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Almost two years to the day that Mozilla acq-hired him, Firefox Creative Lead Aza Raskin will be leaving Mozilla on January 1 to found a new startup called Massive Health. Raskin started out as head of user experience at Mozilla Labs where he spearheaded projects such as Tab Candy, Ubiquity, Jetpack, new mobile interfaces, and geolocation specifications.

Now, at Massive Health, he wants to bring better interface design to help people take control of their health, specifically people with weight-related health problems such as obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. Massive Health will present people with better data and tighter feedback loops so they can assess how the actions they take today will impact their weight and overall health.

His co-founder is Sutha Kamal. Atul Varma—another Mozilla colleague and his former CTO at Humanized (the startup he sold to Mozilla)—will be also be joining him. Better health through better information is a huge, mostly-untapped opportunity. We’ll be following Massive Health closely once it launches. Here is Aza’s post on his departure.

Photo credit: Flickr/Gen Kanai

You may remember the Humble Indie Bundle from May, which was a sort of experiment in payment, trends, and distribution. It was extremely successful, raising quite a lot of money for the EFF, Child’s Play, and of course the developers themselves. Now, just in time for the holidays, a new bundle is being offered with similar terms, and it’s just as tempting.

One new wrinkle is that the sale is now being run by Humble Bundle, Inc., a Y Combinator startup. With downloadable games becoming an almost disturbingly large business, the company could have carved itself out quite a comfortable little niche. The independent games and apps scene is quite active and prolific, and projects like this one are an excellent way to reward developers who often create these things in their spare time.

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Have you ever lost an expensive phone? Hurts, doesn’t it?

I’ve experienced it, and it’s only when it happens when you realize you’ve not only lost a costly device that you’ll need to replace with another one soon, but that losing it also means someone might stand to gain access to your photos, emails, bank accounts and so forth.

Mobile security software maker TekTrak thinks it has a solid solution for that problem, and the startup has just raised a seed funding round from some notable angels to prove it can turn it into a profitable business, too.

Tektrak has developed an iPhone app dubbed TekTrak Pro ($2.99) that allows users to monitor the precise location of their device at all times and secure sensitive or private information stored on the phone. The TekTrak application uses 3 hardware components already built into most smartphones (cellular, GPS, and WiFi) to pinpoint the location of the phone, in the background of iOS.

Obviously, this only works when the phone is turned on, but users can always see where the phone was last located (which might help them retrieve it on the spot).

Location tracking and history aside, the TekTrak app also comes with a remote ringer feature that gives users the ability to locate their device once they’ve narrowed down its whereabouts and are located in close proximity of the phone. Evidently, this is only useful when sound is turned on.

Obviously, TekTrak has tough competition in Apple, which has just made its similar Find my iPhone/iPad application free of charge in the just-released iOS 4.2. TekTrak posits that it also allows users check the last known location and location history of phones, something Apple’s MobileMe does not support.

The company also points out TekTrak provides support for the vast majority of iPhone users, including iPhone 3GS devices, and not only iPhone 4.

The fresh capital will also allow TekTrak to expand to more mobile operating systems and platforms, starting with Android, and to enhance its existing iPhone application with more features.

Investors in the seed round – the size of which remains undisclosed – include Cyan and Scott Banister, Kima Ventures, Sergey Grishin, Wasabi Ventures, BCITL Ventures, Barney Pell and Yoni Saban, among others.

As we wrote a month ago, Google Voice finally arrived for the iPhone after Apple waited 16 months to approve the application. And as expected, the app was a hit with Google Voice and iPhone users. Unfortunately, at the time of launch, Google Voice for the iPhone didn’t support the iPod Touch or the iPad. So today, Google is announcing a new version of Google Voice that will work on both iOS devices.

The new version of the app essentially allows you to use all the features of its iPhone cousin, including the ability to read your voicemail and send and receive text messages. Of course, you cannot make cell calls from the iPad and the iPod Touch. But you can use Google Voice’s Click2Call feature to initiate Google Voice calls with one of your phones.

When you click a “Call button” in the new app on an iPod or iPad, you can select which of your registered phones you want to use to connect the call. Google Voice will call your phone and then connect your call to the contact’s phone number.

