1. Little World Gifts to bring virtual gifts to the iPhone just in time for Christmas  permalink

Little World Gifts to bring virtual gifts to the iPhone just in time for Christmas
Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch Europe

[UK] Liverpool-based Little World Gifts wants to re-define virtual gifts. Only the company doesn't want us to use that word, instead preferring the term 'digital gifts' -- these aren't the typical tiny 2D icons that are gifted on sites like Facebook, they're 3D, touch-friendly and yes, you've guessed it, they run on the iPhone. Little World ...

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Electronista
Little World Gifts to bring virtual gifts to the iPhone just in time for Christmas BlackBerry Curve holds off iPhone 3GS for top spot   —  The BlackBerry Curve line fended off the iPhone 3GS to claim the title of top-selling phone in the US, the NPD Group said this week. Without providing numbers, the analysts noted that RIM's basic QWERTY phone still outsold the high-end iPhone during the summer. The iPhone 3G reached third place and reflected its relatively low price....

Brian X. Chen / Wired
Little World Gifts to bring virtual gifts to the iPhone just in time for Christmas IPhone Owners More Likely to Pony Up for Digital Content   —  Apple has trained iPhone owners to enjoy paying for digital content more than the general online population, a survey suggests. digg_url = ' '; Media law firm Olswang on Wednesday published its 2009 Convergence Survey, which analyzed e-shopping trends among iPhone ...

2. Google Profiles Turn Into OpenIDs  permalink

Google Profiles Turn Into OpenIDs
MG Siegler / TechCrunch

As part of its push to go more social, Google has been attempting to unify its various account profiles into one Google Profile. And now it's more useful. Google's Brad Fitzpatrick has just tweeted out that Google Profiles can now be used as OpenIDs. What this means is that you can sign into any site that accepts OpenID simply by using your ...

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Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped
The Future Has No Log In Button Check the Redesigned Google Yourself   —  When you paste the following into the address bar of your browser when on google.com and hit return, you should find yourself as new participant of Google's latest and more all-encompassing prototype test -- the one with a new logo, buttons, and always-visible left-hand pane in results. Please note I needed to sign out first for this to work. ...

Lawrence Chang / Google Mobile Blog
The Future Has No Log In Button Get movie trailers and more with Google Search for mobile   —  Heads up, movie fans -- today we've launched a mobile version of our new Google Search results for movies , which makes it easier to plan a trip to the movies. Just go to google.com in the web browser on your iPhone, Palm WebOS, or Android-powered device, search for "movies", and then tap on the "More movies" link. From there, you can either ...

3. What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?  permalink

What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch

Today is Thanksgiving in the U.S. Traditionally we take stock of the things that we're thankful for on this day each year. And I realized that one of those things is Steve Jobs . I'm thankful that he returned to Apple in 1997 and did the things he has done since. It wasn't at all a certainty that he would ever return to the company that he ...

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Joe Wilcox / Betanews
What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997? Nearly half the money spent at US retail on desktop PCs goes to Apple   —  By Joe Wilcox , Betanews In October, Mac US retail desktop computer revenue share was 47.71, percent up from 33.44 percent a year earlier, according to NPD. It's a stunning number, given just how many Windows PC companies combined command so much more market share, while competing for the same revenue share. NPD measures in-store and online ...

Scott M. Fulton / Betanews
What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997? Microsoft 'worked with Apple' for Silverlight on iPhone, says Goldfarb   —  By Scott M. Fulton, III , Betanews It was an impressive demonstration, once they got it working: H.264 video streaming wirelessly (and slowly, at least during the caching sequence) using Microsoft's Silverlight video streaming, to an Apple iPhone. It's all the more impressive when you realize that Flash video still has not made its way ( ...

4. Smartbook Says Bloggers Can’t Use The Word Smartbook Anymore. Smartbook.  permalink

Smartbook Says Bloggers Can’t Use The Word Smartbook Anymore. Smartbook.
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch

For most of us, the term 'smartbook' (a device that's somewhere in between a smartphone and a netbook) is nothing but the latest tech buzzword du jour. For German company Smartbook , however, it's apparently a chance to score some free publicity by vigilantly defending a multinational trademark and threatening to sue everyone who dares use it in ...

