Skins – Personalize Opera Mini by choosing a new colorful skin. We have reintroduced the popular skinning feature from Opera Mini 3.

Performance – Opera Mini 4.2 can use our newly established server park in the US. This means significantly faster page downloads for our users in the Americas and Asia-Pacific region. Users in the rest of the world will also experience faster page downloads since we’ve reduced the load on our other servers.

Video – We are working to make video content available on more phones through Opera Mini. If you have a new Sony Ericsson or Nokia phone, the chance is high that you can take Opera Mini for a spin on m.youtube.com.

Sync Notes – The handy Notes functionality from the Opera Desktop Web browser just got more portable through Opera Link. All of your notes are available in Opera Mini directly from the Bookmarks menu.

Now even faster – Prior to this release, we upgraded our servers and Opera Mini now receives your requested Web pages up to 50% faster. So you can now access sites like Facebook, BBC, and any of your other favorite Web sites even faster, with desktop-like speeds.

Find things faster – The new Opera Mini lets you search for text within a Web page so you can get to the information you need even quicker than before.

Get to your Web sites faster – When typing Web addresses, Opera Mini will recognize and suggest completions for you based on your Bookmarks and browsing history, making address input faster, easier and much more intuitive.

Download and upload files – On phones with JSR-75, you can now upload and download files using Opera Mini, without being re-routed to your phone’s native browser. Update your blog while on the go. Upload photos to your Web site or social network. Add attachments easily to Web-based email, and download other non media-rich content to your phone using Opera Mini.

Save it for later – On phones with JSR-75, Opera Mini lets you save pages for offline viewing so you can quickly access and read your desired Web content, even when you’re on a plane, in the subway, or in other places where you can’t get network reception. Depending on your phone, you may need to choose a destination folder for storing pages for offline viewing.

Sync bookmarks and Speed Dial – Opera Mini features Opera Link, which allows you to synchronize your bookmarks and Speed Dial with a computer running Opera 9.50 or other mobile device running Opera Mini.

View pages in Landscape mode – To view the Web on a wider screen, just hit * # and flip your phone to the side to enjoy browsing in Landscape mode. Change your default view to landscape by turning “Landscape mode” on inside the Settings menu.

Give your phone a mouse – Opera Mini gives your phone a virtual mouse, so you can easily scroll in any direction. Move the mouse cursor towards what you want, and then it quickly snaps your view to the link or content.

Power scrolling shortcuts – Scroll at warp speed using your phone keypad. Find your way around on the Web pages quicker by using your phone’s number keys. Press 2 to go up, 4 to go left, 6 to go right and 8 to go down. Hitting 5 zooms you in and out.

Create custom search shortcuts – Just like in Opera for your computer, you can create your own Web search from any search field on the Internet using Opera Mini. Simply click on the search field that you want to grab on a Web page and then choose “Create search” within your menu alternatives. Then you can enjoy making frequent searches without having to type in the site link again.

Tools and support for Web designers – We support Web designers who want to make their Web sites look even better to those browsing with Opera Mini. In Opera Mini, we have included all of the CSS support that Web designers need to make their Web pages look pixel perfect on in the mobile Web world.

Full Web in your palm – When visiting a Web page, Opera Mini displays the overview of the page and suggests where to begin your reading.

Built for speed – Opera Mini is built for speed. Web pages are compressed by up to 90% of its orginal size for speed, saving your time & money.

Links

• Opera Website
• Download Opera Mini

For capturing content beyond direct text and digital ink input, Evernote uses a system of Clippers (Web, Mail, and Universal Clippers) and supports drag-and-drop, cut, copy, and paste, and import/auto-import capabilities.

AI technologies used in the Evernote application for recognition, indexing and search purpose include AIR (Advanced Image Recognition) for search of typed and handwritten text in images captured on camera phone or scanner; and ANR (Advanced Notes Recognition) for search in digital ink notes captured on pen-enabled devices like Pocket PC, Tablet PC, Ultra-Mobile PC, and digital paper, amongst others. AIR technology is optimized for recognition of low quality images. In contrast to AIR, ANR technology provides not only search capability, but also outputs handwriting recognition results for ink notes; ANR can also automatically smooth and align freehand shapes and charts.

