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TechCrunch — Tonight, Google launched its Google Apps Marketplace, an online storefront for Apps products and services. Here are our notes from the announcement. And of course, the marketplace is launching with a number of pilot partners (50 to be exact). One of those partners happens to be recently launched Socialwok, a product that ads a social layer to Gmail and other Google products. At last year’s TechCrunch50 conference, Socialwok made a big splash, winning the award for best demopit startup and launching its enterprise-friendly, ...More FriendFeed-like layer for Google Apps. The web-based application was praised for launching a social network that wrapped around the very unsocial Google Apps. And the startup just launched a gadget to allow users access all the features of Socialwok without leaving Gmail. Socialwok in the the Google Apps Marketplace allows organizations to use their existing Google Apps accounts to login into Socialwok and create a social network for their domains to share within Google Docs, Google Calendars, Google Spreadsheets and other Google objects in feeds. For example, with the Socialwok Gmail gadget, users can view, post and comment on various feeds in their organization right from Gmail. Ming Yong, CEO of the company, said that integration with the marketplace was a logical choice because of the growing number of SMBs that are using Google Apps as their productivity suite of choice. Currently Google has more than 2 million businesses using the Google Apps Suite. Over 6,000 domains and tens of thousands of users are using Socialwok. Socialwok’s standard edition on the marketplace will be free but the startup will launch a paid edition in May. Socialwok, which employs a freemium model, has steadily been adding features and improvements to its application, including releasing a new version of its HTML 5 mobile version for Android and iPhone browsers. And in the process of developing an innocative application, startup managed to catch Google’s eye. Social... ...Less

Mashable! — We had a chance to step into MySpace HQ for a chat with new Co-Presidents Jason Hirschhorn and Mike Jones, who preside over the News Corp.-owned social network from a shared desk in Beverly Hills. The joint office speaks to how closely Hirschhorn and Jones are working together to create a unified vision of the future for the lately struggling MySpace, whose former CEO Owen Van Natta exited the company after only 9 months in the hot seat. Hirschhorn describes MySpace as a site that “lacked focus” as he and Jones were ...More getting up to speed and learning about the business. He sees the pair’s role as instilling that much-needed focus as well as driving a re-imagination of the site from both a user interface perspective and in the development of new products. All of what we saw today on the near near future of MySpace’s roadmap — into approximately Fall of this year — is in service of the networks’s new overarching goal of promoting user discovery and self-expression. MySpace Strategy As Hirschhorn (pictured, right) describes it, MySpace’s trajectory moving forward is about the “pillars of broadcasting, discovery, self-expression, and making content a part of all those experiences.” He spoke to quality, usability and engineering as major focal points: “we want as many people here to be people who build, and who create, and who have top-notch engineering talent.” Jones relates that metrics have become a core mantra for the company as well: “if someone’s inside the company, we want to give them complete transparency in regards to what they’re working on it, why they’re working on it, why it’s important, and if what they did actually came to a good effect.” They’ve effectively retooled the way the business works to make data a huge driver, including implementing very specific new product rollouts, user testing, and full circle evaluation of how changes affect user behavior. But beyond instilling a level of discipline regarding the process of implementing user interface cha... ...Less

ReadWriteWeb — It never ceases to amaze me how many high-tech industry elites get ensnared in every Twitter phishing attack. (See our November story 7 High-Tech Twitter Users Who Fell for Phishing Scams ) This evening Twitter announced that a new program will intercept links sent out by Direct Message and through email , checking to make sure they are safe. Phishing prevention is no small matter. Twitter's is a good move but a lot more is needed all over the web. If we want a transactional developer ecosystem of distributed identity and portable ...More user data, there are both user education and technical changes that need to be made. Sponsor I don't mean to be pedantic about this, but here's my take on the subject. It's only because there is a big developer ecosystem creating interesting new services on top of our Twitter identities that any of us would ever consider logging in to Twitter while on another website. That ecosystem is great, and it's the kind of thing that an interconnected web that leverages portable user data would be filled with. But if user data is a form of currency and even people who are professional technology analysts (paid hundreds of dollars an hour for their technology advice - and many of these people are falling for Twitter phishing scams) - if even these people can't tell the difference between a good transaction and a bad one, then what does that say for the future of distributed developer ecosystems and data portability? Apparently, though, fooling people these days into handing over their Twitter login through an unsafe transaction is like taking candy from a baby. It's really easy. That's a failing of user education and of the design of distributed authentication transactions, isn't it? (Though it's tempting to blame the users who fall for it, it really is!) Remember when debit and credit cards were first introduced and many people didn't trust them? Aren't you glad we figured out how to make that work? Similarly, we need a combination of user educat... ...Less

