VentureBeat

Here’s the latest Silicon Valley round-up:

Is the “Browser Operating System” finally coming? — Google and others have built all these online applications that can, collectively, take the place of Microsoft Office. All we need now is a browser operating system, which makes it easy to switch back and forth between these applications online — so we’re not tied to Microsoft’s XP or other desktop-based operating systems. The home-page companies like Netvibes and Pageflakes appear to be headed that way. Google’s personal homepage is the “fastest-growing Google product,” according to Marissa Mayer, Google vice president. Now, the integration of theses apps via the browser needs to improve, and investors at Intel Capital tell VentureBeat they think a “Browse OS” is coming next year, and several players will be in the running. We’ll be moderating a SVASE panel Thursday discussing what’s hot and what’s not. Newsweek calls 2007 the “year of the widget;” it may also be the year of the browser-based OS. Btw, the image above comes from a decade-old CNET story, showing how readers have long preferred the Web experience not be integrated with the PC.

Technorati used to be hip — Technorati used to be how you searched the blogosphere for people, conceptual memes and companies. But two trends appear to be hurting it: Blogs have become main-stream, and so they’re getting tracked by other search engines. If you’re searching blogs, you can first try Google’s general search. If that doesn’t yield anything, Google has a blog search, with a link directly from its news page. After suffering criticism early on, Google’s blog search has improved, and has apparently overtaken Technorati. And there are internal problems at Technorati. A Handelsblatt reporter sent us a story this morning (scroll down) saying Technoratic’s PR relationship with Edelman has foundered over frustration with Technorati’s service in Germany.

Apple safe from Jobs fallout, for now — Apple today said its chief executive, Steve Jobs, didn’t do anything wrong in the stock options backdating scandal rocking the company (update: though as this Merc story shows, there is still some intrigue). This is a relief to investors, who pushed up Apple’s stock by 5 percent. Earlier this week, an SF publication, The Recorder, reported that options documents had been falsified, and Apple’s stock had plunged on worries Jobs might be vulnerable. What this shows is that a great portion of Apple’s value is dependent on Jobs staying at the company. As such, Jobs is probably the most valuable executive alive — arguably more indispensable to Apple than the Google guys are to Google, for example, or Gates to Microsoft, and Ellison to Oracle — all companies with perceived depth of talent extending beyond the founders. In other words, its time for Apple to engage in successor plans.

Google’s fixed Zeitgeist — Now we find out, through Google’s recent admission, that the most popular searches on 2006 really isn’t the one we were led to believe. The real list apparently contained “eBay,” a competitor, which Google conveniently chose to knock of the official list. It’s another example of Google’s tendency to avoid transparency. If you read Google’s explanation, it all makes sense enough — but we agree with other bloggers that Google’s hand-picking of words based on what Google thinks is relevant removes much of the exercise’s meaning.

The dot-bomb records of Brobeck opened for public viewing? — There’s quite a brouhaha over the project led by professor David Kirsch to open up the records of Silicon Valley law firm Brobeck. You’ll remember that Brobeck was at first fantastically successful, cashing in on the dot-com era IPOs, but then suffered a spectacular crash when the bubble burst. Now, former clients are being informed that if they take no action, their records will be turned over to the Library of Congress’s National Digital Infrastructure and Preservation Program, for perusal by academics and others. See details here. There’s outrage, given the files contain social security numbers and other private data. However, Kirsch seems to have shut everyone up for now with this comment at Techcrunch, where he says some individual information “may need to be scrubbed by archivists for sensitive information.” We’re wondering what clients Kleiner Perkins, Cisco, and Accel and the other Silicon Valley heavyweights will think of their bubble-era laundry being aired.

Since our initial tepid review of online polling company Vizu, its co-founders Mark Tilling and Dan Beltramo have gone underground and reemerged with vastly more ambitious product.

Earlier this year, Vizu got $1 million and began offering a way to let people post polls on their blogs or Web sites.

Beginning Dec. 15, however, it will give marketers and other companies an inexpensive and easy way to conduct instant surveys about just about anything, with much more sophistication. Below is an example of a poll on Salon.com’s sex page, and below that a more generic poll about Christmas trees.

Vizu’s target market, Tilling says, is the “long tail of unanswered questions,” or the research that never gets done because incumbent market research firms and their methods are too expensive, complex and intimidating. Vizu lets marketers do snap polls, conducted across hundreds of sites instantaneously. While they may not be as scientific surveys produced by incumbent research firms, the polls can provide good estimates. Two weeks ago, when a poll was conducted about whether people approve of President Bush’s job performance, Vizu’s results were within a percentage point of surveys done by USA Today, Harris and Pew, says Tilling.

The founders demonstrated the latest product to VentureBeat, and we found it easy to use. Publishers can already sign up to indicate they are ready to accept the polls; they choose a minimum rate of payment (for example, they can pick $2 CPM, which means they get $2 for every thousand clicks on the poll) and there’s a place that explains easily how to place the necessary code into their site. Clients, or those who want to distribute the polls, will first be allowed to sign up Dec. 15. Vizu estimates for its clients how much money it will take to get a reasonable number (about 200) of poll responses. The rate will generally range between $200 and $500, depending on the audience targeted. In testing, some bankers have used the product to do quick polls to prepare pitches to prospective clients, Tilling says. Vizu splits the revenue with publishers 50-50%.

The poll widget is Flash, which gives it a spiffy look and several advantages over javascript. It lets clients rotate the possible poll answers within a poll. It also provides fraud protection. Flash can register — via Flash Shared Objects (more here) on a person’s computer — when a user has seen the poll. So if that user goes to another site that carries the same poll, to try to game the system by voting twice, the poll will not let the person vote again. Instead, the widget may switch to show other info or advertising. Further, if a person clicks in an area of the poll widget that lets them find the survey results, the widget can show an “interstitial,” or temporary advertisement for the few seconds it takes to calculate the latest results.

The co-founders previously ran the Redwood City food service supply-chain company called Instill, which raised $90 million in venture capital and is still private.

The co-founders say the research market is $24 billion a year globally, with the U.S. portion of that at $9 billion and growing five percent a year. The U.S online portion is $2 billion and growing at 25 percent a year, they say.

As mentioned, the company is backed WR Hambrecht + Co, together with Amicus Capital and angel investors including Ron Conway, Esther Dyson, Don Hutchison, and Mike Maples. Once this latest product launches, the company may try to raise another round of capital.