Evernote categories include Automatic, Manual and Keyword (Saved Searches). Categories are automatically assigned to notes based on attributes such as content type, date range, etc.

Evernote’s web-based version of the software was updated to version 3.0 in an open beta on June 24, 2008.

Evernote is a competitor of Microsoft OneNote on Windows and web application Google Notebook.

Links

• Evernote Official Website

Features

Interface

Major revisions to Reader’s interface were made on September 28, 2006. In an interview with Robert Scoble, product manager Nick Baum stated that the redesign is a movement toward making news aggregation something for the general public to enjoy.

Here are some of the features that are now included within Google Reader:

• A front page that lets you see new items at a glance
• Import and export subscription lists as an OPML file
• Keyboard shortcuts for main functions
• Choice between list view or expanded view for item viewing (showing either just the story title or with a description, respectively)
• Automatic marking of items as read as they are scrolled past (expanded view only)
• Search in all feeds, across all updates from subscriptions
• An easter egg that allows a special “Ninja!” skin to be accessed if the user inputs the Konami Code.

Organization

Users can subscribe to feeds using either Google Reader’s search function, or by entering in the exact URL of the RSS or Atom feed. New posts from those feeds are then shown on the left-hand side of the screen. One can then order that list by date or relevance. Items can also be organized with labels, as well as being able to create “Starred Items” for easy access.

Sharing

Items in Google Reader can be shared with other Web users. Previously this was done by sending a link through e-mail, directing the user to the shared article; or by creating a basic webpage that includes all shared items from a user’s account. In December 2007, Google changed the sharing policy so that items the user marked as shared were automatically visible to their Google Talk contacts. Users criticized this change because there is no way to opt out. The URL for a user’s page of shared items contains a random string, and Google originally advertised this as a way to limit sharing to only those people to whom you give the address.

Offline access

Google Reader was the first application to make use of Google Gears, a browser extension that lets online applications work offline. Users who have installed the extension can download up to 2000 items to be read offline. After coming back online, Google Reader updates the feeds.

Mobile access

A mobile interface was released on May 18, 2006. It now can be used by devices that support XHTML or WAP 2.0. On May 12, 2008, Google announced a version of Google Reader targeted at iPhone users. It can be found here.[7]

iGoogle

On May 4, 2006, Google released a new feature[8] which enables feeds from Reader to be displayed on iGoogle (formerly Google Personalized Homepage).

Firefox integration

Google Reader is included within Mozilla Firefox’s feed recognition (in version 2.0 and higher), which can automatically redirect users to Google Reader’s Add Subscription screen.

Wii version

On May 8, 2007, Google created a version of Google Reader specifically formatted for the Wii web browser.

More Information

• Developed by Google
• Platform Web browsers
• Type RSS feed reader
• Website google.com/reader

Best Application Or Service

Google Reader (winner)

Google Reader is a Web-based aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline. It was released by Google on October 7, 2005 through Google Labs. Reader graduated from beta status on September 17, 2007.

MySpace Music (runner-up)

MySpace Music section differ from normal profiles in allowing artists to upload up to six MP3 songs. The uploader must have rights to use the songs (e.g. their own work, permission granted, etc). Unsigned musicians can use MySpace to post and sell music using SNOCAP, which has proven popular among MySpace users.

Get Satisfaction

Get Satisfaction is a direct connection between people and companies that fosters problem-solving, promotes sharing, and builds up relationships. Thousands of companies use this neutral space to support customers, exchange ideas, and get feedback about their products and services…

Minted

Minted is an online stationery store. They crowd-source designs from the professional design community to create high end templates for invitations, holiday cards, and all kinds of stationery.

