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Nokia, the world’s largest maker of mobile phones, has agreed to acquire the Swiss-German start-up Plazes, the companies said in a statement today.

Plazes, based in Berlin, Germany is a service that lets you share your location and leave a brief message — akin to Twitter — about what you’re doing. Your message is placed on a map. In other words, it’s like Twitter, only with the added feature of location tags. Plazes’ most recent version actually integrates Twitter into its service entirely.

The move comes at a time when location-based services are all the rage.

The arrival of the iPhone and other devices using location (GPS) technology is spurring the development of numerous applications that exploit a user’s whereabouts to provide useful services. Various writers have recently opined at VentureBeat about location-based services (here and here). In fact, at this point, it may be over-hyped.

Plazes has 13 employees.

The acquisition is part of Nokia’s effort to bulk up on its social presence and time-based activity planning features, it said. It also is a sign that Nokia doesn’t want to cede too much ground on cool location applications to players such as Apple (Plazes had written an application for Apple’s iPhone recently), which has forged close ties with other similar services (location-based social network application Loopt was demonstrated during Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ keynote earlier this month). In 2006, Nokia also acquired Berlin’s Gate5 for a rumored $250 million, according to Techcrunch, and turned the product into Nokia Maps.

Another mobile social network, Zyb, was acquired by Vodafone recently for a rumored $48 million, or much more than the $25 million Zyb was seeking to be valued by investors when it was searching for a round of financing earlier this year. European investors had passed on Zyb at the time, reportedly doubtful about the promise of the LBS market. We’ve heard that Plazes was similarly under-appreciated until recently.

Nokia is building GPS into its newer handsets, so this make sense.

Carriers are getting active too. VentureBeat has learned that Verizon made a minority investment in both Loopt and popular GPS-based mobile phone navigation application, Networks in Motion.

Despite the Nokia deal, Plazes’ iPhone application is still said to be a go. It will be available in the iPhone App store when the iPhone 3G launches in July. Going forward however, one has to wonder if it’s in Nokia’s best interests to have a Plazes app on the iPhone. After all, Apple is positioning itself to be a major rival to Nokia with the worldwide launch of the iPhone in over 70 countries.

Other players in the social LBS arena include Brightkite and Whrrl. Who knows, Twitter may even get its act together and jump into the location game.

No financial details were disclosed on the Nokia-Plazes deal. Plazes raised about 3.7 million euros over two round.

[MG Siegler contributed to this article.]

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The New York Times adds social networking: The nation’s biggest daily newspaper is embracing Web 2.0 with the launch of its new online feature: TimesPeople. This beta program allows users to build up a friends list and view a news feed for stories that their friends are recommending. It shows that newspapers aren’t just sitting back and letting the Internet wipe them out. On a personal page, a user can save all of the content the user has shared and review the recommendations of everyone else in the network. The beta release uses a Firefox browser add-on. The TimesPeople site will not monitor routine site activity or broadcast private activities. Who says you can’t learn something new from Facebook?

MySpace redesign goes live: The new design for MySpace is cleaner with fewer things to click upon on a user’s homepage. It makes more use of drop-down menus and the navigation has been redone to reduce the number of clicks to get any single task done. When you do a search for something, results that include your closest friends show up first.

Another virtual world launches: Dozens of virtual worlds are getting hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter. So it’s no surprise to see the launch of Meez Nation, a new virtual world which emphasizes cartoon-like 3-D avatars for playing games, socializing, and hanging out at cool locations. You can hang out in Roomz, which are nicer than those in the popular but flat 2-D world of Habbo Hotel.

Verizon turns up the broadband tap: Starting next week, Verizon will make available the fastest broadband connections in the country to 10 million homes and businesses thanks to its FiOS Internet infrastructure build out. Speeds of 50 megabits per second for download and 20 megabits per second will be available in 16 different states. By 2010, it will reach more than 18 million.

Thinking of pitching technology to doctors? Maybe that’s a bad idea. A study shows that doctors aren’t embracing technology for electronic health records. Just four percent of doctors have adopted fully functional computerized health record systems.

Web analytics company ClickTale releases its free Form Analytics tool: The tool reveals how consumers interact with online forms and provides recommendations that can improve the rate at which consumers complete the online forms and make purchases. More detail is available here.

