openSUSE, the community developed Linux distribution sponsored by SUSE, has released version 12.1 today. At first glance, openSUSE 12.1 is pretty much in line with recent releases from Fedora and Ubuntu: GNOME 3.2, systemd, etc. But a closer look starts to reveal some real divergence between the various Linux offerings today. For example, while Fedora 16 allows you to choose btrfs for your filesystem, openSUSE 12.1 uses btrfs by default. There’s a number of other interesting advancements packed in this release, too.

The filesystem features provided by btrfs are enhanced on openSUSE 12.1 with Snapper, a user-space utility to take, compare, and revert snapshots of files. This has huge potential to make life better for users. It certainly won’t eliminate the need for backups, but it’s a strong step in the right direction. Similarly, openSUSE 12.1 includes support for ownCloud, “slim yet powerful private cloud software”. Again, this isn’t going to eliminate Dropbox or similar services, but it’s a step in the right direction toward self-sufficiency for regular end users in the Free Software space.

For power users looking to stay current with the state of the art in Free Software, openSUSE 12.1 includes Tumbleweed, a rolling update of tested, stable software. This replaces the rigid periodic release of a complete, complex system. Instead of upgrading all the software in your entire system every six or twelve months, Tumbleweed will upgrade individual components as new stable releases are made available.

As Zonker opined on G+, there’s a lot to differentiate one Linux distribution from another right now. It used to mostly be Red Hat-like versus Debian-like, but now each distribution has its own stable of compelling features.

If the words Path and Milk mean something to you in more ways than one, or you happen to have heard of a few little companies called Airbnb, Flipboard or Instagram, boy do we have a treat for you. For this week’s TechCrunch Giveaway, we’ll be offering you a way to get up close and personal with some of the greatest minds in today’s web scene: a ticket to LeWeb’11.

And if those names didn’t get you excited, maybe an appearance by our very own Apple columnist MG Siegler will. The tickets aren’t cheap, priced at >$2,500, so if this sounds like your cup of tea pay close attention.

Here’s how you enter to win:

1) Become a fan of our TechCrunch Facebook Page:

2) Then do one of the following:

Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TechCrunch hashtag)

Tell us why you want to go

The contest starts now and ends Friday at 10:30am PT.

Please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will choose at random and contact the winner on Friday with more details. Anyone in the world is eligible.

Good luck!

Evernote is today introducing its first stand-alone product since Peek: a browser extension called Clearly that enables “distraction-free online reading”. Only available as a Chrome add-on for now, Evernote Clearly removes ads, links, navigational elements and whatnot from any block of text you’d like to read on the Web and lets you easily save it to Evernote to read later.

If that sounds a lot like the core functionality of the likes of Readability or Instapaper, you’re probably thinking in the right direction.

Evernote Clearly works best when you’re on a page with a single article, like this one. With one click, you can isolate the text block for comfortable reading, and ‘slide’ right back when you’re done.

The extension also lets you change the appearance and the size of the characters, so you can somewhat customize the experience (see first screenshot below). In addition, you can clip articles to Evernote with the click of a single button to save articles or later reading. Also, a ‘print’ button.

According to Evernote’s blog post, Clearly will even automatically turn a multi-page article into a single page so you no longer need to click from one page to the next anymore, but that didn’t work out for me, as far as the extension I was sent goes (I tried with this post).

Evernote Clearly will soon be available for Firefox, too.

Just yesterday, we were applauding online retailer Wine.com for finally figuring out that having a mobile app is not enough – you still need a mobile website, too. Today, another big name announces the launch of its own HTML5 efforts: GetSatisfaction. The popular customer support company says its new Web app will bring the full functionality of its online community platform to its now 3.1 million users.

At launch, the Web app (currently in beta) supports iPhone users, but support for Android and BlackBerry OS 6+ is on its way soon.

