Yesterday I detailed my quest to find the throngs of Droid fans who had woken up at the crack of dawn to grab a place in line before Verizon unleashed the phone to the masses. Yet despite reports of lines elsewhere, I failed — the Verizon store in Palo Alto was a ghost town, as was the Best Buy down the street. Some commenters took my story and similar reports as an indication that the Droid’s launch had bombed, doomed to play out the same fate of the numerous supposed ‘iPhone killers’ before it. It looks like they may be wrong — that store sold over 70 Droids yesterday, according to one of its employees.

Today I returned to the Verizon store where yesterday’s quest began, looking to get my hands on one of the nifty docking stations that turns your Droid into a desktop clock/multimedia station. And while I expected a handful of other customers to be in the store, I was taken aback by just how crowded it was — each of the registers was busy ringing up a customer while others waited their turn, four people were standing in line just to touch the demo Droid unit, and I had to put my name on the list to talk to someone.

Today is Droid day — an event that I, like many tech bloggers, have been looking forward to for quite some time. Unlike some people, I wasn’t graced with a test Droid last week, so I was forced to go out and get one the old fashioned way: by getting to the store as early as possible, before the precious devices sold out. And while I was concerned about falling prey to a supply shortage, a part of me still hoped there would be many others like me, helping justify my early morning rise. These are my notes as I searched for the unexpectedly elusive Verizon Droid line.

5:30 AM. I woke up this morning to the soothing chimes of my over-priced alarm clock, took a look at the ungodly hour, and immediately sank back into my pillow. It wasn’t until my second alarm (strategically positioned far out of arm’s reach) kicked in that I remembered the task at hand: Droid day.

Back in July we took a look at ZooLoo, a service that looks to help users build their own websites (complete with vanity URLs) where they can manage their entire social network experience from one place — when it launched we described as an iGoogle meets Facebook, in that it’s a single hub that lets you interact with your Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace accounts. Since then the site has seen some significant improvements, including an overhauled UI that makes the site both nicer on the eyes and easier to use.

The biggest changes to the service is its revamped, streamlined navigation system. The old icons, which you can see in this screenshot have been replaced by a series of dropdown menus that are cleaner and easier to use. Another big addition is a home page, which aggregates your feeds from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and brings them together in a single feed. At the top of the feed is a box where you can enter a status message, which then you can then syndicate to each of the services you’ve connected to ZooLoo.

Google has just announced that it is open-sourcing a set of tools its own developers use to build some of the company’s most well known products, including Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Maps.

The first tool is called the Closure Compiler, which helps developers optimize their JavaScript code by removing extra portions of comments and code. The Compiler also has a sister program called Inspector — a plugin for Firebug that allows developers to view their optimized code in the browser, with all of their original variable names and other data restored (typically optimized code strips variable names and formatting that makes it very difficult to read). Google is also releasing the Compiler as a web app and a RESTful API.

Electronic Arts has brought its very popular Spore franchise to Facebook, with the launch of a new game called Spore Islands. The game, while thematically similar to the well known PC game that was released last year, has gameplay that’s entirely different. Rather than roaming around a 3D world, Spore for Facebook is more of a stategy game: you tweak your creature and then watch how it fares against the other beasts inhabiting your island.

I took the game for a spin last night and found it to be pretty fun, though there’s a bit of a learning curve. The game is effectively broken down into two main sections: the creature builder, where you can tweak both the appearance and the attributes of your character (things like speed, reproductive rate, and over a dozen others). Once you’ve fine tuned your creature to your satisfaction, you can go into ‘observation’ mode, where you watch miniature versions of the island’s animals fight over food, eat each other, and reproduce (by way of eggs hatching). The graphics in the simulation portion are pretty basic — everything is presented in a 2D, top-down view, but they’re charming and get the job done.

A Facebook developer named Yvo Schaap has uncovered a massive security flaw present on both Facebook and MySpace that would give hackers the ability to steal all of your account data, including your photos, personal messages, and basically everything else you’ve ever put on the social networks, without you ever realizing it.
Update: MySpace tells us that in their case no private data was actually exposed, see their statement below. However, Schaap believes that MySpace is simply wrong, and that they were in fact open to the exploit.

Schaap stumbled upon the exploit and contacted both Facebook and MySpace. According to his blog MySpace has since fixed the bug, and while his blog indicates that Facebook is still working on it we’ve confirmed that they’ve fixed it as well. So what exactly could the exploit do? From Schaap’s blog:

You don’t need much time to think of all the ways this could be exploited. All what has to happen is a active session, or a “auto login”-cookie and a URL which hosts a exploiting Flash file. For example when accessed, a automatic “post update” could be made, that would lure friends of the user to access the exploit URL, and the exploit would spread virally. An more invasive and hidden exploit could harvest all the users personal photo’s, data and messages to a central server without any trace, and there is no reason why this wouldn’t be happening already with both Facebook and MySpace data.

