Twitter is continuing its rollout of advertising initiatives, with today’s launch of its new program for small businesses, which is being launched in partnership with American Express. Originally announced last month, American Express merchants and cardholders are now being alerted to Twitter’s new advertising opportunities, which were kicked off by a related promotion in which the first 10,000 Cardmembers and merchants received $100 in free Twitter ads.

Today, those first 10,000 will be notified that they can get started in building their ad campaigns. For Twitter users, this news means more ads from smaller stores, brands and chains, which will accompany the now-familiar Promoted Tweets, Trends, and profiles that have historically highlighted both national and international companies, like Samsung or Starbucks, for example.

According to a company blog post, the SMB program is starting off small, and will gradually increase the number of participating merchants over the coming weeks. Advertisers participating in the program will have access to all of Twitter’s Promoted Products, which will allow them to promote their Twitter accounts, place promotions and messages in Twitter timelines and promote tweets which will then appear at the top of Twitter searches.

The expansion of Twitter’s advertising program coincides with other changes the company has made over the past few weeks, specifically those that have brought more of these ads to mobile clients. Earlier in March, Twitter announced an expansion of Promoted Tweets on mobile, allowing advertisers to target recipients by both interest and device.  This followed a previous announcement which saw the arrival of additional Promoted Products on iOS and Android, specifically Promoted Accounts and Promoted Tweets.

SMBs choosing to advertise using these new options will be able to pay per follower for Promoted Accounts and per engagement (click, retweet, reply, and favorite) for Promoted Tweets, says Twitter. They’ll also be able to target the world, specific countries, or even specific U.S. metro areas.

Businesses that have not yet signed up to participate can still do so now here, and will be alerted when the option opens up further.

If you live in a big city, you’ve probably got a lot of fitness options outside the traditional gym — everything from boot camps to cycling classes to Yoga studios. Now a startup called FITiST wants to help you navigate the world, creating plans and scheduling classes across multiple boutique fitness studios.

FiTist has already launched in New York City and Los Angeles, and today it announced that it’s one of the first two startups to join WellTech, a New York-based incubator for health and wellness startups.

After you join FITiST, you can choose from a number of plans, which are essentially different class packages targeted to help accomplish different fitness goals — they’re created by an editorial board that includes experts in personal training, nutrition, anatomy, and more. If you’re looking to slim down, for example, you can sign-up for a package that includes six cycling classes, six core/Pilates, four performance, and four yoga. Some of the packages are tied to a more specific circumstance. One is called Bride (i.e., you want to look great for your wedding), another New Mom. You can also sign-up for an all-access pass of unlimited classes, or create a completely customized program with FITiST’s help.

The company says that its early members include fitness buffs who “had kind of plateaued,” but are starting to see results again thanks to FITiST’s plans.

FITiST also has access to a curated network of studios, so you can sign up directly from the site. That means you can try out a bunch of different facilities, or can set up classes in different locations depending on your schedule. It also offers last-minute deals on classes starting at 9pm the night before.

Not surprisingly, this is going to be more expensive than your standard gym membership, but the plans I’ve seen cover a pretty broad price spectrum, from $75 to $760 a month. And yes, the company wants to expand to other cities eventually.

As for WellTech, the incubator is providing $50,000 in funding, as well as the usual mix of mentoring, office space, and marketing. WellTech was founded by SpaFinder CEO Peter Ellis, and it’s financed by Ellis’ firm Jubilee Investments.

WellTech also announced that Wizpert, a startup that connects users with fitness in real-time, has joined the program.

Remember Highlight? That app that everyone thought was hot stuff back at SXSW? I used it for a few days and then deleted it, discovering quite quickly that the app, despite some utility, was an absolute battery hog. But what Highlight did was prove that, given the proper scenario, check-in works and is important. What frustrates me most, however, is that we keep doing it wrong.

Take this new app, Chkin.at, for example. It allows you to check-in at various websites and to become King of a certain page, thereby giving you certain conjugal rights with the ladies of your Kingdom (not really). Rather than dismiss it outright – it kind of works, but it spurred this little rant – I’ll note that it, like so many other apps, suffers from that fatal flaw: the check-in.

This is not a new complaint and it won’t be the last time someone grumbles about the current state of discovery-style apps. The main problem is always compliance, and it’s a problem familiar to doctors, dietitians, and researchers. Your app requires the user to offer up a bit of information. You can do it in a number of ways, the least efficient being the voluntary check-in (even with the promise of reward). Slightly more efficient is the “discussion” check-in used by devices like Autom, a diet robot that reminds you to log your food and feelings with friendly chit-chat and anthropomorphized features. Finally, there’s the invisible check-in à la Highlight, one of the better – if fatally flawed – instances of check-in I’ve seen in a while. Highlight was sort of a scavenger hunt for the ego (as are many check-in apps) which is why it got so much press. The folks who yodeled the most about it (TCers included) didn’t want to find other people, they were excited when other people found them.

Check-in becomes valuable when we don’t notice it. But invisible check-in requires deep hooks into the mobile device’s operating system. For example, FindMyFriends on the iPhone is just about perfect because it lets you find people without forcing them to Tweet that they’re behind a Denny’s smoking banana peels. The app, instead, knows where they are by using micro updates sent to a central server. Google already supplies similar functionality through Google Latitude and there is currently an API available.