According to GetSatisfaction’s internal metrics, over 25% of the company’s users access its online communities via search engine referrals. Over the past year, the traffic from mobile devices has nearly doubled, up from 8% to 15% of total visits. GetSatisfaction has essentially been squandering that traffic until now by not providing a customized mobile experience for these visitors. (The company offers an independently built iPhone app, but it’s for business use, not for consumers).

The new Web app will provide an immediate advantage to mobile app makers, who can now link to their GetSatisfaction page from within their app in order to provide customer support. Often, app makers simply provide an email address for reporting concerns, provide a basic FAQ within their app, or worse, ignore the need for in-app support altogether. Now, without a lot of additional effort on their part, app makers can funnel users to GetSatisfaction, allowing them to report bugs, suggest ideas, ask questions and interact with the online community.

In total, GetSatisfaction says it has 63,000 communities live on its site, all of which will now be mobile-enabled. That’s up from the 58,000 reported in August, when the company raised its $10 million Series B. GetSatisfaction pages are provided for free, but companies pay a fee to claim and moderate the page, with plans starting at $19.00/month. Today, the company has over 2,500 paying customers, including Proctor and Gamble, Adobe,  Zynga, Spotify, Flipboard and Mint.

It’s not a bubble until startups are rapping for seed funding. Mick Hagen, the founder of Undrip, a stealthy startup in San Francisco that is building a service to better filter your Twitter stream, is trying to get the attention of top angel investors with the rap video above. (Is it really that hard to get a meeting with investors these days?)

The video doesn’t say anything about what the startup does other than it’s the “biggest move I've made since I dropped outta Princeton” and we'll be crushin it from NDA to IPO.” They are already “lookin for the future exit strategies” even though they have yet to launch a product. The chorus, which I do admit is catchy, goes, “We need a angel, We need a ride.” (Full lyrics below). There is even a red sports car.

It’s all about getting noticed, of course, in an overfunded environment. And if this video doesn’t work, they have 20 more addressed to individual super seed investors. Ron Conway, the first one should be in your inbox soon (see below—the production quality isn’t quite up to the $4,000 spent on the main video above, but it is personalized). Other investors who can be expecting a personalized pitch in rap form include Ashton Kutcher, Dave McClure, Michael Arrington, Keith Rabois, Kevin Rose, Chris Sacca, and Sean Parker.

Before you completely dismiss Undrip, Hagen was involved as a co-founder of Zinch, a college admissions matching service, which was sold to Chegg. And at least they are tackling a real problem. Filtering the realtime Twitter stream is something nobody has yet cracked in a satisfying way. If their product is half as slick as their video, it might do okay.

Here are the lyrics:

Verse 1:
Yo this is Undrip baby, comin hot out the kitchen
It's Mick on the Mic, so you might wanna listen
Bout to knock the socks off the competition
Biggest move I've made since I dropped outta Princeton
I don't play games like a politician
Wouldn't be here without a value proposition
Ambition doesn't get an intermission
So I'm swingin for the fences like I did with Zinch and
Inch by inch, row by row
I'm gonna make this business grow
All I need is that seed round dough
and the flow from my Undrip fount – Say Word
Uh yes yes y'all, we're Thus Fresh y'all
A cut above above the rest, obsessed with success y'all
You know I don't sleep, Cuz it really ain't RESTful
I'm always on my grind like a mortar and pestle

Chorus:
We need a angel, We need a ride
We need a bump, a bump so we fly
We're gonna make that money off of social steam
But we need your help to reach the dream
We need a angel, We need a ride
We need a bump a bump so we fly
Undrip is about to go
We just need an angel to unlock the flow

Verse 2:
Comin straight outta Soma, the valley of silicone
In the zone, writing code til we see the break of dawn
Learning the ropes from the CEO
And we'll be crushin it from NDA to IPO
Here we go again, yeah it's back to bootstrap
A lot of young companies do dat do dat
You see these other suckas and they moving at a turtle pace
But check the way we run it when we jump over your burn rate
New York never sleeps, well that may be
But we never sleep either, cuz we workin on them qwerty keys
Lookin for the future exit strategies
If you sleep on this now, then we'll see you at the mezzanine
Real hot issue, cold hard currency
Term sheet poppin' so check check out the equity
Mister Investor, Mister VC
I'm down to take a number, but don't make me take a knee

Congress is in the process of kneecapping the web as we know it with a House bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act (a similar bill, called the Protect IP Act, is in the Senate). In a misguided attempt to curb piracy on the web, the bills would introduce website blocking at the DNS level, among other things, in a way that would effectively amount to censorship. And they could have disastrous implications.

