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2 September 2009
Today’s Tabbloid
PERSONAL NEWS FOR craig.kirchoff@gmail.com
WEB NEWS Nokia has also introduced a new social friendly feature called Lifecasting
with Ovi; it lets you publish your location and status updates directly to
Nokia X6 is Stunningly Facebook from the home screen of the phone:
Beautiful, Facebook Ready “Lifecasting goes beyond just publishing your status – it is
about building deeper and closer connections between
[Mashable] people. It triggers new kinds of communication patterns,
SEP 02, 2009 05:18A.M. such as sending messages or status updates or even
navigating to a friend or a place. Lifecasting will premiere
on the new Nokia N97 mini, companion to the successful
Nokia N97.”
It took them a while, but Nokia has finally caught up to the fact that
having a feature-packed phone is only half of the equation. Giving your
users access to content and enabling them to connect and share with
others is equally important, and their latest lineup delivers the goods.
Read the full press release here.
Here’s a couple of photos that’ll make any gadget lover’s mouth water:
Finnish mobile giant Nokia has introduced several new mobile devices at
the Nokia World conference held in Stuttgart, Germany. Judging by its
amazing design, Nokia X6 is the highlight of the lot: it will definitely
make heads turn, but it’s quite powerful when it comes to features, too.
By specifications, it seems to be a successor to the music-oriented Nokia

5800: it also has a 3.2” resistive touchscreen, and other features include
a 5-megapixel camera, 32 GB of storage, and 35 hours of music playback.
It’s all nice and dandy, but what really caught our eye in the official press
release is Nokia’s commitment to bring social networking and media to
their smartphones. From the PR:
“With direct access to Ovi Store, the Nokia X6 is a hive of

activity that brings 20 friends and virtual communities, like
Facebook, to your homescreen.”
1
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR craig.kirchoff@gmail.com 2 September 2009
WEB NEWS
Nokia Beta Labs Introduces

New Apps: Ovi Lifecasting,
Social Messaging [TechCrunch]
SEP 02, 2009 05:17A.M.
At the Nokia World 2009 event in Stuttgart, Nokia Beta Labs has
announced a number of new services ready for testing right now. The
most interesting one is Ovi Lifecasting, an application we caught wind of
yesterday but is now ready for limited early bird beta-testing.
The beta tool, which requires a Nokia N97 device, taps into Facebook to
enable you to share status updates and photos with your Facebook
Reviews: Facebook friends and also lets you share your location through Ovi Maps (also in
beta). Here’s an introduction video featuring two polished young men
Tags: facebook, Nokia N97 Mini, Nokia X6 using the application to hook up with each other in some city:
Also new is an extension of Nokia Messaging called Social Messaging,

which interestingly Nokia calls the groundwork for an impending
proprietary multi-community social networking client. The company
insists this is an early look, and currently only supports Facebook:
In other news, Nokia Beta Labs is discontinuing Nokia Friend View,

which was an experimental research project from Nokia Research
Center. We covered the app, which was basically a location-aware
microblogging tool when it was introduced in November 2008.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and
hardware.
TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San

Francisco
2
enough to maximize matching benefits from companies, and 80% of

workers have no idea how much they’re paying in 401k administrative
and other fees. BrightScope shines a light on all that and helps people
take better advantage of these programs.
The company has raised a $2 million second round of financing, led by

Steelpoint Capital Partners, to continue to build out the service.
Jim Cacavo from Steelpoint and Tim Tokarsky are joining the company’s
board of directors.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications,

Delivered Daily.

Francisco
WEB NEWS
401k Plans Are Hard To

Understand. BrightScope Raises
$2 Million To Fix That.
[TechCrunch]
SEP 02, 2009 04:35A.M.
San Diego based BrightScope, which launched earlier this year, helps
people understand their 401k retirement plans and how to maximize the
benefits.
That’s a much needed service: the company says 30% of workers don’t
participate at all in their company 401k programs. 22% don’t contribute
3
WEB NEWS
WTF, Google Sells Company

Merchandise Online?
[TechCrunch]
SEP 02, 2009 04:31A.M.
Color me surprised to discover Google operates an online merchandise

store aptly named Google Store, courtesy of @newsycombinator. Google- Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications,
centric blogs like Google Blogoscoped have understandably been aware Delivered Daily.
of this for quite some time, but I had no idea. There’s no mention of it on
the Google corporate website, and even the Wikipedia entry simply TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San
redirects to a list of all its products, although they’re apparently running Francisco
ad units for it on their network (see below).
Apparently, created back in 2006, the online store features a big

inventory of items featuring Google brands for sale, ranging from adult
and kids clothing to accessories like lava lamps, mugs, Yo-Yos and lip
balm. There’s even a recently launched section reserved exclusively for
YouTube-branded stuff, and I’m definitely tempted to purchase one of
those exquisite YouTube Snap Bibs for the next newborn in the family.
Two questions pop into my head: when’s the Bing Store coming (the
domain name has already been secured by Microsoft), and how much
revenue is Google getting out of this well-hidden Google Store?
4
The channel is located over at www.youtube.com/kremlin, and its main

purpose is to reach out to youth. Medvedev covers a wide array of topics:
the first video on the site addresses schoolchildren and talks about good
neighborly ties, while in the latest Medvedev talks about the Second
World War and its outcome.
Interestingly enough, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin does not

yet have his YouTube channel, although he makes it up by regularly
appearing on Russian television.
Reviews: YouTube
Tags: Medvedev, russia, youtube
WEB NEWS WEB NEWS
Russian President Launches MySQL Founders Back Mobile

YouTube Channel [Mashable] Sorcery For Cross-Platform
SEP 02, 2009 03:51A.M.
Development Technology
[TechCrunch]
SEP 02, 2009 03:42A.M.
Many entrepreneurs who muzzle through a successful exit use some of

the proceeds to become an angel investor and help other startups get,
well, started. And that’s not exclusively a Silicon Valley thing. Stockholm,
Sweden-based Mobile Sorcery has just raised an early-stage investment
round amounting up to 1.5 million Swedish Kronor (approximately
€145k or $206k USD), for the most part coming from MySQL founders
David Axmark and Michael Widenius. You may remember MySQL was
acquired by Sun Microsystems back in January 2008 for approximately
$1 billion after raising only $39 million in venture capital. It’s safe to say
Barack Obama has it, Nicolas Sarkozy has it, Pope Benedict XVI has it, both co-founders walked away with enough cash to use some of it for
and now Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has one: his very own angel investment in promising companies.
YouTube channel.
5
TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San WEB NEWS

