FluidHTML is working on a new mark-up language called Fhtml that will help make videos in Adobe Flash as easy as programming HTML. Adobe is currently trying to find ways to create the ability for Flash video content to be indexed by search engines. Currently the text within web programming languages are the driving force behind what is index, but text within Flash documents are difficult to index by search engines.

While getting a language to become mainstream is difficult, FluidHTML believes that they have a chance because millions of websites run Flash and less people are finding HTML to be appealing. Fhtml will not need to be compiled like Flex, Silverlight, and Flash to work on web browsers. FluidHTML was founded by Jim Kremens and the CEO is Michael Collette. The company is searching for $1-$2 million in funding next month.

The way FluidHTML will make money is by charging a low fee to publishers, but developers will have access to the markup language for fre.There will also be open APIs available in January.

Google has bought some interesting companies in the past like Feedburner and YouTube, but I must admit reCAPTCHA is one of the more boring acquisitions. For those of you that are unaware about what reCAPTCHA does, the technology displays a random set of characters that humans must type in to verify that we’re not a spam bot. Surely the technology is useful, but the technology just creates extra steps for humans to accomplish what they want to do right away.

Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHAs) finds random words and text from scanned newspapers and books and since the text degraded over time in the scanned documents, spam bots have a hard time deciphering them. Now reCAPTCHA will be integrating this service into Google products to increase fraud and spam protection.

The technology used by reCAPTCHA’s Optical Character Recognition will also be used on the Google Book Search project. The OCR software built by reCAPTCHA will be able to search for text within the books that Google scans. The reCAPTCHA team will now be working for Google. The announcement was made by reCAPTCHA co-founder Luis von Ahn and Google Product Manager Will Cathcart on the Google Blog.

For those of you that appreciate Slingbox for allowing you to watch your TV from anywhere in the world using an Internet connection, Spawn Labs has created a similar service for video games. Let’s say that you have a friend that has a Sony PlayStation 3 or an Xbox 360 and they live somewhere across the U.S., you can play them in a game by installing the Spawn Labs application on your computer.

However one of you would need to have the Spawn HD Pro box connected to your console. The Spawn HD Pro box retails for $199 and was made available earlier this week. The Spawn HD Pro box can transmit content in HD at 720p over the Internet. People can play on the computer using a USB game controller or the keyboard and mouse. Eventually Spawn Labs would also make video content available through the box too, not just video games.

Spawn Labs launched in December 2004 and raised $1 million in funding from Trailblazer Capital. The company was founded by Oswald Becca and Peter Walker. The company launched out of stealth mode at the TechCrunch50 event.

Remember Buzz Lightyear? Buzz was the astronaut toy in the movie Toy Story that competed for Andy’s affection against Woody. A Buzz Lightyear toy has made it into outer space and the NASA astronauts that took him up there made the above video showing proof.

Buzz returned to Earth last Friday from the shuttle Discovery after it launched aboard the STS-124 on May 31. Buzz went into outer space as part of a partnership between NASA and Disney to encourage students to study science, math, and technology.

Social Gaming Network (SGN), the online game development company behind F.A.S.T., iBowl, and Vampires vs. Werewolves has launched a platform thats a bit different from their normal state of business. SGN created a product for toys to read data from the Internet and communicate that information to kids through the audio source within the toy. The demo that ToyBots used at the TechCrunch50 conference was called Woozee.

Woozee had the ability to read stories to children at night from previous audio recordings made by a parent or guardian. This way if a parent or guardian wanted to read a story to their children at night, the toy would be able to do it while they were away on a business trip. Pretty creepy eh? This means that Tickle-Me-Elmo would be actually read Goodnight Moon to your kids for you. As if kids’ imaginations weren’t already wild enough.

Toys could also have a network of friends that connect with other toys. ToyBots already has a telecommunications deal in place that they will announce later on. Some of the potential revenue streams include royalties and licensing costs. ToyBots would even give developers an SDK to create applications for the toys. Shervin Pishevar is the founder and CEO of ToyBots.

5to1 is a start-up that launched out of stealth mode at the TechCrunch50 conference. The company aims to make it easier for advertising companies to sell off remnant advertising. Remnant advertising is inventory that was unable to be sold due to ad space or time.

Many people that view news websites will notice there is quite a bit of ads that seem totally irrelevant from the publisher’s brand. The team behind 5to1 includes former Fox Interactive executives Jim Heckman and Ross Levinsohn. 5to1 even raised $4.5 million in seed funding.

5to1 helps get rid of the ineffective ad campaigns that only benefit the networks selling the campaigns. The end goal of the service is to increase the quality and revenue of advertisements.

Clicker’s motto is “What’s On Online” and that is exactly what they intend on informing you about. The problem with streaming video on the web today is that it is all over the place with no central place for all of it to be monitored. Between Hulu and CBS, they both have the highest quality of programming but they are still limited to just what they want to and can offer.

Clicker categorizes shows based on genre, network, and show name enabling web surfers more options. Finding content on many other video search websites heavily depend on text based searches. Clicker will also allow users to edit information about shows in a wiki format.

Although there isn’t a way for Clicker to make money yet, they plan to create a Pro option for users to store their favorite videos on the web like DVR or TiVo. Clicker is led by Jim Lanzone, former CEO of Ask.com and COO Paul Wehrley. Clicker demonstrated their service at the TechCrunch50 conference.

Blockbuster is not having a good year. About 18% of their stores are unprofitable so they plan to close 960 stores by EOY 2010. Of those 960 stores, 685 are shutting down this year and another 275 the year after. And those aren’t the only stores, Blockbuster may have to end up shutting down. An SEC filing indicates that Blockbuster may have to shut down about 1,560 locations.

To compensate shutting down a large number of stores, Blockbuster will be expanding their kiosks and Total Access subscriber base. Blockbuster also plans to launch their OnDemand service on as many connective devices as possible. Blockbuster currently has 7,000 stores.

Blockbuster currently has 497 kiosks and they plan to launch 2,500 units by the end of 2009. By 2010, they plan to have 10,000 kiosks in grocery stores and fast food chains to actively compete against Redbox.