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Youlicit is a new social recommendation service similar to Stumble Upon and del.icio.us. While Youlicit has similarities between the two, it is inherently different. Stumple Upon sends you to a “series of random recommended sites within a conceptually broad topic space” where as Youlicit “knows your specific context and will return sites that are of extreme relevance and importance to your current interest.” Users are allowed to save sites under their profile, but it is not intended to replace your social bookmarking site. It does, however, use social bookmarking data (tags and such) as a way to further fine tune their recommendations.

So how does Youlicit work? Well, it is a plugin for Firefox and does not currently support any other browser. If you are on a site that you like and want to see more sites like it, you can click the Youlicit Next! button to go to a relevant site. Instead of going to a single site, you may wish to see a list of related sites. You can click the Youlicit More! Button to get such a list. While you do not have to register to use these features, you do have to register in order to recommend sites. Recommending the site will also save it to your profile which will then help Youlicit tailor recommendation to you specifically.

I find this service pretty interesting. One reason why I do not use Stumble Upon is because I usually dont have the time to waste on random sites. However, having a ‘search engine’, if you will, to help me find relevant sites pertaining to something I am currently looking for could be very useful. Also, leveraging social bookmarking data is extremely smart. I do worry about Yulicit’s ability to stay relevant itself. I mean, what happens if Stumble Upon adapts this sort of functionality? I like rooting for the small guy, so let’s hope Stumble Upon doesn’t and Youlicit can find its audience.

The party and event planning startup, MyPunchBowl, announced today that they received a seed round of funding lead by Intel Capital with participation from eCoast Angels. Additional investors include angel investors in Silicon Valley and Boston. The terms of the financing were not disclosed.

MyPunchBowl was launched in Janurary 2007 after the founders became frustrated with the available methods for planning an event or party. They set out to create a better user experience. I assume they are referring to the aging Evite service. Frankly, I think Evite has a horrid user experience. Evite was acquired in 2001 by InterActiveCorp who also owns Ask Jeeves, Citysearch, CollegeHumor, Expedia, Hotels.com, HotWire, HSN, Lending Tree, Match.com, and TicketMaster. Since then, little has been done to improve Evite which has opened the doors to competitors.

I wish MyPunchBowl the best of luck! I hate having to respond to evites and I hope that more of my friends start using competing services like this one. Other similar services include Socializer and Planypus. Does anyone have experience using either of these companies? If so, how do you like them compared to Evite?

Skype, the internet VOIP phone service, announced that CEO and co-founder Niklas Zennstrom will step down from his role as CEO according to a press release issued by eBay. He will retain his role as chairman. Skype was purchased by eBay in 2005. Shareholders of Skype were to be paid based on an earn-out agreement. This earn-out agreement was based upon specific active user, revenue and gross profit targets that were to be achieved in 2008 and the first half of 2009. Rumor has it that eBay is not happy with the current performance of Skype. One such issue was the Skype outage and the poor handling of that.

Due to lower growth expectations and other factors, eBay has decided to pay out roughly 1/3rd of the earn-out. This equals approximately $530 million. The other co-founder Janus Friis says they are happy with this result in a recent blog post. He says they are excited to move on to new things, including Joost, and their new venture Atomico. Atomico will be a risk capital group where they will invest their own money in new companies. They have already invested in Last.fm, FON, and Technorati.

Personally, I do not think the Skype/eBay picture makes sense. They are two different beasts. What do you think? Do Skype and eBay make a good pair?

Internet TV startup Joost announced that they are officially launching their service to the public. What is a little ironic is the fact that they currently have over 1,000,000 associated with their ‘private’ beta. Joost provides on demand TV via the internet and has a PC and a Mac client.

I tried out Joost in their earlier days. There were a few problems I had with it. I tried running it on my secondary monitor to watch tv while I worked and found the performance to be sluggish. I also was not a fan of the product offering. There was just not enough content and I didn’t enjoy what was there.

Another issue, for me, was the fact that I would rather watch tv on, well, my tv. I have a nice hdtv and use a wireless media player to stream video to my set. I just do not enjoy watching tv on my computer. Well, Joost has an answer for that problem. They announced that within 18 months Joost will be available via a set-top-box.

So, if you want tv on demand via the internet, head over to Joost to get a copy of their client software.