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Alex Ferreyra / MocoNews :   MocoNews Quick Hits

5. Yahoo Loses The Brains Behind Boss  permalink

Yahoo Loses The Brains Behind Boss
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch

The brains behind Yahoo Boss , a young engineer named Vik Singh, is leaving Yahoo to become an entrepreneur-in-residence at Sutter Hill Ventures. Earlier this year, Singh was named to Technology Review' s 35 Under 35 list at the age of 24. Singh is exactly the kind of talent Yahoo should be trying to hold onto, but that is hard to do now that it ...

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Digg.com
English in Action showcases students' work Teeth-Whitening Company Sues Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, ...   —  A dental whitening company that admittedly used deceptive ad campaigns to trick users into signing up for expensive subscriptions is now suing Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others

6. SupportSpace Raises $10 Million Series B  permalink

SupportSpace Raises $10 Million Series B
Daniel Brusilovsky / TechCrunch

SupportSpace , a company that provides on-demand remote tech support solutions, announced today that it has raised $10 million in funding. The round was led by Emergence Capital Partners and also included previous investors BRM Group and Gemini Israel . SupportSpace has raised $24.25M in total funding so far. Kevin Spain of Emergence Capital ...

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Vidyesh Modey / The Next Web
SupportSpace Raises $10 Million Series B DFJ raising $400 Million for Startups in India   —  Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the venture capital firm which backed Skype, Feedburner, Overture, Baidu, and many such other startups which were later acquired by big Internet fishes is planning to raise $400 Million for start ups in India, US and China. The economic growth rate indicates that India and China would surpass the total economy of [...]

Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch
Dropbox Raised $6 Million Sequoia-Led Series A In October 2008   —  Earlier today GigaOm reported that Dropbox raised a new $7.25 million funding round over the summer (a number they derived from a SEC filing but that CEO Drew Houston wouldn't confirm). We just spoke to Houston, who says that figure is wrong, and it's off by nearly a year: Dropbox did close a Series A funding round, but it was for $6 million, ...

7. Blogging Vs. Microblogging: Twitter’s Global Growth Flattens, While WordPress’ Picks Up  permalink

Blogging Vs. Microblogging: Twitter’s Global Growth Flattens, While WordPress’ Picks Up
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch

Only a year ago, the conventional wisdom was that blogs were dead and microblogging would soon replace them. Twitter was supposed to kill blogs because it's so much simpler to publish one sentence fragment at a time rather than whole thoughts bunched together into what is known in the trade as "paragraphs." Today, blogs are doing fine, while ...

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Scriptingnewsmail / Scripting News :   Tumblr and Posterous

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Readwriteweb / ReadWriteWeb
Should WordPress Buy Pheedo.com? Tweetsgiving: The Twitter Way To Give Thanks   —  Happy Tweetsgiving ! At any number of companies, people are being asked to do their part. To give something back to their community. Epic Change is taking a different approach. Through tomorrow, the Tweetsgiving campaign asks people to share whatever they are thankful for on Twitter , your blog , flickr , Facebook , YouTube or blip.fm Sponsor ...

Chris Crum / Top News Feed
Should WordPress Buy Pheedo.com? What Twitterers Are Thankful For   —  Do you want to tell the world what you're thankful for? Will the Twitterverse suffice? How about you followers and the few people that go to TurkeyTwitter? What is TurkeyTwitter you ask? It is a site that was launched yesterday to give those celebrating Thanksgiving a place to see the collective thanks of Twitter users. Sure, you could simply ...

8. Investimonials Wants To Be Your Guide To Quality Financial Products  permalink

Investimonials Wants To Be Your Guide To Quality Financial Products
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch

If you've ever tried searching the web for financial advice, you probably know just how much junk there is out there. Sure, there may be a few diamonds in the rough, but oftentimes the best results go to the finance 'experts' who are good at SEO - not the ones who know what they're talking about. Investimonials is a new site launching this week ...

9. Aviary’s Chrome Extension Proves That These Add-Ons Are Going To Be Awesome  permalink

Aviary’s Chrome Extension Proves That These Add-Ons Are Going To Be Awesome
MG Siegler / TechCrunch

I have something to admit: I've never been a big extension guy. When I was still using Firefox, I liked them, but the downside, browser bloat, turned me away. But now that we're starting to see the first steps of true extension support in Chrome, I think I could be swayed. While people have been developing extensions for Chrome for a little ...

