Popular restaurant app Urbanspoon is releasing new data today related to its growth over the course of 2011. The company says its traffic is up by 80%, with mobile growth outpacing the web. The site is now seeing 28 million visits per month, with traffic now split roughly half and half between mobile and web.

On the mobile side, Urbanspoon has seen 112% year-over-year growth, while on the web side, it’s at 70% growth over last year. Overall, the company saw 255 million visits in 2011, up from 141 million in 2010.

Across all mobile platforms, including both apps and mobile web, Urbanspoon is seeing 6 million mobile monthly uniques and 10 million mobile monthly visits. The interesting thing about this data is that Urbanspoon can’t always tell when a user hits a particular webpage where that user originated – app or mobile web. That’s because many pages within Urbanspoon’s native mobile applications are actually mobile webpages built using HTML, a decision that the company tells us has been “great for scalability.” (Now to work on improved analytics!).

Urbanspoon attributes its growth to several things, from new features launched over the past year, to its continued focus on improving its mobile experiences. Notably, it launched a food diary / check-in feature called Dineline in recent months. It has also been aggressively going after OpenTable with its Rezbook iPad app that allows restaurants to take reservations directly from the Urbanspoon app and website. As of last month, Urbanspoon had over 1,200 restaurants using this service. (It had just 800 in August).

The company also integrated Zagat reviews in August 2011, just before Google’s September acquisition of the well-known restaurant reviews company. For what it’s worth, there hasn’t been any fallout coming from Zagat’s new ownership in terms of its partnership with Urbanspoon, we’re told. It’s been business as usual.

As for what’s next, Urbanspoon is exploring other ways to help diners “close the loop” with restaurants that extend beyond its bread-and-butter (ha!) offering of restaurant discovery. Reservations and waitlisting are just two of the services the company aims to provide. It’s also exploring ideas like food delivery, customer loyalty programs, and incentives. One of these new transaction types will debut this year. But, cautions Urbanspoon SVP of Publishing Kara Nortman, “when we get into doing something on the loyalty and incentive side, it will be something we consider very carefully.”

The company already allows restaurants to target customers via “Perks” – specials that appear in the reservation flow to entice customers to a particular restaurant. Presumably, the loyalty program could tie those perks to the individual, then reward them for their selection.

In the nearer future (a matter of weeks, in fact), Urbanspoon will deliver new mobile app updates, but specific details on what those will involve will have to wait.

Sometimes it’s the quiet ones who end up doing the most damage. I always thought of Larry Downes, the co-author of the mega-selling Unleashing the Killer App, as an unusually gentle and wise soul. But this was before Downes unleashed his all-too-critical powers on Best Buy, transforming himself from a cerebral author into a bomb throwing critic of America’s leading consumer electronics retailer. In Why Best Buy is Going out of Business…Gradually, a brilliant article he published at Forbes last month, Downes finally told the truth about the terrible customer service at Best Buy. And the article went viral, of course, amassing close to 3 million page views and even forcing Best Buy CEO, Brian Dunn, to issue a response.

Best Buy is committing a “huge strategic blunder” in thinking their service is any good, Downes told me when he came into our San Francisco studio last week. The retailer, he explained, offers neither the lowest price nor provides decent customer service. It’s thus stuck in retail no man’s land – caught  in that dead zone between big box retailers like Walmart and high-end operations like the Apple stores. Worse still, Downes explained, Best Buy’s service stinks so badly because it trains its staff in how to sell rather than in making customers happy; thus, these staff are trained in up selling and cross selling which explains, he says, why most of their carefully scripted encounters with customers are so unpleasant.

So what is to be done? Downes laid out three solutions to reinvent Best Buy: 1) Integrating their on and offline operations; 2) Making the stores fun; 3) Radically changing the in store product mix. But can Best Buy really be saved? I wonder whether its business model might be so antiquated and the experience of shopping in its stores so miserable that its demise might be even more imminent that even Larry Downes predicts.

TechCrunch Gadgets editor John Biggs wrote about whether Best Buy is really finished last month.

Exclusive: WibiData, the big data management startup co-founded by Cloudera founder Christophe Bisciglia and Aaron Kimball, is announcing $5 million in new funding from NEA and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt. Past investors in the company include Cloudera CEO Mike Olson, and SV Angel.

As we’ve written in the past, WibiData wants to help companies manage and analyze complex business data about users so you can predict how they are going to interact with the product in the future. Data such as email records, web histories and other interactions cannot be easily analyzed together, but WibiData aims to solve this problem. Specifically, the technology can be used for personalization for a number of web companies, including consumer web, e-commerce and gaming companies.