Meebo

Meebo is a new communications and media company that’s re-writing the way people have conversations and communicate on the Web. We provide instant messaging and group chat to over 40 million people at meebo.com and via partner sites across the Web. At meebo.com, millions of people every month keep in touch with friends on an any IM network (AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk and Gmail, MySpace IM, Facebook Chat, and more!) and chat with people in Meebo Rooms.

Yelp

Yelp combines local reviews and social networking functionality to create a local online community. Adding social web functionality to user reviews creates a de-facto reputation system, whereby site visitors can see which contributing users are the most popular, respected, and prolific, how long each has been a member…

Best Technology Innovation/Achievement

Windows Live Mesh (winner)

Live Mesh is a data synchronization system from Microsoft that allows files and folders to be shared and synchronized across multiple devices. Live Mesh consists of a software component that allows synchronization relationships to be created among different devices. Once a folder is set for synchronization, it will be available in all devices, and any changes made to the content of the folder will be reflected across all devices.

Facebook Connect (runner-up)

Facebook is a popular, free-access social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves. The website’s name refers to the paper facebooks depicting members of a campus community that some US colleges and preparatory schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff as a way to get to know other

Google Friend Connect

Google Friend Connect is an Open Social application offered by Google that started in May 2008. Google Friend Connect main focus is to simplify the connection between social and non-social websites and standardize the handling and presentation of social applications and content. It uses a blend of open standards, such as OpenID for signin, oAuth to control data, and Open Social for applications.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a free web browser developed by Google that has about 1% share of browser market. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or “chrome”, of web browsers. Chromium is the open source project behind Google Chrome, and is released under the BSD license. It implements the same feature set, but has a slightly different logo.

Swype

Swype creates text input technology for screens. The patented interface enables users to create words with one continuous finger motion across an on-screen keyboard. This approach provides a faster and easier way to write. Swype delivers single-tap, multi-tap, predictive and “swype” motions for both stylus and finger based input. In addition, the application is designed to work across a variety of devices such as phones, tablets, game consoles, kiosks, televisions, virtual screens and more.

Yahoo BOSS

Yahoo! Search BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) is a Yahoo! Developer Network initiative to provide an open search web services platform. The main goal and idea of BOSS is to give users, in this case developer’s free access to the Yahoo! Search index. The results can be supplied into the developer’s website or program so that they can manipulate the resources according to their product’s requirements…

Best Design

Cooliris (winner)

Cooliris, formerly known as PicLens, is a web browser plugin that provides interactive full-screen slideshows of online images. The plugin is available for Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. At present, the software is compatible with Google Image Search, Yahoo! Image Search, Ask.com Images, Live Search Images, AOL Image Search, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, Fotki, FotoTime, deviantART, SmugMug, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, hi5, Friendster, YouTube (for videos), Gallery, and any web site that implements mediaRSS <link> tags in their HTML pages. The software places a small icon in the corner of an image thumbnail when the mouse moves over it, which launches into a full-screen photo viewer when clicked.

Animoto (runner-up)

Animoto is a web application that, with the click of a button, produces videos using images and music that a user selects. Using their patent-pending Artificial Intelligence developed to think like an actual editor & director, the resulting video has the emotional impact of a movie trailer and the visual energy of a music video.

Friendfeed

FriendFeed is a feed aggregator that consolidates the updates from social media and social networking websites, social bookmarking websites, blogs and micro-blogging updates, as well as any other type of RSS/ Atom feed. Users can use this stream of information to create customized feeds to share (and comment) with friends.

Infectious

Infectious creates and sells self expression stickers for your car. The stickers, which are made to be durable yet removable, are made out of the same materials as ad wraps used on cars and buses. The company recommends 18-24 months of usage per sticker, but says they will likely last a lot longer.

Lala

Lala is a hub for online music discovery and purchasing. Users can listen for free music, adding tracks to their playlist as they surf. members who download a plugin can turn Lala into an online music locker that syncs their desktop music libraries to their Lala account. Long uploads aren’t necessary. If Lala already has the song in their library, they simply unlock the file to you online.

