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Week in review: Bloom Energy’s power plant in a box, Apple’s sex ban

Here’s our roundup of the week’s business and tech news. First, the most popular stories that VentureBeat published in the last seven days:

Bloom Energy: Is its ‘power plant in a box’ worth all the hype’? — Bloom Energy finally emerged from stealth mode, unveiling its “Bloom Box” fuel cell during a 60 Minutes segment with Lesley Stahl. Capable of powering more than 100 homes while producing close to zero emissions, just one of these boxes could radically alter how people get their energy. We look at whether the product could be the godsend some are claiming.

14 of the stupidest things ever said in sales meetings — Jim Nichols, a senior partner at Catalyst:SF, asked a number of buyers and sellers about the stupidest things they’ve heard in meetings. Most of his list is just hilariously dumb; the last item is a common-but-crucial mistake.

Apple bans 5,000 apps for sexual content. Here are the new rules — Blogger Jon Atherton at iPhone app developer Chillifresh has become the de facto spokesman for those who think Apple’s new anti-smut rules for iPhone apps are too puritanical. Chillifresh’s app was one of those hit by Apple’s cleanup campaign this past week. Atherton claimed Apple had banned 5,000 apps, and quoted restrictions said to be straight from an Apple representative.

YouTube pulls original “Rickroll” video after 30 million views — Writer Devindra Hardawar was outraged when YouTube pulled down the original “Rickroll” music video used in online pranks. Initially, viewers trying to watch the video were told it was removed due to a “terms of use violation,” but YouTube later brought the video back, saying its removal was a mistake.

Google real-time search adds status updates from Facebook pages — Facebook status updates from Pages started showing up in Google’s real-time search results this week. The key thing to remember, however, is that Google has much more limited access to Facebook’s real-time data than its competitor, Bing.

And here are five more stories we thought were important, thought-provoking, or fun:

Is Apple’s new sex ban a ploy to win educators over to the iPad? — Kim-Mai Cutler looked at Apple’s new no-smut rules and had a hard time believing the high priests of the App Store magically woke up one morning and suddenly decided that ‘T-and-A’ apps weren’t okay. The real rationale for the ban, she argues, has more to do with Apple’s desire to mass-market its iPad tablet in the classroom.

Hi5 to announce new online games management team, acquisition of social game firm Big Six — In its ambition to be a player in the red hot category of social network games, Hi5 acquired Big Six, an Austin, Texas-based social game developer that has its own battle-tested virtual currency platform.

Startup Visa Act officially introduced in the Senate – It looks like the startup founder visa, a concept that has a lot of backing from the startup and venture community, might actually become a reality: Senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar (a Democrat and a Republican, respectively) this week introduced the Startup Visa Act, which reflects many of the ideas pushed by the movement’s advocates.

As predicted, Silver Spring preps for IPO — At the start of the year, when everyone was throwing out predictions for the rapidly growing cleantech sector, Tesla Motors and smart grid networking provider Silver Spring Networks were pegged as the companies most likely to go public in 2010. Now, unsurprisingly, Silver Spring has tapped bankers for its own IPO.

Embargoes explained by colorful cartoon characters — We at VentureBeat are totally fine with embargoes, the timestamps PR people put on press releases. Still, the process can suck the fun out of a workday, which is why we (and many other bloggs) were delighted by a Text-to-Movie cartoon that walked through pitfalls of the standard procedure.

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Google Now Includes MySpace Status Updates in Real-Time Search Results

MySpace and Google just announced that starting today, status updates from MySpace users will appear in Google’s real-time search. MySpace announced its real-time Stream API in December and Google launched its real-time search feature just a day before the MySpace announcement. While Google was one of MySpace’s launch partners (together with OneRiot), it took Google until today to include MySpace updates in its real-time search.

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Currently, Twitter dominates Google’s real-time search results, though Google also plans to include updates from FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca in its search results in the future. Google also has a deal with Facebook to show status updates from groups, companies and celebrities in its real-time search results.

Will these Status Updates be Useful?

Starting today, updates from MySpace users will appear in Google’s real-time search results on the default search results page. Users will also be able to see these updates by selecting the latest and updates mode in Google’s search options bar.

On average, MySpace users don’t tend to share as many links as Twitter users, so it remains to be seen how useful these MySpace status updates will be for Google users. For now, Google doesn’t offer its users the ability to filter real-time searches by source.

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Motally Cooks Up Flexible APIs To Allow Publishers To Import And Export Analytics

Analytics can be valuable if you are able to actually turn this data into content that you can understand and draw actionable insights from them. Generally this is done through analytics reporting systems, which will make sense of data and produce reports. Today, Motally, which provides user-action tracking services for the mobile web and apps, has released new flexible APIs that allow mobile publishers to import and export their mobile data and integrate Motally directly into other reporting systems.

Motally’s offering gives developers the ability to receive daily reports, web-based dynamic reports and user statistics such as unique users, page views, engagement time search keywords, average pages/visit, etc.  The new API allows app developers and publishers to pull reports out of Motally and integrate them into their existing reporting systems like Omniture. In addition to export APIs, Motally’s new import APIs let developers upload data directly to Motally for processing. This could be useful for platform providers who want to send large quantities of data for analysis on behalf of their user base.