As more games on the web begin to embrace virtual currency, users often run into the same problem: they’ve racked up mountains of whatever currency they’ve been playing with, but then don’t have a way to actually do anything with it outside of that game. Sure, they can always buy the latest tractor or weapon to arrive in their game, but at some point that gets old and they’re ready to cash out and move on to something new. Enter Bodega, a new platform that’s looking to help users swap virtual goods and currencies across different games, and even across different social networks.

Bodega lets users sell their virtual goods at auction in return for for Bodega’s own currency, the Bodega Bill. When you go to sell your virtual goods, you can either put it up as a ‘buy it now’ style purchase or an auction, with a minimum reserve if you want. Users looking to purchase virtual goods can obtain Bodega Bills by completing offers, buying them with their credit cards, or by selling their own virtual goods in the marketplace. You can also earn Bodega Bills by completing actions on the site, like adding another user as a friend or listing an item for sale.

Credit Karma, a site that looks to help consumers understand, track, and improve their credit scores, has raised a $2.5 million Series A funding round led by QED Investors, with participation from SV Angel, Aydin Senkut, and Founders Fund, via FF Angel.

Credit Karma is a site that features free credit checks, educational guides, and tools for analyzing your credit score’s current status (presented as a ‘report card’) and for optimizing your credit over time (you can check in on your score on a daily basis if you want to). The are also reviews of various credit cards, as well as sponsored offers based on your current credit rating.

Credt Karma says that its services are all free, and that the company makes money by selling advertising.

Last night we broke the story that Google would be teaming with a number of well known artists to launch a promotion for its Music Onebox search, which was released last week. Turns out, it’s launching a bit sooner than we thought: beginning tonight a number of well known artists will be offering exclusive songs and free downloads through Google’s Music search. To get the freebies and exclusives, simply run a Google query for the artist’s name (the album name works too in some cases).

One clarification: while these songs are being presented and promoted on Google, they’ll also be available on the site that’s actually streaming the songs — be it MySpace or Lala. In MySpace’s case the songs could also be potentially be surfaced on other search engines, though it sounds like artists will be asking their fans to search for them on Google as part of the promotion.

Many of us spend hours a day on our browsers surfing the web both at home and from the office, but we don’t really do much with our web history, which could really serve as a goldmine of information. Nebul.us, a startup launching today in private beta, is looking to tap into this data, leveraging it to offer a cloud-based web history, a productivity tool for monitoring how you’re spending your time online, and a social link sharing service. The site is now in private beta, and 500 TechCrunch readers will be able to gain access by using the invite code ‘techcrunch’.

Here’s how it works: after installing a browser plugin (the service currently has support for Firefox with IE, Chrome, and Safari on the way), your browser will start monitoring your browsing history and uploading it to the service. Everything is intitally locked down in a private mode — meaning nobody else can see it — unless you visit the site and explicitly decide to share it with your friends.

Infectious, a startup that makes high quality decals and skins that let you customize the look of your iPhone, car, laptop, skateboards, and more, is launching a new feature today: one off prints of your own custom designs. Starting today users will be able to use an integrated Flex app to upload their own images, which they can then have printed out on high quality adhesive stickers (or decks, in the case of skateboards).

We’ve been watching Infectious for a while — back in May 2008 the site launched large, vinyl decorative stickers for your car, and they released decorative iPhone covers just in time for last year’s holiday season.

If you’ve been on Twitter for a while, there’s a good chance you’ve come across a tweet that asked you to retweet something (usually a link to a spammy-looking site) for the chance to enter a contest. Of course, these are typically bogus, leading many people to simply ignore them. And that poses a problem to the companies who really are trying to run sweepstakes on Twitter, who can have a hard time proving their legitimacy. Wildfire, a platform for building viral marketing campaigns, is looking to help: the company has just launched support for sweepstakes on Twitter, allowing brands to now manage campaigns across their websites, Facebook, and Twitter simultaneously.

Wildfire hasn’t been around very long, but it’s already accomplished quite a bit: it won last year’s fbFund, and has built up a very impressive roster of clients, including Pepsi, Sony, CNN, Universal, AT&T, VIctoria’s Secret and even Facebook itself, which has used the service for multiple campaigns. But until now, it hasn’t been available for Twitter.