Gigaom declares console games dead: Wagner James Au says the failure of Grand Theft Auto IV to boost consoles of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (with just a month’s worth of data) shows that the “next-gen” heat-seeking consoles have peaked and the Nintendo Wii is the wave of the future. Online games made with smaller budgets for wider audiences are the wave of the future, Au says. We can’t argue all that much with that, but console games including the Wii are in the midst of their best year ever at a time in the cycle when they should logically be peaking. GTA IV had a better launch than any other previous game (including the predecessor) with 11 million units sold within just five weeks. Like that old Monty Python line suggests, “I’m not dead yet.”

Meanwhile, something we can all appreciate: You’ve heard of Obama Girl. Well, the Wii Fit Underwear Girl is famous thanks to this video where she shakes her tush while playing the Hula Hoop game on Nintendo’s new Wii Fit game. She tells MTV Multiplayer that she didn’t know that her boyfriend was taping her from behind while she was working out. The video has been viewed more than 3 million times.

[Editor's note: Eric, to keep the site PG (or PC?) snuck in and cut out the embedded video so you'll have to follow the link to watch.]

Verizon to buy Alltel, your cell phone bill to go up? — Verizon has concluded a deal to buy smaller wireless operator Alltel for $27 billion. Combined, the two will pass AT&T to become the largest operator in the US. Alltel has many users in the Midwest, and it has gotten relatively good marks for things like customer service, that market leaders like Verizon and AT&T are not known for. Analyst Craig Moffett of Sanford C. Bernstein is optimistic about such consolidation driving up prices for consumers. The New York Times quotes him as follows:

The consolidation of Alltel takes another step towards rationalizing and consolidating the U.S. Wireless industry, something that must be viewed as a positive. Fewer players will inevitably mean greater pricing stability (although only marginally so, since the smaller operators increasingly have been in the position of taking their cues from the Big Four anyway), and should lead to marketing efficiencies for all players as competition for retail distribution consolidates.

“Pricing stability,” of course, is a euphemism for less competition, but the deal is expected to pass regulators, and anyway, some consumer-rights groups aren’t worried. For mobile startups, this all means there’s one less wireless operator out there to try to work with. [AP photo via The Boston Globe.]

Valley VC Vinod Khosla to get backing from CalPERS for cleantech investments — The California pension fund is expected to put up to $640 million into Kholsa Ventures, Khosla’s self-titled and self-funded investment vehicle that has focused on cleantech investments. PEHub has details; see also our previous coverage of the Wall Street Journal’s criticism of Khosla’s biofuel investments, and his response.

Microsoft may buy information management software company Zoomix for $20 to $30 million — more here.

HP also getting into cleantech — The storied tech conglomerate has announced an agreement with Xtreme Energetics to develop a solar energy system designed to generate electricity “at twice the efficiency and half the cost of traditional solar panels,” it claims. HP is licensing its transparent transistor technology, which it developed in conjunction with Oregon State University, to Xtreme Energetics in exchange for royalty payments.

Business software company EMC to buy data storage firm Iomega — The move will set EMC off on a new strategy to create a consumer business in data storage, an area that Google and other consumer-facing Internet companies have also been getting into.

The Los Angeles Times launches a tech blog — This means more competition for VentureBeat, which we, of course, welcome. The blog’s staff includes the excellent Jessica Guynn, who was recently hired away from The San Francisco Chronicle.

The Linux Mobile Foundation, or LiMo, has been trying to create an open-source platform for device manufacturers, carriers, third-party application developers and others in the mobile industry since last year. By using the open source Linux operating system, companies across segments of the mobile industry will have lower technical and cost barriers to mobile operating system innovation, the effort hopes.

Today, LiMo has gotten a big boost, maybe: Eight new member organizations have joined, including the largest US carrier, Verizon, and Firefox browser creator, Mozilla.

LiMo goes to great pains to bring everybody under its tent. Its members provide intellectual property to its “middleware” platform — the operating system of a phone, rather than its applications and content. See screenshot for a diagram of the components that LiMo works in (in green); LiMo background information PDF here.

At its core, LiMo seems to be pitting carriers like new LiMo member Verizon against the Google-led Android effort, even though they’re not quite the same thing — both Google and incumbent carriers hope to maintain some control over operating systems on their phones, so they can promote their own ads and applications.

LiMo, for example, will allow carriers like Verizon to cut the cost of putting together an operating system. It lets carriers customize their own user interfaces for the LiMo operating system, as Linux Watch points out, which is a way for these companies to introduce applications that they can control and make money from.

The closest rival here is the Open Handset Alliance, or OHA, led by Google, that is implementing the Google-developed Android operating system — based on a different distribution of Linux. In contrast to LiMo, Android has its own user interface. Through this interface, Google will give preference to its own ads and applications like Gmail and Google Maps, as well as partner third-party applications.

