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Everyone loves Legos. There is no debate. In fact, there may only be one thing better than Legos: customized Legos. And a new web service aims to provide those to all.

Brickify is a website that allows you to put in the URL to any image on the web and it will output a “brickified” image. Yes, it’s an image just like the one you just put in — but made of bricks. “Bricks” are the generic and non-trademarked term for Legos, but make no mistake, we’re talking Legos here.

Once you get the brickified image, you can alter it on the site by changing around colors. And once you have what you want, you can download inventory you need to build an actual version of the images with Legos. And they’ll even give you the schematics to build it. Yep, awesome.

“Turning a picture into a brick pattern isn’t the kind of problem we solve every day, but HTML5 technologies made it relatively easy. We use the canvas to load the user’s image and process the pixels in the image into bricks,” Carsonified founder Ryan Carson says. Carsonified’s Think Vitamin team built the site.

“We also use the canvas to tile brick images together to form an isometric view of the final production. JQuery helps out with basic manipulation in the UI, and we use Sammy.js and Underscore.js to glue everything together,” he continues.

That’s all well and good. But let’s be honest, the key is Legos.

Bill Gross is up to something. The CEO of PostUp, who previously founded (and sold) Overture, answers.com, and a number of other companies, has just acquired his second Twitter client in as many weeks. On January 5 PostUp acquired EchoFon, and today the company has announced that it’s acquired UberTwiter, which makes Twitter clients for iPhone and BlackBerry.

In addition to the acquisition, PostUp has another piece of news: it’s changing its name to UberMedia. This is the third name for the company, which was originally called TweetUp, but changed its name last summer to PostUp as it added support for Facebook and LinkedIn.

So what is UberMedia’s strategy here? The company now has a new homepage, which includes the following description:

UberMedia is the leading independent developer of applications and web-based services that make it easier for users to find, follow and communicate with others on Twitter and other social media platforms. The company is focused on driving innovation in user experiences across a range of online and mobile platforms. UberMedia also provides advertisers and brands with new ways to engage and communicate with consumers via Twitter through its family of apps.

In other words, it wants to offer a variety of third party services that are complimentary — and in some cases, directly competitive — with what Twitter offers.

George Zachary of CRV was our guest on Ask a VC today, and not only did he answer reader questions bluntly, he indulged us with his craziest story from his days working with Internet icon Jim Clark on Shutterfly.

The whole episode is below, or feel free to tune into just the answers to these questions:

What sort of materials do you look for when initially being approached by an entrepreneur with an idea? A prototype? A business plan?

Since you put out your call to entrepreneurs for an app discovery business plan on Facebook, any takers? Do you think app discovery is a big issue and large market opportunity?

What are the future prospects for merchants and publishers using a white label platform like chompon and tippr to develop their own deals?

There are rumors Apple and Google are working on “social” projects. Any idea what their angle or focus will be compared to the 800 ton gorilla Facebook? Any predictions?

Do you foresee any change in user activity (regardless of websites or mobile) in view of changing demographics and employee productivity requirements being ratcheted up (i.e., employers don’t want employees playing around in Internet all day)?

Do you still review screenplays?

What are some exciting upcoming startups that you have come across recently?

What’s the craziest story you can tell us about jim clark?

One of the criticisms of Apple’s App Store (and application stores in general) is how it is commonplace for a popular app or game to have dozens of clones. These can be sifted through due to their low popularity and shoddy icons, and on the off chance you prefer an ad-supported knock-off over a 99 cent app, they’re a good alternative. But not every clone is flattery and bandwagon-jumping; some are outright theft. Case in point, an iOS game entitled The Blocks Cometh, which is a straight lift, graphics and all, of a Flash game of the same name by developer Halfbot.

The iOS app has been approved and is available to buy now, though of course you shouldn’t buy it (Halfbot is working on an actual iOS port). A week ago, Apple was notified that the game was clearly made entirely from stolen IP, which isn’t surprising, as the rest of the offending developer’s games seem to be knock-offs as well. But a week later, Apple has yet to pull the app or give any kind of substantial response.

Continue reading…

The Crunchies Statue. Sure, everyone wants it. But so many people ask us, “Why the hell is it a monkey?” (Hint.)

