Previously, Loopt was more of a passive service — you started it up on some device and it kept track of where you were. Other users could see where you were if they opened the app too, but generally it wasn’t about pinging your friends to let them know where you are and what you were doing. But Pulse makes Loopt much more of an active service. It recommends hot places, hot events, and lets you know what your friends are up to.

This new feature is already live on Loopt’s website, but as we alluded to back in May, this will also be a part of the Loopt 2.0 iPhone app, which should be released shortly. But things have even changed since then. As you can see in the screenshots, a key feature of this new Loopt is the idea of the “Check In.” Obviously, this is a direct reaction to competitors like Foursquare and Gowalla which are built around that very idea. This is a key part of the new Loopt as checking in helps it recommend things for your friends to do.

But Loopt is also using other data to recommend places. It has a partnership with Zagat to get restaurant information and pulls data from sources like Citysearch to further its recommendations. All of this data has allowed Loopt to create what founder Sam Altman refers to as a “local search engine.”

And this is altering Loopt’s business as well. As we’ve previously covered, location is a potentially powerful tool for business models involving things like coupons. Foursquare is starting to delve into this, but it isn’t yet making money from it. This new version of Loopt is taking full advantage of this. The company has already struck deals with partners such as Jack In The Box to serve up virtual coupons when users of Loopt are nearby a restaurant.

Fans of Loopt will still recognize many of the features of the service, but everything has been improved, Altman says. One thing not included however is Mix, Loopt’s service that helped users potentially find dates. That was spun off into its own app last month.

Loopt also offers some things that Foursquare doesn’t such as the ability to see where all your friends are checked in on an actual map (rather than just a list of where they are). And you can also see not only that friends are at a particular place, but how others have rated it (with a smiley face or a frowning face). This allows you to see if a restaurant is not good, for example.

The iPhone is proving to be a boon for location-based services, but it also has a very big weakness: Third-party apps cannot run in the background. This is one reason why the previous version of Loopt didn’t work well on the device; it kept track of your location, but only when you had it open. Loopt recently launched a new feature that allows you to get around this by pinging your phone to get your location with the help of the carrier. But that service costs extra money, a huge barrier. Moving to the concept of check-ins seems like a better way to keep people using your application.

So can Loopt take on the younger location-based upstarts with its new features? We’ll see, but Loopt has a couple of big advantages: 1) It works on over 100 mobile devices (Foursquare, for example, works on only a few right now — but any phone can access its mobile website). 2) Apple seems to love Loopt. They’ve included it in commercials, and routinely feature it in the App Store.

Disclosure: Loopt offers a TechCrunch branded version of the service here.

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Brightkite was one of the early players in the location-based social networking game, which is a space that is growing rapidly. Originally a TechStars startup, Brightkite was bought in April by Limbo and has been flying a bit under the radar as a fresh crop of location-based services have popped up including the new favorite, Foursquare.

A few weeks ago, the startup launched Brightkite 2.0 for the web, which was chock full of new and noteworthy features. Today, the much-awaited Brightkite 2.0 for the iPhone, which is free, hit the app store.

The app contains much of the same functionality has the new version of the web site. One of the main changes is the new friend model in the app. Brightkite friendships has been redesigned to let people “subscribe” to your public posts by becoming a fan, but only you decide who’s a friend. While fans have limited access, Friends get more access and privileges to your posts. Brightkite says it’s a way of taking the pressure of users who don’t want to deny an acquaintance access to see their posts.

The new version has also upgraded privacy settings and sharing options, to share with just friends or everyone. You can also share posts to Twitter and Facebook invididually and can post with out location included. And the app contains much of the new streaming filters that are included on the web, which allow customization of the people, locations, and type of posts you want to see. Other features include stats, which lets you see the number of views on your posts, popularity of a post, visitors to a place, and more. You can also rate other users’ posts with a thumbs up or thumbs down.

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Brightkite

It’s not entirely clear when Brightkite 2.0 will launch, but indications are that it will be soon. Users have been receiving notices about it. We’ve obtained a whole bunch of screenshots purported to be of the new version. We’ve reached out to the company to verify these, but they definitely look legitimate.

