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There has been a lot of speculation recently about an impending update to iTunes. Version 8.0, among other things, is supposed to finally bring a recommendation engine to the digital media player application. While that's interesting from a music discovery perspective, it is even more interesting to consider what this could mean in terms of an iTunes+iPhone based social networking experience.

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/apple/The_Case_for_an_Apple_iNetwork_Welcome_to_the_Social';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'normal';iTunes (launched 2001) and the iTunes music store (launched 2003) have come a long way since they were first launched. The application has gone through various iterations, gaining significant features such as podcasts (2005), videos (2007), games, and applications (2008) along the way. In the process, selling billions of songs, millions of movies, and over 10 million applications in the first week of the app store's launch. Needless to say Apple has built an experience that with all it's parts combined is unparalleled in both its features and the breadth of its catalog of content.

The Software Side

While most of that is common knowledge, what most people overlook is the glaring lack of any community aspect to iTunes. There are millions of people, many of them with similar tastes, flocking to the same destination every day, yet they never interact with each other... because they can't. If Kevin Rose is to be believed, however, (as discussed on TWiT 157) that all is about to change with iTunes 8.0.

He says, '... the one thing I hear about iTunes 8.0 is that it's gonna do something along the lines of, um, looking at your music, and, uh, kind of recommendations based on certain things.' In other words, the next version of iTunes will monitor your media purchasing and consuming habits and correlate them with everyone else using the system to figure out which songs you will probably like but haven't bought/listened to. If you're a fan of collaborative filtering systems or internet radio (Pandora, Last.fm, etc), you're probably familiar with the idea already and that iTunes may be considering implementing this doesn't come as a surprise (I found myself wondering why this wasn't introduced 2-3 years ago).

While this feature itself isn't social and can be implemented entirely on the back end, the implementation required for that functionality is so close to a networked experience (monitoring of habits and correlation across users) that they might as well take a small next step and add a visible social layer with which those users can interact. In fact, if you look at the results from a 2006 iTunes survey, you will see the people want to be able to see what people with similar interests and tastes (i.e. friends) are purchasing and consuming, so they can experiment with and pick from the same selection. More specifically, consumers want:

1. The ability to view a friend's wish list, with permission.
2. The ability to view what a friend is currently listening to, with permission.
3. The ability to view a friend's playlist, with permission.
4. The ability to view a friend's recent purchases, with permission.
5. The ability to view a friend's favorite artists, with permission

What's also interesting about this approach is that it reaches the exact opposite conclusions of EMR's UK social networking study [PDF]. The study implies that social networks will be the content distribution channels of tomorrow, but the relationship may actually work better in the other direction. With the addition of networking and recommendation features to iTunes, the application could become the most efficient, most engaging, stickiest (always-on), and most profitable social network almost overnight.

But Apple's social networking potential doesn't end there. Remember Microsoft's 'welcome to the social' campaign that centered around the launch of its Zune digital media player? If you don't, you're not alone. The goal behind the campaign, 'to create a shared, social experience that will be shaped by the collective imagination of consumers and will inspire discovery of new music and artists,' was actually a formidable one. Unfortunately an inferior device, coupled with disasterous software integration made the campaign a $100 million failure.

Enter Apple.

The Hardware Side

With a formidable install base, great hardware and one of the most versatile mobile operating systems around, the iPhone is ready to herald in the future of mobile social networking. Furthermore, with 3G/EDGE/WiFi/GPS capabilities, the iPhone is a great tool for both networking as well as wirelessly sharing digital media like the Zune promised (but failed miserably at). Not only does the device work seamlessly with the iTunes software, but Apple's DRM is more consistent and perhaps more forgiving that Microsoft's (which was partly responsible for crippling the Zune's ambitions).

The Cloud

With a firm grasp on the software side with iTunes and on the hardware side with the iPhone, Apple is in good shape. Their killer app, however, could end up being the cloud. Apple already operates MobileMe (previously .Mac) which faciliates the management of contacts, calendars (events), email, photos, and any other files or digital media. Admittedly the service has been an utter failure since launch, but Apple has acknowledge the failure and is on the path to fix its shortcomings.

The previously discussed iTunes social networking and collaborative filtering (recommendations) system, coupled with the iPhone's versatile wireless communication and media sharing capabilities, topped off with media and information management (and sharing) in the cloud, the combo is no doubt ready to be our digital life (and relationship) manager. The only limitation of the network, however, (and it will be a deal breaker for many) is that unlike every other social network today, the experience will come at a steep cost. Knowing Apple though, I have no doubt it will be an experience worth the cost (especially considering what they had to deal with at the MobileMe launch).

This is a guest post by Muhammad Saleem, a social media consultant and a top-ranked community member on multiple social news sites. You can follow Muhammad on Twitter.