Mobile Linux is arriving, but for whom?

Mobile Linux operating systems has until recently been viewed skeptically with the mobile industry. They haven’t gained much traction among more expensive and complex “smartphones.”

But the competition to be more open, spurred by Android, has forced carriers like Verizon to look at ways of giving developers more control. The catch is that everything still being developed. There are only a few LiMo-enabled phones out now (like the Motorola U9, pictured, via Linux Devices), and the first Android phone won’t be out until later this year.

Long-term, though, mid to high-range Linux-based phones are expected to reach twenty percent worldwide market share by 2013, according to one study. Meanwhile, the other competitors have grown large. Apple is seeing surging purchases of its iPhone, which runs on its own operating system — a study from last fall says the iPhone has already gained 27 percent of the smartphone market in the U.S.

And, of course, the largest hardware manufacturer in the world, Nokia, already has its own operating system, Symbian. Microsoft’s mobile version of Windows has also already become popular on high-end “smartphones” that allow better web access. LiMo hopes to be a cheaper, jointly-controlled alternative.

Where does all this talk of open efforts leave third-party developers? First of all, it will ultimately create new ways to build applications that run on one operating system across many types of phones, on carriers around the world. That’s also one downside for LiMo — partners are able to customize their implementations of it, which means an application may need extensive re-working to function across carriers.

Android, because it is run by Google, promises a more seamless operating system, user interface and other features for third parties to build applications. This leads some Android advocates to believe that its OS will achieve dominance.

Verizon, at least, seems to be thinking about the possibility of Android’s success. The carrier suggests it will allow Android phones to operate on its service, but that obviously won’t be its focus with LiMo. Here’s the thing. If Android is very successful and LiMo is not, the questions as to why Verizon didn’t simply align with that movement will get very loud. Especially for the company that turned down the iPhone.

Also of note: Mozilla’s participation. The company has already said that it’s coming out with an open source web browser. By joining LiMo, the non-profit organization shows it is looking well beyond its search-revenue partner, Google. Presumably, Mozilla’s mobile web browser will include Google as its default search option just like it does on the web — and on LiMo-based operating systems.

So far, LiMo has gained 40 members. Besides Verizon and Mozilla, members announced today include Infineon Technologies, Kvaleberg AS, Red Bend Software, Sagem Mobiles, SFR and SK Telecom.

Big companies are trying to promote third-party innovation

Nearly every big company in mobile is offering rewards to promising developers. Venture firm Kleiner Perkins has a $100 million fund for companies that build for the iPhone. Smartphone Blackberry maker Research In Motion has just joined together with Thomson Financial and other investors, putting $150 million total towards companies that build for the Blackberry.

LiMo, meanwhile, says it will reward promising developers with “special access and support,” according to Forbes, with its winners being announced in September.

Android is leading the charge here by being first (although not in the funding it provides). Yesterday, it announced its 50 winning application companies from among the more than 1,700 applicants. The winners will receive seed-funding portions of a $10 million total fund. Not all of them have launched. For a list with links to the company names, see here; for some more in-depth reviews, see here.

The FCC-imposed period of silence following the spectrum auction has finally been lifted, and Google is talking.

As we suggested when news about the auction results broke, Google is very happy with the outcome despite not winning a single piece of the 700 Mhz spectrum. Why are they so happy? The company believes its actions both leading up to and during the spectrum auction helped consumers and the industry as a whole.

“Partly as a result of our bidding, consumers soon should have new freedom to get the most out of their mobile phones and other wireless devices.” Which I read as: Android, coming soon.

Interestingly, Google says that it was willing to go “somewhat higher” than the $4.6 billion set reserve price for the “C block” of the spectrum, and in fact claims it was the leading bidder for “many days.”

Just because the auction is now over with Verizon having won the C block, don’t think Google is going to sit back and watch what Verizon does with it:

“The end of the auction certainly doesn’t mark the end of our efforts toward greater wireless choice and innovation. We will weigh in at the FCC as it sets implementation rules for the C Block, and determines how to move forward with a D Block re-auction.”

Google closes out the post with a mention of the TV spectrum “white space”, which may be even more important to the company than this auction was (our coverage).

[photo: flickr/Indigo Goat]

Verizon has filed a request with the FCC asking for the right to cancel existing cable television service on a customer’s behalf. Such a move could change the landscape, allowing for new television providers, such as Verizon with its FiOS (Fiber Optic Service) network, to get a foot in the door.