So what’s new? The first thing you’ll notice is that the whole look and feel of the site has been revamped. Gone is a lot of the clutter that distracts from the main location feed. This has been replaced by a revamped top toolbar, and a new bottom toolbar (think: Facebook).

Filters are a key part of Brightkite now. Rather than having three different main streams (Me & My Friends, Around Me, Universe), there is now one with a few different filters. There are also new filters to sort through people using the service by factors like location, sex, and age.

Checking-in has been simplified, as has adding a new place. And Brightkite 2.0 promises simplified privacy settings so you can more easily set where to send you updates (to the public, or just your friends — to Twitter and/or Facebook).

Also new is the ability to “like” other people’s updates. Obviously, this is similar to the functionality found on FriendFeed and Facebook.

But the biggest change to Brightkite is that it is going asynchronous. That is to say, rather than forcing you to accept a friend request to enable other people to see you updates, those people can now simply follow you without any confirmation needed, like on Twitter. They will become your “Fans” while people you also follow back are your “Friends”.

This is an interesting move since Brightkite is a location-based service, and privacy remains the main issue for why all services, like Facebook, don’t switch to this model.

Below, find more screenshots.

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The Android userbase may not be quite as big as that of iPhone OS – but man, they are one loud bunch. More so than any smartphone platform past, users of these two operating systems tend to consider themselves rivals of sorts; if you release an application for one, users of the other will begin to clamor almost immediately.

It’s been about 8 months since the launch of their iPhone app, but geo-centric social network Brightkite is about to hush the calls of Android-toting Brightkite users everywhere. Brightkite’s CMO and Co-Founder Rob Lawson just wrote in to let us know that Brightkite’s Android debut should be submitted to the Android Market within the next few days, hopefully going live to all sometime within the next week.

We’ve just cracked open a big barrel of Brightkite beta. Read on for our first impressions – or better yet, read on to find out how you can get beta access as well.

First Impressions: If you liked what you saw of the iPhone app, you’ll probably like the Android app just as much – if not more. At first glance, I thought the Android app was missing a ton of functionality – that is, it seem that everything that’s placed in the row of tabs at the bottom of the iPhone port, such as Friends, the “Nearby” search function, Messaging, etc, was absent. Then I remembered that Android handsets have the advantage of a “Menu” hardware key. Pressed that – sure enough, everything I was looking for was tucked right in that little slide out drawer. It’s a great design decision; when it comes to designing for tiny mobile handset screens, every pixel counts. Moving these navigation items behind a single button press frees up about 15% of the screen real estate.

The application’s interface is dead simple, whilst still providing just about every bit of Brightkite-based functionality you’d expect of it. In fact, we’re having a hard time finding anything you could do in the full-blown Brightkite web interface that you couldn’t do in this app. Check ins? Of course. Messaging? Yep. Search, friend management, even stuff as trivial as editing your profile picture – it’s all here.

The interface is well polished, and the functionality is exhaustive – so is it perfect? Not quite. Just like most older brothers, the iPhone port is quite a bit faster than its fresh-faced Android sibling. The only time the Android app seemed quicker than the iPhone version was during the initial startup; after that, most actions took 2-3x longer. Of course, the iPhone release has been around for 8 months, and we’re dealing with beta software on the Android end. Chances are there’s some room for optimization.

Beta access:

You’re probably tired of hearing us blabber on at this point. iPhone this, Android that – you get it. You just want to play with it yourself.

Fortunately, that’s pretty easy. Brightkite has sent over a few scannable QR codes which will get anyone with an Android phone into the beta. Here’s how:

1. Make sure you can install applications that aren’t from the Android Market. To do so: Hit the menu, then go to Settings, then Applications, then check the “Unknown Sources” option.
2. If you haven’t already, install the “Barcode Scanner” application from the Market. You’ll need this to scan the QR code below.
3. Scan the proper code below. No need to print the QR code out – Barcode Scanner should be able to read it right off your monitor. It will open your browser to the proper page, and download should begin.