Finally, a judge who may have actually visited the Internet once or twice before deciding a case. Judge Howard Lloyd, a judge on the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, threw out adult entertainment company IO Group’s 2006 copyright infringement case against Veoh today. At the time Veoh had some user-uploaded porn on its service that belonged to IO Group. Despite quick takedowns from DMCA notices, IO Group sued anyway.

A key issue of the case turned on whether or not Veoh should lose DMCA safe harbor protection because they transcoded user uploaded videos to the Flash format, something every online Flash video site does as a matter of course.

IO Group argued that the transcoding made Veoh a direct infringer and that the materials were under their direct control. Lloyd disagreed, saying “Here, Veoh has simply established a system whereby software automatically processes user-submitted content and recasts it in a format that is readily accessible to its users. Veoh preselects the software parameters for the process from a range of default values set by the thirdparty software…ButVeoh does not itself actively participate or supervise the uploading of files. Nor does it preview or select the files before the upload is completed. Instead, video files are uploaded through an automated process which is initiated entirely at the volition of Veoh’s users.”

In other words, nice try but no dice.

Viacom-YouTube and a host of other Internet video related lawsuits continue to rage on, but the good guys won this one. But those of you thinking you’ll find a little adult content on Veoh now that they’ve won the case will be dissapointed. Veoh banned it permanently back in 2006. This case was about nothing but money.

The full order is included below.

Veoh v IO Group - Free Legal Forms

CrunchBase Information Veoh Information provided by CrunchBase

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The business card needs to die, and everyone knows it. They’re clumsy, easy to lose, and virtually useless unless you take the time to enter them into your computer’s address book (they kill trees, too). The cell phone market could easily put business cards out of their misery, but instead of conforming to a single standard for contact exchange, handset manufacturers offer proprietary solutions or none at all.

FriendBook, an iPhone application from Tapulous, looked like it might hold the answer. The app uses a physical “handshake” to swap information - users simply put their iPhones next to each other and shake them. Granted, this would only work on iPhones, but it could have paved the way for similar apps on other phones. But as of yesterday the fate of FriendBook is now in jeopardy due to the departure of its lead developer (and Tapulous cofounder) Mike Lee. So is all hope lost?

Gabe Zichermann, CEO of rmbrME (”remember me”), thinks that his startup holds the answer. The service uses standard SMS or a web app to initiate the transfer of contact information, so it should work on nearly any phone. rmbrME initially launched last spring under a paid model (you’d have to pay around 50 cents every time you wanted to add a new contact). But because of an immediate poor response to the model, rmbrME is now free, though it plans to offer a premium service in the future.

To begin using the rmbrME, you first set up a profile including your standard contact information as well as links to your presence across various social networks. After meeting a potential new contact, you send a text message containing either the contact’s email address or phone number to a designated rmbrME shortcode. rmbrME then sends your new contact a SMS or email message with a link to your details, and asks them to create their own profile so that you can receive theirs.

Zichermann says it only takes about 3 seconds to initiate the process - just send your contact’s email to rmbrME, and you can complete the rest later. That may be the case, but each user still needs to create an account, logon to the site, and download the contact information from there. People may be willing to jump through a few hoops for essential contacts, but the process is still too involved, especially when meeting a large number of people at once. rmbrME is a step up from the antiquated business card, but at this point it isn’t the ultimate solution.

So what is the answer? Handset manufacturers need to agree on a format for proximity-based exchange over the air between devices - whip out the phones, detect nearby acquaintances, and hit accept. Palm was doing this a decade ago (albeit with a proprietary format), yet we’re still fumbling with Email exchanges and workaround solutions.

CrunchBase Information rmbrME Information provided by CrunchBase

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It’s about time. Last Spring, Nintendo launched WiiWare, a downloadable game service on the Wii, but I haven’t been all that impressed by the scant titles they’ve made available since then. This week’s offering is different: Helix, from indie developer Ghostfire Games. In my view it’s the first WiiWare title to truly capitalize on the game console’s unique functionality and diverse audience. More crucial, it’s WiiWare’s first music/rhythm game, an entry in the seemingly unstoppable genre which accounts for 32 percent of the industry’s growth so far this year.

Plus, it’s pretty freaking fun.

Think Dance Dance Revolution, but for the upper body. Holding two Wii remotes in either hand, you imitate an on-screen robot in a fast routine of arm swinging, swaying, and waving your hands in the air like you just don’t care. As with DDR and all the many games it’s spawned, you need to time your movements to synch up with the glowing symbols that fly across the screen.

All this is accompanied by fairly decent electronica dance music, though Helix is too frenetic and choppy to feel like dancing. Still, it’s a good workout. For the Wii’s future outlook, that’s another important plus — it’ll easily appeal to the 6 million+ who bought WiiFit, and prime them to look for more downloadable content on WiiWare.