Current regulations stipulate that the customer must be the one to terminate their service. Verizon argues that the removal of this requirement would create a more competitive landscape.

Though Verizon is often associated with its phone networks, the company has been busy building up and promoting its advanced FiOS infrastructure. This high bandwidth service provides one of the most advanced packages of high definition television, high-speed Internet and phone service for customers in areas where it is available. For example, FiOS Internet download speeds currently max out at 50 megabits per second, compare that to traditional cable company speeds which are often 1/10th of that or less.

By removing the additional step of a customer having to call to cancel their current cable service, Verizon clearly believes people will flock to its superior service. In its news release, the company states:

“Cable incumbents do not accept disconnect orders from the new provider; instead, they require the customer to contact them directly to cancel service after choosing a new video provider and to return equipment.

This significantly complicates the process of switching video providers, thereby entrenching the cable incumbents’ dominant market position.”

“Complicates” seems a bit strong of a word. It isn’t exactly complicated to call a company and cancel a service. It can be a cumbersome step however depending on call holding time.

Verizon hopes the FCC will create a television provider landscape similar to the one that currently exists for phone networks — which, of course, Verizon knows well. If you want to switch phone providers in the United States you do not need to call your old one to let them know of the switch, your new company will do that for you.

Verizon may have learned first hand just how effective petitioning the FCC can be thanks to Google using it against them to make sure the 700 Mhz spectrum auction produced an open spectrum (our coverage). The company also made sure to cite numerous times the buzz word the FCC loves so much: Competition.

The 700 Mhz spectrum auction results were revealed today. The big winner? Verizon Wireless, which took the largest chunk of the sought-after C-block according to The Wall Street Journal. But was Verizon the real winner in this situation? Or was it actually Google?

Google, after all, is the company that pushed for the FCC to adopt certain “open” requirements for the winner of the spectrum auction. These included opening the network and any devices used on the network to third parties.

When Verizon heard that the FCC would implement a rule requiring the winner of the auction to use it within open network guidelines, Verizon sued the FCC to attempt to stop the auction from going forward.

“Imposing any such requirements in the competitive wireless market would reduce the revenue the government will receive from the spectrum auction and limit the introduction of new and innovative wireless service,” is what Verizon had to say at the time.

That, of course, turned out to be a preposterous statement as the spectrum auction went forward and garnered nearly double the amount of cash the government had hoped for from the bidding (our coverage) — most of that, coming from none other than Verizon. (AT&T and Echostar won some smaller parts of the spectrum as well.)

Once Verizon knew the auction was going forward it clearly did not want to lose. This made for an interesting situation given the talk that Google might have been placing a bid simply to make sure the minimum was reached for opening the C-block. It appears, that may have been precisely what took place.

Google ended up with no licenses for any of the spectrum, but did get what it wanted: An open spectrum.

Meanwhile, Verizon has control of the spectrum, but must do with it what it initially sued to stop, keep it open.

Of course, Verizon has changed its tune since that lawsuit and now seemingly favors open networks. However, questions remain if this “open” talk is simply spin or a legitimate effort to help developers and consumers (our coverage). What Verizon ultimately does with the 700 Mhz spectrum should speak to its intentions.

Looking back on these events, history may judge it as (if I can reconstitute a quote from Charles Baudelaire famously used in The Usual Suspects): The greatest trick Google ever pulled, was convincing the world it was bidding to win the spectrum auction.

update: Google put up a short post on its Public Policy Blog weighing in on the matter (they can’t say much due to the FCC’s anti-collusion rules). Basically, it reads as: Thanks everyone for playing!

[photos: flickr/doob31 and francemagazine.org]

Verizon Wireless today unveiled the specifications for its open network and promised to partner with inventors to grow the industry. That sounds good, but what does it really mean?

On the consumer end, unless you’re willing to pay several hundred dollars for a phone, you’re still likely to end up signing one of those 2-year contracts. On the developer end, you’re going to need to create a device that adheres to CDMA (the network protocol Verizon uses) standards, as well as some “supplemental requirements” — which is a vague way for Verizon to call this an “open” network, while still having rules.

Don’t get me wrong, this certainly seems like a step in the right direction — but it also sounds a bit like things won’t be that different at all.

Some of the quotes from the company’s Open Development Device Conference are also telling:

“The technical specifications aren’t rigorous and are based on industry standards,” said Tony Melone, chief technology officer for Verizon Wireless.

“The certification process won’t be lengthy, costly or complicated,” said Tony Lewis, vice president of open development for Verizon Wireless.