If you’re running Android v1.5, otherwise known as “Cupcake”:

If, for some reason, you’re still on Android v1.1:

Disclosure: Brightkite’s competitor Loopt should be considered a TechCrunch sponsor, and Brightkite helped pay for the booze at a recent Crunchgear reader meetup.

[PSGallery=2j8rwq53dv]

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The startup was one of six finalists – selected out of a pool of 50 applications – invited by Microsoft to come present ideas for applications running on Windows Mobile and get certified for the upcoming Windows Marketplace for Mobile, which is supposed to become the big, central commerce and distribution point for WinMo apps that is currently lacking.

The company is widely expected to introduce the latest iteration of Windows Mobile at next month’s TechED 2009 conference in Los Angeles (11 May), although devices running Windows Mobile 6.5 won’t start shipping until after the Summer. Microsoft’s a heavyweight in the smartphone OS market but is getting some serious heat from Apple and its iPhone / App Store (which is about to hit 1 billion downloads), and is going to be facing even more stiff competition on the mobile application front from RIM / Blackberry, Nokia and Google Android in the coming years.

Microsoft is hoping to up the ante with its new mobile OS and its own version of the App Store, but is evidently going to need a lot of good mobile applications once the Windows Marketplace kicks off, and in that sense hosting a competition was probably a good idea (there will be more of those in Europe and Asia in the near future by the way). Too bad for Microsoft, there was little buzz about the event and press coverage of the outcome is virtually nowhere to be found.

Anyway, the six finalists were:

Brighkite, the location-based social networking service
Motolingo, a telematics solution that will monitor car diagnostics and report mobile phone behavior in the car
VisTracks, enterprise app for real-time product location and tracking company shipments
Networks in Motion, turns GPS-enabled mobile phones into full-featured navigation devices
VoiceMuffler, real-time, two-way speech-to-speech translation designed for foreign military personnel and civilian travelers
DJ Nitrogen, facilitates legal sharing of user-generated content, such as ringtones and music mash-ups

Yesterday, Senior Business Development Manager on Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team Brian Hoskins announced Networks in Motion to be the winner, on Twitter no less.

The startup is the maker of Gokivo Navigator, an interesting application that brings real-time turn-by-turn visual and audible directions to GPS-enabled mobile phones, combined with hyper-local search and location-based services. In light of the event, Gokivo got some new features to its core offering, including the ability for users to update their Facebook profile with the specific place they are (address/map). They’re on our radar now.

Besides the advice it received from and connections it made with Microsoft developers and external experts at the Incubation Week, Networks in Motion will receive ‘early placement’ in Windows Marketplace for Mobile once it’s launched, and also took home a Zune music player.

(Via Digits)

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In the nascent world of mobile social networking, there are the big dogs (Facebook and MySpace) and everyone who wants to be a big dog. Two of the puppies just got bigger. Limbo is buying Brightkite, which all the tech kids are raving about, in a nearly all-stock transaction. It will change its name to Brightkite in a re-branding move, and gain Brightkite’s engineering team and product smarts. Limbo CEO Jonathon Linner will remain as CEO, while Brightkite founders Martin May and Brady Becker will take over product management and design.

Meanwhile, Limbo brings a lot of cash to the table, having just raised a previously undisclosed $9 million round of financing in January, 2009. Nexit Ventrures was the lead, and existing investors Azure Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and New Enterprise Associates also participated. Brightkite, meanwhile, started out as a TechStars startup and was funded with just $1 million in angel money. This marks the third exit from TechStars’s Class of 2007—the other two being SocialThing to AOL and IntenseDebate to Automattic.

The combined company will employ 35 people and boast two million active users. That should keep it in the running with other growing mobile social networks such as Loopt, which has more than one million active users, Mig33, which may have 10 million or more and MocoSpace, which has 3.5 million active users. The enlarged engineering team should help Limbo/Brightkite push out new features at a faster pace and keep up with the front pack.

