You think the iPad will be the only tablet we’ll talk about in 2010? Not even close. According to Arm’s worldwide mobile computing ODM manager Roy Chen, we can expect as many as 50 tablets before the year’s end.

“The first tablet devices will launch in the second quarter by [mobile network] carriers. You’ll see a lot more in the third quarter,” said Chen. He declined to name specific companies that will launch the tablets, but he did say some of the top 10 telecoms will launch a tablet. Arm also displayed a taste of what’s to come at the Taipei news conference, showcasing two tablets running Android.

As a company that creates chips for many of these tablets, Arm must have a good idea about the number of devices we’re likely to see this year. Still, fifty sounds like a lot. iPad generated a lot of buzz, and it may have even created an entirely new market. If iPad is destined to fail, however, it’ll probably take most of these new tablets with it.

Tags: arm, Tablet

We’ve seen many, many iterations of the popular tower defense games over the years, but this one has a special meaning for all you Twitter fans out there.

Based on a tried and true concept, Tweet Defense is an iPhone game that lets you fight zombies with various tower defense units, but with a social twist: it grabs your various Twitter stats – number of followers, friends and tweets – and calculates bonuses to your defense based on them. It’s like an infinite time sink which connects two enormous time wasters – Twitter and tower defense. In other words, it’s beautiful.

Get Tweet Defense for $0.99 from the App Store.

Tags: iphone, tweet defense, twitter

Yahoo is backing a cycling team. I don’t know why — but they’re doing it. And today their passion got a little boost: from Google.

Google is announcing tomorrow at the National Bike Summit in Washington, DC that Google Maps will now include biking directions in the U.S. Apparently, this was the most-requested feature for the service, as some 57 million Americans ride bikes.

Thousands of miles of bike trails have been added to the maps. And there is also step-by-step directions, much like you can see for driving or public transportation directions in the maps. There is also a new layer that shows bike trails and bike-friendly areas on roads. Yes, it’s a bike-lover’s dream.

To make this new feature happen, Google partnered with Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, a nonprofit group that converts old rail lines into bike trails. The group have given Google information on some 12,000 miles worth of trails in the U.S.

To coincide with the launch, Google also has a cycling contest. To enter, you simply have to tweet with the hashtag #bikewithgoogle. The randomly selected winner will get a voucher for $2,500 to be used at American Cyclery.

I fully expect that hashtag to be dominated by members of Yahoo’s cycling team tomorrow.

Find out more about the new feature in the video below.

CrunchBase InformationGoogle MapsYahoo!Information provided by CrunchBase

Jon [Miller] came to us and said, `Would you like to be co-presidents?’ We said, `Hell yeah.’ We didn’t have to move our desks,”

– Former MySpace Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn’s reaction to the abrupt firing of his boss and his promotion to co-president of MySpace.

CrunchBase InformationJason HirschhornMySpaceInformation provided by CrunchBase

More bad news for an already bullet-riddled MySpace: three key employees have left the company to join Gravity, a cross-town startup founded by former MySpace COO Amit Kapur, SVP Steve Pearman and SVP Jim Benedetto.

We covered Gravity’s launch in December 2009.

The three MySpacer’s are Chief Software Architect Chris Bissell (we previously reported Bissell’s resignation), Chief Systems Architect Dan Farino and Development Manager Robbie Coleman.

All of these employees approached Gravity on their own, says our source. But MySpace’s somewhat zealous legal department isn’t shy about engaging in the occasionally ridiculous turf war. We’ve also heard that the best MySpace employees continue to head for the door, and companies that know which employees actually get things done aren’t going to turn away good people.

MySpace declined to comment on this story, other than to confirm that the three employees are no longer with the company. Gravity also declined to comment.

CrunchBase InformationMySpaceGravityInformation provided by CrunchBase

A new study by Comscore will be released on Wednesday that may give hope to social gaming startups trying to monetize users. 35% of the survey respondents said that they engage in “marketing actions” to earn virtual currency (such as watching a video, filling out a survey, etc.), and 53% said they be willing to consider marketing action for currency if given the choice.

The study was conducted by Comscore, sponsored by Offerpal, and included responses from 799 Comscore panelists who play games on social networks at least once per month. 54% of panelists play games at least daily.

This is good news for game developers who’ve had their monetization choices somewhat fenced in over the last few months. Gamers 25-34 are the most likely to earn virtual currency for marketing actions, according to the study – 71% of panelists in that age group said they are “very likely” to consider this.

The study also showed that about 30% of panelists don’t have the ability to pay cash for virtual currency. But more than half of all panelists, including a majority of those that can pay cash and a majority of those that cannot pay cash, were willing to consider marketing actions.

The bottom line of the study is that even users who have the ability to pull out their wallet want options when it comes to social games. And as long as they don’t get scammed along the way, we’re just fine with it. Watch a video in exchange for Zynga points? That’s a better deal than the credit card.

Bookmarking service Delicious has just rolled out a Google Chrome browser extension.

Like other Chrome extensions we love to play with, this one is lightweight, fast and useful. There's no bulky sidebar here. Bookmarks can be created and saved with a miniscule "TAG" button and they can be searched from Chrome's excellent omnibar. So, do you think this will prompt loyal Delicious users - many of whom had been holding out on Chrome in favor of Firefox - to switch to Google Chrome entirely?

Sponsor

This is what the button and simple form for bookmarking a page look like:

While this extension doesn't have all the bells and whistles of some of Delicious' other browser add-ons, the team noted that the public demand for a Chrome extension prompted them to release a beta earlier than they would have liked.

"It doesn't have all the API's needed and it's missing a good chunk of the functionality we believe it needs, but we're getting so many requests for the Chrome extension that we're going to make this available sooner than we originally planned...

"As soon as Chrome is able to support the functionality needed we'll ensure the features of this extension matches that of our other browser add-ons. There are still some interactions we're not quite happy with that we'll address shortly, but we wanted to give you an official Google Chrome extension as soon as possible."

What do you think? Does the new Delicious extension make you want to use Chrome more? Or if you're a Chrome fan, does this move give you a renewed interest in Delicious? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Discuss

We had a chance to step into MySpace HQ for a chat with new Co-Presidents Jason Hirschhorn and Mike Jones, who preside over the News Corp.-owned social network from a shared desk in Beverly Hills. The joint office speaks to how closely Hirschhorn and Jones are working together to create a unified vision of the future for the lately struggling MySpace, whose former CEO Owen Van Natta exited the company after only 9 months in the hot seat.

