Happy Dogs Wearing Coats, Nuff Said on Dogatar

Hey internet entrepreneurs, celebrities are encroaching on your market. Thanks to flexible technology and an abundance of developers, web start-ups are practically the new must-have accessory for Hollywood types, reports Business Insider. Check out their list of the 10 companies to watch. There are the A-listers like Ashton Kutcher's Katalyst Media and Will Ferrell's FunnyOrDie. But did you know that Ludacris and Will.i.am have social networks? Or that Peter Gabriel came up with a Pandora-killer and Kim Kardashian launched the Netflix of footwear?

Big numbers from Tumblr. We've periodically sung the praises of blogging start-up Tumblr, which boasts slick technology and an entrepreneurial prodigy of a founder. Today, via Mashable, Tumblr announced some serious traffic growth: 1 billion pageviews and 15,000 new users joining everyday. Meanwhile, Mashable reports that Tumblr, which has operated thus far without a business model, "plans to launch a two revenue generating features next month."

Advice for first time CEOs. Bijan Sabet deals with a lot of neophytes but he doesn't mind (via peHUB). "In consumer Internet companies, first time CEOs are the norm - perhaps even encouraged and preferred," says the general partner at Spark Capital. He has two nuggets of advice for greenhorn CEOs: 1) Share bad news with your board and investors early and 2) always be planning for contingencies. "The 'what if' exercise is incredibly valuable and tells me that a CEO is thinking extremely strategically and not afraid to admit that things sometimes do take longer."

Another acquisition for giant vacation rental company. When HomeAway raised an astounding $250 million in a single venture funding round back in 2008, CEO Brian Sharples told Inc.: "There are going to be some great opportunities [for acquisitions] the next couple of years." Now, TechCrunch reports that HomeAway has bought the publisher of AlugueTemporada.com.br, Brazil's best known vacation rental site. This is at least the third acquisition the company has made since its last funding round and the first outside of North America and Europe.

How not to kill your start-up. ReadWriteWeb has put together a list of core principles entrepreneurs should internalize in order to keep their start-ups from biting the big one. One thing the post says to dodge is the tendency to become caught up in the allure of modern technology. "Consider other sources of competitive power than just technological sophistication, such as superior customer experience or service, exclusive distribution partnerships, or other market-based advantages." The most provocative, and perhaps, pertinent piece of advice? "Remember that sometimes start-ups need to be killed, for their own good -- or yours, at least."

Apps for TV have yet to catch on It is estimated that by the end of 2010, Americans will own more than two million Web-connected TVs. And in 2009, Yahoo! announced that Samsung, Sony, LG, and Vizio televisions would come with its Connected TV software, which is open to all developers. However, unlike the Apple App store, which had more than 3,000 programs just two months after its debut and more than 140,000 by 2010, apps for TV haven't taken off. Only 35 full-featured apps are available on the Yahoo! service. BusinessWeek reports one reason apps for TV have yet to take off is that the approval process for television apps is more difficult than for their online counterparts. After Yahoo! approves the App, each individual TV maker must also approve the app. Some TVs cannot run certain types of code, and TV makers are reluctant to take on the risk of being blamed for an app that disappoints.

Selling your business? A lawyer can help. Over at the New York Times' You're the Boss blog, lawyer Harry Styron offers pointers on selling a business and when to get a lawyer involved (hint: not until the decision has been made to sell, ideally not out of necessity). Especially for family run businesses, Styron says, "if the decision to sell is a result of a key family member having died or become ill or if the prospect of selling the business means some family member is going to lose a good job or a good income, the decision to sell was made too late." Now all you need to know is whether your lawyer should specialize in entrepreneurship.

How to cope with changes at the workplace. From budget cuts, to massive layoffs, to new management techniques, there are plenty of reasons why changes at the office can stress out employees. A recent survey conducted by Right Management, a career management consulting firm, shows that 31 percent of employees have trouble adapting to changes in the workplace, Boston.com reports. The Boston.com team has also come up with five tips on how to deal with change in the workplace, which include taking time to get to know a new boss in order to develop a good working relationship, staying on top of the latest skills that employers expect when seeking out job candidates in your field, and having an open flow of communication with your manager if you feel too bogged down by your workload.