The threat is so serious that many of the web’s largest companies, including AOL, eBay, Facebook, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo, and Zynga sent a joint letter to Congress over the issue. A congressional hearing being held today has prompted many sites to add a ‘Stop Censorship’ banner on top of their logos (you can get one here). And now some other services are taking even more drastic measures.

Head to Tumblr right now and log into your Dashboard. You’ll find that your stream of content has been replaced with censorship blocks — with a link at the top of the page prompting users to Stop The Law That Will Censor The Internet. Click the link, and you’ll be prompted to enter your phone number and street address. Tumblr will then call you to run through some talking points and tell you how to call your House Representative.

Millions upon millions of users will doubtless run into these blocks of censored text without any idea as to what is going on. They’ll be angry and frustrated . And many of them will channel that anger (hopefully in moderation and with plenty of “with all due respect”‘s) toward their representatives. It’s a bold move, and it’s one that could have a major impact — Tumblr just tweeted that users are averaging 3.6 calls per second.

You can watch this morning’s congressional hearing, which is heavily stacked in favor of SOPA proponents,  right here.

Oh, and if you really want to see your Tumblr Dashboard, try clicking ‘Next Page’ — that seems to make the censor blocks go away.

Image by Thomasraukamp.

You go on vacation, spend a day with the kids, buckle down on a project, and suddenly you’re hopelessly behind on tech news. You could scan back through the pages of your favorite sites, but you’d have little way of knowing which stories were most important. Luckily, Israeli developer Briox has developed a data fusion technology that can surface the most relevant content from a firehose of sources. To show off the technology, it’s released the free Riversip Tech Reader iOS app, which lets users view the latest news, or just the biggest stories from that day or week. Briox hopes Riversip will attract more enterprise customers from health, finance and other verticals to pay for help managing information overload.

Riversip is designed to aid those not constantly wired in to other news reading solutions. Techmeme works perfect for me because I check it a dozen times a day for what’s important at that moment. If I take a break, though, I’m relegated to the archives that don’t indicate if a story was the biggest of the day or a less significant item. RSS readers are a mess if you don’t check them frequently, confronting you with an endless stack of headlines.

Riversip solves this by letting you choose a timeframe from which to show the most newsworthy articles. It defaults to latest, but users can toggle to view headlines of the day or week. Drilling into an article provides the full text or a link to read it through an in-app browser. A “More Coverage” button shows perspectives on the same news item from other outlets. Users may select topics to create a personalized summary, search for keywords, and share anything they find.

The quality of daily and weekly summaries are passable. Riversip picked out new about iOS 5.0.1, Adobe killing mobile flash, and iTunes Match that were indeed the biggest stories of the past week. It doesn’t always choose the most well written articles, though. At one point it picked Mashable as the source of the top 3 items of the week when more thorough write-ups existed. This is a deficiency of a purely algorithmic content curation engine that too heavily weights traffic and doesn’t include human editors like Techmeme.

Next, Briox plans to expand into consumer products for more news verticals, and strengthen its enterprise offering. Facebook’s news feed recently began showing the biggest stories since a user last logged in — a strong endorsement of content consumption systems like Riversip that take into account how frequently users visit. One day, people might be able to efficiently follow a wider set of news and interest topics by using data fusion-powered products like Riversip.