Hirschhorn describes MySpace as a site that “lacked focus” as he and Jones were getting up to speed and learning about the business. He sees the pair’s role as instilling that much-needed focus as well as driving a re-imagination of the site from both a user interface perspective and in the development of new products. All of what we saw today on the near near future of MySpace’s roadmap — into approximately Fall of this year — is in service of the networks’s new overarching goal of promoting user discovery and self-expression.

MySpace Strategy

As Hirschhorn (pictured, right) describes it, MySpace’s trajectory moving forward is about the “pillars of broadcasting, discovery, self-expression, and making content a part of all those experiences.” He spoke to quality, usability and engineering as major focal points: “we want as many people here to be people who build, and who create, and who have top-notch engineering talent.”

Jones relates that metrics have become a core mantra for the company as well: “if someone’s inside the company, we want to give them complete transparency in regards to what they’re working on it, why they’re working on it, why it’s important, and if what they did actually came to a good effect.” They’ve effectively retooled the way the business works to make data a huge driver, including implementing very specific new product rollouts, user testing, and full circle evaluation of how changes affect user behavior.

But beyond instilling a level of discipline regarding the process of implementing user interface changes and building new products, at the end of the day Hirschhorn says MySpace is about “music that you love, the photos that you love, the video that you love, and the artistic stuff that goes on every day that says that you’re you. Those are the pillars of how we’re going to be building our product.”

Social Network or Destination?

We asked Hirschhorn and Jones whether they envisioned MySpace as needing to cultivate its roots as a social network versus crafting the site as more of a destination around premium content, and the answer essentially is both. “You need to be a platform where your audience has a voice,” even as culture constantly shifts and changes, said Hirschhorn. “I think a lot of people say ‘content portal’ — it isn’t just about putting up channels that broadcast this stuff one-to-many. It’s about putting up a platform that’s totally accessible to anyone that creates content, whether it’s big media or not.”

Jones (pictured, left) agrees that “going back to the roots of what made MySpace MySpace early on” is important. “I think at some point it lost its way, and we’re basically just tying it back to that. I don’t think it’s a decision of content site or social network — people are doing things that are very social within MySpace, and they’re doing things that are social in other environments too. There’s a type of user, there’s a type of relationship that MySpace is really, really good at, there’s a type of environment around discovery that we’re really good at, and it’s about embellishing that.”

Hirschhorn acknowledges that MySpace is “centered around pop culture topics” that resonate with the primarily 14-34 year-old demographic (“and a very sweet spot in the 18-24 demographic”), “so while you could share your thoughts about the elections in Iraq it might not be the place that you do that — but you’ll certainly talk about what went on in The Hurt Locker and what dress Sandra Bullock wore, and that crazy lady who ran onto the stage during the Academy Awards. That is a part of the pop culture conversation that goes on every day, and also a place we feel we can win at.”

Twitter and Facebook: Competitors or Coopetition?

We asked if the Co-Presidents saw social networks like Twitter and Facebook as competitors, or whether they thought there was room enough in the market to allow a multiplicity of sites to flourish. Jones sees ample space for many social sites: “I think there’s room for all the players. I think at the end of the day there’s not going to be a direct overlap saying ‘this is the exact behavior on MySpace or FB or Twitter’ — there’s always going to be some crossover. I don’t think it’s a winner take all because I don’t think it’s a singular behavior we’re all trying to capture.”

Hirschhorn agrees: “The reality is there are people on there with accounts on both. When you’re as big as 100 million or 200 million users you seem to have a little bit of everybody.” He says that after seeing commonalities with Twitter and doing a simple integration deal allowing MySpace users to sync the two accounts, “all of a sudden we started to see people back on MySpace we hadn’t seen in a while.”

He sees a certain level of platform agnosticity as being a necessary attitude when operating online: “I think that if you want to maintain a presence online, you have to think cross-carrier or cross-network. When you and I were coming up, SMS didn’t take off until it was cross-carrier. To think that your audience is only going to be on one network is silly. It’s very important for us to be cross-networked, and to make sure that if you’re someone who is managing your presence on MySpace that you can also publish into Twitter, and you can go into Facebook, and if you’re creating a playlist and you want to distribute it into Facebook, that’s great.”

Future Roadmap: Profile Changes

We were shown a number of elements from the upcoming re-imagination of the user interface, primary among them being changes to profile pages. Users will still have control over customizing the look and feel of their profile (“they’ll actually have better tools,” says Jones), but there will be more unification to the underlying structure and framework behind profile organization in order to make a better, more cohesive experience for users in terms of site navigation.

Hirschhorn says that customization is obviously valuable but “has to work within a usable framework. And that is going to be a religion for us. It can’t be homogenized, it still has to be ‘let your flag fly,’ but there has to be a certain kind of structure to it. And that’s a very very important point for us going forward.”

He acknowledges the dual blessing and curse of the original wide open profile customization: “giving them that control had a real impact on the usability of MySpace. So the real mission we laid out to the staff was how do we give them the visual control but still maintain a certain kind of architecture in how you browse through the site.” The new profiles will bring a unity to the overall experience while still allowing the “crazy and fun” level of self-expression users came to know and enjoy about the site.

Publishing and The Stream

In the past, you couldn’t do things like publish videos or other types of content directly into the Stream, but the vision is to allow all types of content. Moreover, you’ll be able to filter the contents of your stream by type, so you can view only videos or see just the links, for example. The MySpace Share mechanism will handle incorporating content from all over the web directly into the Stream, both via buttons webmasters can incorporate within their sites and as a browser bookmarklet that allows sharing content just as easily even if the buttons aren’t specifically included.

Currently in testing now is a change to the former status update tool into an explicit publishing tool, allowing users to simply add videos, photos, links, and other types of content. Within the next month we should expect to see a new feature that allows cross-posting to sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Digg via a simple dropdown. “Why not? Publish once, go everywhere. If you increase publishing, you increase engagement,” said Hirschhorn of the upcoming feature.