Other features of the app include the ability to send callers straight to voicemail via a Do Not Disturb button. And Google has added a “Contacts” button to the Dialer tab to allow you to find your contacts in your address book more seamlessly. Also when you enable Push Notifications within the app, Google will disable Text forwarding for you.

The ability to actually initiate a call from the iPod or iPad is kind of cool, and surely something that could be useful for Google Voice users. Of course, you will have to put down your device and pick up your phone to actually participate in the call.

Like Uncle Eddie said, “Clark, that’s the gift that keeps on giving the whole year.” And so, kind readers, in that spirit today’s daily giveaway is a Roku XDS. Cut the cord, stream Netflix, and keep your hard earned money instead of paying for the power bill on Comcast’s massive 2100-foot HD wall. Or don’t cut the cord. We don’t care. We just want to give a reader this Roku XDS for the holidays so click through for the instructions and rules.

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Soladigm raised a $30 million series C investment the company announced this morning. Founded in 2007, the company makes smart glass for green buildings that can change from clear to tinted automatically, in response to changes in light or temperature. Windows using this “electro-chromic” technology help building owners and operators reduce their heat, cooling and lighting costs, and energy consumption.

The market for green buildings is growing rapidly. According to research by McGraw Hill Construction:

Today, a third of all new nonresidential construction is green— a $54 billion market opportunity. In five years, nonresidential green building activity is expected to triple, representing $120 billion to $145 billion in new construction (40 to 48 percent of the nonresidential market) and $14 billion to $18 billion in major retrofit and renovation projects.

DBL Investors and Nano Dimension led the series C round in Soladigm, joined by General Electric (GE) Energy Financial Services, as well as earlier investors Khosla Ventures and Sigma Partners. Cynthia Ringo, Managing Partner at DBL Investors, joined Soladigm’s Board of Directors with the investment.

Last month, GE named Soladigm one of the first 12 winners of its Ecomagination Challenge, a $200 million innovation competition inviting entrepreneurs and students to share their best ideas on how to build the next-generation power grid.

In August 2010, the company announced plans to locate its primary manufacturing operations in Olive Branch, Mississippi, where it expects to create several hundred clean tech jobs. To facilitate the expensive factory build, the State of Mississippi provided the company a $40 million loan.

The series C round will help Soladigm build and launch its high-volume commercial operations and develop sales and marketing channels, according to a company statement.

Earlier this month, another maker of smart glass, Sage Electrochromics, drew an $80 million investment from Saint-Gobain, a construction materials manufacturer.

GNU creator Richard Stallman is back on the old “cloud computing is evil” kick again, and this time he’s speaking out against ChromeOS. His basic premise, that cloud computing is dangerous because it places your data in the hands of companies that neither care about you or your data, is sound. As is his threat that when the police come knocking on your cloud provider’s door asking for your data, Google is far more likely to give it up than you are. These are fine and good reactions to the slow erosion of privacy that comes from the rise of cloud computing.

“I think that marketers like cloud computing because it is devoid of substantive meaning. The term’s meaning is not substance, it’s an attitude: ‘Let any Tom, Dick and Harry hold your data, let any Tom, Dick and Harry do your computing for you (and control it).’ Perhaps the term ‘careless computing’ would suit it better.

To paraphrase Raymond Carver, Stallman is talking and Stallman invented GNU so sometimes that gives him the right. But I worry his FUD in regard to the cloud is misplaced. The obvious issues aside, given the current state of most people’s computer security and back-up practices, will not disregard the cloud as a good alternative to those who can’t maintain their own PCs. Stallman comes from a culture where everything is in one place. The Linux architecture itself is, to an extent, monolithic (not in the computing sense but in the metaphorical sense), and every action you perform on data within it is self-contained on the disk. Copies of copies are propagated through the network, ensuring that important data is replicated and not linked.

You would be a fool to trust your entire video or photo collection to Google or Yahoo or Microsoft, yet millions do. You would be a fool to trust your email records to a bunch of privileged uber-nerds in Palo Alto, but I, myself, do just that. These are compromises we make to create a centralized information jukebox and I, as a responsible computing citizen, keep copies of my important stuff locally.

