There are many sites that show trending links across the web including TweetMeme, Topsy, and Bit.ly. Recently launched splurb is now in the mix with its site that shows the most popular links that are trending on social media sites. splurb currently indexes Digg, Reddit, Mixx, Propeller, TweetMeme, Yahoo Buzz and Fark.

Splurb tallies the number of votes from the various sites and number of sources that list links. The more sources that cite a link, the larger the story appears on splurb. To get listed, a link must be popular on at least two social websites.

The site’s founder, Bill Chasen, said he created splurb because the most popular content on the web has a tendency to repeatedly show up on the seven hubs which are indexed. From there, he says, content then moves to blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of social media. I’m not so sure about that statement, but I do think that sites like TweetMeme and Topsy help us understand what links and news are trending on the web. To a certain degree, these sites are able to help us understand the importance of certain links vs. others.

Of course, Chasen says that splurb is not a replacement to its competitors, but rather serves as another layer for people to discover the best content without having to dig deep into each site.

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Zynga insists they are serious about cleaning up the industry. And today Pincus has announced that the company will remove all offer advertising from their games.

This isn’t a meaningless action. Offers account for 1/3 or so of Zynga’s rumored $250 million in revenue.

All offers will be removed by the end of today, says Pincus, “until we can control their inclusion and presentation ourselves.”

The blog post also discloses that Zynga is an investor in DoubleDing, an offer provider that competes with OfferPal and SuperRewards. DoubleDing was serving the mobile offers that popped back onto Zynga on Friday.

Pincus’ blog post:

Ensuring zynga’s user experience – removing all cpa offers

michael arrington posted yesterday on mobile offerings still being shown in our new game fishville. I want to explain why this occurred and how we are taking more aggressive steps to ensure this never happens again.

zynga has not been able to control the ad content as it is managed by the offer companies that we work with.

with regards to yesterday’s incident, the offer provider, doubleding, told us this was the result of their failure to remove an optimization queue which was still showing these ads to 10% of pageviews. i want to be clear that zynga had no control over the pages being shown and never filtered them from michael or anyone’s view.

we recognize it is our responsibility to ensure that offers which generate a bad user experience are not shown with any of our games.

therefore, we are removing all CPA offers across zynga games until we can control their inclusion and presentation ourselves. This will be effective by end of day today. this move is worth it for the long-term user experience and value to our partners like facebook and myspace.

yesterday’s mobile offer issue was particularly painful as we had helped fund doubleding earlier this year in the hopes of cleaning up the space and raising the bar on user experience. we intend to influence them and others to improve their ad content and be long-term focused for the success of the social gaming and social networking industries.

as I said in my post last monday, my mission is to build zynga into a sustainable consumer service with enduring value to our users. we will continue to do whatever it takes to earn our users trust and respect for the long-term.

We’ve also heard from DoubleDing President Matt Handal, who responds to our article yesterday:

Michael,

I am the President of DoubleDing and this is not the way I wanted to meet you. I wanted to provide you with some additional information and offer more details for your Zynga article dated Nov. 6. It is my desire that you relay this information to your readers as soon as possible.

It is our intention to fully comply with all Facebook, as well as partner (e.g. Zynga), advertising standards. Zynga’s standards require us to remove all mobile offers which do not offer a clear user value. We take 100% responsibility for any issues that arise from our actions and commit to correcting any errors.

As evident from our logo on the bottom of the offer wall, DoubleDing powers the offerwall displayed in this article. Mobile offers were displayed because of a technical glitch in our system. We have an optimization engine that serves advertisements to 10% of the traffic. Sometime late Thursday or early Friday, a bug in this engine began pulling previously removed mobile offers and displayed them in the mobile tab of our wall. If a user would have refreshed the page 10 times, they would have seen offers in the mobile tab only once. We identified the bug and corrected this within 30 minutes of being notified today. There was NO IP BLOCKING of any sort, beyond the normal country and fraud blocking.

Finally, to reiterate our commitment and seriousness of our intent to adhere to high standards and bring value to the growing virtual currency space, we will be donating ALL revenues derived from this and any future mistakes of this sort to charity. DoubleDing will NOT derive any financial benefit from any such issues.

If you would like any more information or to discuss further, please feel free to contact me directly.

Thanks,

Matt Handal
President
www.DoubleDing.com

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FishVille will remain suspended, Facebook tells us, “until Facebook is satisfied that Zynga demonstrates compliance with Facebook restrictions — as well as Zynga’s own restrictions — on the ads it offers users.”

This is a relatively light slap on the wrist since the game only launched two days ago and had a couple of thousand users (Update: Zynga says FishVille had 875,000 users yesterday. wow). Zynga’s other games, including FarmVille with 63 million monthly users, remain online, despite the fact that they were showing the same ads.

But this does send a clear message to Zynga and other game developers that Facebook isn’t ignoring the problem. Whether it’s a real concern over the user experience or simply embarrassment from the press suggesting Facebook is a haven for scammers is somewhat irrelevant.

Facebook has also shut down a total of four ad networks in recent months for ad violations, including Tatto Media and Gambit. Other networks, such as SendMe Mobile, which was founded by ex-CNET executives, have largely taken their place by offering similarly questionable offers that trick users into mobile subscriptions.

This is also a bit of an arms race. Zynga may be specifically filtering Facebook employees from seeing ads that violate Facebook terms and conditions, making it difficult for Facebook to enforce the rules.

And the relationship between the two companies is complicated. Facebook battling Zynga on the advertising scams. But Zynga is also one of Facebook’s largest advertisers, probably accounting for between 10% and 20% of total Facebook revenue.

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This time, TokyoCamp gave a total of 29 startups from three Asian countries (Japan, Singapore and Korea) the chance to present their services to Japan’s leading journalists, fellow entrepreneurs, top-level VCs and TechCrunch readers. Here are thumbnail sketches (of varying depth) of all companies that were present at the event. (Here is my report on the first TokyoCamp that took place in August this year.)

Demos from TechCrunch50 alumni from Singapore, Korea and Japan

iTwin
Singapore-based A*STAR was one of the two non-Japanese startups demoing at TokyoCamp. Their two-part USB drive iTwin, showed to the world at TechCrunch50 in September, is intended to be a “cable-less cable”. After connecting the iTwin to a computer, you can give one part of it to someone else who’ll have remote access (over the web) to the computer via his own computer.

iTwin’s Kal Takru told me his company is currently plans to release the device in five to six months, with the price likely to be $99 including worldwide shipping. Initially, the iTwin will be available online only – even though following TechCrunch50, the company was bombarded with inquiries from retail chains all over the world.

Sealtale
Social widget service Sealtale was Tokyocamp’s guest from South Korea and another TechCrunch50 finalist. Sealtale users can express their interests, preferences or causes via so-called seals (interactive widgets). Once these seals are integrated into your blog or social network page, you can communicate with other people who have the same interests as you within the seal itself (via RSS feeds, comments, posts, audio and video files). Sealtale works across various blog platforms and social networks.

The three members of the six-man company (all of whom are college students) who were invited to Tokyo told me they now feel there’s life before TechCrunch50 and after. Following TC50, Sealtale in South Korea apparently got a boost in terms of user base, massive media attention (the service was even featured on national TV) and increased interest from brands and companies. Just one example: Sealtale was chosen as a partner for a media campaign in Korea’s political space and distributed more than 120,000 seals to users all over the country in the process. Sealtale’s major global roll-out is planned for the middle of next year.

Spysee
Tokyo-based people search engine Spysee launched its English version during TechCrunch50 in September (the service was in the TC50 demopit). You can use it to look for any person on the web, with Spysee scraping various information on that person off the web (bio, news, blog posts, videos, related individuals etc.) and displaying it on a single page (example: Barack Obama’s Spysee entry).

