It has been revealed that the office of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is conduction an investigation of Google over complaints of antitrust and anti-competitive behavior, and the search giant is responding.

According to Search Engine Land, the state of Texas’ investigation is focused on whether Google manipulates its search results to the detriment of its competition. The investigation was sparked by complaints from vertical search engines Foundem, SourceTool/TradeComet and myTriggers. While none of these companies operate out of the state of Texas, they only need customers in the state to help spark an investigation.

Google has since responded to the report via a blog post from Deputy General Counsel Don Harrison. In it, Harrison addresses the questions about the “fairness” of the Google search engine while providing background on Foundem, SourceTool/TradeComet and MyTriggers. This background refutes each company’s argument that Google is engaging in anticompetitive behavior.

“We look forward to answering their questions because we’re confident that Google operates in the best interests of our users,” Harrison said in the company’s response.

Google is facing a similar investigation from the European Commission over whether it manipulates search results to stifle competition.

What do you think of the investigation? Do you think Google is engaging in antitrust behavior, or is this smoke and mirrors? Let us know in the comments.

Reviews: Google

More About: Antitrust, Google, investigation, privacy, texas

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Java gets a bad rap. It's considered old-school. People say that young developers prefer Ruby-on-Rails and other Web-based hot stuff. True - but these are not bad times for Java at all.

James Governor of RedMonk wrote a post that provides several good reasons why Java is really doing quite well.

Elance shows the current demand for people with Google App Engine skills is greater than those knowledgeable about Amazon Web Services. Audrey Watters of ReadWriteCloud saw the news and posted on the topic of IT Jobs as the question for our weekly poll.

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The reason why Google App Engine is doing so well? It's all about the enterprise. VMware's Spring Platform is based upon SpringSource, which has become the dominant platform for launching Java-based apps. It now integrates with Google App Engine, a primary reason for the growing success of the platform.

Governor makes some points that are worth noting:

NoSQL is one of the hottest trends in tech right now. Many of the technologies built on the platform are written in Java. It was born on the Web but will eventually move to the enterprise.

MapReduce? It's what Google and Yahoo! use to get fast responses over large data sets. It is built on Java. Hadoop is based on MapReduce. It has its own ecosystem developing around the technology.

And then there's this from Governor:

Of course we're also seeing innovation from the new hotness - thus Erlang underpins CouchDB and RIAK. But Java is certainly core to the innovation. Lets look at RabbitMQ for example - which though written in Erlang was acquired by SpringSource as a messaging engine to underpin a Java-based programming model.

Governor goes on to provide a number of other examples to make his point.

And we have to agree. Java is not dead. it still has plenty of room for innovation.

Discuss

The Obama administration back in January promised $8 billion in funding for cities and states to build high-speed, intercity rail projects.

This week, the Department of Transporation issued its specifications for the manufacture of new fast trains, namely double-decker coach, dining, baggage, and business class passenger rail cars that can travel between 79 MPH and up to 220 MPH.

Bi-level rail cars not typical in the US today, would accommodate more passengers, and hopefully alleviate congested roads and some resulting air pollution.

According to the American Association of State Highway & Transportation Officials (AASHTO) 95 percent of passenger travel in America is made by car, motorcycle and truck on our highways now.

Expanding highway capacity and overhauling busted roads with more durable and sustainable materials can prevent some traffic jams. But even highway professionals advocate building efficient, intercity, high speed trains and upgrading our freight rail systems.

Wireless companies like Groundlink and D-Link could win business rigging new high speed trains with internet service and related equipment.

Cities that recently won government funding for their high speed passenger rail projects include: Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinatti, Ohio, and Battle Creek, Michigan among others along the Detroit to Chicago route.

Feds promised the biggest piece of the budget in their national high speed rail transit program earlier this year to large-scale efforts in Florida and California that would connect Tampa and Orlando with 168 MPH trains, and Los Angeles and San Francisco with trains running up to 200 MPH.

