Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.
STARTUP DETAILS:
Company Name: Locify
20-word Description: Location-enabled mobile browsing, and a free and open way to create location-based services for mobile phones.
CEO’s Pitch: Locify is location-aware platform for mobile phones. Users can start exploring what is “here” or “there” and any developer can add geo-services or geo-resources for Locify users.
Developing location based services is now as easy as writing XHTML pages. Locify now offers fully-functional services such as Wikipedia Near, Geocaching, Show Me on the Map, Twittering Your Location, FireEagle location update, etc. And all these services are well documented to inspire other developers to enhance them or create new services.
Location matters. Locify yourself. Take the ride!
Mashable’s Take: We’re seeing mobile Web services that are aware of your location more and more frequently. If they happen to carry the right balance of technical utility, a critical mass of users, and ample privacy controls, they can become downright killer applications. We already have a growing array of applications having to do with everything from social networking services to historic landmark referencing to fuel pump scouting and so forth. So it seems only fitting that some startups seek to bundle various services together to make things a little easier and a little less scattered.
Manchester, UK-based Locify appears to be traversing that route. It works with both GPS-enabled and non-GPS devices, and can be accessed by going to www.locify.com/m. There are also software download options that you can install through a connection to your PC if that’s your preference. A BlackBerry-specific version of Locify is available, though it is said to be in an “experimental” stage.
I explained that Locify is sort of a bundle of services, all formatted to a relatively uniform menu system. Which I think is an altogether fair assessment of its general utility. But at its most basic level, it is a platform, eminently expandable so far as XHTML can take a developer today. For the time being, Locify sports a decent variety of items to choose from. Geocaching for trailblazers and treasure hunters. Twitter support. Wikipedia search. And of course some basic mapping, too. But it will naturally need to expand its sights. Given the simplicity of Locify’s code base, more additions will likely be made in the not too distant future. (See the Locify feature page, with videos, for a deeper look at what it has to offer.)
To its users, Locify is a free investment. One need only have a compatible mobile device. Registration is optional. Keep in mind, though, a Locify account will get you access to more features than you would otherwise have at hand.
Sponsored by Sun Startup Essentials
Written by Ernesto
TV shows are by far the most wanted files via BitTorrent, and according to some, it’s fast becoming the modern day TiVo. But what are all those people downloading?
The data is collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.
At the end of the year we will publish a list of most downloaded TV-shows for the entire year, like we did last December.
TV-shows such as “Lost” and “Heroes” can get up to 10 million downloads per episode, in only a week.
Top Downloads June 13 - July 20
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Searchles has landed a big new publisher to implement its social discovery technology: The Washington Post and its MyPost social network. Now, when browsing the profiles of other MyPost members, you will see Searchles’ “Related Users” widget, which shows you other people who have taken an interest in similar stories on washingtonpost.com, based primarily on comments.
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The basic idea is that connecting people based on similar reading habits is a good way to build a social network – especially one on a big media site. Clicking on users in the Related Users widget brings you to that user’s profile, where you can then see the comments that person has left on Washington Post articles. You can then navigate to the rest of the user’s profile, which includes basic features like a bio, interests, and photos. The Washington Post’s commenting and social networking features are powered by Pluck, which was recently acquired by Demand Media.
Similar to publisher offerings from companies like Loomia and Outbrain, which are focused on related content rather than users, the end-game is increased page views. From this perspective, I would think users are more likely to click on people than additional headlines, but Searchles UI appears to be lacking user photos in the widget, a big missed opportunity.
Searchles signed a similar deal last year with Total Telecom, a niche publisher for the communications industry. The company secured additional angel funding earlier this month and has raised a total of around $2 million to-date.
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The Ubuntu community hit the ground running at OSCON this week. Scarcely a couple of days into the event, there's already a new version of the distro to peruse and updates to the code hosting platform Launchpad to talk about. In the meantime, the project's founder, Mark Shuttleworth, still found time to deliver a presentation at the event and meet with a local tech group to talk about his vision for the future of Linux.
