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This morning, we covered the debut of 1000Memories, a Y Combinator backed startup that helps family and friends memorialize loved ones online. The company was started by three friends, Brett Huneycutt and Jonathan Good, formerly of Mckinsey, and Rudy Adler, a former employee of ad agency Wieden + Kennedy.

Adler and Huneycutt dropped by our studios for our latest episode of TechCrunch NOW, to discuss the challenges of their business model and the theory behind the site’s design. See video above.

The founders cobbled together the first draft of the site in roughly one month, with a few goals in mind: create a sleek design that does not distract from the person’s story and offer the product for free. The founders say 1000Memories will always be free and sans advertising, but they plan to roll out optional products for purchase soon, like framed photographs and memory books.

Huneycutt also responded to commenters from Arrington’s post, who wondered what would happen to the content if the business went belly-up: “I think if someone takes the time to create a memorial site for their loved one, they want to make sure that their photos and their memories are there forever, so along those lines we are making a personal pledge never to erase anyone’s data or content… if things do go wrong, we will never erase it and we’ll make sure to get people their data back.”

Beyond the Rack, a members-only sample sale site, has raised another round of funding today. The startup has just announced a $12 million round of funding from Highland Capital Partners and BDC Venture Capital. This brings the Beyond The Rack’s total funding to $16.5 million.

Similar to Gilt Groupe, HauteLook and Ideeli, Beyond the Rack is a members-only shopping site that offers steeply discounted (from 50 to 70 percent) on designer brand clothes, accessories and other goods. The site says that its revenue growing over 30 percent per month and currently has 1.5 million members, doubling its userbase from six months ago.

Beyond The Rack launches up to eight new sales events every day, with each event only lasting a few days. The model has done fairly well in the space, with similar sites seeing rapid growth. There’s the rumored acquisition of European sample sale site Vente-Privee by Amazon for an estimated $3.01 billion. And sample sale sites Gilt and Ideeli have recently raised large amounts of funding. While the flash sales space is full of worthy competitors, clearly there is room for a number of sites to operate.

“Foursquare gets all the hype.” It’s something I hear just about every day from just about every other location-based startup. And it’s true, though I would argue that it’s warranted — and investors seem to agree. But it’s also important to keep some perspective. While Foursquare is just shy of 2 million users, other services like MyTown have quickly surpassed that number. Same with Google Latitude, which is at 3 million. And you can put Loopt on that list as well, as today they’ve hit 4 million total users.

Loopt was one of the first location-based services to get a lot of hype — even getting on stage at the Apple event first talking about the App Store way back when. But as we’ve noted numerous times, they started out at a disadvantage because the iPhone didn’t allow third-party apps to run in the background. And that was Loopt’s model, continuous location updates. But with iOS 4, the iPhone does finally allow for that functionality — and specially for background location. And Loopt is benefiting from it.

Daily sessions are up 60% from just prior to iOS 4 being release, founder Sam Altman tells us. Both background location and the proximity alerts are pushing this growth — as well as the latest version of the app, 3.0, in general. Altman says that daily active users is in the hundreds of thousands.

Altman also credits Loopt’s usage surge to being featured in markets where Android phones are quickly gaining popularity. And the biggest surge is thanks to the fact that Loopt is now preloaded on almost all MetroPCS phones. “We’re finally seeing real Android growth,” Altman says.

Loopt pivoted last year to allow for check-ins when it was clear that the model was taking off. But the latest version marries the two ideas. The latest iPhone version allows you to check-in at a venue and keep your live location active for up to 24 hours so that friends can see as you move on the Loopt map. For some people that’s extremely creepy. For others, it’s the future of location.

You can find Loopt 3.0 in the App Store here as a free download. You can also search the Android Market for it.

It’s not news that cargo planes aren’t the greenest way to transport heavy loads, but some companies are working on other ways to send goods through the air. Could blimps make a comeback as a greener cargo carrier? Speaking to an audience at the World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment in Oxford, England, scientist David King recently predicted that helium-powered ships could be carrying freight within a decade.

It is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing have been developing blimps for some time, both for cargo transport and for military operations.

Boeing is working with Canada’s SkyHook International on the JHL-40 or “Jess Heavy Lifter”, a helium-filled airship with helicopter rotor systems that will help lift up attached cargo. The blimp will be designed to carry 40 tons as far as 200 miles before needing to refuel, or 800 miles without cargo and could be in the air by 2014 (assuming it doesn’t get mothballed or canceled before then, as several similar projects have in the past).

Blimps are unlikely to replace most airships, since they travel rather slowly. They could be used, however, to help transport goods to and from remote regions. Some models could have lifts for attaching and removing cargo without touching down, which could enable them to bring goods or humanitarian aid to areas without accessible roads or airports.

Other uses for the Heavy Lifter could be slightly ironic. Boeing and SkyHook plan to target the logging, mining and energy industries, offering a way to be greener by reducing their need to build roads in isolated areas.

