Path co-founder and CEO Dave Morin is joining the board of the event ticketing startup Eventbrite, the company is announcing today. The news of the appointment follows what has been, so far, quite a busy year for the startup, which has now sold 60 million tickets, and is expanding globally with websites in eight different languages.

Morin, whose background includes time as the former head of the Facebook Platform and several years at Apple, will bring his knowledge of social to the ticketing company, says Eventbrite.

Morin joins Barry McCarthy, former CFO of Netflix, Sean Moriarty, former CEO of Ticketmaster, Roelof Botha, former CFO of PayPal and Partner at Sequoia Capital, among others serving on Eventbrite’s Board of Directors.

“Eventbrite has long been a believer in the impact of the social graph, and the work that Dave did while at Facebook has had a profound impact on our business,” Kevin Hartz, CEO of Eventbrite says. “Our integration with Facebook Connect in 2008 predicated an exponential increase in traffic and engagement among event attendees,” he added.

Eventbrite is heavily benefiting from Facebook integration. In 2011, the company reported that every time an event was shared on Facebook, it generated an additional $2.52 on average in ticket sales for event organizers and 11 clicks back to the Eventbrite page. And this was before the launch of Facebook’s Open Graph in early 2012, and the introduction of “actions” like “bought,” or “want” or “watch,” etc.

Notably, Eventbrite was one of the Facebook Open Graph launch partners, but it’s not yet using “actions.” According to Tamara Mendelsohn, VP of Marketing at Eventbrite, however, they’re “working on something now” on that front, and we should see the results of that soon.

Facebook is also the number one driver of Eventbrite’s traffic, says Mendelsohn, but the company won’t share how much.

As for engagement levels, you can see in the chart below what the impact of Facebook integrations have already had on the company’s business. With Morin’s guidance on deeper integrations, those numbers should jump yet again.

Outside of social integrations and global expansion, the company has also been pushing itself forward in the mobile payments space. In March, Eventbrite launched a complimentary credit card reader to go along with its iPad ticketing app “Eventbrite at the Door,” which attaches to the iPad’s dock connector, allowing users to swipe credit cards. Just prior to this, the company had announced a product called “Endurance,” specifically for selling tickets to races and walks, like marathons and fundraising events. And only last week, Eventbrite announced integrations with SponsorHub for connecting event organizers with sponsors.

“Eventbrite is fundamentally changing the way people create, promote and find events and gatherings in their local communities,” said Morin in a statement. “I’ve been more than impressed by their level of innovation, their commitment to their users, and by their long term focus. The decision to join the board as they forge into making event discovery more mobile and social was an easy one. At the end of the day, we all live for great events.”

Eventbrite has been making a huge push towards reaching $1 billion in gross ticket sales this year, about doubling the number of events on the platform in 2011 (458,207 events in 2011) and tickets sold (20,798,509 tickets in 2011). In 2011, Eventbrite sold $400 million worth of tickets, up from $207 million in 2010.

Mobile payments and identity verification company Jumio is introducing its Netswipe Mobile SDK today, which allows developers to add credit card scanning functionality to their mobile applications. The SDK (software development kit), is available now for iOS, but an Android version is coming soon, the company says.

To jump-start usage, Jumio is also waiving transaction fees for the SDK’s first users for a temporary period of time.

The company is calling this a “$5 million fund,” but it’s not really a fund – it’s a just a discount to developers who choose to implement the solution. They’ll be able to try out the Jumio SDK in their apps before committing to paying the extra cost of doing so. Jumio says it will cover the cost of the first 1,000 scans every month, but did not announce an end date for this promotion just yet. (Until the $5M runs out, it seems).

The SDK allows developers to integrate the card-scanning technology into their app, which means users can hold up a credit card to their smartphone’s camera in order to have the card “read” by the app and the numbers automatically entered into the correct fields. To confirm the purchase, the 3-digit CVV still has to be entered, however.

The technology is similar to what a lesser-funded competitor Card.io already has in place. In fact, while both companies have operated in the same space – “computer vision” for speeding up mobile payments – they’ve been coming at it from different angles. While Card.io started with SDKs for iOS and Android, then moved into web support for e-commerce sites, Jumio has been going the opposite direction. As of March, Card.io already had some 200 developers using its SDK.

The Jumio SDK for iOS is available for download here.

Contactually, the lightweight CRM solution for email users which launched into private beta at the beginning of this year, is today announcing its public debut with a number of new features in tow, as well as $500,000 in angel funding from YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, co-founder of CapLinked Chris Grey, and a re-up from previous investor, 500 Startups.

As for the new features, there are quite a few, but the major ones include the launch of “Contactually for Teams,” Microsoft Exchange support, a Gmail plugin, and additional integrations with other services and CRM systems.

Before delving into the details of what’s new, a little refresher on how Contactually works. When you sign up for the service, it pulls in information from social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Klout, Quora, Flickr, Foursquare, Tumblr, Skype, and dozens of others, and integrates those into your new online address book. The address book tracks how often you and your contacts correspond and their priority. Another key part to the service are “Actions” – which are reminders to follow up with your contacts. These appear on the online dashboard and are sent out via email.

Prior to today, Contactually only supported IMAP-connected email accounts like Gmail, Google Apps, Yahoo, and AOL, but with its public launch, the service now adds much-needed support for Microsoft Exchange (2007+). Gmail users get an update, too, with the new Gmail plugin which shows reminders and lets you quickly categorize people. (Oh, and I checked – it works alongside Rapportive’s plugin, in case you hate to give that up). 

Team sharing is another new feature that allows users to see who on their team last contacted someone and see their contacts. It’s an interesting concept in making email less of a closed box, private to only the one person with access. Instead, users of the Teams product can share contacts and collaborate on follow-ups with each other.

Contactually is also rolling out more integrations, including support for messaging and contact import from LinkedIn, integration with SugarCRM, and plans to add CapsuleCRM, Producteev, and MailChimp in the next month. (Highrise and Salesforce are already supported).

Company co-founder Tony Cappaert tells us that the service now has 6,000 users, a “large chunk” of whom are paying, as well as a couple of enterprise deals of a couple thousand seats or so.

Interested users can sign up here. The private beta period will end at 12 PM ET, allowing anyone to sign up.

Contactually was founded by Zvi Band, Tony Cappaert, and Jeff Carbonella, and is based in Washington, DC. In addition to the $50K in seed funding from 500 Startups, Contactually’s previous angel round of $165K included investors Sean Glass and David Steinberg.

Fresh on the heels of its $1 million Series A, Triptrotting, a startup that aims to connect travelers with hosts, is relaunching its website with a number of changes. In addition to improved design and functionality, the website also introduces new features which aim to better connect travelers with each other as well as with their local hosts.

For a little background, Triptrotting’s focus is to match up travelers with locals at their destination using a fancy algorithm built-in consultation with former eHarmony chief scientist Galen Buckwalter. Local hosts can offer anything from an area tour, to a night out on the town, dinner, or can even offer up accommodation in their own home. Although Triptrotting wants to primarily emphasize cultural exchanges, it does allow hosts to charge for their services, if need be.

With the website’s relaunch, the company is rolling out a new feature called “Social Activities,” which allows Triptrotters to find nearby activities by location, date and time. The activities, which now have their own dedicated section on the site, are sorted by popularity, so members can see who’s going ahead of time, and check out those members’ profiles. But the suggested activities are also personalized, so you’ll see those that match up with your interests.

These activities could include meals, parties, walking tours, concerts, trips to historic sites, museum outings, trips to local destinations or beaches and more. All the activities are curated, but in some cases, Triptrotting is now working with local businesses to highlight their offerings. The activities can also be shared via Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

A second notable addition to the revamped website is the TRIPups feature, which are a special type of activity. These are also found in the Activities section of the site, but are noted by a special colored banner indicating they are “TRIPups.” These events are hosted by a select group of Triptrotting local advisors, a group that’s the Triptrotting equivalent of Yelp Elites, perhaps. Already, TRIPups have taken place in China, Brazil, Italy, the U.S., Russia, Cambodia, Hungary, and elsewhere. Previously, however, the events were being organized via Eventbrite. Now, Triptrotting is managing these events on its own site.

A more minor update involves enhanced user profiles, which allows members to read and “follow” the profiles of other members more easily than before. Underneath users’ profile photos, for example, there’s a new “follow” button for tracking the members you like. And there’s a new “search” option, too, which lets members find users by name or email.

Co-founders Shana Zheng and Aigerim Shorman tell us that all these updates were driven by what the users were already doing and the features they wanted. They also gave us a peek into the demographics, which highlight Triptrotting’s global outlook. Today, the “many tens of thousands” of users are spread out across Asia (30%) Europe (30%), and North America (10%-15%), with the rest in South America and Australia.

Live now in 150 countries and 2,000 cities worldwide, it’s good to see a non-U.S. user base on the site, given that it’s aimed at world travelers.

The company has several more things in the works, too, including an update that will show you not just the percentage compatibility you have with another user, but why you were matched to them too.

Design shopping site Fab.com is debuting the next major release of its platform today, Fab 3.0, which is going live on the U.S.-based Fab.com first. The revamp focuses heavily on improved “social shopping” features, and will soon arrive in Fab’s mobile applications before rolling out to Fab’s European properties later this year.

The update offers over 100 enhancements, both big and small, but the most notable changes involve the redesigned navigation, a new feature the company calls “smile pages,” and a major update to Fab’s Live Feed which adds Facebook integration and a number of filtering options, while doing away with Google+ in favor of Pinterest.

When you log into the Fab 3.0 site, you’ll now land on a new page called “Featured Today,” which reflects the most popular sales and categories on the site that day. This is the page that appears whenever you click the “Fab.” logo from any other section of the site going forward.

The new top navigation is noticeably less cluttered than before, too, as Fab has now ditched ”Stores” and “Sales” from here. Instead, there’s now an increased focus on social shopping features (the “Live Feed”) and the newly added “Search” option, which offers searching by price, category and even color. Sub-navigation directs users to favorite sections like “Art,” “Home,” “Kids,” etc., and to the right, a “live ticker” displays constantly updated trending items.

But the removal of “sales” is telling for a service which some still think of as being in the “flash sales” genre – Fab is telling the world that it’s just not that kind of site. There will still be sales, however, they’re just not the reason Fab wants customers to shop there.

“From the beginning, we never really thought of Fab as a flash sales site, we thought of ourselves as design,” explains CEO Jason Goldberg. “People appreciate Fab for discovery, or for finding products they didn’t know existed, or for delighting them, and price is not a big deal. We don’t want people to think ‘sale, sale, sale,’” he says.

As for the discovery features on Fab, they’re getting a big boost today with the updated Live Feed section. This Pinterest-like part to the Fab experience was initially rolled out in December as a part of the Fab 2.0 launch as a way to show a live, dynamic feed of what Fab’s members are buying, favoriting and sharing. As a result of the feed’s introduction just five months ago, 15% of visits to this section now result in a purchase, says Goldberg.

The most important change here is Facebook integration. Members will now be able to filter the feed to see just what their Facebook friends are buying, favoriting and sharing. It’s an obvious next step for the company, which has already worked closely with the social network on things like Facebook Timeline integration, Open Graph (implicit sharing) integration, and most recently, adoption of Facebook’s new “actions.”

The social shopping angle does well for Fab, which already saw anywhere from 15% to 30% of its traffic come from Facebook any given day, plus around 2% from Twitter, and another 2% from Pinterest. And that’s before today’s introduction of the new Pinterest “Pin it” buttons which were added in favor of Google+ (now dropped).

Google+ traffic was practically non-existent on Fab. To give you an idea of context, here are some sites that sent more traffic to Fab than Google+ did: Woot, Bing, Coolmaterial.com, Svpply, TechCrunch, NYT and Goldberg’s blog.

Also new to the Live Feed section is a filter by category, color or price option, which just generally improves the browsing experience, as well as support for buying items directly from the feed itself.

The final change is the introduction of “Smile pages,” which is just another way to feature popular items on the site, by pulling trending items onto what you can think of as “best of Fab” pages.

“How do you help people dig into a site, discover and browse?” Goldberg says of how Fab, now 4 million members strong, has approached these new changes. “It’s like the anti-Amazon. Amazon is the best place in the world if you know exactly what you’re looking for, but you don’t browse Amazon. Fab is like going shopping with your friends, or maybe you don’t know what you’re looking for, but you want the fun of discovering stuff,” he says.

The update should be live now on Fab.com.

“Social magazine” Flipboard may have to think up a new tagline for itself, as tonight the company is rolling out an update which greatly expands its focus beyond text-based content to also include audio. The rollout features integrations from NPR, PRI (Public Radio International) and social sound platform, SoundCloud.

Also of note, Flipboard is launching its third localized edition with the debut of a Flipboard app for Japan, following its previous launches in China and France. And there’s an update which will matter a lot to a smaller number of users: integration of Apple’s VoiceOver controls to provide better access for the visually impaired.

Unless you’re based in Japan, the biggest news today is the introduction of the audio content to what’s primarily been a text-focused, magazine-like platform for reading news, blogs and updates from your social networks. But when you think about it, the addition makes sense – news is often delivered through multiple formats, not just text. And Flipboard already has a video section, we should point out.

