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While incredibly useful, Google Translate is also known for its occasional snafus. For example, an English to French translation of “videos on Vimeo” previously resulted in “des videos sur YouTube.” Another example of a wonky translation took place when Kai-Fu Lee, president of the search giant’s China operations, left the company.

Today’s questionable result comes from an English to Italian translation of “call us for free.” The phrase returns in Italian as “Telefonare gratis con Skype.” The reverse translation results in ‘call us for free.’

This doesn’t seem to work in other languages, so it could just be a glitch in the system. Or it could be a result of a crowdsourced effort to change the translation. We’ve contacted Google for comment. Regardless, it provides for a little lighthearted humor on a Tuesday afternoon.

Update: Google has confirmed that this was a machine translation error and not the result of a crowdsourced effort to change a translation. The translation has now been corrected.

Sonos stopped by our office in San Francisco today to show off their newest toy: the iPad controller app. Those familiar with the iPhone/iPod touch version of the controller will feel at home here, though obviously the larger screen allows Sonos to do some more creative music management things with the UI. It looks to be a pretty killer way to manage multiple Sonos systems throughout your home (it can manage up to 32 separate zones).

While the app looks polished and ready to go, Sonos says it’s still pre-beta. The plan is to have it ready to submit to Apple’s App Store by mid-August. Once approved, it will be available as a free download.

They see the iPad version of the app as the most social Sonos controller yet — great for parties. As to why you would buy a CR200 — their dedicated remote that costs $350 — instead of an iPad with this app, they note that the CR200 is still faster to use if you want to access your systems instantly. And the dedicated remote is going to stay in your home, if someone leaves with the iPad, you’ll have no remote.

Watch a video of it in action below. As you can see, it seamlessly runs two Sonos S5s (including the new black one), in two different rooms. Below that, find a video of Sonos telling us a bit more about the strategy behind these apps. Of note, they’re completely focused on Apple’s mobile platforms for the time being (meaning, sadly, no Android app is in the works just yet). And while they may be hesitant to say it, they’d clearly love for their systems to be available in Apple Stores.

For those who can’t wait for the iPad version, check out the iPhone version (which will work on the iPad) here in the App Store.

On June 9th, social gaming powerhouse Zynga launched its latest creation: FrontierVille. The game takes many of the gameplay elements found in Zynga’s smash hit Farmville and adds some of adventure and spontaneity (not to mention a Wild West theme) to help spice things up. Today, less than two weeks after launch, the company says that it has 5.2 million daily active users.

To give some context to that stat, it was only eight days ago that Zynga CEO Mark Pincus announced that the game had over 1 million DAUs. Zynga’s Farmville (which just had its one year anniversary) has around 18 million daily active users according to Inside Network’s AppData leaderboard. Treasure Isle, another popular Zynga game, has 5.18 million DAUs.

So why does this matter? Zynga’s Facebook games saw staggering growth last year, but this year its games’ popularity has leveled off (and in some cases, dipped). It’s imperative for Zynga’s future success that it can keep launching hits. At this point FrontierVille has a long way to go before it can match Farmville, but it’s off to a solid start. Still, my hunch is that Zynga will have to start launching games that are innovative — as opposed to iterative, like FrontierVille — before we see another game succeed on the same scale as Farmville did at its peak.

Some other interesting stats about the game so far:

• 10 Million people have created homesteads
• Half a million people have had their avatars get “married”
• 5 million settlers have visited friends and have completed 550 million tasks
• 2.5 million settlers have ‘hired’ a friend
• 6.5 million players have chased away 141 million snakes
• 3 million players have scared the bear (87 million bears have been scared away)



CrunchBase Information
Zynga
Information provided by CrunchBase

I’ve always had a soft spot in my necrotic heart for Sonos. In the face if iPods, Zunes, mobile phones, and everything else, they’ve kept pumping out great, compact products for folks with big houses. They’ve never pretended to be too high-class for the rest of us yet you basically use their products to create soundscapes, just like Disney World, Vegas, and the haunted house I made in my basement as a kid.

Sonos just announced their iPad app – probably available in August – that allows you to control your Sonos system on the iPad’s bright screen. The app allows you to browse your iTunes and Sonos collection, pick radio streams, and even set different rooms with different playlists. When I tested the Sonos kit I used to like to make my bathroom, for instance, the Drum’n’Bass room to ease evacuation.

Video after the jump.