Francisco
Imprisoned Journalists: We
Were Violently Dragged to
North Korea [Mashable]
SEP 02, 2009 01:51A.M.
“AFTER WE WERE detained, the two of us made every effort

to limit the repercussions of our arrest. In the early days of
our confinement, before we were taken to Pyongyang, we
were left for a very brief time with our belongings. With
guards right outside the room, we furtively destroyed
evidence in our possession by swallowing notes and
damaging videotapes.”
This is a small part of a lengthy statement released a few hours ago by

Laura Ling and Euna Lee since they were released from North Korea
prison. It’s their first statement since their ordeal, and although they
leave out many details, it’s still gut-wrenching.
For those who may not be familiar with the story: Laura Ling and Euna
Ling, journalists for Current TV were captured, detained, interrogated,
and more by the North Korean government near the border between
China and North Korea. They were sentenced to 12 years in a labor camp.
However, intervention from President Bill Clinton helped secure the
release of the journalists.
The statement, which we have included below in its entirety, reveal how
they “violently dragged us back across the ice to North Korea and
marched us to a nearby army base” and were sent to Pyongyang for
interrogation and “trial.”
Clearly, the ordeal has been emotionally traumatic on the duo. So much
so that they repeatedly state that parts of it are “too painful to revisit”
and are thus not part of the statement. They do talk about how they ate
6
their notes and protected their sources, coping with five months of the ice to North Korea and marched us to a nearby army base,
captivity, and more. where we were detained. Over the next 140 days, we were
moved to Pyongyang, isolated from one another, repeatedly
Here is the entire emotional statement. Please note that it is lengthy: interrogated and eventually put on trial and sentenced to 12
years of hard labor.
“WE ARRIVED AT the frozen river separating China and
North Korea at 5 o’clock on the morning of March 17. The air DURING OUR TIME in captivity, and in the weeks since we
was crisp and still, and there was no one else in sight. As the returned, there has been speculation about what we were
sun appeared over the horizon, our guide stepped onto the doing in that part of the world and about what happened on
ice. We followed him. the morning of the 17th. After arriving home, we were
disoriented, overwhelmed and not ready to talk about the
We had traveled to the area to document a grim story of experience. There are things that are still too painful to
human trafficking for Current TV. During the previous week, revisit, but we do want to explain what took us to
we had met and interviewed several North Korean defectors, northeastern China and the circumstances of our arrest.
women who had fled poverty and repression in their
homeland, only to find themselves living in a bleak limbo in Our motivations for covering this story were many. First and
China. Some had, out of desperation, found work in the foremost, we believe that journalists have a responsibility to
online sex industry; others had been forced into arranged shine light in dark places, to give voice to those who are too
marriages. Now our guide, a Korean Chinese man who often often silenced and ignored. One of us, Euna, is a devout
worked for foreign journalists, had brought us to the Tumen Christian whose faith infused her interest in the story. The
River to document a well-used trafficking route and chronicle other, Laura, has reported on the exploitation of women
how the smuggling operations worked. around the world for years. We wanted to raise awareness
about the harsh reality facing these North Korean defectors
There were no signs marking the international border, no who, because of their illegal status in China, live in terror of
fences, no barbed wire. But we knew our guide was taking us being sent back to their homeland.
closer to the North Korean side of the river. As he walked, he
began making deep, low hooting sounds, which we assumed In researching the story, we sought help from several activists
was his way of making contact with North Korean border and missionaries who operate in the region. Our main contact
guards he knew. The previous night, he had called his was the Seoul-based Rev. Chun Ki-won, a well-known figure
associates in North Korea on a black cellphone he kept for in the world of North Korean defectors. Chun and his
that purpose, trying to arrange an interview for us. He was network have helped smuggle hundreds of North Koreans out
unsuccessful, but he could, he assured us, show us the no- of China and into countries — including the U.S. — where
man’s land along the river, where smugglers pay off guards to they can start new lives. He introduced us to our guide and
move human traffic from one country to another. gave us a cellphone to use in China, telephone numbers to
reach his associates and specific instructions on how to
When we set out, we had no intention of leaving China, but contact them. We carefully followed his directions so as to not
when our guide beckoned for us to follow him beyond the endanger anyone in this underground world.
middle of the river, we did, eventually arriving at the
riverbank on the North Korean side. He pointed out a small Because these defectors live in fear of being repatriated to
village in the distance where he told us that North Koreans North Korea, we took extreme caution to ensure that the
waited in safe houses to be smuggled into China via a well- people we interviewed and their locations were not
established network that has escorted tens of thousands identifiable. We met with defectors away from their actual
across the porous border. places of work or residence. We avoided filming the faces of
defectors so as not to reveal their identities. The exception
Feeling nervous about where we were, we quickly turned back was one woman who allowed us to film her profile.
toward China. Midway across the ice, we heard yelling. We
looked back and saw two North Korean soldiers with rifles Most of the North Koreans we spoke with said they were
running toward us. Instinctively, we ran. fleeing poverty and food shortages. One girl in her early 20s
said she had been told she could find work in the computer
We were firmly back inside China when the soldiers industry in China. After being smuggled across the Tumen
apprehended us. Producer Mitch Koss and our guide were River, she found herself working with computers, but not in
both able to outrun the border guards. We were not. We tried the way she had expected. She became one of a growing
with all our might to cling to bushes, ground, anything that number of North Korean women who are being used as
would keep us on Chinese soil, but we were no match for the Internet sex workers, undressing for online clients on
determined soldiers. They violently dragged us back across streaming video. Some defectors appeared more nervous
7
about being interviewed than others. But they all agreed that jeopardize our situation and those of relief organizations
their lives in China, while stark, were better than what they working along the border.
had left behind in North Korea.
After spending nearly five months in captivity, we were
We also visited a foster home run by a pastor who worked for relieved to be granted amnesty by the North Korean
Rev. Chun. The home housed six children born to North government. We continue to cope with tremendous mental
Korean women who were forced into marriage in China. The and emotional anguish, but we feel incredibly fortunate to be
mothers had either been repatriated to North Korea or had free and reunited with our families. We are forever indebted
abandoned their families. Because the children have Chinese to the United States government, particularly to President
fathers, it is unlikely they will be deported to North Korea. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, to
The foster home provides them with decent conditions, an former Vice President Al Gore and our colleagues at Current
education and hope for a better life. TV, to Swedish Ambassador Mats Foyer, and to former
President Clinton and his team for taking on this private
In the days before our capture, our guide had seemed humanitarian mission.
cautious and responsible; he was as concerned as we were
about protecting our interview subjects and not taking WE can’t adequately express the emotions surrounding our
unnecessary risks. That is in part why we made the decision release. One moment, we were preparing to be sent to a labor
to follow him across the river. camp, fearing that we would disappear and never be heard
from again; the next we were escorted into a room with
We didn’t spend more than a minute on North Korean soil President Clinton, who greeted us and told us we were going
before turning back, but it is a minute we deeply regret. To home. We are grateful to the many journalists who kept our
this day, we still don’t know if we were lured into a trap. In story alive. We are humbled by the tens of thousands of
retrospect, the guide behaved oddly, changing our starting people who supported us, prayed for us and fought for our
point on the river at the last moment and donning a Chinese release.
police overcoat for the crossing, measures we assumed were
security precautions. But it was ultimately our decision to At the same time, though, we do not want our story to
follow him, and we continue to pay for that decision today overshadow the critical plight of these desperate defectors.
with dark memories of our captivity.
Since our release, we have become aware that the situation
AFTER WE WERE detained, the two of us made every effort along the China-North Korea border has become even more
to limit the repercussions of our arrest. In the early days of challenging for aid groups and that many defectors are going
our confinement, before we were taken to Pyongyang, we deeper underground. We regret if any of our actions,
were left for a very brief time with our belongings. With including the high-profile nature of our confinement, has led
guards right outside the room, we furtively destroyed to increased scrutiny of activists and North Koreans living
evidence in our possession by swallowing notes and along the border. The activists’ work is inspiring, courageous
damaging videotapes. During rigorous, daily interrogation and crucial.
sessions, we took care to protect our sources and interview
subjects. We were also extremely careful not to reveal the Many people have asked about our strength to endure such
names of our Chinese and Korean contacts, including Pastor hardships and uncertainty. But our experiences pale when
Chun. People had put their lives at risk by sharing their compared to the hardship facing so many people living in
stories, and we were determined to do everything in our North Korea or as illegal immigrants in China.
power to safeguard them.
The outcome of our three-day trial was never in doubt. In the
Our families and colleagues back home maintained total end, we were convicted and sentenced to two years for
silence about our work for two full months, both to minimize trespassing and 10 years for “hostile acts.” What did we do
the potential impact on sensitive underground work in China that was hostile? We tried to tell the story of repression and
and to protect us. We were surprised to learn that Chun desperation in North Korea. It’s not surprising, given the
spoke with reporters publicly in the immediate aftermath of North Korean government’s desire to silence any form of
our arrest. Among other things, Chun claimed that he had dissent, that the more extreme portion of the sentence was
warned us not to go to the river. In fact, he was well aware of issued not for trespassing but for our work as journalists.
our plans because he had been communicating with us Totalitarian regimes the world over are terrified of exposure.
throughout our time in China, and he never suggested we
shouldn’t go. Chun’s public statements prompted members of We know that people would like to hear more about our
our families to speak directly with him in Korean, pleading experience in captivity. But what we have shared here is all
with him to refrain from any further comment that might we are prepared to talk about — the psychological wounds of
8
imprisonment are slow to heal. Instead, we would rather corporations in many different verticals. Headshift has been the
redirect this interest to the story we went to report on, a story European counterpart to the Dachis Group (or vice versa, depending on
about despairing North Korean defectors who flee to China which side of the pond you’re looking from).
only to find themselves living a different kind of horror. We
hope that now, more than ever, the plight of these people and Though various sources have called both groups “social media agencies”
of the aid groups helping them are not forgotten.” at various times (including during news of the acquisition), this is not the
kind of social media guru/expert you might have in mind. Headshift
Tags: china, current tv, free speech, laura ling, North Korea, President consultants aren’t out there acting as company representatives on social
Clinton networks like Twitter and Facebook.
Rather than fishing for companies, Dachis and Headshift are teaching
them how to fish for themselves. “It is time for companies to move
beyond the hype and toward delivering concrete, sustainable, and
measurable value from their social media activities,” said Headshift co-
founder Livio Hughes in a statement.
The pair of consultancies have made a profitable business out of showing