That’s a lot of “aren’ts” and “won’ts” — these statements sound downright defensive.

Before Apple unveiled the iPhone last June, the mobile industry seemed like a much different place. Back then, every company wasn’t tripping over one another to out-”open” its competition. Instead, we had a group of closed companies, content to lock customers in and rack up monthly overages.

Shortly after the iPhone emerged, talk of a “Google Phone” began to heat up. This rumor eventually revealed itself to be Google’s Android mobile development platform.

The iPhone and Android coupled with Google’s entrance into the wireless spectrum auction had wireless companies rightly spooked. The word “open” not only became the new buzz word of the mobile industry, but a competition of sorts erupted to see which of the major mobile providers could be the most open. Verizon said it was opening its network, then AT&T said it would be even more open, then Sprint tried to position itself as the most open of all (our coverage).

While the “open” plans were being made, the mobile companies next engaged in a price war. Verizon and AT&T both promised unlimited calling plans for $99-a-month. Not to be outdone (and in a weak position as the 3rd-place carrier), Sprint promised unlimited calling plans as low as $60-a-month (our coverage).

Verizon’s announcements today may sound good, but consumers and developers should be cautious. The mobile industry is rapidly evolving right now, and each company is doing little more than attempting to say the right thing to get ahead.

Here’s the latest action:
1) Dan Farber takes the helm at CNET
2) Mozilla launches email-focused subsidiary
3) Scribd creates iPaper, an Acrobat competitor
4) Hewlett-Packard has great first quarter
5) Tesla Motors pulls in another $40M
6) Verizon, AT&T unveil new unlimited wireless plans
7) Oligarchs, proletariat run amok in Silicon Valley
8) Scientists suck up CO2 to make alternative fuel

Dan Farber takes the helm at CNET — One familiar figure is stepping aside for another at CNET, where long-time editor-in-chief Jai Singh is ending his long rule over the editorial arm of the media company. Farber, a veteran journalist and former EIC at some of the tech world’s most recognized publications, takes on the role at a time that CNET is struggling with activist investors including Spark Capital and Jana Partners. His own thoughts on the transition are here. (Image by Scott Beale of Laughing Squid.)

Mozilla launches new subsidiary to improve email — The Mozilla Foundation, which makes the Firefox browser, has launched a subsidiary called Mozilla Messaging that will work on improving the Thunderbird email client, another of the company’s products. In a painfully vague blog post, David Ascher, the CEO-to-be of Messaging, says that the new division will give Thunderbird the kind of attention Firefox has always gotten, adding new features and opening it to more contributions from outside developers. Despite the vagueness, as a major competitor to Microsoft Outlook, a next-generation version of Thunderbird may (eventually) be big news.

Scribd creates iPaper, an Acrobat competitor — Does clicking a link only to find it opening up a PDF file in a separate window bug the hell out of you? Scribd is hoping it can tap into that pain point to get a foothold over Adobe’s Acrobat, with a new document viewer called iPaper that will be embedded directly in web pages. The viewer will be able to display a variety of formats including normal text and Powerpoint presentations and, get this, advertisements powered by Google Adsense, without requiring a download. The app is quite similar to Macromedia’s FlashPaper, which Adobe effectively abandoned when it acquired that company. Ironically, iPaper is also made with Adobe Flash.

Hewlett-Packard has an excellent first quarter — Giant computer maker HP had an excellent first quarter, especially as compared to the recent earnings and stock performance of most of its compatriots on the NASDAQ. The company saw a small bump in North American revenue, accompanied by a jump in Asia and Europe. It’s often considered an indicator for the enterprise sector, so strong results coming now from HP suggest that the recession might not be so bad after all, at least for tech.

Tesla Motors pulls in another $40 million — Electric car maker Tesla has taken another $40 million, raising total investment in the company to date to $140 million, as we briefly mentioned yesterday. The lead investors were Valor Equity Partners and Elon Musk, the company’s chairman. Tesla is shooting for $250 million more over the next two years, and the launch of a new model; for more details, see yesterday’s article.

Two major carriers unveil new unlimited wireless plans — Verizon and AT&T now both offer unlimited-use wireless plans, starting at $99. Directed at the high-end market, the new packages are a significant step away from the set-minute “buckets” that the largest carriers have favored to date. They mark a further move toward using value-added services like applications and data as the major differentiator between wireless plans.