This, in turn, sets privacy advocates on edge because, in a sense, the app is telling people where you are without your explicit knowledge (although not without your explicit permission.) You give up a freedom to gain a bit of functionality.

It seems the best apps are those that offer check-in after the fact. Yelp, for example, offers Foursquare-like check-ins but also just leaves you alone if you don’t want to use that service. More important, Yelp creates a valuable dialogue between the user and the service in that they don’t let you publish reviews right from the app or, presumably, right from the location. This, in turn, forces a more ruminative approach to restaurant reviews.

Most check-in apps get it wrong more than they get it right. If I have to do anything other than enter a room to use a location-based service, someone is doing something wrong. Here’s hoping someone really figures out the sweet spot between volunteering information and “streaming” it live before we all get so engrossed in checking, plusing, liking, and tagging that we forget to live our lives.

[Image: alpturk33/Shutterstock]

Disney’s Playdom had a hit on their hands when they released their time-travelling, object-finding adventure Gardens of Time, which eventually (and contentiously) topped Facebook’s list of most recommended games in 2011. The question for the team then was, well, what’s next?

User research had players responding positively to nature, so when the time came to craft a follow-up to Gardens of Time, the team decided to trawl the Disney IP vault for something that would fit that nature-conscious bill. After being reminded of a certain wildlife-themed Disney theme park in Florida, Animal Kingdom Explorers was born.

Playdom’s VP of Product Eric Todd mentioned that this nature-friendly tack is what they hope will set the game apart from their scores of competitors, though area of appeal is likely a bit different than in their previous games. I’ve played a bit of Gardens of Time in my day, and what kept me coming back was the steampunk-y narrative thread that tied together what otherwise would have been the digital equivalents of pages from an I Spy book. Animal Kingdom Explorers skews a bit more toward the realistic, with players joining the Global Wildlife Research team, a rag-tag group of nature lovers devoted to finding and protecting critters in far-flung reaches of the globe.

The mechanics of the game are terribly straightforward, and refugees from Gardens of Time will have an especially easy time getting into the swing of things. At the game’s heart, you, well, find animals. Some are well hidden, some aren’t — you’ve seen this before. Education is more of a focus this time around though, as Todd explained that Gardens of Time players enjoyed learning about and getting glimpses into eras gone by. In Animal Kingdom Explorers, players will come across scores of animal names and trivia to add to their mental cache.

As expected, there’s more to do in the game than just find a few wayward (and well-hidden) critters — like in Gardens of Time before it, players can carve out their own corner of the game world in the form of a nature preserve. At the center of each player’s preserve is a bit of the Animal Kingdom park itself — iconic Tree of Life, in all its strange, thick-trunked glory. Eagle-eyed players may also spot the inclusion of a few other Disney-specific nods, like a rock formation that looks awfully like something out of The Lion King…

Todd tells me that in-jokes and references to existing Disney properties are visible throughout the game, and players could eventually see more official appearances from the Disney crew if the right opportunity presents itself.

The game has been in full production for about 5 or 6 months now, with an official launch slated in for the coming weeks. The timing certainly seems right though — Gardens of Time peaked at around 17 million monthy active users, which dropped to about 8.5 million MAUs when they made Facebook’s list. Now it’s down to 6.5 million, perhaps signaling that their players are ready for something new.

A group that petitioned Apple in January to do more to protect workers’ rights in China is withdrawing its petition. The petition, which had previously gathered over 255,000 signatures before being delivered in-person to Apple stores in major U.S. cities, including New York, recently made headlines following a New York Times series on the harsh conditions of factory workers in China. The series examined the working lives of those tasked with building our favorite gadgets, like iPhones and iPads.

But one of the critical stories that helped lead the crusade, and therefore the petition, was that of American playwright Mike Daisey, whose one-man show attempts to get his audience to think about the origin of their beloved iGadgets. Unfortunately, his story turned out to be partially false. Now the group behind the original petition is reversing its course, too, saying “Apple is already doing more for worker rights in China than just about any other IT company that deals with Chinese suppliers.”

Oops.

Mike Daisey’s story, which became one of the most listened to shows on NPR’s “This American Life,” was retracted earlier this month, when it was discovered that Daisey’s story contained "significant fabrications.” (More on that here). His claims of children standing at Foxconn’s gates (the large factory contracted by Apple to build its gadgets), of a man with hands mangled by a factory accident, of workers poisoned on the job – all false. (Although cribbed from media reports, Daisey never saw these things himself, as claimed).

Motivated to get people to think about how the global economy leads to less than ideal working conditions overseas, it’s possible that Daisey’s heart was in the right place. One can never tell, when there’s money involved – and Daisey wasn’t performing his play for free, of course. The problem, however, was the media eating up the non-journalist’s tales and then reporting on them as if they were fact.

But back to the point of the online petition – did it ever really matter? Does the fact that it’s being retracted now matter still?

The retraction of a petition such as this can be portrayed as a showcase example of slacktivism gone wrong. With a click of mouse, hundreds of thousands of consumers rallied behind the awareness-raising effort, when in truth, Apple was already on course to address labor violations, as pertaining to Foxconn and others. In January, the company released a series of reports detailing the results of supplier audits, and opened itself up access to an independent team of auditors from the Fair Labor Association to review its ongoing performance in these matters.