LIFEmee
LIFEmee is a life management service that allows you to store and share the significant aspects and events of your life online (from “the cradle to the crave”). You can keep a diary, list up significant events in your life (career history, places you lived in, hobbies etc.), share your future plans, manage assets, store your last will or compare certain elements of your life with other LIFEmee users.

The service launched at TechCrunch50 (LIFEmee presented at the demo pit) in English. The LIFEmee team has since been working on localizing the service into Japanese and collecting early user feedback for the English version to optimize features and functions.

Demos from Japanese startups

Joker Racer
Joker Racer, a service that just recently won the Grand Prix at another big demo event in Tokyo, lets users from all over the world control Wi-Fi- and GPS-enabled models cars through the browser or iPhone (in real-time). The cars are customized and offered by JokerWorks, the new company behind the service, itself. A bunch of videos can be found here.

But at TokyoCamp, CEO Yoski Akamatsu presented the “Joker Racer R/C Server” for the first time, the world’s first linux server exclusively designed for R/C model cars to be controlled over the web (specs and more pics here). This means you can buy the mini server, connect it with your own R/C car, and then control the car using its standard servo/speed controllers and a mounted standard web camera.

For end users, the server’s final price and release date are yet to be determined. But JokerWorks already accepts inquiries from event organizers and advertising and promotion agencies.

Lang-8
Youyou Ki, CEO of Lang-8, showed a revamped version of his award-winning language learning site whose interface is available in 14 languages. The main idea is to let users write in the language they’re learning and have native speakers of that language correct the text (this video shows how this works). Lang-8 users can get in touch with each other directly through the site, too. The service is free.

Cerevo Cam
I’ve written an extensive article on the Cerevo Cam, a digital camera that automatically uploads pictures to various social media sites via Wi-Fi or 3G, in late August. Now, roughly nine weeks later, the device is finally priced (just under 20,000 Yen/$220) and dated. The Cerevo Cam and Cerevo Life, a photo management site specifically designed for buyers of the camera, will be available at the beginning of next month. CEO Takuma Iwasa is still determined to sell the camera outside Japan but couldn’t give me details.

At TokyoCamp, I tried out a fully working prototype, which instantly uploaded pictures to a nearby panel computer via a 3G modem stick plugged into the camera.

HaaLee
HaaLee isn’t a web startup, but the company, whose team is based out of China, Japan and the US, showed a pretty cool blue-tooth stereo headset that does not plug-up the ears. Instead, users are supposed to place the speakers against the skin just in front of the ears. The idea is to be able to listen to music on your cell phone or portable media player while still being able to hear sounds around you. HaaLee is currently in discussions with various brand companies and carriers to take the headset to market.

Jingoo
Tokyo-based MetaCast presented Jingoo at Tokyo Camp, a Japanese-only add-on for Firefox or the Internet Explorer. Once installed, Jingoo occupies a column on the right of your browser window (”Jingoo Zone”) that allows you to access customized apps that are supposed to make your life on the web easier. These apps (there are 17 at this point) can be anything from games you can directly play in the “Jingoo Zone”, a clock, maps, shopping tools, a tweet stream etc. Jingoo is free.

Pixiv
Launched in September 2007, the Japanese-only “social illustration” service Pixiv broke the one million member mark in June this year (it’s currently ranked at 60 in Alexa Japan). Users (talented amateur artists, pros and art enthusiasts) spend more than 13 minutes on the site per visit, submitting 15,000 drawings per day on average and discussing them in a social network that’s built around the drawings.

Here’s how a typical drawing, submitted by a Pixiv member, looks (each piece gets a dedicated page):

The free site makes money mainly through display ads and premium memberships ($6 per month) but also organizes real life events. Learn more about Pixiv in the excellent English Wikipedia entry.

Patent Bureau
Patent Bureau is a technology media company that aims at automating the process of delivering relevant technology and intellectual properties information in real-time. The company claims their interactive data base, dubbed astamuse (Japanese only), is being used by patent offices in Japan for trial decisions and court precedents for intellectual patent cases. astamuse wants to be the ultimate destination site for anybody involved in creating, using and managing technology and intellectual properties to explore their territory. Patent Bureau is currently working on covering additional languages.

Rigureto
Rigureto is a free community and communication platform through which users can anonymously express and share their negative feelings (i.e. “I just lost my girl friend.”) with other users who can then post messages of comfort (i.e. “Don’t worry, you’ll soon find another one.”). This happens virtually in real-time, as it usually seems to be a matter of a few minutes or even seconds to get a reaction. Think an online, crowdsourced Dear Abby (even though some users post just in order to communicate with other human beings – and it usually works). Rigureto users receiving positive comments can thank other members by sending them “arigatou” points, which can later be redeemed on the site. The service is Japanese only at this point.

UserHeat
UserHeat is an in-page web analytics tool that visualizes user behavior in three different ways (mouse movement tracking, clicking behavior and “gazed” area, an educated guess of which areas of a given page were viewed the most). Install the tool on your web site, wait for a certain period of time to analyze how visitors use it (1,000 to 1,500 page views are apparently the minimum) and let UserHeat display the result via “thermographic” images that are superimposed over your site (sample heat map for a Japanese site selling contact lenses). The service is available in English, Chinese and Japanese, and it’s free.

Notable mentions

Here are the 16 other services demo’d at the TokyoCamp event: fabric video (a video delivery system to be made available next year), MOT (an ASP business tool), Photiva (a digital signage solution), Tabereko (an iPhone app for gourmets), Wombit (a Wi-Fi-enabled touch panel computer currently being developed by Tokyo-based Omnibit), Ataritsuki CM (a solution that links TV commercials to the web), Speeda (a database that users can access to get structured economic data in an SaaS-like model), Orihime (an online shop set up by a college student who sells self-designed and made-in-Japan PC bags and cases), AdLantis (an online ad management system), Cognitive Function Balancer (a piece of interactive software for self-test and training for mild cognitive impairment), Phroni (a Firefox add-on that displays information on keywords you highlight on a web page), RainbowApps (a platform that allows you to list up your iPhone apps and discover which apps other iPhone owners have installed), Conit (an iPhone app developer), Istpika (a social gaming company developing for Facebook, iPhone and other platforms), Pankaku (one of Japan’s most successful iPhone app development companies) and Linkthink (an entertainment content provider).

Many thanks to all attendees, demo companies and Nikkei Digital Core for making TokyoCamp a success. Special thanks to TechCrunch50 finalists and Asian guests iTwin and Sealtale for the journey to Tokyo. Another TokyoCamp might follow very soon!

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I met up with CEO Gary Wang and COO Sam Lai, who already raised some $85 million from Granite Global Ventures and General Catalyst Partners, and they swore they weren’t here trying to raise more cash. That’s a bit of a shock. Last we wrote about Tudou and its arch-competitor YouKu, they were burning through hundreds of millions between them trying to find what YouTube still hasn’t: A way for online advertising to pay for video’s outrageous broadband costs.

But more on Tudou’s financial prospects in a moment. One of the more interesting things we talked about was the company’s new push into mobile. Last week, Tudou won a deal to be the online video channel for China Mobile. Other than one-upping YouKu, who Wang says lost the deal, this doesn’t mean a huge amount yet. So far video can only run on high-end phones and much of China can’t even get 2G access, let alone 3G. And those who can have to pony up a pricey 150 RMB a year. While many game companies have reached massive new audiences via mobile, the people watching Tudou’s videos on their cell phones are likely the same affluent audience the company is already reaching.

But Tudou sees that changing in a few years for four reasons. One, China Mobile is investing some 58 billion RMB to build out 3G capacity in the country this year and will match that investment next year, hoping to catch up to other countries soon.

Two, phones are changing. Taiwan chip company MTK is developing chipsets that allow very low-end phones the ability to download and upload video. Low-cost MTK chips already supplies chips for roughly one-third of the Chinese handset market, Wang says.