Let's start with Ubuntu Netbook Remix, a complete distribution designed to run on Atom-based Netbook PCs. The main difference that sets it apart from it's big brother Hardy Heron is the Ubuntu Mobile Edition (UME) Launcher, a user interface created specifically for use on the teensy screens and keyboards of today's popular ultra-portable computers.
PC World's Robert Strohmeyer tried out Remix and says "Although the Netbook's Atom processor is decidedly anemic even by subnotebook standards, the OS booted quickly. Navigation in the simplified UME menus was quick, and applications such as OpenOffice.org Writer, Firefox, and Pidgin launched about as rapidly as I would expect. Though not terribly snappy, it was competent compared with other Netbook OS installations (including Windows XP)."
He says that though Canonical reps remain mum on where Netbook Remix will make it's first appearance on retail devices, they say it will be on store shelves by the end of the year.
Also making news at OSCON is the upcoming release of Launchpad Version 2.0, also expected to be available within the year. The Register is reporting that 2.0 will include "a beta version of a planned API that'll allow third-party applications to authenticate, query and modify data in the massive Launchpad database, without a user needing to manually access the system via a browser."
The new version of Launchpad will also include GPL plugins for access to Bugzilla and Trac bug tracking systems, as well as an updated Bazaar version control system that will support a greater number of projects.
Mark Shuttleworth has been meeting with reporters to talk about everything from the evolution of leadership in the open source community to who he considers his heroes. Despite the busy schedule, he still found time to give a presentation to a local group, Legion of Tech, about space exploration (he says it should be mainly unmanned) and his ongoing mission to deliver Linux to the masses. He then went on to give a talk at OSCON itself, where he suggested Linux could gain better market share it if had better eye-candy than Apple.
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The Internet is filled with websites and services that can help you find a new place, but sorting through them can be more frustrating than the apartment hunting process itself. Whether you’re planning a move across town, relocating for a job, or just need to find an apartment with cheaper rent, we’ve put together over 50 tools to help make the process easier.
If, on the other hand, you’re a landlord looking to rent a property, we’ve included a few tools specifically for you. Also note that almost all of the listing sites we’ve provided for renters invite landlords to add vacancies, quite a few of them for free.
Apartment Listings
ApartmentHunterz.com - Focuses on smaller rental properties in Southern California.
Apartments.com - Apartments.com tries to provide as many pictures as possible for each property, customizable searches, a moving center that lets you arrange movers and much more.
BidRent.com - Allows you to bid on how much you wish to pay in rent for listed properties in the USA and Canada.
CityCribs.com - While CityCribs has listings for most major US cities, their heaviest focus is on listings for New York City.
Craigslist.org - The place where most people start their search for locating a rental property.
EliteRenting.com - A Google Maps mashup showing you rental properties and their neighborhoods as well as offering you side-by-side comparisons of various properties to help with your selection.
FlyRig.com - FlyRig is a Google Maps mashup focusing on just the 5 boroughs of New York City.
ForRent.com - Features all kinds of rentals for singles, families, college students and military.
GreenRenter.com - Limited to properties in the Portland, OR area, GreenRenter aids in telling potential renters how green a building is.
HotPads.com - Highly customizable search for each city letting you select rooms, rent range, and more. Also has heat maps to show you where the most activity is.
HousingMaps.com - Google Maps mashup that lets you easily visualize where a location is.
HubBuzz.com - HubBuzz attempts to take your likes and dislikes into account while trying to help you find an apartment that best suits you.
MyApartmentMap.com -A Cragslist/Google Maps mashup that lets you view the neighborhood and other data while also giving you a roommate finder, college apartments and more.
MyNewPlace.com - An apartment search site that provides detailed photos and floor plan drawings, they also offer $100 or more cash back when you sign your lease.
PeopleWithPets.com - Site specializing in pet friendly rental units.
Rent.com - An eBay company providing rental searches and will give you a $100 gift card for a successful rental through them.
RentalAds.com - Provides regular listings as well as specialized listings for pet owners, rent to own properties and more. Landlords can list their properties for free.
Rentals.com - Find all sorts of rentals across the United States including apartments and houses.
Rentals.NationalRelocation.com - A site focusing on people making long distance moves, will also help you locate all types of movers, including piano movers.
RentalSource.com - A rental listing site with all of the normal search functions as well as roommate finders and tools to help you move.