Both Limbo and Brightkite have iPhone apps, and both use Facebook Connect to plug into people’s existing social network. Here is how we described the Brightkite app when it first came out:

The app allows users to syndicate their current location to their friends, meet nearby Brightkite users, and lifestream with the equivalent of geo-encoded Tweets. The application is tied to Yahoo’s Fire Eagle, which allows users to manage their location from a number of other services. The site also uses databases to automatically associate POI’s and cross streets with GPS locations, so user positions aren’t simply displayed as coordinates.

Meanwhile, Limbo is more centered around the activities of the people around you and connecting with them that way. We included Limbo in this roundup, where we concluded it could do a better job with locating the exact position of friends on a map. Brightkite’s Fire Eagle implementation should help with that.

Something tells me this is just the beginning of the consolidation in mobile social networking.

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We all know how tagging makes the Web a richer place (by tapping into people’s desire to categorize things and share those categories, ad-hoc though they may be, with the everyone else). Tagging brings a bottoms-up order to the Web by making information more searchable and thus easier to find. Now it is time to start tagging the world. The real world.

In fact, millions of people are already doing so every time they upload a geo-coded photo to Flickr, add a review to Yelp, Tweet about a specific place, or use any of the dozens of geo-aware social apps springing up all over the place. They are not just tagging the world with keywords, they are commenting on it and annotating it in tiny little bursts. To get a sense of what some of this activity looks like, check out Twittervision or Flickrvision, which show Tweets and Flickr photos, respectively, on a map as they are posted to the Web.

Services such as Plazes (now owned by Nokia), Brightkite, and Nokia’s new Friend View app all combine social communications and location information, making them visible on a map.

Most mobile social networks, on GPS phones at least, put geo-labels on everything you do. FriendFeed just recently started adding Google maps for any messages that contain location information, and Yahoo’s Fire Eagle makes it easy for other services to add their own geo-location layer.

Geo-coded communications are becoming more and more common, and this is just the start. I like to complain about the increased noise level that lifestreaming services are bringing into our lives. While that continues to be a growing problem on an individual basis for people who want to tune in and use these services (”You’re at the bus stop? Great. Keep those Tweets coming.”), on an aggregate level all the seemingly useless drivel has the potential to become useful meta-data.

And this is not limited to GPS-enabled services. You can tag Tweets, for instance, with hashmark codes that act as tags for places and things (”#bus-stop”, “#centralpark”). All of these messages get dumped into databases on the Web, which are then searchable. And that is where things get interesting. Chris Brogan explains in a post titled “Secrets of the Annotated World”:

Services like Twitter and FriendFeed and Flickr and Facebook and LinkedIn and more are hosting conversations around you that might be of value to you. . . . If you’re not using services like Yelp and BrightKite, (and you could name several others), you’re missing some of the glyphs and warnings we’re leaving on the landscape to tell you about the way things are versus the way things are marketed. You’re missing chance encounters. You’re missing stray opportunities.

Again, you don’t have to get involved. It’s just that we are, and we’re passing many more notes than you can imagine.

I am glad there are people out there like Chris who are obsessive about geo-coding everything they do. They are like the early taggers, the two percent or so of people on Flickr, Delicious, and other services who did all the heavy lifting of organizing and categorizing all the data that was dumped into them. The more that data can be sliced and diced, the more useful it becomes. And location data is particularly valuable because it relates to places, people, and events in the real world.

Every geo-coded Tweet, Flickr photo, or restaurant review is adding a tag or comment to the world that is then searchable by others. It is what will make visions like Tonchidot’s Sekai Camera a reality. It is why Fotonauts, an upcoming photo app that launched at TC50, makes it easy to geo-tag every photo in an album via Google Maps or Wikipedia. Everything in the world will be tagged. But it is such a huge task that the only way to do it is if we all pitch in. (Or at least if Chris and his friends pitch in—the rest of us can freeload).

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Brightkite, a geo-aware social network from the TechStars class of 2007, has given us a peek at the site’s upcoming iPhone application, due to appear in the App Store in the next few weeks (pending Apple’s approval process).

Brightkite’s featureset will be familiar to users of similar applications like Loopt. The app allows users to syndicate their current location to their friends, meet nearby Brightkite users, and lifestream with the equivalent of geo-encoded Tweets. The application is tied to Yahoo’s Fire Eagle, which allows users to manage their location from a number of other services. The site also uses databases to automatically associate POI’s and cross streets with GPS locations, so user positions aren’t simply displayed as coordinates.

The application looks impressive, but it will have plenty of competition: there’s already at least six major geo-location networks vying to get some traction on the iPhone. Founder Martin May acknowledges that Brightkite shares many similarities with other geo-enabled social networks, but points out that Brightkite is available worldwide, while most of its competitors are not. He also says that Brightkite’s SMS integration and existing user base of 50,000 users through its website and other mobile platforms may also help give it a leg up, though some of its competitors have estbalished users bases and distributions on other platforms as well.

If you’d like to try Brightkite’s main website (you’ll have to wait a few more days for the iPhone app), you can sign up for the private beta through this special link.

Disclosure: Brightkite competitor Loopt should be considered a TechCrunch sponsor.

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Today TechStars held its third Demo Day, offering a dozen of its startups the chance to display their wares in front of a throng of investors and the media. TechStars is a seed stage investment fund similar to Y Combinator and DreamIt Ventures that gives startups a modest amount of cash (around $5,000 for each founder) and a three month mentorship in exchange for a 5% equity stake in the company. Every year TechStars chooses ten companies from hundreds of applicants to take part in the program. Some of these companies have presented before at last month’s Demo Day in Colorado or in last year’s presentation.

Included in the days festivities were announcements that two TechStars companies have been acquired: madKast (by ShareThis) and IntenseDebate (by Automattic, the maker of WordPress). After AOL’s purchase of SocialThing! in August, that brings the acquisition total from TechStars’ first class to three (of ten graduates). Not too shabby.

Devver

Devver offers a suite of development tools in the cloud that allows developers to run time intensive processes on remote server farms, which it says can improve productivity by 75%. The company is currently focused on the Ruby programming language and automated testing tools (which is says have a multi-billion dollar market), and plans to expand to more lanugages and applications.

Foodzie

Foodzie is an online marketplace that allows artisan food producers to sell their goods in customized mini-stores as part of the Foodzie network. By connecting these stores together, these artisan producers get more exposure than they would otherwise. The site also makes it easy for vendors to quickly change prices or adjust product selections. Foodzie allows producers to keep 75-80% of their revenue, as compared to around 40 or 50% for producers selling through traditional food stores.

Travelfli

Travelfli is an online management system for Frequent Flyer Miles and other rewards programs. After inputting their credentials, users are able to view the number of miles they’ve earned and when they expire at a glance (you can also enter information by emailing in confirmations sent by the airlines, much as you would with TripIt). The site also can monitor airline ticketing systems for openings of “Rewards seats”, and can also suggest when it might not be a good idea to apply Frequent Flyer Miles towards a particular flight.

Ignighter

Ignighter is a group dating site that looks to offer an alternative to one-on-one dating sites like Match.com and eHarmony. The site asks groups of friend to collaborate on a group profile, which displays interests, personality types, and photos of group members. Users can then browse through other groups in their area, using messages or a Wall feature to set up a date (they can also set up a mass invite, notifying multiple groups where they plan to hang out that night). Also see Mixtt, which launched at TechCrunch50.

Gyminee

Gyminee is a fitness tracking application merged with a social network. Users can share their current exercise progress with friends with visually appealing graphs, and can hold friendly competitions (for example, a group of friends could challenge themselves to see who could run the most miles in a month). The site also gives users access to training programs, complete with videos demonstrating how to perform each exercise. As part of the site’s premium features, users will be able to access meal plans (complete with nutrition information on over 50,000 foods) and custom tracking options. Also see Fitbit, a fitness oriented site that launched at TechCrunch50.

Intense Debate

IntenseDebate is an enhanced blog commenting system. Today the company announced that it has been acquired by Automattic.