Three, concurrent with the connectivity roll out and the dramatic step- up in what a crappy feature phone can do, data plans are plummeting in price. Lai says China Mobile is planning video-subscription plans that offer unlimited uploading and downloading of video for the equivalent of 75 cents a month. That’ll break user generated video in China wide open.

And lastly, in China people are replacing their handsets roughly every nine months. That means all of these changes could ripple out faster than if they required, say, a PC upgrade cycle to complete.

Forget YouTube running on an iPhone as the model—if Tudou’s plan plays out this could mean huge things for video in China, India, Africa and any other emerging market where basic mobile handset adoption and access is widespread but laptop-Internet usage lags. User generated video, gonzo journalism, and self-expression on this kind of scale will make Tweeting about the Iranian election (even if the merit of that can be debatable) look like a prehistoric version of social media-helping-social-good.

And of course, in many countries monetizing over mobile is easier than monetizing over the Web, because mobile minutes—whether pre-paid or subscription based—are essentially becoming currency for people without credit cards.

Tudou sees mobile video starting to take off in 2010, growing rapidly in 2011, and in 2012 generating enough actual revenues to equal what it makes in traditional online advertising.

So, what about those online ads? Wang had vowed when we last talked that the company would prove profitability without raising more money. There are two ways to do this: Sell more ads and clamp down on broadband. To stay alive Tudou, and some of its competitors, have had to do something most Valley companies would find unimaginable: Restrict how many people can view their site. By just making its broadband pipe bigger, Tudou, YouKu or a new competitor could double views in short order—but it’d be bled dry financially in the process. Proof? Since we last talked, Wang says he’s doubled bandwidth and was at capacity again in two weeks.

To add to the costs, Wang is running around Asia doing content deals to add professionally produced, non-pirated content to the 30 million pieces of video inventory Tudou has already. In fact, next year, he expects to spend more on content deals than on broadband. He says these deals are small compared to what gets done between the Valley and Hollywood. A hot new show (think an “Entourage” of Asia) may cost the equivalent of $200,000 US dollars for a two-year run, while a popular, but older show (think a “Friends” of Asia) would cost just $200 in US dollars for a two-year run.

Meanwhile, Tudou is producing a ton of original content including a TMZ-style entertainment news show and a “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” style reality show it co-produced with Nokia. Reality TV is a natural for producing lean content for a mostly TV-entertainment-starved nation. The Nokia show cost some $500,000 in US dollars to produce and thirty million uniques tuned in for the six live shows, where contestants could use friends or search engines on their Nokia N97s to help get the answers. A 20-year old girl won 1 million RMB at the end. In fact, it’s original content like that that helped Tudou win the China Mobile deal over competitors, Wang says. (No one wants to get dragged into a copyright war who doesn’t have to.)

It may seem a lot for one company to take on, but that’s the Internet business in China. Since so much of what we’d consider “old” media is developing at the same time, it’s a total land-grab free-for-all when it comes to content and information.

That’s the cost side. Wang said that revenues are increasing 40% per quarter, but admitted it was a small base. Total advertising revenues in China are small for the market: about $15 billion-$20 billion in US dollars. Half of that goes to TV, and a tiny 6% or so goes to online, Wang says. It’s at most $100 million in US dollars the country is carving up. (This could explain why sales of virtual goods are such a hot market.) He’s hoping to break even next year.

To put it mildly, between broadband costs, content deals, pioneering a new advertising segment in a young ad market, and now moving video to mobile, this is not an easy business. There’s a reason that out of thousands of YouTube copy cats, YouKu and Tudou are the only big ones that have survived, by most people’s estimations.

But unlike when I wrote my post last May, there seems enough traction that someone can survive in China’s online video business—whether it’s Tudou, YouKu, or a competing site launched by an existing Chinese Internet giant like Tencent or Sina. And that’s good news for the country’s 200 million Internet users.

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Smug that after two weeks of me suggesting that social media might not be an unequivocally Good Thing in terms of privacy and human decency, the news has delivered the perfect example to support my view.

Unfortunately it’s hard to feel smug – hard to feel anything but sadness and nausea – when thirteen innocent people are dead.

I’m talking, of course, about Thursday’s Fort Hood shootings. Better informed and more sensitive commentators than I have written about the massacre itself and what it means for the US army, and in particular for the thousands of Muslim soldiers currently fighting – and dying – for this country. How do you even begin to process the idea of an American soldier shouting the takbir, before mowing down his comrades in arms? On American soil? At the home base of the Combat Warrior Stress Reset program? Yes, that’s definitely one for the experts to parse.

And yet, the first news and analysis out of the base didn’t come from the experts. Nor did it come from the 24-hour news media, or even from dedicated military blogs – but rather from the Twitter account of one Tearah Moore, a soldier from Linden, Michigan who is based at Fort Hood, having recently returned from Iraq.

When Major Nidal Malik Hasan began his killing spree, commanders immediately put the base into lock-down in accordance with military procedure. Movements in and out were severely restricted, as was the flow of information to the news media. Official statements from army spokesperson Lt. Gen. Robert Cone were the only way for reporters to find out what was happening, while other base personnel focused on treating the wounded, and ensuring the threat had been dealt with. Or at least that’s what the commanders thought was happening. In reality Ms Moore’s was tweeting minute-by-minute reports from inside the hospital where the wounded were being taken for treatment.

Reports like (in no particular order)…

[T]hey just brought a CART full of boxes w/transplant parts in them. Not good not good. #fthood

Ok we just saw a soldier on a stretcher w/2 armed guards walking by He didnt look like he was in great condition.

Maj Malik A Hassan. He shouldn’t have died. He should be in the worst suffering of his life. It’s too fair for him to just die. Bastard!

A FUCKING MAJOR? Are you kidding me? A MAJ! For those of ut hat don’t know, Army MAJ have pretty serious rank. Dick

Someone just started shooting in Commanche 4 which is on post housing. What are these people thinking?!?

The poor guy that got shot in the balls http://twitpic.com/oejh5

That last twitpic link was particularly amazing: it showed a cameraphone image – of a wounded soldier arriving at the hospital on a gurney – taken by Moore from inside the hospital. Unsurprisingly, Moore’s coverage was quickly picked up by bloggers and mainstream media outlets alike, something that she actively encouraged by tweeting to friends that they should pass her phone number to the press so she could tell them the truth, rather than the speculative bullshit that was hitting the wires.

There was just one problem: Moore’s information was bullshit too.

As we now know, Major Hassan was not killed, but rather captured alive. Reports of a second – and third – shooter also now appear to be inaccurate. Whether someone was shot “in the balls” hasn’t been publicly confirmed and, for the sake the of the victim’s privacy, let’s hope it never is – but the point is that many of Moore’s eye-witness reports weren’t worth the bits they were written on. They had no value whatsoever, except as entertainment and tragi-porn.

Two weeks ago, I wrote here about how the ‘real time web’ is turning all of us into inhuman egotists. How we’re increasingly seeing people at the scene of major accidents grabbing their cellphones to capture the dramatic events and share them with their friends, rather than calling 911. Last week I went even further with my doom-mongering, suggesting that the trend of adding people’s homes to Foursquare without permission was indicative of a generation that prioritised their own fun over the privacy of their friends.

In the actions of Tearah Moore at Fort Hood, we have the perfect example of both kinds of selfishness.

There surely can’t be a human being left in the civilised world who doesn’t know that cellphones must be switched off in hospitals, and yet not only did Moore leave hers on but she actually used it to photograph patients, and broadcast the images to the world. Just think about that for a second. Rather than offering to help the wounded, or getting the hell out of the way of those trying to do their jobs, Moore actually pointed a cell-phone at a wounded soldier, uploaded it to twitpic and added a caption saying that the victim “got shot in the balls”.