Image credit: www.ghostfiregames.com

BackType is the newest YCombinator startup to launch from their summer program. They’re a blog-comment focused startup - founders Christoper Golda and Michael Montano are for the first time aggregating all comments from millions of blogs into a single, searchable, parsable stream. Think Twitter for all comments on the web.

They are not like the recent barrage of startups focusing on cleaning up the comment experience on blogs - see Disqus, SezWho, JS-Kit, etc. Blogs (and even commenters) don’t have to actively participate to be included. Instead BackType is grabbing all comments from millions of blogs (via feeds and scraping) and adding them to the site.

Like Twitter it’s a gold mine of information. I tried searches for TechCrunch50, Obama and Olympics and got back all kinds of content that I would normally miss. RSS feeds for searches are also available.

You can also track by commenter. BackType aggregates comments made by a name that matches to a linked URL. So if you, like most people, leave comments with the same URL across multiple blogs, they will be aggregated. You can also claim an account, like i did, and have your comments aggregated even if you use different URLs. Since there is not authentication other than what people type into comment boxes, there’s a big fake comment problem. That can be fixed by turning moderation on so that you have to approve anything that goes under your name.

I like this one a lot.

CrunchBase Information BackType Y Combinator Information provided by CrunchBase

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FriendFeed, the social activity aggregator, has released a set of customizable widgets that will allow bloggers to make sure their readers can follow all of their activities across the web. While the site has provided some widgets in the past, this set includes some new widgets to facilitate story sharing and allows for more tweaking than was offered before.

Among the widgets offered are a new profile badge, a list of the most recent items in your feed, and a “Share on FriendFeed” chiclet that allows users to add an item to FriendFeed without leaving your site. You can grab the widgets here.

Here’s an example of the badge:

The new status widget:

The new features come only two days after FriendFeed rolled out support for photos and Friends List which have enabled the “Fake Follow“.

For more details, check out the FriendFeed blog.

CrunchBase Information FriendFeed Information provided by CrunchBase

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Mark Cuban will be joining the TechCrunch50 program on Tuesday, September 9 for a one-on-one interview with Jason Calacanis from the main stage. You probably know Mark as both the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and a serial entrepreneur who co-founded Broadcast.com with Todd Wagner. They then sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo in July of 1999 for $5.04 billion. Before Broadcast.com, Mark co-founded MicroSolutions, a leading National Systems Integrator, in 1983, and later sold it to CompuServe.

Mark has continued his work with Todd Wagner in another venture, 2929 Entertainment, which provides vertically integrated production and distribution of films and video. Additionally, Mark is a co-founder (with Philip Garvin) of HDNet, the first high-definition satellite television network.

Even with all of his entrepreneurial, sports and corporate experience, Mark recently found time to participate as one of the 12 contestants on the 5th season of the ABC Show Dancing with the Stars. Mark and his partner, Kym Johnson, were the fifth couple to be voted off of the show after welterweight boxing champion Floyd Mayweather and professional partner Karina Smirnoff.

You will not want to miss this live interview with Mark Cuban from TechCrunch50. Stay tuned for additional content updates – as we have a number of surprises yet to announce.

TechCrunch50 is right around the corner. Please register for your tickets before we sell out!! You will not believe what we have planned for you this year (September 8, 9 and 10).

As we move closer to the conference, we are encouraging everyone to book their hotel reservations (many hotels are already sold out) and register for the conference before we sell out. For companies seeking to launch and showcase products at TechCrunch50, please take a look at our Exhibitor Package. If you have questions about sponsorships, please reach out to Heather Harde or Dan Kimerling. All media inquiries should be sent to Sarah Ross.

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Last week, Dell’s PR team was busy emailing us about a joint announcement they were going to make in tandem with Facebook. They were going to announce a partnership, they said,

…around the next generation of Cloud Computing. In addition to the joint announcement, the companies will also be discussing their perspectives, insights and future plans surrounding the Cloud Computing space.

Since it conflicted with some of my other commitments, I couldn’t go. I am actually glad I didn’t go, for it turned to be much ado about nothing. According to a post on the WSJ’s blog, the only piece of news that came out of the event held at the top of a posh office tower in San Francisco was that Facebook has 10,000 servers — and not all are made by Dell. Dan Farber has a more elaborate report but essentially it says the same, except it also has Dell re-hashing the news that Dell is now working with Salesforce.com, replacing Sun. Facebook’s Jonathan Heiliger, according to the WSJ, said the company was:

… tired of all the high-cost features companies pack into servers – on a slide, he pointed to extra USB ports and unnecessary graphics capabilities as examples. Most server makers are selling what, in automobile terms, would be the equivalent of a Lexus “at a Toyota price,” he said. What Facebook wants “is the Scion product at the Scion price.” He said Dell seems to be ahead of other server makers in selling inexpensive servers that reduce power and cooling requirement.

