Gnip, the guys that are helping move data around from one social network to the next, launched v 2.0 of the service tonight.

The new version of the service allows data consumers (services like Plaxo that take data from other services, like Twitter, Friendfeed, Digg, Delicious, etc.) to have data from requested users pushed to them. It’s no longer “Hey, TechCrunch just tweeted. Go query the API to get the data.” Now it’s “TechCrunch just tweeted – here’s the data.” Data consumers are no longer required to build pollers for any of the publishers pushing data into Gnip, they just give Gnip an endpoint and they push the data to them in real time.

Recommendation engine StumbleUpon has been facing some tough times lately: earlier this month we reported that eBay was looking to sell the startup less than 18 months after acquiring it (the company refuses to comment). And its traffic has been showing signs of stagnation (though the number of registered users to steadily rise). But tonight, the site is launching a new feature that may very well turn things around: a long awaited install-free web toolbar.

Update: CEO Garrett Camp says that usage of the service isn’t stagnating – the unique views have leveled off because users tend to Stumble without returning to the site’s homepage, so their hits aren’t recorded.

StumbleUpon has long been hindered by the fact that it requires a browser plugin that users have to download and install. Such plugins create a large barrier to entry, as they are time consuming and tend to be associated with malware. These problems are magnified by the fact that StumbleUpon’s purpose isn’t immediately obvious – many users have to actually try it out before they understand what it does (for the uninitiated, it uses an algorithm based on your preferences and other users to direct you to websites that you’ll find interesting).

As part of its 10th birthday celebration, Google has opened the doors to an antiquated version of its search engine that dates back to 2001. The portal has all the trimmings from the old site, including the goofy logo (complete with exclamation point), a missing “I’m Feeling Lucky” button, and the not-so-modest claim of having indexed 1,326,920,000 web pages.

It’s cool to see things the way they were (though they haven’t changed all that much), but the real fun lies in running a few searches. Google’s blog post offers a few examples: The iPod referred to a Document Processing System, and YouTube gets zero hits.

And most humbling: a search for TechCrunch yields a single link to a now-defunct learning website.

Now that Congress has failed to bail out Wall Street, the country (and world, to a lesser extent) has begun bracing itself for nuclear winter. The technology sector is no exception, even if the Silicon Valley tends to fancy itself as immune to broader economic turmoil.

As Fred Wilson points out, those startups backed by venture capitalists will fare the best during these hard times. So we compiled a list of all the technology startups that have raised at least $25 million over the past two years, according to CrunchBase. The ~160 startups to stockpile that much capital recently are listed below.

Apparently more than a few traders had heart palpitations today. As the market closed, Google’s share price appeared to fall apart, falling to $200 from an opening price of $396. At least that’s what the Nasdaq ticker showed.

That was $62 billion in market cap that was zapped away in the last four minutes before the fiscal quarter ended and the markets closed, and it was automatically reported by Google Finance and other sites (the comments here on MarketWatch’s uncorrected article show how freaked out some people were).

And the “drop” came as the markets surged on news that the bailout was still in play and mark-to-market rules were suspended (allowing banks to stay solvent). So what happened?

“It was a data glitch, which is extremely rare” said one hedge fund guy I know. “But yeah, for a second we freaked out.” In after hours trading Google is back to normal, trading at $407.

YouTube has launched a new feature as part of its Insight tool for content creators that allows members to visually examine exactly where in their videos their viewers gain and lose interest. The new feature, called Hot Spots, displays the dropoff data in a dynamic graph that can be viewed alongside the original video.

To determine which points in a video are “hot”, Hot Spots compares each video to other videos of similar length on YouTube – if people are leaving more quickly than average at a given time, you’ll know you have some tweaking to do. The site also tracks rewind and fast forward data, so you can see if viewers are repeatedly watching a certain segment.

When the iPhone was first released, there was an abundance of speculation over whether the phone’s lack of Flash support would cripple its browser and give us something less than “the real web” that Apple had promised. At the time, Steve Jobs explained that the full version of Flash wouldn’t run well on the iPhone (the iPhone runs on an ARM11 chip, which doesn’t play nice with Flash), but that Adobe’s Mobile Flash was lacking in functionality – he wanted a product in the middle before Apple would consider putting Flash on the iPhone.