Her behaviour had nothing to do with getting the word out; it wasn’t about preventing harm to others, but rather a simple case of – as I said two weeks ago – “look at me looking at this.” (I don’t know about you, but if I spotted someone taking a picture of one of my friends or relatives in a hospital then they would probably need a hospital bed of their own. “Tell me, Ms Moore, exactly how did the iPhone end up in your lower intestine?”)

Perhaps fittingly, I posted some of these thoughts on Twitter yesterday, as events were still unfolding. Many people agreed with me – replying with links to the specific military codes that cover what information solidiers can share, and the HIPAA which deals with patient privacy. But plenty of others felt that by criticising Moore I was advocating censorship.

As one reply put it, sarcastically: “Yes indeed, let’s moderate twitter and vet all tweets…” Others pointed out that it was just this kind of photography and ‘citizen journalism’ that ensured that the truth got out during the Iranian elections. What about the global outrage at the famous YouTube video of Neda Agha Soltan, shown dying after being shot by (alledgedly) pro-government agents?

Yes – what of it?

For all of our talk about “the world watching”, what good did social media actually do for the people of Iran? Did the footage out of the country actually change the outcome of the elections? No. Despite a slew of YouTube videos and a couple of thousand foreign Twitter users turning their avatar green and pretending to be in Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is still in power. It’s astonishing, really. Despite how successful ten million actual voters marching through Washington, London and other major cities in 2003 were in stopping the invasion of Iraq, a bit of entirely virtual cyber-posturing by foreigners didn’t lead to real change in Iran.

And so it was at Fort Hood. For all the sound and fury, citizen journalism once again did nothing but spread misinformation at a time when thousands people with family at the base would have been freaking out already, and breach the privacy of those who had been killed or wounded. We learned not a single new fact, nor was a single life saved.

What’s most alarming about Moore’s behaviour is that she probably thought she was doing the right thing. Certainly, looking at her MySpace page and her Twitter account (before the army finally forced her to lock it down) we see the portrait of a patriot. Someone who clearly cares a great deal about others, and who – despite the rhetorical question “remind me why I joined the army again” on her profile – is proud to serve her country. In tweeting from the scene, and calling out the media for not reporting the rumours from inside the base, I’m sure she genuinely believed she was helping get the real truth out, and making an actual difference.

And that’s precisely the problem: none of us think we’re being selfish or egotistic when we tweet something, or post a video on YouTube or check-in using someone’s address on Foursquare. It’s just what we do now, no matter whether we’re heading out for dinner or witnessing a massacre on an Army base. Like Lord of the Flies, or the Stanford Prison Experiment, as long as we’re all losing our perspective at the same time – which, as a generation growing up with social media we are – then we don’t realise that our humanity is leaking away until its too late.

As I’ve already said – and I’m even starting to bore myself now – the answer isn’t censorship (which won’t work), but rather in our social evolution catching up with the state of technology. We need to get back to a point as a society where – without thinking – we put our humanity before our ego. With that in mind, and in the hope of hurrying the process along slightly, I’m going to draw these three nay-saying columns to a close, not with yet another appeal to the better nature of social media addicts but rather with two videos that everyone should watch.

The first is a clip from This American Life which I stumbled across on the blog of the comedy writer, Graham Linehan (Father Ted, The IT Crowd). It’s a thing of beauty. And absolutely terrifying. Just watch it.

The second video is much less heartwarming, but far more terrifying – because it’s entirely real. So real in fact, that I don’t want to embed it here. I want you to make a conscious decision to click through and watch it. It’s the video of the final moments of Neda Agha Soltan’s life.

Even if you’ve seen the footage before, you should watch it again. But this time bear in mind the following: the cameraman was not a professional reporter, but rather an ordinary person, just like the victim. And what did he do when he saw a young girl bleeding to death? Did he run for help, or try to assist in stemming the bleeding? No he didn’t.

Instead he pointed his camera at her and recorded her suffering, moving in closer to her face for her agonising final seconds. For all of our talk of citizen journalism, and getting the truth out, the last thing that terrified girl saw before she closed her eyes for the final time was some guy pointing a cameraphone at her. “Look at me, looking at her, looking back at me.”

Here’s the link.

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So we were surprised yesterday to see a screen shot clearly showing a mobile subscription ad in a post on InsideSocialGames about the launch of a new Zynga game, FishVille.

I went to the game to check myself, but those mobile ads weren’t there. I assumed they had quickly been taken down, or there was some other reasonable explanation.

They weren’t taken down though. Or rather, they were, but just for me. Other users were still seeing the same mobile ads. And the filtering was clearly directed at me, since I logged in on the same IP address with a friends account and saw the ads. I held a laptop showing the ads up next to my screen that didn’t show the ads and took a picture:

Is Zynga intentionally blocking ads to journalists and bloggers that have criticized them for the practice, while leaving them up for everyone else? More on that in a minute.

The ads, which have now been removed after I emailed Zynga, are exactly the same as before, and they are the main reason I started the whole series of posts on social games – see our ScamVille post and related updates.

These ads clearly violate Facebook’s terms and conditions. They don’t state on the offer page that the user is required to enter into a $10 – $20/month mobile subscription, and there is no opt in by the user before entering in personal information. And they also violate the rules in other minor ways, like having auto-playing video and audio in the ads.

There’s an image at the bottom of the post showing just the mobile offers that were up on Zynga’s games until earlier today when we asked them about this. All of these violate Facebook’s existing terms, and any normal human being would consider them scams. And none of these should be there given Zynga’s promise to take down all mobile offers.

Since most people have never experienced one of these ads to understand just what we’re talking about, I made a video. After ten minutes I had been asked to subscribe to 5 or 6 separate mobile subscriptions, had been asked for my birthday, and had been asked to enter in my email address. Even after all that I hadn’t earned the originally promised coins, and abandoned the effort (getting users to abandon these offers part way through is its own business model, referred to as “breakage”). Here’s the video:

What’s disheartening to me isn’t that Zynga put the mobile ads back up, or even that appear to have selectively blocked me so that I don’t personally see the ads. Their motivations are quite clear. What’s really disappointing is that Facebook, even after promising to enforce their rules, continues to just turn a blind eye to this stuff. I know Facebook hates the negative press, but I am really starting to think that they couldn’t care less about their users getting scammed.

In the last few days the industry really started to make the right moves and I thought this was a problem that would soon be solved. But then I realized that as much users hate being scammed, and as much as the press is willing to put the pressure on (both Time and Newsweek are pointing the finger at Facebook), there may just be too much money at stake for any meaningful self regulation to occur.

We await official comments from Zynga and Facebook.

Update: From Zynga “We asked all offer provider networks to remove the mobile category. Upon learning today that one provider was still showing 6 ads, we asked them to remove these too. They told us they hadn’t realized this was still in their testing queue and immediately removed them.”

Update 2: DoubleDing, the offer provider in this case, responds to this post and denies any filtering of ads. Full email from the DoubleDing President is here.

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Today I returned to the Verizon store where yesterday’s quest began, looking to get my hands on one of the nifty docking stations that turns your Droid into a desktop clock/multimedia station. And while I expected a handful of other customers to be in the store, I was taken aback by just how crowded it was — each of the registers was busy ringing up a customer while others waited their turn, three people were standing in line just to touch the demo Droid unit, and I had to put my name on the list to talk to someone. When I asked one of the employees if they were selling a lot of Droids, his somewhat breathless response was “Yeah, a lot. Over 70 yesterday, we got a shipment of another 100 in today.” Oh, and they were out of both the dock I had come for and spare batteries. Maybe the lack of an early morning line wasn’t so damning after all.

Obviously this store represents a single data point, but so did my story yesterday. Here’s some more evidence that Droid might be doing pretty well, after all: last night Pandora CTO Tom Conrad tweeted,

“Just saw Pandora’s Android install numbers for the day. Wow! There may not be lines, but Droids are very much among us – and running Pandora”.

We followed up for more details, and while Conrad declined to give any exact stats for now, he did say that Pandora’s download rate tripled, going on to say “We were doing well on Android before though, so the increase is pretty amazing.”