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Webmail.us announced yesterday that they were acquired by Rackspace. Webmail.us is a paid email service that targets small-medium businesses. They currently have 72,000 businesses and 600,000 users. A year ago, they had only 23,000 businesses using their service, so they have been growing at a great rate. This growth rate earned them position #217 on the Inc 500 list of fastest growing privately held companies in America.

The acquisition is a smart move by Racksapce. Rackspace is a well-known hosting company and considered a leader in their industry. They were providing all the backend infrastructure for Webmail.us services. Rackspace was also the biggest reseller of Webmail.us. Now Rackspace can use their internal hardware and bandwidth to lower the operating costs and retain 100% of the revenue from customers of the email services. Webmail.us will continue to operate it from their Blacksburg, Virginia offices and the management team will stay intact.

It has been a good year for email companies. Zimbra was acquired last month for $350 million by Yahoo and now this undisclosed acquisition of Webmail.us. One thing that impressed me about Webmail.us was the attitude of the management team. While they acknowledge the buyout was not on the same level as Zimbra, they are completely happy to continue to run and develop their business. They seem to have an attitude of wanting to run a business instead of making tons of money. I think that is a pretty great thing to hear in this crazy age of high dollar acquisitions. While a large sum of money is nice, there is something completely satisfying in running a successful company.

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With its release of the iPhone and iPod touch, apple has paved the way for a possible resurrection of the Newton. According to Apple Insider, well placed sources have said a new Apple PDA is being worked on. Apple was the first into the PDA market when it released the ill-fated Newton back in the 90s.

I used to be a big fan of the Pocket PC platform. That is until I tested an Apple iPhone. The iPhone interface and hardware are far superior to any Pocket PC I have ever used. To get these beautiful devices, Apple spend tons of time and money developing their multi-touch technology and a mobile version of their OS. So, a logical step would to take that investment, modify it, and create an Apple PDA which can compete more directly with the Pocket PC platform. While I think Microsoft’s mobile platform has a fighting chance, I do not believe the already dieing Palm does.

Below is an artist rendition showing approximate size ratio to existing Apple handhelds. Artwork by audiopollution

I think it is fair to say that mobile consumer electronics has really elevated Apple to a new lever- perhaps even saved it. Will an Apple PDA dilute its current line of PDA like devices in the iPhone and iPod touch? Or will it strengthen the Apple brand adding yet another great device? Frankly I would rather see Apple focus on the iPhone and fix some of the things us users are complaining about- such as copy and paste abilities.

Yahoo has announced that on October 31st they will effectively be shutting down their podcast directory. A message on their website reads “Yahoo! apologizes deeply, but we will be closing down the Podcasts site on Oct. 31, 2007.” This Yahoo service allowed you to search and listen to podcasts, rate them, and subscribe to certain feeds.

As mentioned in my article about Odeo acquiring FireAnt, podcasting has not become a huge, mainstream hit. Is this some foreshadowing of the future of podcasting or just Yahoo’s attempt to restructure and focus on what they are good at? Yahoo has been shutting down other services in order to steer the company in a new direction.

Who here actually uses and enjoys podcasting? I know I have only listened to a few podcasts here and there and do not subscribe to anything. I am not sure why I do not and why I prefer blogs over podcasts. Maybe because blogs are easier to use and more convenient? I’m not sure.

People who know me and know how busy I already am, thought I was crazy to take on yet another gig writing here for Rev2. I took this job for the opportunity to meet great people and write for a great blog. Over the past week, I have done interviews with two great companies and have at least one more lined up for this week. The first one is Axure, with whom I met with on Friday.

Axure RP is a PC desktop application. Wait up. Hold the presses. This is a web 2.0 blog, so why is Jason writing about a desktop application? Well, let me tell you why. Axure is directly related and can be very useful to any web 2.0 start up. Axure is software that lets you rapidly prototype and create specifications for software including rich internet applications. In fact, through my consulting company I have been hired to help startups with user interfaces and we utilize Axure to prototype their interfaces and collaborate before they are sent to designers and programmers.

On Friday I met with Victor Hsu, one of the founders and the president of Axure, at a great Indian restaurant called Monsoon. Let me give you a little background on the company. It was founded in 2002 and is a privately held company. They are self funded and have been profitable for three years. The first version of Axure RP was released in January 2003. I asked Victor why Axure was founded. He used to work in a larger corporation that developed software. The specifications that were coming from product managers were not up to par and he believed they could be better. So, the idea for Axure was born. The first version started off more as specification software, but it soon morphed into prototype software too.

