We’re big fans of TinyChat, a web-based chat startup that has been growing like gangbusters and recently won a Crunchie for best bootstrapped startup. TinyChat started out as a simple IRC-style chatroom app to complement conversations on platforms like Twitter, has been steadily building out its innovative platform to include video chat and screensharing options, live video streaming, and Facebook Connect.

Now the platform is making chats more social with the addition YouTube video integration, document collaboration with Etherpad, and whiteboard features powered by the company’s own Flockdraw. The social YouTube feature allows a moderators to pay any public YouTube video for everyone participating in the chat. The administrator can also control were the video starts, pauses etc.

The Etherpad integration is as simple as using Etherpad itself (the service’s parent AppJet was acquired by Google last year). With the click of a button, you can activate an Etherpad for your chat, where multiple can collaborate on a particular document. And the Etherpad integration has all of its original features; including the ability to go back in the lifetime of your document, to import and export to a variety of formats, and unlimited sharing options. You can also save your document and reopen it in the chat platform at a later time. The Flockdraw Whiteboard integration is similar to the Etherpad feature, except for whiteboarding vs. document collaboration. The whiteboard options are basic; you can draw, paint, type, and erase. But it’s simple to use and fairly intuitive.

These social and collaborative features no doubt bring TinyChat’s functionality to another level. Now that the platform has screensharing, and document and whiteboard collaboration, TinyChat could become a staple for businesses. And TinyChat offers its API for users to build off of its platform. The big bonus: TinyChat is completely free. The chat startup makes money from advertising and has yet to monetize, although its main competitor TokBox has begun to experiment with a freemium model (TokBox also has Etherpad integration). Although the startup has raised no VC funding since its launch last year, TinyChat has continued to innovate and make its platform a compelling offering for chat. In fact, the startup seeing 5 million minutes of usage per day. And along the way, the TinyChat has morphed into a full-fledged collaboration platform.

A couple days ago, Apple put iPhone developers on notice that location-aware ads will no longer be allowed in all apps. Some observers read this as a blanket prohibition, and noted that it looks like Apple might be reserving geo ads for itself through its acquisition of Quattro Wireless. But the notice itself only seems to ban location-based advertising from non-location-based apps.

Here’s what the notice on Apple’s Dev Center says:

If you build your application with features based on a user’s location, make sure these features provide beneficial information. If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store.

We’ll see how liberally Apple chooses to apply this new guideline, but the language does not ban all geo ads. It only bans geo spam. If an app does not have a geo component as one of its core features, it can’t serve up irrelevant geo-targeted ads. This seems like a policy aimed to avoid random geo-targeted ads from popping up in games or other apps that try to enable the core location feature for ads and nothing else.

Geo-based ads are very promising, and could open up local advertising to the Web in an entirely new way. But Apple needs to set the rules of the road early to make sure that consumers are not inundated with ads that are nothing more than spam and out of context to what they are doing. If you are an iPhone developer whose app was sent back for this reason, please share your experience in comments.

FriendFinder Networks Inc. (“FFN”) announced today that based on market conditions, it has chosen not to proceed with its planned initial public offering at this time until market conditions improve.

With this short statement, FriendFinder Networks has canceled its IPO plans, following a widely reported delay in trading earlier this week.

Investors are analysts were wary of the company’s plans to go public (on the New York Stock Exchange, under the symbol “FFN.”) in order to repay debt – it was reportedly paying $75 million in interest on operating profit of $45 million last year and carries a massive debt load of $471 million.

The internet holding company reported net revenue of $244.4 million in the nine months ended 30 September 2009, compared with $243.9 million in the same period a year ago. Even with this small revenue increase, filings showed sales were flat.

Florida-based FFN (formerly Penthouse Media Group) operates sites like Penthouse, Adult FriendFinder, Bondage.com, Cams.com and BigChurch.com and many more. It filed a registration statement with the SEC in December 2008, hoping to raise $460 million in the initial public offering at the time (this was later adjusted to $220 million).

Penthouse acquired Adult FriendFinder in December 2007 for approximately $400 million.

Question is what will become of the company now, and if it will stay afloat long enough for ‘market conditions to improve’.

Million dollar question is: is it legal?

According to its website, TVGorge using searching and indexing techniques to detect and gather content from third-party TV streaming websites around the world. The company says that its proprietary script is capable of detecting the best source for TV shows and automatically compile the information for its database. Each video is said to be manually screened to make sure it is of high quality and functioning properly.

TVGorge adds that it does not effectively store video files on its own servers and only links to or embeds existing videos from a ‘variety of sources’. Listed at the bottom of the homepage are partners such as CBS’ TV.com, Hulu, TVGuide.com and TVDuck.

The amount – and quality – of the content on TVGorge is nothing short of impressive: all episodes from all eight seasons of 24 are on there, for instance, in addition to dozens of episodes of shows like Californication, 30 Rock, Heroes, Lost, CSI, Mad Men, Grey’s Anatomy, The Simpsons, and so on. I counted 128 TV shows on the site.

In its Terms and Conditions, TVGorge claims to fully respect the intellectual property rights of third parties, but somehow I doubt the company effectively has agreements with Hulu, CBS and others regarding the international distribution of its copyrighted video content in place.

Something tells me this one won’t be around for long.

(Via Twitter and Download Squad)

Facebook messaging has been the bane of users’ existence for years. My first public gripe was in 2008, when I said that urgent changes were needed. The biggest problem is simply deleting old emails. It takes so long that I have thousands of unread and read but not deleted messages in my inbox.

But Facebook messaging is also only indirectly linked to the email, which is still the standard way that people exchange digital messages when not on Facebook.

Facebook has occasionally dabbled with improvements to messaging, like adding the ability to search messages. But for the most part it has remained static. And not very useful.

Even MySpace moved away from their aging messaging platform to a true webmail service in 2008 (albeit one that lacked POP or IMAP support).

But now Facebook is getting itself back in the game. And if the details we’ve heard are accurate, Project Titan, or whatever it’s called when it launches, may be the kind of product people flock to.

First, our understanding is that there will be full POP/IMAP support, meaning users can access the account other than through Facebook itself. Your email account name will be your vanity url – vanityurl@facebook.com.

Email is all about identity. And Facebook is ahead of everyone else in the identity game via Facebook Connect. Facebook says more than 60 million people log in to 80,000 third party websites each month via Facebook Connect.

Tacking a real webmail product on top of those vanity URLs and Facebook connect is something even Google may shudder at. Gmail killer? I don’t think so. But a strong product move nonetheless.

Since joining MySpace, Hirschhorn has gotten a reputation for slashing products that weren’t deemed to be part of MySpace’s core strategy (given how bloated the site was, that wasn’t always a bad thing). But the core product hasn’t really changed all that much, either, which is something that needs to change for MySpace to get back on its feet.

But the real problem may have been a lack of chemistry between Hirschhorn and his fellow executives. CEO Van Natta was supposedly hired by Murdoch directly for the job. Hirschhorn and Jones were hired by Digital chief Jon Miller. Since the whole team was brought in at once, Van Natta didn’t have any say at all in the hiring of his two right hand guys.

Before joining MySpace, Hirschhorn was president of the Sling Media Entertainment group, a founding partner at TripleH Media Advisors, and Chief Digital Officer at MTV.

MySpace refused to comment on this story. An email to Hirschhorn has so far gone unanswered.

Since 2008 Plugg in Brussels has become a must-attend fixture on the European startups scene. It was one of the first startups events I attended after just joining TechCrunch and it was a brilliant event, made more fun by the great welcome put on by founder Robin Wauters, who later happily became a TechCrunch writer as well.

Every year Plugg gives European startups an opportunity to pitch a large audience composed of entrepreneurs and investors, and an esteemed jury.

Besides the classic MPA in Innovation live 3-minute pitches, this year also features the winners of previous awards.

There’ll also be a special keynote from arguably the most successful startup in mobile history, Russell Buckley of Admob, which was recently aqcuired by Google for $750m.

After an investigation we determined that the allegation was true. In fact, on at least one other occasion this intern was almost certainly given a computer in exchange for a post.

The intern in question has admitted to some of the allegations, and has denied others. We suspended this person while we were sorting through exactly what happened. When it became clear yesterday that there was no question that this person had requested, and in one case taken, compensation for a post, the intern was terminated.

This was not one of our full time writers, and so the frequency of posts was light. Nevertheless, we’ve also deleted all content created by this person on our blogs. We are fairly certain that most of the posts weren’t tainted in any way, but to be sure we’ve removed every word written by this person on the TechCrunch network.

Our attorneys have advised us not to disclose the name of the individual because the person is not a legal adult. We also think that, given the intern’s age, it may not be appropriate to make their identity public.

We are all shaken here at TechCrunch – this is someone who was our friend and who we trusted to be honest with our readers. Our hope is that the intern learns something from this experience and grows into the kind of person that will be more welcome in this community.

I apologize to each one of you. I promise that we will always maintain complete transparency with you on how we operate, even when it isn’t such an easy thing to do.

Update: Daniel, the intern in question, has decided to talk about this situation publicly on his blog. I’m glad that he has. You can read his thoughts here.

After nearly a year in development and $24 million in venture capital, Siri is finally ready to bring its personal assistant to the iPhone. Siri brings a conversational interface to the iPhone which allows you to ask it to perform tasks for you such as find a French restaurant nearby and book a table, look up movie listings, order a taxi, or look up the phone number and address of a local business.  The app is now live in the App Store (iTunes link; for now it is recommended only for iPhone 3Gs models because it requires more processing power, but a version tuned for older iPhones will be come out by the end of the quarter)

You simply speak into the phone with a request like, “Find something to do in San Francisco this weekend.”  It turns your speech to text and pushes your request out to an appropriate service on the Web such as Eventful or Citysearch, in this case.  It not only attempts to bring you back the appropriate information based on context, time of day, and your location, but with your permission can go ahead and make reservations or buy tickets as well.  (Read our extensive first-look coverage from last year or watch this sneak-peak video)

Siri combines an impressive array of technologies and brings them together on the iPhone.  These include natural language processing and semantic analysis.  The underlying technology was developed at SRI with $200 million worth of Darpa grants. Siri was spun off to commercialize it and bring it to consumers.  It’s last funding round was led by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing (a fact never disclosed before), who also is an investor in Facebook.

In a way, Siri is the “mother of all mashups.”  The iPhone app is a conversational interface with Siri’s servers on the Web, which tie into  nearly 30 different APIs at launch, with more on the way.  These include OpenTable, TaxiMagic, MovieTikets.com, Rotten Tomatoes, WeatherBug, Yahoo Local, Yahoo Boss, StubHub, Bing, Eventful Freebase, Citysearch, AllMenus.com, Gayot, and Wolfram Alpha.

The app is free, and Siri gets affiliate fees every time you buy something like a concert ticket or make a restaurant reservation through the app.  In addition to helping you do things, it also can be used to set reminders. Simply tell it to remind you by email to make a phone call on Thursday morning, and it can figure it out.  The app licenses its speech-to-text engine from Nuance, another SRI spin-off. Android and Blackberry versions are also in the works.

Copyright © 2009 Keith Dsouza

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Before I tell you about the movie or parts of the movie you will like, let me tell you this, I watched it in US with a houseful theatre for a bollywood movie, and that is very rare. Second is that, throughout the movie you will continue to laugh, cry and think on some wonderful lessons from the movie without realizing that you are actually watching one.

It is a total laugh riot. Just when you think that you will not laugh, there is a excellent dialog thrown in, which will crack you up to no end, putting into context the entire scene. While we were getting home after watching the movie, which took more than 20 minutes, we were still talking about the movie and the scenes in it, now that has rarely happened for a long long time.

There are few scenes which make you laugh for a good 5 minutes, which is as long as the scene runs, for example the scene where there is a student who does not know Hindi giving a speech. Kareena Kapoor’s take on names of Guajarati dishes (which by the way taste excellent) is another awesome scene. There is also a scene where Aamir is trying to revive Sharman Joshi from a paralytic attack and that is excellent too.

Overall, I would say drop everything and watch this 3 Idiots, you will love it. All iz Well, you won’t regret it and will remember it forever. I bet you will end up watching 3 Idiots more than once.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKb3WWPSLFg

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Other good news include that Techie Buzz is now regularly featured in TechMeme, which is a great honor for me as it is after all the Holy Grail of technology for many. We also got featured on the Slashdot home page, which is again a big achievement for any tech site, and were featured in Softpedia and several other high profile tech blogs. We are also part of 9Rules and Google News, phew so much more to add, but I will cut it short.

This post is not to brag about these achievements, it is to express my joy that all the hard work I have put in the last 3 and half years, and the collective effort of the Techie Buzz team in the last 9 months or so has helped us achieve so much, it is really the most exciting times for me, and probably one of the best December and Holiday season I have ever had.

I thank everyone for all the support, my friends, my Jammu and all the authors at Techie Buzz for being with me all through this. I had one promise to all my authors that we will move towards the top, and this is definitely a real awesome step towards being there.

I hope someone who is so important to me, but with whom I cannot share the happiness with reads this somehow and laughs, that will make me so much more happy.

Wish me all the luck for the future

Copyright © 2009 Keith Dsouza

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Looking for buy the Twilight Saga series books? Amazon has some nice discounts on the Twilight Saga books 1-4 in paperback and hardcover.

• Twilight ( The Twilight Saga, Book 1) – Paperback – $4.25 – Buy at Amazon.
• New Moon (The Twilight Saga, Book 2) (Paperback) – $4.25 – Buy at Amazon
• Eclipse (The Twilight Saga, Book 3) (Paperback)  – $5 – Buy at Amazon
• Breaking Dawn (The Twilight Saga, Book 4) (Hardcover) – $10.59 – Buy at Amazon

Shop for more books discounts at Amazon

Copyright © 2009 Keith Dsouza

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Listen to this song by Sona Mohapatra and you would definitely fall in love with it.

Love you Jaanu.

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Watch the video below to see the Controversial Goal in action.

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A channel whose main Valentine show would be “Rakhi ka Chaata” or something, played over and over again showing us clip of how Rakhi Sawant slapped her boyfriend, cannot be considered serious right? Well they do, and here is a breaking news which will floor everyone.

A cat climbed a so called building or terrace and stayed there for 6 hours and that became breaking  news.

By the way how do you expect a poor cat to survive and climb down when such jokers are all around her with stupid cameras. And aren’t cats supposed to have 9 lives. This episode leaves me wondering if the next Breaking news on AAJ TAK would be “Chaat pe phase hue billi ne chuha pakda”, “Chaat pe phase hue billi ne 6 bacche diye, maa theek hai aur bacche so rahe hai” .

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