Today at the Flash On The Beach (FOTB) conference, Adobe has confirmed that such an application is in development (it had previously been speculated to exist, but there was no official word from either company). Adobe Sr. Director of Engineering Paul Betlem made the announcement, stating “My team is working on Flash on the iPhone, but it’s a closed platform.”

Microsoft CEO Steve “Sweat” Ballmer said that the financial crisis will “sap consumer and business spending,” leading to a downturn in Microsoft’s revenue. He explained that no company will be immune to the crisis although analysts predict an 8 percent rise in revenue this quarter.

With one of the most fascinating PR headlines I’ve seen this year we find ourselves smack in the middle of the perfect Web 2.0 storm: Latinos, babies, and social networks. Introducing Babyspot Latino, a social network for parents of Latino babies or babies of Latino parents. Add in the words “Twitter” and “API” and you’ve got a grand slam.

Don’t get me wrong, this a noble goal. It brings a new voice to baby care to a market traditionally under-served by standard social networks. The site debuted on a Spanish-language talk show featuring cute little shavers capering like cupids and the site will include educational material on baby health and pregnancy along with the standard BabySpot features like photo sharing and group creation.

In a move that could start a new wave in PC sales, Dell and Paramount Pictures today announced that they have signed a joint venture that will see “Iron Man” come pre-loaded on Dell computers for anyone who wishes to order the unit.

So far, the details of the deal are a bit disappointing. Paramount is the only studio that has signed on and “Iron Man” is the only film being offered. Dell claims that more titles will eventually be offered during the purchase process, but for now, it looks like Dell and the studios have a “wait and see” attitude to decide if they want to move forward with a broader strategy.

Earlier this month both AOL and Yahoo redesigned their home pages to include more links to outside services. The new AOL homepage features prominent links to Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail, as well as to bookmarks leading elsewhere, and integration with Facebook and MySpace. Yahoo’s new home page, which it is still bucket testing selectively, also includes more directlinkstoother e-mail providers, social networks, and a new left-hand channel strip that can be modeified by suers to include links to their favorite Web services. For YAhoo, it is part of its strategy to become the preimier starting point on the Web, no matter where people wan to go. But in an era when the destination site is quickly dying, if not already dead (with information pushed and personalized to you via services like Facebook, FriendFeed, and Twitter), will these redesigns be enough?

In a note today, Wall Street analyst Douglas Anmuth (formerly of Lehman Brothers, now of Barclays Capital) is not so sure.

With the $700 billion bail out on hold and banks dropping like flies, it seems this economic apocalypse will come in – and out – with a bang and not a depression. To that end we’ve decided to scour our mind-holes for gear that will help you survive the coming economic catastrophe.

While we can’t promise that there will be zombies during this international economic breakdown, we wanted to be completely prepared for all potential threats, especially when Pfizer goes belly-up and their laboratories are overrun by environmental activists who release a deadly “rage” virus into the wild. So, in a very real way, this is both to help you survive the Great Dustbowl of 2008 and the great Zombie uprising of suburban New Jersey. Let’s begin.

As the concept of the “social graph” began to gain focus and attention, a buzz around the notion of multi-player social games began to grow as well. How cool would it be to play a game of pong between two users of a social network, right? And yet most multi-player games are limited to Chess, Checkers, and Poker. It’s not that there’s a shortage of companies developing casual games—in fact, money is being poured into the space in truck loads. Yet the multi-player games we were teased about have failed to materialize so far. Don’t despair though because salvation is upon us and it comes in the form of Come2Play’s multi-player API.

In my initial review of Come2Play I dubbed them the “Ning of social gaming networks“. Today they are upping the ante by putting out an open source multi-player API aimed at allowing Flash game developers to create real multi-player games.

Some of the most compelling apps on the iPhone and upcoming Android phones take advantage of the GPS chips inside those devices to create services that filter information based on your location. While GPS chips are particularly good at pinpointing your location, other techniques are also used. For instance, the iPhone uses cell-tower triangulation and Wi-Fi positioning. No single technology works all the time, so having a couple fallback methods is always a good idea.