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As a longtime Apple TV owner, I’ll admit a dirty little secret: I really like the device. Sure, it has been one of the rare flops for Apple in recent years. And it could be so much more with say, a Blu-ray player or a web browser. But it is really good at its core functionality: bringing iTunes content into your living room. And that’s why this new version of the Apple TV makes sense — at least for now.

When I first bought the Apple TV, there were two varieties: a 40 gigabyte version and a 160 gigabyte version. I was torn between which one to get, but I ultimately went with the 160 GB one thinking I could put most of my movies on it. Big mistake. I basically never use the hard drive on my Apple TV, so it’s a 160 GB hard drive sitting there doing nothing. Instead, I stream everything to the Apple TV.

In fact, the only time I do use the hard drive on my current Apple TV is when I rent a movie on it. Currently, even when renting, you download a movie to your hard drive where it sits for up to 30 days (or 24 hours after you start playing it). But with the new iTunes rentals (both TV and movies) everything is streamed — no hard drive is required (besides a small one for buffering purposes). Thanks to that, and undoubtedly the knowledge that most owners were using it for streaming, Apple removed the hard drive from the device, and cut it down in size and price.

Now, at one-forth the size and less than half the price, it’s an even more attractive way to get your iTunes content into your living room. And it has a few very nice bonuses. The mixture of the new Netflix functionality with Apple’s new release rental movies makes this an excellent in-home movie machine for the masses. For those who pay $9 a month to Netflix, you get access to tens of thousands of older movies. For those interested in newer movies, they’re $4.99 a pop from Apple.

Yes, Apple removed the option to buy movies on the Apple TV itself. But you can still do this through iTunes on your computer — or on your iPad/iPhone/iPod touch. And guess what? With the forthcoming AirPlay feature, you’ll be able to stream any of those purchased movies right from any of those devices to the Apple TV. In a way, it sort of does make the Apple TV a $99 iPad accessory.

Further, the removal of the option to buy (as well as the removal of the SD options) make Apple TV much less complicated for general consumers. Now there is no question about whether you should rent or buy. There is also no question about whether you should do rent or buy in HD or SD. I suspect most people were renting in HD on the device, which is why Apple made the move it did to eliminate the other unnecessary options. They’re keeping it simple, stupid.

Apple also removed the option to buy TV shows — which never really made much sense to me. There are some shows that people would like to own, but most are definitely watch-once programs. Previously, there was no rental option, you had to buy. Worse, even if you did want to own a lot, the old Apple TV didn’t have nearly enough storage to handle them all — some HD TV show seasons take up 30 GB of space or more. The model just didn’t make a lot of sense.

Granted, Apple’s current $0.99 TV show rental option is pretty weak. They only have shows from ABC and Fox — and only some shows from Fox. But obviously, just as happened with iTunes music and movies, Apple is hoping all the studios eventually get on board.  And if they do relatively soon, the Apple TV will be a very interesting device to consumers as both a movie box and as a potential cable replacement. Sure, most people aren’t going to feel comfortable totally killing cable just yet — but at $99, this will be a very interesting experiment for a lot of people.

All that said, let’s be clear: this Apple TV is not the killer device in the living room. This will be more popular than the current Apple TV, but it will not be iPod/iPhone/iPad-big. And Apple seems to know that, which is why they’re still talking cautiously about it.

The problem Apple faces is the same problem that everyone faces: content agreements. Hollywood is proving much harder to convince than the music labels were. In a few years, if DVD sales keep falling and cable revenues start decreasing, they’ll be more receptive to new options.

The killer Apple TV would have TV network subscription packages. It would offer live events. It would have every movie ever made available on-demand.

And on-demand is the big key to all of this. All of this content is going to move to the cloud. It has too for storage purposes and given how many devices we all have. Rentals just completely made the jump, but eventually purchases will too. At first, you’ll have the option to download certain movies you’ve bought to take on the go, but when you’re at your home, even movies you “own” will be streamed — they’ll simply be streamed for free. And then one day, all of this stuff will be in the cloud entirely as mobile devices will always be connected by high-speed wireless.