Still, no one was quite as confused by it as our new intern. Lucky for us a documentary crew was in that day to catch the footage. Watch below.

Today, Facebook announced that it raised a total of $1.5 billion in its latest round, giving the company a valuation of $50 billion. But it also disclosed something else: when it will likely go public.

Buried at the bottom of its press release, it sets a date for when it expects to start filing public financial reports:

Even before the investment from Goldman Sachs, Facebook had expected to pass 500 shareholders at some point in 2011, and therefore expects to start filing public financial reports no later than April 30, 2012.

While Facebook could decide to report financial publicly without actually going public, once it goes through the trouble of financial reporting and the increased scrutiny that brings, there will be little remaining reasons to remain private. So the clock is now ticking. Expect a Facebook IPO by April, 2012.

With increasing SEC concerns about private trading of Facebook stock on places like SecondMarket and pooled funds like Goldman’s which are engineered to skirt SEC disclosure rules, putting a timetable on when financial disclosures will be forthcoming is probably a good idea.

Photo credit: Flickr/ kobiz7

Today, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based maker of electric vehicles and batteries, CODA Holdings, appointed auto industry veteran Phil Murtaugh as chief executive officer.

On a conference call, CODA’s interim CEO Steven “Mac” Heller described Murtaugh as someone who believes “the automotive industry can innovate rapidly and be more responsible as a global citizen,” and is deeply experienced in building American auto businesses in Asia. Earlier this month, the company raised a $76 million bringing its equity funding to about $200 million, sparking IPO rumors.

Murtaugh previously worked as chairman and chief executive officer of GM China. Over a decade, he grew GM’s presence there from fifteen employees in its Shanghai operations to 15,000 employees throughout the country, increasing the unit’s revenue from $300 million to more than $7 billion. In brief, Murtaugh discussed CODA’s plans in Asia, and how he will leverage his experience on behalf of the younger car company:

“We have a joint venture with one of the three largest battery manufacturers in China [Lishen Power Battery of Tianjin, China, whose principal shareholder is CNOOC, or China National Offshore Oil Company]. The joint venture is called LIO [Energy Systems]. They will manufacture the battery systems for [our] vehicles. We also have contract assembly agreements to assemble the [battery packs]…

A vast majority of CODA manufacturing will be in China. That fits nicely with experiences I’ve had [there] for the last 15 years. I understand China’s manufacturers and culture. My experience will help us deal with those situations. We’re going to introduce our vehicle into China’s domestic market as well as in the U.S.”

Through its battery system joint venture, currently CODA is a large-scale producer of power battery systems for the transportation and utility industries. Murtaugh touched upon CODA’s retail sales outlook for its vehicles in the U.S., as well.

“We haven’t announced our plans. But what I can tell you is this…We won’t start our retail sales through a traditional dealer network. It will involve setting up company-owned sales outlets. They will be in high visibility areas with lots of [foot] traffic where people will be able to walk in or make an appointment [online] to test drive vehicles. [Customers will be able to] configure their vehicles, and place orders online. This will be a no-haggle buying experience. That’s shown to be very, very successful with other [car] brands.”

With Murtaugh’s appointment, Miles L. Rubin, CODA’s founder and co-chairman becomes a chairman emeritus, remains a company director and the company’s largest shareholder. Heller, CODA Holdings interim CEO and a co-chairman, will move into the role of executive chairman.

Facebook has officially announced that it has just raised $1.5 billion in funding at a $50 billion valuation, according to a release issued today (we’ve embedded the release below).

As stated in the release, the investment was broken into two parts. Goldman Sachs participated in the first round (via an offering to its non-U.S. clients in a fund), which totaled $1 billion. In December, DST and Goldman separately invested another $500 million into the social network. Both rounds gave Facebook a $50 billion valuation, says the company. This brings Facebook’s total funding to a staggering $2.336 billion.

It’s interesting to note that Facebook didn’t take the full $1.5 billion from Goldman Sachs in the first part of the investment. As stated in the release:

Under the transaction’s terms, Facebook had the option to accept between $375 million and $1.5 billion from the Goldman Sachs overseas offering, at the discretion of Facebook. While the offering was oversubscribed, Facebook made a business decision to limit the offering to $1 billion.