corporations and government how to create a collaborative ethic inside
WEB NEWS their organizations and how to use today’s leading software platforms.
Headshift is based in London but also has offices in Sydney, and it
Dachis Group Acquires operates across Europe and the Pacific.
Headshift: Say Hello to a Social Both Headshift and Dachis Group are privately held, so no financial
details of the acquisition were released. According to one source the
Business Consulting most recent injection of capital into Dachis was specifically to make
purchases of this nature, so look for more news to come.
Powerhouse [Read Write Web]
SEP 02, 2009 01:47A.M. Thanks to Susan Scrupski at ITSinsider for the tip.
Discuss
The Dachis Group, an agency founded by former Razorfish CEO Jeff

Dachis and backed by Austin Ventures, has made its first acquisition.
Late Tuesday night the company announced it has bought the London-
based consultancy Headshift, giving Dachis Group an international reach
for the first time.
Dachis and Headshift offer large corporations advice on technology

strategy, specializing in the social technologies that have taken the
consumer Web by storm and are slowly but surely moving into the
enterprise. Both agencies have been leaders among a cadre of
consultancies advising corporate entities as diverse as the BBC, Intuit
and Coca-Cola.
Sponsor
Dachis Group is a top consultant group in the U.S. advising companies

about social technology adoption, and they’ve served big name
9
WEB NEWS
LOST: Regional Networks

