As a reporter covering startups and new product launches, I see a lot of WebEx, GoToMeeting, Glance.net, Adobe Connect, Dimdim and other remote presentation tools on a day-to-day basis. And maybe I’m just on a bad streak of meetings, but they all too often don’t work. So I’m for anything that makes long-distance demos more simple and reliable.

I had a chance to check out a new tool this week that promises to be just that: It’s called Black Tonic, and it’s launching today out of Portland, Ore.-based design and development consultancy Wolverine. Black Tonic is entirely web-based sans plug-in, and works across just about all browsers. People watching a presentation can even tune in via Safari on their iPhones.

Black Tonic is not a screen-sharing tool, so you don’t have to show your whole desktop, with the risk of co-creator David Price’s complaint about competitors’ products: “I hate it when I don’t turn off my Growl notifications and an email from my mom pops up while I’m presenting.” (Yeah, definitely seen that one — but further it’s just awkward to be given a full view of someone’s personal desktop space.) And Black Tonic is not a collaboration tool; all that happens is one person presents a deck of slides and the other watches. (So on the downside, this wouldn’t be good for people who want to work together remotely or want to give a live demo of their site.) The product also includes versioning support and live uploads on the fly. For even more details on its functionality, see Imran’s post over on WebWorkerDaily.

Price compares what Black Tonic does to Google Wave, drop.io, and other real-time browser-based tools. Black Tonic is all HTML and JavaScript, not even the new hype magnet HTML5. Price said they refer to their real-time broadcasting engine as “DOMcasting,” as in the “document object model” coding convention. “We synchronize the DOM between every instance of the web browser,” is how he put it.

Black Tonic is available to the public as of today, starting with a 14-day free trial and after that $15 per month per user.

After spending years in beta, Mozilla’s Weave synchronization tool is finally out in a new version 1.0. Installable as a free extension for Firefox, Weave synchronizes your bookmarks, saved passwords, browsing history and open browser tabs — keeping all your personal data encrypted.

I’ve been taking Weave for a spin, and have found it to be very intuitive. As is true of XMarks, which works with Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari — but concentrates primarily on syncing browser bookmarks — Weave is likely to be especially appreciated by users who want to keep passwords, preferences and personal data uniform across multiple devices. The more mobile devices you use, the more you’ll like it. Weave is available in Firefox through the Tools menu, as seen below.

Once you install Weave (you need Firefox 3.5 or greater), you need to sign in and create an account, after which preferences you save will be stored in the cloud. For those who balk at having personal information stored online, there is an option for setting Weave up on a local server.

If you, as I do, favor Firefox (or the Fennec browser from Mozilla), Weave is likely to become your synchronization tool of choice, as it’s especially attuned to preferences that you set in the browser. According to Mozilla’s post announcing it, “future releases of Weave Sync will add support for synchronizing your browser add-ons, search plugins and other customizations and ultimately everything that makes your Firefox and Web experience personal.”

Mobile marketers are wasting no time trying to cash in on the iPad hype. Jumptap this morning crowed that it was the first to offer a mobile ad solution for Apple’s new tablet, and Motally is extending its analytics offering to support the gadget. The early moves indicate that the iPad will be a battleground between the pure-play mobile advertisers and traditional Internet ad firms. And the lack of Flash support on the iPad tilts the field heavily in favor of the mobile guys.

It’s an easy move for mobile advertising firms to embrace the iPad. The tablet runs the familiar Safari browser and will support all those iPhone apps that have fueled recent growth in the mobile ad space, and which — if recent online trends are any indication — is poised for huge growth. And wireless ad firms are salivating over the iPad’s knockout 9.7-inch touchscreen, which will help marketers make their pitches in more effective ways without crowding out the content that users are looking for in the first place — a feature that mobile phones can’t hope to achieve.

So the mobile guys can easily take advantage of the iPad, but what about the traditional online advertising firms that already have relationships with the big media companies  that want to be on the iPad? After all, the device looks to be a great platform for accessing news and other online content from traditional media outlets, which depend largely on Internet advertising dollars. The traditional online ad players aren’t going to want to give that up.

But most of the online ads supporting the likes of the New York Times or Conde Naste magazines — or most other ad-supported sites, for that matter — are rendered in Flash. So advertisers that want to sell next to Thomas Friedman or in The New Yorker have a few choices: they can invest heavily to rebuild those ads to strip out Flash and make them iPad-friendly, they can lean on the ad-serving platform Apple acquired when it picked up Quattro Wireless, or they can do business with one of the countless smaller players in mobile advertising that deliver ads to the iPhone and other handsets.

