Webware

The OpenID Foundation announced Wednesday that it has added PayPal as a corporate member of the board. Andrew Nash, PayPal's senior director of information risk management, joins the board, which is populated by representatives from Google, IBM, and Microsoft, among others. According to Nash, PayPal elected to become part of the OpenID board because "open standards-based user-centric identity is clearly becoming an increasingly important part of the evolving web infrastructure" and his company believes it can add to OpenID's desire to bring more security to the Web.

HealthCentral, a site that provides a collection of condition-specific consumer health information, announced that it has acquired Wellsphere, a health technology company, that aims at informing the public on specific health issues. According to the company, the acquisition will create a combined entity that has 10 million unique visitors per month and creates "the largest organic aggregation of online health and wellness communities." The exact terms of the deal were not disclosed.

CoveritLive, a company that offers a free hosted live blogging platform, announced that it has received $1.2 million in funding from Flagstone Capital to help it increase its customer base and improve its business model. According to the company, Flagstone Capital's commitment will provide support to the company until it can break even.

Bemba Media, a company that offered a bookmarklet that allowed users to bookmark pages across the Web and share them with others, announced Wednesday that it will shut down on February 8. According to a post on the company's site, the company's founders were forced to shutter their business "because the amount of Bemba users is not growing fast enough to pay" its expenses.

Radar, a photo-sharing site that allows users to upload pictures and connect with others, has launched an iPhone app. Users can take pictures with their iPhone camera and immediately upload those to their Radar page. That page can be kept public or private and other users can comment on pictures or send private messages to each other. The tool features basic editing tools for those who want to fix photos and a statistics page to see how many people have looked at the pictures. The app is free and available now in the iPhone App Store.

"Wikipedia: The Missing Manual" by John Broughton has been made available for free on Wikipedia, O'Reilly Books, its publisher, announced Tuesday. The book is being delivered in Wiki format, which means users can edit the text as they see fit. Peter Meyers, the "Missing Manuals" managing editor, said O'Reilly may use those edits in a second edition, if it's made available. If you want to read the book (or improve it), it's available now on Wikipedia's help page.

AllFacebook, a blog that covers the world of Facebook, launched a tool Tuesday that will allow users to search and sort Facebook pages by category or statistics, like fans or daily growth rate. According to data compiled by the tool, Facebook's top page, ranked by the number of fans, is Barack Obama's. Second is Coca-Cola's page and third is Homer Simpson's Facebook page. The tool will be updated daily.

Comment management service, Disqus, now allows its users to pull Friendfeed comments about their blog posts and post them on their blog. Disqus' new tool will take comments from the respective blog's RSS feed in FriendFeed and post them automatically in the corresponding blog post. The new feature is available now for all Disqus users.

Fring, a company that provides mobile VoIP IM services, announced Tuesday that it's bringing a Last.fm mobile app to its client. The app will feature Last.fm's music recommendation engine, as well as its social features. According to the company, Fring users will be able to access their Last.fm library, tag songs, and check on a friend's music tastes. The Last.fm app is free and available now to Fring users.

Online travel itinerary and trip-planning service TripIt announced Monday that it has launched a new application programming interface for developers who want to integrate the company's travel itineraries into their respective service. The API will allow developers to share itinerary information between sites and travel agents. The first iteration of the TripIt API, which is available now, will only allow users to read, add, or delete trip plans.

ChaCha, a human-powered answers service, wants to raise $30 million in a Series C round of funding, reports PEHub. So far, the company has been able to raise approximately $11 million, but investor information has yet to be disclosed.

YouTube now allows users who leave comments to delete them. Those who wish to do so can click a new "delete" button that appears in the "Text Comments" section below a video. So far, YouTube will only allow users to delete their own comments.

ProPay, a service that competes with PayPal and provides the same basic service, announced Monday that it's now extending its offering to eBay Bronze PowerSellers. Prior to the announcement, ProPay was available only to eBay Silver, Gold, and Platinum PowerSellers. The ProPay eAuction service requires Bronze PowerSellers to pay 3.1 percent and 30 cents per transaction or lower for Silver, Gold, and Platinum PowerSellers.

The Internet has been voted the best source for investors to make financial decisions, claims a new study from Forbes. The study, which was conducted in November, found 65 percent of respondents believe the Web is the "most important source of investing information." In 2005, only 52 percent of respondents made the same claim. Newspapers, on the other hand, are losing importance. The study found that only 17 percent of all respondents say they use newspapers to make investing decisions.

Last.fm announced Friday that it has launched a mobile version of its social radio platform for Google Android-based phones. The Last.fm app, which is already available for the iPhone and iPod Touch, allows users to listen to the company's streaming radio stations and plays in the background while users perform other functions on the device. Last.fm's Android app is free and available now in the Android Market.