Bisciglia says that customers can use the data analysis platform to create personalized products and services. And the technology easily integrates with business intelligence and database offerings. Additionally, the startup’s talent includes Bisciglia’s former colleagues from Google’s personalization team.

The company’s client base counts Wikipedia, Rich Relevance, and Atlassian. For example, Wikipedia uses WibiData to better understand their contributor community, such as analyzing revision histories, understanding individual areas of expertise, and identifying trends in contribution patterns. RichRelevance, which powers personalization for retailers, uses WibiData to manage complex user data, and enable collaboration between their engineering and data science teams.

Under the hood, Wibidata is helping companies leverages Apache Hadoop to manage and analyze large amounts of data. Bisiglia has in-depth experience with the technology as the founder of Cloudera, a developer and commercial distributor of Hadoop, the open source software that powers the data processing engines of the worldʼs largest and most popular web sites. Prior to Cloudera, Bisciglia was a senior engineer at Google where he founded and led Google’s Academic Cloud Computing Initiative, which provides Google hosted computational resources to facilitate education and research to universities around the world.

Bisiglia tells us that WibiData (which was formerly Odiagio) is focused on creating a unified framework for engineers and data scientists who collaborate around tools and applications. The product is still in beta, but has already doubled its customer base. “We’re helping deliver personalized products and services in a way that can scale to large volumes of data and be flexible as data evolves,” he says.

He explains that he sees the competition as internal teams who are struggling to close the gap between where Hadoop is a platform and where it comes into real-time application delivery. Bisiglia contends that Wibidata closes this gap, and will recompute recommendations and personalization info on the fly, as a user continues to interact with a product or service offering. This enables companies to personalize the experience in real-time.

The new funding will be used to grow WibiData’s engineering team, open an office, and more.

WibiData is entering the market at a time when big data analysis and personalization are ramping up. As more retailers, e-commerce companies and other technology startups increase personalization, there’s no doubt that a real-time layer to process and analyze user data is going to be in-demand.

Flush with new capital, Klout, the startup that measures influence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare, Google+ and other social apps, is making its first acquisition. Klout is purchasing mobile and local neighborhood app Blockboard. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Blockboard develops a neighborhood app through which neighbors can interact with one another. They can report potholes and graffiti directly to the city, alert each other about crime and vandalism through a Blockwatch, post general observations about the neighborhood, ask their neighbors questions, and post pictures of lost and found items. Basically, the app is focused on creating a community within real neighborhood.

Blockboard was co-founded by Dave Baggeroer, Stephen Hood and Josh Whiting , who worked as an engineer at Craigslist and Delicious (Delicious founder Joshua Schachter is an investor in the startup). The company raised a $1 million in seed funding in 2010 from Schachter, Mitch Kapor, the Founder Collective, Battery Ventures, Harrison Metal, Josh Stylman, Tom McInerney, and David Liu.

So how does this fit into Klout? The company says that the technology and team will be used to invest in local and mobile product efforts. Klout has yet to come out with native mobile apps and will be using Blockboard’s expertise in local and mobile to further develop mobile products. Details haven’t been revealed on how the mobile apps will work, but perhaps there will be a local element with the addition of Blockboard.

As Klout writes in its blog post: To keep driving toward our mission of unlocking every user’s influence, we need to make Klout useful and accessible wherever they are – whether they’re at home or on the go.

For background, Klout evaluates users’ behavior with complex ranking algorithms and semantic analysis of content to measure the influence of individuals on social networks. The company topped 10 billion API calls in December, which is up from 100 million API calls in January, 2011. The company has more than 4,000 API partners, up from around 100 in early 2010. And it has indexed north of 100 million public profiles. Klout also just raised around $30 million in funding from Kleiner Perkins and others, with partner Chi-Hua Chien joining the startup’s board.

Here’s a demo of Blockboard from last year’s Crunch-Up:

One of the more annoying aspects of starting a new jobs recently was switching email accounts — I tried figure out an easy way to transfer messages and contacts, but after a few minutes of fumbling around with my email client, I gave up, forwarded a few key messages, and then set to work rebuilding my contact list (mostly) from scratch.

In other words, I could really have used something like YippieMove, a product from startup WireLoad that promises to make the email migration process as easy as possible. You just enter your account details (the company supports more than 100 email providers — co-founder and CEO Viktor Petersson says it should work with pretty much any email service that uses IMAP) and YippieMove handles the rest of the process, no software installation or constant babysitting required.

Petersson says the company just reinvented YippieMove in a way that could turn a cool technology into a significant business. The YippieMove site has been redesigned, but more importantly, the company has developed an API that should help it work with larger clients and partners.