Removed from Facebook
[Mashable]
SEP 02, 2009 01:26A.M.
We’ve emailed Facebook to get their reaction, and will update this post
when we get it. Tell us in the comments if you’ve noticed the removal of
your network, or if yours is still standing for now (it’s possible this
change is coming in waves as well).
Update: We got a response from Facebook. We were referred to their

July 1 post on the matter, as they announced the feature would be
“phased out.” It may be that today was the phase out of networks on
profile pages.
Reviews: Facebook, Mashable, Twitter
Tags: facebook, Regional Networks
Last month, we picked up on a small change to the Facebook interface –

the removal of regional networks when browsing groups of friends. We
were of the belief that it was a precursor to the removal of regional
networks on Facebook, something they launched in 2006 to expand
Facebook beyond its college roots.
Now regional networks are gone. We first noticed the change when
I was trying to search for my Facebook friends in New York City to plan
for an upcoming trip. Friend after friend had their college or work
networks, but no regional network. So I checked my own. Sure enough,
“Silicon Valley” was gone, and so were the local networks for all of the
Mashable editorial staff.
We were vaguely aware that this move was coming. It has long been part
of Facebook’s Twitterification plan. It wants to expand from tight
regional networks into a worldwide platform for conversation, much like
Twitter, which is trying to become the world’s water cooler.
So yes, we were warned, but we’re still a bit shocked. We feel lost without
them. I still want to contact all my NYC friends and tell them I’m coming
to visit. We can see why Facebook is making this move (even if we don’t
agree with it), but we’re not sure if the hometown feature will
compensate.
10
WEB NEWS
Pandora One Gets an Update to

Desktop App 2.0 [Mashable]
SEP 02, 2009 01:11A.M.
Windows users (sorry Mac fans!) can also use a mouse hover over the
Pandora icon in the system tray to get a quick view of the current track’s
song title and artist.
Two other small tweaks include positional memory for the app window,
so next time you start up the app it will be right where you left it. Version
2.0 will also remember your last volume level as well.
Lastly, the wait time between songs has been sped up, which means no
more long waits after thumbs down-ing a track.
By the way, if you’re a current Pandora user looking to get more out of
the service with or without a subscription, check out our recent feature
Pandora got a large number of votes in our recent lunchtime poll for on 6 ways to find new music and spice up your stations. Do you use
favorite music streaming service. And if you’re one of the proud Pandora? Have you subscribed or considered subscribing to the Pandora
subscribers to the Pandora One service, you’ve got some good news One service? Let us know in the comments.
today: the Pandora Desktop App was updated to version 2.0.
Reviews: Pandora
Some relatively simple interface tweaks to the Pandora One AIR app add
some nice new functionality, including a track progress bar and access to Tags: Adobe Air, music streaming, pandora
your song history. Both are accessible by simply clicking the album
cover, which insets the album art and makes room for the other two
controls. You can navigate backwards through the last hour of your
listening, thumbs up or down anything in the playlist, and/or purchase
any of the tracks from the list.
11
WEB NEWS
Salesforce Launches
Lightweight Contact Manager
For Small Businesses
[TechCrunch]
SEP 01, 2009 11:55P.M.
One of the advantages of using a CRM is the ability to easily manage and
organize contacts to maximize leads. Salesforce.com and the many other
companies that offer CRMs have well-established contact management
systems within their products that can be incredibly useful to businesses
both big and small. But what if you want a easy-to-use, but
comprehensive contact management system without the bells and
whistles of a CRM? Salesforce.com now has the answer: a Contact
Manager Edition of its CRM that doesn’t include all the more
complicated features of Salesforce’s conventional product. For $9 per
user per month, Contact Manager Edition will store and manage all
contacts and accounts in the cloud. The product will integrate with any
email system, including Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo. The system
will track all emails, keeping a record of customer interactions and will
run pre-configured and customized reports on contacts and accounts. Of
course, this tracking system can be customized to track data that is most
important to an user’s needs.

Francisco
12
WEB NEWS
People of Walmart: Viral Blog

Showcases Retailer’s Clientele
[Mashable]
SEP 01, 2009 11:54P.M.
Time also interviewed the founders of the site, who told them how it all
got started:
“Andrew, his brother Adam and their friend Luke started

People of Walmart after a shopping trip to a South Carolina
branch earlier this month. “We turned a corner to see a
stripper — at least, I think she was a stripper — with a shirt
that read ‘Go F___ Yourself,’ and she had a 2-year-old kid in
one of those child harnesses that looked like a dog leash,”
says Adam. They turned another corner and saw a guy with a
ZZ Top beard.
Inspired by the experience, the three friends — who shop at

Wal-Mart regularly, sometimes while wearing ugly clothes —
Attention Walmart shoppers: you’re the subject of a new blog that has went home and created the website. They asked their friends
gone highly viral. The site People of Walmart is seemingly the latest to submit photos and naively assumed that no one outside
user-submitted photo blog to take off, as Walmart shoppers around the their social circle would ever see it. “Honestly,” says Andrew,
country are sending in photos of other customers with absurd outfits, “we didn’t think we’d even update it very often.”
outdated haircuts, or other oddities befitting of common stereotypes
about the retail chain’s clientele. The concept is quite similar to other photo-focused blogs we’ve seen go
viral, like LATFH or HCWDBs (abbreviated for good reason!). Basically,
Yesterday, the site was the subject of a feature in Time, which appears to the idea seems to be identify a stereotype, exploit it, find a clever name,
have sent it far more traffic than it can handle, as People of Walmart has and then let users do most of the work by sending in their snapshots.
been up and down since we discovered it. But Google’s cache captures
some of the content you can expect to see there: Whether or not there’s a sustainable business model in that beyond
Busted Tees ads, we’re not sure, but it’s at least one way to find your 15
minutes of Internet fame.
Tags: BLOGS, people of walmart, viral content
13
Each of these companies has something interesting to offer. Some are

already established products, some have received further funding, and
others are still getting all of their features built and are looking to
expand. Regardless, we wanted to highlight them all so you can see what
the future of Facebook apps might look like. Tell us if any of them pique
your interest in the comments.
The FbFund Startups
1. BackLight: Backlight uses your social graph to help inspire your

creativity.
2. Friend Radio: This app takes the favorite music of your Facebook
friends and lets you listen to it in a social music player. It plays within
Facebook and soon there will be a browser plug-in to let you listen to it
anywhere.
3. Funji: Funji is an iPhone app that creates a virtual community within

the mobile world. Slick avatars and Facebook integrations are just the
WEB NEWS start of its features.
22 Facebook Funded Startups to 4. Gameyola: It’s a monetization and distribution platform for Flash
games, especially in the realm of virtual goods.
Watch [Mashable]
SEP 01, 2009 11:16P.M. 5. GeckoGo: Its product, Travel Brain, is a social tool for tracking your
travel and discovering new places to go. It joins a crowded market
including Kayak, Bing, and Joobili.
6. GroupCard: Yes, it’s a virtual group card, and you may have heard of
it, because it’s been around for a while. It lets you sign and collaborate on
greeting cards. They also are introducing Cash.io today, a product that
helps businesses save money on rebates and promotions. It lets you issue
codes that can be cashed in by users through everything from Paypal to
Facebook Credits.
7. Life360: Life360 is designed to help you protect and track your

family’s safety. The product, which won Google’s Android $300k
Developer Challenge, can do everything like track family and pets on
maps, recover lost item,s and protect you against identity theft.
8. MyChurch: It builds social networks for church congregations.
Today, 22 Facebook-related startups made their pitches to press,

executives, and potential investors at the FbFund Demo Day. The
Facebook fbFund is a seed venture fund and mentorship program for
businesses built around Facebook. They’ve been working in Facebook
office space for 12 weeks, building their products, and receiving
guidance.
14
9. NetworkedBlogs: It pulls your blog feed to your Facebook profile 17. Sortuv: It changes how you find things like restaurants. Instead of
and business page, allows you to add widgets, and lets you read news “Thai restaurant” it could be “Find me a restaurant like Thai Thai in
blogs on Facebook. Chicago.” It has a lot of categories.
10. NutshellMail: A product we’ve previously covered, NutshellMail is 18. Thread: Thread turns your Facebook friends into dating
a social media management platform that puts Facebook, Twitter, and matchmakers.
other social networks in your email inbox. Customize the info you receive
on event invites, friend requests, and more. 19. Vittana: Vittana, the second non-profit in fbFund, lets you help
students in developing countries by lending to them to further their
11. Photos I Love: Photos I Love is a Facebook app that helps you education.
manage your digital media.
20. Wildfire: We reviewed Wildfire previously. It allows you to create
12. RentMineOnline: It’s a social lead generation platform for branded promotions on Facebook and elsewhere.
apartment property managers utilizing your Facebook, Twitter, and
other social graphs. It wants to broaden to things like gyms, time shares, 21. Workstir: We highlighed Workstir last year for its winning
jobs, hotels, and more. implementation of Facebook Connect. Apparently Facebook agreed with
us enough to fund them. It lets you connect with local service providers
13. RunThere: It’s not a fitness social network, but a tool for mapping (contractors, plumbers, etc.).
out routes on an interactive map and coordinating runs with nearby
athletes. 22. ZimRide: ZimRide is an app that helps you find carpools to join.
14. RunMyErrand: RunMyErrand helps you get your chores out of the Reviews: Bing, Facebook, Joobili, NutshellMail, Twitter
way by connecting you with people who’ll do them for you. For more,
read our full review. Tags: BackLight, facebook, fbfund, Friend Radio, Funji, Gameyola,
GeckoGo, GroupCard, Life360, MyChurch, NetworkedBlogs,
15. Samasource: One of the two non-profits of the FbFund, NushellMail, Photos I Love, rentmineonline, RunMyErrand,
Samasource aims to train less-fortunate people in other countries in Samasource, Sociable, Sortuv, thread, Vittana, wildfire, workstir,
quality assurance. It has a product to help Facebook Apps test for errors. Zimride
16. Sociable: It’s a tool to drive sales by using social graphs to show
friend and word-of-mouth recommendations on ecommerce websites.
15
Backlight: Backlight is a community that allows members to share

inspirational digital assets from across the web. The community puts art
into context by illuminating upon it with a background narrative.
Backlight offers a StumbleUpon-style bookmarklet, Facebook Connect
integration through page updates and notes, and the group plans on
developing a point-based credit system entitled “social currency.”
Thread: Thread is a tool that allows Facebook friends to leverage their

social graphs and make romantic connections. Formerly Frinto, the
company recently raised $1.2 million dollars from Sequoia Capital. It is
perhaps best described as Linkedin for dating as friends search each
WEB NEWS others contacts and request introductions.
Facebook Fund REV GeckoGo: GeckoGo is a tool that leverages Facebook data and pushes it
back to sites like Expedia and Voyij. Users add their travel information to
Graduation Day: Backlight, maps and travel wish lists, receive a snapshot of their destinations as
well as a quick look at their friends who’ve also traveled to these
Thread and More [Read Write locations.
Web] FriendRadio: FriendRadio is a Facebook application that allows users

SEP 01, 2009 11:00P.M. to rank and listen to their friends’ music playlists. The tool lets you set
favorites, vote on tracks and even assigns music matching scores - a
music compatibility rank for your friends. The group is exploring
revenue strategies including “song gifting” and the artist-to-fan
appreciation model popularized by sites like Bandcamp and Topspin
Media.
RentMineOnline: RentMineOnline is a resident referral program that

offers property managers a chance to leverage social networks to secure
better tenants. Managers create campaigns and pass the info on to their
After a summer of hard work, Facebook’s 24 fbFund REV incubator favorite residents. From here, residents distribute rental openings to
companies presented their products to a room full of investors, their friends via Facebook Connect.
entrepreneurs and journalists. Created by Accel Partners and Founders
Fund, the fbFund REV program is meant to foster innovation and test Given the nature of the Facebook platform, social startup presentations
the boundaries of app development on the Facebook platform. The were no surprise; however, this year, the fund chose to work with 2
groups have certainly come a long way from concept to creation, below nonprofit organizations - Samasource and Vittana. Interestingly enough,
are just a few of our favorites: both companies work to help individuals in developing countries.
Sponsor
16
WEB NEWS
Why Gmail Failed Today