IssueBurner, the combination task management and helpdesk solution from Webyog Inc. is now exiting beta and launching as a commercial product. The service, from the data management company behind CloudMagic and Visifire, was originally cooked up by the company’s developers as an internal solution to deal with their own “inbox overload” situation. Last year, the product was launched as a public beta and as since gained over 16,000 users.

With the commercial launch, IssueBurner will begin licensing its product on the freemium model. For 2 members and 2 groups, the service is still free, but silver ($19/month) and gold ($39/month) plans are now available for larger organizations.

The way IssueBurner works isn’t entirely novel: you create groups, assign them an email address and then those emails end up in the IssueBurner hosted solution, which is also used as an online helpdesk. Because people can’t seem to let go of using email for group communications, no matter what alternative solutions are presented, IssueBurner works on top of email instead of attempting to replace it. The expected workflow is that employees just cc: or bcc: the IssueBurner group address on those emails that should end up online.

If this all sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because it is. To name just a few: CC: Betty, which later became Threadbox prior to its acquisition by MySpace, had the same idea. Back in 2009. More recently, Grexit launched a similar product for Google Apps earlier this year. Others that jump into mind:  Followup.cc, TaskForceApp and Nudgemail. It’s a crowded space.

To distinguish itself, IssueBurner’s offering combines its email archival ability with the basic functionality of a helpdesk product, complete with labels, prioritization capabilities, bulk issue management and a mobile interface. The look-and-feel is reminiscent of old Gmail – it’s a sparse but simple UI that ditches the bloat, which is a big plus in terms of efficiency.

Webyog was founded back in 2005 and has been profitable since, which speaks well for its ability to get products right. For that reason alone, IssueBurner may be worth a look for those in the market for a simple task management solution.

Today’s giveaway is pretty exciting. For your pleasure, we have a Timbuk2 D-Lux Racing Stripe Laptop Messenger bag, a $120 value, yours for the low, low price of free. Like the previous contest (won by a young man named Ryan Mense), this is a comment contest. Your goal this time is to tell us about how this bag will save/improve your life. That’s right: treat this bag like a DJ who did something for you last night.

Here’s a bit of info about the D-Lux, but darn it if it doesn’t look cool.

Timbuk2 incorporated user feedback into the D-Lux Messenger to create a laptop messenger that works with and without your machine. The racing stripe makes you go faster and the upgraded features mean safer, more comfortable portage for daily rides on and off the interweb. Features include a vastly improved cam buckle, side-entry Napoleon pocket, color-coordinated, three-zipper front organizer, and slim, studded laptop sleeve for your computer’s protection. The D-Lux is a machine for your machine.

Additionally, if you enter, consider friending me on Facebook so I can send you a message a bit more quickly. If there’s one negative to Facebook comments it’s our inability to directly contact you all if you win. Anyway, not mandatory, just helpful.

Good luck and look for our amazing grand prize later this week. Don’t forget to check out the rest of our Bag Week 2011 reviews.

Next up during this year’s Bag Week we have the oddly named but delightfully designed Wise-Walker from Nomadic. This Japanese import is a business up front and a party inside.

Style
The Nomadic WR-08 Wise-Walker is like a surprise birthday party. One minute you’re walking up the stairs to your drab, dark house and the next minute you’re treated to a delightful clutch of blaze orange balloons held by your loved ones. Then you get cake. See, like the party, the Wise-Walker is a standard, fairly drab shoulder laptop bag with a black nylon exterior (it also comes in grey and navy) and a bright orange liner. It’s made in Japan, which is another plus. Sadly, the bag does not include cake.

Style-wise most of the magic happens on the inside. Except for the cute name label on the outside, there is little to identify this bag as an actual import nor is there anything to particularly recommend it. However, in practice, it’s quite a find.