RentBits.com - Lets you search the entire country or region of your choice for rental properties.
RentMineOnline.com - A social network enhanced rental system which focuses on friends referring friends to rental properties. Also has a Facebook app to ease referrals.
TheRentMap.com - A mashup of Apartments.com’s listings with a Google Map.
Zilpy.com - Zilpy will give you an amazing amount of information about an area by breaking a city down by region and then telling you the average rental price for various styles of apartments and information about the neighborhoods.
Listings Outside the US
FindMyCrib.com - A Google Maps mashup for finding rental properties located around the UK.
FusedWorld.com - Apartment listings from countries all over the world.
HouseFinderUK.com - Despite the site’s name, HouseFinderUK also features a large selection of properties to rent in the UK.
Properazzi.com - Search all over Europe for properties in your own language and currency.
RentRight.co.uk - A rental listings site based in the United Kingdom with everything from lofts to houses listed.
Spyk.com - Search for rental properties throughout Australia.
Surf4AProperty.com - A UK-only site for locating rental properties around the country.
Rental Management
GetPropertize.com - Geared to helping an individual with property to rent, Propertize helps you track income & expenses as well as helping you generate your tax reports.
OnsitePropertyManager.com - Multi-featured property management software that also includes nightly back-ups of your data.
Property-Management.Buildium.com - A full-featured system that prints checks, makes work orders from online maintenance requests, allow residents to pay securely online and more.
Rentomatic.com - Offers both free and paid plans, can assist you in advertising, automating rent collection, track maintenance and more.
RentYield.com - Lets you manage your vendors as well as your tenants, track the performance of your properties and more.
TenantMarket.com - Helps landlords to locate tenants for their vacant properties.
Reviews
ApartmentRatings.com -Nearly 700,000 reviews of rental properties and their landlords, helping to save you some of the hassle of not knowing what you’ll get after you sign the lease.
IntroIn.com - Find people living in the complexes you are interested in and connect with people living there so you can get the inside track on what it’s like.
LandlordReview.com - Lets you review landlords and management companies in a dozen major cities in the USA such as Washington D.C. and San Francisco.
NeuLandlord.com - Rate and read reviews of landlords in all 50 states in the US, see who are the best and worst on their leader boards.
PickALandlord.com - A community based around reviewing landlords before you sign a lease.
RateMyStudentRental.com - A site devoted to renting your student housing, and if warranted, the site will send your landlord a note about problems with the property.
RottenNeighbor.com - When you rent a property, not only do you have a landlord to worry about, but also possibly annoying neighbors. Check out the neighborhood you’re moving into as well as look for sex offenders and more.
Roommates
EasyRoommate.com - Has over 190,000 listings in the United States for rooms to rent and people looking for rooms.
Gradspot.com - Use the website or their Facebook app to help you find roommates for your post-grad life.
MetroRoommates.com - Roommate referral service that focuses on major metropolitan areas in the USA.
RoommateClick.com - Focused on college and university students, RoommateClick will help you find a room or let others know you have a room to rent.
RoommateConnection.com - A roommate referral service for the northeast United States with a heavy focus on Boston, MA.
RoommateLocator.com - Assists you with you finding roommates across the USA as well as some oversea locations.
Roommates.com - Almost like a dating site for roommates, you set up a profile and start searching for your perfect roommate match.
Roommates4You.com - This one lets you set if you are looking for a room or have a room, in addition to price ranges you are looking for from the initial search.
Roomster.net - Helps match you with a roommate with a compatible personality, works for cities in the USA, Canada and the UK.
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There are three parts to a successful open-source project: First, there has to be software. The software doesn't need to be great, but it needs to show some promise, solving a real problem that people have. Secondly, it needs to have an open-source license that encourages participation. There are several dozen sanctioned open-source licenses today, but the GNU General Public License and Berkeley license are two of the most common, because they are well understood and easy to understand.
A third critical component -- and in some ways, the most important of the three -- is the community. This is where things can get tricky; managing a large community can be difficult, both technically and socially. Encouraging newcomers to take part in the community, helping others or working on the software, takes a great deal of time, and exposes you to the (strong) feelings that other community members may have.
A strong community can take a good software package and make it great. (They can often take a good software idea and turn it into running code.) Apache, Perl, and and Moodle are but a few of the best-known open-source communities. Each of these communities has a large number of mailing lists, message boards, Web sites, and blogs, all of which point to one another, reference each other, and keep the conversation going even when people aren't directly talking.
Without a strong community, an open-source project becomes a hobby for either one person or a small group. Without a critical mass of users to report bugs, offer support, and improve software and documentation, a project will never get off the ground. This doesn't mean that the software will never be useful -- but it does mean that the authors will have fewer people on whom they can rely for help, as well as less of a core of people committed to a particular technology.
Everyone wants to have a strong community. What can you do to foster it? At least two talks at today's OSCon in Portland, Oregon, will address this issue. The "Community Anti-Patterns" talk given by Sun's Ted Leung will be followed by a panel discussion with PostgreSQL's Josh Berkus and other four other prominent open-source figures. Their comments are expected to focus on what open-source communities can do in order to succeed, using information from failed projects.
This discussion comes a short time after the publication of Clay Shirky's new book, "Here Comes Everybody," in which he describes the implications of living in a society in which exchanging information is easy, fast, and cheap. Shirky says that whereas groups have traditionally been of the form, "gather, then share," Internet-based groups turn that around, first sharing (and collaborating) with one another, and then forming social ties.
There is never a guarantee that a community will emerge -- but there ways to improve the odds. These two talks will describe some of those ways that you can improve the odds, and the "antipatterns" that you should watch out for, since they might well hasten failure.
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My prediction: nothing. Not a damn thing. If Google acquires Digg, which many sites are reporting as a done deal, it’ll be a little something I call a vanity buy. Which would mean that Google doesn’t really need Digg; it wants it. And if Google is smart, it’ll just leave Digg as it is.
The thing is, Digg and other social media sites are very much dependant on having an active, vibrant community. I might be proven wrong, but history has shown that these types of sites never get enormous; and their users are not too keen on clicking ads. In short, they’re not the goldmine everyone thought they would be (hence the thousands of Digg clones out there).
So - if the rumors are true - why is Google buying it? Because it’s cool. It has formidable traffic, yes, but the main reason why anyone would want to own Digg is influence. Let’s face it, it’s a very influential site: some are trying to game it, some are trying to win it (it can be a game, you know), some are trying to understand it and profit from it. But the fact that it’s such an enigma, with its users constantly redefining what works and what doesn’t, is one of the reasons it’s so popular.
The other reason why Google would want to buy Digg is the simplest of all: because they can. Digg is the first and best site in an entirely new niche, and if the price is not outrageous, Google can afford it, so why not own it? If nothing else, it’ll give them a great opportunity to find out about the inner workings of this specific and complex social media ecosystem.
Therefore, I think that it would be dumb for Google to try to do anything to Digg, especially immediately after the acquisition. It could cause a backlash from the community. If they acquire it, they can move some ads around and try to leverage the influence in some ways, but the best thing they can do is enjoy it and go with the flow.
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Microsoft and Digg Sign Ad Deal, Acquisition Mentioned
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This is the fifth part of a series that follows the Group Health Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic along its route, and explores the history and transformation of the Pacific Northwest through the communities and stops along the way. See here for part 4.
It was nearly 11 a.m. when we arrived in Centralia for the half-way point on the STP, to have lunch with David, our friend who was taking the whole course in one day. We parked in a free public lot and hurried into a little cafe called "Centralia Perk," in homage to Friends, which was also an ice cream parlor and antique store. The temperature was already in the eighties at least, and we left a few minutes later with ice cream cones firmly in hand, to walk the half-dozen or so blocks to Centralia College, where the STP riders were coming in.
Along the way, we took a detour through Washington Park, along S. Pearl St., behind the old Carnegie Library, now the Centralia Timberland Library. All over the place, little signs announcing "No Camping" covered the lawns; up to 6,000 people on the STP would be looking for places to crash over-night in Centralia, and this was the one place in town they can't. Because Washington Park is sacred ground.
