Less than three months after launching its popular iPhone game Tap Tap Revenge 3 as a 99-cent app on iTunes, developer Tapulous made the game free a few days ago.  The game was downloaded 300,000 times in 24 hours, overwhelming the Tapulous servers so much that the company had to turn off the online playing feature of the game.  Tap Tap Revenge is now the No. 2 most popular free game on iTunes.

Making Tap Tap Revenge 3 free is another high-profile bet on the power of in-app purchases.  Tap Tap Revenge 3, which is a Guitar-Hero style game, comes with free music tracks, but you ca also buy new tracks through the game.  So far, as a paid app, it’s sold about 1 million songs, but it believes it can sell a lot more by making the game free.  The Tap Tap Revenge series of games have been downloaded more than 20 million times, and the company claims 4 million active users per month.

Games do a better job than other categories when it comes to in-app purchases, although nearly all of the top-grossing apps in iTunes are still paid apps.  But another iPhone game company, ngmoco, is shifting its entire strategy to from paid to free games with in-app purchases.  It is not clear whether Tapulous is moving to this model as well, or launching new apps for 99 cents and then making them free once sales begin to die down.  When it launches its next game, Riddim Ribbon, we’ll see if it is paid or free.  If it is paid, one advantage of making Tap Tap Revenge 3 free now is that it can flood the market and then be used to cross-promote Riddim Ribbon.  The shelf-life of an iPhone app is so short that it makes sense to sunset a paid app early to help push sales of a newer game.

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The only good thing about the deadline for this week’s TechCrunch round-up falling on Christmas Day is the absolute certain fact that you won’t be reading the results. After all, with the holiday season in full swing, no one in their right mind will be reading TechCrunch. I certainly won’t.

Safe in that knowledge, I can pretty much claim anything I like. That this week’s top story was Mark Zuckerberg being eaten by zebras, for example, or Al Qaeda investing in Twitter. Hell, I could probably claim that Spotify is profitable and it would still pass entirely without remark. Who would know? Just me and Google’s spider.

But I’m a professional – which is why I only missed my Christmas Day deadline by 24 hours – and as such I take seriously my responsibility to bring you this week’s top stories, regardless of whether you care or not. Hell, I’ve even come up with a festive theme in a vain attempt to keep you reading. Even though I know you’re not.

Here we go then…

On the first day of Christmas, TechCrunch gave to you….

One billion dollar exits
Sarah rounded off her South American research trip by profiling Wences Casares and examining the difference between billion dollar exits and what it means to feel “success”.

On the second day of Christmas, TechCrunch gave to you…

Two out of every ten companies suffering from “stealth disease”
Vivek tells stealth start-ups: Get Over Yourselves: Nobody Cares About Your Secrets.

On the third day of Christmas, TechCrunch gave to you…

Three years of Crunchies
The first tickets to the third annual Crunchies sold out very quickly, but there’s still plenty of time to vote for the winners across 18 categories before voting closes on January 6th.

On the fourth day of Christmas, TechCrunch gave to you…

Four screenings of Avatar
Or at least that’s how many Arrington has attended since the movie launched this week and he described it as ‘The iPhone Of Movies’.

On the fifth day of Christmas, TechCrunch gave to you…

Five hundred and fifty million dollars
Over half a billion dollars; the price that Yelp turned down when they walked away from selling to Google.

On the sixth day of Christmas, TechCrunch gave to you…

Six-ty thousand nooks will be shipped by Barnes & Noble this year
…despite issues with shipping pre-orders.

On the seventh day of Christmas, TechCrunch gave to you…

Seven million more dollars raised by ChaCha
….despite issues with their entire business being a joke.

On the eighth day of Christmas, TechCrunch gave to you…

Eight million dollars raised by Livemocha
…in a round led by August Capital to allow the online language-learning community to build new partnership deals and work on product development.