Traditional online ad firms have struggled mightily to gain a foothold in wireless, with many having to buy their way in via acquisition if they want a piece. So if the iPad can find a sizable audience, it could substantially increase the value of the pure-play mobile ad guys still left on the field.

Image courtesy Flickr user Serge Melki.

Is the newly launched Apple tablet, the iPad, beautiful? Yes. Drool-worthy, in fact. Will Apple sell a lot of them? If the iPod and the iPhone are anything to go by, then yes — and at $499 for the basic version, they are priced to move. But does the iPad contain anything that could be seen as throwing a lifeline to the foundering ship of traditional media? Well, no.

Once you get past the hype (of which there has been a boatload), the iPad is really just a larger version of the iPod touch, with some interface and usability tweaks thrown in around things like email, games and e-books. Has the iPhone changed the traditional print media business? Not at all — unless you think selling an app for your publication (as Conde Nast has for GQ) is a game-changer.

Yes, the New York Times app looks impressive, with video that plays right inside the newspaper display (although you can do that on the NYT web site, too). But will a fancier app change the nature of the newspaper business or the magazine business? No. Is the Times going to charge for its app, or charge people for content through the app somehow? There was no mention of it in Martin Niesenholtz’s presentation as part of the Apple launch.

Theoretically, in-app sales could add to the bottom line at some newspapers and magazines, if they can convince enough users/readers to pay. But will they pay for the same content they can get online for free? Unlikely — even if they can resize the font and watch videos. Yes, advertising inside the app could bring in additional revenue, but that’s not likely to be a game-changer either.

Could the iPad be used to help create and distribute content or connect to services aimed at specific groups, through the kind of membership-based model with which The Guardian is planning to experiment? Possibly. But that again is a nut that newspapers and magazines will have to crack with or without the iPad, and the existence of the device isn’t necessarily going to make finding the right business model any easier. Could you take someone from a travel story and connect them directly to a travel site to purchase a ticket? Sure you could, but you don’t need an iPad to do that.

Another thing the iPad makes abundantly clear is that if you want to succeed in a world ruled by a giant iPod touch, you had better develop (or acquire, or partner with someone who has) some serious multimedia chops. This device is designed to do large full-color photos, full-screen video (even HD) and much more. If all you have is a traditional newspaper-like page with a few small photos and some grainy video, you are going to get left in the dust.

That might make things easier for magazines like Conde Nast, which are used to dealing with large-format, high-quality images and which understand design. But if you’re a newspaper, let’s be honest — large, high-quality images are not exactly your thing (except for the wonderful Big Picture feature at Boston.com). Many news organizations, including the New York Times, are getting better at doing video, but most of them still have a long way to go.

As many observers have noted (including Robert X. Cringley in a recent blog post), the biggest problem that traditional media entities have right now is a cost base and production system and corporate structure that was designed for one specific platform — namely, the neo-industrial process of laying out and publishing a printed product that is delivered to people’s homes. That structure and process is completely out of whack in relation to the new platform (the web), which is growing in ways the printed version is not. And it’s not just off by a little, it’s off by orders of magnitude.

Think about it this way: Have iTunes and the iPod rescued or saved the music business? Hardly. If anything, they have only accelerated the disruption in that industry, and exposed how out of touch, out of control and cost-prohibitive most of it still is when it comes to doing business online. The web has been doing the same thing to traditional media for the past decade or so, and devices like the iPad are only going to accelerate that process.

Which means that newspapers and magazines still have to figure out what they have that is unique, different and special in a way that makes people want to pay for it. That was the problem before the iPad came along, and it continues to be the central problem facing content creators of all kinds, not just newspapers and magazines. It’s just exacerbated for them because — unlike books — so much of what they traffic in is a commodity, here today and gone tomorrow.

And the iPad, whatever else it might be, is no magic bullet.

Om is drooling over the iPad at the moment, getting ever more excited about the feel and capabilities of Apple’s new device. His thesis is that the Amazon Kindle is dead thanks to the rich media capabilities of the iPad as well as the full software-based keyboard. Oh yeah, and there’s all those apps Apple already has in its App Store, which put the Kindle’s platform efforts to shame.