The audio integrations will be highlighted in a newly added category, simply called “audio,” which will appear after the Flipboard app update (version 1.9) gets pushed out tonight. The section will showcase the curated selections from NPR and PRI including content like NPR’s “Fresh Air” and PRI’s “The World,” for example, as well as content from SoundCloud. However, a search option will also be available so users can find any audio content that Flipboard might now host. SoundCloud users will be able to listen to their sets, favorites, and people or artists they follow, but you won’t need to have a SoundCloud account to take advantage of the new offering.

Audio is background-enabled, too, allowing you to exit the app while continuing to listen, or while continuing to browse through Flipboard.

In speaking with the company earlier today, it becomes clear that the new audio integrations are only the start of what’s next for Flipboard, which is aiming to move from “magazine” to more of a digital entertainment hub. While the company won’t go on record with detailed plans to integrate more audio sources, it does intend to “do more with audio,” given that there are already “lots of great services to work with” out there right now, including on-demand streaming music and radio offerings like Spotify, Rdio, MOG and Pandora, for example.

While deals with those would help Flipboard beef up its music selections, another obvious focus for the company would be the integration of more podcasts – a part of iTunes which today is somewhat of a sub-par experience. (There’s a reason why iTunes/Apple users often turn to third-party apps, like Instacast, e.g).

Further down the road, Flipboard will look into other ways it can do more with video, too, which could mean that it one day will compete with social video services like Twitvid, Showyou, Shelby.tv and others.

As for all that buzz about the Flipboard Android app, which is arriving on the Samsung Galaxy S III and already available as a hacked version, the company would only say that it’s currently working on a broader Android release. But the unintentional beta Flipboard found itself in is somewhat of a blessing and curse for the company. On the one hand, it’s getting much-needed feedback on how Flipboard works on unsupported phones and tablets, but on the other hand, for many Android users, their first experience with the app may be one that’s less than ideal.

Flipboard says it plans to officially come to market this summer on Android, but doesn’t have a date to announce yet.

The Japanese version, audio integrations and voiceover controls are all rolling out tonight on iOS. Or, if you’re new to Flipboard, you can grab it from iTunes here.

SaneBox is definitely starting to get my attention. The company, which is focused on solving the very real problem of email overload, has just rolled out a minor, but clever, new feature: reminders that sync to calendars. With the so-called “SaneRemindMe 2.0″ offering, you can quickly defer emails until you’re ready to deal with them. It’s essentially a “snooze” button for your email. Starting now, those reminders don’t just bump up emails in your inbox at the appropriate times, they can also sync to your calendar.

Here’s how the feature works, if you’re unfamiliar. When you get an email that you want to defer to a later date, you send it to an email address specifying that date or time. The email address can be very specific, like October15@sanebox.com or more general, like 30minutes@sanebox.com or 1week@sanebox.com, for example. If you later reply to the email in question, no reminder is ever sent. But if you don’t reply (as is typically the case), SaneBox forwards the email back to the top of your inbox at the time specified.

The feature can also be used on emails you send out – just cc: or bcc: the @sanebox.com email address to remind yourself to follow up later with the recipient if they don’t reply.

That part (above) isn’t new – it was previously available in the initial SaneBox offering. What is new is that the feature will now also sync up the reminders with your preferred calendar service, like Google Calendar or iCal, for example.

Hmm, reminders that are integrated into email, work via forwarding, and automatically sync with other products in your office productivity suite? And why is it that we’ve had to wait for a third-party to develop this technology, again? Well, thanks, SaneBox.

If you’re interested in trying it out, SaneBox works with almost any email service, including Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Apple, Outlook and others.

Fine, I’m signing up.

Appia, an app marketplace and white-label app platform, is broadening its support for Android with the introduction of Pay Per Install App Advertising for Google Play (formerly known as the Android Market). Up until now, all the downloads generated through PPD (pay per download) were done through an Appia-powered app store, but now developers can purchase a Pay Per Install campaign and drive traffic back to Google Play. This, in turn, can then boost their app’s install numbers and rank.

The news comes at a time when Appia is hitting another notable milestone: its network has passed 500 million mobile consumers worldwide.

To give you an idea of their growth, when we covered the launch of their PPD service in April 2011, the company was reporting more than 200 million mobile subscribers. In addition to this 250% growth in terms of network reach, the company also claims to have driven more than 15 million sponsored app installs over the past 12 months, with an average of more than 25 million total app downloads per month, and more than 400 million app downloads since its debut.

The new support for Google Play allows developers to now run both Pay Per Download and Pay Per Install campaigns. Plus, it offers advanced reporting which will show campaign activity by platform, device, and geography (country). This allows the developers to really see where their campaign is working and where it isn’t.

To generate this data, developers can install tracking via an in-app API or through server to server integration.

A big difference between Appia and its competition (think TapJoy, and other incentivized Pay per Performance networks) is that the traffic Appia sends is non-incentivized. That means users aren’t offered virtual currency or other rewards in exchange for their actions. In addition, the company allows developers to buy on-deck ad placement on the app portals from over 50 major operators globally, including Vodafone, Vodacom, Telcel, America Movil, Claro, Comcel, Myxer and Zedge.

Given its reach, Appia attracts big-name advertisers. Over the past 12 months, the company has seen advertisers like Facebook, AT&T, Priceline, Gameview Studios, Amazon, MocoSpace, CrowdStar, Blue Lion, Tequila Mobile, Storm8, Pocket Gems, Per Blue, Big Fish Games and others using its platform to bring in new mobile users.

Web-based productivity suite Zoho is launching a new app today which, again, puts it head-to-head against its biggest competitor, Google, while filling a much-needed hole in Zoho’s business tools lineup. The company is debuting Zoho Sites, a drag-and-drop website builder that allows anyone to build a professional website in minutes, without needing to know HTML or CSS.

The product takes on two of Google’s own offerings in one shot, including Google’s simple website builder known as Google Sites, as well as Google’s latest addition, a mobile website conversion tool powered by DudaMobile.

The difference between Zoho’s offering and Google’s is that Google’s products work separately, and are designed for different purposes. One (Google Sites) is a very basic website and wiki building tool, which is more appropriate for personal use or for use in small teams, not as a consumer-facing webpage. Meanwhile, Google’s DIY mobile site tool is more of a way to convert a professionally designed website into a mobile-friendly site that syncs with its desktop counterpart when changes are made.

Zoho Sites, on the other hand, is an all-in-one product. It allows business owners to build desktop-sized websites which are already optimized for mobile devices. Plus, it comes ready with third-party app integrations, including support for Google Analytics, Google AdWords, Google Maps, YouTube, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Picasa. These elements can be dragged-and-dropped into place on the website.

The site builder is also integrated with other tools in Zoho’s productivity suite. For example, Zoho stores all content in the Zoho Creator database, and when that database is modified, the website automatically updates. Also powered by Zoho Creator, Zoho Sites offers a form builder which lets site owners handle things like support requests, again without writing code. The forms can kick off email notifications and other integrated custom workflows as well.

A number of other features are offered, too, including themes, built-in blogs, domain registration and hosting, integration with Google Apps, and support for multiple authors or site moderators.

Zoho Sites will be available both as a free service (two websites with two forms each, one blog, unlimited pages) and paid. The Professional Edition is $39/year and includes six websites, each with 10 forms, a blog, and unlimited pages). This is the only edition to support AdSense and a full rebranding.

Below, a video tour of the Zoho Sites offering:

Open data platform Factual.com is beefing up its Global Places offering today with three new APIs that will provide mobile developers with access to a ton of new data which can help them build better location-aware apps. But the company notes that the APIs’ launch will be of special interest to mobile ad providers, including mobile ad networks, demand-side platforms and agencies, who are looking for new data points around geography. This is particularly important on mobile where traditional methods of ad targeting – beacons and cookies – aren’t viable.

The Geopulse API (beta) is the first of three, and works to reveal directionally where Factual intends to go, rather than signaling their arrival at a destination. The API provides everything Factual knows about the location. You provide it latitude and longitude, and Factual returns additional attributes which it calls “pulses.” These pulses use Factual’s network of signals, calculated metrics, and census data, which come from Factual itself, publicly-available data, or from third parties.

The first few “pulses” to become available include:

• Factual Commercial Density: Relative density of businesses near a location
• Factual Commercial Profile: Types of businesses near a location
• Nearest: provides the nearest Factual Place (a business or landmark)
• Demographics: Age, gender, race, median household income for a given location (U.S. only)

The more interesting ones here are the Factual Commercial Density and Factual Commercial Profile. The company has taken its Places data and provided overviews of the density and type of businesses in the area.

A potential use case for this API could involve a brand like Starbucks, which wants to know when, where and to whom it should serve its ads to in order to get the highest yield and conversions. With the API, the company would know not only the exact location of the consumer (the latitude and longitude), but also all the contextual info about and around the location, too.

More “pulses” will arrive in the next few months. Factual says that pricing will depend on use case and usage volume.

The second API is the Reverse Geocoder API (beta) which converts longitude and latitude into an address (U.S. only) or region (49 other countries). There a a few of these out there already from Google, Yahoo and MapQuest, Factual notes. While the company says that it does not see itself getting into the mapping business, it does see a need to serve its own API to complement the other offerings in its Places product.

Finally, there is the world World Geographies API (beta) which is primarily used to translate place names between languages, and determine what cities are found in what regions, what states in what countries, etc. This is another complementary service, as Factual has already published small businesses and landmarks. This adds 6 million more natural and administrative geographies.

Factual admits that there are a few other players that have similar products to those it announced today, but wants to differentiate itself with data (especially in terms of the Commercial Density data, above), speed and scale. The company claims to provide near real-time access to these datasets well-under 100ms.

Social video network Twitvid has closed another acquisition today, following its March deal which involved bringing the team from daily deals aggregator Frugalo on board. Today, the company is announcing it has acquired Cull TV, an independent music video sharing site, which CTO John Hurliman describes as a little bit like Pandora mixed with MTV.

Cull TV, founded in early 2011, currently offers a catalog of some 2 to 3 million videos, with 100 brand-new ones appearing per day. The service offers 25 prominent channels devoted to various genres, but gets more specific than just “indie rock” or “hip hop.” Some of the featured channels today, for example, include “Euro Popped,” and “New Chilean Rock,” to give you an idea of how niche some of the content can be.

The company relies on its in-house team of experts to curate the selections to determine what’s trending, but it also relies on the wider web of music bloggers, Hurliman explains. There’s other technology behind the site, too, which involves “a lot of web analysis and continuous crawling” to find out which bands and videos are generally popular. And Cull TV can customize channels to your own interests as well.

“Once you log in with Facebook on the site,” adds Hurliman, “we can get a lot more personalized intelligence by looking at your Facebook posts and your Facebook likes to determine what bands you like and turn those into continuous video playlists,” he says.

As for Twitvid’s interest in the site, it goes far beyond curating music videos. Explains Twitvid CEO Mo Al Adham, “we’re going to use a lot of the know-how and knowledge the [Cull TV] team has acquired to integrate those learnings into Twitvid,” he says.

Cull TV did a lot of work in figuring out how to get really great content out of long tail video, and knows how to use a combination of manual curation and algorithms to surface the most relevant content.

“We hope to bring what we did very well in independent music, and broaden that out to Twitvid’s more generic approach to all of long-tail video,” Hurliman says.

During the transition period, Cull TV will remain up-and-running for at least the next few months, but whether it will remain up indefinitely has yet to be determined. Also of note, Cull TV CEO Katherine de León will not be joining the Twitvid team, but will be moving on to a new project.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but the results of the integration will arrive soon after Twitvid’s big product announcement they’re teasing for June (hopefully a new iPad experience).

According to CEO Al Adham, Twitvid has more than doubled the number of video views it serves over the past five to six months, now in the range of 70 million+ views. The last time they talked to press, the Twitvid network was seeing 10 million unique visitors. Today, that’s over 15 million. Stay tuned.

Simplee, a Mint-like platform for tracking healthcare expenses and then paying them online, is today announcing the close of its $6 million Series A round of funding. The round was led by The Social+Capital Partnership (aka “s23p”), and includes current investors, Greylock Partners Israel. As a part of the investment, s23p’s General Partner Ted Maidenberg and Greylock’s Tilli Kalisky joined Simplee’s Board of Directors.

The funding will help Simplee extend its product from bill tracking and payments to other areas, including plan recommendations, care recommendations, and more. The company is also preparing to roll out its B2B offering to partners, and launch its first mobile app.

The company is based in Palo Alto, but company CEO Tomer Shoval is Israeli, which is why Simplee’s seed round of $1.5 million included Greylock Israel and a ground of Israeli angels. However, the company is focused on the U.S. market, in terms of its offering.

For a little background, Simplee aims to do for your medical insurance accounts what Mint.com did for financial accounts, which means, basically, it helps you make better sense of them. Something of a Cake Health competitor, it brings in medical, dental and pharmacy bills and presents them in an easy-to-understand dashboard showing things like total costs, how much you’ve paid out-of-pocket, your deductible, how many doctor visits you’ve had and more.

Besides making it easier to visualize spending, Simplee also tracks your insurance company’s database, and updates its platform with a new bill when it becomes available. It shows you how much of that bill you owe, and how much your insurance will pay, so that you can then make the correct payment directly through the service itself.