Right in the middle of the park, in front of a towering flag pole, there's a tall bronze statue of a First World War doughboy called The Sentinel. On first inspection, you'd be forgiven for assuming it was part of a war memorial: It sits at the end of the "Freedom Walk," a long, black stone memorial to Centralia's war dead. But The Sentinel is not a war memorial; it—and indeed the whole of the memorial in Washington Square Park—is one giant conglomeration of political propaganda, the product of a conflict between the left and right that stretches back 89 years.
There is an image gallery to this entry which you can view at Seattlest
Those who view the 1999 riots at the WTO meeting in Seattle as a strange outburst of subversive left-wing political activity in the state know nothing of Washington's political history. The same timber, mining, and railroad barons who whiled away their time smoking cigars at the Spar Cafe with the highest ranking State officials built their empires on the backs of thousands of workers: the miners, mill workers, lumberjacks, longshoremen, and railroad employees who kept the state's extraction industries chugging along. And by 1919, these workers were desperately fighting to unionize, led by an assortment of communists, anarchists, and radicals.
Socialism and union movements had existed since the post-Civil War era, of course, but in the wake of the First World War, America was a seething crucible waiting to explode. The left, inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution, was increasing its unionizing activities, while right-wing and nativist movements were forming to oppose them and operate as proxies for entrenched business interests.
Enter the IWW, the Industrial Workers of the World, known colloquially as the "Wobblies." A militant, left-wing union sympathetic to the Soviet Union and popular amongst the timber and mining industry workers in Washington, the Wobblies had in 1919 pulled off one of, if not the only, successful general strikes in U.S. history. On February 6, 1919, 65,000 workers in Seattle walked off the job in support of 35,000 striking dockworkers. In an editorial from February 4, Anna Louise Strong, the legendary leftist journalist, fanned the flames of Communist paranoia by declaring of the strike: "We are undertaking the most tremendous move ever made by LABOR in this country, a move which will lead - NO ONE KNOWS WHERE!"
In fact, the general strike led nowhere. The city was paralyzed for five days, but a lack of concrete demands left labor with little to claim as a victory. But the ability of the IWW to even pull off a general strike left business interests and anti-Communists fearful.
One of the main organizations opposing the IWW and other left-wing organizations was the American Legion. Officially formed in March 1919, the American Legion was ostensibly organized by veterans to support veterans and the "values" they purported to have fought for in the war, but its political purpose was to resist the spread of leftist politics, and members frequently served as strike-breakers against union organizers.
What happened in Centralia on November 11, 1919 was just one of countless flash points in the often brutal and today largely forgotten history of American inter-war politics, but its shadow is long and broad. John Dos Passos, the great, unabashedly left-wing American Modernist, whose reputation has suffered over the last few decades because of his political affiliations, even saw fit to include the events in Centralia in 1919, volume 2 of his monumental U.S.A. Trilogy. In his telling:
The timber owners, the sawmill and shinglekings were patriots; they'd won the war (in the course of which the price of lumber had gone up from $16 a thousand feet to $116; there are even cases where the government paid as high as $1200 a thousand for spruce); they set out to clean the reds out of the logging camps...
In Centralia, the Wobblies were vehemently opposed by local timber barons, who backed the American Legion and other anti-union activists as a bulwark against the IWW successfully unionizing their workers. Since at least 1917, the Wobblies had struggled to find and keep a union hall. On Memorial Day 1918, veterans in a parade through Centralia broke off and looted and burned the IWW hall. So, as November 11, 1919, Armistice Day, rolled around, the IWW was prepared for a repeat of the attack, due in no small part to the rumors flying around town that the occasion of the American Legion parade would be used to again dispossess the IWW.
The leader of the American Legion was a man by the name of Warren O. Grimm, a former All American football hero, freshman class leader at the UW in 1910, and a frat boy from Sigma Nu. He was also a veteran of the American Expeditionary Force Siberia, a little-known venture wherein around 5,000 Americans were sent to fight the Bolsheviks in Siberia for the purposes of defending the Trans-Siberian Railroad in Vladivostok, from 1918-20. According to the historian James W. Loewen, in his book Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong, Grimm had expounded at length on his experiences in Vladivostok to lobby against the Wobblies, calling them the "American Bosheviki."
On the eleventh, while a small group of Wobblies remained to protect the union hall in the Roderick Hotel on Tower Ave., between Second and Third Sts., other workers armed themselves with rifles and took positions near by, with the intent to protect themselves and their headquarters if attacked. The American Legion parade, the ranks of which were swollen with visitors from Chehalis and too large for the tiny town, was scheduled to pass by the Roderick not once but twice. The second time around, all hell broke loose.
The exact series of events is a matter of dispute, but more or less everyone agrees the following events took place: the American Legion leader Warren Grimm turned to his followers and called out "Halt! Close up!"; at some point before or after, a group broke off and charged the union hall; and finally, in response to either the call or the attack, the Wobblies started firing.
Numerous theories abound: Did the Wobblies fire without provocation? Did the American Legionnaires attack the hall first? What did Grimm intend with his command?
The most compelling explanation, offered during the murder trial of IWW members the next year, held that a group of Legionnaires were under the pay or influence of the Centralia Citizens' Committee, a proxy of F.B. Hubbard, the president of the Eastern Railway & Lumber Company, who had an ongoing dispute with the IWW and was their leading opponent in town. This theory holds that Grimm, who was looking back over his marching Legionnaires, saw a group break away in a premeditated attack the hall, and tried to order them to stop; Wobbly Eugene Barnett, who had a direct shot at Grimm at the moment he made the command, mistook the order as one to attack, and fired. Whatever the case, within minutes, Grimm and Arthur McElfresh were shot dead in the street. The Legionnaires descended on the union hall, where Ben Cassagranda was shot to death, most likely by Wobbly Wesley Everest.
Everest fled the scene armed and was caught trying to cross the Skookumchuck River by Dale Hubbard, F.B. Hubbard's nephew. Hubbard's pistol was jammed; he was shot by Everest in the stand-off, who was subsequently arrested while pistol-whipping the mortally wounded Hubbard.
That night, a lynch mob descended on the jail. The city's power grid was cut, and in the darkness Everest was dragged from the jail. As he was pulled out, Dos Passos has him telling his comrades: "Tell the boys I did my best." He was beaten, strung up with a noose and tossed off a bridge three times, until his neck broke, and was then shot. According to some accounts (which Dos Passos bought) he was castrated before death, but no autopsy was taken to confirm or disprove the claim: the coroner laughably ruled the death a suicide. Everest was buried in an unmarked grave in the pauper's cemetery, its location forgotten for generations.
But for years, the legacy of the so-called Centralia Massacre has provoked angst and bitter conflict. The Sentinel was raised in 1924 by the American Legion in honor of their fellows killed, with no notice or remembrance given for the Wobblies, who were, after all, harassed and persecuted for years leading up that tragic day, to say nothing of Everest's shameful fate.
It wasn't until 1989 that anyone managed to break through Centralia's silence over the rest of the community's role in causing the violence in 1919. A 14-year-old student by the name of Cynder Viles researched the events for her National History Day project, and, with the support of the Queen Anne Historical Society's student plaque program, which allowed students to place historical markers, chose to honor the Wobbly side of the Massacre. Months of acrimony followed as community leaders and the American Legion objected to her efforts to place a plaque commemorating the Wobblies next to The Sentinel. In 1992 Viles, who ultimately won her battle after standing her ground after contentious public meetings, was awarded the National Council for the Social Studies' Academic Freedom Award, the first student ever to have won it.
In response, in 1993 Centralia installed the "Freedom Walk," which, in the words of the historian Loewen, "Implicitly...conflated the 'The Sentinel' with conventional World War I doughboys..."
If it's hard to imagine that the town would resort to such cynical means to re-purpose a monument and suppress the town's past, that's nothing compared to the cynicism of the marble monument itself. In an act of what appears to be a disgusting sort of fidelity to fiscal responsibility, the long slab of black marble, listing Centralia's war dead in every war since WWI, was left with a fair amount of blank space at the end, in grim anticipation of future wars. Perhaps the only thing more grotesque than the Walk's purpose and grim extra space is the fact that they're near running out after only 15 years.
Next: That good old offensive Uncle Sam sign.
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Just a couple weeks after sitting on 