Although not talked about as much, the Wi-Fi positioning is made possible through a deal with Skyhook Wireless. Now Broadcom, which makes many of the GPS, Wi-Fi and other types of chips in a vast array of phones, is adding Skyhook’s Wi-Fi positioning to its chips as well. That means more phones will be able to take advantage of location-based apps in the future.

The CEATEC 2008 tech/electronics exhibition started today in Chiba (near Tokyo) and as to be expected, the Murata Girl, aka creepy kindergarten robot Little Seiko, turned out to be the biggest crowd pleaser.

Today marks the first time Murata, the Tokyo-based company behind the robot, demonstrated its newest product to a larger audience (Japanese video news portal DigInfo kindly provided CrunchGear with their video first).

A 28-year-old delivery man from the UK who bought a Nikon Coolpix camera for about $31 on eBay got more than he bargained for when the camera arrived with top secret information from the UK’s MI6 organization.

Allegedly sold by one of the clandestine organization’s agents, the camera contained named al-Qaeda cells, names, images of suspected terrorists and weapons, fingerprint information, and log-in details for the Secret Service’s computer network, containing a “Top Secret” marking.

Once he downloaded the contents onto his computer, he immediately went to the police to explain the situation. The police originally treated it as a joke, but within a week, anti-terror officers started investigating and demanded that he not talk to the media about the contents contained in the camera.

RealDVD hasn’t even been available for more than an hour and already Hollywood studios are upset about the ramifications it could have on the industry.

According to a statement released by RealNetworks, it has filed suit against Hollywood studios asking the court to rule that RealDVD “fully complies with the DVD Copy Control Association’s license agreement.” The suit was filed against DVD Copy Control Association, Inc., Disney, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, and Twentieth Century Fox to name a few.

In its defense, RealNetworks claims RealDVD “allows consumers to securely store, manage and play their DVDs on their computers” and “does not enable users to distribute copies of their DVDs.” It was also quick to point out that RealDVD adds another layer of DRM that locks the user to their own computer to make the program even more stringent.

Real Networks announced that RealDVD, its latest solution allowing users to copy DVDs onto their hard drives without facing legal troubles because the ripped copy keeps the DRM, is now available on the company’s site.

We profiled RealDVD a few weeks ago and found that it may suit some of those who want to create a media server and don’t mind DRM, but the software’s hefty price tag of $49.99 for your first license ($29.99 as an introductory offer) and $19.99 for the additional four licenses if you want to watch the films on five computers, should be enough to shy many away. It does have a 30-day free trial so you can try it out though.

SocialText 3.0 is (or will be in the near term) an enterprise mashup of Facebook, FriendFeed, enterprise microblogging, and the wiki. If you were to take any one of these constituencies – social networking, conversation aggregation, Tw*tter, or vanilla wikis and the leveraged sites the technology has produced – you might not think of SocialText as a major player or competitor with the exception of the enterprise wiki space. But add these together and get out ahead of both the market and the logical expansion plans of larger players, and SocialText 3.0 may have something hard to disrupt.

In recent weeks, we’ve seen enterprise Twitter clones appearing from many companies both big and small. The central conceit of these apps is integration with business processes inside the corporate firewall. In most cases, the services leverage the Twitter use case: semi-public SMS-length comments with very little conversational threading but live search capabilities called track that allow group collaboration to be aggregated. Layered on top of the message data is a taxonomy derived from each user’s Follow cloud of colleagues, data feeds, and competitive analysis.

Facebook launched more than a new iPhone app this evening – they also have a new home page (the page you see when you aren’t logged in) and a new tagline. Gone is all the descriptive language suggesting you sign up to “Keep up with friends and family,” “Share photos and videos,” “Control privacy online,” and “Reconnect with old classmates.” Now Facebook has a simple message to entice you to sign up: “Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.”

They’ve also removed the language around being a social utility, although I suspect we haven’t heard the last of it. The old tagline was “Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you” and was used by Facebook customer service reps to claim Facebook wasn’t a social network and that people should use it primarily to connect with offline friends: