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We’re big fans of easy-to-use blogging platform Posterous, which has seen fast growth, revenue and impressive funding since its launch in 2008. Over the past six months Posterous has steadily added nearly a dozen innovative features to its publishing platform, including static page support, comment moderation, custom domains, and a media sharing service for Twitter. And it’s no secret that Posterous is hoping to be the go-to simple everyday posting platform for consumers. Today, in its quest for world domination, the startup is unveiling a massive switching initiative to help users transfer all content from other posting and blogging sites over to Posterous.

For the next 15 days, Posterous will announce a different service daily that will allow you to transfer your account, blog, videos, images and more over to the simple blogging site for free. First up: Ning. To switch, you simple give Posterous the URL of the Ning blog you want to move and your email address and Posterous will send you an email when they are done copying a site. You don’t have to have a pre-existing account with Posterous either to make the switch.

The switch over times will vary based upon size of site that is being converted, says co-founder Sachin Agarwal. Ten posts will only take a few minutes, but 1000 posts and large amounts of video and images (which Posterous will host) will take longer. The best part is that all of this work is done for you for free. And in case you don’t buy Posterous’ claims, here’s a testimonial page of beta users who have used the importing tools.

As for the platforms that Posterous will now offer switching from, Ning makes sense considering that many Ning owners who were using the network for free may be looking to switch after Ning shuttered its free service. Posterous is a nice alternative, with its enhanced customization features.

So which service is next in the switching plan? Agarwal and VP of Marketing Rich Pearson wouldn’t tell me but I think it’s safe to assume some of the platform that Posterous will target. While Posterous unveiled a “quick and dirty” converter for WordPress last year, Agarwal says it was fairly simple. It’s safe to assume that the startup will be launching a more comprehensive migration tool in the next two weeks. And it’s also safe to assume that TwitPic, Google’s Blogger, TypePad and Tumblr are also included in the lineup.

For Posterous, this is certainly an impressive campaign. Agarwal and Pearson say that this has been something the team has been working on for months. Clearly, Posterous has ambitions of becoming the defacto posting platform and is now making it significantly easier for users to switch. While the company doesn’t reveal number on how many blogs it hosts, Pearson saud that the site is growing in userbase by 20 to 25 percent each month. A little aggressive marketing could speed that growth up significantly.

When Google launches new services, they often gets a lot of hype (see: Wave, Buzz). Unfortunately, they don’t always live up to that hype (see: Wave, Buzz). But one service that Google launched last year definitely has: Google Voice. Sadly, it has only been open to those with invites. But starting today, it is open to all.

Google Voice started as GrandCentral, a startup launched in 2006 to revolutionize phone management on the web. Google quickly snapped it up in 2007 for over $50 million. For the next two years, it went through a metamorphosis. During that time, some wondered if it was yet another service that Google bought and let die. But in 2009, it emerged as the Google Voice butterfly.

The “early preview” of Google Voice that Google unveiled last year has since undergone a number of changes. Notably, SMS now works better, a Chrome extension makes it simple to keep on top of everything, and there’s a great mobile web app. Most importantly though, Google Voice now works seamlessly with all Android-based mobile phones. The solution is brilliant — and was the central figure in Google’s falling out with Apple (after they rejected the native Google Voice app).

Google says that there are now over one million people actively using the service. You can expect that number to balloon now that anyone can go to the site and sign up.

In fact, why are you still reading this? Go sign up. Trust me, it’s worth it.

Microstock photography giant Fotolia is moving to the desktop today with the launch of an Adobe AIR-powered desktop app to purchase stock photos. Fotolia currently has two million registered members who use the service.

Compatible with Mac OSX and Windows, the application puts Fotolia’s collection of over nine million images in a desktop app. The app has a number of features not available in Fotolia’s web app, including the ability to buy and download images with one click, a drag and drop interface, bulk image download capabilities, unlimited gallery creation and better search. The interface is comparable to a less-sleek version of iTunes. While the desktop app may not be something that an occasional Fotolia user will find useful, it is sure to be popular among daily users of the stock photo site.

Fotolia has a had a big year. The company took a massive round of investment last year from TA Associates last year and has been steadily growing its userbase. It reached one million registered users and five million images for sale last February, introduced microstock video in April, hired an iStockPhoto co-founder in May, and launched a royalty-free photo site called PhotoXpress.

The site also rolled out an add-in ribbon for Microsoft Word and PowerPoint 2007 that gives users instant access to the company’s vast library of images and vectors from within the application. And the company just launched an Animoto-like video slideshow site Flixtime.