Shoval tells us that the company is weeks away from launching a pretty exciting new feature: it will soon start detecting and flagging billing errors. For those with a lot of healthcare expenses, this could end up saving you quite a bit of money. He’s not ready to disclose how exactly the technology works, but hints that it’s based on the company’s knowledge of your plan and the payments you’ve already made.

A second feature, plan recommendation, is also on the horizon, says Shoval. With this, Simplee will look at aggregate data to determine what plan best fits a user’s needs. Further down the road, Simplee will also roll out tools to help you find the right doctor for your needs, too.

Since its launch in May of last year, Simplee has managed nearly half a billion dollars in medical expenses for members across thousands of medical providers. Today, the company covers 80% of insurers in the U.S. market, and the average Simplee bill pay user pays around $1,000 per year via the platform. User engagement with the service is high, too, the company reports, with more than 65% returning regularly (within a 90-day window)

Thanks to the new funding, the company can now really focus on its new product updates and is also poised to announce several new B2B relationships involving large partners who will bring Simplee to their members. The partners will include employers, HSA banks and FSA administrators, but Simplee is not disclosing their names at this time. “It’s a great opportunity that can help us scale in terms of user base and monetization,” says Shoval of the new partners.

Partners will pay for Simplee via its advanced SaaS subscription model, which doesn’t offer per-seat pricing, but will actually adjust pricing based on user engagement. When users get results, partners pay more. For its consumer-level offering, Simplee will remain free.

And in case you’re worried about putting your medical expenses in the hands of a third-party, Shoval assures us that they will “never share user data with anyone.” The company may examine aggregate, anonymized data to make recommendations, but your personal data and expenses remain private.

Remember Jitterbug, the big-buttoned phones for seniors that made using those confusing, new-fangled cellphone thingies so much easier to handle? Well it looks like someone has gone out and built the equivalent for the iPad. Which literally made me laugh out loud when I read the news, because the iPad is the first computer I’ve ever seen seniors adopt in droves. But hello anyway, Family Ribbon.

Everything about this app is funny. From the touted “health benefits” (apparently, a May 2012 Mayo Clinic study confirmed that a combination of exercising and using a computer may protect seniors against mild cognitive impairment!!!) to the stock photos of granny on iPad in the “how it works” section of the website.

I’ll spare you the gory details. Here’s the pitch in a nutshell: the app, which is “officially” launching on May 30th but is live now in the iTunes App Store, is “an easy-to-use app for the iPad which features an easy-to-use interface that helps seniors and kids stay connected to their families online.”

In case you missed that, it’s “easy to use.”

Because really, the iPad is so hard. And this UI is clearly better:

I’m sure the iPad’s complexity is why my 2-year has completely stolen mine, knows how to slide to unlock, flip through screens, launch and close apps, navigate within apps, and I’m pretty sure she’s already better than me at Angry Birds.

Let’s get real here, kids are not the issue with adopting new technology. Seniors, however, often struggle. And while I do understand the need to offer them assistance, I’m not sure that, of all things, it’s the iPad that’s so confusing. Computers, yes. Windows, yes. Mac OS X, yes. But iPad? No.

Sure, grandma and gramps might need a demo at the Apple Store or from you before they get it. But I’m not convinced they need something like this.

I will give the app one shout out as its saving grace – it offers a remote administration feature which could come in handy. The confused user can push the “call back request” app for assistance which sends a text, email and phone call (wait…omg, it’s this, WUPHF lives!) and can then tap a button to share their screen. It’s a screenshot-snapping feature, to be clear, not true remote administration.

Oh, and there’s an “easy Facebook” mode too:

I’m sorry, I just fell out of my chair.

Honestly, this may be the best thing I’ve seen on the Internet all day.

The app was co-created by two ex-McKinsey consultants, CEO Ivan Osadchiy and Mykola Komarvsky. I was just going to decline to cover (Osadchiy wanted to talk about the “many health benefits” that this application will bring), but I found I couldn’t help but share this news. Back to your regularly scheduled Facebook IPO-salivating now.

Doccaster wants to disrupt document-sharing, but it’s attacking the space from a new angle: it’s not just about storing files in the “cloud,” it’s about tying files to a location. The company is launching a beta version of its web-based utility today that lets users upload then broadcast any number of files. Those files immediately become available to anyone within a 15-mile radius and can be searched for either by proximity or by a Doccaster ID (similar to a Twitter ID).

The bootstrapped, Orlando-based startup spun out of a previous effort called Gotootie, which was an early player in the location-based chat scene launched back in 2010. Still convinced of the potential in the location-based space, co-founders Kyle Steele (CEO) and Himanshu Pagey (CTO), who met while at the University of Central Florida, have now narrowed their focus to document sharing and discussion, with a specific emphasis on the convention space.

After having spent time talking to participants and organizers, the team wanted to find a solution to many of the problems with printed literature, including not just the cost of printing documents, but the chaotic and messy nature of their distribution, the environmental impact, and the lack of analytics for documents around things like views, shares, and comments. Doccaster tracks all those metrics, enabling companies to see the views, demographics and conversations around their files uploaded to the platform.

Interestingly, the document discussion aspect is tied to the location, too. Only those in or near the venue can join in, which makes the product different than an online office suite or cloud storage company. For now, Doccaster supports viewing, downloading, and bookmarking files, but Steele tells me the plan is to add integrations with other online storage services, so you could push the files shared in Doccaster to your Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon Cloud Drive, or Box, for example.

The introduction of the Doccaster ID is another element that conference participants can use to make their files more easily available. Instead of having to search through all the files at that location, you can put in a company’s ID to pull up just their shared files.

During its beta, Doccaster will remain free, but at some point in the future, the plan is to transition to a freemium model built around document activity. Also in the works are mobile apps for iPhone, iPad and Android.

Interested users can sign up now, here, from web or mobile.

This morning, Nielsen is putting hard numbers to how consumers like to shop with their smartphones, backing up trends we already suspected to be the case. In particular, the new report examines how consumers use their phones when shopping out there in the real world (what’s that?) – using phones to compare prices, scan barcodes and even redeem coupons. Not surprisingly, how you use your phone has a lot to do with where you’re shopping and what you’re shopping for, says Nielsen.

The trends are sort of obvious, but there are some interesting bits to be pulled out of the data.

For starters, mobile coupons are most popular at grocery stores, (41% of mobile shoppers said they used coupons there), department stores (41%), and clothing stores (39%). At electronics stores, the majority (73%) read reviews, compare prices (71%), and scan QR codes (57%).

It seems the higher the purchase price, the more likely it is that users will whip out their phone to shop around. Or perhaps electronics buyers are just a bit more smartphone-savvy than the rest, happily scanning QR codes and the like? Something notable here, perhaps – assuming that, for many of these shoppers, price is the reason for the extra research, it initially seems somewhat odd that furniture shoppers don’t do the same. Only 19% read reviews, and a paltry 5% scan a QR code. And yet, their big-ticket purchases often cost more than a new HDTV. Why is that?

Well, besides the fact that furniture is a more personal purchase, like clothing, it’s mainly because the exact same Ethan Allen sofa isn’t going to be found at a Ashley store for less. But it would be interesting if there were apps that could scan a furniture barcode or “see” a photo you snap then show you similar sofas at nearby stores or online as well as their prices. (Is someone building that? Because I’d use it today. I hate my sofa.) Unless you’re not in the income bracket where cost is not a concern, this seems to be an unfilled niche. One of the top reasons why people don’t buy furniture they fall in love with is because they feel the need to shop around.

Back to the report. It’s not surprising to see minimal usage of the various smartphone technologies at fast-service or low-ticket item stores like convenience stores, dollar stores and office supplies stores, but it’s somewhat interesting to see moderate use at mass merchandisers (Walmart, Costo, etc.). Even though those stores appeal to users because of their low prices, it’s apparent that not all shoppers are convinced that they’re getting the best deal: 34% read reviews and 31% scan QR codes at these outlets. Given the right pricing on the right products, it seems department stores, electronics retailers and online shops can woo customers from the Walmart-sized chains, when it comes to higher priced goods. With brick-and-mortar stores turning into Amazon’s showroom, it’s more important than ever that merchants offer in-store shoppers some other advantage besides low prices. Expect the new crop of customer loyalty startups to have a big role in framing what that advantage might be.

It’s been a year since E la Carte launched its customized tablet for restaurants, which brings menus, wine lists, nutritional info, play-while-you-wait games, and payment options tableside, and now the company has new numbers to reveal. This time last year, there were around 20 restaurants using the tablet; today there are now over 600, including national chains Pizzeria Venti and Umami Burger, as well as Faz Restaurant Group in the San Francisco Bay Area and Classic Restaurant Concepts in Boston. In total, there are around 20,000 tablets in 20 U.S. states, and seven countries worldwide.

The company, if you’re unfamiliar, makes a 7-inch tablet they call “Presto,” which includes a digital touchscreen menu with photos and detailed descriptions, plus games and a built-in credit card reader. The tablet is also ruggedized for heavy use, offers a 20-hour battery life, and whose usage is provided on a subscription basis.

According to founder Rajat Suri, the average usage is at 150,000 users (annually), and its adoption is increasing by 50% month-over-month. And the El la Carte team has grown, too, from 5 to 35 people over the past year.

“People sometimes think that restaurants are slow to move, but it turns out that once a few start to move, everyone else sees them and there’s a huge herd mentality,” says Suri. “If you’re a restaurant, how do differentiate yourself from the guy next door?, he asks. “People are looking at this and thinking ‘this is how I could improve the guest experience.’”

But it’s not just the guest experience that’s being improved, Suri says. The company also reports its restaurants are seeing a 10% higher check average, which, with restaurant’s tight margins, is a huge boost. Plus, table turn time is reduced by 7 minutes, as it takes 55 seconds to pay with the company’s “Presto” tablet compared with 8 minutes through the traditional process.

You would think that with tablets doing much of the wait staff’s job for them, there would be a decrease in tips – after all, the waiter is no longer taking the order, bringing you your check or, in the case of fine dining establishments, even suggesting the wine pairing for the meal. But, paradoxically, the opposite has proved true so far. Tips are up. This is mainly because restaurant owners can customize the tablet with suggested tip options which can be selected at the touch of a button. And it’s easier to push a button than figure out how to stiff your waiter.

In the near future (Q3), the Presto tablet platform, which is built on top of Linux, will include new ways to see nutritional information, so users can filter menus by diet (e.g. low calorie, low-carb, etc.) or by allergies (e.g. gluten-free). By the end of the year or early next year, E la Carte will introduce ways for bars and other more casual restaurants to incorporate social, restaurant-wide games like trivia which will work with in-house TVs to display the questions and leaderboards.

At the end of the day, Suri says his company’s goal is to put the Presto tablet on every restaurant table. “‘It’s not going to be trivial,” he says. “We’ll need to grow significantly, luckily we have great revenues to support that, and great demand from the marketplace.”

E la Carte has $5 million in funding, with a $4 million Series A led by Lightbank, as well as around $1 million from other angel investors.

Wow, Pinterest’s porn section is fairly tame. I was just curious about the type of not-so-mommy-friendly content that might be popping up on what’s now the third-most popular social network after Facebook and Twitter. (Also I’m bored). After all, Tumblr houses, like, a lot of porn.

Both services aim to help their members find platforms for self-expression, one through pinning images for inspiration, the other through blogging, and both have also had to fight unwanted content on their networks.

For example, both Tumblr and Pinterest recently implemented changes to their Terms of Service banning self-injury and self-harm. This includes the cult of the “thinspo” posters, who like to find “inspirational” imagery encouraging and celebrating their anorexia-induced starvation.

Tumblr seemingly took a more proactive stance in its bans, announcing it would apply the policy on a blog-by-blog basis. And yet today, thinspo searches on Tumblr bring back hundreds of posts of jetting collarbones, ribs poking out, thighs that don’t touch, and more. Sadly, these are mostly fashion industry photos, so what can you do?

Pinterest, which enacted a similar ban on thinspo and other self-harm imagery, a month after Tumblr did, has also apparently had a tough time keeping thinspo off its site. Searches reveal this is still a popular topic for its users.

Even Instagram isn’t immune to this community, which is incredibly tough to police. When is a photo art, versus something encouraging a disease?

That’s why it’s interesting how the three social services far on other NSFW topics. You know, the dirty ones. There’s no #porn or #sex on Instagram, at least not that which you can query up by tag, that is. Depending on when you query it, the #porno tag is either pretty lame or shows full-on nudity. #Pornstar is about the same. But then someone told me about #pornstagram, and yep, there you go. Plus, all those pictures are tagged with other words that can lead you down the Instagram rabbit hole of shame. (To get to the raunchier stuff, you have dig into the tags and accounts of the users posting the images).

Pinterest, I first thought, was much cleaner. Apparently, there, porn means food porn, art and kind of silly posts (Kermit watching a nature show with frogs doing it, e.g.). A search for pornstar gets a little dirtier. But guess what mommies like to post? (hint: it’s not T&A) Still, the section itself is very small. (The section, I said.) But seriously, even searches for a certain “c” word return pictures of chickens. I guess women really do prefer recipes and shopping to hot, hot sex? Then I found some other boards. Oh, I guess not.