Sliderocket

SlideRocket is a rich internet application (RIA) that provides for every part of the presentation life cycle. It integrates authoring, asset management, delivery and analytics tools in a single hosted environment that allows you to quickly create great looking presentations, store, tag and search your assets, collaborate with your colleagues, securely share your slides in person or remotely and measure the results.

Best Bootstrapped Startup

GitHub (winner)

GitHub is a project hosting service for projects using the Git revision control system. It is written in Ruby on Rails, being developed by Logical Awesome (Chris Wanstrath, PJ Hyett, and Tom Preston-Werner). GitHub operates a pastebin-style site at gist.github.com

12seconds.tv (runner-up)

12seconds is the best place online for video status updates. It’s a super easy way to share what you’re doing with your friends and family using short video clips. You can use your web cam or mobile phone. Show your friends where you are, share your thoughts, or tell them how you’re doing. We are building a video status platform that will help you keep up to date with your friends 12 seconds at a time.

• BackType
• Socialcast
• StatSheet

Most Likely To Make The World A Better Place

GoodGuide (winner)

GoodGuide™ strives to provide the world’s largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of products and companies. GoodGuide’s mission is to help you find safe, healthy, and green products that are better for you and the planet. From our origins as a UC Berkeley research project, GoodGuide has developed into a totally independent “For-Benefit” company. We are committed to providing the information you need to make better decisions, and to ultimately shifting the balance of information and power in the marketplace.

• Kiva (runner-up)
• Akoha
• Causes
• CO2Stats
• Better Place

Best Enterprise Startup

Amazon Web Services (winner)

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) are a collection of remote computing services (also called web services) offered over the Internet by Amazon.com. Launched in July 2002, Amazon Web Services provide online services for other web sites or client-side applications. Most of these services are not exposed directly to end users, but instead offer functionality that other developers can use. In June 2007, Amazon claimed that more than 330,000 developers had signed up to use Amazon Web Services.

Google App Engine (runner-up)

Google App Engine is a platform for building and hosting web applications on Google Web Servers. It was first released as a beta version in April 2008. During its preview release, only free accounts are offered. According to Google, a free account can use up to 500 MB of persistent storage and enough CPU and bandwidth for about 5 million page views a month. Google has also indicated its intention to eventually provide additional resources for a price. During the preview stage, Google App Engine tries to accommodate sudden surges in traffic, but errors will occur if the quota continues to be exceeded.

• Force.com
• Yammer
• Zoho

Best International Startup

eBuddy (winner)

eBuddy is a web & mobile messenger which supports various instant messaging services including Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo!, AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Facebook, and MySpace IM. eBuddy is a web browser-based instant messaging service that originally started as e-Messenger in 2003. It combines MSN, AOL, Google Talk, ICQ, Facebook and MySpace IM into a single web based interface. It is also available via mobile phones, independent of carrier or device via WAP or mobile internet browser.

• Wuala (runner-up)
• Fotonauts
• OpenX
• Vente-privee

Best Clean Tech Startup

• Project Frog (winner)
• Better Place (runner-up)
• Boston Power
• ElectraDrive
• Laurus Energy

Best New Gadget/Device

• iPhone 3G (winner)
• Android G1 (runner-up)
• Ausus EEE 1000 Series
• Flip MinoHD
• SlingCatcher

Best Time Sink Site/Application

• Tap Tap Range (winner)
• Texas Hold Em (runner-up)
• Mob Wars
• iBowl
• Zivity

Best Mobile Startup

Evernote (winner)

Evernote is a software application that allows users to capture information of various types, including text notes, mobile phone snapshots, printed and handwritten text within images, web clips, and digital ink. All data added to Evernote are run through a series of recognizers that make any text within the various note formats searchable. The application uses a continuous “roll of paper” metaphor for its user interface. Additionally, users may create folders, categories and notebooks.