The iPad already delivers some of the stellar features the Kindle does in order to make that a dedicated e-reader (and as such, better than your smartphone), such as a long battery life and a bigger screen, but instead of offering it in black and white, it offers it in color, complete with rich media. It’s like comparing Kansas and Oz. That rich media experience will change the way organizations deliver their content in that it will allowing them to include video, interactive charts and all sorts of other fun things. The price for rocking your media world? At the low end, an iPad with Wi-Fi will set you back $499, but if you’re willing to splurge there’s a version with more memory and a data plan (that’s extra) for $829. It will be available starting in late March.

Check back for more from Om  later.

Jon von Tetzchner

Opera Software has named Lars Boilesen as the company’s new CEO, replacing Jon S. von Tetzchner, who co-founded the Norwegian company in 1995 and has served as its head ever since. Opera will retain von Tetzchner for strategic help, but the shift to his role marks the end of an era for the company.

Long-time Opera CEO von Tetzchner announced the change himself:

“My decision to assume a new role in Opera is based on a lengthy consideration process. As outgoing Chief Executive, I leave confident in the company’s continued leadership in key markets, our strong management team, our ongoing commitment to innovation, and our robust financial foundation.”

Boilesen has held various management, sales and marketing positions at companies including Alcatel-Lucent, Tandberg Data, and Lego and was previously Opera’s chief commercial officer and a member of Opera’s board. He played a key role in positioning Opera as a cross-platform browser.

“We provide browser technology not only to nearly 100 million consumers worldwide, but also to the major players in the industry: Vodafone, T-Mobile, Nintendo, KDDI, SKT, Nokia, Samsung, Toshiba and Sony Ericsson to name but a few,” said Boileson, in a statement. He added that Opera will continue to work with OEMs and industry players to continue to push the adoption of Opera and the Opera Mobile and Mini browsers.

Opera faces more competition than ever in the browser market. Google has recently released beta versions of its Chrome browser for Mac and Linux, solidifying its cross-platform strategy. Mozilla’s Firefox browser is also available for Windows, the Mac and Linux, and many feel that these two open-source browsers are leading browser innovation.  Net Applications’ most recent browser market share data shows Chrome in third place — ahead of Apple’s Safari — with 4.6 percent global share. Firefox accounts for 24.6 percent of the market, while Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has 62.7 percent. Opera, meanwhile, has only 2.6 percent share.

Going forward, Mozilla and Google have their eyes squarely set on encouraging healthy ecosystems of extensions for their browsers, and both Opera and Internet Explorer have ground to make up in that area. Opera Mobile is also likely to face competition from Mozilla’s Firefox Mobile browser, now out in a release candidate version. Without a doubt, Opera’s greatest challenges will come from Google’s and Mozilla’s open source competitors.

Time this week released its list of the top gadgets of the year, and the Motorola Droid rings in on top. The Droid was chosen for being the first Android phone deemed good enough to be an iPhone competitor. The big screen and physical keyboard were also listed as factors for making it the top device for 2009. The Droid beat out the iPhone 3GS from Apple and the Barnes & Noble Nook reader.

Meanwhile, the web browser in Android is considered to be excellent, and is often compared to Mobile Safari on the iPhone. But competition is always a good thing, so it’s welcome news this week that both Opera Mobile and Mobile Fennec (Firefox) are coming to Android. Opera Mobile has long been considered to be an outstanding mobile browser, and is even included as the default browser on Windows Mobile phones produced by HTC. Mobile Firefox is currently in beta testing on the Windows Mobile platform, with Android support expected to begin next year.

Plus, the Droid Eris has been available on Verizon only for a short while, but the carrier has already issued an update this week to address a number of bugs. The update, which is currently being pushed out to phones, improves the handling of text messaging and other issues that owners had reported. To obtain the update, consumers must wait until their phone indicates an update is available for download.

Also this week, T-Mobile in the U. S. is rolling out an update to the Android Market that supports charging apps to a customer’s phone account. Until now, purchasing apps in the Android Market has always required a credit card. The update is invisible to the user and is being pushed out in phases. To determine if your Market app has been updated, check the version number in the Manage Applications setting. Any version higher than 1660 contains the new feature.

A mobile app needs to be more accessible than a web site, that’s for sure. But it doesn’t necessarily need to be simpler and dumber, as travel search service Kayak learned this year. Now, the company is changing its overall business strategy to address user needs that it only became aware of from seeing how they use the Kayak iPhone app.