So essentially Dell is offering stripped-down, cheaper computers that may be consuming less power! Dan Apparently the company has been doing that for a long time, as per their founder. So how this redefines cloud computing, I don’t understand. What it seems like is an attempt by Dell to add some Facebook pixie dust and finish it all up with the latest, hottest lipstick shade, called “cloud computing.” I gotta be honest, a certain impromptu toga party definetely had more news value.

Want to know more about the rapidly changing Cloud Computing landscape? Preview our Cloud Computing Briefing or purchase the full version.

Put this in the category of “you gotta be kidding me.” Microsoft has applied for and received a patent (U.S. Patent #7,415,666) that essentially patents “Page Up/Page Down” functionality. The patent (Timothy D Sellers, Heather L. Grantham, Joshua A. Dersch) that was filed in March 2005 is yet another proof that our patent system is as (if not more) dysfunctional as Britney Spears.

Method and system for navigating paginated content in page-based increments

A method and system in a document viewer for scrolling a substantially exact increment in a document, such as one page, regardless of whether the zoom is such that some, all or one page is currently being viewed. In one implementation, pressing a Page Down or Page Up keyboard key/button allows a user to begin at any starting vertical location within a page, and navigate to that same location on the next or previous page.

For example, if a user is viewing a page starting in a viewing area from the middle of that page and ending at the bottom, a Page Down command will cause the next page to be shown in the viewing area starting at the middle of the next page and ending at the bottom of the next page. Similar behavior occurs when there is more than one column of pages being displayed in a row.

The mass exodus of both execs and rank and file employees at Yahoo continues. In fact the real defections may just be getting started at a high percentage of employees vest on lucrative restricted stock units this month.

Yahoo’s head of communications Jill Nash continues to try to keep the resignations as quiet as possible, and suggests informally to press that most of the high level departures are really just a cleaning house procedure.

What a housecleaning.

Two more SVPs are bailing out. Previously reported was Todd Teresi (pictured left), SVP of Network Business. Teresi is now the Chief Revenue Officer at Quantcast.

Now we’ve heard that the number 2 exec at Yahoo Mobile, ten year Yahoo’er Steve Boom (pictured right), has resigned as well. Boom started in Yahoo’s London office in a business development role. More recently he oversaw Yahoo’s broadband partnerships with AT&T, Rogers, BT and Verizon.

CrunchBase Information Yahoo! Todd Teresi Steve Boom Information provided by CrunchBase

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RSS is the backbone for most things Web 2.0 but these days, it's not always fast enough. Politeness limits ping times to every 15 minutes at best in most cases, string a couple of applications together and information will sometimes not arrive where you're waiting for it for up to an hour.

A number of people are trying to speed up the feeds but today sees the first public mention of a new effort lead by the guys at popular lifestreaming service FriendFeed. FriendFeed is working on an open source add-on to RSS and Atom that will make it easier to discover when a feed has been updated. This could be a big deal.

What it Is

The FriendFeed crew is working on something called a Simple Update Protocol. It was first reported on by venture publication The Deal and subsequently by Venture Beat, leading us to believe the PR push is an effort to for the company to raise some more money.

In response to our questions, FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit told us the following:

• RWW: How will it work?

  Buchheit: SUP is just a very simple extension to RSS and Atom that makes it easier to discover when a feed has been updated.



• RWW: Where is this relative to XMPP?

  Buchheit: It's unrelated to XMPP.



• RWW: Gnip? (See our coverage of Gnip, a startup that appears to be aiming to do what SUP will do and more.)

  Buchheit: We're talking with several companies about supporting SUP, but aren't ready to announce anything.



• RWW: Open source?

  Buchheit: Yes, absolutely Open Source.

Not a whole lot of information is available about SUP, but we hope the above helps. We're real excited to see what FriendFeed has under its hat. The company has done more interesting things with popular use of RSS than anyone else has in awhile.

The Simple Update Protocol is due to be released next month. We look forward to checking it out. Soggy feeds put a damper on our day far too often.

Interested in FriendFeed? Take a tour of the RWW writers' activities on the site here. See also our months-old podcast interview with the founders of FriendFeed, still one of the best sources of in depth information available about this important service.

When it comes to the availability of good mapping data, not all parts of the world are created equal. That’s why Google is taking a wiki approach to filling out the white spaces on its maps, particularly in developing nations. Back in June, it launched Map Maker for a small group of island nations where there isn’t great existing cartography data. But now it’s added India to the countries that can modified on Google Maps. As Google gains more experience with this experiment, more countries may be added in the future. Although it is starting in regions that have poor map data, hopefully it will figure out a way to add this capability for every region of the world. (Even in the U.S., which is not yet editable in this fashion, Google Maps is not perfect).