• ChaCha (runner-up)
• Posterous
• Qik Skyfire
• Truphone

Best Mobile Application

imeem mobile (winner)

imeem for Android helps people easily discover music that matches their tastes. The application enables users to create custom Internet radio stations by searching for specific artists, discover new music through personalized recommendations and listen to the most popular artists in the imeem community. .

Google Mobile Application (runner-up)

Google’s mobile application is available for the Android, iPhone, Blackberry, and numerous other mobile phone solutions. The application supports websearch, directions, maps, business listings, GMail, YouTube, and phone contact search. Google Mobile also supports an SMS search system..

• Pandora Radio
• rolando
• ShopSavvy
• Ocarina

Best Startup Founder

• Linda Avery and Anne Wojcicki (23andMe)
• Michael Birch and Xochi Birch (Bebo)
• Robert Kalin (Etsy)
• Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone (Twitter ) (winner)
• Paul Buchheit, Jim Norris, Sanjeev Singh, Bret Taylor (FriendFeed ) (runner-up)

Best Startup CEO

• Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) (winner)
• Jason Kilar (Hulu) (runner-up)
• Tony Hsieh (Zappos)
• Elon Musk (SpaceX)
• Andy Rubin (Android)

Best New Startup Of 2008

FriendFeed (winner)

FriendFeed is a feed aggregator that consolidates the updates from social media and social networking websites, social bookmarking websites, blogs and micro-blogging updates, as well as any other type of RSS/ Atom feed. Users can use this stream of information to create customized feeds to share (and comment) with friends.

Dropbox (runner-up)

Dropbox is a storage application and service operated by Evenflow, Inc. The service enables users to store and sync files online and between computers. Dropbox has a cross-platform client (Windows, Mac and Linux) that enables users to drop any file into a Dropbox folder that is then synced to the web and the users’ other computers with the Dropbox client.

• GoodGuide
• Tapulous
• Topsin Media
• Yammer

Best Overall Startup In 2008

Facebook (winner)

Facebook is a popular, free-access social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves. The website’s name refers to the paper facebooks depicting members of a campus community that some US colleges and preparatory schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff as a way to get to know other.

Twitter (runner-up)

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.
Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS, RSS, or email, or through an application such as …

Amazon Web Services

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) are a collection of remote computing services (also called web services) offered over the Internet by Amazon.com. Launched in July 2002, Amazon Web Services provide online services for other web sites or client-side applications. Most of these services are not exposed directly to end users, but instead offer functionality that other developers can use. In June 2007, Amazon claimed that more than 330,000 developers had signed up to use Amazon Web Services.

Android

The Android platform is a software stack for mobile devices including an operating system, middleware and key applications. Developers can create applications for the platform using the Android SDK. Applications are written using the Java programming language and run on Dalvik, a custom virtual machine designed for embedded use, which runs on top of a Linux kernel.

• hulu

The Crunchies 2008

F lickr was developed by Ludicorp, a Vancouver, B.C., Canada-based company that launched Flickr in February 2004. The service emerged out of tools originally created for Ludicorp’s Game Neverending, a web-based massively multiplayer online game. Flickr proved a more feasible project and ultimately Game Neverending was shelved.

Early versions of Flickr focused on a multiuser chat room called FlickrLive with real-time photo exchange capabilities. There was also an emphasis on collecting images found on the web rather than photographs taken by users. The successive evolutions focused more on the uploading and filing backend for individual users and the chat room was buried in the site map. It was eventually dropped as Flickr’s backend systems evolved away from the Game Neverending’s codebase.

Some of the key features of Flickr not initially present were tags, marking photos as favorites, group photo pools and interestingness, for which a patent is pending.

In March 2005, Yahoo! acquired Ludicorp and Flickr. During the week of June 28, 2005, all content was migrated from servers in Canada to servers in the United States, resulting in all data being subject to United States federal law.