Dashboard and Reputation

Back in October, MySpace launched an Artist Dashboard tool (pictured below) as part of the MySpace Music hub for musicians and bands. We’ll be seeing that tool become available for users as well, with the goal of providing a visually-rich view into the “ripple effect” of a user’s activity on MySpace. Imagine being able to get statistics back on what your most popular shares are, who is reacting to what you’re publishing and where they are, and all manner of metadata about what kind of user you are on the site and the effects of your activities there.

Closely related to that will be a system of achievements and badges that users can display on their profile to show off what type of users they are, whether it be someone with the most shared playlists or someone who spots trends early on and more. This creates a cycle of feedback and recognition to the user, as well as providing an additional layer of self-expression and identity driven by the data surrounding how that user is actually interacting with MySpace.

We were shown bright, friendly icons for potential badges that anyone who has used Foursquare will recognize as familiar, and this particular part of the strategy certainly recalls mechanics like Xbox Live achievements or PS3 trophies as well. The idea is to add game-like elements that not only are fun but also give recognition back to the user in a playful visual style: “that’s what the future of MySpace is going to look like. It’s not going to be bland and data-oriented; it’s not going to look like chaos like it does today. It’s going to be fun and tactile,” said Hirschhorn.

Trends

Hand in hand with data visualizations in your Dashboard, another new featured area to look for in the near future is a way to identify trends. Here too we should expect to see bright and visually-engaging ways to find out where the hotbeds of activity are around MySpace, whether it be a hot conversation thread or new movie trailer or new album stream. Trends will be tracked in real-time and be based on what’s being most shared, most talked about, and generating the most activity around MySpace at any given time.

Those trends will also be able to be broken down very atomically by various indices like region and demographics, so you might be able to drill down very specifically into data points like “what is the most popular album among teenagers in New Jersey,” for example. This level of detail is another example of how data-driven some of the new features will be as well as how much of that internal data will be open and transparent to users, but ideally in a way that’s more visually attractive and accessible as opposed to your typically dry charts and graphs: “I want something more visual. I want it to be visually cool,” said Hirschhorn.

Liking and Interest Maps

In addition to friending (a bi-directional relationship) and following or subscribing, a new “Liking” mechanism will emerge in the future as one part of a system that will start to understand more about you. This hints at a still nascent element that will likely play a much larger role in MySpace’s strategy moving forward, which is about learning specifically what you like and changing your experience over time to be more customized.

Hirschhorn said of the Liking mechanism that it “starts to build preferences that ultimately are going to build up who you are in our database so we can deliver you better experiences. They don’t change your user experience overtly in front of you but they’re going to behind the scenes. That will be both passive and active. That’s a discipline I don’t think we’ve had here, but it breeds engagement and action on the site.”

In the long-term, the goal is to build up “interest maps” based on what users have liked and gravitated towards in the past, although the eventual personalization engine will also have to be wide enough to allow for new things and new experiences. “Discovery has to be wider than what you think you want,” and won’t be just about matching a stated set of preferences but also about allowing for serendipity and for new types of content to be exposed to you based on elements including what your social network is actively interested in.

More Features, and When Will We See Them?

Other new features we were shown included a big visual and thematic update to the Calendar application, which will gain the ability to sort and filter by type of event like concerts, movies, etc. The calendar will be culture-based and have a strong local component, so users can drill down in a visually accessible way to pop culture and entertainment-oriented events nearby.

Apps and games will also see significant development in the coming months, with the goal of increasing audience usage from the current 20-30% participation to something more like 50%. Mobile development will also be hugely important, with iPhone and Android (app pictured, right) being the biggest platforms, although currently mobile usage is “overwhelmingly” not smartphone users yet. “The iPhone is gaining very quickly,” though, says Hirschhorn.

We should also expect to see a better introduction to MySpace for new users, who will get recommendations in terms of friend and content suggestions upon creating an account on the site. This will give new users a place to start from even if they don’t yet have any friends.

Topic pages will be another new feature that will pull in content from around MySpace but also from Twitter, YouTube, and all over the web where it’s happening surrounding a particular topic, movie, celebrity, or other entity people are talking about online. This starts to organize existing content around user interest specifically as opposed to relegating content discovery to specific content hubs in music, movies, etc.

Lastly and perhaps more importantly: when will we be seeing all of these new plans come to fruition? The answer is incrementally, as features become ready — as opposed to saving everything up for one big launch. “I don’t think the world wants to wait for a redesign and also, those days are over. 100 million people use this every day, and you can’t just freak out and pull the tablecloth off,” said Hirschhorn of the decision to roll out incremental updates, changes, and new MySpace features.

In other words, if you’re curious about how all the above is actually going to be implemented, you likely won’t have to wait too long. From what we saw today, there’s a lot on the plate for MySpace in the coming months, and we should expect to see a lot of changes coming soon. Will it be enough to restore the social network to its former glory, and put MySpace back on a path of growth and leadership in the social networking space? Only time will tell, but if Co-Presidents Jason Hirschhorn and Mike Jones are able to successfully execute the vision they’ve laid out, it’s perhaps reasonable once again to be optimistic about the future of MySpace.

Reviews: Android, Digg, Facebook, Foursquare, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube

Tags: Film, interview, Jason Hirschhorn, Mike Jones, music, myspace, social media, trending, tv

Social media gurus: We all know one. If you're lucky, you know only one.

They are the attendees of tech parties, the "Twitter consultants," the armchair generals of the Internet, and their numbers grow by the day. Yet most of them couldn't distinguish a line of code from a badly punctuated haiku.tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/open_thread_should_social_media.php';tweetmeme_source = 'rww';

What's to be done with the social media experts? Accept that their blathering may contain some wisdom? Or require technical exams for all Twitter users with more than 1,000 followers? You decide! And make the NMDs among us take our "technical" quiz.

Sponsor

There is always grave danger when amateurs turn overnight into experts. This sub-professional clown town is where B movies and Soulja Boy come from. It's also the birthplace of every blowhard who tells you you're "doing it wrong" without any technical knowledge or original thought to back it up.

Sometimes, it's not such a bad thing - in fact, there are a great many non-technical social media folks who are doing a great job of creating quality content and helping brands get themselved situated on the Web. But most of the people I can think of who fit this description have been doing their thing for so long that they've had to pick up a few technical tidbits along the way to ensure their continued success and to ensure they weren't sounding like idiots.