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Google Buzz initially launched to much fanfare but sadly the excitement has faded as issues over privacy, organisation and filtering have arose.

Google have corrected many of the privacy concerns, other features we lie in wait for.

One of the most anticipated releases is Buzz for Google Apps, Google's corporate webmail and PIM service.

Today it appears Google is rolling Buzz out to selected users. Not available on the fullemail client just yet, some users (including myself) now have Buzz available on the mobile version of Buzz. This is similar to the roll out of Buzz in Gmail, which saw it available on the iPhone before Gmail.com. We can expect to see Buzz arrive in Google Apps email inboxes very soon.

Interestingly, Buzz on the iPhone does appear to be part and parcel of the google apps email service but a separate account isn't required. I'm logged into my Google Apps email @zee.me and am greeted with the notice above but upon visiting Buzz, it is in my fact the same account I have been using to test out Buzz on my standard gmail.com account. We can only assume that Google is making it possible to integrate your Google Apps account with your standard gmail account.

The URL of Google Buzz for your domain on your mobile http://m.google.com/app/buzz/a/YOURDOMAIN.com, on a standard browser (after a few tries) we believe you should find buzz appear at http://google.com/buzz/a/YOURDOMAIN.com. Although at the moment that redirects to a page not found url.

This evening, at 7pm PST Time, we'll see Google make a major announcement. Whether this has something to do with it is possible but unlikely. We've been reliably informed Google has bigger news in store.

H/T Sam

StatusNet, the open-source microblogging service that serves as the foundation for identi.ca, just announced the launch of the public beta of its StatusNet Cloud Service. Thanks to this, you can now easily host your own Twitter-like community for your blog, club or company.

Sponsor

Getting Started

To get started, just head over to status.net, sign up for a free account. You can choose between a single user account (good for bloggers and brands), a private network for your company or a public community site. After that, you can customize your site with your own logo and colors. You can also set the character limit for status updates from your users.

Connect to Twitter

Just running your own microblogging network isn't too exciting unless you are running an internal site for your business, but you can easily connect your Twitter account to your StatusNet site, so that every update from your personal site gets syndicated to your Twitter stream as well. Sending local StatusNet @replies to Twitter is optional.

StatusNet in the Enterprise

StatusNet also offers paid enterprise solutions, with costs ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 per year depending on the features and level of service the customer expects. Our Own Alex Williams just took a closer look at the service's future in the enterprise last week and argued that it "has the features that the enterprise customer wants and it has a strong developer community."

As of now, StatusNet's free offering can't quite replace Yammer or similar products in a business setting, but if you always wanted to set up your own Twitter-like environment, StatusNet now makes it as easy as choosing a URL.

Updated

Dalton Caldwell, co-founder and former chief executive of music startup Imeem, appears to be working on a new company called Mixed Media Labs. And he has raised $370,000 of a targeted $600,000 in debt financing to get started, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Despite getting off to a promising start, Imeem struggled to make its business work, and was acquired and shut down by MySpace last year. Most of its staff was laid off, while Caldwell and other executives were kept on only as consultants to help with the transition. So it's not surprising that Caldwell is moving on to another startup. The filing also lists Imeem's former chief operating officer Ali Aydar as a director at the new company.

I haven't been able to find any information about Mixed Media Labs online. There's a web site, but it's completely blank. Unfortunately, we don't have any personal contact info for Caldwell, so I had to resort to Twitter to try to reach him. I'll update this post if I hear back.

Update: Caldwell emailed me: I am not currently in a position to talk about my new company.

Companies: Mixed Media Labs

People: Ali Aydar, Dalton Caldwell

Mashable and the Google Wave team are proud to announce the Google Wave API Challenge, a month-long competition to create exciting new Google Wave extensions.