ReputationDefender, an online security startup, has announced a $15 million Series C round led by JAFCO Ventures with existing investors, Bessemer Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers participating in the round. This brings the company’s total funding to $24 million.

The startup, which just raised $8.65 million last year, helps you monitor your reputation on the Web and take actions to make sure that when someone Googles you they see you in the best possible light. ReputationDefender sells four different security products on a monthly subscription basis (MyReputation, MyPrivacy, MyChild, and MyEdge) which lets you monitor information about you across the Web, as well as in semi-private databases, and helps you remove inaccurate information or counter by promoting your own vetted profile.

The company also just bought Ziggs.com, a social networking site for business professionals and people who would like to ‘market themselves on the Web’. And ReputationDefender recently launched an application, PrivacyDefender, to help you navigate Facebook’s new privacy settings.

The company plans to use the funding for to develop new product and expand customer acquisition efforts.

Over the past several months, Foursquare has had a number of impressive stats for a startup. Some of them involved SXSW, some involved overall check-ins numbers, some involved deals signed. But at the end of the day, the most important metric for any service remains number of users. And Foursquare is doing pretty well there too.

The location-based service has just tweeted out that they’re now past 1.7 million users. Impressively, that’s up 100,000 users from just about a week ago. Also impressive from this angle, it was only two months ago that Foursquare passed one million users — clearly the rate of growth is increasingly quickly.

At this rate, Foursquare will surpass 2 million users in July. MyTown, another location-based network hit that number in May, but it’s more of a game than a standard location-based network. Another location-based network, Brightkite, hit 2 million users in February. Meanwhile, rivals Loopt and Google Latitude both have 3 million users.

At this rate of growth, Foursquare could surpass many of its rivals in terms of size fairly soon. Of course, Loopt with its new background-enabled iPhone app, and Latitude with its new API, may have something to say about that.

The latest streaming music service to launch is Rdio, which is backed by the founders of Skype. It lets you stream 5 million songs from all the major labels (some key indie bands are missing though), create playlists, and find music through other people. The problem is that it is rolling out slowly. You need an invite just to try it out.

Well, we just got 1,000 invites for TechCrunch readers. Just click here and use the code “RDIOTC01″

The invite is only good for three days, after which you need to subscribe for at least $5 a month to keep listening. But it’s worth checking out. From my earlier review of the service:

My initial take: Until Apple launches iTunes as a jukebox in the cloud, it could learn a few things from Rdio. While the new music streaming and download service has many shortcomings, it points to how digital music should be consumed on the Web and mobile devices.

Rdio is literally an online jukebox with 5 million songs which you can stream in full. It competes with Rhapsody and Spotify (which is not yet launched in the U.S.). You pay $5 a month for Web-only access, and $10 a month to access the service on a mobile phone through Android, Blackberry, or iPhone apps. Curiously, Apple won’t approve the latest update to the iPhone app. Finally, there is a small desktop AIR app that lets you go through your songs and sync to iTunes.

So sign up and tell everyone what you think of Rdio in comments.

As you may have read last night, Apple started emailing people who pre-ordered the iPhone 4 to let them know that it may arrive a day early. While the rest of us have to wait for June 24, those who opted to get the device delivered, should get it as soon as tomorrow, the email says. But actually, if FedEx’s tracking system is correct (and that may be a big “if”), some people may actually get the iPhone 4 today.

As you can see in the screenshot, FedEx is alerting some customers that the iPhone 4 is “On FedEx vehicle for delivery.” In this particular instance, this is an iPhone that has been sitting in Oakland for a day, so it’s not clear why it would be on a FedEx truck unless they were actually delivering it. Others on Twitter are seeing the same thing.

Also a bit odd is that the estimated delivery time in the example below still says June 24. Unless the FedEx truck is going to circle for the next two days, something is up.

Update: At least one person on Twitter is claiming that their iPhone 4 has been delivered already. Obviously, we’re awaiting proof of this. But other FedEx tracking details seem to suggest deliveries are happening as well.

Update 2: Here’s a user in the MacRumors forums who says they’ve gotten it delivered today — complete with pictures!

Update 3: And here’s another user who took a picture. This looks legitimate at this point.

Update 4: Another user who got it today is saying he can’t yet activate it.

Update 5: And you can count Loopt founder Sam Altman among those who got his early.

[image: twitpic/pep2009 and twitpic/gilcabrera]