Oligarchs, proletariat run amok in Silicon Valley; middle class vanishing — Petit bourgeousie, where art thee? Recent employment figures for Silicon Valley show that overall employment levels are rising, but jobs in the $30,000 - $80,000 earning range are on the decline. Worse, the job growth for low-end earners  making less than $30,000 was at five percent, while growth for the $80,000-plus group was at only one percent. This might have something to do with an increasingly common business model: One well-paid CEO, one small army of interns.

Suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to make fuel — A couple of new schemes hope to pull carbon dioxide from the air to create an alternative fuel. The idea reported here by the New York Times involves using a nuclear plant as the power source for the electrochemical reaction that would produce the fuel, though, so don’t plan on seeing it any time soon.

1) Verizon to let “any apps, any device” onto its network
2) Google GDrive is real, almost here
3) Brightcove to focus on video distribution for its partners
4) JotSpot, where are you?
5) GuildCafe, a social network for gamers, buys Uberguilds Network, an online gaming network
6) Xbox introduces more advanced friend features

Verizon to let “any apps, any device” onto its network – There’s lots of excitement today about an announcement by oligarchic mobile carrier Verizon that it will let any application or device developer access its network — even somebody “in their basement,” a Verizon executive said.

At first glance, this is great news for mobile startups, because it could mean they’ll get less restricted access to Verizon’s 63.7 million customers. Verizon will publish its technical standards in early 2008, that developers will need to follow in order to work with Verizon’s mobile network. If you meet the minimal standard, Verizon will activate you, with designs being tested and approved in a special Verizon testing lab. Verizon customers will be able to choose any application on their devices.

With this timing, Verizon will be getting a jump on a rival effort, the Google-led Android open source mobile software project, as Larry Dignan points out.

There are all sorts of details that need to be clarified in Verizon’s plans or developers may stay in their basements, such as what turnaround time for testing will be, a better understanding of Verizon’s standards and the price of certification fees.

For more, see Om’s pithy take.

Google GDrive is real, almost here – Rumors have abounded around the blogosphere for years about such a service. Google’s GDrive will let you store large files, like video, music, and images Like Box.net, the Wall Street Journal reports. This apparently means it will compete against file-hosting startups like Box.net, Divshare and many others. Google already lets users have a few gigabyts of storage for free in GMail, its online email service. Gmail has been steadily increasing its storage capacity, recently adding a subscription-fee enterprise version with storage up to 25 gigabytes for a single account.

Brightcove to focus on video distribution for its partners – The company has until now offered a public site, Brightcove.tv, where users could share videos, but it was really late to the game. There are a horde of online video startups experimenting with variations on that theme. Brightcove, which raised a huge $59 million round last January, will stop allowing users to upload videos on December 17. It will focus on being a specialized media platform for media companies — including some of its funders, such as the The New York Times, Hearst, CBS, and others.

JotSpot, where are you? – Since JotSpot, the wiki company, was purchased by Google in 2006, it has closed off registration for new users and has otherwise gone quiet. The sharp eyes in the forums section of Google Blogoscoped spotted another clue over the weekend that JotSpot is returning soon — a new mention of Jotspot in some Google software code. We’ve also been hearing rumblings that it will be introduced soon and integrated with other Google Apps like Gmail and Google Docs.

GuildCafe, a social network for gamers, buys Uberguilds Network, an online gaming network — Guildcafe connects gamers across so-called massively multiplayer online role-playing games (or MMOGs), including World of Warcraft, the Lord of the Rings Online, and Guild Wars. Players can form groups, or “guilds,” that can move across these games. The purchase negotiation was no doubt bloodily simulated between the two companies in a virtual battle fought across the MMOGscape. The purchase price wasn’t disclosed.

Cambridge, Mass.-based Guildcafe raised an undisclosed amount from IDG Ventures Boston back in July, apparently to acquire companies.

Xbox introduces more advanced friend features – If you’re one of the eight million Xbox Live users around the world, you’ll be able to see who your friends on Xbox are friends with. Question is, when will Xbox owner Microsoft sync this the data in its social network ally, Facebook.

Here’s the latest action:
1) Google facing employee overload
2) Verizon Wireless abandons legal challenge of FCC rules
3) Qualcomm comes up with competition for WiMAX
4) Could Yahoo finally be giving up social networking?
5) Google’s PageRank changes injure startups, again
And a handful of fundings:
6) Linkstorm raises $4.2 million from 60 angels
7) JibJab takes a further $3 million from Polaris
8) Zoji receives $1.5 million in seed funding
9) Socialthing raises $300,000 for profile aggregation

Google facing employee overload — Google may be overstocking itself with new employees. Jordan Rohan, an RBC Capital Markets analyst, told News.com, “Half the company has been hired in the last 12 months. That’s chaotic. The new employees find it difficult to figure out how to get things done.” Facing an employee glut, Google may not have the corporate expertise to structure the next for their new worker bees.
Simultaneously, Google is undergoing a talent drain, with some of its best and brightest striking out on their own. (The most recent: Salman Ullah.) Even John Doerr, an original Google investor and board member, is worried that the company’s culture may not survive the changes. Larger, more lumbering and less talented by the day: Is Google finally ready to become a regular corporation?