On the ninth day of Christmas, TechCrunch gave to you…

Nine ‘rock-star’ names associated with WePay’s new group payments services
Levchin, McClure, Conway, Y Combinator…

On the tenth day of Christmas, TechCrunch gave to you…

Ten IPO Candidates for 2010
….and, from Europe, ten disappointing tech stories of 2009.

On the eleventh day of Christmas, TechCrunch gave to you…

Eleven billion valuation for Facebook
Up from the company’s $10billion valuation earlier this year.

And finally. On the twelfth day of Christmas, TechCrunch gave to you…

Twelve (at least) religions that I’ve certainly offended by suggesting that the entire world stops for Christmas. I look forward to the comments. Not that I’ll be reading them – after all, it’s Christmas!

Have a good week!

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In 2007, just prior to its launch, I was absolutely positive I wasn’t going to buy an iPhone. My rationale was that I didn’t even like using a cellphone, so why would I want a $600 one? What I wanted was a touch screen iPod — basically, an iPhone without the phone. In other words, I wanted an iPod touch, but that didn’t exist yet, so I would sit back and wait, I told myself. Then came iPhone launch day: June 29, 2007. Curiosity about the launch day hoopla drove me to an Apple store. There was a line around the block just to get in. So again, there was no way I was getting an iPhone. But then I started to wonder why so many people were lined up for this device — what was I missing? A few hours later I returned to the Apple Store. I waited in a much shorter line to get in. I walked up to the iPhones out on display, picked one up, played with it for all of 10 seconds. I left the Apple store $600 poorer.

My point in telling that story is that all signs indicate that we’re closing in on another new Apple product, a tablet computer. And the hype around it is already palpable. But so is the skepticism among many — skepticism similar to what I felt with the iPhone. “Why would anyone want a tablet computer?” “It will be way too expensive, no one will buy it.” “This is all just nonsense Apple hype.” Those are a few of the more common reactions against the still-mysterious device. But I’m not going to be tricked again. Conventional wisdom suggests that Apple will not be able to succeed where so many others have failed. But Apple makes billions defying conventional wisdom.

The truth is that most of us don’t understand the allure of a tablet computer because they’ve all sucked up until now. It’s the exact same reason that I didn’t understand the iPhone at first. My cellphones leading up to the iPhone ranged from “okay” to “junk.” The idea of getting one with such a high price tag was insanity to me. But within seconds of using the iPhone, I was able to tell that Apple had made something completely different. It wasn’t a cellphone as I had known them. It redefined the category. And while there are no sure things in the tech world, I would bet that Apple’s tablet will do the same.

If an outsider were to look at the tech news coverage of the past few days, they’d think there is an oddly disproportionate amount of Apple tablet talk. Why is that? The lazy answer is that everyone is a bunch of Apple fanboys. But the reality is that it’s dozens of blogs and all the mainstream media sites covering this news about a product which no one is even 100% sure exists. Everyone is covering it because there is a huge amount of interest about the device among each site’s readership. And it goes far beyond that. People outside the tech world, those who don’t ever read tech blogs, have been asking me about it recently. And Apple’s stock is at an all-time high based on the rumors of this device.

Part of it is that Apple has a sterling record with consumer-oriented products. Sure, there are some duds, like the Mighty Mouse. And yes, there are some slip-ups, like my new iLemon. But overall, Apple commands attention in the consumer space because more often than not, they nail it. Going deeper, Apple is not afraid to step outside of the traditional comfort zones to try to create a new product — even if others have failed there before, as is the case with tablets. While this stirs skepticism in some, in many more people, it creates a sense of wonder. What if Apple can do it right this time? It’s exciting partially because it’s no sure thing. It’s exciting because the payoff is potentially huge. By this time next year, we may have a whole new genre of computing. It’s an undiscovered country.

But it’s also familiar. There’s a quote from the first season of Mad Men that I think applies in this regard. “But he also talked about a deeper bond with the product. Nostalgia. It’s delicate, but potent,” Don Draper says leading up to his Kodak Carousel presentation. The core idea of a tablet is interesting to people on a fundamental level. At least as far back as Moses with the Ten Commandments, it has been a part of the human psyche. It’s something that couldn’t be simpler. It’s a slate that displays information. It’s not a computer with a mess of peripherals and/or physical buttons. If a media and web-centric computer were being designed today with no thought to what the computing norms of the past were, it would be a tablet.