It will be interesting to see how these blimps perform. If they succeed, some parts of the world could start looking like a more peaceful version of one of those old airship films.

When Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert heard that we were working on a redesign of TechCrunch, he decided to give it a go with his own sense of style. After inviting several other world-class designers to our headquarters in SF we decided to go with his vision. Voila! Say hello to the new-look TechCrunch.

Truth be told, we felt a bit bad for Gilbert. He’s had a rough 24 hours. Yesterday, at a nationally televised press conference, he found out his star player, LeBron James, was booking it to Miami to play with D-Wade and Chris Bosh — a move that left Gilbert clearly pissed off. But we’re here to offer him a consolation prize. We now have a version of TechCrunch in his favorite font, Comic Sans!

Yes, okay, Techmeme did it first, but we wanted to show our support as well.

It seems that the web can’t get enough of Comic Sans. Or at least, get enough of taking shots at the hideous font. Over 12 hours after we first wrote about it, the font is still a top trending topic on Twitter. And yes, still ahead of even “LeBron James.” Meanwhile, our post has gotten some massive mainstream media love with CNN, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and others all weighing in on the hot topic. In fact, the CNN story on the faux pas was even the most popular story on the entire site earlier today. Joked Twitter user Audrey Watter earlier, “perhaps if BP had issued press statements in Comic Sans, we’d still be talking about the oil spill, eh?“

So this is our thank you to you, Dan Gilbert. Thank you for writing your rant in a font that cannot be ignored. And we’re sorry about the LeBron thing.

P.S. Every page on TechCrunch will now work in Comic Sans if you simply append “?lebronified” to the end of the URL. Or, if you’re feeling really adventurous, try “?LEBRONIFIED”.

What makes Apple tick? How is it that it came back from the dead to surpass both Google and Microsoft in market cap? French consulting firm faberNovel takes a stab at explaining Apple’s success and its strategy against its two main rivals in the SlideShare above. (In the past, faberNovel has created similar slideshows about Google).

The 48-slide presentation, titles “Apple: 8 Easy Steps To Beat Microsoft (And Google),” boils Apple’s strategy down to eight steps including “the arrogance of simplicity” (Step 1) to customer lock-in (Step 3), selling at a premium (Step 4), cross-selling products (Step 5), and, of course, think different (Step 7). Much of this is not new information, but seeing it all in a detailed slide presentation helps put Apple’s various moves in context.

Apple starts by stripping away complexity from computing products, paring down features in favor of making their products more effortless to master. Apple locks in customers by controlling every aspect of a product through vertical integration. For instance, it doesn’t make much money from iTunes, but that is how it keeps customers coming back. It makes its money from hardware, which it sells at a premium. It has been able to increase its gross margins from 23 percent in 2001 to 40 percent last year.

Over that time period, it went from a niche, high-end computer maker to a consumer electronics company. But its iPods, iPhones, and iPads bring new consumers into the Mac fold and drive sales of Mac computers, which of course work better with all of its other devices. The iPod, iPhone, and now the iPad are what drive mainstream adoption for Apple and have propelled it to become the powerhouse it is today.

The part of the presentation which is the most insightful is when it illustrates the thinking behind Apple’s emerging cloud strategy. While iTunes in the cloud is a foregone conclusion, that might just be the first wisp of an entirely new product strategy.

When Apple started to make other devices such as the iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV, they were designed to connect to the Mac as the digital hub syncing and managing all of these devices and others like digital cameras. These began as media creation and consumption devices, but then evolved into communications devices in their own right. Applications were the glue that connected these devices to the computer hub.

But now we are entering the post-PC era with the iPhone and the iPad, depending on the Mac as a central, orchestrating digital hub no longer makes any sense. iPhones and iPads are powerful computers in their own right. The new hub is the cloud, which can manage many more devices and offer much more powerful computing experiences (“speech recognition, unlimited storage”) than any personal computer.

Google is already all about the cloud. Microsoft is moving in that direction, and so will Apple. The new glue tying its devices to the cloud will be iTunes and MobileMe, which faberNovel predicts Apple will make free because of its strategic potential to lock customers into the Apple universe. Instead of syncing your devices to your computer, MobileMe syncs them to the cloud. And why store all of your songs and movies on your computer, when you can stream them from iTunes in the cloud? (That is why Apple bought Lala). There is unlimited storage, it is all in one place accessible from any device, and Apple can start charging subscription fees for streaming music and movies. Throw your photos up there too as an extra backup while you are at it.

It’s been a big week for YouTube news. On Wednesday, the company launched a new HTML5-based mobile site, as well as the slick-looking YouTube Leanback. Today, during a keynote at VidCon, the site made a few more announcements: YouTube is adding support for video shot in the 4K video format — a very high resolution that clocks in at 4096 x 3072). And it’s also creating a new $5 million Partner Grants program that’s meant to help spur the creation of original content on YouTube by funding promising video ventures.