Tumblr however, gets freakin’ filthy. I mean, really, really #NSFW. It’s been said that Tumblr’s secret to success is its adult content. Several years ago, that was probably true. Today, Quantcast’s Tumblr subdomains’ stats show that content has diversified quite a bit. No longer are adult sites the majority of the top destinations on the network. But did it scale on top of porn? Of course it did. And those sites are still out there, if you dig through the subdomain rankings.

And let’s get real here: Tumblr’s own content guidelines have long stated that it’s A-OK with porn. Just tag it #NSFW and don’t upload adult videos (embed, them, says Tumblr).

Why is this important? Well, maybe it isn’t. I mean, this is the Internet after all, it’s not all kittens and rainbows out there. It’s not a new problem either. (Hi,Flickr).

But I find it funny that the services are taking the time to worry about the sad, disturbed kids cutting and starving themselves, and yet, aren’t worried all that much about the fact that they’re hosting teens’ posts and photos alongside some very, very adult content. At least some porn sites have the decency to make kids do a little “what year were you born” math before seeing this kind of stuff. There’s not a warning message in front of http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/nsfw, but Tumblr does tone down what you see if you’re not logged in. (The company says it has developed several “tools for filtering and warning users about ‘nsfw’ content,” and will soon be adding more.)

Look, porn has its place in society, and always will. And, really, it’s fine if all these user-gen content services want to host it. And it’s fine if you want to go check it out. I don’t care. But let’s not rave too much about they have the best interests of kids in mind when they launch outreach efforts to save kids from the evils of thinsporation and whatnot.

They have a nifty PR campaign, but at the end of the day, they’re fine with porn. And they’re not that concerned about what kids see on their site. And, yes, some of this stuff still matters.

Pinterest has 11 million registered users.

Tumblr, 50 million blogs (some users have multiple blogs)

Instagram, some 50 million users.

Image via badkikgirl on Instagram

This week, two of the major players in the credit card industry, Visa and MasterCard launched their online digital wallet services. Known as V.me (Visa’s) and PayPass Wallet Services (MasterCard), both are very similar initiatives which see the companies clamoring to become the credit card of choice for digital transactions, the way they fight today to be the credit card for all the other transactions taking place out there in the real world.

And, to be clear, a “digital” wallet isn’t necessarily the same as a “mobile wallet,” although a digital wallet service could also be housed in a mobile app interface, as both MasterCard and Visa plan on offering in the near future.

While neither of these companies are the types of early stage startups TechCrunch typically favors, their moves will have an impact on a number of companies already operating in this space, like PayPal and Square, as well as those that aim to disrupt the payments industry like Dwolla. Below are the details of what was announced and how the two services compare.

Visa V.me

Visa’s digital payments service, V.me, wants to make it easier for consumers to shop online, whether via web, mobile or tablet. The service is effectively a digital wallet, which stores not only your Visa card information, but also your MasterCard, American Express and Discover cards. When you’re on a supported merchant’s website, instead of entering in your payment information and shipping preferences manually (as is par for the course today), you only have to enter in your V.me email and password. The merchant still receives your payment through Visa’s network, but your 16-digit card number is not displayed on the site, which adds another layer of security to the transaction.

In the future, Visa plans to introduce a mobile payments element to the service as well by leveraging NFC, QR codes and “other technology,” which would allow you to tap your phone to a secure reader at the point-of-sale in order to pay for your purchase, scan a QR code or perform some other type of interaction. Support for offers based on your activity and interests will be rolled out later on, too, the company says.

This week, Visa took a major step in making the V.me service a reality. The company announced its beta launch, with its first online merchants, PacSun.com and Buy.com, adding support for the program on its site. The V.me acceptance mark is now visible on the login and checkout pages of both sites.

Visa says it’s currently focused on scaling V.me within the U.S. market, but a global rollout is on its roadmap. Over the coming months (Visa won’t provide exact dates), V.me will launch on a number of other e-commerce sites.

MasterCard PayPass Wallet Services

MasterCard, too, has its own take on digital wallets, and unveiled its new PayPass Wallet service this week. The PayPass Wallet is an extension to MasterCard’s already fairly well-known PayPass brand, which offers tap-and-go, NFC-enabled payments that work via PayPass-enabled (NFC) phones, cards, key fobs, or mobile tags at over 441,000 locations worldwide. The same credentials stored in the digital wallet for online payments (PayPass Wallet) can also be accessed for tap-and-go purchases on an NFC-enabled phone through a mobile app.

Like V.me, MasterCard’s PayPass Wallet is an open solution, and allows consumers to add their Visa, American Express and Discover cards, whether credit, debit or prepaid. It also keeps your shipping info on file, for faster online checkouts. And, like V.me, PayPass Wallet is making a splash with some big-name launch partners. In this case: American Airlines and Barnes & Noble. Both merchants will incorporate the PayPass Online checkout button on their websites, and American Airlines will go a step further and integrate PayPass Wallet into its own mobile application.

Other merchants committed to the solution include  Jagex, JB Hi-Fi, MLB Advanced Media (MLB.com), Newegg, Runningshoes.com, TigerDirect.com and Wine Enthusiast Companies.

Several banks are on board too, including Banesto, Bank of Montreal, Commonwealth Bank, Citibank, EURO6000, Fifth Third Bank, Grupo Banco Popular, Grupo BBVA, ICBA, Intesa Sanpaolo, Metro Bank, National Bank of Canada, PSCU, RBS Citizens Financial Group, SEB Kort AB Sweden, Sovereign Bank, Swedbank Sweden and Westpac.

The solution will be offered as a white label, meaning banks, merchants and other partners can use the PayPass Wallet platform within their own digital wallets. This option will go live by Q3 2012, initially in the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Australia.

Finally, like V.me, MasterCard’s PayPass Wallet will roll out to point-of-sale and as a mobile application in the future, but MasterCard isn’t providing exact timeframes on when those solutions will arrive. The mobile app, though, is not necessarily being targeted at consumers, but at the banking partners.

“This initiative provides issuers with a turnkey solution to quickly launch a wallet with their own branding using our reference wallet or the freedom to connect their own wallet into our PayPass network,” explains Ed Olebe, Senior Vice President and Group Head, Emerging Payments, MasterCard. “PayPass Wallet Services will accept all credit, debit and prepaid MasterCard, American Express, Discover and Visa cards as long as the merchant or financial institution accepts those cards,” he says.

Those with an NFC phone can continue to tap-and-go as they do now, but soon, both NFC and non-NFC users will be able to take advantage of the other benefits of the PayPass platform, including at-a-glance account information which you can peek at prior to making a purchase, spending controls, real-time alerts, and, of course, coupons and targeted offers.

The above solutions from the top two credit card companies are notable because of their news this past week, but they’re far from being the only competitors in the space. Outside of startups like Square and PayPal, mentioned above, Google is dabbling with its own mobile wallet/mobile checkout play called Google Wallet and the U.S. mobile carriers are ramping up a mobile payments initiative called Isis. (Worldwide, other carriers have their own programs, too).

However, in terms of credit card companies, American Express is another important player in the space. With its previously announced Serve platform, it’s not only competing head-to-head in the online payments space, it’s also working to enable other features like peer-to-peer payments, for example.

With so many similarities between the services and some confusion on branding, the problem will soon become one of too much choice. Should you go with V.me or MasterCard’s PayPass (or a PayPass Wallet rebranded by your bank, perhaps?), Serve or PayPal? Wait, PayPal works at point-of-sale too? Does Google Wallet work on my phone? What’s Isis?

Although the names of the credit card companies are already familiar, the programs themselves are not. All the players will need to work to deliver clear messages to consumers about what they can and cannot do.

Tagstand, the YC-backed company focused on making NFC a more mainstream technology, is getting some action at a pretty big black-tie event in New York this weekend which will see its technology used to enable some nifty actions for the 3,500 guests, like tapping to tweet, posting pictures to Facebook and registering “likes” for the cocktails they’re drinking. Sounds like (kind of geeky) fun!

The event in question is New York’s big cocktail party for the opening night Gala at The New York Public Library, which is offering up 30,000 different cocktails, created by over 150 different bartenders. (Now you can see why “liking” a particular cocktail might come in handy – that’s a lot to remember.) In fact, after a guest likes a cocktail, they’ll be able to receive the drink recipe via a personalized email courtesy of foodie guide Tasting Table.

But to back up and explain how all this works: guests at the party are getting this Digital Goodie Bag which includes an NFC-enabled bracelet which they’ll tap on the NFC reader stationed at the top of each bar to like their drinks. Even cooler, guests can link up their NFC bracelet with their Facebook and Twitter accounts, enabling them to automatically upload the pictures they take at the party’s web-connected photo booths, they can tap to check in on Facebook Places, and they can tweet by tapping on the Library walls – all magically enabled via NFC.

Oh, and there will even be some guys roaming around wearing Bonobos clothing, who guests can tap to indicate that they like the ensembles, which automatically registers them for a chance to win the outfits. (Party hosts are requesting that all taps are waist-up, however. Given there are 30K+ cocktails to choose from, though…umm. Good luck!) There’s also an NFC-enabled giveaway, where guests can tap to register to win Virgin Atlantic Airways tickets and hotel stays and more.

According to Tagstand co-founder Kulveer Taggar, the client (ClearHart Digital) was already sold on the benefits of NFC and reached out to Tagstand for this event. It’s the first event like this that Tagstand has ever done like, but they already have more in the pipeline, Taggar says.

While a bunch of interactivity showiness/goofiness isn’t a first for the events industry, the notable thing here is how NFC could encroach into RFID’s territory when it comes to solutions like this. Tagstand built custom hardware, software and the wristbands for the event, but its readers are much cheaper than the ones on the market today. Plus, says Taggar, their reader has “a bigger read range, connects to wi-fi, has local storage in case of wi-fi problems, and, most importantly, we can re-purpose them for other use cases like loyalty, security, ticketing, etc.”

There’s also another benefit: using an NFC wristband to post pictures, check-ins and tweets saves party-goers from having their nose stuck in their phones all night. Imagine that – a party where you actually talk and interact with people, not your iPhones? Could such a thing really exist?

Docphin, a medical news and research service which we once described as a “Bloomberg for doctors,” has been growing quickly since its beta launch in November. Since then, the startup was selected to participate in Rock Health’s incubator and announced its forthcoming iPhone app. This month, the company also hit a major milestone: its nationwide expansion to 10 more academic medical centers, bringing the total to 13. And the company has redesigned its platform with HTML5, partnered with Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) to feature content from MedEdPORTAL, and introduced a number of new features to the service.

For those unfamiliar with the service, Docphin helps physicians organize, bookmark, read and track medical news and research from a variety of sources, all within a single dashboard interface. The resulting product has a very consumer-like feel, especially with features like a Twitter widget for tracking medical societies’ tweets, bookmarking, commenting and social sharing. But the content is all medical-focused.

Initially available at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan and the University of California-San Diego, Docphin has now rolled out to Columbia University, Cornell University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Northwestern University, New York University, Stanford University, University of Chicago, University of Washington, and Washington University in St. Louis.

It has also moved to an HTML5 platform and has added features like a “Trending” section that shows what others are reading, sharing and discussing as well as a new “Search” page that lets doctors filter content from Docphin’s news sources and journals and more. For the old-school doctors (or rather, just the busy ones), the company is adding a free, personalized email service with direct links to articles based on their interests. And finally, the Docphin iPhone app is on track for a summer launch.

While in beta, Docphin was open to the public with limited access, but now it will only be available to its partnering institutions with free full-text access to journal articles. Co-founder Mitesh Patel says news of the service has also spread via word-of-mouth, and now its user base is evenly split between doctors, residents, and medical students alike.

As for the burning questions about how the company plans to make money? Patel isn’t ready to reveal all the details yet, but tells us that Docphin will introduce a cloud-based SaaS model for its enterprise product which will launch later this year.

According to news coming out of the Black Hat security conference this week, researchers have figured out a way to use the Square mobile payments system to access stolen credit card data. The ingenious thing about the hack demonstrated is that criminals would not even need to have the original stolen card present in order to use Square for fraud. Instead, they can convert magnetic stripe data into an audio file, use a stereo cable to feed it into the Square device (a small dongle that plugs into your smartphone's headphone jack), and - ta-da! - the illegal transaction completes.

This hack turns the Square reader, a dongle meant to support swiped transactions, into one that can be used for electronic-only transactions, reports CNET. Creative? Yes. A real-world concern? We're not so sure.

However, a second hack, which turns the dongle into a card skimmer is of more concern. And it begs the question: where is the hardware encryption Square promised us earlier?

Researchers Adam Laurie and Zac Franken, directors of Aperture Labs, discovered two different ways to hack Square, which they demonstrated at the conference. The first, which turns Square into a device that accepts cardless transactions, while interesting, is not as distressing as the second hack, we believe. In order for the first hack to work, it would seemingly have to involve a fraudulent merchant account, since the hardware involved would eliminate the possibility of face-to-face transactions.

It's Hard to be a Fraudulent Merchant on Square

But it's hard to create a dummy merchant account on Square, despite its "open to all" nature.