It also points to the future of interacting with computers. The mouse and keyboard will one day die and everything will be touch and gesture-based. We’ll be living in a future with Minority Report, Star Trek, and Avatar interactive technology. To many of us, few things are more exciting. To others, that concept is foreign and as such, scary. Regardless, it will happen and the tablet computer is the latest, and perhaps most important step in a line of technology taking us there.

I think a lot of people understand that, even if they don’t realize it. That’s why we saw so much interest in the CrunchPad. It was to be a simple, touchscreen device that you could surf the web on. For many people, that’s more than enough of a computer.

And the truth is that Apple has already proven the concept. The iPhone is a tablet computer, just smaller. Recently, a former Apple employee was quoted in the New York Times as saying that much of the early work on the tablet exists today in the iPhone. The iPhone is the computer I use the most now day in and day out. And again, I never thought I’d want one. So while the immediate use of the tablet in our homes already riddled with computer may not be apparent just yet, I have no doubt that it will prove itself to be very useful.

I have no idea what the tablet will be called (Robin lays out a comprehensive tale of why it may be the “iSlate”), what its specs will be, or how much it will cost. But I’m not going to make the mistake of dismissing it like I did with the iPhone simply because its practicality isn’t immediately apparent. If it succeeds, it will likely redefine the role of computing in our lives just as the iPhone has. That’s exciting. And that’s why we care so much about it.

[images: 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures]

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A month ago we ran a contest giving to give away a 7-day adventure trek for two to the ancient Inca ruins of Machu Picchu. As we wrote back then:

. . . the winner will be climbing a mountain in Peru to the fabled Inca city of Machu Picchu. Well, you and a guest will actually be on horseback most of the way, and staying in WiFi-equipped luxury eco-lodges. But you can walk part of the way just to say you hiked the Inca trail.

This 7-day adventure for two, which is worth about $7,000, is being donated by the tour operator Mountain Lodges of Peru in conjunction with ekoVenture, a marketplace for “experience travel” (read our recent post on them).

And we have a winner, reader Meagan Donahue. Merry Christmas.

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GROU.PS, a do-it-yourself social network focused on moderated online collaboration has steadily gained an impressive amount of users and added compelling features to its application. The social network platform has just hit 2 million users, adding another million members in just 6 months.

And GROU.PS has amped up its offering for publishers by launching Elastic Modules, which gives publishers the ability to change the way the data is displayed to their visitors. To date, the highest reach of look and feel customization was at the template level; the
publisher could only change the skin of their site. Now publishers can actually modify the backend of the social network they’ve created.

GROU.PS counts Don Dodge, developer evangelist at Google, is among the community builders that have chosen GROU.PS as their online platform. “Don Dodge’s Startup List” is sort of a Crunchbase for Boston area.

The startup’s networks are attractive to users because it lets you run all of your group’s collaboration tools from one GROU.PS domain using a single login. The system supports wikis, photos, links, blogs, calendars, chat, forums, maps, profiles, and subgroups – each of which is available as a plug-and-play module for your community. These modules also allow users to pull in their data from other third party services (flickr, Digg, blogs, etc).

The startup, which has over 40,000 networks on its platform, also recently added ActivityRank Pipelines, a point and reward system that lets moderators of a social network measure and rank members’ content contributions and then extend moderation privileges to members based on these rankings. And the social network is launching a subscription model that will allow moderators to charge subscription fees to members (GROU.PS gets a 50% cut on any fees charges).