Motally, which recently launched an extension of their mobile analytics to include content developed on Apple’s iPad, support analytics for applications on the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry platforms as well as the mobile web. Motally offers more advanced features that allows developers to troubleshoot and debug their products from anywhere in the world, without having to re-deploy apps and games to the Apple iPhone store. For a young startup, Motally has seen significant traction as a mobile analytics provider. Backed by renown investor Ron Conway, Motally’s clients include Twitter, Yelp, Fandango and Verizon.

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Motally Brings Mobile Analytics To The iPad

Once the iPad SDK is released, many developers will be in a mad rush to create apps optimized for Apple’s tablet device. Already, developers are flocking to update their apps with the new iPhone SDK optimized for the iPad. But it’s not only the developers of games and apps who are participating in this gold rush. Motally, a startup that provides analytics on mobile devices, is launching the extension of their user-action tracking services for mobile web and apps to include content developed on Apple’s iPad. Their analytics will automatically work for iPhone apps accessed on the device with further support to be released specifically for the iPad SDK once it is available from Apple.

Motally’s offering allows developers to receive daily reports, web-based dynamic reports and user statistics such as unique users, page views, engagement time search keyworks, average pages/visit, etc. Currently using the iPhone SDK, Motally will support the iPad SDK once it rolls out.

Motally offers more advanced features that allows developers to troubleshoot and debug their products from anywhere in the world, without having to re-deploy apps and games to the Apple iPhone store. For a young startup, Motally has seen significant traction as a mobile analytics provider. Backed by renown investor Ron Conway, Motally’s clients include Twitter, Yelp, Fandango and Verizon.

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Why is Google Afraid of Facebook? Because Social Networking Could Soon Pass Search

It’s often said these days that Google and Facebook are major rivals, but how could that be if one is in search and the other, social networking? Traffic analyst firm Hitwise provided one very clear clue tonight when it published new numbers for web user activity in Australia. For perhaps the first time ever, social networking sites have surpassed the traffic search engines receive, Hitwise says. There is reason to question the company’s categorization of web traffic, but the trend is worth examining none the less.

Social networking climbed fast this year, and Hitwise says it just peaked over search for a few days during the communication frenzy of Christmas. Take that, Larry and Sergey – Mark and Ev are right behind you.

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The biggest problem with Hitwise’s numbers is that the company appears to include YouTube in the “social networks and forums” category that is challenging search. That’s a questionable categorization of (Google’s) YouTube, a site that some people call the 2nd-largest search engine on the web. A person certainly can use YouTube as a social network – but we’d guess that far more people use it as a search engine. If YouTube is growing (and this analysis says it is) then search is growing. You wouldn’t think search would have much room to grow, but YouTube demonstrates nicely that there can emerge new kinds of search at any time. Some people argue that real-time search is the next type that will emerge as a growth industry for the search market. Others point to social search and that kind of amalgamation could throw our search vs. social networking equation entirely!

The arguable mischaracterization of YouTube seems to throw a big monkey-wrench in Hitwise’s usually fabulous market analysis, but as a general trend social network is undoubtedly growing. At 2% of web use, according again to Hitwise, YouTube is a major player – but lets think about the rise of actual social networking sites relative to search.

What would it mean if social networking over-took search in terms of sheer visits online? It would mark a sea-change on the internet. No longer would our dominant use of the web be seeking out web-pages built by HTML web-masters! Now we would all be publishing tiny little updates that perhaps only our friends and family care about. We’d be subscribing, more than we ever did by RSS, to syndicated updates from organizations of interest, large and small. It would be (perhaps will be) a very different era and, to be frank, it’s going to be harder to monetize. There will be privacy battles. There will be new platforms for innovation.

It’s a pretty big deal. Things will really change if current trends continue and social networking rises to the top. That’s not as clear as this traffic analyst firm argues that it is, but it could happen. And that’s a big reason why Google and Facebook are rivals.

Classic post: Is YouTube the Next Google?

Check out our research report The Real-Time Web and Its Future.

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Week in review: Startup dreams crushed by Google, MySpace’s collective consciousness

Here’s our rundown of the week’s business and tech news. (Due to the holiday-shortened week, I’m including fewer posts than usual.) First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:

Nine startups dreams and industries Google crushed in 2009 – A lot of folks, from tiny startups to companies in established industries, found themselves in the search behemoth’s path this year. We looked back some of the dreams that were destroyed.

Apple’s new gadget is an e-reader, says latest rumor — There are reports that Apple’s new tablet computer has a specific purpose: It’s a Kindle-killer designed for reading books, magazines, and news on-the-go.

These are the ten best video games of the decade, dammit! — VentureBeat games writer Dean Takahashi compiles a list of his favorite games from the past 10 years, supposedly because his “annoyance [with other best of decade lists] built up so that it overflowed” and he “felt compelled to retaliate” by creating his own list.