However, I hold the strong opinion that if you're working in technology - even as a PR flak or social media consultant - you should be able to understand some of the terms, concepts and people that make your business possible. Otherwise, you risk your own reputation by taking the chance that you're scarily wrong or laughably vague, and you risk gumming up the works for your clients by not knowing how to communicate with their audience, many of whom are very technical folk.

Ultimately, taking the time and effort to understand the technology you use is simply a matter of taking pride in your work, just like the barista who knows all the ins and outs of the perfectly pulled free-trade organic espresso or the skilled sommelier who, though he may not make the wine himself, knows everything about who did and where and how.

Take this quick survey, my social media gurus. (Techies, don't take the survey; you'll skew the results.) If you can't work out the answers, you might be sounding like an idiot - I tell you this because I'm your friend and I care about you. And remember, when you cheat, you're only cheating yourself, so no Wikipedia for you.

Let me know in the comments what you think about the issue. Am I being an elitist prig? Did I not take my rant far enough? How much do you think a social media expert should know about tech? Would you work with someone who couldn't sail through this "technical" survey?

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View Survey

Discuss

In November, Phonebooth.com released the beta version of Phonebooth OnDemand, which is a full-featured phone service that lives in the cloud, but can communicate with both cellular phones and IP desk and conference phones. Today, that service — which costs $20 a month per user — is becoming generally available. Phonebooth.com is also leveraging its own private VoIP network to launch Phonebooth Free, a free version of its hosted phone system, which is very similar to Google Voice but aimed at small businesses.

Phonebooth.com is a product from Bandwidth.com. While Bandwidth.com might not be as well-known as players like Comcast, Verizon and Cisco, in the business VoIP space it’s a pretty big player. Bandwidth.com has its own VoIP network and because of that has more flexibility over pricing, which is one reason the company can launch products like Phonebooth Free.

Phonebooth Free

A problem that a lot of small businesses face — especially businesses that have employees located all over the country — is deciding on a phone system. On the one hand, the investment into a PBX system is often an expense that just can’t be justified in the beginning. On the other hand, having everyone use their own cell phones can appear unprofessional — especially if you are a customer-facing company.

Services like Grasshopper exist and they offer a low-cost way to get features like auto-attendant (press 1 to reach Jenny in Accounting) and call forwarding, but even they have a minimum monthly pricing plan.

Phonebooth Free is, from what I can find, the only free VoIP-based phone system that will give you a local number with up to five extensions, offer call forwarding to multiple sources, voicemail with transcription, and the ability to let users connect with you from the web (like the Google Voice widget) for free.

Free? Yeah. Free. If you sign-up for Phonebooth Free you get a free local phone number for up to five users and 200 inbound minutes a month. Every additional minute is 6¢, which is about the industry standard.

Phonebooth Free includes an auto-attendant so that you can have number-based redirection to go to other employees or users. And like Google Voice, you can set-up call forwarding to forward to one or multiple cellular phones based on rules that you set.

Phonebooth Free also includes support for something called Contact Us Plus, which is a dynamic widget that you can put on your website that offers up contact information (including click-to-call), plus other business contact info like e-mail, Twitter links and a Google Map with your company’s location.

The widget is dynamically generated, which means that if you change your phone number or website or other information, it gets updated automatically.

Phonebooth OnDemand

Phonebooth Free is a brand new offering, but Phonebooth OnDemand is also becoming generally available. Phonebooth OnDemand is a product aimed at businesses that need either more inbound minutes or need to be used with desk phones and have other features from a full-featured phone system.

Phonebooth OnDemand is $20 a month per user and includes unlimited local and long distance calls on the Phonebooth.com nationwide network, supports HD VoIP and IP phones, can handle conference calls (that can be set up within the web admin interface), and can do everything that Phonebooth Free can do in terms of number porting and forwarding.

Phonebooth.com has an upgrade path that will let users or companies upgrade from Phonebooth Free to Phonebooth OnDemand, if their needs for a phone system extend or grow beyond free offerings.

Other Thoughts

Phonebooth Free has most of the features of something like Google Voice except for one — outbound calls still appear from the number in which they originate from. I spoke to Todd from Phonebooth.com and he said that while masking tools will probably be available in the future, it will most likely be done on the software side for the individual cell phone clients, because those systems handle that sort of thing better.

On the mobile end, Phonebooth sees the potential for mobile and VoIP integration — especially at the business level — and they have plans to make their whole platform integrated across the big mobile platforms. As it stands, you can use your cellular phone with either Phonebooth service without a problem, but mobile clients are something that will be featured in the future.

Big Opportunities for Small Businesses

By offering a free option with a direct upgrade plan to another product, Phonebooth Free is really attractive for small businesses — or even individuals who want to maintain separate business and personal communications fronts, without having to invest in getting multiple phone numbers or phones.

We think that VoIP’s business implications are potentially even greater than its consumer implications, especially as more and more companies move or consider moving to IP-based PBX systems. Hosted services like Phonebooth have a real opportunity to get business from companies that might not want to invest in full systems that someone has to be paid to maintain, but that still want an easy way to route and manage incoming and outgoing calls.

Does your business use any sort of VoIP solution? What do you use and why? Let us know!

Reviews: Google Voice, Twitter

Tags: bandwidth.com, Google Voice, grasshopper, phonebooth, phonebooth free, phonebooth ondemand, voip

With SXSW starting Friday in Austin, Texas, every location-based service out there is right now finalizing updates that they hope will be the one that gets them used more than all the others. Loopt, is betting on events integration.

The latest version of the app, due to hit the App Store tomorrow will feature a new Pulse tab. Here you’ll find events populated from a ton of sources including the live music tracker SonicLiving (SXSW is first and foremost a music event, after all) and most notably, Facebook. This pre-population is important, because it means the events will already be in the system so users won’t have to do anything other than share it with friends, or check-in if they’re going. The feature also uses you current location to show which events are happening around you at any given moment that a lot of people are at.

As you might expect, you also also tell who is already at the event, and which of your friend is supposed to be going. The later feature works with Facebook Connect. You can RSVP to an event right from within Loopt and see who else is scheduled to go.

Calling it the “best event ever from an app,” Loopt founder Sam Altman believes they’ll have every single event taking place at SXSW in their system. A newer startup, the recently funded Plancast (started by TechCrunch alum Mark Hendrickson), may have something to say about that statement as they’ll be debuting their own events-based iPhone app at the festival as well. And like this new Loopt feature, a key Plancast component is Facebook event integration.