Apple has sold 3 million iPads in 80 days, according to a release issued by the company today. The statement also reported that there are 11,000 iPad apps available for the device.

On May 31, Apple reported that it had sold 2 million iPad, showing that the company has sold one million more tablet devices in less than a month. The company only started shipping units to customers in countries outside the United States in late May, which could account for the faster growth in sales.

At the 2 million mark, Apple said the iPad had over 5,000 new apps for the iPad. Clearly this number has more than doubled, to 11,000 total iPad apps. There’s no doubt that iPads are flying off the shelves, as Apple sold a million devices in less than a month.

As previously announced, the iPad will be available in nine more – but still unnamed – countries in July and additional countries later this year.

WizeHive, a group messaging and task management app is getting an upgrade today, with a revamped interface, new features, an iPhone app and enterprise-friendly tools. WizeHive combines microblogging features found in Twitter, project management features, and general collaboration and organizational features.

WizeHive’s interface has been streamlined to be easier to use. You can now include up to five workspace that can be included in clickable tabs, with a “more” button available for links to additional workspaces. Generally, tabs in the interface have become consolidated for a cleaner look and feel.

New features to the platform include the ability to tag data as a way to easily find pages and content in search. And you can now create an account and login using your google credentials. You can directly access and index Google docs from within WizeHive and create new Google docs that will remain within Google Docs but also be linked in the appropriate location from within WizeHive.

WizeHive is also taking its collaboration platform mobile with a free iPhone app that offers much of the same functionality as the web app. And the new version also includes 22 WizeApps, which are applets that add additional functionality to a workspace. For example, WizeHive has a Resume Manager edition that includes applets for capturing inbound resumes (from job boards), as well as applets that allow for collaborative rating, scheduling and review.

WizeHive offers a free entry level version and paid versions start at less than $50 per month. The bootstrapped startup has only raised $500K in funding. WizeHive’s online collaboration tool has received positive reviews thus far thanks to an easy-to-use and collaborative interface, and is steadily gaining traction as a competitor to SharePoint and other enterprise-friendly collaboration platforms.

Microsoft has just released an updated version of the Bing for iPhone app (iTunes link), and it brings two major goodies.

The first is a Google Goggles-like feature for visual scanning of certain objects, and secondly come search enhancements that take the engine beyond traditional searching to include status updates from your social graph.

In a blog post, Bing for Mobile group product manager Justin Jed writes about the new features.

You can now connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts and see combined status updates from your friends from within the Bing app. For any type of search from the free Bing app for iPhone and iPod touch, you will also be able to see both Web results and relevant results from your contacts across social networks.

Jed cites an example where you would do a search for a movie, after which you would get movie showtimes first and anything your friends on social networks may have said about it next. In addition, when you find something you like using the app, you can easily share it with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, or through email.

The Google Goggles-type feature that I referred to earlier is called Visual Scanning in Redmond. The Bing app now lets you scan barcodes and cover art on the fly using your iPhone camera. Users can thus scan the barcode of any product or the cover art of books, CDs, DVDs, or video games, after which they will see descriptions and occasionally also reviews, prices and links to merchant websites.

The updated app also brings some improvements to the Movies section, where you can now get even more video and trailers and easier access to movie showtimes. Finally, a brand new Shopping section lets you find products along with prices and links to stores selling the products straight from the app.

Check it out and tell us what you think. I’m in Belgium, so Microsoft feels I should not be able to download and install Bing on my iPhone.

Today, Skype is releasing an open software development kit (SDK) for developers called SkypeKit which will allow Skype calls, instant messaging, video chat and other features to be integrated into consumer electronics and computers. For the past few years, Skype has found its way into a variety of devices from cordless phones and mobile phones to TVs through direct partnerships with device manufacturers. But with SkypeKit, the SDK is now available to all developers.

“The SDK is very similar to what we use internally,” says general manager Jonathan Christensen. It goes much deeper than Skype’s public API, which is more for accessories like headphones. The initial release of SkypeKit is targeted at consumer electronics companies and desktop app developers. SkypeKit supports Linux now and in a few weeks Windows and Mac support will come out as well. As TVs, digital picture frames, and other consumer devices become linked to the Internet and get cameras and screens, they will become good candidates for adding Skype functionality. Anyone creating a desktop app can add in Skype features, but it still cannot be built into Web applications. Like Skype itself, it requires a separate runtime.