Besides simply making it easier for any individual to accept credit cards at dramatically lower rates, the Square system also takes advantage of the smartphone's sensors itself to determine a device's location when the card is swiped. Transactions that show a San Francisco Bay resident has all of a sudden gone on a shopping spree somewhere across the country, for example, would be an obvious red flag to Square's risk management department, just as it would be for those using traditional credit card systems. And Square's risk management is done in-house, in real-time. So far, that's been a successful strategy for the company - its fraud protection rate of 0.05% is lower than the industry average of 0.07% and has remained consistent over time.

In addition, one of Square's less-talked about features is its ability to track device IDs alongside these geo-coordinates and then cross-reference those with social signals. Yes, social media signals. When new merchant accounts are verified, Square looks at their social footprint: their Facebook page and number of fans, their Yelp reviews, Twitter followers and retweets, blog posts, Flickr photos, Google Street view, etc. All these things are taken into consideration before a merchant is determined to be a "real" person, and not a dummy account of some sort.

This matters because the hack in question would seemingly necessitate a dummy merchant account in order to work. After all, what merchant would let a criminal attach some sort of contraption to their smartphone during a face-to-face transaction?

Square as Credit Card Skimmer: This is the Real Concern

From the sounds of it, the above hack is not as worrisome as the second, which turns the Square reader into a credit card skimmer. This is the same sort of issue that VeriFone CEO Douglas Bergeron raised in March, posting an open letter to his company's website warning consumers of the dangers involved with Square's technology. Using the Square reader and a fake Square application, VeriFone was able to turn the Square device into a free skimming machine.

While reporters from sites like GigaOm, TechCrunch and Gizmodo initially attacked VeriFone as waging a smear campaign against its competitor, the issue it raised, however indelicately, was valid. The Square dongle did not include hardware encryption, which is (and should be) a concern. Without encryption, hacks that turn the dongle into a free credit card skimmer are not just possible, they're easy to do.

Laurie and Franken demonstrated their variation of this hack at the conference, using a program that included less than 100 lines of code.

Soon after the VeriFone debacle, Square itself admitted that hardware encryption was a necessity. At a Visa conference in April, Square Security Lead Sam Quigley announced that Square would begin shipping dongles that offer hardware encryption sometime this summer. Well, summer's almost up now, and apparently, the encrypted dongles aren't yet available. Either that, or the researchers were using an older dongle to showcase their hack. Franken told CNET that he had heard Square would be shipping new dongles, but CNET was not able to reach Square to confirm. (Square is difficult to reach, for what it's worth. We tried too.)

Update: Square has provided an official comment -

Like all credit card processors, we aggressively guard against the use of stolen credit cards- and we use traffic analysis and other patented methods to detect and prevent malicious activity.

While the ingenious nature of the first hack is notable, the complexities to implement it in the real world make it less of a danger to consumers and merchants alike. In addition, as CNET noted, federal anti-fraud bank regulations in the U.S make it difficult for fraudsters to set up dummy accounts, too. Laurie suggested that criminals could pay legitimate account holders to operate as Square money mules, but frankly, that's a lot of effort when there are still much easier ways to commit fraud.

It's the second hack that should be concerning. Where's the hardware encryption that Square promised? When is it coming? Is it still coming? Why won't Square respond to reporters' questions about this?

Have you been waiting for more practical implementations of augmented reality (AR) technology outside of gaming and marketing initiatives? So have we. That's what makes the technology Zugara is launching now so interesting. It has teamed up with U.K.-based online clothing retailer Banana Flame to offer a virtual dressing room of sorts which lets online shoppers "try on" the clothes featured on the retailer's website.

Using the computer's webcam and Zugara's AR e-commerce software dubbed "Webcam Social Shopper," shoppers can immediately see what clothes look like on them and can ask friends for an opinion via Facebook and Twitter.

Of course, trying on clothes virtually isn't the same as trying on clothes in real life. You don't know how the fabric is cut, how tight or loose it is, how it will hang, how well it's stitched, or any of the other factors that go into making a real-world purchasing decision. However, it's a step closer to emulating that real world experience than anything we've ever had before. It's also kind of fun…well, when it works.

Using the computer's webcam, visitors to Banana Flame's website can instantly try on any of the clothing items it sells. To start the process, you have to step a few feet back from the computer, making sure the camera can see your face. The garment will then automatically position itself on top of what you're currently wearing. Using Kinect-like motions, you can then touch virtual buttons to make minor adjustments to the garment's position on your body. In fact, the technology seems similar to a Kinect hack that does basically the same thing.

You can also swipe your arm to navigate between the controls provided in the software. These controls let you change the garment's color, move it around or take a photo of you "wearing" the item. You can then immediately share that photo with friends via Facebook and Twitter using the software or download it to your computer.

In theory, the system sounds great, but in practice, it still needs some work. For example, it was completely frozen when we tried to use it on our Mac (in both Safari and Chrome), but worked well on our Windows PC (in IE). This appears to be related to the software's use of Adobe Flash - the Mac webcam is not set by default to work with Flash. There's a workaround for this, but an average user wouldn't know to try it. And the website doesn't offer instructions.

Also, we have to admit, using AR in this way is not anything like actually trying on clothes.

But it's a start. And not just a start at using AR for virtual shopping purposes, but a start for AR to be used for anything that's not some gimmicky marketing push, like AR-enabled posters or sports tickets. For that, we're grateful.

In our continuing tradition of rounding up new mobile application releases we found interesting and/or exciting over the past month, we present you with this new list of apps for July 2011. This month, we found a lot of great new iPhone apps, some Android and tablet apps, and a bunch of "notable" application updates.

As always, share your thoughts on those we missed in the comments below.

iPhone & Android / Cross-Platform

Spott: This app uses your phone's GPS to point to map out nearby film and TV locations. Great for entertainment buffs. ($0.99, iTunes and $1.13, Android Market)

Nosh: This food-spotting and reviews app lets you photograph, share and track great places to eat and the meals you've had there. (Free, iTunes and Android Market)

Facebook for Every Phone: This new app brings Facebook to over 2,500 phones worldwide. To download, go to m.facebook.com or enter d.facebook.com/install in your mobile browser.

MyMoby lets families privately share their location with each other and send alerts when needing assistance. (Free, iTunes, Android and BlackBerry)

iPhone

Batphone: This experimental app uses the phone's microphone to record the sounds in a room to develop an acoustic "fingerprint" for that space. The idea is that this type of location-detection could be used in future apps when GPS is not available. There's nothing much you can really do with this app right now, but what a cool concept! (Free, iTunes)

Capture: Instead of wasting time hitting "record" or adjusting settings, the Capture app starts recording video as soon as the app launches. Finally, you can record the kids before the moment has passed!($0.99, iTunes)

Trover: Newly launched app Trover was an undiscovered gem until the big press push this month surrounding the app's update. With Trover, you can connect with others to discover places and things nearby using photo-sharing combined with geolocation. (Free, iTunes)

Summify: This new iPhone app delves into the social news space to deliver periodic summaries of the news from your friends on Twitter, Facebook and Google Reader. (Free, iTunes)

Trimit: This app summarizes webpages into either 1,000, 5,000 or 140 character summaries for easy reading and social sharing. (Free, iTunes)

Katango: Like the idea of Google Circles but happy on Facebook? Katagno automatically organizes your Facebook friends into groups, then allows you to share just with them. It's automagical! (Free, iTunes)

Evoz: This app turns your iPhone, iPod or iPad into a baby monitor by working with another iOS device connected over Wi-Fi. Put one device in the baby's room, listen on the other. (Free, iTunes)

Dragon Go: This voice control app understands the intent of your questions and opens the appropriate website to provide an answer (e.g., Reviews of sushi restaurants might open Yelp, music by Lady Gaga, starts playing a song on your iPod, etc.) (Free, iTunes)

Photovine: This new photo-sharing app comes from Google-acquired Slide (yes, we know, weird!) Fun, but invite only for now. (Free, iTunes)

ON Voicefeed: A great new app for iPhone, ON Voicefeed lets you set up custom voicemail greetings for different callers or groups of callers. A premium version ($9.99/year) adds unlimited greetings and voicemail storage. (Free, iTunes)

Foreca.st: From the makers of Hurricane Party, Foreca.st lets you share where you're going with friends, then lets you check in using Foursquare when you arrive. (Free, iTunes)

Flixlab: This app lets you easily make movies and slideshows on your iPhone which you can then share with friends on Facebook. (Free, iTunes)

OfficeDrop: You can scan, search, organize and archive your paper files, PDFs and other documents using this new iPhone/iPad app and view them either on your device or the Web. (Free, iTunes - additional storage available for a fee)

im360: With this iOS application you can check out an amazing collection of 360-degree videos from your iPhone (Free for Lite version or $1.99, iTunes)

Android

ABC News: The official ABC News app arrived on Android bringing top stories, video briefs, pictures, breaking news and more. Select cities also have access to local news. (Free, Android Market)

Do it (Tomorrow): A great new productivity (or procrastination) app for Android, Do it Tomorrow lets you keep track of your to-do's in an attractive, simple interface. Cloud syncing is available, too. (Free, Android Market)

AwayFind for Android: This app brings email management tool AwayFind to mobile users, letting you route urgent emails to your Android phone or tablet, read the whole message and reply. Push notifications are supported too. (Free, Android Market)

Vellamo Mobile Web Benchmark: This new app from Qualcomm lets you evaluate Web performance in detail so you can see which Android devices offer the best experience in terms of browser performance. (Free, Android Market)

Localicious: This new Android app from WhitePages helps you find popular nearby businesses, plus real-time tips and trends. Foursquare users can also use the app to do "pre check-ins." (Free, Android Market)

Scrabble Free: This month EA launched its first free Android game, Scrabble Free, which includes all the features you love and expect. (Free, Android Market)

Tablets

SwiftKey X: One of the best alternative keyboard interfaces for Android added a ton of new features, including better predictive intelligence and "cloud learning," which lets you optionally connect to Twitter, Gmail, Facebook and SMS to improve its predictions. Android Honeycomb is also supported. ($3.99 for Android phones, $4.99 for Tablets, Android Market or Amazon Appstore)

Crayola ColorStudio HD for iPad: Not just an app, but an app and pen combo, this new experience for iPad actually lets your kids color on the tablet with a big pen. No more crayon on the walls! Can't wait for my daughter to be old enough for this! (App is free in iTunes, iMarker pen is $29.99.)

Star Trek PADD: The app you nerds (ahem, self included) have secretly been waiting for: the PADD turns your iPad into an authentic-looking PADD from Star Trek. For practical purposes, you can read Star Trek news, but really, who needs practical? ($4.99, iTunes)

iUsers: This iPad app sets up your iPad for use with multiple users, each with their own mailbox, settings and apps. (Jailbreak only - add http://cydia.iblogeek.com as a source then search for iUsers)

Birds-Eye: An iPad app that shows you who's tweeting around you. Simple, but fun. (Free, iTunes)

NASA Visualization Explorer: An awesome app for space geeks, this new iPad app provides a direct connection to NASA's research news in an engaging format using photos and videos. (Free, iTunes)

iSheetMusic: Although it works on iPhone too, we like iSheetMusic on the iPad instead - it's easier to see. As you may have guessed by its title, this app lets you search for, buy and organize sheet music collections on your device. An audible and visible Metronome are included, too. (Free, iTunes)

Notable Updates

You may have missed the following app updates this past month. Here are a few worth mentioning.

Social

• Foursquare launched notifications on Android (first!) and added directions to the iPhone versions.
• FriendCaster (Facebook app for Android, formerly called Flow for Facebook) came to Android tablets (in alpha, via invite)
• StumbleUpon! came to the iPad
• Hashable's social CRM app was updated with a new focus on privacy instead of broadcasting connections.
• Twitter for Android added push notifications and support for multiple accounts

News/Info

• Bloomberg arrived for Android tablets
• NASA's official app arrived on Android

Entertainment

• Amazon's Cloud Player arrived on iPad via a Web interface, and added unlimited storage for $20/year
• Hulu Plus for Android added support for more devices
• Zinio's magazine reader app expanded Android support to all Froyo and Gingerbread devices
• SoundHound for iPhone added LiveLyrics, which lets you search for lyrics for the music you're listening to
• IMDb added support for Android tablets and several new features
• TV guide app i.TV partnered with check-in service GetGlue on iOS

Google / Other

• Google Maps for Android added stop-by-stop information for transit and offline maps
• Google Docs for mobile browsers added the ability to sort, narrow and share multiple docs from your list
• Google Shopper was updated with support for Google Offers (local deals)
• Evernote for Android updated with new interface, rich text notes and more.
• Pinger brought free text messaging to European users
• Mint for iPhone was updated with more money management features, including the ability to add transactions while on the go
• M-commerce app Zaarly arrived on Android
• Cross-platform smart note-taking app SpringPad was updated with reminders, push notifications and badges (iOS)
• Thrutu, which lets you share information and media while on the phone, arrived on iOS

AppMobi has launched a new "XDK," which allows developers to build HTML5-optimized applications for the Web or for mobile platforms. The resulting code can be used to deliver great HTML5 applications, like those found in Chrome's Web app store, but it can also be used in hybrid apps submitted to Apple's App Store or the Android Market.

The XDK itself is a Web app, and is available in the Chrome Web app Store for free.