Map Maker lets anyone add or edit roads, points of interests, and other features on Google Maps. You can mark tourist destinations (like the Taj Mahal), restaurants, factories, helipads, even shrubbery. There is a drop-down list of dozens of feature types to choose from for consistent tagging and easy searchability. Map Maker also lets you define particular regions and neighborhoods by drawing or tracing them using the satellite imagery as your guide. Unlike Google My Maps, any changes to Map Maker are automatically added to Google Maps for everyone to see (although Google reserves the right to moderate contributions).

Here is a video from Google India explaining the service and a list of the 57 countries that can now be edited in Map Maker (image below) .

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For most companies, having to deal with one piece of bad publicity in a day is already bad enough. Apple, however, has to deal with three pieces of bad publicity today. In England, the Advertising Standards Authority, moved to ban one of Apple's ads for the iPhone because of misleading statements in it. Also, an embarrassing security hole in the iPhone firmware lets anybody bypass your security code, and Apple's move to ban a violent comic book from the App Store has also set off a minor firestorm of protests.

iPhone Ad Banned

Apparently, two British TV viewers were unhappy about the fact that one Apple TV ad for the iPhone stated that the phone would give you access to the whole Internet. However, because the phone does not support Flash or Java, these folks argued that this is a misleading statement and the Advertising Standards Authority  agreed.

Security Hole

The gaping security hole in Apple's firmware for both the iPhone and iPod touch is maybe the most embarrassing of these three stories for Apple, especially because the problem was already known and fixed back in the days of the first iPhone.

If you lock your phone with a security code, anybody can bypass that code by hitting the 'Emergency Call' button and then double tapping your home button (if it is still set to display your favorites, which is the default behavior). After that, you have full access to the contact list, email, web etc.

If you want to protect your self from this, just set the home button to do anything but display your favorites (Settings -> General -> Home Button.)

Comic Book Controversy

As if all of this weren't enough, Apple itself created some more controversy after it moved to ban the violent comic book Murderdrome (which is based on the ComicReader app) from its App Store. As Apple's SDK states, the apps are not to offend anybody and Apple itself is the sole arbiter of offensiveness, so the company was in its right to ban this book, which, after all, features a good number of beheadings and ripped out limbs, which might make some users feel a bit queasy about the comic.

Apple's SDK states:

"Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple's reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users."

On the other hand, this is a comic book and, while a bit over the top, it doesn't feature anything that other comic books haven't shown before.

For developers, this once again shows the dangers of working within Apple's closed of iPhone ecology, where Apple has the final say over what gets included and what doesn't, with no place but the Internet to complain about it.

So What Does Apple Do?

In typical Apple fashion, the company has not made any statement about any of these issues yet - and is likely not to do so anytime soon. That, for better or worse, is the way Apple operates. At the same time, though, the disastrous launch of MobileMe forced Apple to issue repeated notices about the status of the service. Maybe (and just maybe) this current firestorm of problems might just force the company to open up a bit more, though we don't expect Steve Jobs to start blogging about iPhone apps anytime soon.

The Active Network, a network of sites focused on getting people involved in sports and other activities, has raised an additional $80 million in a Series F round led by ESPN and joined by Canaan Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, and Performance Equity Partners.

The round brings San Diego-based company’s total to over $275 million since its founding in 1998 as a registration site for endurance races (we’re still tracking down all the rounds for CrunchBase).

While its main property, Active.com, delivers the bulk of its traffic with 17 million registered users and almost 1.3 million uniques per month (according to internal stats), network properties also include Eteamz, LaxPower, and CoolRunning.

We’re told that The Active Network’s total revenue in 2007 exceeded $102 million. Since the beginning of 2007, the company has made 11 acquisitions intended to help it branch out into new markets such as camping and education.

This is not the first time ESPN has invested in The Active Network, which focuses on the participatory side of sports rather than the spectator side. In 2006, ESPN invested more than $20 million in an attempt to diversify its business away from news and editorial. As part of its relationship with The Active Network, ESPN runs advertising campaigns and places its logo on the network’s sites.

The Active Network makes most of its money through transaction fees for event registrations. The network facilitated over 10 million transactions in 2007 alone.

CrunchBase Information The Active Network ESPN Information provided by CrunchBase

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So we return to the Palm Treo Pro, a $549 unlocked Windows Mobile Treo aimed squarely at the business set. It’s been about a week and I’ve used this guy off and on. It kept a nice charge - two days, for the most part, without much data use - and fit nicely in the pocket. But is it the Treo of which we all incessantly dream? Is it the Treo that will bring us closer to world peace and better burritos on the East Coast? Is this the Treo for you?