Kayak CMO Robert Birge and Chief Architect Bill O'Donnell

When Kayak went to build its first iPhone app earlier this year, Chief Architect Bill O’Donnell told us during a visit this week to GigaOM HQ, it stripped down its travel search functionality to the bare essentials. O’Donnell’s thinking was that the prototypical mobile user was one who just had a flight canceled and needed a replacement reservation to get home, stat. No need for non-urgent and complicated queries, like flexible date search. That strategy worked well enough; the Kayak iPhone app has had 600,000 downloads since February, and currently 5 percent of Kayak’s total search volume takes place on the iPhone, with mobile Safari the site’s third-most popular browser after IE and Firefox. (Kayak also has a BlackBerry app with 4,500 downloads; an Android app was released last week and apps for Windows Mobile and Symbian are coming.)

But users complained loud and clear that they wanted the ability to do everything they could on Kayak’s web site on their phones, so O’Donnell went back to the drawing board to amp up the app’s functionality while maintaining a simple, finger-friendly interface.

As he dug deeper to figure out how to display oversized and dynamic data such as calendar dates for version 2.0 of the iPhone app (which was just released), O’Donnell started to think about the mobile travel experience more holistically. Meanwhile, the business side of the company, according to Kayak CMO Robert Birge, was taking a hard look at the iPhone’s fast-growing user numbers.

Now that those stars have aligned, the company’s next major strategy initiative is actually coming from the iPhone. Kayak has always been a search site; its sole purpose is to help people search across vendor and aggregator sites to get the best travel deals. It makes money from referral fees and ads. But as O’Donnell explained, the leap from a friendly iPhone app interface to travel web sites in order to make reservations is an awful experience. Users have to contend with tiny, virtually unreadable text, Flash sites that don’t load, and squished pages formatted horizontally for a PC.

So starting next year, Kayak plans to offer an iPhone-friendly booking experience. The company is building a wallet system to allow users to book travel using their Kayak accounts. They’ll be able to use their saved credit card, frequent flier numbers and flight preferences, and Kayak will then go enter that data into the providers’ sites and send users an alert when everything has gone through. It’s a major new initiative for the company that should extend back to the web site as well.

It’s also a big change from Kayak’s history as a straightforward search engine that’s careful not to pressure users to even register. O’Donnell and Birge said their business model is still ads and referrals, though, and that any airlines or other vendors that feel uncomfortable with the new system can always opt out.

Still, as the iPhone helps Kayak redefine itself and how it addresses its customers, it shouldn’t stop with concierge services that address the design and usability constraints of a small touchscreen. The company could make itself even more useful by figuring out how to offer a mobile travel experience that incorporates the best and most relevant features of a phone, like real-time access, location awareness and push notifications.

Livestreaming is all the rage today, be it from a handset or home computer with a webcam. But one of the major challenges is how to view that live content on a handset. Wouldn’t it be nice if a company could provide a method for livestreaming to mobiles without a lengthy re-encoding process? Lo and behold, enter Livestream, which today announced its Procaster beta application for Mac and PC at NewTeeVee Live, our annual online video industry conference. Using the iPhone’s native H.264 HTTP streaming, Procaster allows for near-instant broadcasting to iPhones — there’s roughly a 20-second delay from live broadcast to the devices, and multiple handsets can tune into the same stream. Watch NTV Live by clicking here or going to iphone.livestream.com. Here’s a video demo to see how Procaster works:

I took the Procaster software for a short test drive, and I was broadcasting live from my Mac in under five minutes using an integrated webcam and microphone. Procaster can use any attached webcam or microphone, so you don’t have to limit yourself to integrated audio or video capture devices. Once my broadcast was live, I simply pointed the Safari browser on my iPhone to http://iphone.livestream.com where I saw my personal channel. Tapping it opened up QuickTime where I saw a near real-time, high-quality view of my  broadcast. Even better: As a broadcaster, I was able to toggle between my camera setup and my desktop, a solution I envision as being useful for real-time training and presentations.

While there are other ways to view video on the iPhone, most involve a lengthy re-encoding effort. Livestream has cut that down to under a half-minute. And the best part? Procaster is simply using the native functions that Apple already provides to the platform. That’s a killer feature right there because it means people can begin to live stream to iPhones without any software installs on the handset.

