VentureBeat

Here’s the latest action:

Microsoft’s Live Search cashback will generate NO revenue for the company — How badly does Microsoft want to catch Google in the search business? Badly enough that it’s willing to put a program in place that will bring in absolutely no revenue, and will in fact run at a loss until it is propped up by its regular search advertising business, according to Silicon Alley Insider. SAI actually somewhat likes the idea, but the whole thing still sounds pretty desperate to us.

Google Reader catching up with Bloglines — The most popular RSS feed reader in the United States is still Bloglines, but Google Reader is closing the gap quickly, according to new data from Hitwise. A year ago, Bloglines attracted twice the share of US Internet visits compared with Google Reader. At that time Bloglines was ranked 45th among Blogs and Personal Websites while Google Reader ranked 118th. Last week, Bloglines ranked 21st and Google Reader ranked 32nd.

MySpace moves to curtail app spam — With the launch of its platform, MySpace has seen a rise in the amount of malicious applications being created for the social network. The same sort of thing happened to Facebook after its platform launched, and now just like Facebook, MySpace is taking some actions against it. From its blog entry:

…as of today, we’re instituting new rules for how apps can communicate with users on MySpace. You can read about these rules here and in the Application Guidelines, The main thrust of these changes is to limit app communications that are based on incentivizing or tricking users.

Spielberg’s Ghost and UFO social network gets a name — “The Rising” will be the name of the new social network developed by Oscar winning Director and Producer Steven Spielberg, according to TechCrunch. Whereas in Hollywood they might call this a “genre”, in the world of social networks we call this a “niche.”

Microsoft to start opening Office to other file formats — In a move away from its own native formats, Microsoft will begin to support other file formats that many people use for various files. These include Open Document Format (ODF), Portable Document Format (PDF), and XML Paper Specification (XPS). Unfortunately these new formats won’t be added until Service Pack 2 for Office 2007 comes out in the first half of next year, according to CNET.

The return of the 3-D film in a major way — The nations largest theater chain, Regal Entertainment Group, is equipping some 1,500 screens across the country to show three-dimensional films. This will allow the chain to show the movies in most American markets. With a lot of studios now working on 3D films again, a significant resurgence of the technology seems just around the corner.

Here’s the latest action:

China’s virtual worlds censored– China’s virtual world Hipihi reflects the real-world culture of its users. Players can have virtual sex in private rooms, but can’t engage in frank political talk. GigaOm has a review here. We mentioned Hipihi earlier, when writing about competitor Leeuu. There’s a YouTube video of Hipihi here (though Chinese language), which shows how similar it is to Second Life in other ways.

iFamily latest family tree company — We’ve written about the proliferation of family tree Web sites, including Geni, MyHeritage, and clones such as Verwandt among them. The latest is iFamily, which has won an undisclosed amount of cash form CountryRoad Capital, a New York investment firm. IFamily says its main product, Family Tree, is the leading social genealogy application on Facebook. Since launching in June, the product has had more than 20,000 downloads with more than 62,000 family tree profiles entered, the company says.

Twitter + Gmail: Last week, we mentioned Twitter’s search box, which lets users of the service search for people they want to befriend and track. Now the messaging service has added a way to import your address book from Gmail. This could be a draw for many young, tech-savvy people who already use Gmail + GTalk to instant message. It lets them stick with their contact list, but add the social component of Twitter to their routine. It may be may be enough to convince skeptics to use Twitter — we’ll be giving it a shot. The company also plans to add address book imports from other email clients.

Vadver latest video recommendation service — The San Francisco start-up is led by Patrick Koppula, who was founder and former CEO at music recommendation service iLike.com (formerly GarageBand.com). The young company has raised $1.7 million in Series A funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, according to Newteevee. This is a crowded area, counting players like Mesmo.tv and Divvio. We’ll have more later.

Nielsen launches HeyNielsen to track social web “buzz” — The TV/Web traffic rating company’s new product will be “opinion engine, part social network and part buzz tracker,” according to PaidContent.

Latest GPhone reports: It’s launching in India in two weeks — The latest rumors are pretty strong, and say Indian mobile operators Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar will debut the device in early September. Story here. Sources close to Google say a simultaneous North American and European GPhone launch is expected, the article continues, with the company currently waiting for federal regulatory approval before rolling out the handset in the U.S market. The Bharti Airtel and Vodafone negotiations are said to encompass mobile data, IM and search solutions as well, it said. The Wall Street Journal previously reported Google invested “hundreds of millions of dollars” in the gPhone project, and entered negotiations with T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless.

Bloglines gets a makeover — Bloglines, the feed reader we started using years ago, has got a redesign. It is being tested here. The redesign helps, but it still doesn’t push it noticeably past other readers. It doesn’t have an offline feature, for example. Basically, it has caught up with Google Reader and others — offering a personalized start page, more (3) pains for viewing and drag and drop features for feed management. There’s a review by RWW. Bloglines was once the undisputed early leader, led by entrepreneur Mark Fletcher, but innovation at Bloglines started slipping after it was sold to Ask and Fletcher left.