On May 16, 2006, Flickr updated its services from beta to “gamma”, along with a design and structural overhaul. According to the site’s FAQ, the term “gamma”, rarely used in software development, is intended to be tongue-in-cheek to indicate that the service is always being tested by its users, and is in a state of perpetual improvement. For all intents and purposes, the current service is considered a stable release.

In December 2006, upload limits on free accounts were increased to 100MB a month (from 20MB) and were removed from Pro Accounts, permitting unlimited uploads for holders of these accounts (originally a 2GB per month limit).

In January 2007, Flickr announced that “Old Skool” members–those who had joined before the Yahoo acquisition–would be required to associate their account with a Yahoo ID by March 15 to continue using the service. This move was criticized by some users.

On April 9, 2008, Flickr began to allow paid subscribers to upload videos, limited to 90 seconds in length and 150MB in size.

Yahoo! Photos

Yahoo announced that they would shut down Yahoo! Photos on September 20, 2007, after which all photos would be deleted. During the interim, users had the ability to migrate their photos to Flickr or other services (including Shutterfly, Kodak Gallery, Snapfish, and Photobucket). All who migrated to Flickr were given three months of a Flickr Pro account. AT&T Internet Services customers were given a free Flickr Pro account, which originally was planned to be for the duration of the customer’s subscription to AT&T Internet Services, but AT&T has recently decided to drop the Pro account services, with most customers’ Pro accounts ending next year unless they subscribe to Flickr Pro. This generated some negative feedback amongst AT&T customers. Flickr users who do subscribe to Pro before their term runs out will be given an extra two months of the service free of charge.

Visit Flickr

Users of Mixx can control a personalized blend of web content that includes text-based articles, images and videos. Mixx users can search and discover media relevant to their interests, and interact with friends and other Mixx users who share their common interests.

The content on Mixx comes from various online sources, such as news services and online publishers of media such as video, images, and various other content. Mixx users can submit items from any online source, including their own websites.

Mixx has received partnerships with a growing list of online publishing outlets including CNN.com, USA Today, Reuters, The Los Angeles Times and The Weather Channel.

Functionality

Mixx lets users generate their own unique mix of web-based media by creating their own personalized start page. By submitting, commenting on and voting for or against stories, photos and videos that they like or don’t like using a democratic voting method, Mixx users can influence the flow of incoming media and recommend relevant media to other users within specific categories like business, sports and health using either free-form or pre-determined meta tags to define items by subject matter or geography.

Mixx users can also follow other users with whom they share common interests, as well as create, join and invite other Mixx users to private groups to further share and discuss relevant items among peers.

Mixx functionality is primarily divided into three categories:

1. Personalization capabilities

• Start Page. Mixx allows you to specify the categories and topics that interest you. These categories and topics are added to Your Mixx page. Here, all of the items that match your categories or tags are displayed.
• Personal Profile. Mixx users can create their own user Profile, including the ability to choose or upload a photo or image to use as their personal Avatar.
• Customization. While navigating through Mixx, users can customize their Mixx experience by adding a category or topic to their Your Mixx start page.

2. Search and discover capabilities

• Search. The “What are you interested in?” feature lets users enter keywords that they choose to quickly search all of the text or news articles, videos and images on Mixx.
• Navigation. Mixx users navigate through Mixx by category or type of content. Within a category, they can shift focus between Stories, Photos and Videos.
• Popularity. The Popular tab in Mixx displays the items that are most popular among all Mixx users and across all categories for a specific day and time.
• Localization. The Local tab displays content associated with the zip code specified by the user during the registration process. Utilizing the Local Search feature lets users find content for other locations as well.

