VentureBeat

Here’s the latest action:

Blackberry 8820 announced – It is the first BlackBerry that is dual-mode, letting you use both cellular networks (EDGE/GPRS/GSM) and WiFi. More at ZDNet. This is probably enough for BlackBerry to stave off the iPhone, at least among the BrackBerry-fixated VC crowd.

Ashopfor.com, latest Web 2.0 pyramid scheme — Like Zlio (see our coverage), Ashopfor.com is a company that lets you create an online store, and wants to give you money for sales you drive: “Your shop earns a cash back contribution from the retailers when you or your friends make a purchase through the retailer links on your shop or when you refer a new shop.” However this is like some of the other Web 2.0 schemes we’ve been seeing. When your shop refers new shops, Ashopfor gives you 20 percent of the total amount of the contributions these referees make. This includes contributions from any shops they refer, and the ones they refer, and so on. A classic pyramid.

WipBox helps people sell things on eBay and Craigslist — The new service allows users to text “WipBox” and an item’s name — iPhone, for example — to 44636 to get average and high prices for items listed in their local area, based on eBay and Craigslist data. WipBox is founded by Jason Weiner, founder of early Web 2.0 company Dipsie. Weiner demoed an early version of the site for us several weeks ago, and WipBox does make the cumbersome listing process easier.

Venture capitalists are going later stage — PE Hub reports on the trend. And while venture firms are investing later in a company’s life, valuations have crept higher, reports the Mercury News.

Loomia, a recommendation engine used by online retailers and publishers to suggest related content to users, signs a deal with the WSJ — Its technology is similar to Aggregate Knowledge, which we’ve written about several times.

Aaron Swartz (left), early employee of news-ranking site, Reddit, starts book-to-web free library — Details here.

HBase, a Google Bigtable clone — Google’s Bigtable is a distributed storage system for structured data. HBase appears to be a very early stage open source project to clone Google Bigtable. It will provide Bigtable-like capabilities on top of Hadoop. It’s not surprising to see that folks behind this are from Powerset, a search engine trying to compete with Google (Via Greg Linden).

Economic boom times in BRIC — Brazil, Russia, India, China. See story Fortune.

Google offers search engine to small Web sites for $100 per year — But sites with more than 5,000 Web pages will have to pay more: $500 a year for up to 50,000 Web pages.

Google to offer new mobile service — The company wants to go beyond letting you basic Web search on your cell phone. According to the WSJ, it wants to let you search for things like a ringtones and games, giving you a list of places you can buy them. Eventually, Google would charge companies for high placement in the search results. This, of course, brings it closer to competing with the carriers, which also like to charge for such information. More analysis here.

GetLeaflets, a site launched by design firm Blue Flavor, provides a series of applications designed for the iPhone via its browser — Techcrunch reports: Direct your iPhone browser to Getleaflets.com and you’ll see a menu of application ready for use: Search, Flickr, New York Times, Upcoming, Del.icio.us, for example. There is also a feed reader.