That’s not to say that Apple was innocent in the matter – the reports found a handful of underage workers, forced overtime, issues with benefits and other labor violations, but if anything, things were getting better. In 2010, for example, Apple had discovered 91 underage workers in 10 facilities. In 2011, there were 13 cases uncovered.

Petitioning a company for change, when one could argue that, in fact, it’s leading others in the industry who are less-than-forthcoming on the matter, seems misguided at best.

It also leads one to question whether or not online petitions really matter in the long run? Sure, they help to make headlines, but usually only after an issue has been brought to the attention of the public through other means, often the media. Does signing your name as another who’s “really mad about this” have any lasting impact on a company of Apple’s size? Do these petitions even have credibility when one can start one based on false information? Do recipients take them seriously?

There’s not a simple “yes” or “no” answer to any of these questions. A recent thread on Reddit had commenters pointing out several examples of online petitions having real-world impact, many regarding legal and governmental matters (areas where politicians sometimes do take into account the views of their constituents). But the issue was hotly debated.

It’s clear that the impact of petitions is hard to quantify. There are often inflated claims that a petition was responsible for change when it could easily be a number of other things (the old correlation/causation argument). It’s also clear that in some cases, petitions are merely just more examples of slactivism.

Signing a petition as a part of some sort of “social activism” movement is a shot in the dark. Some percentage of petitions may help impact change, others linger on the internet then die off. Signing one can be the equivalent of changing your Twitter profile photo or “liking” some cause on Facebook – easy to do, questionable meaningfulness. It makes you feel good, but that’s about the extent of it.

Did this particular Apple petition bring anything new to the company’s attention, or was it merely an echo of complaints, and the deep-rooted guilt of privilege that Apple consumers continually face?

Bottom line: if consumers want to really force a company to take notice of anything, the best way to do so is still the hardest for most to follow through on: stop buying the company’s products.

ht: CNET

Ustream is celebrating reaching 2.5 million downloads of its Android app today with the release of a major new version, Ustream 2.0. It’s been a long time coming for Ustream to hit this milestone – the original Android app was launched back in 2009, and the Android tablet version arrived just last year.

With the update, the company is finally providing a way for users to disable the banner ads within the app – news whose timing is critical, given the recent reports about Android ads and the related battery drains.

Explains Ustream of its in-app ads: “to maintain its development, the app is supported by unobtrusive banner ads appearing at the bottom of some screens.”

How “unobtrusive” those ads may be, however, is certainly subjective.

And with the report (PDF) that ads in these so-called “free” Android apps drain the phone’s battery at incredible rates – some even use twice the power they actually need to operate – any ad-disabling option will be a welcome addition for regular users.

Starting today, Ustream users can choose to purchase a premium membership, available to buy both in the app and on Ustream’s website, in order to have access to an entirely ad-free version.

While that’s the biggest news with Ustream 2.0, the app has also received a makeover as well as a new “quick broadcast” widget, as a part of the overhaul.

The updated user interface now offers a dark theme, and supports device rotation to landscape mode, swiping-based navigation, an improved “actionbar” (the screen header) functionality and other minor improvements.

Also new is a “Quick Broadcast” widget which Android users can place directly on their homescreen. When you see something you want to record, just tap the widget to immediately begin live streaming.

Although of lesser importance to stateside users, but of strategic importance to the company itself, version 2.0 of the Android app now supports the Korean language too, in addition to English and Japanese. This comes on the heels of last week’s announcement of Ustream’s launch in Korea. The company had partnered last fall with KT Corporation, a leading telecommunications provider in South Korea, while simultaneously raising an additional $10 million funding round from Japanese telecom provider Softbank. Korea is the second non-English platform for the company, following Ustream Asia, which launched in January 2010.

The updated version of Ustream for Android will roll out to the Android Market Google Play store today. For those who already have the app installed, just check for updates.

You’re paying your developer $150,000 a year plus change. Why let them get distracted by dry cleaning or grocery shopping?

While the very biggest companies like Google and Facebook have figured out that they need to import barbers, car washes and gourmet food onto their campuses to keep their talent focused, smaller companies don’t have the scale for these luxuries.

That’s the reason why Exec, the task-management service from Justin.tv founder Justin Kan, is opening corporate accounts today. Companies will be able to set up an account and allot a certain amount of money every month for employees to delegate errands they don’t want to do. If they don’t use the credits, then they will just roll over into the next month.

Exec is a task-management service that gets people to run errands on-demand like getting keys copied or cleaning for $25 an hour. Unlike other services, it doesn’t make users manage a bidding process and vet offers.

“If you want to have someone do a gig, there are usually a lot of steps involved,” Kan said. “I’m trading mental energy to save physical effort. I want money to replace mental energy and physical effort. I want this to require as little thought as possible.”

Kan said he’s launching corporate accounts because so many startups had asked him to do it. Stripe, a mobile payments processing startup, used Exec to get beer and 50 chairs from Ikea down to their office for a developer meetup. Greplin, a personal search company from Y Combinator, also uses Exec to get food for the office from Trader Joe’s.

Right now, Kan is focused on preserving user experience over growing too fast. He says 91 percent of the app’s reviews are five-star ratings and 98 percent are either four- or five-star ratings. Exec is only available in San Francisco at the moment.

“For an app like this, the first time that it doesn’t work for you is the last time you’ll use it,” he says. He’s hired lots of workers and sent through a multi-step training process to make sure supply outpaces demand for now (just like Uber had to do when it first launched).