Artist Exploder

Artist Exploder offers a Facebook application that aims to help musicians transition from MySpace, where they may have established a sizable fan base, to Facebook, which has less of a musician presence. The application allows users to download free songs in return for exposing their friends to musicians, which helps artists expand virally. The application also allows musicians to selectively message specific users (for example, I could send a message to everyone in LA that I have a concert at The Roxy tonight).

Brightkite

Brightkite is a location-based social network that claims to be seeing faster growth than competitors like Loopt. The site allows users to update their position through a number of devices including mobile phones, and can generate a stream of all activities that occur in a given place. Users can choose to either use the service to only find nearby friends, or they can set their data to public so they can meet new friends in the vicinity.

Occipital

Occipital is creating image software that combines elements of image recognition and tagging to create what it hopes will become the next step in image processing software. The software can try to infer location tags on photos haven’t been properly tagged by using data from other images as well as landmark recognition. Occipital is also using the image recognition to use objects as “links” through different photos – for example, I could click on the cover of a book in a photograph to see a listing of other images containing that book. Finally, the software can be used to generate 3D worlds from static photographs, much like those seen on Microsoft’s Photosynth.

App-X

App-X is an enterprise software suite built on the Salesforce Platform at Force.com that aims to help fund managers keep better track of money, deals, and other aspects of their trade. The site is aiming to spread through word of mouth in the investor community, with a stated goal of around 100 customers in the space (which it says would actually make it a very substantial player).

EventVue

EventVue creates social networks based on conferences and events. Because networking is such a valuable component of these conferences, many people would like to see who else will be attending. Users can tag themselves with their companies, job titles, and other criteria, which can help facilitate personal interaction once the conference arrives.

madKast

Widget-maker madKast announced that it will soon be acquired by ShareThis.

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This is the Holy Grail of mobile social networking, and one of the main reasons for taking the networks off the desktop/laptop environment in the first place. Imagine walking into a meeting, classroom, party, bar, subway station, airplane, etc. and seeing profile information about other people in the area, depending on privacy settings. Picture, name, dating status, resume information, etc. The information that is available would be relevant to the setting – quick LinkedIn type information for a business meeting v. Facebook dating status for a bar.

Knowing when your friends are around, and having the ability to meet new people who share your interests (even if it’s just that you are both single), will drive massive usage of networks. But, as with many new services, a chicken and egg problem looms. Until everyone is using this, there is no real reason for anyone to use it. Meetro, an instant messaging service that finds friends based on location, has struggled to gain users over the last couple of years for this reason.

Technical barriers aren’t an issue – cell phone tower triangulation and bluetooth solve a lot of the problems of locating users and transmitting information between phones. What’s harder is just plain getting a critical mass of users.

The Failures

There is a trail of failed attempts at getting this right. Nokia released Nokia Sensor nearly three years ago. It broadcasts information about yourself to others via bluetooth. Never heard of it? Neither has anyone else, although it is still available for download. Google’s Dodgeball is another example that’s fallen flat – it tells friends (and friends of friends) who are within 10 blocks of you where you are and what you are doing.

The New Experiments

A bunch of new startups are giving this a shot, too. In a post yesterday TechCrunch UK mentions Germany’s Aka-Aki, Paris-based Mobiluck and MeetMoi (the lone U.S. startup). Another startup is Copenhagen-based Imity. It’s not surprising that most of the innovation is occurring in Europe. The current approach is to get java-based software on the phone – very few U.S. carriers and handsets allow user-based installs of java apps.

Aka-Aki

Aka-Aki, based in Germany, is just a couple of weeks old. Create a profile and download the java app to your phone. You can also create and join groups that say things about your life, job, etc. When you are near other people who are members, data about you is transmitted to them via bluetooth, and vice versa. Users have control over data flow with privacy settings. And the groups supply another layer of privacy. You may transmit that you are single only to other singles, for example. Or share your sexual orientation only with others with the same orientation.

After a silent launch, word is getting out. Thousands of people in Berlin are using the software, and there is a chance for them to get critical mass there with proper marketing. The company has raised a small seed round from FoundersLink and is currently looking for a larger round.