10. Ustream Brings Its Viewer App To Android Market  permalink

Ustream Brings Its Viewer App To Android Market
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch

Ustream has just launched a version of its Ustream Viewer for Android Market, giving users the ability to access any Ustream footage while they're on the go, free of charge. You'll be able to use the app for streaming video both over Wi-Fi and 3G. This is actually Ustream's second application for Android. The first is its Broadcaster app, which ...

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Don Reisinger / Webware.com
Ustream Showing More On Android Ustream viewing meets Android-based devices   —  Online video-streaming site now offers an app, dubbbed Android Viewer, that allows users to view Ustream content from their Android-based devices.

Vladislav Savov / Engadget
Ustream Showing More On Android Lenovo's Snapdragon smartbook gets Android, pictured properly   —  That's right, sailor, Qualcomm has been dishing some more info on the future of smartbooks, and we now know that the Lenovo number we noticed being teased earlier this month will be driven by a vanilla copy of Google's Android OS . Other data of import includes a purported battery life of more than eight hours and always-on connectivity through ...

11. LinkedIn Signs Up 3 Million Users In UK, Won’t Go Public Any Time Soon  permalink

LinkedIn Signs Up 3 Million Users In UK, Won’t Go Public Any Time Soon
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch

Business social network LinkedIn has hit a milestone in the UK, surpassing 3 million registered users in these parts. Kevin Eyres , Managing Director Europe at LinkedIn, announced the feat at a London event last night and on the company's blog this morning. LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman attended the event as well, and told Reuters afterwards ...

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Www.reuters.com
The Return of the High-Tech IPO? LinkedIn co-founder sees IPO likely, but not soon   —  LONDON (Reuters) - LinkedIn, the world's biggest professional social network, will probably pursue an initial public offering some time but not in the near future, co-founder and executive chairman Reid Hoffman told Reuters.

Www.theregister.co.uk
The Return of the High-Tech IPO? UK jails schizophrenic for refusal to decrypt files   —  Exclusive The first person jailed under draconian UK police powers that Ministers said were vital to battle terrorism and serious crime has been identified by The Register as a schizophrenic science hobbyist with no previous criminal record.

12. Thumbtack Takes On RedBeacon As It Looks To Bring Local Service Providers Online  permalink

Thumbtack Takes On RedBeacon As It Looks To Bring Local Service Providers Online
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch

Last month we saw the launch of TechCrunch50 winner RedBeacon , the startup that lets you book local service providers directly from the web. Today it's getting some strong competition from a new startup called Thumbtack , a local service booking engine that's looking to offer both a comprehensive directory of providers and a greater degree of ...

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Justin McElroy / Joystiq
Thumbtack Takes On RedBeacon As It Looks To Bring Local Service Providers Online All the great Rock Bands started at Old Navy   —  We can't tell you the number of times we've been packed into the mall during holiday season like angry, sweater-draped sardines and thought "This is great, but what if four people could swing plastic instruments around and warble an off-key version of 'Thunderstruck' just a few feet from us?" Finally, a retailer has stepped up to cater to our ...

13. Online Advertising In The U.S Begins To Stabilize  permalink

Online Advertising In The U.S Begins To Stabilize
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch

Online advertising revenues in the U.S. seem to be stabilizing. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers released third-quarter figures showing that online advertising in the U.S. approached $5.5 billion, up 1.7 percent from the second quarter of 2009, but still down 5.4 percent from the same quarter a year ago (which ...

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14. Just In Time For #Thanksgiving, TurkeyTwitter Gathers All The #Thankful Tweets  permalink

Just In Time For #Thanksgiving, TurkeyTwitter Gathers All The #Thankful Tweets
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch

Want to know what people are thankful for this Thanksgiving? You can be sure many will be Tweeting about it. Tomorrow if you search #thanksgiving or #thankful on Twitter search, you will get a good sense of what thanks people are sharing on Twitter. Or you can go to TurkeyTwitter , a site thrown together by Joshua Premuda which gathers all ...

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Andy Beal / Andy Beal
Just In Time For #Thanksgiving, TurkeyTwitter Gathers All The #Thankful Tweets Happy Thanksgiving!   —  To all Marketing Pilgrims, we hope you have a restful, thankful, and blessed Thanksgiving. We’ll see you back here on Monday!

