from last year.

He also said the company is adding social and commerce components to advertising, and said that the AOL will be debuting a new social ad format for advertisers soon.

As of September 30, 2011, AOL had $444.1 million of cash.

Ooma’s disruptive VoIP service is hitting Canada per an announcement Wednesday morning. Starting today, Canadian consumers can order the VoIP-in-a-box and place and receive phone calls to anyone within the wide expanse that is the great white north. That is, of course, if that person has plenty of room under their Internet cap.

The pricing scheme is just like that found in the States. The $229 CAD Ooma Telo device offers free basic telephony all by itself and for $9.99 a month, buyers can opt for the Premier service that offers features like call screening, three-way conferencing, call forwarding, and different ring tone options. Plus, Ooma is now allowing US Prime subscribers to place calls to Canada for free but it hasn’t been announced if it works the other way.

Ooma isn’t the first mass VoIP service to hit Canada; Vonage launched there in 2004. For better or worse, Ooma does VoIP differently by rolling in the cost of the service into the cost of the device rather than a traditional monthly bill like Vonage.

The current trend of Internet caps by Canadian ISPs might make some consumers think twice about moving their phone service to the Internet. However, VoIP services generally do not use that much bandwidth but it’s probably worth spending 10 minutes investigating how much data you’re currently consuming. You don’t want your Internet suddenly throttled while you’re talking to your Mom — or maybe you do.

At the Slush 2011 event held today in Finland, Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka revealed a huge milestone for the company’s hit game, Angry Birds—500 million downloads over the past two years. Vesterbacka claims that's the fastest growing game and most downloads of any game ever.

It’s no secret that the game has been growing fast without any marketing dollars being spent. It looks like Angry Birds has added 100 million downloads in the past two weeks alone. At the Web 2.0 conference in mid-October, Rovio's North American General Manager Andrew Stalbow said the game had seen 400 million downloads across platforms. At the time, he said the game is currently seeing 130 million monthly users, 30 million daily active users, and 300 million minutes of game play each and every day.

The company also recently revealed a new bird for Halloween and is expected to release a movie and cookbooks as well.

Cloudability, a platform to manage and monitor all of your cloud costs in one place, is launching to the public today. For the past few months, the Portland-based startup has been in private beta.

Cloudability helps businesses be more efficient on the cloud by analyzing a company's entire cloud spend for cost savings opportunities and make recommendations. Cloudability supports more than 80 cloud and application providers, including AWS, Rackspace, Heroku, Airbrake and Google Apps, to give companies the ability to monitor and analyze complete cloud spend across multiple vendors.

The startup aggregates cloud costs into comprehensive reports and a simple dashboard to help companies understand and manage their cloud service spending, increase efficiency, reduce waste, and identify opportunities for coud cost savings. The service also includes daily customizable email and cloud spend/ activity notifications.

Cloudability is now tracking more than $10 million in cloud spend, and in its private beta identified an average of $2000 in efficiency gains per customer. Early beta users include SlideShare and others.