Twitter’s Trending Topics area is one of the easiest things to game on the web. Even when trends start out as real items, spammers often latch onto them with bogus tweets hoping to ride the wave and get some people seeing their spammy nonsense. Today, Twitter is acknowledging this.

In a post on its blog, Twitter notes that the “noisiness of the conversation” has led Trends to be less interesting. So beginning today they’re going to be experimenting with ways to surface more relevant tweets in this area. While they don’t come out and say it, the implication here seems pretty clear: They’ll be in some way curating the topics and the tweets. It’s not clear if this will be algorithmic or manual yet.

In the Steven Spielberg movie Minority Report (yes, I make some reference to it about once a week), there’s a scene in which John Anderton (Tom Cruise’s character) is walking through an urban retail center and his eyes are getting scanned as he moves, which is serving up custom greetings and deals from retailers. It’s both creepy and cool. But that movie is set in 2054, we’re not there yet. But AT&T had a demo at its Tech Showcase today that is inching closer to that.

As you can see in the video below, the idea behind AT&T’s system is that you can walk around a city with a phone in your pocket and get alerted when a nearby retailer has a deal for you. Users of Foursquare and soon Loopt will recognize this concept, but AT&T’s idea is a bit different. By using AT&T’s network as the bridge to be constantly updating your location (assuming, of course, you opt-in to such a feature), these retailers are able to push these coupons to your phone via SMS. Currently, something like Foursquare requires that you “check-in” to a place to see that there is a deal there or nearby.

Last month, I lashed out against cable companies and their cable boxes because they are junk. Absolute trash. The hardware is slow, the UIs are terrible, and the remotes are like Fisher Price toys. This is 2009, not 1989.

Today in San Francisco, AT&T held a Tech Showcase to show off some of the new innovations they are working on in their labs. One such thing I got a demo of was a way to use your iPhone to search television content simply by using your voice. While you may think something like this is less than ideal, it’s fast and very accurate. Watch below as the demonstration goes from simple to more complex. And, of course, a regular touch-based remote is included as well to select things.

Over the past few weeks, it’s definitely been crunchtime as we’ve been putting together the panels and demos for our Realtime CrunchUp on November 20 in San Francisco. Get your tickets here. After much back and forth, and with the help of our Realtime Board, we finally have an agenda we are very excited to present (see below).

Speakers will include Twitter COO Dick Costolo, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Facebook VP of Product Chris Cox, Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley, angel investor Ron Conway, FriendFeed co-founders (and now-Facebook VPs) Paul Buchheit and Bret Taylor. The CrunchUp will take place at the Intercontinental Hotel in San Francisco and will kick off with a big roundtable discussion and one-on-one interviews, followed by startup demos and panel discussions drilling down into geo streams, media streams, marketing, and venture capital.

With most online services, the idea behind advertising is to get people to come to your site to make some sort of transaction. Most of the time, that doesn’t happen. In fact, even if they click on an ad to come to your site, 98% of the time, those users will leave without buying anything, according to the advertising startup Adroll. A new service they are offering hopes to help with that problem.

The idea of ad “retargeting” is not at all new. A ton of big brands and advertising platforms use it to try to lure users back to sites using the fact that they know they already visited once. The difference with Adroll’s new RoundTrip product is that they are making the practice accessible to any online advertiser to use. Previously, this type of campaign was reserved for those who were willing to spend a lot of money for this much more highly targeted ad type.

If you spend any amount of time using the Internet as we know it today, chances are you have suffered some inconvenience from the variety of interpretations of the various “standards” used to create the web. Every web browser renders web pages slightly differently; some Flash content isn’t compatible with older versions of Flash (and some versions of Flash aren’t supported on some operating systems at all!), etc. If you make your living creating web content, all of those problems may be amplified several times. Doesn’t it make you long for a real standard, where content is king, and presentation of said content is the same, regardless of whether you’re shopping for shoes or looking for an academic journal? The Gopher protocol, created in the early 1990s, had all that, and it ain’t dead yet!

Online real estate broker Redfin is revamping its website to add recent data and photos of recent home sales as well as links to blog discussions of a listing. The Seattle-based startup, which is profitable, represents buyers and sellers in home real estate transactions for far less than the industry rates that take 5%-6% of the sale price of a home and split it between buy and sell brokers. On the buy side they reimburse 50% of the fee they receive back to the buyer. On the sell side they charge a $5,000 – $7,000 flat fee. The normal broker fees on a million dollar house are up to $60,000, so the savings for the consumer can be significant.

With the addition of 9.6 million photos for 1.4 million recent property sales, the total amount of data and photos stored by Redfin has increased by 340%, empowering consumers with more information about the homes they are considering buying. With the upgrade, Redfin users can access sales information of properties within 15 minutes of the property’s being taken off the market, including the photos used to sell the property, and information about the properties’ amenities. Redfin mashes this info up with public records, giving the prospective home buyer greater insight into the history of a property.

Zyxio is a Las Vegas based startup that we’ve been tracking for a while now. They’ve developed proprietary technology called SensaWaft that lets people control computers via air flow. As in, you can control a mechanical device, or a mouse pointer on a screen, or whatever, by blowing. How hard you blow, as well as minute differences in direction, are converted to commands.

The possible products from the technology are limitless. Combine this with voice recognition for less dangerous in-car computing. Or design applications to help the handicapped. You can get an idea for how the technology works in the video below.

The company is busy productizing the technology. But today they’re launching a contest to crowdsource new product ideas. If you have an amazing idea for the technology, you can get paid to help them build a product around it. And if you just want to vote on ideas from others, you can do that too.

Go to BeAMindBlower and register for more details. Submit your idea in as much or as little detail as you like. Others can register and vote. At the end of November the company will take the top ranked ideas and put them to a final round of voting, which ends on December 13.

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.

Last week Google launched the Music Onebox — a special new music search product that lets users stream songs in their entirety for free. Today, Yahoo Video is answering by improving its music video search offering. When you search for a song or artists, Yahoo will extract music videos of the most popular songs and albums for that artists or band. It appears that most of the songs are pulled from YouTube, Last.fm and other music sites.

So a search for U2 on Yahoo Video will show a list of the band’s albums, such as The Joshua Tree, and the music videos for popular songs, such as “Beautiful Day.” When you click on an album, you’ll see the music videos for all of the songs on the album. If you click on an album or song, it will show videos for the album or song in an overlay page.

Back in August, we covered the launch of TwitCause, a service not unlike Causes on Facebook, only built on top of Twitter. Basically, they find a cause to support (partially based on community feedback) and use Twitter to drive awareness for it. They also ask that you donate some money if you find the cause worthy. But today brings a new little twist: A sponsor willing to pay for any Twitter user who tweet out their support for a cause. Ice cream maker Häagen-Dazs has stepped up to do this to try and save honeybees.

A year ago, KillerStartups bought the killer domain name Startups.com for a few hundred thousand dollars. The company didn’t do anything with it other than redirect to the KillerStartups blog. Today, it realunched as a Q&A site for business questions.

Want to know “How to edit a business video before uploading it to YouTube”, “What is the typical annual income of a freelance webdesigner”, or “How can I copyright an idea?” (Answer: You can’t. Ideas aren’t protected by copyright). Well, you might not find the answers quite yet on Startups.com, but KillerStartups CEO Gonzalo Arzuaga is hoping that you will soon.

Another day, another Android phone. I believe we will soon come to a day when Android phones will be looked at with the same jaundiced eye as, say, the latest LG Chocolate, but since that day hasn’t come, I’ll share a few observations with Verizon’s new $99 Hero-alike, the Eris.

The Eris is basically a mini Hero. It’s slightly thinner and clad in all black and but the Sense UI is in place and all of the things that made the Hero great – responsive OS, apps, and social networking connectivity – are here. One thing lacking, however, is the “latest” version of Android with its superior navigation application and multi-touch.

Remember, remember, the 9th of November!
Gadgets, technology, and beer.
I see no reason why gadgets and tech
should ever bring little cheer.

Last year’s Columbus meetup was a huge success, and folks have been asking me when we’ll do it again. Well mark your calendars for Monday, November 9, and join us for a friendly evening of networking and libations at the Surly Girl Saloon, my favorite cowgirl/pirate themed bar!

The latest twist in the ongoing settlement talks between Google and book authors is that yesterday, the judge in the case denied an attempt by photographers to become part of the settlement. In the decision (embedded below), Judge Denny Chin basically ruled that photographers are not authors, and that the settlement only covers “word-based material,” with the exception of illustrations in children’s books.

The judge writes that the motion was filed too late, and that in any case, the current settlement does not preclude photographers from bringing their own lawsuit.

Scripps Networks Interactive, owner and operator of the Food Network and HGTV lifestyle television networks, is to acquire a controlling interest of 65% in the Travel Channel at a $975 million valuation and enter into a joint venture with current owner Cox Communications.

The network, which will be controlled by Scripps, was put up for auction last Summer and attracted interest from other juggernauts such as News Corp and NBC Universal. Cox said in June 2009 that it had received unsolicited offers for the Travel Channel, which it acquired from Discovery Communications back in 2007.

Everlater has secured an undisclosed Series A round of funding led by Highway 12 Ventures, to help the startup “expand its development, marketing and sales efforts”. Terms of the financing were not disclosed, but Highway 12 Ventures’ Managing Partner Mark Solon informs us that it was an initial seed round of less than $1 million.

Everlater is a place where you can basically record your travel experiences, share them with others, and discover new travel ideas from your social graph and other travelers that match your profile. The goal of the service is to centralize all travel conversations and information sharing into a single place.

A source just tipped us on some interesting changes Google-owned YouTube has made that give its partners more control over the blocking of video content they upload to the service.

Basically, there are two new buttons in the interface for partners. One says ‘Block by Country’ and provides content partners with the ability to geo-block a single video rather than an entire account, an oft-requested feature that allows partners to restrict the geographical rights for specific videos. This can be helpful for blocking a clip in a region where it might be culturally offensive or where rights issues prevent an account for having distribution rights in a handful of countries.

The second button reads ‘Enable Auto Block outside Ownership’ (yes, that’s a confusing name). The purpose of the button is similar to the first button, but is for content owners who only have rights to a video in a single region. Using this feature they can quickly claim rights to that one region, while automatically blocking access everywhere else.

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.

[France] Paris-based Deezer is not waiting for Spotify to expand into new territories and is moving forward with its own plans pretty quickly. The French startup recently raised $9.5 million (€6.5 million), bringing the total invested into the company to nearly $20 million, and today the company’s launching its previously rumored premium offering and a couple of new products.

Basically, the Deezer website, where users can listen to streaming music and create playlists, will remain free of charge while users who would like better sound quality (up to 320 kb/s) and no more advertisements can opt to pay €4.99 per month for Deezer HQ. The Premium offering (€9.99 / month) is the most interesting though, since it gives users the opportunity to download a full-fledged Adobe AIR desktop application and lets them gain access to their accounts through a wide range of mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPod Touch and multiple Android-run and Blackberry devices.