Utility
This bag is surprisingly spacious. It looks quite small, to be sure, but most of the pockets expand sufficiently to store any number of cables, mice, and tablets. I’ve been able to use this bag as a travelling companion and even fit a few huge device boxes into it after a meeting. If you’re looking for a walkaround bag or a bag for the office that you’ll use for a smallish laptop, tablet, and maybe some pens, you really can’t go wrong. I was also able to use it as an overnight bag, stuffing in a few shirts, a jacket, and some toiletries into the main pocket.

The Wise-Walker is also quite rugged and resilient. One caveat: the front velcro closure is a bit small to keep the bag closed completely and, when the bag isn’t closed, the front velcro-ed pockets will open to expose some of your items. Don’t stuff it too full and it will be fine.

Who’s It For?
Folks who love Japanese style and design will get a kick out of this bag. It’s quite small – it’s designed to fit an A4-sized notebook – but it’s more than big enough for a Macbook Air, a tablet, and bunch of other little junk. The water bottles are tiny by American standards, but the rest of the pockets – barring the front velcro pockets – are zipped and secure. I personally got a huge kick out of the bright orange inside material and the price is on par with any other good laptop bag you can find out there.

Again it is a bit small, so feel free to look for something slightly bigger if you’re a heavy-duty laptop user.

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Check out the rest of Bag Week 2001 here.

SEO firm BrightEdge is reporting that 61 percent of world’s top 100 brands have already created Google+ pages. As we reported last week, Google launched “Pages” for Google+ to allows brands, products, companies, businesses, and organizations to build their very own tailored Google+ presence.

Channeling Facebook Pages, Google+ Pages offers brands and businesses a similar experience to that of individual Google+, in that brands can place people into Circles to share content with that select group, launch video hangouts to have face-to-face conversations with their customers, and it all works through the site’s mobile app (you can read our in-depth comparison of Google+ and Facebook Pages here).

For basis of comparison, 94 percent of the Top 100 brands have a presence on Facebook. BrightEdge says that only 12 percent of the brands that created these pages displayed a link to them on their home page. About 53 percent of the Top 100 brands display a link on their home page to their Facebook page. And brands appear to be having mixed success at building social networks around their Google+ presence. In fact, Google had the largest fan contingent of any brand on Google+, having attracted more than 65,000 fans.

But other consumer brand stalwarts like Coke, McDonalds and Verizon had only dozens of fans (but have millions of Facebook fans). In fact, a review of Facebook and Google+ properties for all 100 brands showed a collective total of almost 300 million Facebook fans for these top brands, compared to approximately 148,000 Google+ followers for these same brands.

Of course, in Google search, Google+ brand pages seem to be performing well. The BrightEdge analysis showed Google+ pages on average appeared in the top 12 Google search results for the corresponding brand, while the brand's Facebook pages on average appeared in the top 13 or 14 listed results.

Only one Top 100 global brand, Marlboro, has no social media presence on either Facebook or Google+. And Microsoft and General Electric are the two largest brands that have a Facebook page but no Google+ presence.

Clearly, it’s still early for brand interaction and Google+. Yesterday, Google announced a pilot program that will allow businesses and brands to manage their Google+ Pages using a number of third-party applications, including Buddy Media, Context Optional, Hearsay Social, HootSuite, Involver, and Vitrue. These integrations should help brands further their presence on Google+ and increase engagement.

For background, BrightEdge’s SaaS allows marketers prioritize SEO campaigns based on forecasted revenue, execute coordinated SEO strategies across their entire company and tie everything to clearly defined business metrics. The product also comes with reporting tools that lets large enterprise analyze how their organic search performance stacks up against that of their competitors, and how it can be improved over time. Since launching to the public in 2010, BrightEdge has gained a significant clientele, including seven of the top ten Fortune 1000 retailers. Other customers include Symantec and VMware. BrightEdge has raised $6.5 million in venture funding.

Bubble Motion, which offers a popular a Twitter-like voice blogging service in India, Japan, and Indonesia, is announcing a number of high-profile executive hires to support its future growth in Asia.

Bubble Motion's Bubbly platform is a voice-blogging phone service that allows people to share status updates in their own voice with fans and followers. It essentially takes Twitter’s model and applies this to voice blogging and mobile phones. These 'bubblers' record their voice update into their phone, and their followers everywhere are notified by SMS and prompted to click and listen.

Joining the team are Jean Huang Lundgren as COO, Brett Bouchard as CMO, Prakash Durgani as VP Engineering, and Paul Palmer as VP Worldwide Sales. Prior to joining Bubble Motion, Lundgren managed consumer product strategy in Asia for Vanguard Strategies and led Motorola's content and value added service strategy across the Asia Pacific region.

Bubble Motion’s new CMO, Brett Bouchard, was previously Managing Director Europe for Ancestry.com and led marketing at SkyGrid.

The company says that these new team members will be expanding Bubble Motion's platform and country presence with a number of product and region launches in the next few months in Asia. The company also plans to bring Bubbly to iOS and Android, adding text, photo, and video to the service.

Bubble Motion recently raised $10 million in new funding from SingTel Innov8, Infocomm Investments, Sequoia Capital, Palomar Ventures, and NGC.

Last year Marshall took their iconic amps, enlisted the help of Wayne Szalinski who shrunk them down to something that can fit on your ears. The Major and Minor earphones hit the market last November, and here, one year later, they’re available in white just like the iconic white Marshall head used by Randy Rhodes.

The white versions cost the same as the black models. The over-the-ear Majors cost $119 while the in-ear Minors are $59. In our tests we found both of them to be rather acceptable and a great deal for the price. But while the black models are unique, they’re still just black headphones afar. That’s where the white models come in. They’re just a little bit more special. And special sells.

With the HTC Vivid garnering mixed reviews, it looks like the device's name may be the most interesting thing about it. At least one company thinks so, anyway: the porn peddlers at Vivid Entertainment have filed a cease and desist notice against the company for use of the “Vivid” name.

According to TMZ, Vivid’s legal counsel filed the notice because they are afraid consumers will think the LTE-capable smartphone is somehow connected to Vivid’s adult video empire. Yes, really. Just let that sink in for a moment.

While this all looks like a big joke, Vivid Entertainment seems awfully serious about protecting their brand. If HTC doesn’t agree to a name change by next Monday, Vivid claims that they’re ready to take their case to court. Let’s be honest here: I don’t doubt that Vivid’s got some legal muscle, but HTC’s team of lawyers has surely fought tougher battles over the years.

Whether or not Vivid has any legal standing here is sure to be debated by scores of armchair jurists, but their claims of potential customer confusion seem a tad spurious to me. While I’d love nothing more than to take a gander at to HTC’s official reply, the company has said they “won’t have any further comment” until the issue gets straightened out.

UPDATE: Vivid Entertainment has just issued a release that explains their side of the story. Here are the relevant bits:

[Vivid's attorney Mark Hoffman] said HTC America’s use of the Vivid trademarks “creates the false impression that your company and your company’s products are affiliated, connected, or associated with and or sanctioned by Vivid Entertainment.” He added, “We believe it is possible that your company is not unaware of this conflict.”

Mr. Hoffman gave HTC America until Monday, November 21 to respond to his letter and cease using the Vivid trademark or “our client will have no alternative but to pursue all legal remedies.”

“For the past 27 years Vivid has worked hard to protect and build its brand. We believe this is a clear infringement and will use all legal remedies available to protect our trademark,” said Steven Hirsch, founder/co-chairman of Vivid Entertainment.

What are your goals? To walk the length of the Golden Gate bridge? To run a 5K? To plant a tree in a magical forest? The Striiv lets you do all of those things and more. This wee device is a fairly basic pedometer that measures your steps as well as flights of stairs taken during the day. However, there’s a bonus – it has a nice, bright LCD touchscreen to display your current steps as well as other information like “badges” you’ve won for walking certain distances. The cherry on top? There’s a goofy little game that you can play, selling your “steps” for magical trees in a some kind of weird Farm-ville Hobbit world.