Yes, it is the Treo for you if you are a business professional forced to use Windows Mobile and you travel quite a bit and hardware price is no object. This is also the Treo for you if you’re buying a few cellphones for the CEO and the CFO and you want them to be productive without having to change your Windows-based IT and communications infrastructure. If you are neither of those people, think of the Treo Pro as a vision of Palm’s future.

The Treo Pro is one of Palm’s most attractive Treos to date. Gone is the lumpen plastic of the Centro and the low-gloss ho-hummery of the 800w. Whereas the Centro and the 800w took design cues from the lower end of the market, Treo tapped HTC to design this new looker and for good reason. The RIM, in a general, sense, was eating their enterprise lunch and the Centro was doing just fine.

So we have the Treo Pro. As its name implies, this isn’t for amateurs. Because it’s unlocked and unsubsidized you’d better have a damn good reason for going Windows Mobile. This could mean IT departments buying in bulk for their executives or a mobile professional who wants a messaging phone but still likes ActiveSync. Europe loves them some Windows Mobile, so their unlocked model is a good move. The US market, sadly, looks at expensive phones and then looks elsewhere. The Blackberry Curve didn’t get where it is on its good looks.

Read more…

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

As many of our readers have noticed (and noted) already, we rolled out a new design for TechCrunch yesterday evening.

We’ve been watching as the initial feedback has rolled in through Twitter and in the comments to our other posts. And while we’re still making lots of small changes, we wanted to take a second to write a proper post explaining our intentions and soliciting your feedback.

Our overarching goal was to clean things up, both on the surface and under the hood. TechCrunch had become bloated in many ways, with the homepage taking way too long to load and the scroll bar going on forever and ever.

So the first step entailed switching over to an “excerpt” format with which readers could get a taste of our posts on the homepage before diving in to read them in full. By cutting down on the amount of content on the homepage, we’ve reduced load times and made it easier to skim our headlines for the news and editorial you care about most.

We’ve also taken a minimalist approach to design that uses lots of whitespace and gives priority to our main content with a wider post width and a larger font size (no more squinting on that high resolution monitor).

As far as particular features go, a new “featured posts” box sits adjacent to the second post on the homepage and in the sidebar of every single post page. It’s intended to highlight some of the content you might otherwise overlook, with a tab for the most recent posts and another for those that garnered the most comments in the past few days. We’ve also started to measure the traffic to our individual posts more closely and will add a tab with the most popular posts as well.

So what’s next? We plan to roll this design - with minor customizations - across most of the other blogs within the TechCrunch Network (CrunchGear, MobileCrunch, TechCrunch UK, etc). We’re also going to launch a new search implementation using Yahoo BOSS Custom that lets you search by keyword across our entire network of blogs, plus CrunchBase.

But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let us know what you think in the comments below.

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Today the organization behind the popular Xen open-source hypervisor announced the latest release of its virtualization software. It’s smaller, has better power management and graphics capabilities, and can run on machines ranging from servers to laptops and mobile phones.

Also, Nortel announced today a product it calls an “office-on-a-stick.” I would call it a virtualized desktop. Nortel joins companies large and small pushing products that can replicate your computer and information anywhere on computers, thin clients and even cell phones. Desktop virtualization competitors MokaFive, Citrix, VMware, Microsoft, Desktone and Pano Logic are trying to grow the market as well.

Participating in a call related to the semiconductor industry earlier this week, I heard from one of the analyst participants that thin-client sales were on the upswing as management focused on power savings, security and manageability. A virtualized desktop can be delivered via a USB drive, a thin client, and on hypervisor-equipped laptops. The benefit of virtualization to most companies is that mobile users can take USB drives, thin-clients or laptops and recreate the corporate compute environment in a secure and controlled setting. This takes a lot of the expense out of managing hundreds or thousands of desktops.

There are several ways to virtualize desktops. In the old thin-client model of computing, the client was connected to a server though the corporate LAN, making it a good choice for some companies worried about security, but less compelling for widespread use. Then products that allowed clients or computers to connect to virtualized computing environments located on a central server emerged. But Ian Pratt, founder of Xen.org, points out that as hypervisors start to ship on laptops and other devices (Samsung is putting a hypervisor on ARM processors for some of its smart phones) a form of two-way virtualization and syncing can occur that’s far more secure and flexible.

As virtualized servers have been gathered into computing clouds, hooking some kind of virtual desktop to that cloud has become easier to implement and manage, making desktop virtualization more interesting for corporate buyers. That was a reason Microsoft found startup Kidaro interesting enough to acquire in March and is also the value proposition behind MokaFive. The next few years could see some real changes in corporate computing.