In a blog post, YouTube writes that the goal of the Grants program “is to act as a catalyst by infusing additional funds into the production budgets of a small group of YouTube partners who are at the forefront of innovation” and says that these funds will be serving as “an advance against the partner’s future revenue share”.

Here how the program works:

• YouTube is identifying eligible partners based on factors such as video views, subscribers, growth rate, audience engagement and production expertise
• Selected partners are contacted by YouTube and invited to submit a Grant proposal
• Proposals are evaluated by YouTube based on signals which include projected performance, distribution plan, marketing plan, cost requirements and appeal to advertisers
• If approved, funds are transferred to the partner so they can get started on their project

As for the 4K video resolution support, it’s really big: YouTube says that the ideal screen size for 4K video is 25 feet. Not to mention that the cameras needed to record in 4K resolution are quite expensive. So yes, this might be a little overkill for your average consumer recording, but it’s clear that it could definitely have professional applications.  YouTube also notes that if you want to watch a video shot at 4K you’ll need a very fast broadband connection.

All of this is clearly meant to help YouTube boost the amount of original, high-quality content on the site (in other words, it is growing beyond the 10 minute clips of cats on Roombas that are its bread-and-butter).  According to a report in AdAge, YouTube “envisions someone directing the money toward a short film or to increase their current level of production on YouTube”.  It sounds like the only restriction is that the primary mode of distribution for these videos has to be YouTube.

Well, well, well. Blizzard has announced that real names WILL NOT be required to post on the official forums after all. Your level one alt is safe!

To show just how much Blizzard cares, the news was penned by Mike Morhaime, the company’s co-founder and current CEO.

The money:

I’d like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We’ve been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we’ve decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

Read more…

Next time you’re running low on toothpaste, switch to solar power. The Soladey-3 ionic toothbrush from Japan apparently busts plaque with electrons that work with saliva to remove it from your teeth. A solar panel attached to the handle absorbs electrons from light and transmits them to your teeth through ionized water and a titanium oxide semiconductor in the upper shaft of the toothbrush.

According to the Website, “This reaction is not felt by you, but it makes the plaque unstable and easy to remove.” That is reassuring.

It’s different from most electric toothbrushes, which vibrate and sometimes shoot water at your teeth, but still rely on toothpaste to help remove plaque. You could still use toothpaste, but Soladey claims it loosens plaque effectively using only electrons. And don’t worry, night owls – it works with artificial light, too.

Note: Some people think that the health benefits of ionized water is nothing more than “Snake oil on tap.” Anyone have experience with one of these?

In it’s seemingly never ending quest to slash public spending and bring down the deficit the UK government is resorting to increasingly bizarre stunts to whip the public up into a frenzy of “slash and burn”.

One of the most recent was the YourFreedom campaign which is trying to get the public to suggest which “red tape” inducing laws they want slashed (we’d like the repeal of the badly drafted and rushed-through Digital Economy Act, thanks very much). The latest is a clearly staged video chat between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Prime Minister David Cameron, now released below, about what to do about deficit. Huh, Mark? Huh? Come on then, let’s hear your ideas…

Quite why Mark chose to “meet” the PM in what looks like his spare bedroom in a T-shirt is something there will perhaps be PHDs written about. Or perhaps not.

Micropayments startup PlaySpan has primarily focused on powering transactions for virtual goods, but today the startup is moving onto videos. PlaySpan is launching its PriceYourVideo Platform which essentially allows video producers to sell views via a micropayments model.

Any video content producer can sell their videos on PlaySpan’s marketplace and can price their uploads accordingly. Producers can also donate proceeds to charity for videos that are available free elsewhere. It’s fairly simple and similar in theory to news organizations that are charging micropayments for viewing articles.

Playspan has already signed up a popular premium content publisher, Revision 3. Web shows like Diggnation, Chad Vader, and Turbo Dates are all being sold on PlaySpan’s platform. For example, you can preview an episode of Diggnation for 3 minutes but after that time period you need to pay 10 UPoints (the marketplace’s virtual currency) to view the remainder of the video. To give you a sense of the pricing, 1,000 UPoints costs $10 on PlaySpan.

Playspan also plans to allow publishers to integrate the video monetization into their own sites. The idea of micropayments for videos isn’t new; YouTube has been experimenting with this And PlaySpan will face the challenge of bringing traffic to its marketplace to actually generate views and payments for producer videos.

While PlaySpan has been steadily growing the reach of it marketplace through licensing deals with social networks, game developers, media companies and gaming platforms, it’s nice to see the startup innovating and adding new features to its platform.

Digital commerce giant eBay announced this morning the international releases of its eBay Selling application and its eBay for iPad application. The free Selling application is now available in Germany and the UK, and the eBay for iPad application is now translated into French, Italian, German and Spanish and currently available through Apple’s 77 iTunes App Stores.

In a separate release, eBay also announced that its Android app is now available for free download in the Android Market in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.