Decide.com, the consumer electronics search service launched by several former Farecast engineers, is expanding its focus today to home appliances. Previously, the service told users whether they should buy now or wait to purchase consumer electronics like cell phones, tablets, desktop and laptops.

But according to Decide CEO Mike Fridgen, home appliances share much in common with CE devices, in that their prices are similarly volatile – on any given day prices on appliances change by 12%, he says. These fluctuations – precisely the kind of data that Decide.com likes to crunch – were one of the reasons why it made sense for Decide to attack this new vertical.

For those unfamiliar, Decide.com is a search engine of sorts that tells you whether or not to purchase a gadget, computer, or now, an appliance, that you have your eyes on. Created by Farecast’s former VP of Marketing and Product Development, Mike Fridgen, as well as Farecast co-founder, now Decide CTO, Oren Etzioni, the engine is somewhat reminiscent of their first product Farecast, which told consumers the best time to buy a plane ticket. That company was later acquired by Microsoft for $115 million.

Now at work on tracking pricing and product changes in other industries, the team is using their expertise to develop new techniques for analyzing different sorts of market fluctuations. Decide doesn’t just compare current prices and availability for the products it watches, as a shopping portal would, it also knows of product release cycles, historical trends, company announcements, news and rumors published by the media, and more. All of these items come into play when Decide makes its “buy” or “wait” recommendations.

With home appliances, prices are constantly changing, making them an ideal target for Decide’s algorithms. When prices change on appliances, explains Fridgen, 50% are price increases and 50% are price drops. The average drop is 10% and often goes as high as 25%. For consumers, this could translate into significant savings when shopping for high-dollar items like new refrigerators, washers or dryers, for example.

By targeting the home appliances market, which sees 55 million buyers per year, Decide says it’s increasing its prediction and product coverage threefold.

To date, Decide has provided consumers with millions of recommendations, saving people roughly $54 on average, says Fridgen. The company also has mobile applications on iPhone and Android, an plans to release an iPad app early next month. The iPhone app was recently featured by Apple, and received over 100,000 downloads within its first 90 days of availability (Metrics for Android were not given, however.)

A couple of weeks ago, the company also released another feature which could soon have increasing importance: a “what to buy” feature. As the “what” is often subjective (just ask iPhone or Android users about that), the company is starting in just one area – camera recommendations based on product specs, but that also factor in price stability among other things.

With today’s expansion to appliances, Decide.com has refreshed its website to feature both categories of consumer goods right on the homepage.

Decide raised $6 million in Series B funding a year ago, bringing its total raised to $8.5 million. Investors in the most recent round included Maveron, Madrona Venture Group, Google founding board member Ram Shriram, and former Expedia CEO Erik Blachford.

Parse, the San Francisco-based startup that’s trying to bill itself as the “Heroku of mobile,” is coming out of the gate with some nice momentum.

The company, which streamlines the development process for mobile apps by letting developers basically outsource their application’s server-side backend, is coming out of beta today. There are more than 10,000 developers who have signed up including 955 Dreams, which is behind those immersive iPad apps like Band of the Day and The History of Jazz. The company adds that those numbers are growing at about 40 percent month-over-month.

“There’s this trend underway with apps increasingly resting on web services. Years ago, people said you would be crazy to run your apps in the cloud,” said Tikhon Bernstam, who co-founded Parse after co-founding Scribd. “The next step is cloud platform dedicated to mobile apps. This is totally inevitable given AWS (Amazon Web Services) and Heroku.”

(For those unaware, Heroku was Y Combinator’s biggest exit to date with its $212 million sale to Salesforce. It eased Ruby on Rails, Node.Js, Python and Scala development by taking the pain of dealing with servers out of the process.)

With the move, Parse is introducing pricing for access. It’s a freemium model, with free access for up to 1 million API requests, 1 million push notifications or 1 gigabyte of file storage. After that, it’s $199 per month for up to 15 million API requests, 5 million push notifications or 5 gigabytes of storage. Then there’s a higher enterprise pricing tier, for which developers need to sort out a custom arrangement with the company.

Bernstam says that most of the 10,000 developers who have signed up are showing up by word of mouth. Parse’s entire team is made of developers, so Bernstam says the company is acutely aware of the pain points that others feel in the mobile app development process.

“When we were building apps, we saw that everybody one was building this half-baked version of what Parse is over and over,” said co-founder Kevin Lacker. “We would spend 90 percent of the time building that infrastructure and plumbing instead of building the apps we wanted to create.”

Parse recently raised $5.5 million in a round led by Ignition Partners, the same firm that led the Series B round for Heroku.

As Education 2.0 looms, we’re seeing a rise remote learning, self-education, smart software, all of which is allowing people to learn and to teach at their own pace — inside the classroom or out. As this becomes more and more true, coupled with the noise that one finds online today in job forums, employers and businesses are looking for more effective ways to identify the right candidate with the right set of skills.

There are a million different approaches. LinkedIn knows it has to change, and is considering a skills section, Identified, BranchOut, and Bullhorn are combining your social graph with (at least in the case of Identified) a reputation score. While a more tried and true measure, employed by sites like Odesk and Elance, ply freelancers with tests that allow them to prove their skills. You may not have heard of it yet, but there is a similar motive at work behind Smarterer.

