“It’s even easier to access Digg on the go with the new mobile version of Digg,” stated Jeff Hodson. “This enhanced version – found at m.digg.com – is perfect for phones that support the full web browsing experience, such as a Treo, Blackberry or that new iPhone you just waited in line all morning to get.”

Now Digg is available for those who use Windows Mobile.  I currently have a Motorola Q and was getting frustrated by the lack of functionality that Digg had when loading the site on the phone.  That problem has just been solved.

http://m.digg.com is able to show multiple views of popular stories.  If the story is tagged on YouTube, the video can be played on the iPhone.  Digg Mobile has the ability for users to favorites stories when logged in.  More comments can be loaded when browsing through stories.  And now that there is less JavaScript used on Digg Mobile, pages load faster.  Most important, the Digg It feature actually works on the mobile version.

Here are pictures of what Digg looked like before creating the mobile version:

And here is what Digg Mobile looks like now:

Related Links:
1. Digg Blog
2. Mashable

In the first social network and movie production deal of it’s kind, Paramount has partnered with Bebo.  Paramount movie, “Angus, Thongs, And Perfect Snogging” (ATPS) will be rolled into Bebo web drama, “Sofia’s Diary.”  Georgia Nicolson, character of ATPS will be appearing in two episodes of Sofia’s Diary. 

In Sofia’s Bebo profile, she inteviews Georgia to find out why teenagers are obsessed with Georgia’s life.  Sofia then starts watching Georgia’s video blog posts and interviews others through the Bebo messaging service.  Before the deal happened, Georgia’s profile was created to allow users to get to know her. 

MeC Interaction is the advertising agency that brought Bebo and Paramount together.  “A format such as ‘Sofia’s Diary’ offers a unique opportunity for advertisers and consumers to engage on this level because they can’t do this on television,” stated Carl Reid, account director at MeC.

AOL acquired Bebo for $850 million in cash 5 months ago.

Related Links:
1. Bebo.com
2. Paramount.com
2. InformationWeek

“The Microsoft negotiations were just the latest example of the negligence by this board,” stated Eric Jackson, a major Yahoo! shareholder and President of Ironfire Capital. “There is still a lot of anger and frustration among shareholders right now.”

Tomorrow is a big day for Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO).  It is the day that the search engine company has their annual shareholder meeting.  The shareholders will be able to vote on whether they want to the current Yahoo! Board of Directors to stay or not. 

At last year’s shareholder meeting, Eric Jackson expressed his extreme disapproval of Terry Semel, former CEO of Yahoo!  Six days after the shareholder meeting, Semel stepped down.  Jackson plans a repeat performance this year against Jerry Yang.

“I will not be attending. The proxy fight is over and it will not do shareholders or Yahoo! any good to have the annual meeting turn into a media event for no purpose. Last week, I realized it was impossible to gain enough support from the large institutions to win a majority of the Yahoo! directorships,” stated Carl Icahn, a new Yahoo! Board member.  “A few days ago, I met with both Jerry Yang and Roy Bostock and I believe both gentlemen genuinely wish that we will be able to work together to enhance value.  While we still disagree on many points, I have great hope ‘this will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.’”

Carl Icahn writes that he hopes this will be a beautiful friendship two months after writing:
“Until now I naively believed that self-destructive doomsday machines were fictional devices found only in James Bond movies. I never believed that anyone would actually create and activate one in real life. I guess I never knew about Yang and the Yahoo Board.”

Related Links:
1. Eric Jackson’s blog
2. Carl Icahn’s blog
3. Associated Press

Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) subsidiary, Del.icio.us found a new home on Delicious.com and has relaunched their platform.  The new infrastructure makes the site work faster.  The new look makes Delicious more intuitive and easier to learn.  The new search engine works a lot faster than the old one.  Alphabetical bookmark sorting is now available for users.

Joshua Schachter created Del.icio.us and sold it to Yahoo! for around $30 million.  Union Square Ventures and Amazon.com invested $2 million in Del.icio.us before Yahoo! bought them.  Schachter made $15 million from the sale.  Before Schachter created Del.icio.us, he was a programmer at Morgan Stanley, created geoURL, and co-created Memepool.  Schachter quit Yahoo! last month.

Delicious currently has more than 3 million users and hosts 100 million bookmarked URLs.

Related Links:
1. Delicious blog
2. Delicious (website) on Wikipedia

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is setting up a venture capital arm of the company to monitor potential investments.  The Google venture capital arm will be lead by current SVP of Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond.  Bill Maris will also join the investments team.  Maris was a neuroscience and worked with Sergey Brin’s wife, Annie Wojcicki at a company called Catalytic Health [TechCrunch].

Many technology and media companies have set-up their investment arms.  Examples include Intel Capital Intel Corporation), Steamboat Ventures (Disney), Bezos Expeditions (Amazon.com), etc. 

Google is especially known for overtaking companies through acquisitions rather than equity deals.  In all of Google’s company transactions, only three of them were equity deals, including a $1 billion investment to buy 5% of AOL several years ago.  Wikipedia has a list of Google acquisitions.