Last week Google launched the Music Onebox — a special new search result that lets users stream songs in their entirety for free. The feature is being powered through partnerships with MySpace and Lala, who are providing the song streams, with contributions from a host of other partners like Pandora and imeem. Millions of people will doubtless stumble across the new feature on their own as they run searches for their favorite bands, but Google also has a few tricks up its sleeve to get the word out. We’re hearing that a number of well known artists will soon be actively promoting the service, offering exclusive content to fans who Google them.

We’ve heard that artists will be offering songs that can only be found through Google search, some of which will be given away for free. Over 20 artists are involved. Beyond that details are still scant, but we hear that the new promotion will start running soon — perhaps later this week.

Site builder Webs.com (formerly known as Freewebs) is launching a new App Store today with the hopes of helping its members customize their sites with rich, dynamic web apps without having to deal with widgets. The company is adopting a model similar to Facebook Platform, inviting developers to build applications that users can install on their Webs.com pages from a central directory.

Webs CEO Haroon Mokhtarzada says that one of the biggest problems with traditional website builders is that they generate static content, and it’s up to the site owner to continuously provide new content in order to engage readers. That’s fine in some cases (like for business websites), but most people have a tough time coming up with quality content on a regular basis. But he says that rich applications, which offer users a more dynamic experience, can help.

Jed Stremel, Facebook’s Director of Mobile who has been with the company for four years, has resigned, according to a post on his Facebook profile. Stremel was charged with leading the company’s mobile strategy, and was previously involved in Business Development at Facebook.

Below is Stremel’s bio, taken from last year’s MobileBeat conference page.

Jed Stremel oversees Facebook’s mobile strategy transforming how individuals find and express information relevant to their life. Prior to Facebook, Jed played key partnership, business operations, and strategic roles at high-growth businesses. He spearheaded mobile initiatives for Yahoo! building the company’s efforts to empower seamless communications across SMS, WAP, Java, BREW, and other mobile technologies. At Tellme Jed managed distribution, promotion, and licensing relationships with leading online and telecommunications partners.

YouTube has just posted a series of videos highlighting one the more impressive feats of Mother Nature: the colorful transition from summer to fall. It may sound a bit lame, but if you’ve ever enjoyed the changing colors of autumn leaves or the charming landscape of a local pumpkin patch, the videos are well worth a look (they remind me a bit of the Planet Earth series that came out a few years ago). You can find the four videos featured at the top of YouTube’s homepage, or you can check out the ones we’ve embedded below.

Over the last six months we’ve heard quite a bit about Vevo, a premium content site that’s been called a ‘Hulu for music videos’. The site was originally founded by UMG in a partnership with YouTube and has since added Sony Music Group, with negotiations onging with EMI and Warner. But while plenty has been said about its partners, we still haven’t seen much that shows what the site actually looks like.

Today it looks like Vevo decided to peek out from under the covers, though its appearance was short lived. Our tipster noticed a number of artists who had apparently been given Vevo-linked YouTube accounts, with names like EminemVEVO and DonnaSummerVEVO. Videos from these users look nearly identical to the music videos scattered throughout YouTube, but with one key difference: there’s VEVO branding on the bottom right hand side of the player.

The Foo Fighters will be streaming a concert live tomorrow night on Facebook, direct from the band’s Studio 606 headquarters in Los Angeles. You can RSVP to the event here, and stream it live here beginning at 7 PM PST tomorrow. As with Facebook’s other recent video streaming events, users will be invited to update their status messages with their thoughts about the concert, which will draw in even more fans as they see the updates in their news feeds. The live video will be powered by Livestream.

Live concert streams seem to be a growing trend for the web’s most popular content and social sites. Last week MySpace streamed their Secret Show Weezer concert in San Francisco. And earlier this week YouTube streamed a U2 concert from the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA.

Personal genomics startup 23andMe has just gone through a round of layoffs, we’ve confirmed. The company declined to comment on how many people were laid off, but offered this statement:

We have reduced our staffing levels in a restructuring of our workforce. This was a very difficult decision, but one that we felt was necessary to achieve 23andMe’s long-term business development goals and maintain our strength in the industry.

These cuts, which are a reflection of the current economic environment all companies are facing, will allow us to continue to invest in the growth of our Personal Genome Service and research endeavors.

Ustream has just started to roll out a new feature for its live video streams that allows commenters to syndicate their thoughts across four of the web’s largest social sites: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and AIM instant messenger. The feature will go live for Featured shows beginning on Monday, and everyone else will have access soon thereafter.