Erick and I took a closer look at the Striiv in this episode of Fly or Die and, while I’m sort of a convert, Erick is unimpressed. To be honest, the Striiv is a bit tough to love. It’s not wireless, like the Fitbit, and it requires you to sync and charge it with a USB cable. However, because most of the goodness happens right on the device, it’s a bit more useful than I originally expected. Pedometers are all the rage this year, and the Striiv is probably one of the better ones.

Product Page

While there are plenty of Apple fanbois out there with the full arsenal of i-branded goodies, not all of us have the cash to afford an iMac, MacBook Air, iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. While Fanhattan is probably the best movie/TV discovery app on the market right now, it has thus far excluded the iPhone crowd. A huge, media-hungry bunch that aren’t used to be left out of anything (at least where apps are concerned).

Well, no more. After some hard work to rescale the app for a smaller device, Fanhattan is now available for iPhone on the Apple App Store.

For those of you who haven’t heard, Fanhattan is a video content discovery app that pulls in data from Netflix, Hulu Plus, and iTunes. Users can filter searched content to be super specific, or simply browse through the app and check out Rotten Tomatoes reviews, cast and crew bios, soundtrack info, fan gear, and reccos from their Facebook/Twitter friends.

Though the iPhone version doesn’t have access to quite as many streaming services as the iPad version does, Fanhattan promises that more services will be added soon.

Despite LinkedIn’s professional focus, it’s Facebook that’s leading social networks to become a major way people find new jobs. 16% of those unemployed and looking, employed and looking, or employed and open to a new job said “an online social network directly led to finding their current/most recent job”, according to a new Jobvite study. Of these 22.1 million Americans, 78% attributed their job to Facebook, while 40% cited assistance from LinkedIn, and 42% cited Twitter. The findings should signal HR departments and recruiters of the importance of social networks, and especially Facebook, to their success.

Last year, just 11% of job seekers had found their latest gig from a social network. Jobvite surveyed 1,205 American adults for this year’s study.

The rise of Facebook as a job source can be in part tied to the proliferation of tools that harness the social network’s biographical data and massive user base. BranchOut released its Recruiter Connect enterprise search product, and Jobvite, Work4 Labs, and Monster.com now provide ways to distribute job openings through Facebook.

A year ago, Facebook redesigned the profile to make work info immediately visible, which prompted more users to keep it up to date. Combined with the size of the user base and the frequency with which they visit the site, recruiters can both search a larger pool of applicants and expose job listings to a larger audience using Facebook than LinkedIn.

The dedicated professional social network is still very important for recruiting high profile white collar employees. However, as Facebook improves privacy controls to make it easier to count both professional and personal contacts as friends, it is chipping away at LinkedIn’s value-add for the blue collar work force.

Update: Jobvite changed some of the stats in the study since first sharing them with us. This article now reflects the latest data on job seeker use of social networks.

Exclusive - ZooZ, not to be confused with ZOOZ Mobile, has raised $1.5 million in funding in a seed round led by lool ventures (yes, that’s really what they’re called).

Other investors that participated in the financing round include Rhodium, Kima Ventures, Orefa Investment, Jaina Capital, A.M. Holdings and private investors Eilon Tirosh and Yuval Tal.

ZooZ offers a comprehensive end-to-end payment solution that lets mobile app developers easily integrate digital payment and checkout options into their Android or iOS apps through an SDK.

The startup claims its payment solution requires only a couple lines of code and minimal development time, but still provides everything that’s necessary for app developers to start accepting in-app payments from end users. Here’s how it works.

It’s worth noting that ZooZ is adamant about the fact that it has built its solution with security and fraud detection in mind, and stores all sensitive data in a PCI-compliant cloud environment.

The ZooZ platform is being rolled out in an initial, six-month beta phase, during which the service will be completely free. After this period, ZooZ will be charging a nominal fee for processing payments.