Any guesses on the future name of the investment arm?  Google Greenback? Google Gold?

Related Link:
1. WSJ
2. TechMeme Discussion

About DEMO
DEMOfall 08 is the place to be for emerging technologies, companies, and products. DEMO has acted as a launch pad for some of today’s greatest innovations.  From TiVo, Java, E*TRADE, and Palm in the 90s to OddPost, GrandCentral, IronPort, VMware, Salesforce.com, and Six Apart more recently, DEMO has consistently delivered products that change the dynamics of the marketplace.

In the past four years alone, DEMO companies have raised over $2.5 billion dollars following their debuts at DEMO.  About 20-25% of the companies who presented at DEMO in 2004 and 2005 have been acquired by companies by the likes of Cisco, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Motorola, Viacom, Symantec, and Nokia. 

DEMO’s executive producer, Chris Shipley, has met with companies from all over the U.S, Europe, Asia, and more.  As a result, you experience a degree of global sourcing unmatched by any other event.

Pulse 2.0 readers may receive a $600 discount by registering through the URL: http://www.demo.com/F8PUL2.  See you in San Diego!

Advertise With Pulse 2.0
If you would also like to sponsor Pulse 2.0, please send an e-mail to info@pulse2.com

Like.com is a visual search engine with a focus on shopping and consumption.  According to VentureBeat founder, Matt Marshall, Like.com will be preparing to raise double digit funding within the next two weeks.  The round of funding, provided by Menlo Ventures, will complement Like’s revenue success.

Like.com allows users to search for consumer products by specific details, colors, and find goods worn by celebrities.  Like is working on a technology that allows users to upload photos and find similar goods.  When consumers click through the goods on the search engine and buys it from retailers, Like.com shares the revenue.  Like.com’s revenue is rumored to be close to $20 million.

To date, Like.com’s total funding is roughly $19.5 million, provided by Bay Partners, BlueRun Ventures and Leapfrog Ventures.  Like.com is a spin-off from Riya.com.  Riya.com was founded by Munjal Shah in 2004.  Riya was rumored to be courted for an acquisition by Google 3 years ago for roughly $40 mill [GigaOM].

Related Links:
1. Like.com
2. Riya.com

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) Live.com has launched a new homepage.  The new homepage has wallpapers that have designated hot spots that link to relevant and interesting search results.  For example, if the mouse is rolled over certain areas, the following links appear:

1.) Windows Live Maps of Okavango Delta, Botswana
2.) Information on mosquitos will appear when moving the mouse over the plants
3.) Animals in Botswana

“Extensive user research and exploration of many concepts with our customers pointed us in the direction for this design. We want the page to be a great place to start a search and also to intrigue and inform as well,” stated The Live Search team. “We think hotspots will help users discover parts of Live Search they might not know while not distracting from the core purpose of the page — searching.”

I really like this search engine idea.  It gives search more of a cultural and “human experience.”  When visiting the new Live.com, we are immediately exposed to facts that we did not know before.  If Pulse2.com wasn’t my homepage, I would definetely make my new homepage Live.com.

Related Link:
1. Mashable

Pulse 2.0 commenter, Adam Rinkleff pointed out that Scrabulous has relaunched into a new game called Wordscraper.  This news comes one day after the blogosphere reported that Scrabulous, an application created by Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Aggarwalla, was shut-down.

Below is the description of the new game:

Welcome to Wordscraper. It’s the only game on Facebook that allows you to play the game the way you want to! With Wordscraper you can build your own board and try out whacky combinations with special high value squares.

So give it a try, you will love it. Don’t follow rules, make them!

The new game already has close to 200 daily active users.  What will EA and Hasbro do about this game?  Hopefully nothing.

Click here to add the new application.

“When looking at investment opportunities in the consumer internet sector, we found myYearbook offered the most attractive and engaging value proposition for both members and advertisers alike,” stated stated Sergio Monsalve, partner at Norwest Venture Partners. “The company has created a service that is highly valued by its members and a platform for marketers to reach and engage this audience in a friendly and effective way.”

myYearbook.com has raised $13 million Series B from U.S. Venture Partners, First Round Capital, and Norwest Venture Partners.  myYearBook plans on using the money to provide additional services to members and focus on building revenue.  Brother and sister teenage entrepreneurs, Dave and Catherine Cook started myYearbook in 2005.

myYearbook receives about 10 million monthly unique visits per month.  So far, myYearbook has raised about $18.6 million.  Sergio Monsalve will be joining myYearbook.com’s Board of Directors through this round of funding.

“We are excited to have NVP and Sergio on board as we enter this next phase of our growth,” stated Geoff Cook, CEO of myYearbook. “We are focused on creating new, innovative services that will offer long-lasting value to both advertisers and our members. NVP’s track record of success and Sergio’s deep operational experience from brand name companies like Photobucket and eBay will be invaluable to our team.” 