Beyond an awesome name (and an intimidating logo), Jason first covered the Boston-based startup in June of last year when it raised $1.25 million from True Ventures, Google Ventures, and a flock of angels. The team had founded Smarterer in 2010 with the goal of developing a platform for validating people’s technical and social skills, which it launched officially to the public in October 2011, after its summer financing.

For those unfamiliar, Smarterer wants you to be able to prove how proficient you are at using Salesforce, or Twitter, or Google Apps, all through a series of quizzes. The startup thinks that it can only take a few minutes to prove just how competent you are at using these sites, so users simply head to the site, where they’re served practice test. If you select Twitter, a sample question might be, “what’s a popular third party Twitter application?” Choose “Twitterer,” and you’d be wrong, pal.

Smarterer’s system is crowdsourced, and edited “Wiki-style,” which Executive Chair Dave Balter says allows their tests to remain flexible — to date, users have created more than 400 tests and have added more than 30K questions for skills like Excel, Facebook, PHP, VMWare, etc.

Thus, while Smarterer has been flying under the radar (and providing an awesome complement to the game-ified jobs platform for developers, Gild), it’s formula has been proving successful this year. In fact, it grew by 1,250 percent in one week. In it’s blog post on the subject, Smarterer dishes out some interesting advice for startups, especially in relation to strong growth over time vs. immediate, viral growth, the former of which Pinterest has been drawing attention to of late.

After slow growth at first, Smarterer has been hitting some milestones of late, among those the fact that its community has now answered over 5 million questions, and is now seeing an average of 70K questions answered per day. In its Photoshop test, for example, over 12K people have answered almost 200K questions in an effort to show their Adobe skeelz.

The reason Smarterer has found its so-called “magic button”? It’s a combination of two things. One, in January, it launched a new “Skill Sets” product that helps hiring managers use Smarterer’s tools to validate candidate skills, and the other is that it’s really focused on its algorithm, which doesn’t just monitor user activity and make guesstimations, it’s using a scoring platform based on Glicko (a rating system used to qualify chess masters) that makes the tests get a little better at measuring your skills every time you answer a question.

Every question answered helps the algorithm (and the team) understand its difficulty. This is great for the average user, because, hey, the truth is that not everyone shines on their resumes, and employers can very easily miss great candidates if they become overly focused on a one-page CV to determine talent. Smarterer wants to give those people a way to cut through the BS, and just “show what they know,” with a score served according to Levels of proficiency. Take some tests, and prove that you’re a master of CSS. In less than 60 seconds.

As to revenue models and competition? Well, Smarterer recently struck a partnership with Bullhorn Reach, and it sees sites like Identified and BranchOut as potential partners — not competitors. Right now, Smarterer isn’t charging for its services; both users and recruiters can get tested or use the platform for free. However, as Smarterer is seeing a growing demand to use its platform to validate credentials for professionals, it will likely be rolling out fees for this service in the coming months.

For more, check out Smarterer at home here.

Vox.io is a startup that has been making waves recently for its innovative take on VOIP. Essentially, it replaces what would normally be a phone number into a hyperlink, a disruptive idea which has many ramifications. But today the company is starting to aim at SMS as well. It’s launched a realtime Chat feature which many observers will interpret simply as a feature. It’s actually more significant than that. Firstly the interface is something I daresay Twitter will be taking a good hard look at. Secondly, this chat feature will be moving to the startup’s iPhone client shortly, going up against WhatsApp and a host of other messaging services trying to kill SMS.

First up vox.io has come up with a great new way to chat. It puts the links and content people talk about in line in a two-column interface. I’m slightly amazed other clients – and perhaps Twitter? – haven’t come up with this simple strategy but it certainly makes chat a lot more intuitive since it means not having to leave the conversation.

Out of the door, vox.io chat is supporting over 200 services including YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Twitter, Instagram and Google Maps courtesy of Embed.ly.

As with Facebook Chat, vox.io Chat stores messages offline and delivers them the next time the person is online. Alternatively, you can send an SMS straight from the chat interface.

Chat also works inside a vox.io call, which makes me think this is going to be way more fun than Skype.

A mobile version of vox.io with support for text-based communication is already in the works

Vox.io currently allows free calls between vox.io users, calls to regular phones, synced contacts and call history and paid-for SMS. It’s backed by angel investors and Seedcamp (vox.io won Mini Seedcamp London in January 2011 and was selected as one of the top startups at Seedcamp Week 2011).

Maybe you’re just a secretive person. Or perhaps you are in the middle of leaving your job, and are talking to a boss from a competing company. Maybe you have a girlfriend… and another girlfriend.

Whatever the case may be, you don’t want people reading your texts. In fact, when Greg wrote about a guest mode on the iPhone, you basically realized the biggest problem with your phone in that very instant. But there’s a solution, and it’s called Black SMS.

There’s one tiny issue I have with the app but none that should hinder anyone from downloading the app if they want to keep their text chats private. Seriously, you don’t even need to read any more. Just download. Here.

OK, fine. You want to know more.

It’s really simple. Black SMS is an app that works with iMessage. You simply install and set a password, and then type out your big secret. Once you give the other person the password for your convo (which I recommend that you do over some other form of communication, not text), you simply copy and paste the message from Black SMS into iMessage and hit send.

When the text shows up on the other person’s phone, it’ll just look like a black text bubble. The recipient then needs to copy the bubble, switch over to the Black SMS app, and paste the message. The recipient will also need to input the same password you used to encrypt the message.