PhysOrg Team / PhysOrg.com
Just In Time For #Thanksgiving, TurkeyTwitter Gathers All The #Thankful Tweets Thanksgiving last full day in space for shuttle   —  (AP) -- Space shuttle Atlantis' astronauts will spend Thanksgiving checking their ship for the ride home.

15. A sleepless 58 hours later, Startup Weekend London produces nine potential companies  permalink

A sleepless 58 hours later, Startup Weekend London produces nine potential companies
Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch Europe

[UK] Startup Weekend is the 58 hour-long conference where attendees made up of "developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists, and more" don't just talk, they actually build something. The projects, of which nine were completed at the London event last week, are developed over a very long weekend - ...

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BBC News
Website recreates London's busiest shopping streets   —  A new service called Near London will offer a replica of the capital's busiest shopping streets with digital shopfronts.

16. KIDO’Z Upgrades Its Web Environment For Kids  permalink

KIDO’Z Upgrades Its Web Environment For Kids
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch

KIDO'Z , the Israeli company behind the eponymous media browser for kids , has released a new version of its program and insists that we now refer to it as a Web OS for kids instead. It's certainly not an invalid point, since the new KIDO'Z incorporates communication features besides content consumption elements only, and the company is making ...

17. Scamville Shakeout: Was Gambit The Right Fall Guy?  permalink

Scamville Shakeout: Was Gambit The Right Fall Guy?
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch

I'm not sure any lasting change will come from our series of Scamville posts . For now the most egregious of the social gaming offers are gone, which is a good thing. But none of the big players seem to have felt much pain. And, importantly, Facebook's rules still allow most of the really bad stuff (as long as users are being told in the fine ...

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Guest Post / Inside Facebook
Scamville Shakeout: Was Gambit The Right Fall Guy? Slower Growth For This Week’s Facebook Apps With the Most New Daily Active Users   —  This is our second edition of our top 20 applications that gained the most daily active users in the past week. We’re taking a close look at the DAU metric because it gives an idea of whether users keep engaging with an app (and maybe making its developers money). The monthly active users measure, on [...]

18. Mobile Web Usage Continues To Explode As Opera Mini Nears 40 Million Monthly Users  permalink

Mobile Web Usage Continues To Explode As Opera Mini Nears 40 Million Monthly Users
Leena Rao / TechCrunch

We all know the Mobile web is exploding in popularity. Opera Mini, Opera's mobile browser, grew its monthly users by 11 percent to nearly 40 million users in October from 32 million users in August. In terms of page views, Opera Mini delivered 17.2 billion last month, a 238 percent annual increase, indicating that mobile web usage is growing fast.

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Tonie van Ringelestijn / B R I G H T
Mobile Web Usage Continues To Explode As Opera Mini Nears 40 Million Monthly Users Eerste Intercity's met wifi in maart   —  Na jaren vertraging, met dank aan KPN, bereikt wifi nu eindelijk het treinstel. T-Mobile gaat het aan de NS leveren. De NS en T-Mobile hebben een driejarig contact gesloten voor levering van draadloos internet in de trein, meldde T-Mobile donderdagochtend. De eerste treinen met hotspots gaan vanaf maart rijden. De NS biedt wifi in eerste ...

19. If Kerouac Lived In The Present, OnTheRoad, The Service, May Have Interested Him  permalink

If Kerouac Lived In The Present, OnTheRoad, The Service, May Have Interested Him
MG Siegler / TechCrunch

There's a ton of buzz around location right now. Our discussion on it at the RealTime CrunchUp this past Friday easily could have gone on twice as long as it did. There are just so many interesting facets: Business models, privacy, real-life social implications , and so on. Not surprisingly, we're seeing an explosion of services that are built ...

20. CrunchBoard Europe Job of the Week  permalink

Mike Butcher / TechCrunch Europe

This week's TechCrunch Europe Job of the Week is for a Lead Architect with ChannelFlip Media . Remember, it costs only £20 to post *any* kind of advert on the CrunchBoard related to your startup/business, whether it be jobs, searches for office space or requests for new projects. Every week we publish the Job of the Week here (14,000+ on RSS) ...