VentureBeat — Cisco unveils super-router — Cisco Systems today launched a new large-scale core router with enough bandwidth to allow every Chinese citizen to place a video call over the internet at the same time, according to PC World’s Tech Inciter .<br/>FourSquare introduces tools for businesses — Popular Silicon Valley check-in service is debuting a dashboard for business owners showing them data on who frequents their locations and when. They are intended to give businesses more information about their customer ...More bases.<br/> Skimlinks makes it easier for publishers to find affiliates — Skimlinks, an affiliate marketing tool made my Skimbit, aggregates products from a network of merchants, allowing users to discover new products they may haven’t otherwise. TechCrunch has the details . Pokorny snags CEO post at Dailybooth — Brian Pokorny has departed his position as general partner at SV Angel to become CEO of Dailybooth , a social application that allows users to share status updates and photos. Twitter battles phishing — The micro-blogging site says it will now vet all links posted through its Trust and Safety team in order to prevent cyber attacks. Bing continues to grow as Yahoo falls — comScore’s newest data shows that Bing’s market share increased 0.2 percent between January and February while Yahoo’s dropped 0.2 percent. Business Insider has more data .Retweet sells for $250,000 — The site, which aggregates the most popular links on Twitter, sold on auction site Flippa after garnering 45 bids.<br/>Google Maps becomes bike-friendly — Google Maps has introduced maps and directions for bicyclists, finally giving into the avalanche of requests for that functionality. CNet has more .<br/> Metalab accuses Mozilla of plagiarism — Interface design agency MetaLab’s Andrew Wilkinson published a blog post today alleging that Mozilla ripped off the design of its FlightDeck editor.Lemnis Lighting shines with $37.5M — Light-emitting diode maker Lemnis has raised $37.5 million in a fourth round of ca... ...Less

Mashable! — Hulu struck a deal to host content from The NFL Network in January, including eight shows and highlights from every team in the National Football League. The network has been adding new content to the site ever since, and this week Hulu has posted an impressive 400 hours of NFL-related videos. Fierce Online Video reports that Hulu plans to add 600 more hours before the next football season starts. Sports enthusiasts are seeing a big boom in web video coverage; the NCAA college basketball league just launched a website that streams ...More shareable clips from countless March Madness plays. Meanwhile, Hulu is likely hoping deals like this one will — in tandem with its own in-house reality show If I Can Dream — help make up for the loss of two of its most popular shows, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report . Hulu saw a slight dip in viewership in the month of January, but maybe this vast library of NFL content will help pull the numbers back up. [ via Business Insider ] Tags: football , hulu , News , nfl , nfl network , sports , video ...Less

Mashable! — The Super Bowl may be long over, but Brand Battle 2010 continues to rage on, as yet another commercial is bit by the controversy bug — this time one of those adorable spots from E-Trade featuring a talking baby named “Lindsay.” According to the New York Post , actress Lindsay Lohan is suing the investment site on the grounds that the man-eating, substance-abusing baby in the commercial is based on her. Lohan’s lawyer, Stephanie Ovadia, is asking that the commercial be taken off the air and every copy of ...More the offending spot be rounded up (which could now be more difficult given today’s coverage). The actress is also asking for $100 million. According to Ovadia: “Many celebrities are known by one name only, and E-Trade is using that knowledge to profit… They used the name Lindsay…They’re using her name as a parody of her life. Why didn’t they use the name Susan? This is a subliminal message. Everybody’s talking about it and saying it’s Lindsay Lohan.” Ovadia also says Lohan was mistreated because E-Trade didn’t get her approval nor offer her compensation for allegedly being referred to in the ad. Now, the lawyer says her client is owed $50 million in exemplary damages, as well as $50 million in compensatory damages. Although Ovadia says that the spot — which debuted during the Super Bowl and aired during the Winter Olympics — helped garner E-Trade mucho money, it wasn’t one of the most popular ads to premiere. It didn’t rank tops with either online viewers or couch potatoes (although the talking baby series has racked up a lot of success in the past ). Still, today it joins a cadre of commercials that cleaned up on hits due to controversy — including the Tim Tebow spot, GoDaddy’s rejected “ Lola ” ad and men’s-only dating site ManCrunch ’s similarly punted ad. One could argue that by suing E-Trade, Lohan is calling even more attention to the ad in question. As of right now, the ad has nearly 2.5 million views on YouTube. It remains to be seen — most likely tomorrow ... ...Less