For a lot of college students, the new semester is just around the corner. Last year, we created a long list of great Web 2.0 tools that we thought would be helpful for college students, but given how fast things develop on the web, we thought we would revisit this topic again this year and look at some of the most useful Web 2.0 tools that have the potential to help students do better in school, collaborate with their fellow students, and save them time.

Taking Notes 1) Evernote

Evernote is a great note taking application, but that only scratches the surface of what it can do. If you are in a lecture, for example, you can also take a picture of the blackboard with your phone, upload it to the Evernote server, and thanks to Evernote's clever OCR algorithms, even pictures of handwritten notes become instantly searchable.

You can also use it to bookmark web pages and write down your own lecture notes. Best of all, you can use a web app, a Windows or Mac desktop app, or a Windows Mobile and iPhone app, all of which seamlessly synch with each other, so that your notes are always up to date.

2) Google Notebook

The Google Notebook is one of Google's lesser know products, but, thanks to a very well designed Firefox extension, it's a great tool for when you do most of your work in a browser already. If you do some of your research in Google Books and Google Scholar, you can also easily clip excerpts from books and articles into your Google Notebook.

One additional nice feature is that you can invite collaborators to work on a notebook with you. If you are doing a research project in a group, for example, you can easily share your research with your whole group.

Online Office Suites 3) Google and 4) Zoho

Word processors, spreadsheets, and presentation apps are probably the single most often used tool among college students, and while none of the online offerings can yet beat Microsoft Office (which, for students, now only costs around $60 for the Ultimate Edition), the online office suites from Google and Zoho do have some distinct advantages. Office obviously has a lot more features, but not only are both Google Apps and Zoho free, they also allow easier sharing of documents and working on projects collaboratively.

And while the online tools to create presentations are still a bit crude compared to Powerpoint or Keynote, they are both worthy contenders, especially if you don't feel the need to add lots of fancy transitions to your presentations.

If we had to choose between Google's and Zoho's offering, our vote would probably go to Google, as the Google apps have a slightly more organized and professional feel to them, which, in the end, is going to make it easier to focus on the content of your documents.

Bibliography 5) Zotero

The standard tool for doing extensive bibliographies in academia is Endnote. While that is a great tool if you are writing a dissertation, Zotero is a great choice for less extensive research projects - and it's free. Zotero is a Firefox extension, so it is not technically a web app, but in its next version, the developers are promising the ability to synch your bibliographies to a web version of the tool, so that your books and notes will become available everywhere.

For now, Zotero lives in the status bar of Firefox, and it pops up a little icon in your URL bar every time it recognizes a compatible website. Zotero already supports the databases of a huge amount of libraries worldwide, as well as a lot of standard academic databases such as JSTOR, LexisNexis, InfoTrac, PubMed, or ScienceDirect. Besides curating your citations, you can also add notes, tag items, or add attachments (like pdf files of articles). Once you are done, Zotero will create a bibliography for you in most standard formats, including APA, MLA, or Chicago style.

6) EasyBib

If you just need to create a short bibliography, Zotero might be more than you need. EasyBib will just help you to quickly create a bibliography entry in MLA format - a favorite among literature teachers. It can also handle the APA format, but you will have to subscribe to the pro version of EasyBib.

If you really hate figuring out where to put a comma and where to put a semicolon in your APA style bibliography entries, those $7.99 a year for the pro version might just turn out to be a bargain.

Also, if you only need a quick bibliography entry for a book, check out OttoBib, where you just have to enter the ISBN number and it will give you a fully formatted citation.

Staying Organized 7) Google Calendar

There are lots of great online calendars out there, including 30 Boxes and Yahoo's calendar app, but our favorite is the Google Calendar, simply because it is dead easy to use, integrates nicely with GMail, allows for importing and exporting your calendar, and lets you publish a site with your free/busy information with the click of a button, so that your friends know not to bother you while you are cramming for that test.

8) Remember the Milk

Remember the Milk might just be the tool that will keep you on track. And to make things even easier, Remember the Milk also integrates nicely with Google Calendar, so you can manage everything in one place.

Picking the Right Class 9) Rate My Professors

As much as teachers don't like sites like these, Professor Performance and Rate my Professors can be useful tools when you decide which class you want to take. While almost every university makes you rate your professor at the end of the semester, schools never make this data public, so whenever you get a choice between professors, you really have no idea who the better teacher is. We like Rate My Professors a bit more than Professor Performance, simply because its search is a lot easier and the site is a bit more up-to-date. The site now also features a Facebook application.

Keeping in Touch 10) Meebo

As much as your teachers would like to think so, college isn't just about classes, papers, and long ours in the library. If you want to stay in touch with your friends no matter what computer you are on, Meebo is a great universal IM client that lives on the web. It supports, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Jabber, and Google Talk, as well as Meebo's own IM architecture.