[TechCrunch]
SEP 01, 2009 10:59P.M.
Vittana: Vittana is best described as Kiva for student loans. While

financial aid programs are well established in countries like Canada and
the US, few programs exist for education in the developing world.
Vittana offers 6-24 month student loans to students interested in
pursuing advanced education. The project hopes to raise $650,000 in
philanthropic venture donations. The majority of loans are awarded to
vocational students and amounts range between $500 - $1500. Loan
recipients are screened by on-the-ground microloan organizations and When Gmail went down today, it caused more than a minor panic.
preference is given to students who are the children of microloan People, like me, who use Gmail as their primary email couldn’t get much
recipients. Visit Vittana for more information. work done. There’s nothing like an outage to make you realize how much
you rely on something.
Samasource: In Sanskrit, Samasource means “equal”. The company
works with men and women in developing countries to provide work- So what happened exactly? Isn’t Gmail supposed to have multiple points
related activities via the internet. Similar to Mechanical Turk, of failure? Well yes, Gmail has thousands and thousands of overlapping
Samasource connects corporations, nonprofit organizations and small mail servers which can pic up the slack if any one fails because the data is
businesses to complete “microwork” tasks. The group launched App Test replicated and spread all around. But there are also request servers
early this morning before the fbFundREV demo. Available at which do nothing but route the requests for email to whichever server
Apps.Facebook/Samasource, the product allows Facebook application (with the right emails on it) happens to be available.
developers to outsource their QA testing to those in need. The company
has helped more than 500 individuals in Kenya, Uganda, Cameroon, It tuns out that Google took down some regular email servers for routine
Ghana and Pakistan. To find out more about this program, visit maintenance, and because of some recent changes, that overloaded the
Samasource. request servers. Google engineering VP Ben Treynor explains on the
Gmail Blog:
Discuss
At about 12:30 pm Pacific a few of the request routers became
overloaded and in effect told the rest of the system “stop
sending us traffic, we’re too slow!”. This transferred the load
onto the remaining request routers, causing a few more of
them to also become overloaded, and within minutes nearly
all of the request routers were overloaded. As a result, people
couldn’t access Gmail via the web interface because their
requests couldn’t be routed to a Gmail server. IMAP/POP
access and mail processing continued to work normally
because these requests don’t use the same routers.
So much for redundancy.
Gmail, which recently passed AOL to become the third largest Web mail
service in the U.S., is obviously having some growing pains. A few hours
of downtime is not the end of the world, although it might seem like it at
the time. It just better not make this a new habit.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology
17
companies, people, and investors WEB NEWS
TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Google: Gmail Outage Was Our
Francisco
Bad [Mashable]
SEP 01, 2009 10:37P.M.
If you were living in a cave today (or at Burning Man) then you may have
missed today’s big news that Gmail was down. The Gmail outage caused
a Google frenzy, practically brought Twitter to its knees, and impeded
the work lives for many web workers.
Now, Google has officially released their apology and a statement of what
happened. So what the heck did happen? Well they messed up, big time.
In a routine server upgrade, they “slightly underestimated the load” and
things started to go haywire at 12:30 pm PST, lasting a full 100 minutes.
Here’s part of Google’s side of the story:
Here’s what happened: This morning (Pacific Time) we took a

small fraction of Gmail’s servers offline to perform routine
upgrades. This isn’t in itself a problem — we do this all the
time, and Gmail’s web interface runs in many locations and
just sends traffic to other locations when one is offline.
However, as we now know, we had slightly underestimated

the load which some recent changes (ironically, some
designed to improve service availability) placed on the
request routers — servers which direct web queries to the
appropriate Gmail server for response. At about 12:30 pm
Pacific a few of the request routers became overloaded and in
effect told the rest of the system “stop sending us traffic,
we’re too slow!”. This transferred the load onto the remaining
request routers, causing a few more of them to also become
overloaded, and within minutes nearly all of the request
routers were overloaded. As a result, people couldn’t access
Gmail via the web interface because their requests couldn’t be
routed to a Gmail server. IMAP/POP access and mail
processing continued to work normally because these
requests don’t use the same routers.
The Gmail engineering team was alerted to the failures within

seconds (we take monitoring very seriously). After
establishing that the core problem was insufficient available
18
capacity, the team brought a LOT of additional request

routers online (flexible capacity is one of the advantages of
Google’s architecture), distributed the traffic across the
request routers, and the Gmail web interface came back
online.
That’s one big oops Google. But it’s nice to see that you’re publicly
apologizing for the outage and attesting to the fact that you will do
everything in your power to prevent it from happening again. Here’s
hoping you stick to that.
Reviews: Gmail, Google, Twitter
Tags: gmail, gmail down, gmail outage, Google
So I was reading this Comscore report about the massive number of ads
that are being served on social networks. 8.2% of all display ads on the
Internet today in the U.S. are being served on Facebook. Wow. MySpace
still has a small lead there, with 9.2%. Overall, social networks are
serving up 21% of all U.S. display ads, and that’s with Twitter basically
still on the sidelines.
Anyhow, as soon as I finish reading the report and some of the

associated coverage, I see an email from Facebook in my inbox. It says:
Hi there,
My name is Melissa and I work in advertising at Facebook.

