Trapit launched its new publisher suite today, the startup’s first business-to-business product that lets publishers and brands create personalized, more engaging reading experiences.

“The web is generating more content per day than ever before,” said founder Hank Nothhaft Jr. in an interview with VentureBeat. “There are plenty of web aggregators and distribution networks, but as far as I am concerned, these are one-trick ponies. They are not solving problems as far as publishers are concerned. We use artificial intelligence to create branded personalized content experiences for audiences; it’s like machine-assisted editorial, and the impact on engagement is tremendous.”

Trapit was born out of the prestigious research institute SRI International, the same organization that spun out the Siri virtual assistant technology later acquired by Apple. Trapit combines artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and personalization technology to act as a discovery engine for the web. When Trapit launched in 2011, it was a consumer product that sorted through the massive amount of Internet content to surface articles that were specifically relevant to each individual user.

With this latest offering, Trapit will sell its tools to businesses that want to recommend content to their readers from multiple sources, without redirecting users to other sites, syndicating, or working with an ad-network. Nothhaft said that after Trapit released an iPad app in July 2012, the company received an outpouring of interest from the media industries about how they could use the technology to enhance their own native and digital experiences. Nothhaft jumped on this opportunity to generate revenue, without making money through consumers or advertising.

Using Trapit’s publishing tools, customers can curate topics that are important to their audience based on key words and topics. The engine dives into a 140,000 vetted sources that won’t necessarily pop up in search engines, and delivers the content in real-time to interested users. Nothhaft said that while social networks user other people to filter the web, that method of surfacing content often turns out to be an “echo chamber,” and search is gameable. Additionally, syndication agreements, third-party plugins, and ad networks surface “junky” content that adds little value to the publisher or the reader. Trapit’s advanced technology provides a superior, more authentic alternative.

“Trapit is able to understand the context of an article more deeply than a set of keywords and keeps the user around longer, to create a relationship,” he said. “We monitor how users interact with content and apply that feedback differently, as well as data on what they are opening, how long they are spending, what they share, what they delete etc… We develop a rich understanding of the user and those interests in real-time, and surface articles within moments. This personalizes content to each individual users. No two Trapit feeds are exactly the same, and no other service can claim that.”

Publishers appreciate the fact that app is white-labeled and doesn’t redirect users or dilute the integrity of their brand. Nothhaft said that he takes a broad view of what a publisher is, and in addition to working with traditional media properties, Trapit also has customers like Deloitte which uses Trapit to power an internal iPad reader. The app personalizes business news and internal reports, so a consultant who is out in the field can quickly access information that is relevant to them without spending the time to search.

Furthermore, the software enables publishers to extend their publishing into mobile without spending a large amount of money. Clients can publish content to branded iPad and web apps, as well as email and social networks, to build community around their topic. And of course, analytics are part of the package. Trapit is based in Palo Alto, California.

Photo Credit: Trapit

Today, the digital notebook service announced a partnership with Deutsche Telekom which means nearly 60 million of the telecom giant’s customers will be eligible to receive one year of Evernote Premium. With over 45 million users, worldwide reach, and over $250 million in venture capital, Evernote is well on its way towards world domination, of online note taking that is.

Through this offer, subscribers can request an upgrade for Evernote Premium through their Deutsche Telekom account or by launching the latest version on their Android smartphones. The deal is the latest in a string of international telecom carrier partners- Evernote has also struck deals with NTT Docomo in Japan, Orange France, KT in Korea, Taiwan Mobile, and Docomo Pacific.

These types of agreements serve to cement and expand Evernote’s global footprint by distributing it to millions (upon millions) of potential global consumers. Once they are given a taste of Evernote Premium, the hope is they will continue to pay for it after their free trial is up. Evernote Premium costs $5 a month or $45 a year. In exchange for the fee, users have access to larger upload capacity, top priority customer support, offline notebooks, PDF and document search, collaboration tools, note history, larger files and bigger notes, and hidden promotions.

Evernote’s tagline is “remember everything” and it is a useful tool for keeping track of life’s (and thee web’s) little details. The service can be used for anything from recipe documentation to meeting minutes, and CEO Phil Libin told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview that his goal is to actually boost cognitive abilities by turning Evernote into an “external brain.”

The company recently began focusing more on its business platform. Evernote Business has all the features of the consumer-facing products with additional business-only tools like an administrative console to invite, add, and manage new employees and keep all of the business notebooks organized in a shareable library. Earlier this year Evernote continued the expansion of the business product into 26 new countries in Europe, signaling a transition towards making money from businesses rather than consumers.

Evernote is the top note-taking app out there, but just last week reports came out that Google is working to release a note-taking app called Keep that would challenge Evernote’s dominance. While 45 million is a hefty user base, Google Apps has more and could steal users away from Evernote because it is already part of the Google ecosystem.

Partnering with Deutsche Telekom will help Evernote gain a hold in Germany, which is rising quickly as an international tech hub. The two companies are also co-hosting a Hackathon in Berlin in April, which will be held at Deutsche Telekoms new startup space. The event will “encourage developers and designers to imagine and create new apps” using Evernote API and Deutsche Telekom’s Developer Garden.

Photo Credit: momentcaptured1/Flickr 

In a less violent and more productive demonstration of clipboard capabilities, online web clipping service Clipboard has struck an investment deal with Scientia, an enterprise software company that provides tools to institutions of higher education.

On Clipboard, users clip items from around the web and organize them on “boards.” Rather than importing a link or an image, users select the specific zone they want to keep, which makes it easier to save things like a tweet, forum thread, or product description.

The platform is comparable to that of Pinterest, Evernote, and Springpad. Uses include personal collections, containing recipes and clothing items, and work-related purposes. The boards can private or shared, and you can use them to collaborate on projects. You can annotate and tag them, and they can sync across desktop and mobile devices.

This strategic investment with Scientia is in an effort to move Clipboard’s offering into a new vertical and make it a solution geared towards researching private and professional content.

“Since we can ‘clip’ anything on the web, this will be extremely beneficial in the education space, for instance professors pulling together coursework materials, students researching a paper and study groups brainstorming project ideas,” said CEO Gary Flake in an email. “Scientia helps more than 400 top universities and more than 10 million students outside of the US organize academic life and we are confident this new partnership will help us add value to the research, collaboration and creation of ideas in education.”

Scientia’s software is used by major universities around the world. Its suite of applications include planning, timetable and exam scheduling, progress tracking, and workload organizational tools. A statement issued by Clipboard said this funding “marks the beginning of a joint product development effort by Clipboard and Scientia that will focus on advancing the state-of-the-art in online collaboration and extending it into the education market.”

Clipboard received $1.5 million from top tier investors Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurveston, and SV Angel, among others. It launched to the public on May 31 and now claims to have more than 100,000 registered users who have saved more than 1.7 million clips. The terms of this deal are undisclosed, although it makes Scientia the largest individual investor.

It seems the days of physical documentation are slowly ebbing away. Notebooks, bulletin boards, to-do lists, photo albums, and filing cabinets will soon be relics of a time gone by. Soon, they will be function primarily as vintage home decor (or weaponry) as digital versions gain traction with the mainstream population.