If you’re an Android dev, let us know in the comments if you’ve seen a boost too. And if you’ve passed your local Verizon store, let us know how busy it was.

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Well, not exactly.

Apparently, Apple contacted Someecards a couple days ago because of some new content in the app — Someecards pushes new cards into the app just as it does on its site. There was one in particular that Apple did not find amusing, and wanted clarification on: A card making fun of President Obama Halloween costumes. It’s fairly easy to see why Apple wanted some clarification, the card involves race. Here’s what it says: “Just double-checking that your Obama costume will involve a mask and not shoe polish.”

Fans of Someecards will know that they use these types of provocative jokes all the time. The intent, it would seem, is not to be racist, but to use a joke to make a statement about race. “It’s kind of hard to explain humor, but I basically said it was making fun of racist behavior,” Someecards co-founder Duncan Mitchell tells us that he told Apple.

It is hard to explain humor. You either get a joke, or you do not. Apple, it seems, does not. “They said that they thought we could both agree we should remove the card. I said that we probably wouldn’t both agree that we should remove the card, but that we would remove it if they said we had to,” Mitchell says. “They said we had to.”

Anyone who has ever talked to just about any spokesperson at Apple will immediately relate to what Mitchell is saying. If Apple contacts you about something, they’re really contacting you to make you do what they want. If you don’t, there is often the threat of repercussions of some sort. In Someecards case, it would have meant pulling the app from the App Store.

As I’ve said many times, the App Store is Apple’s store, they can choose to do what they want with it. The problem is that Apple is perplexingly hypocritical when it comes to what apps get rejected and what apps get accepted. For example, apps that feature interactive Asian upskirt shots are fine. So are apps called Asian Boobs which feature young Asian women wearing next to nothing in sexually provocative poses. Also apparently fine is Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler’s famous work.

For whatever reason, Apple has decided that anything having to do with making fun of public figures is prohibited. Though satire is protected in this country, it’s apparently not okay in Apple law. Apple literally has no sense of humor when it comes to that. But guess who does? Google.

In a seemingly coincidental bit of timing, Mitchell says that Google contacted him just hours after his call with Apple. They were calling to see if he’d be interested in making the app for Android. Their big selling points? “They pitched us on all the cool new phones that were coming out, and they also wanted to stress that they wouldn’t censor the app,” Mitchell tells us (emphasis mine).

Google, it seems, has a much better sense of humor than Apple. And they’re definitely playing their cards right in attempting to set up Android’s Market as a more open alternative to Apple’s App Store. With over 100,000 apps now, the App Store is a juggernaut that keeps on growing. But it would be a mistake to believe this growth will continue on in perpetuity no matter what. Apple should be careful about pissing off developers (which it has done plenty of times already) when an alternative like Android is finally gaining some momentum.

Regular readers will know that unlike a couple of my colleagues, I’m firmly an iPhone guy. Despite the advances that competitors are making, I still truly believe it is hands-down the best mobile device out there. But, as I hope you’d expect, I’m not above calling out Apple’s bullshit when I see it — as I do, very often, with regard to the App Store.

I simply believe they are making a mistake with the way they’re trying to contain this environment. At first, it made sense from Apple’s perspective because the company is all about controlling the user experience. But as the App Store continues to grow, the app approval model be harder and harder to maintain. What happens when we get to a million apps in the App Store? What about 5 million? Is Apple prepared to hire thousands of people simply to approve apps? The more they hire and the more apps that keep coming in, we’re going to continue seeing more and more screw-ups and hypocrisy. And developers are going to grow more and more frustrated. This situation is simply not tenable.

Lighten up on your heavy-handed rules, Apple. And just lighten up in general.

[photo: flickr/swami stream]

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Last week, Apple released its new 3.0 software for the Apple TV. Unfortunately, it looks like it came with a pretty big bug in tow: Disappearing content.

Here’s the problem in Apple’s words:

There is an issue with Apple TV software version 3.0 that can possibly cause your content to disappear after a period of time. All customers running Apple TV software version 3.0 should immediately restart their Apple TV and then upgrade to Apple TV software version 3.0.1.

Today, Apple has sent an email to all Apple TV owners advising them to immediately upgrade to the new 3.0.1 software to cure this issue. Obviously, you’ll want to do this as an Apple TV with no content is pretty much useless.

The new Apple TV 3.0 software has been generally well-received, though many feel it doesn’t go far enough to allow for content such as streaming web video. The UI has been improved, but it’s still hard to search for content without using an iPhone or iPod touch as the remote. The new Apple Remote works with the device, but it’s pretty much as useless as the white one in many ways.

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SnapNames acquires expiring domain names from registries and then auctions them off to interested buyers. When everything goes well people are happy. SnapNames gets a good return on investment, and the domains go to the buyer who values them the highest.

But it turns out things most certainly have not gone well. Since 2005 a substantial number of domain auctions had shill bidding by a SnapNames employee.

This isn’t run of the mill eBay shill bidding. On eBay a seller may try to participate in the auction to drive overall bidding higher. But for the most part pricing doesn’t get out of control because most stuff sold on eBay isn’t particularly unique and price boundaries are well established.

What happened at SnapNames is much worse. The company is the seller and has the most to gain by shill bidding. And the company is also in control of all auction information. Sometimes an auction may have two bidders, with one bidder putting in a maximum bid of $100,000 (yes, they go this high sometimes). Another may bid just $10,000, and so the winning buyer would just pay some small amount over $10k. From SnapNames perspective that isn’t a $10k gain. It’s a $90k loss.

So SnapNames “fixed” the problem. An executive with the company simply bid on those domains. He could bid up to, say, $90,000 with full certainty that he wouldn’t be burdened with actually winning the auction and having to pay up. SnapNames made lots of extra money. And if the top bidder backed out and the executive accidentally won, SnapNames was secretly reimbursing him on the back end. Zero risk.

SnapNames said only about 5% of total auctions were affected, but this is misleading. The top domains make up a substantial proportion of total revenue. So that 5% could easily have accounted for, say, much more than 50% of revenue. SnapNames was careful not to disclose the total dollar amounts involved, or even what percentage of overall auction revenue was affected.

That was their first mistake. Not being open and honest.

Now they’re demanding that customers sign an agreement waiving any rights they may have to sue SnapNames in exchange for the refund. That’s a big problem – some customers are complaining that auction data has been erased from their accounts, so they don’t even really know how much they were affected. And SnapNames isn’t making any promises that the reimbursement offers are complete. Once a customer signs the release, even if the settlement amount was calculated incorrectly, they have no further recourse against the company.

A typical comment from a customer: ““Please be prepared to provide detailed information and data regarding your bidding and purchase activity to the extent that it differs from the information we have provided to you.”Pretty hard to do since Snap took down a large portion of bid history!”

SnapNames is making exactly the wrong moves here. They need to return this money to customers immediately with no conditions attached. And they need to provide full and accurate reports to those customers along with the refund. Anything short of that is just shady.

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Can you imagine Techcrunch’s logo looking like this? It’s all dependent on font choice. (in case you were wondering BTW, Twitter’s font is mostly Pico created by Maniackers Design)

Regardless of the fact that the web makes it easy for everyone to be more creative (i.e., logo above), it becomes a paradise for designers themselves who seek new tools & inspiration. So whether you’re a professional graphic designer, or an amateur web publisher this list of font tools might come in handy (eventually).

myFontbook is an online font viewer and manager based on the font available on your computer. It allows you to organize your font collection and gives you all the tools you need to do so. Once you open the demo, myFontbook will render all the fonts in your computer, and display them together in an easy to view mode. While all the files are actually open, it makes it easier to browse through them and see the fonts in several sizes. You can also make lists of fonts, tag & favorite the fonts that you like best. The font viewer renders your entire font library super fast. Just compare the rendering time to other font management tools. And there’s nothing to install—it works from your browser. If you want to save all your activities for later use, you’ll need to register. But don’t worry, it’s free.