Google Wave's latest updated clean API and new extension abilities allow for faster development, more opportunities for integrations and lots of exciting potential for many new Google Wave use cases. We invite developers from around the world to showcase their latest extensions.

Over the next several weeks, Mashable and the Google Wave team will be showcasing and discussing the most interesting submissions.

There will be 3 voting categories: Most Fun, Most Useful and Best Use of the Embed API. We'll then pick a Judge's Choice as the overall winner.

The winning developer/development team will receive 2 unlocked Nexus Ones, see their extension featured on Mashable AND receive free passes to the Google I/O conference.

4 Step Submission Process
Step 1: Developers install the Mashable submitty extension from the public read-only wave
Step 2: After installing this, you'll get a New Mashable Submission in your new wave menu
Step 3: Just use our Mashable Submitty Google Extension and fill out the form.
Step 4: After approving valid entries, we'll create a public discussion wave with entries including a voting gadget.

Timeline:
Submissions Open: March 8th, 2010
Submissions Close: April 9th, 2010 11:59 PM EST
Public Voting on Top 20 submissions: April 12th, 2010 April 19th, 2010
Winner Announced: April 21st, 2010

Rules:
Developer or Developer Team (Preferred max of 4 names submitted)
Existing Extensions are eligible only if they use the new API (ports to the new API are fine)
Full Credit for any work due must be entered in April 9th, 2010
Over 18 to receive prize
Final winning submission will be judged exclusively by Mashable and Google Wave team

Tags: contest, Google, Google Wave, google wave api challenge

The Linux Foundation, the non-profit that supports the growth of the Linux kernel, has launched a merchandise store where people can purchase a newly launched line of original T-shirts, hats, mugs and other items that reflect geek culture.

According a release sent out by the Foundation, merchandise available in the Linux.com store is designed to reflect the unique and varied culture associated with Linux and will support the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds. For example, t-shirts contain phrases like Free The Code, FSCK the Establishment, and Fork You. All revenue generated from the store will go directly towards Linux Foundation activities, initiatives and events.

In conjunction with the launch of the store, Linux is holding a t-shirt design contest. Design submissions are due on the store's site by April 11, 2010. The top five designs will be available for community vote at Linux.com through June 6, 2010 and the winning design will be included on T-shirts available for purchase in the Linux.com Store. The lucky designer will be awarded with travel to Boston to attend the Foundation's annual conference LinuxCon in August.

The Linus Foundation has launched a number of unique initiatives to help raise funds for the organization and its open source initiatives. Last year, the Linux Foundation launched a branded Visa credit card.

About the Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux. Founded in 2007, the Linux Foundation sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and is supported by leading Linux and open source companies and developers from around the world. The Linux Foundation promotes, protects and standardizes Linux by hosting important workgroups, events and online resources such as Linux.com. For more information, please visit www.linuxfoundation.org.

Rush Limbaugh hurled a racist comment towards embattled New York Governor David Paterson on his radio show Tuesday.

Discussing the resignation of Rep. Eric Massa and the possibility that Paterson would appoint his replacement or call a special election, Limbaugh invoked Massa's last name in a reference to slavemasters, also known as "massas."

"I am reasonably sure that Paterson will be appointing the replacement, assuming that he, you know, doesn't resign in the next 60 or 90 days," a caller said to Limbaugh.

"Let's assume you're right," Limbaugh responded. "So, David Paterson will become the massa...who gets to appoint whoever gets to take Massa's place. So, for the first time in his life, Paterson's gonna be a massa. Interesting, interesting."

LISTEN (via MediaMatters):

Sorry, everybody who bought a Zune HD! You screwed up. It won't be a part of the XNA Game Studio 4.0 partymeaning it won't play those new mobile Xbox Live games for Windows Phone 7unlike the Zune HD2.

It's through MIcrosoft's XNA Game Studio 4.0 that developers get access to the Xbox Live goodness, using Gamer Services APIs. And that's not in the cards for the plain old Zune HD, according to Microsoft's Klucher:

"Development for the Zune and Zune HD will continue to exist in XNA Game Studio 3.1, however, in XNA Game Studio 4.0, we're encouraging you to migrate your games over to the Windows Phone 7 Series platform."