Part of the SDK is Skype’s SILK audio codec, which it is trying to make a standard by making it available royalty-free. “The value of the codec is in the breadth of its adoption,” says Christensen, “we want it to be a common codec.”

The next natural step for SkypeKit is to start supporting tablet and mobile operating systems like Apple’s iOS and Android. “We are looking at the relevant operating systems,” confirms Christensen. There is already an official Skype app on the iPhone and third-party apps on Android, so extending the SDK to those mobile platforms is a no-brainer.

On the heels of reaching the 70 million member mark, professional social network LinkedIn is adding new functionality to its Groups feature on the site. Launched last August, Groups essentially allows anyone on the network to create an open forum around a specific subject or profession where users can comment and share news and information. Currently there are over 650,000 groups on LinkedIn, with the largest amassing 200,000 members (for an E-Marketing Association).

Today, Groups has undergone a bit of a facelift. LinkedIn has improved the look and feel of the Groups feature, making threaded conversations within groups similar to face-to-face professional interactions by removing the wall between original remarks and off-site content such as news articles. You can share links on Groups the same way you would on the homepage. And your profile picture will now be attached to any comment you make on a group, personalizing the experience.

You can also now roll over the images of the last three participants on any thread to see comment previews and click their profile pictures to jump to their part of the conversation. If you are new to the thread, you can easily view an entire discussion by clicking the discussion headline or “See all comments” link, which will tale you to the beginning of the discussion.

One of the significant changes in the the groups experience is the ability to curate new content and vote on shared content by liking and commenting on discussions with a “like” button. Content that is “liked” will be highlighted. You can also see who has liked a conversation to get a sense for topics that group members are gravitating toward.

Group members can now get email alerts when select members of a group participate by simply following a member within the group. The following feature was originally added to LinkedIn a few months ago. And LinkedIn will begin to highlight active group participants as “top influencers,” which designate the the member whose contributions stimulate the most participation from other group members.

LinkedIn’s principal product manager Ian McCarthy says that overall, Groups has been upgraded to be more engaging with users and a place where people can have conversations on the platform. The interface looks almost like a Facebook or FriendFeed, which isn’t surprising considering that LinkedIn has taken inspiration from other social networks for some of its features.

The network has been adding social features continuously over the past six months to broaden LinkedIn’s reach across the web, including adding a deeper Twitter integration, adding the ability to follow, and enhancing sharing options.

Exclusive – Snaptu, the company that aims to bring a smartphone-like experience to regular handsets, hit an important milestone today: 10 million registered users.

Coincidentally, the announcement comes at a time when the startup is disclosing that it has secured $6 million in Series B funding in a round led by Carmel Ventures and joined by early backer Sequoia Capital.

As a result of the funding deal, Carmel partner Rina Shainski will join the Snaptu board.

Snaptu is in essence a mobile application company that targets users of regular phones rather than high-end handsets like the iPhone, DROID and Nexus One that get much more attention from the press but boast much smaller numbers in worldwide usage.

The startup’s service incorporates a suite of popular social networking, news, informational and sports applications, including Facebook, Twitter, Picasa and Flickr. The app, which can be downloaded by visiting m.snaptu.com, works on any data-capable phone that can run Java – some 2,500 different phone models according to the Israeli company.

In addition, the company has agreements with mobile operators around the world to ensure compatibility with their “app store for phones that don’t have their own app store”. Just two months ago, the startup struck a deal with AT&T to make sure that the mobile application works nicely with the carrier.

You can see it in action here:

Salesforce’s foray into injecting social features into the enterprise world, Chatter, is finally open to the public after four months in private beta. Announced last November, Chatter leverages what Salesforce CEO and co-founder Marc Benioff calls the Cloud 2, delivering realtime access to data and information, using social sources, such as YouTube and Twitter. In Feburary, Chatter was launched in private beta to 100 companies and eventually expanded to more than 5,000 customers. Today, Chatter will be available to Salesforce’s 77,300 customers and the rest of the enterprise world.

Similar to Facebook, employees can create business profiles with professional information like personal contact data, area of expertise, and work history. Searching other people’s profiles, colleagues can quickly identify individuals who are relevant to their enterprise needs. Users can post status updates to share communications, files and links around a project, sales deal or customer support case. And users can see realtime feeds of personalized updates from people, applications and documents.

Clickable, the ad management platform that lets search marketers measure and track the performance of their online marketing campaigns across different search engines and advertising networks, is partnering with American Express OPEN to launch SearchManager, a product that allows small business owners to streamline search advertising and marketing.