Gowalla, meanwhile, has a full list of events straight from SXSW itself — which is highlighting the app on it’s main site. Gowalla is Austin-based.

Loopt was one of the original hot players in the location space, launching an iPhone app alongside the App Store launch in 2008. However, their initial bet was on always-on location updates, which the iPhone cannot do because it will not allow third-party apps to run in the background. Loopt found a loophole (see what I did there?) to that through AT&T, but by then the momentum has already swung to the check-in based location services like Foursquare and Gowalla. Last year, Loopt pivoted its app to be more predicated around check-ins.

Look for the latest Loopt app tomorrow in the App Store.

Disclosure: Loopt offers a TechCrunch branded version of the service here.

CrunchBase InformationLooptInformation provided by CrunchBase

Phonebooth.com, a VOIP service for individuals and small businesses, just launched a free version of its service. Phonebooth, just like Google Voice and Ribbit Mobile, provides its users with a free local phone number that can be forwarded to any cell phone and landline. Phonebooth also offers voicemail transcriptions. What makes it stand out from it competitors, however, is that it offers an auto attendant feature that allows you to route callers to different employees.

Sponsor

It's worth noting that Bandwidth.com, the company behind Phonebooth, has been providing infrastructure services to other VOIP services, including Voxeo and Yext, for more than three years. The company's VOIP network delivered almost 4 billion minutes in 2009. Bandwidth began a beta test of the paid version of Phonebooth.com last year and now has over 1,000 customers.

Features in Phonebooth's free version:

• Free local phone number for your business
• Includes an auto attendant (Press 1 for Sales, Press 2 for Support...etc.)
• Unlimited extensions for your employees or partners
• Read your voicemail, with VM-to-email & text transcription
• 200 free minutes of inbound calling (6¢ additional)
• Includes new Contact Us Plus feature

A Free VOIP Service that Will Grow With You

Starting today, Phonebooth will offer a free service geared towards individuals. The company also announced the general availability of its $20/month/user option, which offers a fully featured phone system in the cloud. One of the advantages of using Phonebooth over similar services like Google Voice or Grasshopper is that the company allows users to upgrade their phone system over time. Once your company outgrows Phonebooth's basic plan, you can easily switch to a higher-end phone system (Phonebooth on Demand) with hardware IP-based phones.

Phonebooth's users will be able to choose local numbers from virtually everywhere in the U.S. (the service us U.S.). Sadly, though, there is no way to make your Phonebooth number appear on the caller ID for outgoing calls from your landline or cell phone. Phonebooth doesn't currently offer any mobile apps, though the company told us earlier today that mobile apps are definitely on Phonebooth's roadmap.

Contact Plus Widget

In addition to the free VOIP service, Phonebooth is also launching a new widget for small businesses - Contact Us Plus - that allows potential customers to use Phonebooth's VOIP service to initiate a call right from the website. In addition to initiating phone calls, the Phonebooth widget can also feature additional contact info (Twitter account, email etc.), as well as your address and a map. Phonebooth's users can also opt to show phone numbers for different departments in their company in the widget.

Discuss

A ReadWriteWeb Guide

OMG! Kevin Rose just touched my shirt!

Don't lie - we know you get butterflies at the thought of bumping into iJustine or Robert Scoble at a tech conference. We've pulled together a nice little cheat sheet just for you, friends. tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sxsw_2010_for_web_celeb_stalkers.php';tweetmeme_source = 'rww';Whether you want a simple handshake, and autograph on your iPhone or a chance to pitch your idea for the Next Big Web App, here's ten places, panels and parties where you can track down the Internet famous at SXSW 2010. Don't forget to leave your tips in the comments!

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This is part of a series of ReadWriteWeb guides to SXSW Interactive 2010. If this guide isn't your cup of tea, be sure to check back for more information soon!

<?php include('/includes/sxsw2010.php'); ?>Justine Ezarik, a.k.a. iJustine

Longtime lifestreaming queen iJustine is famously an Apple fangirl, but it's Intel that's giving you the key to tracking her down at SXSW. She's and Intel Insider, and she might be stopping by some of the Intel Insider events, like Frank Gruber's Johnny Cash party or Chris Heuer's Social Media Clubhouse. We don't have hard and fast details on Ezarik's whereabouts, but wherever she is, she'll probably be tweeting, so keep an eye on her Twitter accounts.

Christopher Poole

Pool may not be a household name in and of himself, but there's nary an Internet user who hasn't been in some way effected by the fun and foul play on 4chan. "4chan - often referred to as a 'meme factory' - has been responsible for the creation of countless Internet memes but is perhaps best known for its exploits. In this conversation, we'll explore the game mechanics of online communities. What fosters creativity in an online community? What design elements can we incorporate to increase interaction? How is the game played?"

Baratunde Thurston

In "How to Be Black," The Onion web editor and star of Popular Science's Future Of series Baratunde Thurston will "touch on the black online experience (if there is such a thing) included memes, statistics on usage patterns, popular destinations and issues of representation. For example, are black people as represented among the creators, developers and builders of our future or are we more consumer oriented than average?"

Violet Blue

Our favorite sex blogger will be kicking off SXSW with a presentation on "How to Not Be a Douchebag at SXSW[...] Aimed at both first-time and long-time attendees to SXSW Interactive, this biting and humorous, yet useful panel takes a look at the common actions and behaviors to avoid if you don't want to be described as 'doing it wrong.'"

Kevin Rose

This year, the Digg founder returns to host Diggnation Live at Stubb's. The Bigg Digg Shindigg was certainly one of the largest events at SXSW 2009, with fans crowding around the large outdoor stage to take pictures and watch Rose shoot the Diggnation episode. But don't expect to meet the man himself unless you've got VIP status for the party.

Chris Messina

In his talk, "ActivityStrea.ms: Is It Getting Streamy In Here?," Messina will explore the nuances of the real-time web. "From Facebook's newsfeed to Twitter's relentless real-time updates, the metaphor of the 'stream' has taken social networking beyond blog posts and on to rich social activities. Learn about ActivityStrea.ms - the open format adopted by Facebook, MySpace, and Windows Live - and how it's fundamentally changing the social web."