What are we missing?

Are there other tools you use in school that we missed here? Let us know in the comments.

Flickr image by laffz4k.

Cisco is getting into the Web e-mail game with a $215 million purchase of five-year-old PostPath. PostWho? The company sells a Linux-based e-mail service to enterprises somewhat like Zimbra (which Yahoo bought for $350 million last year). PostPath is a fully functional in-browser Ajax client, and on the back-end it is trying to take on Microsoft Exchange.
The software also works on mobile phones, including the iPhone. Cisco will add PostPath’s functionality to its WebEx collaboration service (it bought WebEx for $3.2 billion last year).

Not a bad outcome for a company whose software development team is based in Bulgaria. PostPath previously raised a total of $30 million. Its most recent round was a $15 million series C in January, 2007. Investors included JAFCO Ventures, Matrix Partners and Worldview Technology Partners.

As software moves to the cloud, Cisco wants to capture some of the higher margins that go along with that, as opossed to simply pushing boxes that quickly decline in value. Many of us already rely exclusively on Web-based email, but corporations are only now making the shift.

CrunchBase Information PostPath Cisco Zimbra Information provided by CrunchBase

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Have you turned up your nose at YouTube for being born from low quality, financially unsustainable, pirated content? If you've made that argument in conversation before (and we now many people do) - new claims from YouTube itself now indicate that you'd be wrong.

The official Google Blog made a post this morning following up on a New York Times story last week where the company claimed that 90% of the owners of copyrighted content are now advertising against pirated video they own when they find it using YouTube's new content ID technology. The news upends many long held beliefs about the site.

Argument: Content ID is Next to Impossible

Many have argued that YouTube wasn't capable of finding all the pirated content uploaded to its site - that it's been an arms race pitting human monitors and shoddy ID technology against a sea of users uploading content. Video maverick Mark Cuban has argued that YouTube's claim it can't identify content was refuted by the fact that it manages to keep porn off the site and thus that the company couldn't plead ignorance about copyright either.

Right: We don't know if there's some direct financial overlap between Katy Perry's publishers and the ringtone site advertising on this video of hers, but at 600K views we're pretty sure the video's rights holders have seen it and chosen to let it remain on the site. Is that "what good girls do?"

Now it appears that YouTube's newest content ID technology is doing quite a good job of finding copyrighted content. That alone is a game changer.

Arguement: Media Companies Don't Want Low Quality Versions of Their Content on 3rd Party Sites

It's also been argued that many media companies are unwilling to have their content appear online in any form other than high quality files on their own webistes. That way they can maximize ad revenue and protect their brands. YouTube's claim that 90% of content owners who find their work on YouTube are running ads on the site instead of demanding it be removed indicates a sea change in big copyright holder attitudes.

Scarcity is no longer a tenable strategy in a world of digital content and file quality is clearly not as important to consumers as many content producers believed it would be. Imagine what the web would be like if music producers took a similar strategy with mp3 files on other sites. Those same parties are undoubtedly among the participants in YouTube's new program, using the ID technology to find songs being used along with user created video. Unfortunately, the music industry may be too greedy to support this same kind of model throughout a whole ecosystem of websites. Witness the plight of Pandora, a wildly popular service that's trying to play by the rules.

Arguement: YouTube Wouldn't Be What it Is Without Pirated Content

One of the most commonly made critiques of YouTube is that it was only able to ramp up fast because it caught copyright holders by surprise; that it was born of illigitimate uploads of pirated TV shows and movie clips.

The latest turn of events leads us to wonder whether this question was turned around the wrong way. Couldn't we just as well assert that YouTube was lucky to survive before a time when copyright holders understood that they had options with content that they owned rights to on the site? Had copyright holders come down hard and fast in the earliest days, as they did in later months surrounding the Google acquisition, then YouTube wouldn't still be pushing the envelope and opening new doors for distribution and monetization today.

There's a world of possibilities beyond even what's being done today by the most open minded copyright owners. The Times article mentions Electronic Arts, for example, who encourages users to upload Spore related content and then uses YouTube's ID technology to find it and highlight the best stuff. Any number of other campaigns have tried to get people to use a common tag in their metadata or upload through a dedicated portal powered by the YouTube API. YouTube is a chaotic place, though - companies may get the greatest connection with their fans by letting those fans upload how they like and using YouTube's ID tech to find them afterword.

This is Big

This isn't just about copyright and advertising, this is about a new paradigm that big copyright holders may be catching up with. From video to user data, it's not about scarcity and silos anymore. It's about keeping your users and fans through better service and compelling value-ads. Let's hope this YouTube experience is more than just a flash in the pan and that the industry is genuinely moving in this direction.