Originally, Petersson says YippieMove was designed to address his own needs as a Santa Clara University graduate who need to move his mail from his student account before everything was deleted. He quickly realized that college students aren’t a great customer base, at least if you expect them to pay, so he refocused his attention on businesses, where the email migration process can be a big headache. YippieMove started working directly with IT departments (the company’s testimonials page includes a comment from an IT support manager at Kiva.org, for example), but there were still challenges to the business model — as Petersson puts it, “People tend not to do email migration all that often. It’s not a repeat purchase thing.”

So the company also works with Google Apps resellers who manage their clients’ transition to Google, and who use YippieMove to handle the email migration. And with the API, Petersson is hoping to partner with any company (some Internet Service Providers have express interest), that offers email migration services. The big vision, he says, is to become “the Twilio of email migration” — in other words, to become the underlying, often invisible technology powering email migration wherever you find it.

YippieMove is already using the API to power the email migrations on its own website. It will be available to beta testers in the second quarter of the year, Petersson says.

If you have one of the few Android devices currently running Ice Cream Sandwich, then you’re going to love this post. The rest of you, including those of you on iOS, will have to gaze longingly for a while.

Because Chrome just landed on Android.

It’s faster. It syncs everything (provided you want it to). It has nifty transition effects and a more intuitive system for jumping between tabs. And it’s also loaded with potential.

Google’s Chrome browser, which has skyrocketed to popularity since its debut in 2008 and consistently gets top marks for being the fastest browser in town, has long been strangely absent from Android. To be clear, Android has always shipped with a browser of its own — and it actually shares much of the same codebase with Chrome, including the V8 JavaScript engine. But next to the real Chrome, it’s a clear wannabe. After using it for a day, I really have no intention of using the older browser again.

Unfortunately, as I alluded to earlier, Chrome is only available for Android 4.0 and higher — which means the vast majority of Android users won’t be able to take advantage of it yet (devices that support 4.0 at this point include the Galaxy Nexus, Transformer Prime, Xoom, and the Nexus S). Google says this was done in part because Chrome needs to take advantage of the hardware acceleration features that were introduced in the latest build of the OS. If you have a device that supports it, you can download it right here.

So what makes Chrome great? Let’s take a look at the features.

The most obvious difference between Chrome and the stock Android browser is the UI.

For one, Chrome comes with the browser’s gray color scheme, rather than the ICS ‘Holo’ styling. Browsing through the app you’ll notice plenty of subtle effects that contribute to the browser generally feeling more polished. Tabs slide in when they open, and fade out when they’re closed, which helps you stay oriented in the app. The ‘all tabs’ button, which includes a number to indicate how many tabs you currently have open, pulls up a ‘stack’ of your open tabs that you can slide around to get a better look at the tab’s content before you actually open it.

Another nice touch: if Chrome notices you’re trying to tap an area that has a dense cluster of links (in other words, you might have trouble tapping the right one), it’ll launch a neat magnifying pane so that can you tap the one you want.

But the changes run far deeper than the UI. My favorite is the support for sync.

For some time now, the desktop versions of Chrome have allowed you to connect a Google account to your browser, allowing you to sync browser history, bookmarks, apps, autofill, and other data between multiple computers (in other words, if you have a laptop and a desktop machine, you can ensure they’re configured the same way). Now you can hook your Chrome mobile app to your Google account too, and it’ll sync much of the same data (it doesn’t autofill or apps yet, though).

The syncing feature comes with a neat trick: open up Chrome on your phone, and you can see a list of all of the tabs you currently have open on your computer’s copy of Chrome, which is awesome if you’re frequently having to email yourself directions or links to various product reviews. Better yet, this works even if you’ve shut the lid on your laptop and it’s in ‘sleep mode’ — though if you exit out of the browser entirely, the list will go blank.

(As an aside, if you’re looking for these features and are on an older Android device, check out Firefox for Android, which can do many of the same things).

And then there are the speed boosts. Chrome definitely feels snappier, no doubt in large part to its hardware acceleration. It also comes with several speed-related features like pre-fetching — Chrome will automatically begin loading the page it thinks you’re visiting next (it only does this on Wifi by default, though you can change it to work over your mobile connection as well). It also includes some key features that the stock browser doesn’t, like Web Workers and WebDB. One thing it doesn’t have: Flash, because Adobe stopped development on mobile Flash. Can’t say I miss it.

But while Chrome is definitely a major upgrade, its Beta tag is well deserved, because it’s actually missing some subtle features found on the stock Android browser. The most noticeable omission is the lack of a ‘Request Desktop Site’ feature, which made its debut in the browser that ships with Android 4.0. If you’ve ever browsed to a site from your phone, only to find that it detected your mobile browser and served up an inferior, “mobile-friendly” version of what you were looking for, then you’ll appreciate that tiny checkbox. It’s missing on Chrome for now, but it seems obvious that it’ll be added at some point.

As for the long-term outlook, Chrome is looking great. Extensions aren’t part of this launch, but they are inevitable. And while Android 4.0 will continue to ship with its stock browser for now — which means it will live side-by-side with Chrome — down the line Chrome will be replacing that stock browser (it’s a little unclear how exactly this will fit into the Android Open Source Project, but for starters much of the code from the mobile client will be upstreamed to the Chromium project).

Oh, and as for you iOS users? I asked Google’s VP of Chrome Sundar Pichai whether Google had considered building on top of iOS’s WebKit-based browser (they wouldn’t be able to introduce Chrome’s rendering engine, but they could potentially offer the syncing features). Pichai didn’t rule this possibility out, but it sounds like an iOS version won’t be coming any time soon — for now, the team is watching how the Android version is received.

How do you meet new people in today’s digital age, without over-exposing yourself the creeps, trolls and spammers? The answer, perhaps, is build a social service on top of Facebook, leveraging your network, your friends of friends and shared interests to form connections with people you don’t know. That’s what the new startup Speeksy is doing. The service is virtualizing the experience of going out to a bar or nightclub by offering an online venue where users can interact, message each other and video chat, while bonding over their shared music playlists.

The startup is similar in spirt to TechCrunch Disrupt winner Shaker, the Facebook app that turns your Facebook profile into a walking avatar, similar to what you would find in a game like The Sims or Second Life. However, unlike Shaker, there are no avatars or virtual worlds involved here.

Instead, when you sign in to Speeksy (a play on the word “Speakeasy,” a nod to the startup’s virtual bar experience), you’re presented with a list of “venues” and people with similar interests to you. The venues can best be thought of as something like Turntable.fm rooms – there’s live music, a playlist, and fellow music lovers. The music, however, comes from SoundCloud and the point of the room is not necessarily to enjoy or discover new music (you can even turn it off), but to meet other people. The music just serves as a tool to facilitate those interactions. Any user can add to the playlist and people can give “props” to tracks they like. It’s like an ice-breaker for the modern age.

Speeksy offers a number of features that allow users to get to know each other, but the main one involves leveraging Facebook profile data. Users are listed as 1st, 2nd or 3rd degree connections based on whether you’re friends, have mutual friends, or have no friends in common, respectively. Speeksy also matches you up with those who share your interests, again, based on Facebook profile data. And you can search and filter this list by a number of things, like location, gender, and various personal traits, like whether someone smokes or not.

Ah, yes. That’s right – at its heart, Speeksy is a new-fangled dating service, built on top of Facebook profiles. But just don’t call it online dating, pleads co-founder Barry Cassidy, a former Adobe engineer who previously worked on Adobe Connect.

“We’re going for the people who are alienated by the social stigma of online dating,” he says. “Even today, something that gets identified as online dating turns off 85% of singles – it’s essentially a dating agency. It’s analogous to going to an office and saying, ‘I’ve really failed in the social environments that I go to, so I’d like to get put into a database to try and get matched with somebody.’”

(Burn! For what it’s worth, I know many happy marriages among friends that arose from online dating, but I agree – it’s not for everyone.)

The other problems with meeting people online, explains Cassidy, involve unwanted attention from undesirables and the static nature of online dating courtship, involving emails that lead to phone calls that lead to real-world meetings. “90% of the time, there’s absolutely no chemistry,” he says. “We wanted to create an environment where people could talk to each other in real-time and see those things that people get attracted to.”

The service offers tons of tools for virtualized flirting, without being overly creepy about it. When you view another’s profile on the service, you can click buttons like “make eye contact,” “send over a drink,” etc. Alternatives to the Facebook “poke,” essentially. You can also click on another user’s interests to add it to your own, e.g., “oh, you like “The Office,” so do I!”  It’s a conversation starter. Plus, you can start a text-based chat, or, if you’re feeling more adventurous, move into a one-on-one video chat.

The virtual venues can hold up to 50 people, all with webcams a-blazing. However, due to technological constraints, you don’t see the webcam view until you hover your cursor over a user’s profile card in the venue’s lists of participants. You can also view a user’s full profile in order to see their live cam feed.

As for keeping out the creepers, the site “gamifies” social interactions, offering rewards for good behavior (engagement, participation) while doling out warning labels to naughty users who get blocked by others on the site. In other words, if you misbehave, act rude or crude, you’ll strike out and be ignored, just like in real life.

The startup, founded in early 2011, has raised $60,000 in seed funding from its founders and angel investors, Gerad Cassidy and Michael Dwyer, CTO Exigen Insurance Solutions. Speeksy’s other co-founder is Tom Tsatsos, who formerly ran his own web agency that build apps and sites for clients.

The site is launching into private beta today, so you’ll need an invite to get in. There are a couple of thousand of invites for TechCrunch readers tucked away behind this link. In testing, the “beta” label definitely applied –  there were bugs, odd design choices, and frankly, the overall experience could use a bit of polish.

Speeksy, it should be noted, will also soon to face a fierce competitor, the well-funded Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker creation known as Airtime, which is even more of a direct threat than Shaker.

Aren’t you worried about Airtime?, we asked Cassidy.

“I definitely had nervous moments when I heard more about what they’re doing, especially the fact that they’re bringing in social graph information,” he says. “But the more I think about it, I think it’s actually be good for us. There may not be just one winner in this space.”

Last year, venture firm Kleiner Perkins debuted its plans for a summer internship program to place top engineering talent from colleges at the firm’s portfolio companies. The benefit is two-fold: students get to work at the startup level, are mentored (and have the prestige of Kleiner Perkins on their resume) and startups get access to young engineering talent. Today, Kleiner is debuting the first inaugural class of the fellow program.

As Kleiner explains, the goal of the paid fellowship is to give engineering students the experience of working on tough technical problems at startups. Fellows are placed at Kleiner portfolio startups and are also invited to exclusive events at Twitter and Zynga, where they can network.

In total, 25 fellows were chosen from nearly a thousand applicants from over 100 universities. The universities the class of fellows are joining from are Franklin Olin, Rice, Princeton, UPenn, Carnegie Mellon, Brown, UCSD, University of Michigan, Duke, and University of Kentucky. Sample summer projects include working on an energy efficiency insight algorithm on Opower’s data platform, and developing graph analysis to provide data insight that will drive product designs at Klout.

Kleiner portfolio companies hosting fellows include Klout, Path, Chegg, Nest, Zaarly, One Kings Lane, Opower, Flipboard, Crittercism, Nebula, Zynga and Shopkick.

The Kleiner Fellows program isn’t the first of its kind among venture firms. True Ventures launched the Entrepreneurs Corps (TEC) a few years ago, which also undergraduate students in the fund’s early-stage portfolio companies for paid summer internships. Andreessen Horowitz has also been helping portfolio companies recruit talet at colleges via events.

And I expect we’re going to see more firms launch similar programs for their portfolio companies to access talent. Many of these smaller startups could not afford to recruit at colleges and/or compete with large companies like Google, Microsoft or Facebook for college talent. And the firms are able to help college students gain access to working at lesser known startups.

If you’re just waking up out of your post Super Bowl stupor, a crumble of Doritos dusting your chest and beer cans littering the coffee table, floor, and dog, you’ll be excused for not knowing that all the greatest entrepreneurs in the world (and Om Malik) are wearing colorful socks. See, apparently dudes in the Valley wear sassy socks. It’s something that’s done. But why? Well, apparently wearing colorful socks helps you stand out in the dressed-down, always-on, loosey-goosey, fancy-dancing world of Silicon Valley. In a land where no one can see your bespoke suit with working cuff buttons, how are you supposed to show your power? With socks, people. With socks.

In fact, fancy socks are like a gang sign.

I have been in meetings where people look down and notice my socks, and there is this universal sign, almost like a gang sign, where they nod and pull up their pant leg a little to show off their socks,” said Hunter Walk, 38, a director of product management at YouTube, whose favorite pair is yellow, aqua and orange striped.

OK, so now you know how to get funded: wear funny socks. But where can you get those socks? You’re in luck. The guys at 80stees emailed me to offer a set of every sock on this page to two lucky TechCrunch readers. That’s 16 pair each for two lucky ducks. How would you wear them? Well, think about the use case. Headed out to talk to Sequoia? Wear the Batman socks. Interviewing a programmer? Wear the Wonder Woman socks. Pivoting? Wear the Superman socks. Easy.

To win, comment below describing what you secretly wear to meetings for good luck. Thanks to 80sTees for helping all us nerds stay at the height of fashion.

Honeywell filed a multi-patent infringement lawsuit against Nest Labs and Best Buy yesterday. The suit alleges that Nest Labs is infringing on seven Honeywell patents. Honeywell is not seeking licensing fees. The consumer electronic conglomerate wants Nest Labs to cease using the technology and is actually looking to collect damages caused by the infringement. Damages? Bullshit. This is about killing the competition.