One has to wonder if the fact that Goldman excluded U.S. investors from the round had to do with Facebook not raising the full $1.5 billion (which would push the total investment to a whopping $2 billion).

Another interesting tidbit from the release is this: Even before the investment from Goldman Sachs, Facebook had expected to pass 500 shareholders at some point in 2011, and therefore expects to start filing public financial reports no later than April 30, 2012.

Clearly, it looks like Facebook plans to IPO no later than April 2012.

So what will Facebook do with this massive amount of cash? The company says it has no set plans but vaguely stated that it will be “investing to build and expand its operations.”

The Goldman investment was first reported by New York Times’ Dealbook.

So much for that slow Friday news day.

Facebook Raises $1.5 Billion

Facebook Receives $1 Billion from Goldman Sachs Overseas Offering; Digital Sky Technologies and Goldman Sachs Also Recently Made $500 Million Direct Investment

Investment Values Facebook at $50 Billion

PALO ALTO, Calif., Jan. 21, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Facebook today announced it has raised U.S.$1.5 billion at a valuation of approximately $50 billion.

The transaction consisted of two parts. Today, Goldman Sachs completed an oversubscribed offering to its non-U.S. clients in a fund that invested $1 billion in Facebook Class A common stock. In December, Digital Sky Technologies (DST), The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., and funds managed by Goldman Sachs invested $500 million in Facebook Class A common stock at the same valuation.

“Our business continues to perform well, and we are pleased to be able to bolster our cash position with this new financing,” said David Ebersman, Facebook’s chief financial officer. “With this investment completed, we now have greater financial flexibility to explore whatever opportunities lie ahead.”

The investment generated a significant number of questions from interested parties and Facebook has addressed the most common ones below.

Why did Facebook raise this money?

DST and Goldman Sachs approached Facebook to express their interest in making an investment, and Facebook decided it was an attractive opportunity to bolster its cash reserves and increase its financial flexibility with limited dilution to existing shareholders.

Why did Facebook choose to raise $1 billion in the overseas offering?

Under the transaction’s terms, Facebook had the option to accept between $375 million and $1.5 billion from the Goldman Sachs overseas offering, at the discretion of Facebook. While the offering was oversubscribed, Facebook made a business decision to limit the offering to $1 billion.

What are Facebook’s plans for the proceeds of this transaction?

There are no immediate plans for these funds. Facebook will continue investing to build and expand its operations.

Does this investment mean that Facebook will have more than 500 shareholders?

Even before the investment from Goldman Sachs, Facebook had expected to pass 500 shareholders at some point in 2011, and therefore expects to start filing public financial reports no later than April 30, 2012.

MyNines, an aggregator of private sales sites, is relaunching today with a number of new features and a more streamlined user experience.

Launched in March of 2010, MyNines aims to help consumers sort through the daily flash sales sites. MyNines aggregates products from various online sample sale sites and allows shoppers to find them all in one location. Users can search and filter by designer, category, highest discounts, as well as deals ending soonest, most viewed items, deals under $100, and newly listed. MyNines currently aggregates from over 80 sites, including eBay’s Fashion Vault.

With the relaunch, MyNines has rolled out a complete redesign of the site and a new feature called “Boutiques,” which includes sets of products from various sample sale sites curated by stylists, fashion bloggers and celebrities (this is very similar to Google’s Boutiques.com).

One of the most useful additions to MyNines is the sample sales calendar, which will aggregate the sale events from pretty much every sample into a calendar format to see which designers are featuring their sales on flash sale sites each day. You can also subscribe to the Sample Sales Calendar via Google Calendar, Outlook, or Apple iCal and you can set sale reminders for specific sales and MyNines will email you when those sales start.

While MyNines does aggregate actual products from a massive number of flash sales sites, some of the biggest players in the space, like Gilt Groupe, have not signed in to be included in the site’s feeds (although Gilt’s sales are included in the Sample Sale Calendar). The site’s founder, Apar Kothari, seems optimistic, however; that eventually all private sales sites will sign on to give MyNines a feed of their daily sales. Kothari adds that MyNines will soon start rolling out more personalized shopping features and will suggest certain sales and items to members based on what sales they click on.