Droid clobbers other Android phones in Xmas app downloads — More evidence that the new Droid is the king of the Android phones: On Christmas Day, the number of Android app downloads from the new Droid phones roughly equaled the number of downloads from all leading Android phones combined, according to a report from app market analysts Flurry.

And here are four more stories we thought were important, thought-provoking, or fun:

Peering into MySpace’s collective consciousness with real-time search — We look at the differences in how conversations play out on different online communities. Of course, our comparison is extremely unscientific, but it support speculation that class divisions are playing out on the web.

Our favorite horribly wrong or amusing tech covers — As everyone makes predictions about 2010 and beyond, we tried to provide some perspective by reminding readers of decades of bad predictions from the tech press. We’ll have our own predictions up soon, and some will certainly be wrong, but hopefully they won’t deserve too much ridicule a decade from now.

Stealthy C3 raises $26M to manage carbon, but what will it actually be doing? — C3 already seems to be setting itself apart by recruiting heavyweights like former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham for its board. The star power isn’t surprising, considering that the San Mateo, Calif., company was founded by Thomas Siebel — the man who sold Siebel Systems to Oracle for $5.7 billion.

Does voice-to-text technology actually work? — Voice-to-text technology is entering more and more industries, and has the potential to make recording, dictating and communicating a whole lot faster. But after trying out the different services available now, it’s clear that they’ve still got a long way to go.

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5 o’clock roundup: Nothing says Christmas like LEDs, Facebook ups divorces and more

Here’s the latest action:

Rich Wong looks ahead to 2010 — Rich Wong, partner at Accel Partners, sat down with Robert Scoble to provide a venture-eye view of 2010, covering trends in social media, real-time search, clean energy and who will come out on top between the iPhone and Android.

LEDs take over Christmas light market — Apparently, business is good for makers of holiday-themed light-emitting diode strings. Even the country’s most iconic tree at Rockefeller Center is decked in the energy-efficient decorations this year.

Typekit makes your Wordpress blog pop – Wordpress how now added Typekit fonts to its dashboard of Appearance tools via a plugin that asks for your Kit ID. This works whether you host your own blog or work on it through Wordpress itself.

Facebook ups divorce rates? — Apparently the recent popularity of social networks, led by Facebook, has increased rates of adultery and subsequent divorce, according to a survey of law firms dealing with marital disputes.

Firefox ready for its mobile closeup – Mozilla will soon be offering its popular browser tailored to the mobile experience. It will first be available on Nokia’s N900 model, before spreading to many other devices.

Will GM’s new CFO be good for the Chevy Volt? – In an interesting move, Microsoft CFO Christopher Liddell has joined General Motors in the same capacity. There is now speculation that his knowledge of the internet and rapid-moving technology could lend some good ideas to the development of its new electric vehicles.

One Laptop Per Child could beat Apple to a tablet — The nonprofit striving to provide children in the developing world with affordable, useful computers, released designs for a tablet model called the XO-3. Will it beat the tablet that Apple may or may not be working on?

FriendFeed restores real-time tweets — Following Facebook acquisition of FriendFeed, it stopped bringing its users Twitter updates in real time. This hurt the service a lot, considering that the micro-blogging site accounted for a lot of the streaming content. Now this has changed, with FriendFeed registering tweets as they happen.

ReachLocal files for $100M IPO — ReachLocal, provider of tools for small businesses to market themselves online, filed with the SEC today for a $100 million public offering. With more than 500 employees and $147 million in revenue last year, it seems poised to succeed.

Comcast to pay $16M in P2P lawsuit — Two years after Comcast users started to complain about the company restricting broadband communications, especially for BitTorrent, a settlement of $16 million has been reached in the resulting lawsuit.

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OneRiot Launches New Real-Time Ads to Monetize Trending Topics

OneRiot, one of the leading real-time search engines, just announced the launch of a new advertising product for real-time apps. RiotWise Trending Ads will give OneRiot’s partners a feed of ads related to currently trending topics on the Web. These ads can, for example, be integrated in a user’s stream of updates in Twitter apps or displayed as regular mobile ad units. Digsby, for example, plans to place these ads directly in its users’ streams, but because the units are delivered as a feed through OneRiot’s API, developers are free to use them in whatever way the see fit.

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OneRiot’s ad network, RiotWise, launched about 2 months ago as a closed beta with roughly 20 partners. The new RiotWise Trending Ads program was built on top of this network. The network will feature a mix of CPM and CPC ads.

2010: It’s all About Monetizing the Real-Time Web

As OneRiot’s general manager Tobias Peggs told us earlier this month, “2010 will be all about monetizing the real-time Web.” Real-time advertising, however, comes with its own set of challenges. While Google AdSense, for example, can take its time to learn about what works best for a certain keyword, advertising systems for the real-time web have to work with a different set of signals and react to an environment that is always in flux. In this context, it makes sense for OneRiot to launch a product that focuses on trending topics and not on trying to match an individual user’s stream to the right advertiser.

Initially, OneRiot will work closely with developers to ensure that the initial implementations of the RiotWise Trending Ads work well for users. For now, developers will have to get approval to use the new ads by applying through the OneRiot Developer Network. The company plans to roll out the program more aggressively in the next year.

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