3. Sharing and networking capabilities

• Submitting content. Users can Submit a Link by entering the URL and content type of the item they want to share with the entire Mixx community or with a Private Group.
• Voting. Mixx allows users to democratically Vote for content that they like or against the content they do not like. Votes are applied within specific categories, meta tags and geographic locations to ensure that no single niche group overruns another.
• Commenting. Mixx users can join the discussion within the Mixx community or within Private Groups by adding a Comment to any item on Mixx. Nested comments and comment following allow for further comment organization and tracking.
• Kudos. Users are provided 5 Kudos per day to reward to other users making humorous or intelligent comments resulting in a Big Kudos badge for the best comment of the day.
• Private Groups. Users can share and discuss stories, photos and videos among a designated group of friends or colleagues by creating or joining Private Groups. Groups can be made publicly discoverable or remain hidden at the discretion of the Group Administrator.
• Mixx Friends. Users can add Mixx Friends to make it easy to Share, Invite, and View another person’s User Activity on Mixx. Mixx users can also exclude a specific user from viewing their own activity.

History

Mixx was started in 2007 by Recommended Reading, Inc. of McLean, Virginia. The private beta version of the site was launched on September 21, 2007, and the public beta of Mixx was introduced on October 10, 2007.

On October 8, 2007 Mixx announced the creation of content partnerships with USA Today, Reuters, The Weather Channel, Kaboose and uclick Comics. On December 12, 2007 Mixx and The Los Angeles Times announced the creation of a content partnership in which the daily newspaper took a minor stake in Mixx. On May 7, 2008 Mixx and CNN.com announced an alliance that added a “Mixx it” icon to the bottom of each CNN.com hosted story. While readers can still share a story to other online social news sites like Digg or Facebook, those options are hidden under the “Share” option, making Mixx a prominent option.

Created and developed by a team of industry veterans with deep Internet, news publishing and online content expertise including several former executives from leading companies including Yahoo!, USA Today and AOL, the company is led by CEO and founder Chris McGill.

The former head of strategy at USA TODAY, McGill previously served as the general manager of Yahoo! News where he oversaw the transformation of that site into the world’s largest online news outlet. McGill realized that people were becoming increasingly frustrated with surfing a myriad of web sites everyday to find the content that mattered to them. He determined in early 2007 that the time was ripe, and the tools available, to create a site that would make it easier for people with similar interests to discover the best the web has to offer—text, videos and photos. Thus, Mixx was born.

McGill quickly recruited top talent to form an executive team at Mixx that includes Kerry Pearce-Parkins, vice president of products and marketing, and formerly vice president of content at AOL; and Joe Dzikiewicz, Ph.D., Mixx’s CTO, who most recently served as a lead engineer and product innovator at AOL where he spent ten years building cutting edge web applications and technologies.

The board of directors and advisors includes Burl Osborne, publisher emeritus of The Dallas Morning News, and former chairman at The Associated Press; and David Mandelbrot, well-known Internet entrepreneur and the former vice president of Yahoo!’s Content Acquisition Program as well as vice president of Yahoo!’s media and entertainment group where he managed Yahoo!’s Movies, Games, Finance, News, Sports, TV, Health and Yahooligans! properties.

In June 2007, Mixx received initial funding from Intersouth Partners of Durham, North Carolina.

There’s yet another new blogging platform out there: Kontain. It’s designed for non-technical users, and it’s easy to use and very good-looking. I don’t think I’ve seen an easier platform for beginning bloggers, in fact. Everything on the site is clear and simple. But there’s a downside.

The negative of Kontain is that while it’s easy to use, it’s very limited on the presentation side. You get no blog templates to choose from. While the default layout of Kontain blogs is attractive enough, the lack of customizability is surprising in a product that is so strong on the authoring side. Also, the blog pages display slowly.

Creating a Kontain blog is simple. Adding media to blog posts is simple. Even viewing and organizing the media files you’ve uploaded to previous posts is simple–something that’s not true in almost all other blog platforms.

It’s the little things that make Kontain a delight. From the start, it gets out of your way. While it requires a valid e-mail address from new authors, you can start posting right away, since you have 15 days to confirm registration. If you’re writing a post and want to share it with friends, you can enter in their e-mail addresses from the posting screen.

Quite possibly the simplest blogging interface ever.