UPDATED Verizon Wireless is ramping up for Friday’s launch of the Motorola Droid, and the device has created substantial buzz, thanks to generally positive reviews and the carrier’s big-budget marketing campaign. But some users — including Om — say the handset has been overhyped and is no threat to the iPhone. The Droid does have a few noticeable shortcomings, including:

• Accessing the Droid’s built-in support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync will cost users an additional $15 a month. (UPDATE: Gearlog is reporting that this isn’t true; according to the post, the additional $15 fee is for business account holders, not Exchange access.) While the charge isn’t new — Verizon has long charged BlackBerry users a tacked-on fee, and AT&T and T-Mobile USA have similar plans — it could hinder the gadget’s uptake among business users.

• Like other Android gadgets, the Droid’s app storage is limited to a meager 256MB. Yes, it comes with a 16GB SD card that can be replaced with a 32GB card, but there’s likely to be some backlash from consumers who’ve never used removable memory before.

• The Droid’s browser is inferior to the iPhone 3.1 Safari browser, according to MobileCrunch, with slower page loads and slightly less compliance to web standards.

• While the European version of the Droid — which is dubbed the Milestone — features a multitouch screen, the U.S. version does not, eliminating the ability for users to pinch and zoom as they can on the iPhone.

None of these shortcomings are particularly damning, of course, and I expect the Droid to sell well this holiday season. But there’s certainly some fodder here for Apple to fire back with a “Droid doesn’t” commercial or two.

Disappointment in the user experience on the mobile web is ramping up nearly as quickly as traffic itself, according to an Equation Research study that will be released Monday. The survey — which was commissioned by Gomez, a developer of software for Internet publishers and as such, a company with a dog in this hunt — indicates the U.S. mobile web audience grew 34 percent from July 2008 to July 2009. But two-thirds of those users reported having trouble when trying to access web content on their phone, and more than 80 percent said they’d use the mobile Internet more if the experience was as fast and reliable as it is on PCs.

Given the unwillingness of many Internet publishers to invest in taking their content mobile, and a consumer population that often wants the mobile web experience to mirror that of the traditional Internet, such frustrations make sense. Yankee Group recently gave passing grades to only four of 27 mobile web sites it studied (GigaOM Pro, sub. required), and reported that the average score in its annual survey was actually down two points from last year. Part of the problem lies in the design of mobile web sites, but another reason is that wireless networks can’t beat the speeds and consistency that wireline networks offer.

Meanwhile, it isn’t just consumers who are frustrated with the mobile web; operators are facing challenges from it, too. Airvana this week released data indicating that one smartphone typically generates eight times the network signaling load of a USB modem-equipped laptop — turning the idea that mobile laptop users are driving most of the network congestion on its head. Laptops may consume more data and bandwidth, but smartphones are apparently spending more time talking to the network, highlighting the difficulty network operators face when delivering the Internet to wireless smartphone users.

User experience concerns often get lost in the all the hype over the iPhone and its impressive Safari browser. But while smartphones continue to gain traction, Apple and Research In Motion combined to account for just 3 percent of the overall global handset market last year, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Modoff. Mobile browsers like Opera’s Mini do a credible job of making Internet content easier to consume on the low- and mid-range handsets used by most consumers, but Equation Research’s study once again confirms that publishers — and nearly every other segment in wireless — have a long way to go when it comes to bridging the gap between phones and the web.

Not a day goes by when I don’t shake my fist at the computer in frustration; the recent explosion in web-based information has turned search into an activity akin to climbing a mountain. Which is why when I saw Searchtabs, a browser add-on, for the first time, I exhaled in relief. Suddenly, with the snap of my finger, my Google search results made perfect sense. And even though the add-on is still in beta, it does a remarkable job of organizing results into folders that relate to a specific search item. More importantly, it showcases the most relevant and useful links, thanks to the data collected by Xmarks, the San Francisco-based startup that was founded by Lotus founder, Mitch Kapor.

How it works

Xmarks started as a Firefox plugin called Foxmarks that synced and backed up bookmarks to its servers, for multiple browsers. The company that started three years ago had fortuitous timing — more and more people were using multiple computers both at work and at home and wanted to keep their browser bookmarks in perfect synchronization.

It developed similar software for other browsers, such as Safari and Internet Explorer, and saw the number of users explode. The company’s software has now been downloaded 20 million times, and it claims 3.6 million active users. These folks have saved around 800 million bookmarks, which Xmarks has categorized in folders, allowing it to build a taxonomy around these links.