PopJam CEO Alex Tew, the guy behind the internet phenomenon Million Dollar Homepage, has now gone the opposite extreme. Along with developer Ben Dowling, he has created Do Nothing For 2 Minutes, a site whose purpose is pretty self-explanatory.

While MDH was a celebration in online excess, DNF2M is a zen treatise on computing and a challenge. Can you sit in front of your computer and not touch your mouse or keyboard for a measly two minutes? It’s actually not as easy as it sounds, especially if you work in a web-intensive field.

Says Tew on the inspiration behind the site, which brought in 20,000 uniques 8 hours after launch.

“I had been thinking how we spend every waking minute of the day with access to an unlimited supply of information, to the point of information overload. i also read somewhere that there is evidence that our brains are being re-wired by the internet, because we get a little dopamine kick every time we check our e-mail or Twitter or Facebook and there’s a new update. So we’re all developing a bit of ADD. which is probably not great in terms of being productive.”

Tew also holds that the key difference in the way we interact online between when he built MDH in 2005 is that the “viral has gone viral” (infinite loop!), “Ideas spread even faster because of social media. Whereas before, the distribution power lay more with the news media and blogs back in 2005. If I had done MDH today, I might have made $1m in 4 weeks rather than 4 months.”

On May 1, 2002, two men took the stage at a Stanford University event to answer some questions about their startup. The startup? Google. The two men? Eric Schmidt and Larry Page.

That was less than a year after Schmidt officially became CEO of the company, taking over the role from Page. Yesterday, after a decade of success, the two announced they would be switching back. And while some answers are starting to trickle out as to why such a change is taking place now, it’s fascinating to look back in time and see how it all began. Luckily, Stanford captured the talk in 24 short videos clips found here.

One particularly interesting clip is where Schmidt talks about “new leadership and organizational change”. Schmidt talks about the differences between running Novell and Google. “What I found was a company that was working extremely well, but just needed a little bit of list-making and structure. And that’s frankly what I’ve been relegated to,” Schmidt says of Google with a laugh. “Oh no, that’s not true,” Page chimes in. Still laughing, Schmidt says, “It’s okay, your strategy is working pretty good. It’s working well so far.“

Reports today have similar tension being behind the switch. And while they’re clearly at least half-joking here, it’s actually kind of amazing the partnership lasted in the same capacity eight and a half years later.  It’s also funny to hear Schmidt refer to the company as “the Google”.

Another clip has Schmidt talking about how Google won the then all-important partnership with AOL for search. He kicks things off by saying, ”One of the most wonderful things about being a private company is that we don’t have to answer any of those questions.” Remember, that was over two years before Google’s IPO. And that response sounds a bit like something Facebook would say today.

In another clip, Page shows off a picture of a really happy day at Google. Why was everyone so happy? They had just signed the AOL deal. (Hey, like us!)

In this clip, Page talks about innovation at Google. “I guess as Google’s gotten bigger — we’re almost 400 people now — you start to notice that s you get more and more people working on one thing, it’s harder and harder for them to be innovating just because of the communications cost and the inertia and all those kinds of things,” Page says. Again, that was an issue with 400 people — Google now has nearly 25,000 employees. And so perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that this slow down in innovation was one of the reasons cited for yesterday’s change.

Here, Schmidt jokes that “I should say, by the way, that after seeing the way we hire people, I’m amazed that I got through the filter.”

But this video may be the most interesting of all. On the topic of legal issues, Schmidt and Page joke about a couple of different things facing the company, but they’re also clearly serious. Schmidt is concerned about a lawsuit against Google, while Page is concerned about DMCA takedowns (pertaining to Scientology, in this case). Schmidt cares about the business side, Page cares about the information side.

Finally, here Page talks about Google censorship in some countries. While he notes it isn’t a big issue at the time, he worries that it could become a big issue. A report today in the New Yorker by Ken Auletta has one of the main reasons for the CEO shakeup being that Page sided with co-founder Sergey Brin over their pull-out of China, while Schmidt, again from a business perspective, wanted to go the other way.

Each of the short videos is a fascinating look into the early days of the company and the perspective of Page and Schmidt, the once and future CEOs of Google.