Leah Culver

This young developer and successful entrepreneur will be hosting the Web Framework Battle Royale. "Which web framework will rule them all? As an audience member you pick the winner! We will present an introduction to a variety of web frameworks including Rails, Django, Catalyst and Sinatra. You can vote for the best web framework in categories such as URL handling, database integration, forms, HTML templating, documentation, testing and deployment."

Gary Vaynerchuk

The WineLibraryTV founder is a true Web guru and an inspiration to entrepreneurs and content creators around the globe. He'll be giving one of his signature, unforgettable presentations again this year as part of the Interactive Speakers Series.

Evan Williams

Three years after his web app hit it big at SXSW 2007, Twitter co-founder Ev Williams takes the main stage to be interviewed by Havas Media Lab director Umair Haque in front of a live audience . All we have to say is that you'd better get there early if you don't want to get stuck watching a simulcast in an adjacent room!

Molly Wood

A last-minute stand-in for Natali Del Conte at this event, BOL founder Wood has a fanbase of her own. "CNET's Buzz Out Loud will broadcast live from SXSW. While discussing the day's tech news, hosts Tom Merritt, Jason Howell, Molly Wood and others will chat with the audience and invite special guests to talk about what's happening at the show and beyond."

Bonus Round! If you stalk him on Twitter, Foursquare, Plancast and Gowalla, you might get to bump into Robert Scoble, as well. Or, you can catch him at the Rackspace party Monday evening. And of course, while we don't consider ourselves celebrities, the RWW crew will be present and accounted for at the PBS/NPR/RWW party Sunday night!

Those are our SXSW Interaction recommendations for web celeb stalkers of all stripes. If you've got suggestions or feedback, let us know in the comments! See you in Austin, folks!

Discuss

newVideoPlayer( {"type":"video","player":"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/uJxbEQGWpeA&hl=en&fs=1&fmt=22","customParams":[],"width":500,"height":412,"ratio":0.824,"flashData":"","embedName":null,"objectId":null,"noEmbed":false,"source":"youtube"} ); Google just launched a new Google Apps Marketplace where users can discover and deploy third-party cloud applications that integrate with their existing Google Apps accounts.

Give the video above a watch for a full overview of how Google Apps Marketplace apps work, or, summed up from the Google Apps Marketplace homepage:

The Google Apps Marketplace offers products and services designed for Google users, including installable apps that integrate directly with Google Apps. Installable apps are easy to use because they include single sign-on, Google's universal navigation, and some even include features that integrate with your domain's data.

We've detailed how to trick out Google Apps in the past, but the Apps Marketplace brings an entirely new set of potentially useful tools to your Google Apps account—everything from accounting and finance apps to project and customer management.

And while the current set of offerings might seem like overkill unless you're a business running on Google Apps, the integration that these tools provide with Google tools like Mail, Calendar, Docs, and Contacts might be well worth it for the right app, and in time, Apps Marketplace sets the stage for all kinds of awesome third-party integration that could potentially take place with any outside application and the Google applications you use every day. (Time will tell on that front.)

We've been paging through the offerings since the site went up, but if you stumble onto a particularly snazzy looking Marketplace app, share a link in the comments.

Right now most of the apps look like they come with a recurring subscription fee, but we've found a few interesting looking options (some free), like:

• Aviary, the web-based creative suite.
• Shared contacts, which, as one might expect, lets you share contacts with your colleagues (something that's always been a little difficult in Google Apps). [Has a free trial]
• Gbridge, a "free, instant VPN for everyone" that can sync folders, share files, and share screens remotely between computers—and it's free.

Google Apps MarketPlace [via Official Google Blog]

Every day, thousands of businesses choose the cloud. More than 2 million businesses have adopted Google Apps over the last three years, eliminating the hassles associated with purchasing, installing and maintaining hardware and software themselves.

We've found that when businesses begin to experience the benefits of cloud computing, they want more. We're often asked when we'll offer a wider variety of business applications — from accounting and project management to travel planning and human resources management. But we certainly can't and won't do it all, and there are hundreds of business applications for which we have no particular expertise.

In recent years, many talented software providers have embraced the cloud and delivered a diverse set of features capable of powering almost any business. But too often, customers who adopt applications from multiple vendors end up with a fractured experience, where each particular application exists in its own silo. Users are often forced to create and remember multiple passwords, cut and paste data between applications, and jump between multiple interfaces just to complete a simple task.

Today, we're making it easier for these users and software providers to do business in the cloud with a new online store for integrated business applications. The Google Apps Marketplace allows Google Apps customers to easily discover, deploy and manage cloud applications that integrate with Google Apps. More than 50 companies are now selling applications across a range of businesses, including:

• Intuit Online Payroll: A small business application that offers business owners a new way to efficiently run payroll, pay taxes and let employees check paystubs all within one integrated online office environment.
• Manymoon: The company's free work and project management application for Google Apps makes it simple for businesses and teams to organize and share information including tasks, projects, documents, status updates and links with co-workers, customers and partners.
• Professional Services Connect (PS Connect): This new cloud-based offering coming soon from Appirio, pulls contextually relevant information on people, projects, customers and transactions from a user's domain and surfaces it directly inside a Gmail message so services professionals can make more informed, real-time decisions.
• JIRA Studio: A hosted software development suite from Atlassian enables software developers to flow naturally between Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and other design and development tools in order to better track and manage project issues and workflow.

Once installed to a company's domain, these third-party applications work like native Google applications. With administrator approval, they may interact with calendar, email, document and/or contact data to increase productivity. Administrators can manage the applications from the familiar Google Apps control panel, and employees can open them from within Google Apps. With OpenID integration, Google Apps users can access the other applications without signing in separately to each. The Google Apps Marketplace eliminates the worry about software updates, keeping track of different passwords and manual syncing and sharing of data, thereby increasing business productivity and lessening frustrations for users and IT administrators alike. That's the power of the cloud.



For more information on the benefits of the Google Apps Marketplace to businesses, check out our Enterprise Blog post. Developers interested in learning how to integrate with Google Apps can check out our post on the Google Code Blog. Or, you can explore the Google Apps Marketplace directly at http://google.com/appsmarketplace.

Finally, we'll be diving deeper into application development for the enterprise at Google I/O on May 19-20. We hope to see you there!

Posted by Chris Vander Mey, Product Manager, Google Apps Marketplace

Google launched an application marketplace today comprised of services from third-party providers that integrate with the Google Apps ecosystem.