The feature is similar to what Facebook has offered for its video broadcasts (like the one it had for President Obama’s inauguration), where users are invited to update their statuses in real-time as they watch a video. Except with Ustream’s comments, users will be able to check off boxes at the top of the chat window to choose if they’d like to broadcast their updates across multiple services. Each update from the Ustream ‘Social Stream’ box will also include a link to the video you’re watching, which means that the feature can help videos go viral quickly.

Google has just debuted a new form of advertising called AdWords Comparison Ads — a special kind of ad that will prompt users to view a list of sponsored products in a structured format. To get started, Google is running the ads for queries related to the mortgage market, though it has plans to eventually expand beyond that. The ads are in a limited rollout for now, with only some users in some states seeing them.

Here’s how Google describes the new ad type:

AdWords uses a host of targeting and relevancy signals to determine the best ads for each query. However, sometimes a user’s query doesn’t provide enough information for us to confidently predict what they want. Take, for example, users who search for “mortgage.” Do they want a new home loan or a refinance? Do they want a fixed rate or an adjustable rate loan? Comparison Ads improves the ad experience on Google.com by letting users specify exactly what they are looking for and helping them quickly compare relevant offers side by side.

Facebook’s VP of Communications and Public Policy Elliot Schrage has posted an update to the site’s blog outlining a major rewrite Facebook is proposing for its Privacy Policy. Schrage writes that the new version eliminates the legalese of the privacy policy the company has used up until now, spelling out what the site is doing with user data in more explicit terms. You can find the proposed document here and the current privacy policy here.

The new terms are certainly easier to read, and they also contain some significant changes (including a couple Schrage doesn’t point out). One of these seems to indicate that Facebook may well be releasing location-related features soon (this is the first time any language related to location has appeared in any of Facebook’s policy documents, Facebook has confirmed) :

“Location Information. When you share your location with others or add a location to something you post, we treat that like any other content you post (for example, it is subject to your privacy settings). If we offer a service that supports this type of location sharing we will present you with an opt-in choice of whether you want to participate.”

Last March I wrote a preview post showing off Lala’s upcoming iPhone app, which gives users the ability to stream their entire music collection from the cloud, without having to worry about syncing their files. At the time Lala wasn’t ready to give a release date for the app, but our impression was that it was due out fairly soon. Obviously that wasn’t the case. But now we’ve gotten our hands on the latest version of Lala for the iPhone, which was just submitted to Apple for approval. And it’s safe to say that it was worth the wait.

For those that haven’t used Lala before, here’s a quick overview of the service: Lala revolves around the concept of the ‘web song’ — you’re allowed to listen to any song you want totally free exactly once. If you like it, you can then pay 10 cents for the right to stream it as many times as you’d like from then on. This means that you can ‘purchase’ and entire album for around a dollar. You can also use Lala’s Music Mover tool to upload your entire library of MP3s to the cloud free of charge. This is all built on top of a very slick interface, but so far it has come with one downside: because all of the songs are streamed, users didn’t have a way to access them when they weren’t at a computer. Lala’s iPhone app changes that.

Google has just launched into a surprise roundtable at its music event in Hollywood, where a number of top music executives and artists are discussing the news and the music industry. I’m live blogging my notes below (everything paraphrased).

Guests:
Mos Def
Wendy Nussbaum (UMG)
Steve Savoca (Domino Recording)
Syd Schwartz (EMI)
Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park)
Ryan Tedder (OneRepublic)

MS: We used to be called Hybrid Theory. We settled on Lincoln Park, we went online to see if we could get our URL. We were online early on, changed the name of the band to get URL that would give the fans the most direct link to our fans.
Q: Did you ever think international? Do you think about the French version of the Linkin Park website?
MS: We’re in the process of doing that right now to create an easier experience for fans in Asia and Europe..

I’m here at Capitol Records in Hollywood, California for a special media event where Lala, MySpace, iLike, Google and others are officially announcing the launch of Google’s Music Onebox — a special new kind of Google search result that will let you instantly stream songs directly from Google’s results page. We first broke the news of the feature’s impending launch last week, though none of the companies involved have been willing to comment on it until now.

Here’s how the new feature will work: Onebox will let users stream songs directly from Google’s search result page, and will also include additional content like tour information and music videos (the actual content shown will vary depending on the partner — more on that later). Enter a query for “Use Somebody”, and you’re going to see a small ‘play’ button in your search result that lets you stream the Kings of Leon song in its entirety, or buy the song. Clicking on the play button will bring up a small browser window that will immediately start streaming your song.