URL shortening service, Bit.ly, announced Thursday that it has updated its Twitter plug-in for Firefox. The update now provides users with the context of a Twitter conversation when they hover their mouse over the "in reply to" link in Twitter. The update is available now for Firefox users.

Tripwolf, a travel guide site that combines professional material and user submissions, announced that it has closed a $2.5 million funding round led by the MairDumont Group. According to the company's executives, they plan to use the funding to launch an iPhone app and expand their operation abroad.

Vudu, a company that provides streaming movies through its set-top box, has launched an iPhone app that will allow its users to browse and search the company's catalog of titles, as well as purchase and rent those movies for viewing on their Vudu box at home. The app is free and available now in the iTunes App Store.

Dogpile has raised $250,000 in just two months for pets in need, the metasearch engine announced Friday. Its goal is to raise $1 million by the end of 2009. Dogpile raises the money each time a user conducts a search. The more searches conducted on the site, the more Dogpile can contribute to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), as well as other animal-related charities. The Dogpile "Search and Rescue" program will continue through the end of 2009.

Disclosure: Last.fm is a part of CBS Interactive, which also publishes CNET News.

Zoho announced on Wednesday that in light of Google suspending Google Notebook, it has enhanced its own service, Zoho Notebook.

According to the company, it has added a Google Notebook import function, which allows users to import all their Google Notebooks into Zoho's software. The company also added the ability to link between notebooks, record audio and video, and chat with other Zoho users through a new instant-messaging application built into the software. The updated Zoho Notebook is available now.

Mixx, a Digg-like social site that caters to a more "mainstream" audience, has inked a deal with online advertising agency Federated Media to handle all its advertising endeavors. Mixx now joins Federated Media's group of content sites that employ the company to connect them with advertisers.

Federated Media's executives said they will work closely with Mixx representatives to develop "conversational marketing executions" that will cater to Fortune 500 brands. Advertising rates have yet to be determined.

OneSeason.com, a company that offers virtual goods and a gaming platform for sports enthusiasts, announced that it has secured $3.5 million in a Series A round of financing that was led by Charles River Ventures. The company's founder, Mike Sroka, said he will use the funding to build out the site's virtual-goods marketplace and enhance features in its social-gaming network.

Use of Twitter in the United Kingdom has increased tenfold year-over-year, according to a report from market research firm Hitwise. According to the report, "Twitter ranked as the 291st most visited Web site in the U.K., up from a ranking of 2,953 (in 2007), for the week ending January 19, 2008. U.K. Internet traffic to the Web site has increased by 974 percent over this period." Hitwise also said Twitter is still growing at a rapid rate, which is partly due to British celebrities publicly joining the site.

Social network Bebo on Thursday announced that it has partnered with Motionbox, a service for sharing personal videos, to bring video-publishing tools to Bebo's users. Those who wish to use the Motionbox platform on Bebo will have access to its basic membership, which includes online-editing tools and secure storage. Bebo users who want to post high-definition videos will need to sign up for Motionbox's subscription service and pay $29.95 per year.

Virtual Worlds Management, a company that provides research on the growth of online virtual worlds, said $594 million was invested in 63 virtual worlds during 2008. Gaia Online and PlayFish were two of the most prominent recipients of venture funding during the year. That said, investments in virtual worlds declined as the year wore on. In the first quarter of 2008, virtual worlds received $184 million in funding. By the fourth quarter of that year, investments dropped to $101 million. Virtual Worlds Management expects a further decline in funding in virtual worlds during 2009.

Fuzz.com, a social-networking site for musicians and music lovers, announced Wednesday that it's being forced to shut down, effective February 13. According to a blog post the company's founder placed on its site, Fuzz will close because of "increasing operating costs and flat revenue." On February 13, none of the site's accounts or content will be accessible.

Community presentation provider SlideShare has announced that its users can now embed YouTube videos into their Flash-based presentations. According to the company, its old policy of forcing users to include links to outside videos simply wasn't working, so allowing them to embed YouTube videos seemed appropriate. Although its software now works with YouTube, no other video services are supported.

Online video applications, platforms, advertising networks, and related services incurred $494.7 million in revenue in 2008, said AccuStream Media Research. That amount is nearly 87 percent greater than 2007 revenue figures. Even better for the online video market, the research firm believes video revenue will increase by 41 percent in 2009 and 38 percent in 2010. The amounts were based on reported revenue figures from video overlay applications, advertising platforms, CMS platforms, and other video-related services.

HomeAway, an online vacation rental marketplace, announced that it redesigned its hallmark site, VacationRentals.com, Wednesday. According to the company, the revamped page features enhanced property details and an interactive photo flip book to get a better view of prospective locations. To celebrate the launch, the site is offering a "Family Fun Giveaway" for vacationers who wish to book a trip to Florida. Through February 26, travelers will be automatically entered to win 80 prizes from the site, which range from $75 gas cards to a family four-pack of passes to Disney World and Kennedy Space Center.