Could you forward this along to the appropriate person who
does your online media buying?
I am a huge TechCrunch fan, and I think TechCrunch has one

of the best Pages on Facebook. It has seen a sizeable amount
of organic fan growth, and the Page content does a great job
WEB NEWS keeping users engaged. Now that we have “Become a Fan”
cost-per-click ads, it’s easier than ever to expand your fan
Brilliant: Advertisers Pay To base to a much greater size. With over 250MM users, we can
target by various parameters to reach the right people that
Drive Traffic From One Place would want to fan the TechCrunch Page. Having 9,000 fans is
a great start, but with the potential for 50,000 or even
On Facebook To Another Place 500,000 fans, you can make your updates that much more
effective.
On Facebook [TechCrunch]
SEP 01, 2009 10:14P.M. Running through our online tool, you can control your daily
budget, ad creatives, and target audience so your ads are as
effective as possible. We can also have a dedicated account
manager work with you to make sure the ads are being
optimized for the best performance. I am more than happy to
help with this fan-growth effort and tap into the potential
that TechCrunch’s Page has on Facebook. Feel free to reach
out to me by phone at 650-xxx-xxxx or via email at
xxxxxx@facebook.com, and I can set you up with a business
account and some free ad credits to get started. Look forward
to hearing from you!
19
And all I can think is, how did these guys manage to set up a system
where people pay to drive traffic from one place on Facebook to another
place on Facebook? Even Google hasn’t managed to figure that one out
yet. I’ve known they (and MySpace) have done this since launching their
ad platforms, but it never really hit home until today how brilliant this all WEB NEWS
is.
Rails Rumble: Micro-App
They even have a nice pre-created ad to show me when I visit our fan
page on Facebook, and offer to let me pay via cost per impression or cost Competition Winners
per click. It’s all so easy. All I have to do is pull out my credit card and
push Facebook a little bit closer to that looming IPO. Announced [Read Write Web]
SEP 01, 2009 09:18P.M.
I love the Internet.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new
Job2.0

Francisco
In 48 hours last weekend, 237 developer teams competed and generated

a total of 137 qualifying web applications, all developed with Ruby and
Rails on the back end.
The 2009 Rails Rumble was, according to organizers, the strongest yet in
the contest’s history. (Disclosure: I was on the “expert panel” of judges
for the Rumble and got a sneak peak at a significant handful of apps.)
Sponsor
As microapps (as this particular brand of simple, single-function sites

and widgets could be called) occupy an ever-increasing tract of Internet
real estate, time-crunch events such as Startup Weekend and Rails
Rumble serve as tests of skill and team-building challenges, not to
mention endurance competitions as developers burn through hour after
sleepless hour. Yet with each cycle, these events do produce a number of
noteworthy apps that might grow into something more in the weeks and
months to follow while teaching all developers valuable lessons about
simplicity in interface design. Here’s a quick breakdown of the eight
winning Rails Rumble applications.
First Place: Hi.Im
Hi I’m is (yet another) service that aggregates a user‘s social streams to a

centralized location, sort of like Retaggr, Chi.mp, and their ilk. The idea
wasn’t the most innovative, as many of the 80 comments on this project
noted, but the user experience was as simple as following the yellow
brick road. The app was developed by San Jose-based web/mobile
development shop Koombea.
20
is crazy!” So wrote expert and Viget Labs technology director Ben

Scofield of ZenVDN. Perhaps the nature and scope of the project isn’t
such a surprise when one considers that the team behind this project also
constructed web video apps ZenCoder and Flix Cloud. Ambitious or not,
the site is good-looking and designed for simplicity. ZenVDN encodes
videos for the web and mobile devices, allows for HD resolution and
embedding, and makes use of a global content delivery network. Truth
be told, as it must be on a tech news blog, we were unsuccessful in our
attempts to upload a video to our profile, and ironically, the app’s demo
video was not embeddable.
Completeness Category Winner: hurl
Second Place: How’s My Code? There’s something to be said for constructing a full-fledged application
in 48 hours. There’s something else to be said for naming said
How’s My Code is a peer review tool for developers to comment on, application in such a way that conjures only the fondest memories of
approve of, and flag commits. Email notifications allow users to come Dana Carvey in a platinum wig. Simply put, “Hurl makes HTTP requests.
back to ongoing discussions. If you spend more time on GitHub than Enter a URL, set some headers, then view the response. Perfect for
Facebook, this might be an app for you to check out. APIs.” Hurl comes from Pownce founder/Six Apart engineer Leah Culver
and Chris Wanstrath and will officially launch soon.
Here’s a screencast explaining the app:
Check out the screencast for a demo:
Third Place: Tablesurfing
Innovation Category Winner: LAZEROIDS!!!
Using Facebook Connect, the Tablesurfing team created an app for those
who are into impromptu dinner parties. “Like couchsurfing, but for This team built a neverending, massively mutliplayer, peer-to-peer
tables,” Tablesurfing connects users who like to cook with users who are version of Asteroids with sound design that had commenters raving
comfortable dining in the homes of strangers (i.e., the adventurous and (pew! pew!). LAZEROIDS!!! (sic) was moreover developed with complete
hungry.) Of course, the concept is replete with issues (necessary critical disregard for IE support. Still, experts and commenters alike were
mass of user adoption, sketch factor of inviting those weird “Internet impressed with the execution and simplicity of this app. You can check
people” into your home), but it’s a sweet idea with a nice UI. out the team’s blog for information on the architecture, or you can just
go play the game.
Check out the demo video here:
Appearance Category Winner: Lowdown
Lowdown (currently offline for post-Rumble revamping) is/was a drop-