XDK Means Cross-Platform

If you can write code using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript, you can use the XDK to build an application, says appMobi. There's no need to learn Objective C or download any other SDK's. Instead, the new XDK lets you use industry standards to build your apps, as well as appMobi's own aUX javascript libraries, for things like transitions and scrollers.

The XDK also offers debugging tools with on-screen emulation, local-on-device and remotely anywhere in the world, without ad-hoc builds or security features, says the company. And it works on both Mac and Windows.

Works with PhoneGap, Offers Cloud Services

In addition, appMobi says the XDK is fully compatible with the PhoneGap HTML5 cross-platform development project, which recently launched into version 1.0. Like PhoneGap, appMobi's XDK also provides access to a device's native features, such as the GPS, accelerometer, and camera, while also offering touch interaction, gestures, vibration and more.

Developers building apps using the XDK can choose to integrate appMobi's other services, which aren't typically a part of an HTML5 development suite. These include things like in-app purchases, rich media push messaging, usage analytics, secure user authentication and live app updating.

HTML5 App School

Along with the XDK, appMobi launched HTML5 App School, an online resource for those new to mobile development. It provides detailed information on all parts of the development process, from conceptualization, through planning and development, to posting the app on app stores. The App School site also provides access to tools, libraries and other resources, forums, code samples, seminars and instructional videos.

What Do You Think?

Some of the early reviewers of the XDK noted they had trouble with Java, but others seemed to have no trouble. If you try it, let us know what you think in the comments below.

A company called iSpeech has launched a free voice recognition and text-to-speech SDK for mobile developers building apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry. During its pre-launch phase, iSpeech saw over 3,000 developers sign up for its service and powered 1 billion conversions in the cloud. Incidentally, 3,000 developers is the same number that Nuance, makers of the paid Dragon SDK, recently advertised themselves, says iSpeech's CMO Yaron Oren. But that was after significant marketing efforts over the course of 6 months, he added.

The price of the Dragon SDK is a barrier to entry for many developers and businesses, the company believes. iSpeech wants to be the more affordable alternative.

iSpeech on Mobile Goes Freemium

The iSpeech service is free to all mobile developers, and is available to Web developers who want to use the same technology via the iSpeech API and online payment system. On the Web, prices start at $.005 per word, but on mobile it's free. iSpeech says it may offer some value-added services on mobile in the future.

iSpeech is already used in several well-known apps, including Car & Driver's Txt U L8r, TeleNav's Evie, plus the company's own DriveSafe.ly app, and more. Its SDK's and API's provide over 40 text-to-speech voices and include support for over 25 languages. Premium services, like celebrity voices or custom text to speech voices are also available. Developers can also optionally pay for the ability to increase speech recognition performance specific to their use case, when applicable.

Those interested in trying out iSpeech can do so by signing up here.

Update: iSpeech says its FAQ regarding mobile ads was out of date, so we removed the reference to the credit purchasing feature from an earlier version of this post.

Location-based media company JiWire reports seeing increases in the sharing of and the demand for local deals, like those offered by Groupon, LivingSocial and others, since last quarter. According to data from a recent survey, sharing of deals has increased by 21% and demand is up 20% from Q1 2011.

In addition, only 8% never buy local deals, up from 28% who said they never buy them just a few months ago.

JiWire has been tracking the adoption of deals among a segment of the population it calls the "on-the-go" audience, which consists of those using notebooks, tablets and smartphones outside of the home or workplace. So, to be clear, these are not universal trends. They only apply to the highly mobile user, who connects to the Internet, checks email or uses mobile applications while away from their home or office.

Still, that describes a large swath of the Internet-connected U.S. population today, and especially those participating in the local deals space. Simply put, the trends occurring within this audience are notable for the deals industry.

Increased Sharing

Since Q1, JiWire found that sharing local deals is up 21%. Now, 75% of the on-the-go audience are sharing deals regularly, the company says. The most popular way to share deals is email (35%), but word-of-mouth (19%) and Facebook (18%) are also regularly used.

Demand for Deals Up, Too

Demand for deals has also increased over last quarter, says JiWire, with 28% of consumers now buying deals once per month, up from 20% in Q1. As noted above, only 8% say they never buy deals, a decrease from 28% a few months ago.

Women Prefer Less Expensive Deals than Men

78% of people spend an average of less than $50 on local deals these days, but when comparing trends between the male and female audiences, there are some differences. Women are more likely to spend less than $25 on deals, JiWire notes, while men will spend $25 to $50 on a deal.

Image credits: Lead image, Hudson Horizons; Charts: JiWire

Group messaging app GroupMe launched version 3.0 today, adding a number of new features and updates, including full Web access, International support, a redesigned interface, direct messaging and more. But the most notable of the new features is a "Q&A" option called "Questions," which encourages users to start conversations.

What's New?

The updated app brings GroupMe to over 90 countries worldwide, with support for over 900 carriers. However, SMS-based chat is not available outside the U.S., only in-app chat is. The option to include non-smartphone users into a group chat session within GroupMe via SMS has always been one of the app's best features, so we hope that international markets will one day have the same option.

The company also announced that GroupMe is cross-platform now, with apps for Android, iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows Phone, but none of those apps are new as of today. The newest apps, those for BlackBerry and Windows Phone, were launched over the past couple of months, with the Windows Phone app launched just a couple of weeks ago. GroupMe did a soft launch at the time, so this is the first the cross-platform support is getting any press.

We like the Web access option that now ships with GroupMe, which allows you to start, view and manage all your groups and messaging from the Web. This is great for being able to pick up where you left off, by allowing you to seamlessly transition between devices. Too bad more mobile apps don't offer a complementary Web experience like this!

Also new is a Twitter-like direct messaging feature that lets two people have a private conversation, initiated by a tap on their GroupMe avatar.

Mobile Q&A with Questions

Of course, the biggest and most interesting of the new features is "Questions." The feature is in beta testing, but has been made available to any who downloads version 3.0 of the app. Questions don't have to be targeted directly at a private group, like the groups of family members or friends you already have configured on GroupMe. While that is possible, the app also supports the option of posting public questions by broadcasting to Facebook or Twitter. And respondents can answer via Facebook or Twitter, thanks to the included website address posted alongside the update.

According to GroupMe, the idea with questions is to initiate a group chat when the "what" is defined but the "who" is not. That is, you have a question, but you don't know who might have the answer. For example, "anyone want to go to a movie?" or "what is everyone doing this weekend?"

It's an interesting take on how to combine Q&A and social, which Facebook itself has seemingly failed to capitalize on with its Q&A services "Facebook Questions." Perhaps the key to social Q&A is the mobile component?

Of course, Facebook may have already realized that. One of GroupMe's biggest competitors is a similar group messaging app, Beluga, which is now Facebook-owned. But so far, Facebook has not done anything with the technology Beluga offers, and the app still runs as a standalone service. But as Beluga's (public) development slows down, apps like GroupMe that continue to innovate and move cross-platform have a chance at gaining a critical mass of their own. If we had to pick between the two today, GroupMe would now come out on top.

Mobile application developers believe that Google's new social network Google Plus will have more impact on mobile growth and adoption than Apple's iCloud, or even iOS 5's Twitter integration. This is just one of the fascinating findings related to Google Plus revealed within the results of a new developer survey led by mobile cloud platform provider Appcelerator and analyst firm IDC. Together, the two companies had surveyed 2,012 app developers to better understand their take on current and future mobile trends.

The interest in Google Plus is somewhat surprising, considering that the social network's age is still measured in weeks, not months. But, according to Appcelerator's VP of Marketing, Scott Schwarzhoff, developers often take the long view when considering new services such as this, thinking 12, 16 or 18 months out into the future.

For example, last year, Appcelerator saw developers were displaying great enthusiasm for Apple's iPad pre-launch. And it's now seeing the same excitement for Google Plus.

How Developers See Google Plus

At 25% of respondents indicating interest in Google Plus, the results show it ranking higher than other products and trends, including Apple's iCloud (22%), NFC (18%), iOS 5's Twitter integration (14%), Android patent issues (13%), Amazon's forthcoming Android tablet (6%) and the HP TouchPad (2%).

In addition to Google Plus' impact on mobile growth and adoption, developers also said they believed Google Plus could catch up to Facebook in the long-term. Two-thirds said that the new social network would be an asset for Google in gaining mindshare among consumers and developers alike in addressing both the Facebook challenge and the Twitter/iOS 5 integration.

Why Mobile Developers are Excited About Google Plus

The reason developers feel this way has largely to do with Google's ability to leverage Google Plus across a portfolio of products, including Search, Maps, YouTube and more, all of which also have a mobile presence.

Other popular responses to the "why Google Plus" question included positive sentiments about the innovations Google Plus delivered (e.g., Sparks, Hangouts and Circles), its overall user experience, and Google's ability to bake in Google Plus deeply into its Android operating system.

That last item is an especially notable key advantage over Facebook, which does not yet have a deeply integrated Facebook experience on any mobile platform in particular, although there are some phones, like the HTC ChaCha (aka the HTC Status on AT&T), HTC Salsa and INQ's Cloud Touch, which offer a Facebook-focused experience.

But for developers, there's an understanding that what Google Plus may soon offer is not just another way to integrate "social" into their mobile applications, but an ability to map a user's particular "interest graph" into their apps, as well. For example, if a user has a Google Plus Circle of friends who like to discuss movies, explains Schwarshoff, an app like Flixster could take advantage of that for a more personalized and customized social experience. Similarly, a photo-sharing application could allow you to share some photos with just a Circle of family or friends, instead of the general public or a wider network of "followers."

For Now, Facebook Still Wins

All that being said, developers aren't jumping to use Google Plus within their applications immediately. For one thing, Google does not yet offer developer tools for Google Plus (i.e., a Google Plus API - application programming interface) so it's not even a possibility at this time.

However, although Facebook is the API leader over the next 12-18 months, according to the survey, Google Plus and Twitter are tied for second place in terms of future API usage.

Of course, it should be noted that what any survey respondent says they will do and what they actually end up doing can sometimes be very different things. But Appcelerator's surveys in the past have usually been on target when it comes to spotting trends.

And lest you think that Appcelerator's core audience is biased towards Android developers somehow, you'll be interested to know that, in fact, the opposite is true. iOS apps make up 75% of Appcelerator's 25,000+ mobile applications. The apps are Web developers primarily, not those coding in Java or Objective C. Web developers are those who are most focused on building cross-platform applications, which makes this group's thoughts on Google Plus most interesting indeed.

It looks like Google Plus will soon see itself integrated into iPhones and Androids alike through mobile applications, even though Apple has anointed Twitter as its social network of choice.

Appcelerator & IDC's new mobile developer survey is out now, with details on a wide range of development trends including platform choice, developers' future plans and mobile industry challenges. Notably, the companies have now added HTML5 as a new option to rank among mobile development platforms, and its middle-of-road showing indicates that mobile websites are increasingly a complementary requirement for today's mobile developers.

Meanwhile, despite seeing a slight jump back to Q1 levels of interest, Android tablets remain a platform with a number of challenges, developers report. Explains Appcelerator, these tablets are in somewhat of a "no-man's land" in terms of developer priorities right now, as developers aren't sure what to make of the overall Android Tablet picture.

Ranking the Platforms

One of the big questions the survey always asks developers is where each platform ranks in terms of developer interest. As expected, iOS (iPhone, iPad) are doing well, with 91% and 88% of developer interest respectively, as is Android (Phone), with 87% interest. The Android Tablet platform still ranks high, too, with 74% saying they're "very interested" in developing for that platform. HTML5 comes in 5th (66%), above Windows Phone, BlackBerry, webOS, Symbian and MeeGo.

But even though Android Tablets rank well here, Appcelerator says that mobile developers are confused by the Android Tablet space, which remains fluid in terms of the changing nature of the OS itself, the hardware and the form factor requirements. This confusion is reflected in the historical chart (below) which tracks developers' interest over time.

In January, prior to Android OS's launch on commercial tablets, developers said that pricing was the most important issue to consider. And indeed, Android tablets that were priced higher or equivalent to the iPad have not sold well, it seems.

But now, developers see other issues as even more important than price, including the need for user interface improvements, phone to tablet portability, fragmentation problems, increasing the size of the app catalog and more.

These can be seen in either a positive or negative light, depending on your particular viewpoint. For example, Appcelerator says that these suggestions could now indicate that in developers' minds, it's a question of "how" Android Tablets will succeed, as opposed to an "if."

More details on the survey results can be found on Appcelerator's website here.

AOL is launching its entry into the increasingly crowded iPad magazine space with the new application AOL Editions. The app is somewhat similar to other high-profile efforts like The Daily, Flipboard, Plus and Zite, but attempts to find its niche by offering a personalized, social, once-daily experience which is also publisher-friendly.

But most importantly, in an effort to further define itself, AOL has made the bold decision to forgo real-time updates in favor of a magazine that you can actually finish reading throughout the course of the day.

Your iPad Newspaper, Again

Although you can schedule your download of AOL Editions for any time of day, the magazine is clearly designed to be the iPad equivalent of either the morning or evening newspaper. The idea is that it's the paper (or magazine, we suppose) which you would read over breakfast or after work, while relaxing at home with your iPad.

According to AOL's own internal research, morning and evening are the two times of day where people really engage with their iPads. And for this reason, AOL decided to forgo offering real-time updates within the application.