GROU.PS just raised $1 million in funding, bringing the startup’s total funding up to over $2 million. But while the social network is growing, it is still faces major competition form the leader in the space, Ning, which recently hit 37 million users with 1.6 million social networks created on the platform.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Nice scoop by MacRumors, which reportedly retrieved historical evidence that Apple has acquired the domain name islate.com back in 2007. Apparently, the Cupertino company registered the domain through brand protection firm Mark Monitor to conceal the fact that the domain name is theirs, as usual, but was briefly listed as the owner at some point in the past nonetheless.

If correct, that means we can add a rumor to a rumor: that the unconfirmed, unannounced but most definitely coming (maybe) Apple tablet device will be named iSlate. That would be in line with earlier connections of the ’slate’ term to the elusive tablet computer, based on New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller calling it something to that effect in a speech.

Let’s dig a little deeper.

Other iSlate Domain Names

There’s a lot of islate-related domain names with different TLDs that Apple most definitely does not own (islate.org, islate.net, islate.be, islate.nl, islate.es, and so on) but I did find a couple of interesting things trolling whois servers.

A search for islate.co.uk lists Mark Monitor as the owner, just like islate.com. This could be meaningless, but we know for sure Apple works with Mark Monitor for other domain names and the United Kingdom is a key market for the company. Registration date: 17 November 2006.

Unfortunately, the whois server for German TLDs (whois.denic.de) is currently down, so I can’t look up who secured islate.de at this point. Update: owned by Innovative Dynamics GmbH since December 2007.

But look up who the owner of islate.fr (country TLD for France, a third key country for Apple in Europe) is: a Paris-based IP property attorney firm called Wilson & Berthelot. Guess who the technical contact for the domain name registration is? Mark Monitor. And doesn’t Apple work with law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in the States?

Coincidence, or not?

Other related domain names that were secured through Mark Monitor: islate.info and islate.biz, both of which were registered on the same date as islate.co.uk: 17 November 2006.

Update: islate.jp (Japan) was registered by Mark Monitor on 29 November 2006, while islate.cn (China) was registered through the company on 18 November 2009.

The plot thickens.

The ISLATE Trademark (United States)

On November 21, 2006 a company called Slate Computing (registered in Delaware) filed for a US word mark for ‘ISLATE’. Notably, that was right around the time at least three islate-related domain names were registered.

You won’t find any information about any company called Slate Computing online, although according to the filing these are the goods and services they offer:

Computers; computer software, namely, database management software, electronic mail and messaging software, Internet browser software, paging software, database synchronization software, software for accessing, browsing and searching online databases, software for creating spreadsheets, tables, graphs and charts, software for organizing and analyzing data, software for word processing, software for creation and display of presentations including text and graphics, software used for image editing, image processing, image acquisition, image file management, image viewing, image sharing, and the creation of documents incorporating images, software for use in developing websites, software to help users create, edit, organize, search, transfer, publish and subscribe to weblogs, blogs, podcasts, web broadcasts and news and information feeds on global and/or local computer and telecommunications networks, software for use in authoring, downloading, transmitting, receiving, editing, extracting, encoding, decoding, playing, storing and organizing audio, video and still images, software for authoring digital content, software for personal information management, software for DVD authoring, software for the electronic storage and retrieval of electronic calendar files, software with clock and alarm clock functionality, telephony management software, character recognition software, application development tool software for personal and handheld computers, software for the redirection of messages, Internet e-mail, and/or other data to one or more electronic handheld devices from a data store on or associated with a personal computer or a server, and software for the synchronization of data between a remote station or device and a fixed or remote station or device; computer operating system software; computer utility software; computer peripherals. notebook computers; laptop computers; tablet computers; computer servers; handheld computers; mobile computers; hard drives; audio speakers; speakers for computers; radios; cameras; video cameras; telephones; mobile telephones; personal digital assistants; electronic personal organizers; electronic notepads; blank magnetic data carriers; computer gaming machines; microprocessors; memory boards; computer monitors; keyboards; computer input devices, namely, touch screens, styluses, mice, trackballs and shuttle dials; computer cables; modems; printers; computer accessories, namely, computer battery chargers, battery packs, docking stations, adaptors, computer wired and wireless remote controls, audio headphones and earphones, and replacement parts for all the aforesaid goods.