This lawsuit hit Silicon Valley and the tech world hard when it broke Monday morning. Nest Labs is the Valley’s star child right now. The company, founded by the godfather of the iPod, started in a Palo Alto garage just over two years ago and successfully disrupted a stale industry so hard that it seems to have resulted in a major lawsuit. The company won a Best of Innovations Award at CES 2012 and, just last week, a Crunchie for Best New Device. People love Nest. And now most of those same people hate Honeywell.

Honeywell has every right to protect their intellectual property. In their defensive, Nest Labs is clearly riffing off of Honeywell’s iconic round thermostat design. Honeywell’s T87 thermostat is undeniably, instantly recognizable as a thermostat. But so is a Kleenex box. And a Frisbee. Shame on Nest Labs if the Nest Learning Thermostat was intentionally developed from Honeywell’s intellectual property. But from where I sit Nest Labs is simply trying to advance the thermostat using novel features in a familiar design.

The suit alleges Nest Labs infringes on several of Honeywell’s patents involving thermostats. Several, like 7159789 and 7159790, involve the round hardware mechanism, rotating dial and center screen placement. Others, namely 7142948 and 7634504, covers the user interface. Natural language installer setup for controller (7634504) allows for a graphical user interface that sets up the device through a series of simple questions like, “On weekdays, is someone home all day?” and “What is a comfortable sleeping temperature in the summer?” You see, the Nest also has a friendly user interface. Apparently Honeywell is the only one allowed to have a round, rotating idiot-proof thermostat.

Honeywell has been selling thermostats for years but none, including the company’s very pricey Prestige line, match the Nest’s build quality or user interface. I spent a considerable amount of time shopping for a thermostat last year. Out of the six or so Honeywell models I tried, all were cheaply made and featured piss-poor UIs. I literally punched my wall after becoming so frustrated with one of the Prestige models.

The difference between a Honeywell thermostat and the Nest is striking. One is a cheap, clearly mass-produced hunk of plastic and the other is something you would be proud to own. This feeling is exactly why this lawsuit reeks of greed. Honeywell is embarrassed, perhaps even slightly frightened, by an upstart that is managing to get people excited about thermostats.

Honeywell clearly knows what they’re doing. While it’s easy to throw up your hands in disgust, Honeywell is operating within their rights. A quick run-through of the patents revels that the Nest Learning Thermostat is seemingly infringing on all seven. Some are trivial like the four aforementioned patents but the others are a bit more substantial and detailed. Patent 7476988 Power Stealing Control Devices lists the process required to leech the thermostat’s power from another source and store it in a battery, capacitor or the like. But it’s not my job to decide which claim has merit. It’s the hands of the courts now.

I spoke with Matthew Mitchell, Esq. of Mitchell Law PLLC regarding Honeywell’s claims. He pointed out that Nest could have simply overlooked the patents listed here. Or, as he assumes is more likely, the company was aware of these and already have a litigation strategy ready to argue that the patents are invalid.

Patents are intended to protect non-obvious ideas while advancing general innovation. Mitchell later pointed out, “Patents are the great equalizer. Patents enable garage inventors and small startups (some of which are referred to derogatorily as: non-practicing entities or ‘trolls’) to compete with the big boys like Honeywell.” If the case was reversed, if Nest was suing Honeywell, the tech press’ knee-jerk reaction would have been different, but still likely siding with the little guy.

It will be up to the courts whether Honeywell’s claims have merit and the company is due damages, but unfortunately the only winner in this case will be the legal teams. Nest Labs will likely spend money earmarked for R&D/marketing on a defense. Honeywell’s image is tarnished.

But worse yet, the consumer will lose the most if a novel startup like Nest Labs is sued out of existence.

Spreecast, a social video platform that lets people broadcast together, is adding the ability to embed ‘spreecasts’ on their blogs, free of charge.

The brainchild of StubHub co-founder and investor Jeff Fluhr, Spreecast can be used publicly or privately to create interactive, social online video broadcasts. Up to 4 people at a time can be face-to-face, streaming their conversation live while hundreds of others can watch, chat, and participate by submitting comments and questions to those on-screen. Viewers can also request to join on camera, while producers of the Spreecast can manage the action. Spreecast is also integrated with Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ so that producers and creators can broadcast their conversations to their friends, followers, circles, contacts and connections.

For Spreecast, adding the ability to embed these video broadcasts is another way to let people take part in the conversations happening on the platform. Spreecasts can be embedded with a simple line of code in any blog or post. The embedded video comes in multiple sizes and includes a two-way video screen, built-in chat room, customizable Twitter stream, and Facebook Comments.