Where some see a mere bookmark synchronization service — albeit a good one — I see a giant database of intentions. Take those 800 million saved bookmarks, mine them for patterns and you’d quickly start to see certain links emerge as more popular than others. Pardon the cheesy analogy, but it’s like the lazy man’s “American Idol” of bookmarks.

Xmarks has taken that data and married it to its new plugin, Searchtab. Once you install the add-on to your Firefox browser (for now), every time you search for something on Google, a bar shows up as part of the page. The Google results are shown alongside folders related to the search keyword.

It comes back with highly accurate and useful results. And when the service fails, it allows you to correct the results. Many of them are ranked by Xmarks, indicating the usefulness of a link. Xmarks has been able to develop this service because it built a back-end system that is robust enough to handle 750 client transactions per second or about 50 million transactions per daysecond.

James Joaquin, the chief executive officer of Xmarks who in his past life started Ofoto and worked as a venture capitalist, believes that Xmarks can sell advertisements against these additional results, and leverage peoples’ habit of constantly checking Google. (Related: Can Browser Plug-ins Be a Business?)

Why it matters

Think of what Xmarks’ Searchtab is doing as augmented search — after all, it’s making the search experience better. It’s only a matter of time before we start to see more of these add-ons and ancillary services emerge to augment search results.  (Related: More Services to Help Discover Similar Sites.)

There is an unprecedented explosion of data taking place on the web right now, and all that content desperately needs context. As I outlined in my essay, How Internet Content Distribution and Discovery Are Changing, “we are seeing a disruption of behavior in how people use the web,” which in turn means that the 10 blue links popularized by Google won’t be enough. “We add 40 links or so to make more sense of our topics,” Joaquin notes.

Maybe soon, when Joaquin and his team are done building their product, I will stop shaking my fist at the computer screen as well.

Apple purchased digital mapmaker Placebase in July for an undisclosed sum, according to Seth Weintraub at Computerworld. Placebase, which we wrote about last year, is a Google Maps competitor that focuses on adding layers of public and private data to existing maps with an easy-to-use API. One use for the product, called PolicyMap, layers various types of data — like home sales, crime or employment — over maps to help visualize data geographically. It’s big business, and the company was profitable without VC funding. So, why did Apple buy Placebase?

There are many reasons. For starters, it’s increasingly obvious that maps and geo-location are becoming crucial components of any modern operating system. Nokia was the first one to realize this and snapped up companies such as gate5 and Navteq.

Secondly, the acquisition allows Apple to decrease its reliance on former BFF Google. Apple could use Placebase’s technology to replace the Google Maps functionality in the iPhone and iPod touch (and the new tablet, perhaps?) with its an in-house mapping solution. The ongoing legal fight between Apple, Google and the FCC over rejected apps on the iPhone App Store is well-known, as is Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s departure from Apple’s board in August. 

Weintraub claims the Placebase purchase closed in July, which is a curious timeline. Did Schmidt know of Apple’s plans to purchase the company, or was this an instance of him “sitting out” of a board meeting, because it was a place where Apple and Google were possibly competing?

Apple and Google are competing on more and more fronts, and Apple may be looking to cut as many ties with Google as possible in a seemingly belated attempt at keeping the fox out of the henhouse. The highest profile tie at the moment? The Google search box currently sits at the top of every Safari user’s browser window — a search box that likely sends a decently substantial amount of referral funds from Google to Apple. Given Microsoft’s need to expand its search share, it wouldn’t be inconceivable that Apple replaces Google with Bing. As long there is enough “cashback” for Apple!

One of the biggest challenges on the web is discovering new types of content. Last week, I wrote about similar-site.com, a web site that helps you find web sites akin to ones that you’re currently viewing. We came across two other services that accomplish the same task.

Earlier this year, Tel Aviv-based SimilarWeb, which counts well-known Israel angel investor Yossi Vardi as one of its backers, publicly released a Firefox browser add-on that displays sites similar to the one you’re visiting. This week, the startup is enhancing its value by making it possible to find articles with similar content to what you’re currently reading. It will also display tweets on the web about topics you’re reading about.

Xmarks, backed by Redpoint Ventures, started out life as a bookmark backup and syncing service, but has since launched a web service that analyzes bookmarked web sites to help you find similar ones.  Xmarks also offers a browser add-on for Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari that does the same thing. CEO James Joaquin left a comment in response to my similar-site.com post and said Xmarks finds similar sites by culling information from their database of over 800 million bookmarks. He added, “You can also search by topic and discover the top web sites ranked by bookmark popularity.”