Mashable! — 3D is set to be big this year, and Samsung is hoping to tempt early adopters with a promotional offer that attempts to combat one of 3D TV’s main problems — lack of content — by bundling in a 3D movie with certain sales. The promotion takes the form of a new “Starter Kit” that offers U.S. consumers the chance to enjoy 3D movies in their own living rooms, rather than having to head to nearest cinema to check out the eye-popping action. In 2010, Samsung will offer a range of 3D-capable TVs, including ...More the LED 7000/8000/9000 Series, LCD 750 Series and the Plasma 7000/8000 Series. Still, just two models will actually hit shop shelves this month: 46-inch and 55-inch models of the LED C7000. The promotional Starter Kit will see anyone who buys a 2010 Samsung 3D TV and 3D Blu-ray Player or Home Theater System getting two pairs of Samsung 3D active glasses and a 3D version of DreamWorks Animation’s Monsters vs. Aliens on Blu-ray with 3D Shrek promised in the second half of the year. As well as 3D abilities, the new LED TVs offer Internet@TV connectivity with the new Samsung App Store on board. To give you an idea of what you’ll have to cough up to go 3D in the comfort of your own home, pricing for the TVs alone ranges from $380 to $7,000. Samsung’s 3D range arrives ahead of Sony’s due this summer and just a day ahead of Panasonic’s, due to launch in conjunction with Best Buy in the States on March 10. Will you be splashing out for three-dimensional television? Let us know in the comments below. Reviews: Blu Tags: 3D , 3dtv , dreamworks , samsung , televisions ...Less

TechCrunch — Earlier today, Google chief economist gave a presentation to an FTC workshop on the changing economics of the newspaper industry. We all know that newspaper ad revenues have been falling off a cliff for years. Many media companies blame Google and are trying to put the genie back in the bottle with partial metered models for online news. Google is understandably on the defensive, trotting out Varian to paint an unemotional picture with as much data as he can muster. But the picture he paints is a dour one for print media.  For ...More instance, the chart above shows the decline of overall newspaper ad revenues.  Newspapers have taken huge hits in classifieds advertising (in blue) and national brand advertising (in red).  The online portion (green) is still too small to make much of a difference. The collapse in print ad revenues is coming from two places: the overall ad recession of the past couple years and the shift to online news consumption.  Here are some telling stats from Varian’s presentation , which is also embedded below: About 40% of internet users say read news on the Web every day. Time spent on online news sites is only about 70 seconds per day, compared to 25 minutes spent reading a print edition. Online news readers tend to read at work, not for leisure, so they don’t have much time to stick around and are thus worth less to advertisers. Overall, less than 5 percent of newspaper ad revenues come from the online editions. Search engines account for 35 to 40 percent of “traffic to major U.S. news sites,” according to comScore. The cost of printing and distributing print editions, makes up about half the cost, while editorial operations only make up 15 percent. Varian concludes: “Newspapers could save a lot of money if the primary access to news was via the internet.”  It sounds like he agrees with Netscape founder and investor Marc Andreessen, who recommends that newspapers “ burn the boats” carrying their dying print businesses. “The fact of the matter is ... ...Less

Mashable! — We’ve seen many, many iterations of the popular tower defense games over the years, but this one has a special meaning for all you Twitter fans out there.<br/>Based on a tried and true concept, Tweet Defense is an iPhone game that lets you fight zombies with various tower defense units, but with a social twist: it grabs your various Twitter stats – number of followers, friends and tweets – and calculates bonuses to your defense based on them. It’s like an infinite time sink which connects two enormous ...More time wasters – Twitter and tower defense. In other words, it’s beautiful.<br/>Get Tweet Defense for $0.99 from the App Store .<br/><br/>Tags: iphone , tweet defense , twitter ...Less

Search Engine Land — Microsoft is formally launching its much improved MSN portal today. I wrote about the preview version and the wide range of improvements when it first came out in November. There are lots of  interesting elements to the site, including the “local edition,” which is basically a collection of persistent Bing search queries presented in a [...] *** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above or, in Facebook, by clicking on the "View Original Post" link below. ***