This is the future. It’s Apple’s future along with everyone else’s. This Apple TV is one small step in that direction, and at $99 it makes sense for now — at $229, it never did. This is a stepping stone to the cloud age. Right now it’s a mixture of the internal cloud (streaming from within your house) with the external cloud (streaming rentals from the cloud). Soon it will all be external.

If this half-step isn’t your thing, if you want more functionality, buy a Mac mini. There’s a reason Apple just added a HDMI output to it. But that device is too complicated and way too expensive for most consumers to use as a set-top box. The Apple TV is simple.

Oh, and one more thing: the true killer Apple TV device will have apps. I’m still absolutely convinced (as many people are) that it’s only a question of when they make the jump to the living room. The fact that this new Apple TV is running iOS seems to be all the proof one should need that this will come eventually.

When that happens, the Apple TV will become a hell of a lot more than a hobby.

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This week’s Web Faceoff between Skype and Google Voice came down to the wire.

Last week, Google stepped onto Skype’s turf with the launch of Google Voice integration in Gmail. Since its launch, Gmail users have made over 10 million calls through the new Google Voice integration.

Is Google Voice a threat to Skype’s longstanding dominance? On Monday we asked you, the readers, to choose which voice service you preferred. After the closest vote in the history of the Web Faceoff…

…Google Voice is the winner by just 20 votes. With 1,438 votes (42.87%), Google’s voice service beat Skype’s 1,418 tallies (42.28%). That’s barely more than a half-percent difference. 498 of you (14.85%) voted that it was a tie.

One of the big issues with Google Voice many commenters pointed out was that it’s only available in the U.S., while Skype is worldwide. Perhaps this is a debate we’ll have to revisit when Google’s offering is in the hands of the rest of the world. Let us know what you think of this week’s poll results in the comments.

Reviews: Google, Google Voice, Skype

More About: gmail, Google, Google Voice, poll, Skype, voip, web faceoff

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Location-based service Echo Echo recently posted the above image to their blog in a (successful) attempt to garner some media attention as the debate around online privacy continues to rage.

As extreme as their“If Mark Zuckerburg Cared About Privacy” example is, it does call attention to the needless complexity of various web service privacy agreements, settings and policies.

In the wake of a $8.5 million lawsuit settlement today, search giant Google made a gesture of good faith in the “caring about privacy” department, assuring users that it was taking steps in order to make the minutae of online privacy easier to understand.

“For example, we’re deleting a sentence that reads, ‘The affiliated sites through which our services are offered may have different privacy practices and we encourage you to read their privacy policies,’ since it seems obvious that sites not owned by Google might have their own privacy policies.”

Perhaps this concerted movement towards being more transparent and simple with regards to privacy would also work well for Facebook which, like Google, is currently involved in various privacy scuffles.

Vidyo, a company that specializes in high-quality video conferencing technology for the enterprise, is betting big on bringing video conferencing to mobile devices, including tablets and smartphones. Similar to Skype, Vidyo offers a technology that allows people to connect with each other over the web via video conferencing. However, the company says that Vidyo system is focused more on the enterprise, providing a reliable system, allowing conferencing for many parties at once, and offering high quality video. And Vidyo has built a big business licensing its technology to large electronics companies, such as HP, Intel and Hitachi. Vidyo’s technology is also used by Google to power video for Google Chat.

Curious what Google’s Gmail Priority Inbox means for those of us that use an IMAP or POP client like Mac Mail or the Mail function on an iPhone? Well as of yet the feature is not fully enabled on either IMAP or POP-compatible third party or mobile clients, leaving a large percentage of people who hate viewing email a standard web browser out in the cold.

If you try to use the service in Mac Mail right now the emails determined by the Priority Inbox algorithm to be “Important” are sent to an “Important” folder under Gmail. In order to reach them in Mail for the iPhone you also have to search for the “Important” folder under your Gmail account folder.