With BetterFonts, an online font database, you can quickly preview and download thousands of fonts. Navigate the massive collection by alphabetic order or browse the fonts by their categories. You can change the preview text of your desirable font and instantly download it for free. Although the site provides an impressive list of fonts, for the quality ones you’ll need to pay. But they have a deal of a 500-font package for $2.77. Please note that there’s no preview of the font list in advance—which might be a risky deal if you want something in particular (but then again, it’s cheap).

Most of us usually use only one font (probably Arial), ’cause unless you’re a designer, you don’t give much thought to fonts. But hey, there’s a world of fonts out there that is just waiting for exploration, and FFonts is a good site to start with. FFonts has a huge font library and it allows you to navigate easily, and download any font for free. All the fonts on the site are listed on the left side menu for easy access, and clicking on a font gives you information plus a satisfying preview of the font. Overall, the site hosts more than 10,000 fonts!

If you don’t find anything you like, and are still looking for that special font to make an appearance, you are more than welcome to create it yourself with FontStruct. Sign into the service and with FontStruct’s font-building tool & editor, you’ll be able to create fonts constructed out of geometrical shapes, which are arranged in a grid pattern, like tiles or bricks. Once you’re done building, FontStruct generates high-quality TrueType fonts, ready to use in any Mac or Windows application.

You can share your creations with the world or save it for yourself, but FontStruct actually encourages you to share your fonts with others, this is why they’ve created a gallery where people can share and discuss fonts, and download them for free. A quick look at the community taught me there is a lot of going on there—definitely worth the visit if fonts interest to you.

Fawnt is also one of the largest free fonts archives on the web today. With a pleasant design and an easy to use navigator, you are one step away from finding the perfect font. Browse the fonts by category or alphabetically, or use the search function. All the fonts have large and customizable previews, and character maps. Be aware though that while all of the fonts in Fawnt are free, they might have some restrictions. Some may be free for personal use, others for commercial. When you visit a font link make sure to browse the page for any fine print or usage terms.

With 62,000 fonts, Myfonts has the world’s largest font database. Not only can you search for fonts, explore everything in their gallery, and download the fonts to your computer, you can also find fonts based on a picture with their service WhatTheFont. Simply upload a file, or specify a URL, and myFonts will find the font used in the picture you uploaded (or at least, give you some close alternatives to this font). If you’re a designer, I’m sure you can see how important a service like this can be to the industry.

myFonts recently released a great iPhone app that does the same thing and helps you find a font while on-the-go. You can snap a photo with the app, and save it to your gallery. For iPod users, you are asked to upload a file from your iPhone gallery, then myFonts will process and optimize the photos and provide you with the font’s details.

Finally, it allows you to receive or send the results by email. For a free & direct download click here.

Another free iPhone app is FontGenie – The app displays all available fonts on your iPhone and allows you to keep track of ever-changing font families and their font types.

A super cool idea is to actually create a font with your own handwriting, so you’ll be able to insert it wherever you need to place your signature on the web. Luckily, Fontcapture took the idea and made it possible, which means you can create your handwriting font right now if you want to, all you need is a printer and a scanner.

How it works: First, you need to download the font template, print it, fill it in with your own handwriting, scan it and upload it to the site. Then you’ll be able to preview and download the new font to your font library, located on your computer.

Abstract Fonts is not very different than the other font directories suggested here but it has a very convenient interface. Abstract Fonts lets you type in text to view font examples, opens a unique menu for each font which summarizes the information you need to know about that font, see the character map, and display users’ comments. Abstract also gives you the ability to see similar fonts, which I think is an absolutely brilliant addition.

Last but not least, here’s something to look for in the future:

Typekit, a new font editor will offer designers more control over fonts on the web.

Today, almost all Web fonts are protected by copyright, and very few of them allow for linking via CSS or redistribution on the web. Typekit has been working with foundries to develop a consistent web-only font linking license.

Typekit will give you access to their protected library of high-quality fonts. You’ll just need to add a line of JavaScript to your markup, tell Typekit what fonts you want to use, and then craft your pages the way you always have. Except now, you’ll be able to use real fonts.

There’s still not enough information about this new service but based on the above, Typekit might definitely change web design. Unfortunately, the site is in closed beta (invitation only) so designers make sure you sign up for an invite. Meanwhile, check out the full list of fonts already available at Typekit. Also, Typekit has some interesting investors: Evan Williams, Ron Conway, Caterina Fake and True Ventures.

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I’ve been keeping busy this weekend doing some very basic research – I love you, Internet – about Rdio and discovered a couple of interesting details that have emerged on the Web since the stealth startup got its first dose of media attention.

First of all, a search on LinkedIn used to surface only Malthe Sigurdsson, a London-based designer who used to be Creative Director at Skype, as one of the people hired by Rdio – as VP of Design. He can stop hiding that now.

Today, that same search on the business social network yields more results:

– Carter Adamson (COO, Rdio) – former General Manager of Desktop Products at Skype and prior to that Director, Product Strategy/Business Developement at AOL and before that Senior Program Manager at ICQ. His recruitment seems to suggest that the Rdio service will not be exclusively browser-based.

– Todd Berman (VP of Engineering, Rdio) – first hired as Software Engineer at imeem in 2005, Berman served as VP of Technology at the venture-backed social music startup until switching to Rdio back in August 2008. During his tenure at imeem, Berman undoubtedly learned a lot about what it takes to distribute music on the web and scale the service for a large user base.

– Craig Kimerer (Senior Software Engineer, Rdio) – also an ex-employee of music startup imeem, where he worked as Software Engineer. At imeem, he seemingly kept busy with ’scaling, new feature data-model designs and micro-payments’ according to his LinkedIn profile. It’s fun looking at his Twitter account, where he recently proclaimed open source media software sucks.

– Manish Singh (Senior Software Engineer, Rdio) – once a senior member of Oracle’s technical staff, Singh was hired by social browser startup Flock in September 2005, where he held a number of technical roles before becoming the company’s Director of Technology. His recruitment (Feb 2009) suggests Rdio won’t exclusively run on desktops but also inside browsers.

– Matt Crocker (Senior Software Engineer, Rdio) – spent a couple of years developing software for Pioneers of the Inevitable, the startup behind customizable open-source music player Songbird. The University of Victoria graduate joined Rdio in March 2009.

– Joshua Miller (Senior Systems Engineer, Rdio) – held senior Linux/Unix system administration roles at IBM and Pay By Touch before moving to a similar role at social network Tagged (which boasts very high traffic numbers). Miller joined Rdio earlier this year.

Pretty skilled team, right?

Now pay a visit to the Rdio website. Not much to see, right? If gives you an option to sign in to your account if you happen to be lucky enough to have one (if you do, we have a special space reserved in our inbox for screenshots of the service) and an option to sign up for updates to your e-mail address. Other than that, there’s nothing but a link to an e-mail address, which actually bounces messages when you send e-mails to it, rendering it gigantically useless.

But then there’s a copyright notice at the bottom right that reads ‘©2009 Pulser Music Services Inc’. A search on the Web reveals that this appears to be a subsidiary of private equity investment firm Europlay Capital Advisors, which cites a preference to invest in “cross-border media transactions and in interactive entertainment businesses”. If you want to know more about Europlay from when it was founded in 2007, here’s the SEC filing.

And guess who’s Chairman and Managing Director of Europlay Capital Advisors? None other than Mark Dyne, the former CEO of Sega and Virgin Interactive Entertainment who was one of the first people to invest in Skype – he was also a member of the company’s board from 2003 to 2006 – and until recently sat on the board of another venture started by Friis and Zennström: the ill-fated Joost.