That's where the Zune HD2 comes in, which Mary Jo Foley hears is in the pipe, and "will be similar to an iPod Touch," and could ship as early as this year. In other words, it'll presumably be a part of that "Windows Phone 7 Series platform" and run Windows Phone 7 apps.

Which is what Microsoft will needas many devices as possible running WP7 apps to give the platform a running start, and a wide base of them that don't require carrier contracts isn't a bad idea. Like Steve Jobs once supposedly referred to the iPod touch as "training wheels for the iPhone," devices running around with Xbox Live games and Zune music, getting people hooked on the platform early, the people who aren't quite ready for a full phone (though maybe that's where the mysterious Project Pink comes in), is almost a necessity, really.

But, uh, everybody who already bought a Zune HD. Um, yeah. Sorry? [ZDNet]

I'm pleased to announce that in the last week, we've successfully deployed our latest site update. Read along to see what we've been doing to make things a bit easier for you.

Optional Domain Verification

One of the biggest pain points for developers wanting to use Yahoo! APIs and services was that you had to verify your domain before you got Consumer Keys for our services. This security restriction was especially annoying at events like our HackDays, when developers told us they really wanted to start coding as quickly as possible. We've now relaxed this requirement and made domain verification optional. You can still verify your domain when you sign up for a key if you want, but we now offer the option to skip this process and let you verify later from the 'My Projects' dashboard. This makes it much easier to start building apps on Yahoo! services, like our Updates and Contacts APIs.

'My Projects' dashboard

As well as the changes to the domain verification process, we also made some other changes to the 'My Projects' dashboard.

1. 'My Favorite' module link. If you are a YAP developer, you can now update the destination link that your app uses in the 'My Favorite' module, when installed on the Yahoo! homepage. This option is found in the application details tab and gives you more control over how users interact with your Open Applications.
2. Update primary email address. If you submit your Open Application for inclusion in our galleries, we may need to contact you. This feature helps ensure we've got the correct email address on record.

Create Consumer Key API

The Create Consumer Key (CCK) API allows developers to easily provide Yahoo!-issued Consumer Keys, Consumer Secrets, and Application IDs to their users. You can find out more about it in this introduction.

Forum improvements

In the last few weeks, we've made several improvements to the YDN Forum, both of which make it easier to use.

1. Email notifications: You can now subscribe to a forum thread and get notified by email when someone replies, or subscribe to a board and get notified of a new topic.
2. Improved the RSS feeds: These now include replies to threads, rather than just the opening post.

New navigation bar

If you are a regular YDN user, you will probably have noticed this change already. We have made some tweaks to the navigation bar, making sure that it is easy to browse to the most popular and most used sections of the site. You can now navigate to Yahoo! Query Language, YUI, Hadoop and our Pattern Library in just one click, as well as get support from our forum. We also made some of the descriptions and names a little clearer. For instance, now you don't need any inside knowledge to know that YAP is our apps platform (Yahoo! Application Platform).

In case you were wondering, these changes are based on the results of a usability study done here at Yahoo! We invited some developers, some YDN users and some not, into the Yahoo! office here in Silicon Valley and watched them use the site through a 2-way mirror in our usability lab. We learned quite a bit from the exercise and are using the findings to make some site design decisions. The participants did know they were being spied on of course.

Bugs, bugs and more bugs

Last but not least, the YDN engineers closed a plethora of bugs (over 100). These ranged from resolving browser compatibility issues, to fixing incorrect 'new message' counts on the forum, to performance optimizations on the 'My Projects' dashboard. We'll continue to fix bugs each release.