Priority Inbox is like a pet, you have to train it in order for it to function properly, and this training is partly accomplished using the up-voting and down-voting arrows currently only available in your browser. The algorithm also tracks archiving behaviors like starring , which are also limited when using IMAP/POP. And while Google plans on adding the training feature to both Gmail mobile browsers like Google for the iPhone and to Android, third party IMAP clients like Mac Mail will most likely be left out of the loop, at least for the time being.

The majority of complaints I’ve heard from Priority Inbox users (“It’s still showing me junk mail!”) are from people who basically don’t grasp the key fact that the algorithm needs to be trained to get good, which is hard to do if you’re primarily viewing email over the phone or through Mac Mail.

When the IMAP issues were pointed out, a Google spokesperson responded, unsurprisingly, “Priority Inbox is best when viewed in Gmail’s web UI.”

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Can someone please explain this Bloomberg Businessweek story to me? I’ve read it a few times and am still having a hard time understanding what is or what isn’t being implied, or not implied, about a partnership between Coinstar and Apple.

First of all, the title is awful because most people likely don’t know that Coinstar owns Redbox (they acquired them last year), the DVD rental kiosk company. Instead, most people know Coinstar as those machines in supermarkets where you turn in your loose change for cash or silly things, like Facebook Credits. So why on Earth would they be partnering with Apple on some online venture?

Well, again, it’s about Redbox, as they sort of note in the first paragraph. But what are they going to do with Apple?

“I would not conclude we are or are not doing a streaming deal with them,” Coinstar CEO Paul Davis told Bloomberg. Well that clears things right up.

A streaming deal? While Davis notes Coinstar’s “longstanding relationship” with Apple, that’s for iTunes gift cards right now, which is an option at some of their kiosks. A streaming deal is another matter entirely, obviously.

Clearly, Coinstar (again, Redbox) wants to get into that market to be able to compete with their main rival now: Netflix. The problem with partnering with Apple is that Netflix beat them to it. Just this week, Apple unveiled their new Apple TV which has Netflix streaming built-in. Now, Netflix focuses mainly on catalog (read: older) titles, while Redbox focuses on newer titles, but that’s because Redbox is doing DVDs right now (the business Netflix is slowly moving away from). If Redbox gets into streaming, it would likely have to move more towards catalog titles as well.

Further, Apple already offers new movie releases on their own. And they actually get the majority of them before Redbox does because Redbox was forced to cave to ridiculous Hollywood studio demands that they wait 28 days before getting new release DVDs. As Apple CEO Steve Jobs pointed out a few times on stage this week, Apple gets those movies day-and-date (they day they are released for sale on DVD).

So it’s not clear to me how this possibly maybe non-partnership partnership would actually be beneficial to Apple. iTunes kiosks? Perhaps. But the article doesn’t mention that at all. It just non-talks about a streaming non-deal that may or may not be real. And may or may not make any sense. Or something.

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It seems that one of the beta testers for Google TV couldn’t keep all that goodness to himself, and has posted several pictures and some video of the near-finished interface and hardware. It’s a brief and not particularly shocking video, but seeing it running on a home TV and hearing a regular guy expressing legitimate (if subdued) excitement make it a lot more real.

Continue reading…

In less than two days, Apple’s Ping music social network has surpassed the 1 million user milestone.

Apple introduced Ping as the centerpiece of iTunes 10 at its music event earlier this week. It is a music-centric social network where users can follow updates from both their friends and their favorite music artists. It includes custom song and album charts, a news feed and 17,000+ concert listings.

Ping has had a rocky road since its launch late on Wednesday. Apple’s social network has been hit with comment spam and international availability issues. The company’s in up-and-down talks with Facebook over integrations and API use. It’s also received lackluster reviews from the media.

However, that hasn’t stopped droves of people from trying out the iTunes-based social network. Apple says that 1/3 of users that have downloaded iTunes 10 have joined Ping.

Should we be surprised, though? More than 160 million people have iTunes, and curiosity is always at a high after an Apple event. However, while Ping may have 1 million registered users, that doesn’t mean they’ll still be using the social network three months from now. That is the numbers we’ll be interested in, because it is what will determine the fate of Ping as a service.

Reviews: Facebook, Ping

More About: apple, itunes, music, Ping, social networking, trending

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Baidu is the most-visited website in China and has captured 70% of search revenue in that country. Alexa's Top 500 Global Sites list puts it at number 6. But with virtually no penetration outside Asia, can it really be considered a global company at all, or just an awfully big one?

Until it reaches beyond its shores in an appreciable and sustained fashion, it probably won't be considered a global player of consequence. But its latest move may do just that. It is refocusing a great deal of its enormous resources into the mobile and app markets.

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At the annual Baidu developers conference yesterday, CFO Jennifer Li reiterated the company's dedication to the mobile space. The 10-year-old company started focusing on mobile last year with the development of a texting language and mobile mapping. At that point it also established a dedicated mobile department.

As for apps, last night its Box Computing Open Platform went live. The BCOP allows users to run apps, including games, videos and e-books, through the Baidu website using any platform.

A lot of our coverage of China focuses on Google's issues there. Among those issues are the lack of stability: what can a company or developer expect, day to day? With China's shifting censorship regime, it is hard to anticipate what might be disallowed. Mobile apps are dependent on the robustness of their developer community.

Will non-Chinese developers be willing to put time and money into developing on Baidu's platform? Can Chinese developers develop on Baidu for Western users compellingly enough to attract them? Or will the future of China's global influence be on the Internet of Things, leaving Baidu a strictly Chinese concern?

This isn't a rhetorical question. We sent it to a couple of our friends with first-hand knowledge of the Chinese web industry. But if you've got knowledge of your own, share it why not?

Discuss

One quote from an IBM executive stands out in the post that Chris Cameron wrote today about IBM's augmented reality app for the U.S. Open.

Rick Singer, IBM's Vice President of Sports Technology Partnerships said it all comes down tthe information generated with every tennis stroke, volley and serve:

"This is all about data. It's about how you take data, aggregate it and make it simpler to use," says Singer. "This is like having your best friend with you that knows everything about the Open right by your side because you can take all of that data and you can make better decisions."

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IBM is using the U.S. Open to demonstrate its commitment to cloud computing.

For example, according to eWeek, IBM implemented its analytics platform to use real-time and historical information to deploy services to "media organizations, tournament officials, the public, tennis players on different platforms such as broadcast, the Web, mobile devices and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

At the U.S. Open, IBM has deployed sensors to the radar guns, the umpire chairs and throughout the tennis grounds to collect data that can be analyzed and visualized.

It has partnered with the U.S. Tennis Association to provide its PointStream technology, which pull intelligence from the data around scores and match statistics. It is supposed to then present that information in real-time.

According to MediaPost, online viewers may also use IBM's Momentum Meter to see which player has a statistical edge. That provides a range of different possibilities for viewers. They can watch the matches on television and get stats from their smartphone, iPad or laptop. Images can be seen visually, which makes sense as following charts and graphs can be a bit cumbersome.

Analytics provide a different viewing experience for people watching the U.S. Open. The experience also provides a view of what we can expect as more "TV" plays venture online. For example, Google TV will be offering its own ways to analyze data to provide contextual information.

What we are seeing really is the start of a technology match that will last far longer than the last smash and volley at the U.S. Open.

Discuss

Google has agreed to pay a hefty sum to make a class action lawsuit concerning Google Buzz disappear — $8.5 million, to be exact.

The lawsuit dates back to February, when lawyers filed a class action complaint against Google on behalf of Eva Hibnick, a 24-year-old Florida resident and Harvard Law School student. The complaint alleged that Buzz violated several communication privacy laws related to protecting user privacy.

Google Buzz caught a lot of flak for its auto-follow and opt-in features, so much so that Google quickly made privacy fixes after launch. They weren’t enough to quell the criticism though, so Google launched a privacy reset for Buzz, giving users a new opportunity to adjust their privacy settings.

According to the settlement, these changes addressed the key privacy issues surrounding Buzz. “Google has made changes to the Google Buzz user interface that clarify Google Buzz’s operation and users’ options regarding Google Buzz,” it stated.

That’s not all, though. While the settlement acknowledges that Google Buzz’s privacy issues have been resolved, it says the company must do more to educate users about Google Buzz’s potential impact on privacy. The $8.5 million from the settelement will go towards lawyer fees (30%) and the seven named plaintiffs (up to $2,500 each), with the remainder going towards organizations and non-profits focused on Internet privacy.

Now that the privacy issues have been settled, Google can focus on a more important problem: actually producing a winner in the social media space.

[via AFP]

Reviews: Google, Google Buzz, Internet

More About: Googl, google buzz, law, lawsuit, privacy

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This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label “Google Apps highlights" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

Recently we introduced powerful, time-saving features in Gmail: Priority Inbox and the ability to call phones right from Gmail. Google spreadsheets added new features, and many more businesses and schools moved to the cloud with Google Apps.

Cut through the clutter with Gmail Priority Inbox
Since its beginning, Gmail has been helping people cope with large amounts of email, whether it’s with more than seven gigabytes of storage, really fast search, great spam filtering or automatically organized conversations. This Monday we launched Priority Inbox, which helps you get through your inbox even faster by automatically putting important messages front and center. The more that you use Gmail, the better Priority Inbox will become at categorizing the email you receive. Our research suggests that the typical information worker can save a whole week of work time each year with this feature!



Call phones from Gmail
People in the U.S. can now call any phone right within Gmail. If you have a Google Voice account (it's free! and open to everyone in the U.S.), you can also receive calls to your Google Voice number right within Gmail. Calls to the U.S. and Canada are free at least until the end of the year, and international rates start at just $0.02 per minute. Google Apps customers won’t see this feature quite yet, but Google Voice and call phones in Gmail are coming soon with the new infrastructure for Google Apps accounts.


Improved scheduler in Google Calendar
Last Thursday we made it easier to set up new events in Google Calendar. The interface for repeating events is now more intuitive, and we’ve improved how we help you find a good time for your event, even if you’re coordinating a large group of people with busy schedules.


In-cell drop-down with validation and more in Google spreadsheets
We added two helpful features in spreadsheets last week as well. In-cell drop-down with validation allows you to configure cells to display a drop-down menu of accepted values. For example, you can require a cell’s value to be selected from a list of specific cities. We also introduced the ability to easily see which cells have formulas, which can come in handy when you’re working on a complicated mode. You can turn this feature on from the formula bar by selecting the “Show All Formulas” button, selecting “Show All Formulas” in the View menu or hitting Ctrl `.


Who’s gone Google?
The pace of organizations saying goodbye to legacy on-premises technology and moving into the cloud continues to accelerate. Read more about why The Richmond Group, Box.net, Bowerly Lane Bicycles and EPS Communications selected Google Apps for their messaging and collaboration needs.

I hope these updates help you or your organization get even more from Google Apps. For details and the latest news in this area, check out the Google Apps Blog.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

The Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in Central Oregon have made a commitment to broadband for its largely rural population. Taking advantage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's broadband funding, the Tribes will spend $5.4 million in extending broadband infrastructure throughout the reservation and making it affordable for tribal users.

Warm Springs has always been a forward-thinking community. A decade ago it started a business incubator and venture capital firm, welcoming and even buying tech companies, including GIS companies. To further its drive for independence, it needs its people, and client companies, to be able to connect with each other and the world at large.

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Led by the newly-formed Warm Springs Telecommunications Company, the project, a half-and-half grant and loan package, will blanket the 1,000-square mile reservation with a network that combines fiber and wireless; 1,800 people, 18 businesses and 22 institutions users, including tribal government and schools, health care facilities, police and fire will benefit.

For a long time the Warm Springs tribal corporation was Central Oregon's number one business in terms of revenue; it remains an important economic engine of the area, though its distance from population areas still make unemployment a chronic problem.

As Robert White noted in his book "Tribal Assets," Indian tribal polities that create wealth also push out into the surrounding areas, adding to the economic health of their area. Those who don't produce often act as a vacuum, absorbing state and local money. If Warm Springs' historical business acumen is any indication, the benefits of the broadband project will not stop at borders of the rez.

Discuss

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Sprout Social

Quick Pitch: Sprout Social delivers comprehensive tools that allow businesses to efficiently and effectively manage and grow their social presence across multiple channels.

Genius Idea: Sprout Social is a social relationship manager designed to let small businesses, agencies and brands manage multiple social networks from one central dashboard.

It’s becoming more and more essential for companies and brands of all sizes to have a social media presence. One of the continuing hurdles that these companies continue to face, however, is how to manage multiple social channels.

The fundamental problem is that most social networks were designed for consumers, not for businesses. That means that the tools required to monitor and manage those networks are usually not built into the service itself.

In the last 12 months, more and more players have entered the social media management space. Some, like Involver and Vitrue, take a higher-level approach to big brands and also offer app-creation tools. Other services like HootSuite straddle the line between consumer- and business-friendly.

We like that Sprout Social is a solid offering for the smaller brand or agency; it offers more robust management tools, but it’s still affordable. Pricing starts at $9.99 per month for managing up to five identities. For $49.99 per month, 10 identities or locations can be managed and additional metrics and more advanced tracking data is available.

At the $9.99 per month plan, Sprout Social can monitor Twitter, Facebook (fan and personal pages) and LinkedIn. This means you can search and monitor those networks, cross-post to networks and do things like link and referral tracking.

For users that opt to spend $49.99 per month, Sprout Social adds Foursquare and Yelp support, geotargeting and the ability to create daily specials or offers. This makes Sprout Social a particularly useful tool for local businesses like restaurants or retail shops.

Check out this video to see what Sprout Social is all about. What tools does your business use to manage its social media presence? Let us know!

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Reviews: Facebook, Foursquare, HootSuite, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yelp

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Tumblr is quickly becoming one of the Web's most popular and unique platforms on which to share and discover interesting content of all media. According to Tumblr, over 5.3 million posts are made each day by the service's over 7.5 million users. Posts are passed on over and over through Tumblr's "reblog" feature, but at such a high volume it's easy to loose track of where content originated. Tumblr hopes to solve this dilemma with some new attribution functionality launched earlier today.

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Whenever someone reblogs a post on Tumblr, text is generated automatically that produces a "via" link to the user it came from. As users reblog other reblogged posts, an ugly daisy-chain of these links clogs up the caption area, causing most users to simply delete it, breaking the chain of attribution.

Now, Tumblr has made is easy for users to add attribution metadata to posts just as they would tags and other information. This is great for users who want to credit where they found an interesting photo, quote or article, but this feature is a huge benefit to publishers.

As we mentioned earlier this summer, many popular publishers - including Newsweek, Huffington Post and The New Yorker - have flocked to Tumblr to share content in a new way. With this new attribution feature, they can rest assured that their content will be properly attributed as it is shared throughout the community.

This kind of publisher-friendly feature is likely a direct result of Tumblr's latest talent grab, Mark Coatney, formerly an editor at Newsweek. Coatney's new position is to serve as a liaison between Tumblr and media publications who want to leverage the platform, so it's likely Tumblr will continue to add features that will make publishers happy.

Discuss

First up at this week's Strategy Roundtable was Cheryl Yeoh presenting CityPockets, an online destination, and an app for managing daily deals across a wide range of sites. The daily deal and group buying market has really heated up, with numerous sites offering variations on the basic value proposition. But for Cheryl, the problem is that she needs critical mass.

I asked her not to assume that investors will be investing in this business idea, at least not until she can acquire some level of validation, which means tens, if not hundreds of thousands of customers, and several partnerships with daily deal sites.

Sponsor

Venture capitalists today don't exactly practice venture capital. Investors are investing in proven concepts - they call those "momentum investments." As a result, the expectation is that you have to figure out a way to get to some level of momentum on your own (by bootstrapping) or with small doses of angel money - "drip financing" so to speak. To be successful, you need to understand this basic philosophy, and work within its constraints.

Gnosis India

Next Anuj Mishra with Gnosis India presented an idea of doing highly technical workshops (CAD, Robotics) for students all around India, including rural India. I asked Anuj who would be teaching these workshops, and who would be paying for them. In today's India, people with high-end engineering skills are in high demand. They make a lot of money, and nothing in Anuj's business model convinced me that these people have any interest or incentive to go around teaching, especially in rural India. I asked him to abandon this idea and find a better one.

Solution for E-commerce Vendors

Last up was Manish Jha pitching his inventory management, fulfillment and customer service solution for e-commerce vendors, with which he has already built a $500,000 a year business. Manish wants to explore how to get to $2 to $3 million in a couple of years. I advised him to strike OEM partnerships with the e-commerce shopping cart vendors like Volusion, BigCommerce, etc. Such OEM deals may cost him 50% of his product revenue, but would be the fastest way to reach a large number of customers, nonetheless.

I started doing my free Online Strategy Roundtables for entrepreneurs in the fall of 2008. These roundtables are the cornerstone programming of a global initiative that I have started called One Million by One Million (1M/1M). Its mission is to help a million entrepreneurs globally to reach $1 million in revenue and beyond, build $1 trillion in sustainable global GDP, and create 10 million jobs. In 1M/1M, I teach the EJ Methodology which is based on my Entrepreneur Journeys research, and emphasize bootstrapping, idea validation, and crisp positioning as some of the core principles of building strong fundamentals in early stage ventures. In addition, we are offering entrepreneurs access to investors and customers through our recently launched our 1M/1M Incubation Radar series. You can pitch to be featured on my blog following these instructions. Recordings of previous roundtables are all available here. You can register for the next roundtable here.

In addition, we also have a Deal Radar series in which we profile entrepreneurs who have successfully reached $1M in revenue. Many investors monitor this series as a source of fundable businesses that have achieved a certain level of validation, and we encourage you to pitch [following these instructions] to be featured in the series as well. Some recently featured companies include Appssavvy, MobileIron, Mashery, Clickfree, BullionVault, 3dcart, BrightEdge, FootzyRolls, LendingClub, Blacksocks, Merkle.

The recording of this roundtable can be found here. Recordings of previous roundtables are all available here. You can register for the next roundtable here.

Sramana Mitra is a technology entrepreneur and strategy consultant in Silicon Valley. She has founded three companies, writes a business blog, Sramana Mitra on Strategy, and runs the 1M/1M initiative. She has a master's degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her Entrepreneur Journeys book series, Entrepreneur Journeys, Bootstrapping: Weapon Of Mass Reconstruction, Positioning: How To Test, Validate, and Bring Your Idea To Market Innovation: Need Of The Hour, as well as Vision India 2020, are all available from Amazon.

Photo by wax115

Discuss

First we had the Google vs China debacle, then came Saudi Arabia’s tussle with RIM. And now it’s India’s turn: threatening to block RIM, Google and Skype unless the companies agree to set up localised servers, all the better for state monitoring of communications.

Curiously, compared to the outrage levelled at the Saudi and Chinese governments, American reaction to India’s move has been pretty muted. Could it be that India is somehow perceived as “less evil” than the Muslim/Communist nations? Also: to what extent is India simply doing what every government – including the US government – tries to do: demanding the ability to monitor digital chatter in the hope of foiling criminal and terrorist plots? After all, if Big Brother can’t read your BBMs, haven’t the terrorists already won?

In this week’s episode of Why Is This News, we talk to Harvard Law professor Jon Zittrain, who explains the differences between governments who obey the rule of law, and those who don’t – and why Sarah’s right to criticize the government by email is totally protected, unless she should happen to email it to Paul.

Video below.