After that, the secret text will appear clear as a bright blue day within the Black SMS app, but anyone who goes snooping in your iMessages app or tries to fake a password will come up with nothing.

If you’re curious about the tiny issue, I just wish that there was a more direct way to get back into Black SMS from iMessage rather than multitasking. I use a lot of apps all the time and it’s really easy for an app I used just five minutes ago to get pushed out the multi-tasking bar of four.

Still, for $.99 this app is totally worth it. Especially if you creep.

Another development in the evolving technology patent game: HTC today becomes the latest Android handset maker to join forces with Intertrust Technologies Corporation to license the company’s patents, largely around digital rights management. Others that have agreements with Intertrust include Samsung, Motorola and Huawei.

At the same time, HTC has taken a 20 percent stake in SyncTV, a subsidiary of Intertrust, for an undisclosed amount. SyncTV is a cloud-based video service that works on a number of platforms, including Android, Windows Phone, Xbox, iOS and Internet-enabled televisions.

Intertrust is terming this as a “broad strategic technology partnership.” The company, to date, has mainly developed technologies and licensed patents in the areas like distributed computing, including cloud-based services, as well as digital rights management, and here its Marlin DRM software will be used “to protect and manage content in various national video distribution ecosystems in Japan, China and Europe.”

The SyncTV part of the agreement, on the other hand, might be something to be used in some potential streaming services HTC is developing for its devices.

Although other OEMs have inked licensing deals with Intertrust in the past, this looks like the first time that one has also converted it into a deal to take a stake on one of its subsidiaries.

HTC has been building up a portfolio of content and services investments over the last year or so that potentially can be used by the company to enhance its products and set them apart from the rest of the smartphone pack. The idea is for it to better compete with the likes of Apple, which has managed to successfully sell the idea of having the best device (the iPhone!), with the best services (those apps!), to just the kind of customer that HTC would like to have for its own handsets. HTC, meanwhile, has found it a hard struggle to compete in the Android camp against Samsung and its onslaught of devices.

HTC’s investments have most recently included reports of a purchase of MOG, but also a $300-million investment in Beats Audio, the $48.5-million buy of Saffron Digital (for more video distribution) and a $40-million stake in OnLive for cloud-based gaming.

Intertrust, meanwhile, has a long, and financially fruitful, history of enforcing its patents. One of the more notable cases was back in 2004, when it settled a suit against Microsoft over patent infringement for a one-off payment of $440 million, a suit that was three years in the running.

Intertrust’s licensing deals with Samsung, Motorola and Huawei also cover other consumer electronics beyond mobile devices, including set-top boxes, computers and DVD players, Internet TVs and more — although these are areas not (yet?) explored by HTC in its product line-up.

Full statement:

Intertrust and HTC Announces Strategic Technology Partnership

Sunnyvale, CA and Taoyuan, Taiwan – March 26, 2012 – As part of a strategic initiative to improve the robustness, privacy and security of Android and Windows Phone mobile devices, Intertrust Technologies Corporation, the world' leading inventor and licensor of trusted distributed computing technologies, and HTC Corporation (TWSE: 2498), a global leader in mobile innovation and design, today announced a broad strategic technology partnership.

HTC joins many of the world's leading handset manufacturers in licensing Intertrust's patents, securing worldwide access to Intertrust's fundamental patent portfolio in trusted distributed computing and digital rights management (DRM).

Further, as part of HTC's ongoing efforts to create comprehensive mobile experiences for consumers, it has acquired 20% of Intertrust's SyncTV subsidiary. SyncTV is a cloud-based video service that delivers video over the Internet to a broad set of devices, including Android, Windows Phone, XBOX, iOS and Internet-enabled televisions. HTC has also license Intertrust's broadly deployed open standards based Marlin DRM software. Marlin DRM is used to protect and manage content in various national video distribution ecosystems in Japan, China and Europe.

"HTC's growth in the smartphone market is admirable, their innovative devices have come to define a category and have been broadly emulated by others," said Talal Shamoon, chief executive officer of Intertrust. "We are honored that HTC has license Intertrust technology and we look forward to working together in areas of mutual interest."

If at first you don’t succeed, open source the sucker. Peek has released an open source version of their Peek Mobile operating system, allowing hackers to use the all-but-obsolete little email device as a hacker platform. The Linux release is available the PeekLinux wiki and hackers are already adding new apps and functionality to the tiny device.

Peek itself has pivoted out of the hardware space to become a cloud services provider for so-called dumb phones, allowing for push email, social media check-ins, and other interesting applications. They recently scored HTC as a client and the founder Amol Sarva is now aiming squarely at developing markets in their push to add improved features to less advanced phones.

Programmer Chris Wade is leading the Peek open source charge and has built a tool chain and methodology for installing homebrew software. The biggest problem? Trying to find a Peek to test it on. Radio Shack and Target are out of them, apparently, and there are three on eBay right now (Note: do not search for just “peek” on eBay while at work unless you want to see bras with the fronts cut out.)

It’s nice to see a former hardware company give back to its long-time supporters, even if it’s in a postmortem sort of way.

Nokia’s first Windows Phone landed here in the States late last year, but part of me was hoping for something a bit… flashier than the Lumia 710. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop fulfilled that desire when he showed off the LTE-friendly Lumia 900 at this year’s CES, and now we have an officially release date to go with it.