Coming Up

The eagled-eyed amongst you may already know this, as YAP developers should see a module entitled Spring 2010. Yahoo! to introduce support for OpenSocial 0.9 on their 'My Projects' details page. We are currently working on supporting the OpenSocial gadget XML spec in YAP. This upgrade means soon you will be able to modify your application via a gadget XML file hosted on your server, rather than having to enter all your app meta-data into a form. Once deployed, you'll also be able to take full advantage of the OpenSocial APIs and increase your application's portability to other OpenSocial-compliant containers.

Suggestions? Please let us know what you think in the comments.

Matthew Lock
Product Manager
YDN

The mobile search and recommendation service WHERE announced today the launch of its new hyper-local mobile advertising network, WHERE Ads.

WHERE's claim to fame is its immensely useful mobile application which goes by the same name. The app allows you to search for restaurants, entertainment, news, and more based on your location. It's currently available for iPhone, Android, Palm WebOS, and Blackberry platforms.

WHERE Ads will allow the company to leverage its mobile platform further by offering targeted ads that benefit both businesses and users. For example, a hungry user searching for pizza in a new town will likely be tempted by a pizza restaurant's ad that features a $5 off coupon. After the user clicks on the ad, they're presented with a detailed page the offers reviews of the pizza place, directions on how to get there, and more.

The company is also opening the ad network to other mobile services. At launch, WHERE Ads will be running on a dozen mobile services including Geocade, Jambase, MocoSpace, and Superpages.com.

If it functions as advertised, WHERE may have hit upon the perfect formula of mobile ads driven by location based services. WHERE Ads focus on offering users something they want at a very local level, and then follow that up by sending them to a simple landing page with all the information they need to get there.

Such an ad platform seems more local than competing mobile ad platforms AdMob (now owned by Google) and Quattro Wireless (owned by Apple, and also WHERE's previous mobile ad supplier) which have focused more on bringing traditional web advertising to the mobile environment. WHERE claims that Click Through Rates (the typical measuring stick for the effectiveness of an ad) on its ads have been up to three times as much as competing mobile ad platforms.

WHERE is a service of Boston-based uLocate Communications. The company has received funding from Kodiak Venture Partners, GrandBanks Capital, and Venrock.

Tags: WHERE Ads

Companies: Where

Does the world need more than one Twitter? How about 10,000 of them? That is how many sites are running on the hosted version of StatusNet, which went into private beta at our Realtime CrunchUp last November. Today, StatusNet is opening up its hosted service to all comers in a public beta.

You can think about StatusNet as the WordPress of microblogging. StatusNet is open-source software which can either be downloaded and run on your own enterprise servers or now on StatusNet's hosted servers. Basic service is free, with plans to charge for premium levels down the line. The premium versions will be ad-free, support unlimited users, larger file sizes, your own domain and design, Facebook and Twitter integration, and XMPP feeds.

CEO Evan Prodromou describes the various ways StatusNet can be used: as an open-source microblogging server akin to WordPress, as the basis for an online community (ning.com for microblogging); for enterprise (Open Source Yammer), or for a single user to own their social media presence (your own ping.fm). One of the cooler features of StatusNet is OStatus, which lets you follow people on different social networks all from within your hosted microblogging enevironment.

The largest site hosted on StatusNet is the company's own identi.ca, but StatusNet will also be hosting microblogging sites for ABC News, Shit My Dad Says (not live yet at the time of this posting), the Twit Army, Kirsty Ally's weight loss community Phitter, Germany's Bleeper, and Today's Mama. All together, there are more than 1 million registered users across all 10,000 StatusNet sites.

Shit My Dad Says has 1.2 million followers on Twitter and a TV pilot in the works starring William Shatner. He will use StatusNet to push his updates to Twitter while controlling the advertising. ABC News plans to use StatusNet as a central dashboard to push out its headlines and updates to different social networks. Update: Apparently, ABC News changed its mind and won't be using the service now.

StausNet is based in Montreal and raised $1 million in seed capital last year.

We've written about Twitter client Sobees, which is working to create the best social media client on the market, competing with both TweetDeck and Seesmic. Today Sobees is releasing a new version of its Windows native desktop app built in .NET, complete with realtime search, a redesign and more.