I thought it would be helpful to tell you how I use Axure RP. As mentioned above, I work with clients to develop the user experience for their interfaces. We work together to wireframe prototypes complete with interactions and faux functionality. Axure RP uses a system of hidden panels that can be manipulated to create pseudo functionality. You can see a good example here. All these interactions can be annotated with notes and outputted as a Word specification file or as an html, wireframe mockup. These wireframes and specification documents are then sent to the designers and developers to make them into real working applications. I mockup the user interface and send it to a designer. The designer takes the mockup and makes a Photoshop design and incorporates it into our GUI. I then sign off on the design and it is coded into xhtml. The xhtml is then sent to the programming team to actually put the functionality into and integrate it into our software. So, from these two examples, you can see how Axure RP can be useful for start ups. Whether your team works in the same location or they are virtual, like mine, Axure RP can be very helpful. This nifty little software helps you produce web based software more accurately and timely.

Victor was kind enough to tell me what Axure RP has coming up. They are working on collaboration features that allow users to check in and checkout files. They are using SVN backend technology to accomplish this and it should be all transparent to the user. They also are going to be adding more RIA features and functionality to help create better specifications and prototypes. A lot of users have been asking for a Mac version and they are currently exploring the idea. Safari compatibility will be released soon which I hear will allow you to create pseudo iPhone apps. One thing I mentioned to Victor was adding specific iPhone support to help prototype apps to run on the iPhone interface. I think that would be a killer addition and one that I could personally use here soon.

If you are looking for a better way to prototype your new web 2.0 startup application, give Axue RP a look. They offer a great product for a competitive price. It is built rock solid and I have yet to find any bugs. Also, they offer a good student program which will give a free copy to students based on certain criteria as well as non-profit discounts.

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch is reporting about an ultra secret meeting that happened in Mountain View at Google’s headquarters. A select group of 15 of the heaviest industry hitters were invited. It was secret enough to require NDAs but apparently those were violated already. I am not an industry heavy hitter (sniff ) nor do I have access to them, but Mr. Arrington does. The discussion for the day: How do we take on Facebook?

How is Google going to take on Facebook? Open up even more than Facebook. Arrington uses the example, “If Facebook is 98% open, Google wants to be 100%.” Google will accomplish this by offering APIs, possibly as early as November 5th, which will give developers access to Google’s social graph data. They will start with iGoogle and their social network Orkut first, then give access to Gmail, Google Talk, and other Google applications.

Why will this make them more “open” than Facebook? As where Facebook requires the applications to be run on Facebook itself, these new Google APIs will allow information to be taken and put in between third parties apps that are not hosted on any Google platform. There lies the biggest difference. Apparently Google is extremely serious about this and has appointed many of it’s big guns to this project.

To me, it is interesting to see Google reacting to instead of creating the lead in this industry. Google is on the defense and scared of Facebook. And why shouldn’t they be? Facebook’s open platform was brilliant and as much as I sometimes do not like Mr. Zuckerberg, I have to give him props for that one. It will be interesting to see how successful Google is on this crusade. Will they succeed? With Facebook answer back and allow the same type of openness? Only time will tell.

P.S. I hope you liked my AWESOME Photoshop skills with the header image. Booyah! Anyone want to hire me as a graphic artist?

Logbook, a Facebook application from nothingOriginal, is for sale on eBay. To my knowledge, this is the first Facebook application to be sold on eBay. Logbook is an application that allows Facebook users to add books, movies, and music to a list of reviewed items. The application is built using PHP and MySQL and uses the Amazon affiliate program to get data. This only allows items found on Amazon to be added to the Logbook. This may not be such a big issue since nearly everything can be found on Amazon. Logbook also allows for Google Adsense to be embedded into the application. The winner of the auction receives sole rights, all source code, and all Photoshop files. The application is fairly new and only has around 80 users.

It has been very interesting to see how Facebook’s application platform has transformed the social network! As mentioned in my iPhone article, there are some dev shops focusing specifically on building Facebook applications for companies. I think we will continue to see more and more Facebook applications developed with the sole purpsoe of being sold. I personallycan’t wait until the first big acqusition has happened that invovles a Facebook application.

What type of application would you like to see?