Verizon Wireless abandons legal challenge of FCC spectrum rules — Verizon’s appeal to the courts to force the Federal Communications Commission to abandon the rule structure it set up for the 700mhz wireless spectrum auction has been dropped by the company. It’s unclear why the telecom giant decided to stop trying to force the issue, but it was probably simple a matter of good sense; the courts have historically declined to interfere with the FCC’s authority.
The auctions, set for January 2008, aren’t likely to run into any more obstacles at this point. Verizon had taken issue with the controversial “open access” requirement that will allow any device to work on the network, regardless of who owns it.

Qualcomm may have a better plan for wireless access — The vaunted WiMAX technology that companies like Intel, Motorola and Sprint are pouring money into may face a strong challenger. Qualcomm has announced a new line of chips, called Gobi, that are capable of accessing multiple types of networks — for example, both EV-DO and HSPA.
Building cellular access chips into laptops has long been a problem, because each type of chip can usually only process the signal from one carrier network. (The Gobi probably uses a technology called software radio, which is designed to eliminate the need for multiple chips.) Depending on how much Qualcomm charges, its new chips may be preferable until the more efficient WiMAX networks are fully built out.

Yahoo giving up on social networking? — “I don’t think Yahoo can be Facebook tomorrow. I don’t think we want to be Facebook,” said Jerry Yang to reporters at an advertising conference yesterday. That’s news to everyone who has watched Yahoo torturously modify its failed Yahoo 360 social network into the new Yahoo Mash, which has been compared to Facebook more than any other social networking site it may be trying to emulate.
Mash is still in private beta. The question now is whether Yahoo, under the new leadership of Yang, will drop the me-too project and focus on something that might actually succeed, or try to differentiate itself with some unusual features. (Via the Mercury.)

Google undergoes sweeping change in PageRank algorithms — The search giant periodically changes the automated rules that determine how sites rank in its search results. The latest shift, noticed today by bloggers, will have a serious effect on a number of blog networks and some startups. Major sites affected include Engadget and DownloadSquad; both will likely to lose a large amount of traffic due to their lower ranking. Google’s changes appear to have been made to combat paid links and in-text advertisement.

Linkstorm raises $4.2 million from 60 angel investors — Linkstorm offers a method for turning a single link into multiple links. When a mouse pointer touches the link, it opens up into a interactive box showing subject lines and other links, much like drop-down menus. It also offers a banner tool that expands the size of an advertisement on a mouse roll-over. Both products are marketed to advertisers; several have already been deployed from companies including Hyundai and Cisco. The company’s total funding is up to $13.2 million; Linkstorm had already taken $9 million from 150 individuals, and a few of them re-invested in this third round.  Funding news via VentureWire (subscription required).

JibJab takes a further $3 million from Polaris Ventures — peHUB dug up the funding amount, initially undisclosed in the company’s press release today. Together with the previous round, JibJab has taken about $6.4 million, all from Polaris. The company makes annoying-but-amusing videos and greeting cards (today’s announcement was for new e-cards); to see what we mean, check out Starring You.

Zoji receives $1.5 million in seed funding — Yet another online invitations site wanting to take down Evite, the grandfather of them all. Zoji is betting on a full set of social features, including messaging, chatting and photos; it will also save invitations and event details over time, leaving a sort of event scrapbook behind. Like another site we’ve profiled in the past, MyPunchBowl, Zoji also has a feature for reaching consensus for a date among the invitees.

Socialthing raises $300,000 for yet another social network profile aggregator — Boulder, Colo. based Socialthing, yet to launch publicly, consolidates social networks into a single dashboard. It will let you track contacts, blogs, photos and music across multiple social networks. But there are already a host of other companies that do something very similar, including ProfileBuilder, meeCard, FindMeOn.com, OtherEgo.com, ProfileMat.com. There are also ways to track activities on various networks, using Friendfeed, to stay on top of friends’ activities on various platforms. So we’re not certain why we need another company to do this, but we’ll wait and see. EonBusiness provided the funding, as part of a seed round totaling $500,000.