The new client includes support for Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, FriendFeed and LinkedIn (which was added late last year). The most significant addition is the availability of realtime search on the client, with the ability to search Twitter, Friendfeed, OneRiot and FacteryLabs from within the application. Sobees integrated elements of its newly launched realtime web dashboard to power search in the client.

Sobees has also added drag and drop technology for columns in order to change the place of a column within the client. Other technical updated include the ability to preview Tweets and maps, translate messages, and see pictures posted on TwitPic from within the Tweet. And Sobees will break out threaded conversations you have with friends.

Sobees is competing in a crowded space where each client continues to innovate and offer users more options for managing their social media accounts and the reealtime web. For example, Seesmic has incorporated Ping.fm, to allows users to update more than 50 different social networks at the same time. And TweetDeck now incorporates YouTube and Flickr within its client. For now, Sobees doesn't have any mobile clients but we are told that iPhone and Android apps are coming soon.

Bubbly, a service that allows users to send voice messages to multiple followers, has gained 500,000 users in India in the first four weeks of launch.

The number blasted expectations out of the water, said Tom Clayton, chief executive of Bubble Motion, the Sequoia Capital-backed startup that created the Bubbly service.

We were expecting 10,000 to 20,000 users in the first couple months, Clayton said. We haven't even really told anyone about it, it's just sort of grown virally.

Bubbly is cell phone service that aims to bring social media to the masses. It builds on the foundation set by Bubble Talk, which has 100 million users who use the service to send voice messages to on other individuals. With Bubbly, messages go to a bigger audience followers.

Users can easily follow friends, family, celebrities, religious leaders, and BBC News by typing in the person's number or access code, then *. They're notified when there's an update - a friend inviting a group of classmates to a bar, a short news update from BBC News, or a message for fans from a Bollywood star.

Followers get notified when someone sends out a new voice message normally just 30 seconds long - and Bubble Motion earns money by taking a cut of the airtime used to listen to the message. It's free to send a message, though in the case of celebrities, it could be thousands of fans who dial in.

From a fan's perspective, there's a little more intimacy from hearing the voice, Clayton said. They know it's not fake or a PR agent or some guy in a call center typing out a message.

Most of the 500,000 new users are teens and tweens, Clayton said. The average Bubbly message gets listened to by about half of the senders' followers. The company has launched the service in three of India's 23 states, and plans to expand to the rest of India, Japan, Europe the Middle East and later, Brazil.

Bubble Motion also hopes to offer video Bubbly messages, where followers could easily dial into watch homemade videos, or even give users the option of including text making it a true mobile Twitter.

There's just one glitch to that idea, though - Bubble Motion wouldn't make money off texting, because users in Asia don't pay to receive text messages.

Tags: Bubbly

Companies: Bubble Motion, Sequoia Capital

People: Tom Clayton

Twitter: The Criterion Collection

What if Twitter came to life?

We asked some of our friends to film their favorite tweets. We didn't care how they did it. They could read it. They could act it. They could do it with puppets. Whatever they wanted. The only rules were it had to be a tweet written by someone else and it had to contain the entire tweet and nothing but the tweet.

This is what they gave us.

We hope you enjoy it.

@poeks & @sween

Well done, you two.

Tweetie for Mac is the newest bonus edition to the MacHeist nanoBundle 2, which gives Mac users an opportunity to buy a variety of software for a discounted price. Additionally, buyers will also get early access to the pre-public beta for Tweetie 2 for Mac, plus a free upgrade to Tweetie 2 once it is released.

When Loren Atebits Brichter released Tweetie 2 for the iPhone last fall, one of the biggest new features in the app was that it was completely rewritten in such a way that the desktop version of Tweetie for Mac and the iPhone version could share the same codebase. From a development standpoint, that means that adding new features to both apps would be easier and more streamlined.

Tweetie for Mac is still a great Twitter client especially for users like me who like to avoid Adobe AIR whenever possible but it has grown a bit long-in-the-tooth, when compared with either its iPhone counterpart or some other newer Mac alternatives. That's why getting early access to Tweetie 2 for Mac is so compelling. It's a nice rejoinder to fans who have wanted to get updates on the status of Tweetie for Mac, while also offering up some promotion for the new version in the process.