Rdio CEO Drew Larner is also connected to Europlay, where he apparently recently served as Managing Director. Prior to Europlay, Mr. Larner spent over twelve years as an executive in the motion picture industry, most recently as Executive Vice-President at Spyglass Entertainment Group. In that role, he was involved in all operations of Spyglass with specific oversight of business development, international distribution and business and legal affairs.

So we have some serious veteran media executives investing time and resources in Rdio, which based on my findings already boasts a highly diverse and feathered team of engineers, developers and managers with a track record in digital music companies and carrying experience in working for venture-backed startups. Its earliest hire – that of Todd Berman – was made in August 2008 according to his LinkedIn profile, so apparently they’ve been building this company for nearly a year and a half now.

All that, combined with what Janus Friis recently told Bloomberg regarding Rdio, makes this a company to watch closely:

“We have watched many ad-supported music businesses come and go. We felt the time was right to revisit this space, this time with a compelling offering and a sustainable subscription model.”

It’ll be very interesting to see what they come up with – the service is said to be on track for beta launch in early 2010 – and if they’ll be able to steal some of Spotify’s momentum when that company finally makes its way to the United States.

One thing is guaranteed: Rdio won’t be one of those online music startups who manage to fly under the radar and whose leaders lack the experience and negotiation skills to effectively deal with the music industry juggernauts who control the majority of rights to the music this world has to offer.

Which isn’t necessarily a recipe for success of course – the tale of Joost proves as much.

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I’m in India this weekend with fellow TechCrunch/BusinessWeek writer Sarah Lacy. After we’re done with the elephant rides in Jaipur, we’re going to be meeting local tech startups. Then we head back to New Delhi to meet more aspiring entrepreneurs. Sarah is writing a book on how startup culture has gone global and I’m researching how R&D has globalized. It never ceases to amaze me how you can find brilliant entrepreneurs everywhere—whether in the middle of the Thar Desert in Rajasthan or Santiago Chile (where local entrepreneurs showed me life-sized holographic images projected through some hardware connected to their laptops, and software which can help monitor the operational efficiencies of department stores in California). The promise of these early ventures is always amazing and their enthusiasm infectious. Which brings me to Global Entrepreneurship Week. And Snoop Dogg.

You are probably asking yourself, what the heck does the controversial and highly successful rapper have to do with entrepreneurship? Snoop has graciously agreed to serve on a Nov. 16 mentoring panel that features high-powered entrepreneurs handing out sage advice on how they launched and grew their businesses and brands. No doubt, Snoop has built one of the most durable brands in the notoriously volatile world of hip-hop. In fact, I’d wager that Snoop could give some solid lessons to some of the top decision makers and brand masters on a global basis. The panel is but one of a huge slate of events arranged by the Kauffman Foundation (full disclosure — they have underwritten some of my research) for Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Those events span the globe, running in 85 countries and hundreds of venues all with a singular goal—to spur innovative thinkers to do innovative things. The emphasis of many of the events, not surprisingly, is technology. The events are designed to teach, inspire, and foster collaboration among entrepreneurs (many of whom may not even know they are entrepreneurs yet). Aside from getting some sage advice from the original Snoop, the week is also chock full of opportunities for entrepreneurs of every type. Got a great idea to join the clean tech revolution? During Global Entrepreneurship Week in San Francisco, the Clean Tech Open Ideas Competition finals will be held. In this competition, thousands of people submitted early-stage clean technology ideas and it helps turn them into successful companies. Ideas can cover anything that fosters a healthy natural environment, from big-think solar breakthroughs to power-management software for buildings or hotels. Just like the TechCrunch50, this bakeoff will let people with big ideas present in front of a high-powered panel of experts and vie for startup-funding and other assistance.

While a lot of the events are in the U.S., the spread beyond our shores is notable and accelerating. Take “Speednetwork the Globe”. This is a series of networking events where entrepreneurs of all backgrounds can meet with potential collaborators, mentors and investors in five-minute increments. More than 500 speednetworking events in 31 countries happened in 2008, connecting approximately 25,000 people. Likely even more will be scheduled this year and this is a model for how to get geeks and suits—the two key components of a tech startup—together and brainstorming.

A quick look through the list showed me that pretty much anywhere I go I can find some event worth hitting. On November 18 in Chile (which I wrote about previously as being a rising comer in the tech world) the government-backed Foro Innovacion (Innovation Forum) will hold an all day business plan ideathon competition, focused on technology industries. In Tokyo, on November 14 the Honda Foundation is sponsoring a seminar addressing the needs and challenges of social entrepreneurs in Asia.

That last event I put in for a reason. Entrepreneurship, I strongly believe, is not just about making money. In much of the world, entrepreneurship is about giving people control over their own fate, lifting them out of poverty, and improving the world. Even here, in the U.S., entrepreneurship is an incredible social resource. All meaningful job growth over the past few decades has come from start-ups and entrepreneurial businesses that are small in size but powerful in impact. The latest economic crisis and wave after wave of resulting layoffs has clearly illustrated there is no safety in working for a big company, or having the right kind of degree, or even being a productive employee.

This is the core of entrepreneurship, the ability to lift yourself up by your own bootstraps, no matter the circumstances, and create a business and a way to support yourself, your family and your community. Most of you reading this either are entrepreneurs or have entrepreneurial aspirations. I’m saying, that’s great. You are what has made this country an amazing place, and these types of motivations are what has lifted tens of millions of people out of poverty around the world. So pay attention to Global Entrepreneurship week, mark it on your calendar, and attend an event if you can. Next time around, organize an event in your area. And never forget why you are doing what you do.

Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa.

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The ads are destroying YouTube. At least this one is. It is a video ad for sustainable energy company from Spain called Acciona. Yeah, I had never heard of them either.

The video starts with this Euro-dude in a suit starting to blow up and crack apart like he’s made from plaster. Halfway through, the actual video player crack in half, and all of the surrounding parts of the site shake and fall away, while an annoying voiceover is saying something about rebirth. I don’t know, maybe it makes more sense in Spanish.

The visual effect is interesting, but feels like a gimmick since it’s already been done before to much better effect by Nintendo. A year ago, they used the same collapsing webpage motif in a video ad for Wario Land: Shake It. At least that made sense.

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Google’s Vice President of Search Product and User Experience Marissa Mayer was recently profiled in a Vogue Magazine article that offered a in-depth glimpse into the exec’s lifestyle, loves, career and fashion preferences. Now, Mayer has been named as one of Glamour Magazine’s 2009 Women of the Year. Joining Mayer on the list are a variety of female powerhouses and icons including Maya Angelou, First Lady Michelle Obama, Susan Rice, Euna Lee and Laura Ling.

Mayer has been frequently profiled in business and technology publications over the years, but it’s also nice to see her achievements highlighted in magazines like Vogue and Glamour. The brainy Stanford-grad has been able to set an example for young women everywhere. As one of Google’s early hires, she’s now helping to lead product design for one of the world’s most innovative companies. And she’s only 34. What’s not to love about a successful and geeky coder who also loves to wear Oscar de la Renta, Chanel and Armani?

Photo credit/Glamour Magazine/Brigitte Lacombe

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This week we saw the launch of the TwitterPeek, a cute little device built by Peek that will do just about anything you want it to do, as long as all you want it to do is access Twitter. It won’t surf the web. It won’t make phone calls. It won’t support third party apps. But it most certainly does run Twitter.

You can get it in black. Or, if you want to show a little flair, you can get in in cyan.

For some crazy reason I wanted one. A friend bought me one that I will truly love forever(ish). But the company also sent me one. And while I may or may not need one TwitterPeek, I almost certainly don’t need two TwitterPeeks.

This is where you come in.