The news has been anticipated for some time. In particular, it shows how much Google is embracing open-standards and leveraging its search and Google Apps platform to attract third-party developers.

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Google made the announcement at its Google Campfire One event tonight. The emphasis Google is putting on the enterprise is apparent in how much attention the company put into the event. Over and over we heard that Google passed the 25 million customer mark over the weekend.

It is that mark that Google is using as its hook for attracting developers to its platform. Developers will be charged $100 to join the program. With that entrance fee, they may add as many apps as they wish to the Google Apps Marketplace.

The marketplace supports OpenID to provide a single sign-on for developers. Authorization is integrated into the platform. The customers get access through OAuth, the open standard for authorizing users.

A "manifest page" is the foundation for the service. The developers provides information when adding the application to the marketplace that identifies it. Developers then provide additional information about the product.

The system is a controlled. Application developers submit the app for approval, which might take a few days.

Intuit provided an example of how the system works by showing how payroll could be managed. The customer accesses the account. With Google Apps integration, the customer accesses an account where they have the employee information. It's that collected contact network that is then integrated with the payroll application.

Atlassian showed how Studio, its project management application, would integrate with GMail and Google Apps. Again, if the company is standardized on Google Apps, the information is available through the network.

Manymoon is another project mangement application that was demonstrated. It uses Google Apps to develop features such as a calendar, showing how a startup can leverage Google Apps to add features to its service.

Other companies that were a part of the initial launch include Socialwok and Appirio.

At its core, the marketplace is built upon Google's search capabilities. Google Apps can be extended with applications. In turn, developers have access to the built-in capabilities of Google Apps.

Perhaps the greatest value to customers will be if they are centralized on Google Apps. If so, they can get some pretty powerful capabilities of the marketplace.

Discuss

Business to business software can be a tough sell. Online B2B can be even a harder sell. While there is certainly money to be made, unless you’re one of the big players, the likelihood you’re going to succeed is pretty small. Starting today, Google is taking their roll as one of the big players and extending a platform to boost some smaller players.

Tonight, Google has unveiled their Google Apps Marketplace. This is an app store for enterprise apps in the cloud. Using a set of APIs, these third-party apps can deeply integrate their products within Google Apps, which already some 25 million people are using. And that also includes over 2 million businesses ranging from startups, to small businesses, to Fortune 500 companies.

For customers, this means a one-stop shop for a variety of applications that their business or organization can use. And it’s extremely simple to get started with apps in the marketplace — it just takes 4 clicks, Google says (though that initial click will have to come from your domain admin to approve the use of the app). For developers, particularly small startup developers, it means instant access to more users than they can likely imagine. It also potentially means something more important: money.

Like the popular mobile app stores (Apple’s App Store and Google’s own Android Market), Google is allowing developers to sell their apps through this Marketplace. And they’re actually offering a better deal: Google will keep just 20% of the revenue, while the developers keep the other 80% (compared to a 30/70 split with the Android Market). The reason for this better split is that Google believes the B2B market is a bit different, and they want to entice developers to join on board. And instead of Apple’s App Store, which charges a $100 yearly fee to developers, Google is charging a one-time fee of $100 to enroll in the program — and that’s for as many apps as you want to create.

As for what Google will do with their 20% share, they’re not entirely sure. “We don’t know what will happen with the revenue, but we think it’s a very fair rev share for the value we’re providing,” Google Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra says.

As you might expect, in the Marketplace, Google will feature certain apps on a rotating basis. And each will have a star rating system and reviews written by people who have used the app. Apps will be grouped into different categories to make it easier for customers to find exactly what they’re looking for. Once they do, the four steps alluded to above are:

1. Click “Add it now”
2. Agree to the vendor’s Terms of Service
3. Grant access to the data that the app is requesting.  Some apps require data access, some don’t – only grant access to apps you trust.
4. Turn it on and start enjoying your increased productivity

So how does this all work? Google connection points for integration into Apps are actually done through open protocols such as OAuth. And while signing-in may seem like a pain across different apps, Google has streamlined that as well thanks to another open protocol: OpenID.

Once an app is hooked in to Google Apps, it will appear on your main Apps Dashboard alongside the other Google-made apps you use. It will even appear in the “more” drop down that Google uses in the toolbar across its properties. And because these apps are so tightly woven into Google Apps, they can take advantage of the built-in Google Apps such as Gmail and Gtalk to easily communicate within the third-party apps.

And there’s more. While it’s not quite ready to launch just yet, in the second half of 2010, Google plans to launch flexible billing options for third-parties using their services. Basically, this will allow companies to use Google Checkout to handle complicated billings, such as subscriptions. This could mean trouble for startups specifically in this space, such as Recurly. Also coming later will be detailed analytics for transactions, we’re told. For now, developers are free to hook up their data to their own analytic programs to run their numbers.

While Google’s options for this Marketplace sound nice and open, there’s actually something even better: you don’t have to build your apps on their platform. Whereas a big player like Salesforce wants to keep the apps it works with in the Force.com ecosystem, Google doesn’t care where you build it — it can be on App Engine, or on anything else. You simply hook your app up to the APIs and you’re ready to go. It’s a model so enticing that even a big Google competitor in this space, Zoho, is ready to work with them, and is launching as an initial partner. All told, there are more than 50 companies partnering up at launch, including a winner of the audience award at this year’s TechCrunch50, Socialwok.

As to whether Google could eventually roll this app store model out to the more consumer facing apps they offer, Gundotra gave me the old, “We have nothing to announce at this time.” That reads suspiciously to me like a “yes,” provided this is the hit it seems like it should be.

CrunchBase InformationGoogle AppsInformation provided by CrunchBase

Zoho, a web-based productivity suite that was called a “fake Office” by a Microsoft VP, is announcing a significant partnership with Google today. The startup will be a launch partner for Google’s recently launched Google Apps Marketplace, which allows vendors to sell applications that compliment Google Apps. Here are our notes from the announcement. Zoho will be integrating two of its over 20 business applications – Zoho CRM and Zoho Projects with Google Apps.

So starting today, Google Apps users will be able to add on-demand CRM app Zoho CRM and project management software Zoho Projects into Google Apps. While Zoho has previously rolled out the ability log-in to its applications via your Google Apps IDs, the two applications have been specially formatted for further immersion into Google Apps with App’s extended APIs. IT admins will now have an option to add Zoho Apps to their domains through Google Apps Marketplace. Once the IT admin adds a Zoho application to their domain, all users within the domain will have access to the Zoho Application through Google universal navigation.