One note about how MacHeist works: Users get licenses for most apps immediately upon purchase, but some apps have an unlock number that needs to be reached before serials are given out. Now, this is largely a marketing technique (I've never seen any MacHeist that didn't end with all apps being unlocked for all buyers), but you might not get your Tweetie for Mac license until tomorrow afternoon (or whenever the magic number of sales hits).

MacHeist is $19.95 for eight apps (including Tweetie for Mac), plus you can get three other apps for free by taking part in a MacHeist Tweetblast. The sale runs through tomorrow night and the Tweetie 2 alpha preview is expected to start sometime next month.

What is your favorite Twitter client for Mac?

Tags: apple, mac apps, mac software, macheist, software, tweetie, tweetie 2 for mac, tweetie for mac

When I wrote that location would be this year's Twitter at SXSW, I also meant that Twitter's geolocation would be this year's Twitter at SXSW. The service has just turned on geolocation on its website today for the first time.

While Twitter's geolocation feature has been live through its API since last November, there was no sign of integration into the main twitter.com site until now. As you can see in the screenshot above, for tweets tagged with location, right next to the source of the tweet there is a location placemarker. When you hover over it, it turns blue, and clicking on it brings up a little Google map showing the location that tweet was sent from.

You can see these maps as overlays both on individual tweet pages, and on tweets in your main stream. In some cases, depending on how Twitter geolocation API is being used, it looks like place names are even passed through to Twitter. For example, here's a tweet sent from Foursquare that also says where the tweet is being sent from.

The timing of this move by Twitter is significant. Earlier today, the New York Times reported that Facebook would unveil its answer to location next month at its f8 conference. Twitter's first-ever Chirp conference takes place just one week before f8. Google, meanwhile, is in the game with Latitude and to some extent Buzz (but could have been in it a lot more). And of course, every app and their mother appears to be launching with some sort of location functionality at the SXSW in Austin, Texas, which begins on Friday. Many of those apps use Twitter's geolocation API to pass the data back to Twitter, so it makes sense that this would be a good time to turn the functionality on for the website.

Update: It looks like Twitter has just turned off the location functionality after having it on for a bit. Look for it to come back shortly certainly some time before SXSW.

[thanks Chad]

Nick Bilton at the New York Times reports that Facebook will announce the new feature at its developers' conference in April.

Read the rest of this story

See Also:

• Foursquare CEO: "Check-In" Functionality Will Be A Commodity
• The Truth About Google Buzz: It's Late, Boring, And Lame
• Foursquare Pitches To TV Audiences With New Bravo Partnership

When Chomp launched eight weeks ago in the iTunes store, it launched as an app for reviewing other iPhone apps. The app shows you a stream of realtime reviews, which you can filter by everyone or just your Facebook freinds. The app is showing some traction and should hit 300,000 active monthly users sometime tomorrow, according to co-founder Ben Keighran.

While it started out as an app, today Chomp launched a complimentary Website with full app search capabilities and links for each app. There, users can also see the stream of reviews, as well as dedicated pages for each app and vanity URLs for each reviewer. Developers can now link to the Chomp reviews directly from inside their apps using Chomp Connect, which also launched today in private beta. Chomp Connect lets developers add Chomp review buttons right inside their apps without forcing to go anywhere else.

Keighran contends that reviews on iTunes tend to have a more negative bias because people are prompted to submit a review every time they delete an app. With Chomp Connect, developers can ask their most engaged users to submit reviews.

He hopes to make Chomp a social alternative to iTunes reviews. By driving reviews straight from their apps, developers can promote their apps in the Chomp review stream. The more reviews, the more often it appears in the stream.

Here's video of some subway buskers in NYC's Times Square station getting the entire station to help them sing the finale to "Hey Jude." That's some heartwarming stuff right there. Or, as Patrick put it on Making Light: "The terrifying, tough-as-nails world of the NYC subway system at night. How do people manage to live in this urban hellhole?"