ZooZ was founded in 2010 by CEO Oren Levy and CTO Ronen Morecki and is based in Israel.

Apple met with leaders of five environmental groups in China yesterday to discuss pollution concerns. According to a report from The Wall St. Journal, Apple told the groups it had launched audits of 15 of its suppliers who have been suspected of violating environmental regulations, and has completed reviews of 11 of those.

The details of the meeting were confirmed by Chinese green activist Ma Jun, who serves as the director of the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs based in Beijing. Another environmental group director, Li Li of EnviroFriends, was also present at the meeting. Both leaders were relatively happy with the outcome of the discussions, as Apple was taking the right steps to address the issues at hand.

Mr. Ma told the WSJ that Apple had asked the companies accused of polluting to take corrective actions and give a timeline, but Ms. Li thought Apple could do more. Details on what she meant by that were not provided, however. Apple also said it would take environmental issues into consideration when it awarded future contracts, according to Mr. Ma.

Apple PR, in typical Apple fashion, declined to comment on the meeting.

Outside of the pollution concerns, one of the criticisms Mr. Ma had for Apple was its lack of transparency. He felt the company should name the suppliers under investigation and the suppliers themselves should have to disclose the steps they are taking. ”Apple is trailing far behind in terms of transparency and pushing for the polluters to be held publicly accountable for their problems,” he said.

Apple’s annual supplier report  for 2011, released in February, stated that Apple took corrective actions on 80 facilities that weren’t storing hazardous material properly and 41 that weren’t disposing of or recycling waste properly. But again, it didn’t list either the companies or the violations.

Lack of transparency is a common complaint from environmental organizations when it comes to Apple. For example, in Greenpeace’s 2011 Apple report card (Nov. 2011), the group notes that Apple’s Suppliers Code of Code of Conduct states that “suppliers shall comply with the most recent version of Apple’s Regulated Substances Specification, 069-015 and with any applicable laws and regulations prohibiting or restricting the use or handling of specific substances.”

But Greenpeace notes that’s it’s impossible to evaluate Apple’s communications with its supply chain on hazardous substances because Apple won’t disclose its Regulated Substances Specification.

Overall, Greenpeace gives Apple a 4.6 out of 10 across all its environmental sectors, including areas like energy use, green products and sustainable operations. Says Greenpeace, “Apple would score more points on the other criteria with greater transparency of its data in reporting the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) of its supply chain and disclosure of the documents it uses to communicate with its supply chain for chemicals management.”

The Famitsu, Japan’s (and maybe the world’s) biggest video game magazine, has tested Zelda Skyward Sword (the newest Zelda game for Wii) in their newest issue. And apparently, they liked what they played: as the first game this year, Zelda Skyward Sword scored a perfect 40/40 score.

The four testers gave away ten out of ten points each, making the Wii title the third in the Zelda series to get a perfect total score. In fact, Ocarina of Time for the N64 was the first game ever to get the 40/40 from Famitsu (in November 1998). Zelda: Wind Waker, which went on sale about four years later on the Gamecube, received the same rating.

In the US, Zelda Skyward Sword will hit stores on November 20.

Here’s a list that shows all titles that have received a perfect score from Famitsu so far:

1. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998, for Nintendo 64)
2. Soul Calibur (1999, for Dreamcast)
3. Vagrant Story (2000, for PlayStation)
4. The Legend of Zelda – The Wind Waker (2003, for GameCube)
5. Nintendogs (2005, for the DS)
6. Final Fantasy XII (2006, for PlayStation 2)
7. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008, for the Wii)
8. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008, for PlayStation 3)
9. 428: Fusasareta Shibuya de (2008, for the Wii)
10. Dragon Quest IX (2009, for the DS)
11. Monster Hunter Tri (2009, for the Wii)
12. Bayonetta (2009, for PlayStation 3/XBox 360)
13. New Super Mario Bros. (2009, for Wii)
14. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (2010, for PSP)
15. Pokémon Black and White (2010, for Nintendo DS)