We’ve actually embedded a conversation between Chris Kelly, the former Chief Privacy Officer of Facebook, and 4INFO founder Zaw Thet below (which will start as 10:30 PT).

Spreecast has raised $4 million in funding from Frank Biondi, former CEO of Viacom; Gordon Crawford, media and technology investor at The Capital Research Group and Edward Scott, Jr., founder of BEA Systems.

Spreecast, a social video platform that lets people broadcast together, is adding the ability to embed ‘spreecasts’ on their blogs, free of charge.

The brainchild of StubHub co-founder and investor Jeff Fluhr, Spreecast can be used publicly or privately to create interactive, social online video broadcasts. Up to 4 people at a time can be face-to-face, streaming their conversation live while hundreds of others can watch, chat, and participate by submitting comments and questions to those on-screen. Viewers can also request to join on camera, while producers of the Spreecast can manage the action. Spreecast is also integrated with Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ so that producers and creators can broadcast their conversations to their friends, followers, circles, contacts and connections.

For Spreecast, adding the ability to embed these video broadcasts is another way to let people take part in the conversations happening on the platform. Spreecasts can be embedded with a simple line of code in any blog or post. The embedded video comes in multiple sizes and includes a two-way video screen, built-in chat room, customizable Twitter stream, and Facebook Comments.

We’ve actually embedded a conversation between Chris Kelly, the former Chief Privacy Officer of Facebook, and 4INFO founder Zaw Thet below (which will start as 10:30 PT).

Spreecast has raised $4 million in funding from Frank Biondi, former CEO of Viacom; Gordon Crawford, media and technology investor at The Capital Research Group and Edward Scott, Jr., founder of BEA Systems.

Did your parents ever tell you how they switched television channels back in the day? You know, before the remote?

They had to get up, and walk the twelve feet to the television set, turn some knob, and repeat this process until they found something worth viewing (most likely a commercial celebrating our addiction to nicotine and alcohol). But things have changed quite a bit since then.

In fact, we are at the point of throwing away our remotes for something a bit more integrated. Enter the VooMote Zapper, by Zero1.tv.

There are plenty of universal remote offerings out there in the world, and the VooMote Zapper joins the ranks as an iDevice add-on. Simply plug the Zapper into the 30-pin port at the bottom of your iPhone, iPad, or iPod, and download the free app. After the initial setup, you’ll be in complete control of your entire home entertainment system right from your iDevice.

The dongle comes in a bevy of color flavors and costs $70. However, a cover for the iPhone will cost an extra $10, while an iPad cover will force you to cough up an extra $20.

The VooMote Zapper is available now at Apple.com, and you can download the VooMote Zapper app from the Apple App Store.

Did your parents ever tell you how they switched television channels back in the day? You know, before the remote?

They had to get up, and walk the twelve feet to the television set, turn some knob, and repeat this process until they found something worth viewing (most likely a commercial celebrating our addiction to nicotine and alcohol). But things have changed quite a bit since then.

In fact, we are at the point of throwing away our remotes for something a bit more integrated. Enter the VooMote Zapper, by Zero1.tv.

There are plenty of universal remote offerings out there in the world, and the VooMote Zapper joins the ranks as an iDevice add-on. Simply plug the Zapper into the 30-pin port at the bottom of your iPhone, iPad, or iPod, and download the free app. After the initial setup, you’ll be in complete control of your entire home entertainment system right from your iDevice.

The dongle comes in a bevy of color flavors and costs $70. However, a cover for the iPhone will cost an extra $10, while an iPad cover will force you to cough up an extra $20.

The VooMote Zapper is available now at Apple.com, and you can download the VooMote Zapper app from the Apple App Store.

Web app error tracking startup Exceptional has acquired fellow error tracking application and competitor, Airbrake, from web design and development company thoughtbot. Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.

Simply put, Airbrake tracks errors in web apps. The app will collects errors generated by a variety of applications, and aggregates the results for review by developers. Airbrake’s service is used by a number of high-profile companies including Groupon, eBay Square and AT&T.

Together, the two companies have tracked over 5 billion errors since 2008. With a combined 75,000 customer base and counting, these two error handling companies handle over 30,000 reports per minute.

Web app error tracking startup Exceptional has acquired fellow error tracking application and competitor, Airbrake, from web design and development company thoughtbot. Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.

Simply put, Airbrake tracks errors in web apps. The app will collects errors generated by a variety of applications, and aggregates the results for review by developers. Airbrake’s service is used by a number of high-profile companies including Groupon, eBay Square and AT&T.