However, ChromeOS, like many mobile phone OSes, isn’t about being a responsible computing citizen. It’s about getting things done. You put music on your phone or start up Pandora – it’s essentially the same thing. You edit a document in Pages or in Google Docs on the iPad – it’s essentially the same thing. You drag a photo off of your Droid or upload it onto Flickr – it’s essentially the same thing. The primary examples are the movement of bits from and to your own realm while the secondary examples are the movement of bits from and to a password protected “alien” realm. Either way, you’re doing the same thing with the same bits.

When it comes time for me to perform some sort of civil disobedience or when I get it into my head to do something illegal, I will keep that data off the cloud. But I do not consider sharing a photo on Posterous “careless computing.”

ChromeOS is Google’s way of showing us the desktop is dead. It’s also Google’s way of grabbing more eyeballs and insinuating itself into the fabric of our information age lives. None of this is done with any particular malice but it is definitely not done with our best interests at heart. However, for the vast majority of us, letting Google do the heavy lifting when it comes to data storage and maintenance is probably the best way to go.

The question is not whether I should trust Google or Microsoft or Apple with my data in the cloud. The question is, rather, whether it is worth my time, attention, and resources not to.

via Guardian

Google publicly unveiled the Chrome Web Store a week ago. Looking at the most popular apps in the U.S. by weekly install numbers, it looks like TweetDeck has fast risen to the most prominent spot on the list, as relayed by the startup’s founder Iain Dodsworth earlier today.

With about 102,500 weekly installs at the time of writing, TweetDeck thus beats NYTimes, whose app has seen approximately 87,700 weekly installs to date, roughly seven days in.

So where are the Google services? Right behind the TweetDeck and the NY Times, it appears.

The list of top 10 most popular apps on the Chrome Web Store includes Google Calendar, Google Books, Google Docs, Google Reader, Gmail, Google Maps and YouTube.

Granted, most of Google’s ‘apps’ are mere links to the respective Web-based services, whereas ‘ChromeDeck’ is an actual app, but still.

Springpad rounds out the list of the ten most popular apps on the store as the third non-Google service to make the list after TweetDeck and NY Times, with about 35,000 weekly installs (almost a third of TweetDeck’s install numbers).

Obviously, it’s far too soon to draw any conclusions, but it’s certainly a testament to TweetDeck’s huge popularity to see it leading the most popular Chrome apps list, considering the company is primarily regarded as a desktop and mobile client software developer.

For your information, rivals HootSuite (16,000 weekly installs), eBuddy Web Messenger (13,9200 weekly installs) and Seesmic (5,442 weekly installs) are trailing far behind.

Infochimps, a marketplace for data sets, is announcing the acquisition of Y Combinator-incubated startup and competitor Data Marketplace. Terms of the deal were not disclosed but we understand it was an all-cash deal.

As we wrote in our initial review of Data Marketplace earlier this year, the startup served as a middleman in helping financial organizations find quality data on the web. Users could submit requests to Data Marketplace, and the site will send those requests to its database of 200,000 data aggregators, programmers, and consultants who specialize in finding financial data and essentially transferring it into a readable format.

Providers then post data resources to Data Marketplace, provide descriptive metadata, and also set a price. The stored metadata is used to help consumers find relevant data through traditional search engines and when browsing Data Marketplace. Data can also be posted on the site without a request, that users can search for.

Infochimps, which recently closed a $1.2 million financing round from DFJ Mercury, focused on providing smaller data sets for developers. Data ranges from content around academia, the enterprise, and more. The startup is also working on building a large-scale data stack capable of ingesting, analyzing and distributing TB scale databases.

Infochimps’ CEO Nick Ducoff tells us that the funding has been used for both the acquisition of Data Marketplace as well as for new hires, which include Kurt Bollacker, previously Chief Scientist at Metaweb (which was acquired by Google). Data Marketplace’s founders Steve DeWald and Matt Hodan will not be joining Infochimps as part of the acquisition but Data Marketplace will continue to operate as a standalone destination.

Giant retail electronic payments network operator Visa has released a free iPhone app in the United States, giving users access to over 50 merchant offers ranging from clothing and dining to entertainment, just in time for the holiday shopping season.

The app will allow retailers such as New York & Company, Planet Hollywood, Holiday Inn, Hard Rock Café and Zales to automatically deliver exclusive offers to Visa account holders.

Account holders with Visa Signature cards will receive special Visa Signature offers in addition to the standard offers.

Offers are stored in the application, can be tailored to users’ preferences, and can be redeemed either online or at physical retail locations.

Furthermore, the app boasts location-based technology that provides consumers with a map and directions to a nearby retailer where they can redeem offers, as well as the nearest ATM.

Visa says it is working closely with handset makers, carriers and technology providers worldwide to bring Visa payment facilities to the mobile channel. The Visa Mobile application for the iPhone was developed in partnership with Monitise, a UK-based mobile banking and payments platform company.

Visa signed a global alliance with Monitise in June 2009 to custom-develop mobile services for Visa across a variety of handsets.

In addition, Visa last week announced the commercial availability of mobile contactless payments enabled by DeviceFidelity’s In2Pay microSD solution (more about that here).

Visa has also developed an Android application, but participation in the program for the platform is currently limited to select U.S. Bank debit cardholders.

There’s no shortage of mobile ad networks; and unsurprisingly there’s been a lot of consolidation in the space marked by the acquisitions of AdMob by Google and Quattro Wireless by Apple. Today, Moolah Media is throwing its hat into the mobile advertising network ring.

Moolah Media, which has been in stealth for the past few months, is basing its network of mobile ads around a cost-per-action and cost-per-lead model. So the network’s ad formats allow advertisers to drive inbound calls directly to their call center, collect signups and registration leads, while also tracking conversions.

In a private beta period, Moolah claims that the platform generated 250,000 quality leads from 100 million impressions per month. The network also promises higher payouts and 100 percent fill rates for publishers. Ads can be placed within apps, on the mobile web or within text messages.

While advertisers pay more for CPA or CPL ad formats, Moolah Media will no doubt face competition from Google’s AdMob if the network turns on this type of advertising on mobile phones (which seems likely).

After a successful Box Office run and overwhelmingly positive reviews, The Social Network has garnered a number of Golden Globe nominations, including one for Aaron Sorkin for Best Screenplay.

The Golden Globes are known as an accurate reflection of what could come at the Oscars, so this is a big win for the movie, which was released by Sony Pictures.

The Social Network’s other nominations included Trent Reznor for Best Original Score, Jesse Eisenberg for Best Actor, David Fincher for Best Director, Andrew Garfield for Best Supporting Actor and Armie Hammer for Best Supporting Actor (the actor who played the ‘Winklevii’. And perhaps one of the most important nominations—a nod for best motion picture, in the drama category.

While nothing is definite, it certainly seems likely that The Social Network could get a number of Oscar nods come next year.

The Golden Globes will take place on January 16, 2011.

While there are some of us for whom even boiling water correctly is a challenge, there are also future Top Chefs just waiting to be given the chance. You probably have one among your family or friends. And while great cooks don’t necessarily need great tools (it’s-a all in the spirit, eh?), it can’t hurt to have a few high-quality items around the kitchen. A beautiful new knife and cutting board may be the excuse he or she needs to stay home and brew up something delicious instead of going out.

And remember, a high-quality knife or pot can last a lifetime! So don’t be afraid to lay out a little scratch. Consider some of the following items to set your foodie on the right path.

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There are only so many adjectives you can use to describe your achievments. LinkedIn has just released the most overused words and phrases in members’ LinkedIn profiles in the U.S., and the results aren’t surprising.

Extensive experience took the top spot followed by Innovative and Motivated. Other popular keywords used in member profiles include Results-oriented, Dynamic, Proven track record, Team player, Fast-paced, Problem solver and Entrepreneurial. Results are similar for members outside the U.S. For example, France’s most-used word is Innovative while Spain’s most popular buzzword is Dynamic.

LinkedIn, which now has 85 million members, advises professionals who have used any of these words to replace these terms with actionable information and phrases.