All entry fields are nice and big. I would not feel uncomfortable recommending Kontain to people with poor eyesight, or those simply afraid of technology or the blogosphere. It’s really that easy.

You can’t choose your display template or even colors.

However, pretty and simple is not enough, unless you’re Apple and have an Apple-like advertising budget. There are other super-simple, quick-to-use blog platforms, like Tumblr. And there are certainly services that already have the community angle dialed in (like Vox). And for anyone halfway serious about blogging, there’s nothing wrong with expending a few brain cycles to learn how to use free mainstream services like Blogger or WordPress.com.

There are ambitious plans for Kontain, including social features (friend following, for example), privacy options, Web-based audio, image, and video editors, SEO options, and reader analytics. I don’t know if Kontain will still be as simple when it gets these features. I also don’t think there is a big untapped market for new bloggers, since it’s a safe bet that most everyone who wants to blog now is already doing so. Kontain isn’t a bad platform for teaching about blogging, but I don’t see it supplanting any current platforms.

Google has published its plan to build into Chrome what is arguably its most requested feature: the ability to accept extensions that can customize how the open-source Web browser operates.

And guess what? Google’s dependence on advertising notwithstanding, one of the extension examples the company points to is the ability to block advertisements.

The Chrome extensions document, spotlighted Saturday by Google programmer Aaron Boodman, doesn’t include a timeline, but it does shed light on why the project is a priority for Chromium, the open-source project behind Chrome.

“Chromium can’t be everything to all people,” according to the document. “User-created extensions have been proposed to solve these problems: the addition of features that have specific or limited appeal; users coming from other browsers who are used to certain extensions that they can’t live without; bundling partners who would like to add features to Chromium specific to their bundle.”

When Google launched Chrome three months ago, it promised a Chrome extensions framework. Extensions are a popular feature of Chrome’s most likely rival, Mozilla’s Firefox, and one very popular extension is AdBlock Plus.

And AdBlock makes a specific appearance on the list of extension uses that Google said it would like to support eventually:

• Bookmarking/navigation tools: Delicious Toolbar, StumbleUpon, Web-based history, new tab page clipboard accelerators.

• Content enhancements: Skype extension (clickable phone numbers), RealPlayer extension (save video), Autolink (generic microformat data–addresses, phone numbers, etc.)

• Content filtering: AdBlock, Flashblock, privacy control, parental control

• Download helpers: video helpers, download accelerators, DownThemAll, FlashGot

• Features: ForecastFox, FoxyTunes, Web Of Trust, GooglePreview, BugMeNot

Demand for extensions is real.

In an unscientific CNET News poll about why people don’t use Chrome, about 19 percent pointed to the lack of an extensions feature. And on Google’s issue tracking site for Chromium, a Chrome extensions feature is the top-requested item.

“Of all the Firefox plug-ins, this is the one essential one,” said Firefox user Ole Eichhorn. “Chrome is faster until you factor in all the cruft that gets downloaded as ads, then it isn’t faster anymore. When Chrome supports AdBlock, it will be the winner, but until it does, Firefox is the only choice.”

In its document, Google described some of its goals for Chrome extensions. The extensions should silently update, just like Chrome does. They should be isolated for security reasons and only get access to resources it’s entitled to use. Installation should be easy, taking only two clicks.

They should permit rich user interface options–rich enough to implement some parts of Chrome as extensions, Google said. Among the interface options should be “toolbars, sidebars, content scripts (for Greasemonkey-like functionality), and content filtering (for parental filters, malware filters, or AdBlock-like functionality),” Google said. Some interfaces will require the user to grant specific permissions, such as “access to the history database” or “access to mail.google.com,” Google said.

Google will play a major role in extensions, providing a central service that can be used to issue updates and to blacklist “malicious or harmful extensions” so the browser won’t use them.

“It’s likely in the future we may want to provide a consumer front-end which would allow users to more easily find the most popular, highest quality and trustworthy extensions,” Google also said.

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