That’s quite a list for a company that doesn’t even have its own website, but it matches exactly what Apple’s business is all about. Is Slate Computing just a shell company created by Apple, or is someone trying to play a number on them? More on that later.

Either way, the USPTO record shows that an opposition was filed on June 10, 2008.

In case you’re interested, the domain name slatecomputing.com is owned by a company called “Cayman Ninety Business” – with an office address on the Cayman Islands – which according to Domain Tools owns over 11,000 other domain names (all the marks of a savvy domainer and/or cybersquatter at play).

The ISLATE Trademark (Europe)

I did a search for ‘islate’ on OHIM, and founded out that same Slate Computing has filed for a trademark for the term in the European Union as well. It was filed in 21 November 2006, on the same day the filing for the ISLATE word mark was registered in the US.

Listed as legal representative on the form: UK-based Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge, the same law firm Apple worked with for securing the EU-wide trademark for the term ‘Macbook’, for one.

Then I noticed something else on the record for the European ISLATE trademark: the priority country that was registered is Trinidad & Tobago. Why that matters? Because Apple has a history of listing Trinidad & Tobago as the priority country for European trademarks – just look up ‘iphone’ on OHIM and you’ll see I’m right.

Conclusion

Here’s what I think happened, based on the evidence presented above: Apple decided on the name iSlate for a new product it was working on, whether it will ultimately turn out to be for their new tablet computer or not, in November 2006. That same month, they moved to file for a trademark for the name in the United States and Europe under disguise, setting up and using Slate Computing LLC as a shell company, and securing a couple of available domain names through Mark Monitor (islate.co.uk, islate.biz and islate.info).

Then, they acquired the domain name islate.com from whoever owned it at that point. MacRumors reports that the domain name was under ownership of a company called Data Docket, Inc back in 2006, and a search for that company turns up this interesting article on that company. They’re either a shell company for Google (unlikely), or professional domainers/cybersquatters. I’m told Data Docket is in fact affiliated to Mark Monitor, which would make sense.

Either way, Apple reportedly got a hold of the domain name early 2007, right about the time they also secured islate.fr, supposedly.

The evidence is overwhelming: if there’s going to be a new tablet from Apple coming out next month, chances are that it’ll be christened iSlate.

Feel free to start lauding or ranting on the chosen name.

(Original image: MacRumors)

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At our Realtime CrunchUp in November, Bazaar Labs showed off their iPhone application Flixup, which scans Twitter to create aggregate scores for movies. Tonight, just in time for the busy Christmas movie-going season, they’re launching the website for the service.

The website works just like the app. The main page shows the “Top Movies” based on the amount of talk on Twitter. For example, right now Avatar leads the pack by far. Flixup’s Buzz meter also shows if the talk about the movie is positive (green), neutral (yellow), or negative (red). Avatar is not only being talked about the most, but it’s also very clearly green, which is impressive (it’s definitely worth seeing if you missed our screening of last week).

And just like the iPhone app, Flixup works better if you sign in with your Twitter account (via OAuth). If you’re signed in, when you click on a movie title, you can see the conversations about the movie on Twitter that your contacts are having. You can also click to see all the conversations on Twitter about the movie. And you can rate the movie (on a 1 to 5 scale) or say if you’re interested in seeing it or not and tweet all that out with the click of a button.

On the individual movie pages you can also get additional details about the film and see its trailer. And Flixup features its Rotten Tomatoes score as well. This is appropriate since when the iPhone app was previewed, we called it the “Rotten Tomatoes for Twitter movie talk.”

You can find Flixup’s free iPhone application in the App Store here.

Update: And the site is now live.

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As “Fashion 2.0″ sites continue to innovate, the social component of these style-focused sites becomes an important tool for viral growth. Weardrobe, a site focused on capturing and sharing the street style of web users, was recently acquired by Like.com And we’ve written about Polyvore, the startup lets web shoppers pull their favorite items any online store and mix and match to create personalized outfits online. Users can then share their creations on the site and can then buy the items shown. The site is seeing rapid growth, with over 6 million unique visitors per month thanks to new branding efforts and the launch of Facebook Connect.