AT&T has confirmed to CNET that their new flagship Windows Phone, the Lumia 900, will officially hit the company’s sales channels on April 8.

At $99 with a two-year contract, the Lumia 900 is a hell of a deal — it features a 4.3-inch ClearBlack AMOLED display, a 1.4GHz single core processor, 512MB of RAM, and an impressive 8-megapixel rear camera with Carl Zeiss optics. Oh, and expect it to come in black and blue at launch (no word on that striking magenta, unfortunately).

OK, so the spec sheet may look a little underwhelming compared to the sort of hardware you see paired with Android. That’s not really the point though — the thing about Windows Phone is that it really doesn’t require the latest and greatest hardware in order to give users a buttery-smooth use experience. Even on relatively low-powered devices like Nokia’s budget-conscious Lumia 610, Windows Phone doesn’t feel dramatically less responsive than it does on more robust hardware (though there are a few limitations in place).

Though we haven’t had too much hands-on time with the thing, Nokia and AT&T seem to have have struck quite a balance between performance and price. I expect you’ll hear quite a bit about it too, especially if you’re an AT&T customer. Given the device’s reported status as a “Hero” device, you’ll also have to deal with the fruits of a very pricy advertising and promotions campaign. Nokia has reportedly shelled out $25 million to get their new flagship in the hands of AT&T’s front line forces, so prepare to get an earful from your salesperson if you’re planning to pick out a new smartphone some time soon.

Nokia’s clearly attempting to tackle their long-standing visibility problems — they’ve been puttering away in the U.S. market for quite a while now, with none of their devices ever reaching critical mass. Sure, part of that is due to some questionable choices when it came to device releases, but by then they were already flying under just about everyone’s radar anyway.

Of course, this isn’t the only big launch that Nokia has to deal with — the Finnish phone giant is preparing to debut a trio of Windows Phones in China in just a few days. Only time will tell whether or not this aggressive push will play out the way they hope, but a combination of solid hardware and low prices are bound to get more than a few people tempted to take the plunge.

Nokia is beefing up its Lumia handsets with a bit of DLNA baked into its Nokia Play To app for Windows Phone. The app is currently in beta and available for download at Nokia’s Beta Labs. The company debuted the app last summer for Symbian handsets (demo video below).

Do you know what’s great about DLNA? Nothing. It’s Apple’s AirPlay done wrong. The two sharing protocols embody a similar concept in that they allow media to be streamed from a device to a screen. But one implementation works flawlessly, and for various reasons, the other often does not.

Nokia’s Play To app promises to do much of the same as AirPlay. Through the app, Lumia phones can stream photos and videos to DLNA devices as long as both share a common a Wi-Fi connection. But as a longtime DLNA user, I can attest that AirPlay and DLNA work very differently.

From Wikipedia, DLNA is a “non-profit collaborative trade organization.” The standard called by the same name uses UPnP for media delivery. It’s a complex ecosystem consisting of 12 different types of clients and servers from dozens if not hundreds of companies. The standard allows for simple cross-communication between different devices produced by different companies. For instance, a Nokia phone or PC-based media server can share media with a Sony HDTV or Panasonic Blu-ray player. Herein lies the problem: the ecosystem is so vast that there is often a piece missing, causing the whole thing to collapse and fail.

Apple built AirPlay exclusively for Apple devices. The wireless technology is only found on iOS devices and very few hardware clients. Apple TV is the primary set-top client but AirPlay also found on devices like the Boxee Box and through an app on Google TV. This limited ecosystem cuts out a large chunk of potential users but it is also the reason it works so well. Simply turn on AirPlay on a hardware client like the Apple TV and it instantly appears on the iOS device. I do not fancy myself an Apple fanboy, but after years of messing with DLNA, I consider AirPlay a marvel of technology. It just works.

Still, as bad as DLNA is, Nokia is at least moving forward, implementing a widely used standard. Nokia, like Windows Phone, is still playing catch-up. Android has had DLNA for years and Apple’s AirPlay debuted in 2010 as AirTunes. Like HTC, Nokia is essentially using off-the-shelf innovation to beef up its offering. It’s smart and cost-effective. Nokia does not have the same ecosystem as Apple to develop and market a competing sharing technology. But I wish it did.

Wix.com made its name with a platform that business owners and regular Joes could use to build Flash-enabled websites. Now, as a sign of the times, the company is launching a new service to let people do the same with HTML5.

This is a significant boost to HTML5, which lets people create sites that work across both PC and mobile browsers, because Wix already has a track record in attracting users to its offerings.

Wix claims that more than one million users join its platform to build sites every month; those platforms cover not only Flash-based sites, but one specifically aimed to be used on the mobile web. In all, its CEO co-founder, Avishai Abrahami, tells me that websites created through Wix are already bringing in traffic of more than 200 million monthly users.

The new HTML5 builder is based around a drag-and-drop format and Abrahami goes very big on how this is the equivalent of HTML5 for Dummies. “We have a special tool you can use to either change, modify or build new elements on your site,” says Abrahami. “You have to know how to move the mouse and click. You need zero knowledge of HTML coding or any other technical understanding. It’s like PowerPoint, or other drag-and-drop software.”

Users can choose from 50 templates to build their sites, or they can opt for their own (but that will, again, require a little technical know-how or investment in someone who has some). Typically the company charges between $4 and $16 per month for its platform.