Related Links:
1. myYearbook.com
2. Business Wire
3. TechCrunch
4. Sergio’s profile (via NorwestVP.com)
5. Mashable

“It’s in this spirit that we’re thrilled to announce Google’s purchase of Omnisio, a small California-based startup that’s focused on making online video more useful and collaborative,” stated The YouTube Team. “The Omnisio team has tremendous technical expertise when it comes to advanced video tools and having this kind of talent at YouTube should help us further explore ways to enhance your YouTube experience.”

In order to enhance the user experience on YouTube, Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is acquiring Omnisio. Omnisio is a Y-Combinator company that launched in May 2008.  Google is rumored to be spending around $15 million to buy the company [TechCrunch].  Ominisio was founded by three Australian entrepreneurs: Ryan Junee, Julian Frumar, and Simon Ratner.

Through Omnisio, users can sync Slideshare slides with videos.  Omnisio also has the ability for users to comment in embedded videos and mash up videos.  Other Y-Combinator companies that were acquired includes Reddit and Auctomatic.  This acquisition directly allows YouTube to make user video experience as good as Viddler.

The funding of web games just doesn’t stop, does it?  Just 6 days ago, Zynga raised $29 million in funding to make Facebook games.  Today socalTech discovered that Six Degrees Games, a stealth startup based out of Marina Del Rey, Calif. raised $7 million.  The funding information was disclosed in a Pricewaterhouse Coopers/NVCA Money Tree Q2 report. 

The investors were not disclosed, but Prism VentureWorks lists Six Degree Games as one of the clients in their portfolio.  On the About Us page on Six Degrees, there is a message that states:

Six Degrees Games is a new game publisher.

We’re creating the next big thing.

Stay tuned…

Six Degrees is doing what stealth companies do, acting discrete.  Under the Job Opportunities section of the Six Degrees website, they are hiring software and game engineers.  “Six Degrees Games is inventing a new generation of vibrant, mass-market gaming applications for the internet.”

When Six Degrees has something to show, Pulse 2.0 will be there to report it.

Related Links:
1. Six Degrees Games
2. socalTech
3. Prism VentureWorks

Guidester, Inc. has relaunched as Searchandise Commerce.  Searchandise has raised $7.5 million from private equity firm Cloquet Capital Partners LLC, DFJ Gotham, Wheatley Partners, Milestone Venture Partners, Inflection Point Ventures, and Tim Draper.

Searchandise provides CPC solutions to manufacturers that want to advertise on online merchandising companies like Become.com, Buy.com, and PriceGrabber.  Searchandise uses their partnership with ATG to distribute the ads.  ATG created an ad-supported e-commerce platform.

“Searchandise Commerce has the potential to change the online retail landscape,” stated Burt McGillivray, President of Cloquet Capital. “Combine the company’s established customer base, with its innovative technology and a new and proven executive team, and this is an exciting investment for us to lead. I have worked with John and his team in the past and they have a superior track record of successful ventures. Searchandise Commerce will be no different.”

Related Links:
1. Searchandise press release

Zubican is the second search engine company to launch this week (Cuil being the first) backed with funding.  Zubican’s motto is “Find a business in a haystack.”  If you search for a business on Zubican, you will be able to find the number of employees and annual revenues for each company.

Investors in Zubican include Athenaeum Capital, Pasadena Angels, and Tech Coast Angels.  Other investors include executives from JAMDAT Mobile, Rent.com, MP3.com, Tickets.com, and Vivendi.  Users can rate each individual business.  The site is monetized through Google Ads.

Zubican was founded two years ago by Matthew Graczyk, Joe Kevin, and Brian Newton.  Zubican launched in closed Beta in January 2008.  Zubican is based in L.A., Calif.

I have a hard time being convinced that I should switch to Zubican from Google Business Search or Yelp.  Matthew Graczyk, CEO of Zubican discussed with me in the comments how Zubican distinguishes itself from the others.  Zubican plans to improve the search UI to make it more clear to users how to use it.  This is something that I look forward to as the company progresses because I’d like to see strong alternatives to Yelp and Google Business Search.

Thank you Matthew for providing me background info on Zubican.

Related Links:
1. Zubican
2. paidContent

Hasbro, Inc. (NYSE:HAS) has beaten Scrabulous in a game of copyright takedown.  Scrabulous was the first Scrabble game on Facebook.  Then Hasbro created their own Scrabble application on Facebook and sued the founders of Scrabulous, Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Aggarwalla.  Hasbro told Facebook to remove Scrabulous under copyright law within the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Scrabulous took themselves down in compliance with the lawsuit:
“Scrabulous is disabled for U.S. and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here.”  The Scrabulous application is available on Facebook outside of North America.  Scrabulous still seems to be working on Scrabulous.com.

Facebook spokesman, David Swain stated that the social networking company is not taking sides between the Hasbro and Scrabulous dispute.  “We’re trying to maintain just being a neutral platform.”

Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:ERTS) created the Scrabble application for Hasbro.

Related Links:
1. Scrabulous.com
2. NYT
3. Mashable