Polyvore’s virtual styling tool allows people to mix and match products from any online store to create fashion collages, called “sets,” and collections that can then be embedded in other sites. Armed with $7 million in funding, Polyvore has recently forged partnerships with brands like Calvin Klein, Barney’s, Lancome, Zappos Marc Jacobs, and the Gap to create branded collages that the Polyvore community of users can then share and buy from. Many of these brands use Polyvore’s technology to create contests for users.The startup collects revenue in these partnerships and also sees returns from affiliate fees when users buy

And users can now share their branded “sets” via Facebook and Twitter, serving as social advertisements for designers and fashion companies. Polyvore says 30,000 sets are created daily on the site. Launched in 2007, the startup just raised $5.6 million in funding.

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SCVNGR, the platform that lets you build location-based games compatible with any mobile phone, is on a roll. The company has just raised $4 million from Google Ventures, with participation from existing investor Highland Capital. Google Ventures’ Rich Miner will be taking a board seat. The news comes just over a week after we learned that SCVNGR is cash flow positive, with over $1 million in revenue in its first full year in business.

While mobile location based games like Foursquare and Gowalla are getting a lot of attention right now, SCVNGR has quietly managed to establish a very nice niche market for itself. SCVNGR, which started in the DreamIt Ventures program back in 2008, makes a platform that allows companies, schools, and other organizations to build their own location-based scavenger hunts. Dozens of major universities have used the service at campus orientations, while major companies have used it for team building exercises. The platform has been used by over 400 clients including Princeton, Yale, MetLife, and HSBC, and has a whopping 91% client repeat rate.

SCVNGR is also expanding very quickly. In the eleven days since we last wrote about them, they hired six new people. They are currently doubling the company’s size from 20 to 40 employees, filling roles in everything from mobile application development to sales.

Oh, and there’s one other impressive thing about the startup: SCVNGR closed its funding round on CEO Seth Priebatsch’s twenty-first birthday.

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Last summer, when Apple pulled third-party Google Voice applications from the App Store, one of them was VoiceCentral. Apple’s subsequent rejection of the official Google Voice app spurred an FCC investigation, but Google Voice never made it to the app store and none of the other apps ever made it back in.

Well, that’s not stopping the developers Riverturn, the company behind VoiceCentral. They are bringing back their app to the iPhone via the browser. They call it the Black Swan edition. You can get on a waiting list to be on the private beta here. The app is completely browser-based but has the look and feel of a regular app, complete with a dialer, list of transcribed voicemails, and SMS messages.

When you dial a number, Google Voice simply makes a call to your iPhone while simultaneously calling the number of the person you are trying to reach, so you still pay for the voice minutes. But the appeal of having Google Voice on your iPhone is the ability to read transcribed voicemails, or play them, and avoid SMS charges by texting through Google Voice. (You cannot yet do all of these things when you access Google Voice via the iPhone’s browser directly).

The downside is that it cannot access your contact list on your iPhone through the browser. Although, VoiceCentral mimics the look and feel of the iPhone contact manager, you have to export your contacts to Google Voice first and access them that way. Another limitation is that the audio plays through the speaker instead of through the earpiece, but if you are using a pair of earphones that is not a problem.

VoiceCentral will probably be a paid app, but Apple won’t get any of the revenues since it is simply a mobile Website. It even offers offline caching and takes advantage of the HTML5 features of mobile Safari. This could very well be the future of mobile apps. As mobile browsers become more capable, more and more developers are going to ask themselves why bother with the limitations of the App Store and be at the mercy of Apple’s whims? And it won’t just be developers like VoiceCentral who have no other choice.

Below is a promotional video which shows some of the features of VoiceCentral’s Black Swan app. Remember, this is all happening in the browser:

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