Wix is also targeting a growing market: although mobile apps are still a hugely popular way of accessing content on mobile devices, mobile web sites are also seeing a growth in traffic.

And while some sites and services lend themselves to creating apps specifically catering to a mobile user (say with location-based customization, or the ability to use the device’s camera), many other will be looking for an all-in-one platform, like HTML5. Abrahami says his company is the first of the major DIY platforms to move on HTML5 support, but you can expect further companies to follow suit.

Abrahami tells me that one of the big reasons that it has chosen now to launch its new product is because we have seen a significant shift in even the last year away from legacy browsers that do not support HTML5 such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7.

With browsers like Firefox and Chrome, and Safari on Mac and iOS, dominating the market, “it’s a completely different ballgame,” he says.

To date, Abrahami says there have been 600,000 mobile sites built on Wix’s platform and its Facebook page builder, used by companies for their brand presence on the social network, has been used for some 450,000 pages.

Wix, founded in 2008, last year raised a $40 million round from investors including Insight Venture Partners, DAG ventures, Benchmark Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Mangrove Capital Partners — partly to grow out in the very kind of area it’s launching today with this HTML5 product.

Although Abrahami says Wix is “nearly profitable” he adds that the company is likely to starting hunting for another round this year: “We are more focused on building products right now,” he says. “Our target is to improve what we offer and provide more web building services to more people.”

The Mighty Eagle has landed! Released late last week, the latest edition of Rovio’s Angry Birds franchise was downloaded 10 million times in its first three days. Unfortunately since the announcement came by way of a tweet, it doesn’t include detailed data concerning platform penetration or the number of people who paid $.99 for the extra levels (I did). But 10 million in three days!

10 million Angry Birds Space downloads in less than 3 days! Thanks to our fans, stay tuned for more! #angrybirdsspace

—
Angry Birds (@AngryBirds) March 26, 2012

TechCrunch’s Jordan Crook talked to Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka last week concerning the game. He indicated that this game is the company’s most important release to date. The company is no doubt happy with the results, and is hoping that at least some fans are celebrating the game with one of the pricey Angry Birds Space plush toys.

Rovio happened to run into a bit of controversy on the road to 10 million downloads though. Vesterbacka was quoted saying something to the effect that Rovio was not planning on making a version of Angry Birds Space for Windows Phone — an overblown statement that even caused one so-called analyst to become bearish on 3rd party WinPhone vendor Nokia. Rovio’s CEO later corrected the statement saying a Windows Phone version is on the way.

Rovio isn’t going to rest on the success of Angry Birds Space like it did with its first games. The company plans on releasing four more Angry Birds games in 2012. We don’t have the details on the upcoming titles, but chances are the game involves slinging upset birds at green pigs.

ViVOtech, the near field communication (NFC) software and systems company, has raised an additional amount of Series D funding, according to a news release issued today. The company said this is an internal round, but did not disclose the investors or the amount. To date, ViVOtech has raised $96 million from Singapore's EDBI, SingTel Innov8, Motorola Solutions Venture Capital, Alloy Ventures, Citi Ventures (the venture arm of Citigroup), Draper Fisher Jurveston, DFJ Gotham, First Data Corporation, Miven Ventures, Motorola Mobility, Nokia Growth Partners and NCR.

Founded in 2001, ViVOtech develops payment software, NFC smart posters, contactless readers/writers, and over-the-air card provisioning, and transaction management infrastructure software. NFC allows devices to exchange data over short distances with a wave or a tap. The company’s readers are found in big-name retailers and stores such as McDonald’s, Home Depot and Whole Foods as well as in taxi cabs.

ViVOtech has shipped nearly one million NFC payment readers to 328 customers in the United States and 181 customers internationally. The company says that it has shipped over half of the NFC payment terminals installed by merchants globally.

ViVOTech’s technology is also licensed by other companies and merchants to enable mobile payments. In fact, Google used ViVOtech’s technology for last year’s Google Wallet NFC push. Isis, the NFC joint venture between carriers AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon; also teamed with ViVOtech recently.

ViVOtech has also reportedly been looking at an IPO this year. According to Bloomberg BusinessWeek, the company has 80 percent of the U.S. market for NFC readers, and the company sales are in "double-digit millions" as of last year.

While ViVOtech says that it “stands to benefit significantly from,” the growth of NFC, it’s still not clear that NFC has the legs to become the de facto payment option for consumers. PayPal, Square and others seem to be shying away from making a big bet on the technology. Apple has yet to participate in the space and it's still unclear if the iPhone maker will be adopting the technology.

This week I’m heading the ArabNet Digital Summit in Beirut, Lebanon. It looks like the march of the Internet isn’t just changing society across the Arab region, but business too. The MENA (Middle East North Africa) region's largest digital event has been expanded to 5 days featuring speakers, panels, workshops, a startup competition and about 1,500 delegates. In a sign the the Arab business world is really getting switched on to tech these days, there’s even a hackathon-style developer event during the conference. I daresay there will be some interesting startups for TechCrunch to unearth there.

You can follow the conference at @ArabNetME on Twitter or the #ArabNetME hashtag. You should also follow Omar Christidis on @omarchr, Founder and CEO of ArabNet, who’s a cool guy.

I’m looking into holding some kind of TechCrunch Meetup, maybe in the bar of the hotel where the conference is. Let me know if you have any suggestions in the comments on venues etc. Thanks people.