Swedish search engine Twingly announced Tuesday that it has launched a new microblog search that will allow users to find information and users on sites like Twitter, Jaiku, Identi.ca, and others. Twingly's search service includes a widget that can be embedded into a blog. The company's executives say verbs like "save, retweet, reply, comment should be implemented in the search result."

WeFi, a company that provides information on where to find Wi-Fi hot spots, announced Tuesday that it has launched an online directory to find over 1 million different hot spots. More compelling, the company also announced that users will now be able to send a text message with their location to WeFi, and it will return a complete list of nearby hot spots. Unfortunately, the service charges 50 cents plus standard text-messaging rates. It's available now.

TechCrunch is reporting that online photo sharing site Flickr hasn't been serving ads properly over the past few days. When an advertisement is clicked, it's displayed in a frame inside the window instead of redirecting the user to the advertiser's site. Flickr has yet to comment on the issue.

Yammer, an enterprise microblogging solution, announced Tuesday that it has raised $5 million in a Series A round of financing that was led by the Founders Fund and Charles River Ventures. Yammer executives hope to use the funding to expand its presence in the enterprise space.

Online streaming service Ustream has launched its iPhone app that allows users to watch streaming Ustream channels from Apple's mobile device. The free app requires a Wi-Fi connection to work. It was launched in tandem with the presidential inauguration so users could watch all the festivities on their iPhone.

Amber Ettinger, better known as "Obama Girl," has teamed up with Stickam for coverage of the presidential inauguration. Live coverage will be streamed live Monday at 8 p.m. EST from InauguralFest, and viewers will be able to see what she is doing all day at the inauguration starting at 10 a.m. EST Tuesday.

Integrated Media Measurement, an online research firm, found (PDF) that women between the ages of 15 and 48 tend to watch a television show and surf the Web an average of 17.5 minutes per day, while men do the same for just 15.7 minutes each day. Women between 30 and 39 average 23.3 minutes of simultaneous Web and TV usage each day. More importantly for marketers, women tend to multitask more as they get older, while men multitask less often. According to Amanda Welsh, head of research for IMMI, "women are more inclined to multitask than men" while using the Web.

Professional social network LinkedIn announced Monday that it has partnered with IBM to bring social-network functionality to Lotus Notes, an enterprise client that provides e-mail and instant-messaging services to users. The social-network plug-in will provide Lotus Notes users with contact and networking information about those they're contacting (as long as they are using LinkedIn) and browse LinkedIn's news feeds. The companies plan to unveil the new plug-in at Lotusphere later this year and hope to release it to Lotus Notes users by June.

Juniper Research released a report Monday saying event-based sales should increase the value and monetization of mobile dating and chat room sites. The report said that although subscription revenue will still contribute the most revenue to online dating sites over the next five years, charging customers to contact one another or providing virtual gifts will become increasingly important in their business models going forward. Juniper also found that free services that charge for contact are becoming more popular and could become the standard sometime during the next 10 years.

Navitell, a Belgium-based start-up that develops software that adds location-specific multimedia content to mobile phones, announced Monday that it has raised approximately $2.6 million in a round of funding that was led by FPIM. According to the company's executives, they plan to use the funding to expand their set of personalization services.

A Turkish court has sentenced Maksym Yastremski, the alleged "Maksik" hacker, to 30 years in prison for attacks he allegedly perpetrated on Turkish banks, according to reports.

Authorities believe Yastremski is also the mastermind behind the T.J. Maxx credit card theft debacle in 2007 and various other attacks around the United States. The 30-year prison sentence isn't punishment for any alleged attacks in the United States.

In other news, RocketLawyer, a company that provides free online legal information and forms, raised $2.09 million from information compiler LexisNexis, according to an SEC filing. RocketLawyer is now just $1 million away from its stated goal of raising $3.09 million, which it plans to use toward improving its infrastructure and expanding the service's reach.

iMergent, a company that provides e-commerce software for small businesses, announced on Friday that it will reduce its work force by 25 percent due to the impact the recession is having on the small to midsize enterprise market.

After the layoffs are complete, iMergent's will have a total staff count of 250, but its CEO, Steve Mihaylo, did say that it expects its operation and profit potential to remain constant through the first quarter of 2009.

Facebook's iPhone application has been updated to version 2.1, the company reported Friday. The social network says the update improves the app's stability and has corrected inaccurate time stamps for time zones around the world.

More importantly, sync time is much faster now, and Inbox loading has been enhanced to improve the overall experience. The update is available now, but it requires iPhone firmware version 2.2.