We’re giving one of these away to a TechCrunch reader. It’s the cool one, cyan, with lifetime service that costs $200. And it’s all yours. Just retweet this post and make sure to include the short URL link – http://bit.ly/3U2Yhy – as well as the #crunch hashtag. Please only tweet the message once, anyone tweeting repeatedly will be disqualified. Tomorrow we’ll sort through all of the tweets and pick one randomly for the win. You’ll get the TweetPeek device in the mail, and we’ll throw in a TechCrunch tshirt. Even the postage is on us. But please note that in this case only U.S. readers are eligible, because the device only works in the U.S.

By the way, if this goes well and everyone doesn’t spazz out, we’ll do a giveaway every week. Next week we’ll give away a Droid if we can talk Motorola, Verizon or Google into paying for it. If you are a company that has a cool device befitting the refined tastes of a TechCrunch reader (as defined by us) and want to supply the goods, let us know in the comments or via tips@techcrunch.

Oh. And on an unrelated note, it’s unlikely we’ll be returning this test unit, Peek. Something, err, happened to it. I mean we lost it. Actually, it never arrived.

Update: Congratulations to Chris Ricca for winning the Twitter Peek contest.

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As a small team, Gowalla, like its rival Foursquare, doesn’t have a lot of resources to devote to building apps on all the mobile platforms, so this is a good solution for the time being. Eventually, the plan is to have native apps for all the big platforms, Williams says.

But the most-loved child will remain the iPhone app for the foreseeable future. In fact, version 1.3 of that app has just been submitted to the App Store for approval, we’re told. Williams says that it should alleviate a lot of the check-in and place adding issues that users were experiencing in previously versions, which we touched on here.

Yesterday, Gowalla also added Twitter feeds to venue pages on their web site. This allows you to see what the official Twitter accounts for those places are saying at any given time. They also began appending place’s Twitter names to your tweets when you check into a place on Gowalla. See an example here.

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textPlus, a text messaging app that’s powered by GOGII, has just hit the App Store. textPlus lets any iPhone or iPod Touch send free text messages to any cell number by using in-app advertising to cover its costs. There is no limit on how many text messages you can send per month, it’s just a matter of getting WiFi, 3G or an Edge connection. GOGII was one of the first companies that was funded by iFund, the partnership between venture capital firm KPCB and Apple, which was announced at the Apple SDK roadmap event.

With version 2.0 of textPlus, GOGII is announcing the availability of textPlus usernames, which can effectively serve as a stand-in for a phone number, which is great for iPod Touch users. Your friends can send standard text messages to you from any phone, simply by sending a text to the shortcode 60611 that leads off with your username followed the rest of their message (so a text to me would look like “DanielBru Hi are you coming to the movie tonight?”). textPlus also supports group messaging, though someone with the app installed needs to initiate the conversation (the other participants in the chat don’t necessarily need it installed and can use regular SMS).

One of the biggest upsides to textPlus is that you can send text messages internationally at no cost at all — the one requirement, is that you have a textPlus username. And of course, with iPhone OS 3.0, and push notifications, you’ll get a notification each time someone sends you a new text message. GOGII’s goal with textPlus is to make the texting functionality much better then what Apple has already developed.

After playing with textPlus over the last few days, I can see where the success of version one came from — textPlus is very to use, and the ads don’t really get in the way. The only thing I fear is that GOGII doesn’t have any immediate plans to support picture and video messaging, which iPhone users on AT&T recently got.

textPlus currently supports the following carriers; AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, Alltel, US Cellular, Virgin Mobile, Nextel, Boost, Cellular One, Dobson, nTelos, Cellular South, CellCom, evol, ECIT, RINA, Bluegrass, Cox, Inland Cellular, West Central Wireless, Centennial, EKN, RCC, and Immix/Pc Management.

You can get textPlus on the App Store today at no cost. [iTunes Link]

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5:30 AM. I woke up this morning to the soothing chimes of my over-priced alarm clock, took a look at the ungodly hour, and immediately sank back into my pillow. It wasn’t until my second alarm (strategically positioned far out of arm’s reach) kicked in that I remembered the task at hand: Droid day.

Ah yes, the phone that seemingly came out of nowhere — at least to those who haven’t had their ear to the ground on Android phone news, which until now has largely been a steady stream of mediocracy, fueled by underpowered CPUs and generic UIs. But Droid has something special. Mostly, it’s the phone’s heavy duty processor, but there’s also its brilliant screen, much-improved operating system, and the fact that it runs on a network that doesn’t leave people screaming profanities (at least until they get their monthly bill).

So I embarked this morning to the Palo Alto Verizon store, hoping to use a Qik live stream to capture the festive line of Droid fans sure to be present. After all, Verizon customers have plenty to celebrate — though they’re on the nation’s best network, they’ve long been burdened with an underwhelming selection of phones. This is the first time they’ve had a chance to pick up a device that’s a viable alternative to the iPhone. And with Verizon’s marketing onslaught over the last few weeks, not to mention the generally very positive reviews, I expected the turnout to be good. Not Apple good mind you — no marketing push can match Steve Jobs’ mystical mind control over a rabid fanbase of millions. But this was the heart of Silicon Valley, where gadget geeks flourish.

Alas, it seems that my expectations were unwarranted. I walked up to the Verizon store no later than 6:20 AM, forty minutes before the 7:00 AM opening time (three hours earlier than usual in light of the big day). But no sooner had I arrived than I began to question my still-groggy mental state. The Verizon sign was directly above my head. There were five or six employees buzzing around the well-lit store, two of whom were decked out in bizarre Droid-branded outfits, complete with black leather vests. But the street could not have been more empty.

The door cracked open. One of the employees, perhaps concerned by my confused expression or excited that someone had actually shown up, had come to talk to me. Yes, I was in the right place. Yes, they were due to open in a little more than half an hour. And yes, they too had expected more than one person to be standing in front of the store at this point. The door closed again.

A few minutes later I was joined by two new Droid fans. Unfortunately, my excitement over my new friends was rather shortlived — the newcomers turned down my offer of free TechCrunch T-shirts, and informed me that they weren’t actually waiting in line, but had come to witness it for themselves too. As it turned out, they were members of the Android team, who were also apparently let down by the sad turn out. But, as they quickly pointed out, the line was not actually as empty as it seemed! For I had neglected to take into account the three cars parked at the side of the road, each of which was occupied by one future Droid customer. And we were also joined by one other person, who was officially the first person in line, a mere 30 minutes before the store opened. You can relive this moment in the poorly shot video below.

Over the course of the next half hour we were joined by perhaps four more people. I was cheered up by the fact that many of them accepted my offers of free TechCrunch T-shirts (the Android team members eventually caved and asked for some too). But the atmosphere was oddly solemn as we tried to brainstorm where everyone else could possibly be. We eventually arrived at the conclusion that people may have decided to head to the nearby Best Buy, which actually offers a better deal because they take care of the Droid’s $100 mail-in rebate for you (Verizon makes you go through rebate hell). It was time to look elsewhere for a line. You can see our heartfelt goodbyes in the video below.

Thus, I set out on part two of my journey, which was even more boring than part one. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice to say, there wasn’t a single person in front of the Best Buy. Not even an Android team member. My quest was a failure. There are lines being reported in places — dozens of them —  across the country, and I was unable to find one.

All of this would bother me more, were it not for the fact that I now have a Droid sitting on my desk. Over the course of the last few hours, I’ve gradually come to the conclusion that this thing rocks, plain and simple. I’ll always have a soft spot for the iPhone, but for this generation of smart phones, at least, I’ve made my choice.

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Update: Yep. Now suspended.

Update 2: MSNBC is now saying that the account was never in their control in the first place. It was previously sending out MSNBC headlines, but then today went off the deep end, obviously. So I guess this is a lesson in controlling your online brand.

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Now, readers will not only have to pay for the dedicated BILD iPhone app, but they also need to pony-up recurring fees for new articles. The same is planned for Axel Springer’s quality paper Die Welt. Users of Nokia, Blackberry, HTC or other smartphone brands will not be blocked – but only for as long as it takes for Springer to develop an app for each device.

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