In the version of Zoho CRM for Google Apps, Zoho will allow Google Apps domain admins choose the users he or she wants to provide access to Zoho CRM and can import users from Google Apps contacts. And if you have Mail Add-on enabled in Zoho CRM, you can POP your email from Google Apps to Zoho CRM. These emails will show up in the CRM system automatically for each contact. Emails sent from Zoho CRM will also show up in Gmail in Google Apps.

Zoho CRM and Projects will also be integrated with Google Apps Calendar. Google Apps users will now be able to subscribe and view their CRM and Projects events right within Google Calendar. Additionally, Zoho Projects and Zoho CRM allows you to attach documents directly from Google Apps.

The fact that Zoho was chosen as a pilot partner for this program isn’t surprising. Although some of Zoho’s applications compete with Google apps products, the startup has consistently pushed interoperability with Google Apps. Over the past two years, the startup launched a deeper integration with Google Docs; and the ability to log-in with Google and Yahoo IDs. And according to our latest stats, Zoho has definitely reached over 2 million users, and has a loyal follower base.

CrunchBase InformationZohoGoogleInformation provided by CrunchBase

Tonight, Google launched its Google Apps Marketplace, an online storefront for Apps products and services. Here are our notes from the announcement. And of course, the marketplace is launching with a number of pilot partners (50 to be exact). One of those partners happens to be recently launched Socialwok, a product that ads a social layer to Gmail and other Google products. At last year’s TechCrunch50 conference, Socialwok made a big splash, winning the award for best demopit startup and launching its enterprise-friendly, FriendFeed-like layer for Google Apps. The web-based application was praised for launching a social network that wrapped around the very unsocial Google Apps. And the startup just launched a gadget to allow users access all the features of Socialwok without leaving Gmail.

Socialwok in the the Google Apps Marketplace allows organizations to use their existing Google Apps accounts to login into Socialwok and create a social network for their domains to share within Google Docs, Google Calendars, Google Spreadsheets and other Google objects in feeds. For example, with the Socialwok Gmail gadget, users can view, post and comment on various feeds in their organization right from Gmail.

Ming Yong, CEO of the company, said that integration with the marketplace was a logical choice because of the growing number of SMBs that are using Google Apps as their productivity suite of choice. Currently Google has more than 2 million businesses using the Google Apps Suite. Over 6,000 domains and tens of thousands of users are using Socialwok. Socialwok’s standard edition on the marketplace will be free but the startup will launch a paid edition in May.

Socialwok, which employs a freemium model, has steadily been adding features and improvements to its application, including releasing a new version of its HTML 5 mobile version for Android and iPhone browsers. And in the process of developing an innocative application, startup managed to catch Google’s eye. Socialwok was chosen as one of the showcase companies for AppEngine technology at this year’s Google IO Developer Sandbox (Socialwok is powered by Google App Engine). And the startup wrote a blog post on Google’s Enterprise Blog about Socialwok.

We’ve continuously written that if Google doesn’t buy the startup, they should at least heavily promoting what they’re doing. And it appears that Google has taken the latter route. For now. There’s no doubt that Socialwok could face the same fate as Google Docs killer and collaboration platform Etherpad or Microsoft Word collaboration plug-in Docverse.

CrunchBase InformationSocialwokGoogleInformation provided by CrunchBase

Back in October we wrote about Appboy, a social network for mobile app developers and users. Since launching, Appboy has continued to evolve into a community for both developers and users to find and rate apps, as well as submit ideas for new mobile applications. Appboy has just rolled out a big update to its site which improves the design, adds stronger integration with Facebook and Twitter, and makes it easy to keep up with what your favorite app developers are doing. The site has also launched a new companion iPhone application and started a new partnership with Best Buy Mobile.

New Look and Feel

The Appboy Profile pages have been given a total facelift. Now, in addition to displaying your user activity and favorite apps, users can link their Twitter accounts with Appboy and auto-publish any #appboy tweets directly to their Appboy page.

For users, this feature might not get a ton of play, but for app developers it becomes a pretty handy way of keeping your Appboy profile up-to-date with little fuss.

Users can also now login with either Twitter or Facebook Connect. We really like that Appboy has embraced other social networks instead of trying to force users to keep everything in the Appboy garden.

You can also now follow other users, which is especially helpful when you want to keep up with what’s happening with your favorite app or app idea.

The App Pages have also received a new coat of paint, with an easy way to vote “Love It” or “Hate It” on an app’s page. Comments and reviews can now be viewed separately, which is nice when you just want to distill one group or the other. Plus, users can now add related links, videos and reviews to an app page which can help provide better context.

User reviews are also now ratable — Digg style — which allows the most helpful reviews to appear higher on the list.

iPhone App

In addition to a new website design, Appboy now has its own iPhone app. The free app gives users all the functionality of the website right on the iPhone. That’s really nice, especially when you are looking for a new app or want to leave a review for something you just purchased. Sure, the App Store works for that too, but what is nice about Appboy is that it is a community.

Check out these screenshots to see the app in action. As you can see, the interface matches the website and it’s very easy to get around and rate or learn about apps and app ideas.

Best Buy Mobile Partnership

One of the most unique features of Appboy is that it isn’t focused on just one platform; it’s focused on mobile apps in general. So whether you have an Android device, an iPhone, a BlackBerry or a Palm Pre, you can find, rate and suggest ideas for new apps.

Best Buy just launched a new mobile site, Best Buy Mobile, and Appboy powers the Apps section for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. The top 10 apps from each platform are fed into Best Buy’s site and those apps come directly from the Appboy community.

This is a pretty big step, considering the relative age of the site, and we think it’s because Appboy has shown itself as being committed to the mobile community as a whole.

Looking Good

Appboy continues to be a great resource for developers and users wanting to connect and share what’s cool and what sucks in the mobile app space. The new iPhone app is a really nice addition to the site and we hope that the Best Buy partnership will bring even more users into the community.

How do you find out about new mobile applications? Let us know!

Reviews: Android, Digg, Twitter

Tags: android, appboy, apple, apps, iphone, iphone apps, mobile apps