"So many things today are beeping at you with breaking news," explains Sol Lipman, Senior Director of Mobile at AOL, "we wanted to make something that was succinct and completable." He also notes that most iPad owners are sitting at a computer most of their day, and can get real-time news online.

With its focus on a once-per-day interaction, AOL Editions is like News Corp's app The Daily. But unlike The Daily, AOL Editions doesn't provide original content nor does it employ human editors.

Instead, the content is sourced from a limited selection of top sources and it uses smart algorithms that learn your preferences as you tap through and read stories. These automated bots track things like what you clicked, how long you read an article and what topics you tend to prefer, among other things. Users can further refine the personalized experience by connecting to social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and by choosing their favorite sections during the setup process.

Personalization Features

Each of the 15 sections (e.g. Design, Tech, Business, Family, Health & Fitness, Sports, Entertainment, Travel, etc.) can be edited to include your favorite sources and subjects. You can also sync with iCal and Facebook to see your events, meetings and birthdays on the magazine's homepage. And articles can be saved and shared by email, Facebook or Twitter.

The app offers a few cute touches, too, like a delivery notification that mimics the sound of a paper boy or girl riding up on a bike and throwing a newspaper on your doorstep and a section showing today's weather on the magazine's cover where the mailing label would be on a traditional publication.

There's also an interesting feature that involves using keywords for even more refined personalization. Each article is tagged with keywords, which themselves are sourced from Wikipedia entries about the article's subject.

Sources themselves, like BusinessWeek or CNN, for example, can also be selected as keywords.

"Personalize!," shouts the header where the keywords are displayed, "Tap the check on the things you want to see more of and the X on things you don't."

That seems straightforward enough for even non-geeks to understand.

Pageviews for AOL Properties & Others

Of course, this is an AOL product, so it leverages its own properties here, including Huffington Post, and all the brands that now fall under Arianna Huffington's watch as Editor-in-Chief, including Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest, the local news content from Patch and others. It does not, however, appear to give any sort of weighted preference to AOL brands as news sources, as far as we can tell in our tests. It did however, attribute an article of mine here on ReadWriteWeb to the editor, Richard MacManus instead of me. And it put a slash in "Read/WriteWeb," even though we dropped that ages ago. But in the grand scheme of things, these are minor quirks and easily resolved.

Download for Free

AOL Editions is a product from AOL's "Mobile-First" group, a group whose focus is to develop new brands for AOL, like the recently launched music app AOL Play. With AOL Editions, the hope here is clearly to deliver a way to increase pageviews at AOL properties, within the context of an iPad application for consuming news. Editions sends readers directly to the article's website when tapped. It doesn't strip out text or ads, or attempt to reformat the article in an iPad-friendly format. It is displayed as the publisher chose, including inline photos or video, when applicable.

AOL Editions is a free download for iPad. You can learn more about Editions here. The download is expected to go live at midnight, perhaps sooner.

Layar, maker of the Layar augmented reality platform for mobile, has today announced Layar Vision, a platform extension that enables phones to "see" and recognize real-world objects, including posters, magazines and newspapers. With Layar Vision, the goal is to provide brands and print media publishers' with new ways to engage their audience using augmented reality experiences.

About Layar Vision

To use Layar Vision, developers must first upload reference images to Layar's servers. Those images are then used to extract the fingerprint of the object so it can detect, track and augment the object with audio, video and/or animated 3D objects, as specified. Currently the system only supports 2D images with 3D models on the target objects. Layar Vision will be able to instantly detect up to 50 target objects at launch.

The company says there are some limitations to what the technology can recognize and track. It works best on planar surfaces, like posters, magazines and newspapers, as mentioned above, as well as billboards, flyers, book covers, CD covers, paintings and other surfaces with "a minimum amount of discriminative texture and detail." This is different than Qualcomm's recently released AR SDK for iOS (the Android version was already available), which can track both planar objects as well as simple 3D objects like a box.

The Layar platform is already in use by over 10,000 developers who work to build AR experiences for smartphones. These experiences exist both as layers within the Layar smartphone application itself, as well as in third-party apps using the Layar Player. The Layar app has been installed 10 million times, and now has over 2,500 layers, the company says.

Where and When

Developers can expect to see Layar Vision included in the newest beta of the Layar Platform, arriving in the coming weeks, says the company, but no exact date was given for the launch. For developers using the Layar Player in their own apps, they can expect to see Layar Vision in the Q4 release, on both iPhone and Android.

In addition, to kickstart development, Layar is hosting a contest called the "Layar Creation Challenge," offering a total of $55,000 in cash prizes. The top 10 developers with the best and most useful concepts for Layar Vision will receive between $2,500 and $15,000. You can learn more about Layar Vision and the contest here.

Ansca Mobile, in partnership with InMobi and PapayaMobile, has today announced LaunchPad, a suite of marketing and analytics services targeted towards mobile application developers using Ansca Mobile's Corona SDK. The services will allow developers to better market their apps, increase distribution, improve monetization and better understand their audience, the companies say.

Marketing

The idea behind LaunchPad is to give developers a jumpstart on getting their application noticed. For starters, Ansca Mobile has provided a Marketing 101 Guide that will walk developers through all the steps needed to get an app discovered.

They've also patterned with app review sites Technobrains and AppShrink.com, where they have negotiated discounts to get developers featured reviews. And if a developer wins "App of the Week," they get a free review. Ansca says it will also select other applications for additional app reviews and placements.

Analytics

The included analytics product in Corona has also now been improved too. No longer will app developers have to create app ID's through a third-party provider, a task which the company thought was "a little bit clumsy." Starting today, developers will have access to easier-to-use, basic analytics, no app ID required.

Gaming

On the gaming side, Ansca partnered with PapayaMobile to offer developers access to its network of 22 million users worldwide. PapayaMobile's SDK has now been integrated into Corona's SDK, and the game network API have been unified under a single gameNetwork" library interface.

Monetization

For monetization, Ansca parntered with InMobi's advertising network, which serves over 36 billion ads across 165 countries. In tests, Ansca Mobile says it seeded the new library to select developers and found that InMobi generated up to 3 times more revenue than AdMob.

New SDK and More

The LaunchPad release comes alongside the latest version of the Corona SDK, which includes the features, improvements and bug fixes from the daily builds of the last 4 months. The back end has been updated for faster build times, too, especially for Android which is now 2.5 times faster than the previous public release. The new release also bundles several 3rd-party tools, with 30-day trials, including Corona Project Manger, Kwik, and Spriteloq.

Full release notes are here.

I don't hate the Toshiba Thrive Android tablet, which is probably the nicest thing I can say about it. Although heavy, it has a lot of ports. And it feels less heavy than it looks, I found. It runs a newer and more stable version of Android Honeycomb than some of its competitors do, too, so there are handful of geeky new features to enjoy. Overall, it's not a bad Android tablet.

But at the end of the day, the question still remains: who will buy this tablet over the iPad?

I've been in search of a great Android tablet - one that would lure me away from the iPad. But I haven't found it yet. I can't even say the Thrive comes close, because frankly, anything heavier than the iPad 2 is non-starter for me.

Need More Ports? Thrive Has That. (Also, Lots of Extra Weight)

Android tablet makers have been criticized for focusing more on specs instead of on the overall ecosystem. And if any tablet is guilty of this, it's surely the Toshiba Thrive. This tablet is more like a laptop, sans keyboard, especially if you go by the number of ports it offers. There's a full-sized SD card slot, an HDMI port, a USB 2.0 slot, a mini USB port, a docking port, plus the usual headphone and power jacks.

Maybe all those ports are what make the tablet so beefy. It's .62 inches thick, which is double that of the iPad 2 and Galaxy Tab 10.1. And at 1.66 pounds, it's closer to the iPad and the Xoom (1.5-1.6 lbs) in weight than the iPad 2 (1.33 lbs). These small differences matter a lot when you're talking about portable gadgets. After using the Thrive for reading, for example, it became uncomfortable to keep it propped up.

The Thrive also has a 10.1-inch 1280 x 800 pixel display, the same as the Motorola Xoom and Galaxy Tab 10.1, the same 1 GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor as the Galaxy Tab and a better camera than the Tab (5 megapixels vs. the Tab's 3 megapixels). Both have a 2 megapixels front camera, too. (If you really care about specs, you can delve into more of them here. We don't review hardware in this way, however.)

But What Can You Do with the Thrive?

What's more important is not the processor speed and pixel density, but what you can actually do with the tablet you purchase. Apple's iPad has an answer for that question, with over 100,000 native iPad apps, and 425,000 apps in total that work on both iPhone and iPad, combined. And it has iTunes, the marketplace for movies, TV shows, music, podcasts and educational content. The iPad no longer struggles to answer the question, "what can you do on a tablet?" It's now trying to limit the responses to the question of "what can you NOT do?"

That's not to say Android isn't making advances in this area. This spring, Google released an update to its Market which allowed users to rent movies and stream them to their devices. More recently, the mobile Android Market was updated so users could start the purchase process from their mobile, as opposed to only on the Web. But these are still baby steps, when you look at the larger challenge of reaching equity with the iPad.

For what it's worth, the Thrive takes a big step forward in trying to answer the question of "what to do" with the inclusion of pre-installed software applications. Although sometimes unwelcome, in the case of the Thrive, the apps aren't what we would call "bloatware." That's especially true since some of them that normally come with a hefty price tag are provided for free. The paid apps that ship with the Thrive include Quickoffice HD, LogMeIn Ignition and Kasperky's Tablet Security. There are also a ton of free apps pre-installed, like Angry Birds, Backgammon, Toshiba's own e-reader app "Book Place," Google Books, several card games, NFS Shift (a racing game) andThe New York Times.

I also really liked the bundled PrinterShare app, which easily found my Wi-Fi printer and let me immediately print out photos, webpages, documents, messages, contacts, Gmail, and more, without any hassle. Too bad that you only get 5 free prints before having to upgrade to the paid version, though ($12.95 from Toshiba's own store). That's the kind of thing which Toshiba should have thrown in for free to make the tablet more competitive. It's really a great feature.

Pure Honeycomb 3.1…if You Like That sort of Thing

On the software front, Toshiba's Thrive is notable for the fact that it's the first to ship with Android 3.1, the latest version of Honeycomb. That means you can do nifty things like resize your homescreen widgets and enjoy other minor user interface improvements, like a bigger "recent apps" list. And if you like Honeycomb, you'll like the Toshiba Thrive because at the very least, Toshiba didn't bog down the operating system (OS) with a overlay like Samsung's TouchWiz or HTC's Sense.

But...

Well, I'm just going to say it.

I don't like Honeycomb. I don't think it's a great tablet OS in its current state. I don't think that relocating the menus and controls that you find at the bottom of Android smartphones to the top of the screen on Android tablets makes sense. As you move back and forth between your Android phone and tablet devices, the swapped layout gets confusing.

Plus, everywhere you look, there's some sort of button, control or menu system: search is accessed in the top-left, access to the apps menu is at the top-right, navigation buttons are in the bottom-left while notifications and the clock are in the bottom-right, similar to what you would find in Windows PC's "system tray." Because really, if you're going to rip off a design, you would copy from Windows?

But it's unfair to criticize Toshiba for Google's design choices, and my own personal preferences. If you're an Android geek at heart, you might enjoy Honeycomb quite a bit. If so, you'll enjoy it more on a Toshiba Thrive.

At the end of the day, the Toshiba Thrive is a good enough Android tablet, maybe even one of the better ones, but it's not a good enough answer to the question "why not an iPad?"

The Thrive is available in 8 GB ($429.99), 16 GB ($479.99) and 32 GB ($579.99) models.

Mobile application search and discovery service Chomp has released its June 2011 report on app search trends and found that, for the second consecutive month, paid app downloads on Android have increased. The increases are small; paid Android app downloads increased just 2% from April to May and only 1% from May to June.

And in total, only 6% of all Android downloads on Chomp's network were paid.

In other words, these small jumps don't seem to signify any major shift in the overall trend involving the dominance of free apps on Android. However, it will be interesting to watch this space to see if this trend continues. After all, over time, even small increases can add up.

The 1% increase on Android was spread out across multiple price levels, but the $4.01 - $5.00 range saw the largest jump, from 0.1% to 0.6%. The most popular categories were games, utilities and entertainment.

In comparison, iOS app developers saw a 4% increase in paid apps last month, over May. The ranges seeing the most growth there were the $0.99 and $1.99 price levels. The $4.99 price level also saw an increase, going from 0.8% in May to 1.0% in June, while the $9.99 price level declined from 0.3% in May to 0.1% in June.

In addition, the word "free" was the number one search term across all countries sampled on Android, through the Chomp app for Android.

On iOS, the company saw much more diversity on search terms, although "games" was a popular query.

American Express' new digital payments platform Serve has just announced its second operator partnership here in the U.S. will be with Verizon Wireless. This news follows last month's report that Sprint would also integrate the Serve platform into select Android phones on its network.

According to Verizon, its customers will be able to sign up for Serve accounts on both Verizon phones and tablets, although it did not specify which devices those would be.

Serve, which can be funded by a bank account, debit or credit card, or from another Serve account, does not require users to be American Express card holders. Instead, it's aimed at those who don't rely on credit cards. With Serve, customers can shop both online and offline, anywhere American Express is accepted.