Together, the two companies have tracked over 5 billion errors since 2008. With a combined 75,000 customer base and counting, these two error handling companies handle over 30,000 reports per minute.

Telecom expense management (TEM) solutions company Xigo, which Greg likened to a Billshrink for large companies, has been acquired by one of its partners, IT services and solutions provider Dimension Data for an undisclosed sum.

Dimension Data says the acquisition of Xigo, formerly known as Invoice Insight, will enable them to offer enterprise customers an integrated cost optimization solution for spend analysis, sourcing, provisioning and invoice processing.

The company adds that it will focus on increasing Xigo’s market share in the United States and roll out the services to other countries “over time”.

Dave Spofford, CEO of Xigo, will continue to lead the Xigo team and report to Dimension Data’s Americas CEO Jere Brown.

Telecom expense management (TEM) solutions company Xigo, which Greg likened to a Billshrink for large companies, has been acquired by one of its partners, IT services and solutions provider Dimension Data for an undisclosed sum.

Dimension Data says the acquisition of Xigo, formerly known as Invoice Insight, will enable them to offer enterprise customers an integrated cost optimization solution for spend analysis, sourcing, provisioning and invoice processing.

The company adds that it will focus on increasing Xigo’s market share in the United States and roll out the services to other countries “over time”.

Dave Spofford, CEO of Xigo, will continue to lead the Xigo team and report to Dimension Data’s Americas CEO Jere Brown.

Disruptive payments network Dwolla confirmed today it has raised $5 million in Series B financing in a round led by Union Square Ventures. Also participating in the round are Village Ventures, Thrive Capital, Artists and Instigators and Paige Craig of Betterworks. As a part of the deal, Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures will join Dwolla’s board.

The company says that additional funding will be used to continue product development, expand its API and “maybe buy some Doritos.” (Yeah, you gotta love these guys).

Dwolla, which offers both an online and mobile payments platform, is primarily a new payments network, not a tool for enabling payments through the existing credit card network. In other words, it’s not the new PayPal. It’s an all-new payment option.  The idea behind the company is to rethink what a payments network would look like if it was built today using web technologies. By eliminating the legacy issues, fraud and overhead, it can lower costs for end users and merchants alike.

Explains founder Ben Milne, “Dwolla’s network isn’t just about mobile wallets and sending money to your friends with Facebook, it’s about creating an entirely new network architecture to disrupt the $332 trillion electronic payments landscape.”

The company has had a busy year, rolling out new features and services like Spots, FiSync, Proxi, GRiD and Instant, among other things.

Over the course of 2011, Des Moines-based Dwolla says it increased its userbase by 3,200% to over 80,000 accounts and increased its merchant community by 3,000% to over 7,500 accounts. It now processes between $30 and $50 million per month in transactions, both online and on mobile. Due to its lower fees, users end up saving 2%-8% over traditional transactions as well as the typical 30 cent processing fee.

Last month, BetaBeat reported that Dwolla was raising $10 million in financing, but today’s confirmation of the Series B is at half that.

Disruptive payments network Dwolla confirmed today it has raised $5 million in Series B financing in a round led by Union Square Ventures. Also participating in the round are Village Ventures, Thrive Capital, Artists and Instigators and Paige Craig of Betterworks. As a part of the deal, Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures will join Dwolla’s board.

The company says that additional funding will be used to continue product development, expand its API and “maybe buy some Doritos.” (Yeah, you gotta love these guys).

Dwolla, which offers both an online and mobile payments platform, is primarily a new payments network, not a tool for enabling payments through the existing credit card network. In other words, it’s not the new PayPal. It’s an all-new payment option.  The idea behind the company is to rethink what a payments network would look like if it was built today using web technologies. By eliminating the legacy issues, fraud and overhead, it can lower costs for end users and merchants alike.

Explains founder Ben Milne, “Dwolla’s network isn’t just about mobile wallets and sending money to your friends with Facebook, it’s about creating an entirely new network architecture to disrupt the $332 trillion electronic payments landscape.”

The company has had a busy year, rolling out new features and services like Spots, FiSync, Proxi, GRiD and Instant, among other things.

Over the course of 2011, Des Moines-based Dwolla says it increased its userbase by 3,200% to over 80,000 accounts and increased its merchant community by 3,000% to over 7,500 accounts. It now processes between $30 and $50 million per month in transactions, both online and on mobile. Due to its lower fees, users end up saving 2%-8% over traditional transactions as well as the typical 30 cent processing fee.

Last month, BetaBeat reported that Dwolla was raising $10 million in financing, but today’s confirmation of the Series B is at half that.