Here’s the latest action:
–Jajah gets shut out of eBay
–German cell-phone software vendor buys iPhone game maker
–Verizon secretly pressuring FCC Chairman to renege on wireless opening?
–Facebook advertisers are “selling shovels to other miners”
–Ballmer: Ads to make up quarter of Microsoft business
–Research firm Gartner predicts continuing chip-industry slowdown
–Google’s DoubleClick acquisition may face still more hurdles

Jajah gets shut out of eBay — This was pretty predictable. As reported earlier, Jajah released a button aimed to give small businesses the equivalent of a free 1-800 number. eBay vendors could use it to let customers call them for free from their eBay page. However, eBay owns Skype, a competing service to Jajah, and quickly stripped Jajah’s buttons from the site within 24 hours.

German cell-phone software vendor buys iPhone game maker — The German company, Shape Services, has bought New York-based iPhone Applications List, showing how the iPhone has generated a platform of its own that’s creating quite a bit of excitement, and could eventually rival the iPod ecosystem. There’s an estimated $1 billion in sales annually of iPod add-ons, according to Dow Jones.

Verizon secretly pressuring FCC Chairman to renege on wireless opening? — News reports suggest Verizon is lobbying behind the scenes, perhaps even in violation of FCC rules, to have the FCC water down provisions that would open up the 700 MHz spectrum to competition. The FCC has opened the spectrum to bidders in an auction, where the highest bidder gets to offer services over the spectrum, but must also let other service providers access the spectrum too. Verizon, a carrier worried that regulation would let Google or others encroach on its wireless turf, apparently is seeking to make the FCC ease up on a key requirement: that the winner of the bid (Verizon presumably thinks it can win the bid) must open up devices and applications if they use the spectrum. Now Google is crying foul.

Quote of the day: Facebook advertisers are “selling shovels to other miners” – You’ve got to like the analogy by the New York Times’ Brad Stone in his piece about Facebook. He likens Facebook application hype to the 1849 gold rush: “Some [Facebook] developers report earning tens of thousands of dollars in advertising with the applications they have created. Yet their applications are mostly running ads promoting other Facebook applications — a situation that recalls the earliest Gold Rush miners, who earned a living selling shovels to other miners.” Overall, very few people found significant amounts of gold.

Microsoft’s chief executive Steve Ballmer says advertising will make up a quarter the company’s business within a few years — Details here. “Over time, all ad money will go through a digital ad platform,” Mr. Ballmer told a gathering of European ad agencies and clients. “All media goes digital; all advertising goes digital.”

Google remove all ads from its social-networking service, Orkut – This is just the latest sign that social networks are having a much harder time being monetized than people appreciate. Users post pornographic images, and advertisers don’t want anything to do with this. Google said advertising appeared on only 1 percent of Orkut pages. The site is popular in Brazil, but has been accused of containing child pornography among other illicit material. According to research firm comScore Inc., Orkut attracted visits from about 25 million people in August. Perhaps never before has there been such a disjunct between a site’s popularity and such a depressing amount of money that can be made from it.

Research firm Gartner predicts continuing chip-industry slowdown — Already down 4.3 percent from predicted levels, chip equipment orders will stay at their current low levels until late next year, according to Gartner. The research revised capital spending forecasts for the semiconductor industry, trimming off $4.7 billion for a predicted total of $54.6 billion next year. Slowdowns in the chip industry have, in the past, foreboded a slowing of the entire tech industry.

Google’s DoubleClick acquisition may face more hurdles — Not just one, but two committees in the House of Representatives are considering holding hearings over Google’s proposed buyout of DoubleClick. The House Energy and Commerce and House Judiciary committees are reviewing the case, following a hearing last week by the Senate Judiciary’s Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights Subcommittee. The hearings may have been sparked by rivals including Microsoft and Yahoo, who are actively making arguments against the acquisition to Washington’s lawmakers. It’s a good thing for Google that the company has already been busy hiring lawyers and lobbyists in Washington; it’s got some catching up to do.

YouTube will deliver user-submitted video from its site to mobile customers of Verizon’s V Cast video service.

You have to pay $15/month extra (above Verizon’s basic wireless service) for V Cast. However, a caveat: Verizon phones will only carry “high quality” YouTube videos, which seems to go against YouTube’s origins of promoting user-generated videos that are often grainy and of average-quality, but compelling nonetheless. Still, video quality is improving overall, and so this may not be a problem near-term. It is also a first for YouTube, which had promised the service was coming. More deals coming.