Verizon Wireless customers will be able to use Serve to buys goods and services on their mobile device in just a few clicks. The process is easier than entering in a credit card number by hand, because all that's required to checkout using Serve is your mobile phone number.

American Express and Verizon will also team up to use Serve as a way to source, distribute and enable the redemption of online and mobile offers with participating Serve merchants. The offers and coupons customers redeem at checkout will automatically appear in their Serve accounts, which can be viewed and managed online and on mobile.

In addition, both companies are working with Payfone, a mobile payments startup which American Express invested in this spring.  Payfone helps to combine mobile authorization and payment services with the Serve platform. This allows customers to pay for both digital and physical goods using just their phone number. Payfone is unique as it leverages the security built into mobile operator networks to fight fraud. With Payfone, the customer's SIM card, device ID and location are tied to each customer's account for more secure transactions.

Merchants interested in learning more about accepting Serve can visit www.serve.com/billmyphone.

Today, Adobe is launching a new tool called Adobe Edge which will allow creative professionals to design animated Web content using Web standards like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. Not Flash.

Aimed to coexist with Adobe Flash, not replace it, the Web design software is Adobe's big bet on how it will continue to solidify its position as a top player in the infrastructure of the modern Web, especially as the Web goes increasingly mobile. In this new mobile context, the Web has become a more hostile environment for Flash, which has no place on Apple mobile devices, and likely never will.

HTML5 vs Flash...or HTML5 and Flash?

Although Flash still accounts for the majority of website animations today, that won't always be the case.

So does Edge's launch mean that Adobe caved and ceded the battle to HTML5 over Flash? Adobe doesn't see it that way. Although battles make for good headlines here in the world of tech journalism, it's not really an either/or scenario when it comes to the "Flash vs. HTML5" conundrum in the professional world. For today's Web designers and developers, both technologies are still used.

Adobe's Support for HTML5 Continues with Edge

"HTML5 is an opportunity for Adobe," explains Devin Fernandez, Group Product Manager for Adobe's Web Pro Segment, "that's not to say there aren't opportunities for Flash." He contends that Flash will continue to push forward, and, as we have reported previously, it will focus on areas that HTML5 cannot yet address as well - like 3D gaming for example. (Although even there, HTML5 is making inroads.)

Still, with HTML5 being a relatively new technology, it doesn't today deliver a consistent experience across the widest range of devices and browsers. For example, Windows XP, which even to Microsoft's own chagrin remains a fairly popular computer operating system, can only run up to Internet Explorer 8. That means it can't take advantage of the many major leaps in terms of HTML5 support introduced in IE 9.

In other words, Adobe believes Flash still has a solid future here on the Web for some time. But when the Web is ready for an entirely Flash-free existence, this is surely Adobe's plan for maintaining its relevance among the creative professionals crowd, including developers and designers alike.

What Does Edge Do?

Adobe claims it has been a strong player in HTML5, going back to April 2010, when it first began introducing support for the technology in its product line, including Dreamweaver, Illustrator, its Digital Publishing Suite and, more recently, its Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool, Wallaby.

Now, with Adobe Edge, it aims to provide the tools that will help professionals build Web animations, and in the future, even simple games. At present, Edge will focus on its core animation engine, but in the future, it plans to add more HTML5 features, including Canvas support, support for HTML5 Audio and Video tags, richer support for animating SVG graphics and more.

The software (for both Mac and PC) is designed to have an intuitive paneled user interface, a fast startup time, and will include, at the bottom, the familar timeline feature creative professionals already know and understand. Edge users can import existing HTML documents and graphic assets including SVG, PNG, JPG and GIF and then sytle them with CSS3. Panels on the left and right provide access to properties of the .EDGE file and the various elements the designer is working with. And in the center, there runs an embedded version of the WebKit browser.

When a project is complete, it will work on modern Web browsers like those that run on Android, iOS, HP's webOS, the BlackBerry PlayBook, plus Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer 9.

Where to Get Adobe Edge

Starting today, Adobe Edge is available as a free download while in its public preview period. The 1.0 product is expected to launch next year.

This is a hugely important launch for Adobe - one that IDC analyst Al Hilwa, says is "the biggest thing they have done so far." Hilwa likes Adobe Edge, and believes it shows that Adobe is really in-tune with designer needs.

"Adobe has started working on HTML5 and has brought many little things, showing that they can pivot nicely to new trends," Hilwa told us. "It shows that they can remain the premier tools vendor no matter what the technology inside is."

Will designers agree with Hilwa's sentiment, though? In time, we'll know.

Today, Adobe is launching a new tool called Adobe Edge which will allow creative professionals to design animated Web content using Web standards like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. Not Flash.

Aimed to coexist with Adobe Flash, not replace it, the Web design software is Adobe's big bet on how it will continue to solidify its position as a top player in the infrastructure of the modern Web, especially as the Web goes increasingly mobile. In this new mobile context, the Web has become a more hostile environment for Flash, which has no place on Apple mobile devices, and likely never will.

HTML5 vs Flash...or HTML5 and Flash?

Although Flash still accounts for the majority of website animations today, that won't always be the case.

So does Edge's launch mean that Adobe caved and ceded the battle to HTML5 over Flash? Adobe doesn't see it that way. Although battles make for good headlines here in the world of tech journalism, it's not really an either/or scenario when it comes to the "Flash vs. HTML5" conundrum in the professional world. For today's Web designers and developers, both technologies are still used.

Adobe's Support for HTML5 Continues with Edge

"HTML5 is an opportunity for Adobe," explains Devin Fernandez, Group Product Manager for Adobe's Web Pro Segment, "that's not to say there aren't opportunities for Flash." He contends that Flash will continue to push forward, and, as we have reported previously, it will focus on areas that HTML5 cannot yet address as well - like 3D gaming for example. (Although even there, HTML5 is making inroads.)

Still, with HTML5 being a relatively new technology, it doesn't today deliver a consistent experience across the widest range of devices and browsers. For example, Windows XP, which even to Microsoft's own chagrin remains a fairly popular computer operating system, can only run up to Internet Explorer 8. That means it can't take advantage of the many major leaps in terms of HTML5 support introduced in IE 9.

In other words, Adobe believes Flash still has a solid future here on the Web for some time. But when the Web is ready for an entirely Flash-free existence, this is surely Adobe's plan for maintaining its relevance among the creative professionals crowd, including developers and designers alike.

What Does Edge Do?

Adobe claims it has been a strong player in HTML5, going back to April 2010, when it first began introducing support for the technology in its product line, including Dreamweaver, Illustrator, its Digital Publishing Suite and, more recently, its Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool, Wallaby.

Now, with Adboe Edge, it aims to provide the tools that will help professionals build Web animations, and in the future, even simple games. At present, Edge will focus on its core animation engine, but in the future, it plans to add more HTML5 features, including Canvas support, support for HTML5 Audio and Video tags, richer support for animating SVG graphics and more.

The software (for both Mac and PC) is designed to have an intuitive paneled user interface, a fast startup time, and will include, at the bottom, the familar timeline feature creative professionals already know and understand. Edge users can import existing HTML documents and graphic assets including SVG, PNG, JPG and GIF and then sytle them with CSS3. Panels on the left and right provide access to properties of the .EDGE file and the various elements the designer is working with. And in the center, there runs an embedded version of the WebKit browser.

When a project is complete, it will work on modern Web browsers like those that run on Android, iOS, HP's webOS, the BlackBerry PlayBook, plus Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer 9.

Where to Get Adobe Edge

Starting today, Adobe Edge is available as a free download while in its public preview period. The 1.0 product is expected to launch next year.

This is a hugely important launch for Adobe - one that IDC analyst Al Hilwa, says is "the biggest thing they have done so far." Hilwa likes Adobe Edge, and believes it shows that Adobe is really in-tune with designer needs.

"Adobe has started working on HTML5 and has brought many little things, showing that they can pivot nicely to new trends," Hilwa told us. "It shows that they can remain the premier tools vendor no matter what the technology inside is."

Will designers agree with Hilwa's sentiment, though? In time, we'll know.

With today's launch of PhoneGap 1.0, a framework that allows developers to build mobile apps using Web standards, it seemed like a good time to put up a poll about HTML as an app platform. HTML, and in particular, HTML5, has come a long way to addressing the needs of cross-platform development by delivering a platform where apps can run on any modern browser. But is it ready yet for you? How do you use HTML when building your apps? Or do you?

Share your thoughts on HTML as an app platform in this week's ReadWriteMobile poll.

There is a growing awareness about HTML as an app platform, but it still has some catching up to do when compared with its native counterparts. HTML apps need increased access to native APIs, improved runtimes (native aps don't need to worry with Web runtime barriers), and there needs to be more consistency in terms of how Web apps run across various platforms. We'd also like to see more apps that take advantage of HTML5 features, like offline access, for example.

On the other hand, the Web is easy to build for, flexible, future proof (to some extent), and comes very close to the "write once, run anywhere" holy grail.

Not all apps do well built solely using HTML, however. Those needing access to native features (e.g. integration with the camera), rich media, high performance (e.g. gaming), etc., may do better with a native approach.

So now it's your turn: have you used HTML to build your mobile applications? What did you learn from the experience? Tell us in this week's ReadWriteMobile poll and/or in the comments below.

PhoneGap, the open source mobile developement framework that allows mobile developers build apps using Web standards, is launching today into version 1.0. This is a milestone release for the platform, which now adds additional APIs, features and improvements in its newly updated product.

The launch is being celebrated in Portland, at an event called PhoneGap Day held at Urban Airship, a company which just had some major news of its own. Champagne all around!

Mobile developers know PhoneGap as the platform that provides a way to build apps using HMTL, CSS and JavaScript, all of which are common Web standards. PhoneGap developers can use either the free open source framework or the newer PhoneGap Build service (beta) which returns apps for iOS, Android, webOS, Symbian, BlackBerry and soon, MeeGo and bada.

The open source code has been downloaded over 600,000 times, at a rate of around 40,000 times per month, says PhoneGap creator Nitobi.

What's New in PhoneGap 1.0?

With the launch of PhoneGap 1.0, the company says the focus was on accessing native device API's.

Other improvements include:

• Overall API stability and “pluggable” architecture
• W3C DAP API compatibility
• Contacts API
• Remote debugging tools
• A new unifying bridge interface that makes adding platforms and platform extensions easy
• Improved plugin development processes

Most of the improvements to PhoneGap 1.0 came from its community of developers, which Nitobi CEO Andre Charland says is PhoneGap's "greatest asset." Contibuters include Nitobi, hundreds of indvidual developers and a team of senior software engineers at IBM. Adobe has also shown support for PhoneGap in its Dreamweaver software. Others, including Alcatel-Lucent, Sabre, Cisco, Logitech and Time Warner, have adopted it as well, Nitobi says.

PhoneGap 1.0 will be officially launched at this afternoon's party, which will inlcude talks, device hands-on's, demos and, of course, beer.

Did you miss out on the initial round of invites to Google's newest cloud locker service, Google Music? Well, today's the day to hit up your Google Music-loving friends for an invite. Existing users have been awarded just two invites each, which they can give out to anyone they choose. However, the service is still U.S.-only, so you may want to hold off on sharing with your overseas friends just yet.

Google Music is Cloud Storage for Songs

Google Music was announced at the Google I/O conference in May, and launched into beta. Initially, only I/O attendees were invited to join.

The service is similar to Amazon's "Cloud Drive," in that it also offers a place for users to store their music files "in the cloud" - the cloud in this case being Google's servers. But unlike Cloud Drive, there's no accompanying music store where you can purchase more tracks to fill your collection.

Still, for those with extensive music collections of their own, Google Music is a decent enough way to access those files from any Android mobile device, without worrying about storage limitations. The tracks stream over the network when played. Offline access is available too, if you've explicitly made select music available for offline listening.

Be Warned: You'll Need Some Time!

The one big drawback to using Google's service, is the time it takes to upload your files. For those who have collections that number in the 10's of Gigs, you'll have to start the upload process, then walk away for a cup of coffee…lunch, then dinner, a good night's sleep, breakfast, and maybe more.

Uploading is painful because Google Music doesn't have the necessary legal permission to do "music matching," a feature that would check your track lists against Google's own music collection. This is what Apple is offering with its forthcoming iCloud service: iTunes in the cloud. For paying customers ($25/year), iTunes will scan your music and match it to the 18 million songs it has in the iTunes Music store and make those available from all your Apple devices. It's a much easier entry point for cloud music, we would say. But iCloud is not Android-friendly. And Google Music is not Apple-friendly, except for some clunky workarounds.

At least once the collection is (finally) online, using the Google Music app is easy. It's a simple download for your Android device.

And for more information on the differences between Google Music and Amazon Cloud Drive, check out our earlier review here.

How to Get Invites

If you know someone who's a current Google Music user, now's the time to ask for an invite. After logging into the service, the orange bar at the top of the screen should read "Invite a friend: 2 remaining." Just click the link to hand them out.

Why so few invites? Probably to limit the impact on the still-beta service. Thousands of people uploading thousands of gigabytes of music all at once would be a strain on any service's infrastructure, even Google's.

Image credit: lead - LifeofAndroid