Hey Jude Times Square Subway Station (via Making Light)

Online retail sales aren't growing at the torrid pace they once were, but they continue to grow steadily. Forrester Research put out a new five-year forecast today predicting that e-commerce sales in the U.S. will keep growing at a 10 percent compound annual growth rate through 2014. It forecasts online retail sales in the U.S. will be nearly $250 billion, up from $155 billion in 2009. Last year, online retail sales were up 11 percent, compared to 2.5 percent for all retail sales.

In Western Europe, Forrester expects a slightly faster 11 percent growth rate for online retail sales, going from $93 million (68 million Euros) in 2009 to $156 million (114.5 million Euros) in 2014. Forrester's estimates exclude online sales of autos, travel, and prescription drugs.

Some other stats from the U.S. forecast:

• e-commerce sales will represent 8 percent of all retail sales in the U.S. by 2014, up from 6 percent in 2009
• In 2009, 154 million people in the U.S. bought something online, or 67 percent of the online population (4 percent more than in 2008)
• Three product categories (computers, apparel, and consumer electronics) represented more than 44 percent of online sales($67.6 billion) in 2009

While $155 billion worth of consumer goods were bought online last year, a far larger portion of offline sales were influenced by online research. Forrester estimates that $917 billion worth of retail sales last year were Web-influenced. It also estimates that online and Web-influenced offline sales combined accounted for 42 percent of total retail sales and that percentage will grow to 53 percent by 2014, when the Web will be influencing $1.4 billion worth of in-store sales.

Yet there is a lot of room for improvement in helping consumers go from doing online research to in-store purchases. Only 61 percent of consumers who cross over from one to the other are satisfied with their buying experience, compared to 82 percent for those who end up buying online. Forrester draws the lesson that retailers need to do a better job appealing to online consumers in their physical stores. I come to a different conclusion: avoid going to real stores and buy online whenever you can. You will be happier.

Earlier today, Google chief economist gave a presentation to an FTC workshop on the changing economics of the newspaper industry. We all know that newspaper ad revenues have been falling off a cliff for years. Many media companies blame Google and are trying to put the genie back in the bottle with partial metered models for online news.

Google is understandably on the defensive, trotting out Varian to paint an unemotional picture with as much data as he can muster. But the picture he paints is a dour one for print media. For instance, the chart above shows the decline of overall newspaper ad revenues. Newspapers have taken huge hits in classifieds advertising (in blue) and national brand advertising (in red). The online portion (green) is still too small to make much of a difference.

The collapse in print ad revenues is coming from two places: the overall ad recession of the past couple years and the shift to online news consumption. Here are some telling stats from Varian's presentation, which is also embedded below:

• About 40% of internet users say read news on the Web every day.
• Time spent on online news sites is only about 70 seconds per day, compared to 25 minutes spent reading a print edition.
• Online news readers tend to read at work, not for leisure, so they don't have much time to stick around and are thus worth less to advertisers.
• Overall, less than 5 percent of newspaper ad revenues come from the online editions.
• Search engines account for 35 to 40 percent of traffic to major U.S. news sites, according to comScore.
• The cost of printing and distributing print editions, makes up about half the cost, while editorial operations only make up 15 percent.

Varian concludes: Newspapers could save a lot of money if the primary access to news was via the internet. It sounds like he agrees with Netscape founder and investor Marc Andreessen, who recommends that newspapers burn the boats carrying their dying print businesses.

The fact of the matter is that newspapers have never made much money from news, says Varian. They make money from special interest sections on topics such as Automotive, Travel, Home & Garden, Food & Drink,, and so on. The problem is that on the Web, other niche sites which cater to those categories are a click away, leaving the newspapers with sections which are harder to sell ads against, such as sports, news, and local.

So what are they supposed to do? He doesn't really have a good answer, but ignoring the realities of consumer shifts in reading behavior and news consumption is not it.