Imity

Copenhagen based Imity, which launched in April, has also been flying under the radar. Like Aka-Aki it detects other members via bluetooth and send basic profile information to your phone. It also keeps track of people on its website, so you can check that out periodically from your normal computer. It’s bridges mobile and traditional social networks, which may help it gain critical mass. Co-founder Nikolaj Nyholm is also behind Polar Rose, a facial recognition and image tagging service.

Imity went open source in February 2007.

MeetMoi

MeetMoi, the only U.S. based service, is most like Dodgeball – it uses text messaging to help connect people. It’s dating focused – text your location to the service and it notifies other users in your area that you are there. If they are interested, they can contact you. The company has raised $1.5 million from Acadia Woods Partners and is based in New York.

MobiLuck

MobiLuck, based in Paris, is another bluetooth solution similar to Aka-Aki and Imity. Download the software to your phone and it vibrates when other users are nearby. You can then chat with them, send photos, etc.

Update: Per a comment below, we’re adding Britekite to the list. We actually covered them briefly last month as part of the TechStars event.

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Most of these companies are unlaunched and seeking additional angel funding (exceptions are noted). Here are our notes on each – and see Don Dodge for his take:

EventVue builds social networks around conferences (see confabb, an existing competitor). The idea is to let people connect before, during and after conferences in an online space, to add to the physical interaction at the conference itself. The company plans on generating revenue by charging an affiliate fee for each new registration. They are currently looking for $150k in funding.

Intense Debate – see our previous coverage. Intense Debate is a souped-up blog commenting widget that adds a lot of features for publishers and commenters alike. Currently installed on 30 blogs. Installing the plug-in on your blog (WordPress, Blogger, and TypePad) adds threading, comment analytics, bulk comment moderation across all your blogs, user reputation, and comment aggregation. They are looking for $500k in funding.

socialthing! is an ambitious project that simplifies the management of digital content (blogs, photos, music, friends, social networks and links). Users can also synchronize information from and to various social networks from their profile page. Strong viral component. Revenue from advertising. Raising $500k.

J-Squared Media has launched their “Sticky Notes” Facebook application. It has 1.7 million users after six weeks, who have sent over 4 million sticky notes. They are working on several other related Facebook applications and are cash flow positive with $30,000/month in revenue from cost per action advertising. Not seeking funding. More here.

Search-To-Phone is a mobile search service via voice. Call and leave a voicemail asking about a product or service. The request is then routed to the appropriate business to call you back with information and/or a special offer. Built on TellMe and Gold Systems technologies for voice recognition. They’ve signed a business development deal with Excell Services to provess 10 million calls. They are looking for a small capital investment and more partners before launching.

Villij is a recommendation engine that analyzes your online life (social networks, blogs, bookmarks, etc.) to find people who may have similar interests as you. Raising $500k.

MadKast has the honor of being the first TechStars startup to launch. Our previous coverage is here. They’ve made a dead simple way to increase distribution for your blog with one line of javascript or one click for Blogger and TypePad. Once the widget is installed, readers can send a blog post via email, mobile MMS, or social bookmarking networks to friends. They are raising $300k in capital.

FiltrBox is a content monitoring and filtering service for blogs, news sites and other websites. Content is filtered by topics, keywords and context and then delivered to the user via RSS, email and/or text messages. Filters can be adjusted via sliders and will learn what you like over time. Raising $500k in capital.

KBLabs is developing Facebook applications and widgets. Wah! Cool was their first application, which launched four weeks ago. It now has 100k subscribers and is generating 1.5 million page views per week. Other applications include Post Secrets, Motivate Me and Track Bot. The founders are going back to college this Fall but will continue to consult and build Facebook applications. They are not looking for funding.

BrightKite serves location based notifications (”place streaming”) over email, instant messaging of text messages. The idea is to stream content about a place, from a place. Friends are alerted when you are nearby. You receive offers from local businesses. Etc. Targeted towards conferences, bars, parties and public places. It is also a platform for third party applications. Raising $500k in capital.

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