American Express is essentially white-labeling Clickable’s platform for its millions of OPEN business customer via SearchManager. SearchManager is a self-managed solution for small business marketers who are currently doing search advertising, but are looking for a simple and more efficient bid management experience via a centralized dashboard. SearchManager provides an unified access platform to advertise via Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft AdCenter and even Facebook Ads. SearchManager allows business owners to manage their campaigns with one interface.

uSamp (short for United Sample), an Internet panel company with offices in Los Angeles, India, Connecticut and London, this morning announced that it has closed a $10 million Series C round of financing. The funding round was led by Boston-based OpenView Venture Partners.

The capital injection will be used for expansion through acquisition, development of its Web-based panel management platform and other social media technology enhancements.

Founded in March 2008 by panel industry vets Matthew Dusig and Gregg Lavin, uSamp now employs 90 people all around the world, more than half work out of their offices in India.

The company currently boasts a database of 2 million active global panelists for the market research industry. Top segments are said to include automotive, entertainment, financial services, food and beverage, gamers, telecommunications and travel.

The fresh financing round brings the total of venture capital raised by the startup to $14.3 million – the company is also backed by Greycroft Partners and DFJ Frontier.

Co-founders Dusig and Lavin were the driving forces behind dotcom startup goZing, which was sold in 2005 to competitor Greenfield Online for approximately $30 million in cash.

(Source: press release)

uShip, the Austin-based transport marketplace, has acquired the UK’s boxby, which offers a similar but also complementary service by connecting couriers and transporters with customers in need of delivery.

The deal, of which terms are undisclosed, will “support the global growth” of uShip, which already offers localized versions of its reverse auction site for couriers and shippers in the US, Australia, Canada, UK, Germany and other parts of the EU, with further international roll outs planned this year. The boxby site and brand will remain with the “incorporation of key uShip processes and functionality”, while boxby co-founder Sandra Patterson will stay on in a consulting capacity only.

About 7 months after the release of Flash Player 10.1 for desktops (beta), Adobe has today announced it has shipped its mobile sister to partners worldwide.

Adobe unveiled a beta version of Flash Player for Android about a month ago, but has been dabbling with bringing Flash to mobile devices – including Android handsets – for much, much longer.

Make no mistake about it: Adobe really needs to get this completely right.

They need to, considering the harsh criticism it has been given for the shipment delays and claims regarding its stability, security, resource usage and whatnot, the majority of the deriding notably coming from Apple chief Steve Jobs.

Adobe can prove Apple’s decision to bar Flash from running on some of the world’s most popular and capable smartphones and the iPad wrong, but only by doing what it is doing now: by actually shipping Flash for Mobile and showing that it knows how to make it an integral part of the mobile experience, without slowing things down.

Running a bunch of ads, pre-approved demos and canned ‘industry feedback’ won’t cut it. If Adobe thinks Apple is wrong for blocking Flash from their mobile devices and referring to it as a technology only fit for “PCs and mice”, let them prove it where it really matters: in the hands of phone users all across the globe.

Flash Player 10.1 for Mobile should be available for download today on devices using the latest iteration of Android, version 2.2 aka Froyo (no surprise there). As Adobe writes, devices supporting Android 2.2 and Flash Player 10.1 are expected to include the Dell Streak, Google Nexus One (that one actually already does), HTC Evo, HTC Desire, HTC Incredible, Motorola DROID, Motorola Milestone, Samsung Galaxy S and others.

Once upgraded, smartphones, tablets and other devices can be updated with Flash Player 10.1 over-the-air in a variety of ways, including content triggered downloads, system software updates and on-device app catalogs such as Android Market, Adobe Labs and others.

Adobe says it has shipped also Flash Player to its other device partners, readying its roll-out on BlackBerry, Palm webOS, Windows Phone 7, LiMo, MeeGo, and Symbian phones.

All eyes are now on Adobe. Soon, the real testing will commence and it will continue for a couple more years as Flash Player makes its way to mobile platforms other than Android 2.2. By 2012, Adobe plans to have Flash 10.1 on more than half of all smartphones shipped – assuming no major market share changes.

If Adobe manages to deliver a great product, consumers will be better off and Steve Jobs will become pretty much the only person who continues to badmouth Flash for being a technology of the past rather than the future. If it doesn’t, Adobe stands to lose credibility, and face.

That may not sound like much, but it makes a world of difference in the software industry.