dead gorgeous task/project management tool for working with
Cucumber. As the development team wrote, ‘If Cucumber lets us
‘describe how software should behave in plain text... in a business-
readable domain-specific language’ then Lowdown is the tea party where
thinly sliced sandwiches are served on nice platters instead of trying to
swallow it whole.’ Full-featured and flexible, it was one of several related
apps in the Rumble yet stood out for its pristine user interface that was a
breeze to understand and use and a pleasure to look at. We look forward
to playing around with the app more once it relaunches.
Take a look at this demo in the meantime:
Usefulness Category Winner: ZenVDN Solo Category Winner: AlertMe.tv
“Talk about ambitious - building a video delivery network for the Rumble One is the loneliest number, and special consideration was given to the
21
developers who chose to fly solo in this competition. One of our favorite WEB NEWS
apps - a well-designed, useful tool - was AlertMe.tv, a simple system for
users’ opting in to notifications about their favorite TV shows. Email, LA Fires: Images and Video
SMS, or IM notifications are sent when new episodes are about to air.
Adding new shows to the site’s database is also particularly simple. As from Around the Web
someone who needs to be reminded when Saturday Night Live airs, I
particularly appreciate this app. Congratulations to Jacques Crocker, the [Mashable]
Rails Jedi of Silicon Valley. Couch potatoes the world around salute you. SEP 01, 2009 09:09P.M.
So, that’s what the expert panel of judges and hordes of Rail-loving
masses deigned the cream of the crop this year. What’s your take; do any
of these apps inspire or excite you?
Which Rails Rumble winner excites you most?(surveys) Here in Los Angeles, CA the weather has been sunny with a chance of fire
for the past week as no less than eight major blazes are sweeping through
Discuss the state. Both major and citizen media alike have been providing critical
coverage of the 2009 LA fires, with social media naturally enlisted to
spread news, images, and video as well.
We’ve collated some of the online footage here for newshounds to check
out in one place. For breaking updates, follow the LA Times’s
@LATimesfires Twitter account and check their L.A. Now blog’s
wildfires site section.
Video
The fire in the La Cañada Flintridge area north of Los Angeles, also
known as the Station Fire, spread out in multiple directions, forcing
home evacuations through the weekend. Firefighters are currently
fighting back a fire line threatening Mount Wilson, home to multiple
communications towers and the Wilson Observatory.
Watch CBS Videos Online
CBS News’s aerial footage of the Station Fire.
22
anosmicovni. For more imagery on Flickr check out the SoCal

Wildfires group pool and the “station fire” tag sorted by
Citizen footage from the Station Fire looking towards Big Tujunga interestingness.
Canyon, courtesy of Citizentube and jaydubyatee.
Twitpic — This image has been widely retweeted as a
citizen’s eye view of the fire, from joshuaeldridge (also
featured as this post’s header image).
ABC News’s eyewitness coverage of the Yucaipa area fires burning
southeast of Los Angeles. LA Times — Residents of Big Tujunga Canyon returned for
tearful reunions at the site of their former homes, now
reduced to ash. One resident told the LA Times, “It looks like
the moon.”
Intense night footage of the Station Fire including a resulting electrical
explosion, via neoninsanity. Maps
Time-lapse series of HD still shots of the smoke plume from the Station
fire, courtesy of jcmegabyte.
Footage of the Station Fire and its atom bomb-like smoke cloud from the
top of La Canada Blvd., courtesy of hillmaste.
For more citizen video footage of the fires, check out Citizentube’s LA
Fires playlist.
Images
For an interactive map of the LA blazes, head here. Or go straight to the

Google version for a map with a legend and annotations (pictured
above).
For a map that includes SoCal fires burning further north, east and
southeast of Los Angeles including the Yucaipa area fires, check out ABC
Local’s interactive map.
Our thoughts are with all the families affected by the fires and the
professional personnel working tirelessly to get the blazes contained.
Reviews: Flickr, Twitpic, Twitter
Tags: california, citizen journalism, la canada fires, la fires 2009, station

fire, yucaipa fires
LA Times — Amazing imagery of battling and fleeing from
the Station Fire. More images of the Southern California
wildfires.
NASA — Images of the Station Fire taken by NASA from

space show both the large area affected by the blaze and the
incredible distance covered by the resulting smoke.
Flickr — Amazing photo set of the La Cañada fires, by
23
24

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2 September 2009

By specifications, it seems to be a successor to the music-oriented Nokia

“With direct access to Ovi Store, the Nokia X6 is a hive of

Nokia Beta Labs Introduces

Also new is an extension of Nokia Messaging called Social Messaging,

In other news, Nokia Beta Labs is discontinuing Nokia Friend View,

TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San

enough to maximize matching benefits from companies, and 80% of

The company has raised a $2 million second round of financing, led by

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications,

TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San

401k Plans Are Hard To

WTF, Google Sells Company

Color me surprised to discover Google operates an online merchandise

Apparently, created back in 2006, the online store features a big

The channel is located over at www.youtube.com/kremlin, and its main

Interestingly enough, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin does not

Tags: Medvedev, russia, youtube

WEB NEWS WEB NEWS

Russian President Launches MySQL Founders Back Mobile

Many entrepreneurs who muzzle through a successful exit use some of

TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San WEB NEWS

“AFTER WE WERE detained, the two of us made every effort

This is a small part of a lengthy statement released a few hours ago by

The pair of consultancies have made a profitable business out of showing

The Dachis Group, an agency founded by former Razorfish CEO Jeff

Dachis and Headshift offer large corporations advice on technology

Dachis Group is a top consultant group in the U.S. advising companies

LOST: Regional Networks

Update: We got a response from Facebook. We were referred to their

Reviews: Facebook, Mashable, Twitter

Tags: facebook, Regional Networks

Last month, we picked up on a small change to the Facebook interface –

Pandora One Gets an Update to

TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San

People of Walmart: Viral Blog

“Andrew, his brother Adam and their friend Luke started

Inspired by the experience, the three friends — who shop at

Tags: BLOGS, people of walmart, viral content

Each of these companies has something interesting to offer. Some are

The FbFund Startups

1. BackLight: Backlight uses your social graph to help inspire your

3. Funji: Funji is an iPhone app that creates a virtual community within

7. Life360: Life360 is designed to help you protect and track your

8. MyChurch: It builds social networks for church congregations.

Today, 22 Facebook-related startups made their pitches to press,

Backlight: Backlight is a community that allows members to share

Thread: Thread is a tool that allows Facebook friends to leverage their

Web] FriendRadio: FriendRadio is a Facebook application that allows users

RentMineOnline: RentMineOnline is a resident referral program that

Why Gmail Failed Today

Vittana: Vittana is best described as Kiva for student loans. While

So much for redundancy.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology

companies, people, and investors WEB NEWS

Here’s part of Google’s side of the story:

Here’s what happened: This morning (Pacific Time) we took a

However, as we now know, we had slightly underestimated

The Gmail engineering team was alerted to the failures within

capacity, the team brought a LOT of additional request

Reviews: Gmail, Google, Twitter

Tags: gmail, gmail down, gmail outage, Google

Anyhow, as soon as I finish reading the report and some of the