• Beyond the stimulus: untapped resources for startups, VCs (Earth2Tech)
• Quick tip: adding photo albums to any page in iWeb (TheAppleBlog)
• Mobile Tech Minutes: Windows 7 performance on a netbook (jkOnTheRun)
• Cablevision’s MSG channel: for subscribers’ eyes only (NewTeeVee)
• Safari Books Online looking for developers to take the Coder Challenge (OStatic)
• Do you need a landline? (WebWorkerDaily)

Microsoft, after months of anticipation, today launched its latest digital audio player, the Zune HD. It’s a complete revamp of the device’s previous versions — it utilizes a bright OLED touchscreen, adds a web browser and HD radio tuner, and runs on a new Tegra processor from Nvidia. But while Microsoft hopes to “out-iPod” the Apple line of audio players with some extra features, the question isn’t “Which device has more features?” Rather, it’s “Which device has the features that consumers want most?” More importantly — will Microsoft eventually fold its Zune platform into Windows phones?

I haven’t used the new Zune HD yet, although a review unit is on the way. However, I did purchase the original Zune back in late 2006. In fact, I suspect that I’m one of the few people that owned a Zune before owning an iPod. I thoroughly enjoyed the Zune Pass music subscription that the Zune hardware supports; spending $14.95 a month to rent music was a deal that Apple wasn’t then able to match. That deal sounds even better now — Microsoft includes 10 MP3 downloads a month at no extra charge. But iPod owners who crave musical variation now have plenty of options, too, courtesy of the iTunes App Store; even Real Network’s Rhapsody To Go service was recently greenlighted by Apple for availability there. Meanwhile, Pandora and Slacker offer millions of available tracks to stream. The key difference here is that those require real-time connectivity while the Zune device can store rented music for offline enjoyment.

Both, however, are capable of viewing videos in addition to playing music. ZuneHD owners will enjoy brighter and more vibrant video content than iPod owners thanks to the OLED display used by Microsoft. However, those same Zune HD owners will struggle to use their device outdoors — OLED displays appear washed out in direct sunlight. Aside from different display technologies used, the iPod Touch offers a bigger screen with a higher resolution — it uses a 3.5-inch display at 480×320 pixels, while the new ZuneHD is 3.3 inches at 480×272. On a small screen, those missing 48 lines of resolution aren’t that noticeable and Microsoft figures they’ll make up for it by trumping Apple on larger, high-resolution external displays.

Each device can use an optional A/V dock, but the Zune HD can output high-definition video at 720p through its dock, while a docked iPod can only push content at 480p. Here again, Microsoft beats Apple in technical specifications, but unless consumers plan to carry portable HD content and connect to an HDTV, the point is lost. Eventually, I believe that could happen — I proposed such an idea nearly four years ago — but most households already have several options to get HD content on the big screen. How many of them will need a mobile one, too? (For a hands-on demo of the device’s video capabilities, see the video made by Liz and Chris over at NewTeeVee at the bottom of the post.)

Speaking of connectivity, Microsoft has kept Wi-Fi in the Zune line. This time however, it’s far more useful. The original Zune limited Wi-Fi use to “squirting,” or sharing music from one Zune to another; Microsoft later added the ability to sync music wirelessly from a PC. Now it’s included a version of Internet Explorer for web browsing, bringing the Zune HD closer to Apple’s iPod touch and its mobile Safari browser.

Which brings us, of course, to the big question: Will Microsoft eventually meld the Zune and Windows Phone platforms into a stronger competitor to Apple’s iPhone? The opportunity is there, but it appears Redmond isn’t quite ready. On Oct. 6, handset makers will officially unveil Windows Mobile 6.5 devices and no Zune integration is expected. But Windows Mobile 7 is due in 2010, which leaves the door wide open for a Zune Phone. Such a device would have to offer the best features from both the Zune and Windows Mobile platforms to compete with the iPhone juggernaut. The Zune bits would bring entertainment value to the handset, while the large array of Windows Mobile software titles could instantly create an vast “app store” for the Zune brand. Zune will have a marketplace at launch, but the titles are few. Clearly, consumers crave apps, so why not leverage the tens of thousands created for Windows Mobile?

While Microsoft has clearly matured the Zune HD from its humble beginnings, the extra features are unlikely to have Apple scared. So far, while Cupertino offers fewer features, the market is proving that they’re the right features for today’s consumers.