VentureBeat

Here’s the latest action:

Scrabulous returns as Wordscraper — The popular Facebook application was redesigned and relaunched less than 48 hours after it was taken down due to a potential legal tussle with Scrabble-maker Hasbro.

Dell tests digital music player — The computer maker stopped selling players in 2006 due to disappointing sales, but it has a new offering that could go on sale as early as September.

Job site Monster acquires search company Trovix for $72.5 million in cash — Monster says the acquisition should help it deliver more relevant search results for employers and job seekers. The Mountain View, Calif., Trovix, had raised $18.25 million in funding from 3i Group, Granite Ventures and U.S. Venture Partners.

Forrester Research buys Jupiter Research for $23M — Forrester plans to incorporate Jupiter’s team into its marketing and strategy division.

FBI warns of new Storm worm — The Storm worm is a dangerous botnet, so if you get an email entitled “FBI vs. Facebook,” don’t click on the link.

Mobile-chip maker ARM’s new licensee likely to be Apple — Apple’s acquisition of PA Semi earlier this year makes the deal seem more likely. As an ARM licensee, Apple would be able to tinker with ARM’s architecture and processor cores.

Intel working on third-generation Classmate PC — The latest version of the low-cost laptop, which is aimed at schoolchildren, could be available next month.

Omidyar Network backs nonprofit Endeavor – The VC firm from eBay founded Pierre Omidyar has committed up to $10 million to Endeavor, an organization that supports entrepreneurs focused on emerging markets

Activision Blizzard lets go of Bourne game license – The newly-merged game company dumped the license just a month after the release of the first game based on the popular film franchise.

Are communication companies the new OPEC? — The answer is yes, argues Columbia Prof. Tim Wu, because bandwidth is becoming a precious commodity.

Facebook chooses Intel servers – The Xeon 5400 processor-based servers will cover the social networking site’s hardware and software needs.

Leading broadband provider offering stake to Western investors — International cable operator Liberty is one of the contenders for a 20 to 25 percent stake in Akado.

Are blogs to blame for Cuil backlash? — The harsh reaction was caused in large part by the tech media’s over-the-top hype of the search engine’s launch, Sarah Lacy says. She makes a strong case, but loses points for not including a Cuil-related pun her headline. (The company’s name is pronounced “cool,” so the comic possibilities are endless.)

China to limit web access during the Olympic games — Apparently, the ability to access an uncensored version of the Internet wasn’t included in China’s promises to allow the foreign news media to “report freely” on the games.

YouTube’s Steve Grove weighs-in on voice-to-text –Grove offers some interesting examples of how metadata has always been important on Youtube, once you get past his explanation of YouTube’s new text-search feature for political videos (which was already announced).

Job searching is still painful for most people.

The standard job search today means sifting through masses of listings to find jobs that fit, a process that is always exhausting, and often ineffective.

However, there’s a new set of companies that want to turn the process upside-down. They want to do the search for you. They include Trovix, JobFox and to a lesser extent Jobster, which lately has headed in this direction.

Mountain View’s Trovix, a company that launched its public service yesterday, is the latest. You simply upload your resume to Trovix’ site, and Trovix automatically determines your qualifications, searches through an index of millions of job posting, and extracts those that match. Voila!

The job search market is estimated at $55 billion. Eric Yoon of JobThread, a company that offers job boards, broke down the numbers for us: $8 billion is spent on job boards, $6-7 billion on newspapers, and the rest goes to executive and contingency search. Other research has found that companies only find a small portion of their new hires through traditional job boards like Craigslist, Monster, CareerBuilder or HotJobs. Even specialized sites like Guru and Dice aren’t doing the job. As Yoon notes, the huge issue is not job search, but getting access to top talent.

That’s what makes JobFox, yet another company, sound like a more likely winner. JobFox is similar to Trovix, but only shows jobs from the companies it allows onto its site, where Trovix instead searches across the entire internet.

Where JobFox really shines is in offering different levels of confidentiality. With Trovix, no one has access to your information until you choose to send it. JobFox prefers to actively market the skills of its users, even if they choose to keep some personal details anonymous.

One of a new breed of “personal branding” sites, candidates can build a JobFox profile akin to those on a social networking site, highlighting special skills and knowledge for employers. The site also aims to attract people who already have jobs, but would like to anonymously market themselves in case a better opportunity presents itself.

Because its best users are assumed to already be employed, with less time or inclination for job hunting, Jobfox attempts to make the signup process as easy as possible. During a test configuration, the site asked a series of multiple-choice questions relating to career and experience. In a fairly short period of time it had built an interactive job-skills map that, alongside a summarized resume, is the centerpiece of the personal profile page.

Other facets of the page include a tag-cloud of “dream job” characteristics, a space for work samples and links, and a personal summary. Overall, the Jobfox profile page compares well to a Jobster or LinkedIn profile, offering more information with a sleeker design. Another recent entrant, MyCredentials, looks amateurish by comparison.

With its focus on the more lucrative section of the job market, executive headhunters and managers looking for qualified workers, JobFox would appear to be aiming for the right section of the market.

In the “personal branding” niche, where no site has yet gained a significant toehold, will Jobfox succeed? In a sense, it’s already failed; it actually began life two years ago as Market10, a site that billed itself as being “like eHarmony for job seekers.” Accused by users of poor user interface and bad design, it quickly fell off the radar.

Jobfox CEO Rob McGovern’s team appears to have addressed the user concerns and built a solid new product. In all, it may be the best personal branding site yet to appear. And you can’t dismiss the man himself: Although Careerbuilder took a few years to gain traction, having begun life as now-forgotten NetStart, McGovern sold the site to a newspaper consortium in 2000 for a whopping $200 million.