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Google made two significant enhancements to Google.com on mobile phones Wednesday.

The first, history sync, now makes it possible to carry over a record of your search queries when you switch between mobile and desktop versions of Google.com. Dubbed "Personalized Suggest," Google will now remember your searches and will add them into the list of search suggestions you see as you type into the search bar. The new feature saves you from browsing through your history to repeat a query.

Of course, you do have to be logged in to Google for this to work, and you've got to have Web History switched on. Enable it on a phone by selecting "save searches" in the Settings menu on Google.com. At launch, the feature is only available in the U.S. on Android, iPhone, and Palm WebOS phones.

The second addition today similarly gets the mobile and desktop versions of Google.com talking to one another. Google has redesigned local search to make finding places of interest while on the mobile Google site much more finger-friendly. Click or tap "Local" on the mobile browser and you'll see a Start screen with categories you can browse to find restaurants and other businesses nearby, similar to what you can do on Google Maps. You'll need to have the My Location feature enabled.

There's also a category for viewing the points of interest that you starred as favorites on a Google Map. Starring essentially bookmarks the location's Google Place page. Bookmarking isn't anything new, but the browsable layout is relatively new to Google, which generally favors bare links to graphical enhancements. This treatment has the mobile Google site looking like a mobile hot-spot-finding app you might find in an on-phone app store. We have to say, it's a nice change.

The rejiggered Local Search kicks off in the U.S. and China, with support for more regions in the works.

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Twitter on Wednesday announced a long-awaited feature to a small subset of its user base for testing. "Lists" lets users group Twitter accounts together for easy filtration.

For example, you can create a list of all of your work friends or one for all of your drinking buddies. By default, ...

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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Among the tech industry's up-and-coming, ad-supported business models appear to be out of fashion. Or at least that appears to be the trend among the companies that just graduated from the annual Boulder, Colo.-based incubator program TechStars. Representatives from some of those start-ups convened for an "Investor Day" at a Microsoft-owned auditorium here on Wednesday morning.

Founded by venture capitalists David Cohen and Brad Feld three years ago, TechStars accepts a total of 20 participants in both Boulder and Boston for a summer of development, seminars with industry veterans, and a small amount of seed funding. Thirteen of those 20 companies were advanced enough to earn spots at Wednesday's Investor Day, in which they offered short presentations to more than 100 members of the venture capital community who are actively interested in making early-stage investments.

And not a single one was offering a strictly advertising-supported business model, something that would've been pretty unthinkable not so long ago.

"(These companies) are the future of the entrepreneurial ecosystem as it evolves," Feld said to the audience midway through the morning. "We think these are all very fundable companies. In fact, most of the companies that you're seeing today are either well down the path of closing financing, or have closed financing, but for many of them there's still room."

Unlike the TechCrunch50 start-up pitch event earlier this month, none of these companies were actually launching out of a total stealth mode. Some had already experienced a sort of PR blitz--travelogue site Everlater generated some buzz when people were using it to map their plans for airline JetBlue's "All You Can Jet" promotion, and unofficial Twitter app store OneForty experienced the usual tech-blog mayhem earlier this week when it launched in private alpha and set off a flurry among the early-adopter crowd as people scrambled for invites.

But like TechCrunch50's array of start-ups, most of the TechStars lineup had productivity on the brain. Gaming and entertainment companies were limited to TakeComics, which aims to bring an iTunes-inspired business model to the digitization of comic books, and AccelGolf, a decidedly hardcore set of mobile and Web-based applications for avid golfers.

Business-focused applications were far more commonplace. Retel Technologies has built security-camera software enhanced with data and analytics, NextBigSound tabulates bands and musicians' popularity on social-media and music sites to roll up into a product sold to industry professionals; SendGrid offers e-mail marketing services to businesses at a variety of price points; and HaveMyShift, built by a former Starbucks barista, offers an exchange for hourly employees at major chain stores to swap and pick up shifts.

The companies were a mixed bag, and so were the entrepreneurs behind them: many fell into the young-entrepreneur stereotype of puppy-faced young men who could use a haircut along with that seed funding, but others strayed from the norm. OneForty's Laura Fitton is already a respected Twitter consultant; Raj Aggarwal, CEO of mobile data start-up Localytics, is an Apple veteran who had helped construct the original business model for the iPhone; and the founders of mobile contact management company Sensobi professed to earlier entrepreneurial experience in the chocolate industry.

Of the entire lineup, Everlater--founded by two childhood friends who had quit their Wall Street jobs to found the company--offered the closest thing to the typical ad-supported consumer model that was so ubiquitous in Web 2.0's heyday a few years ago, and even still, the founders plan to sell customized scrapbook and postcard products as well as offer branded packages to travel companies hoping to get their name out there.

A few other TechStars presenters said they hoped to use a free, ad-supported model as an entry point for the subscription services where they plan to make more significant money: video-based language learning system LangoLab, for example, hopes to strike deals with online video hubs like Hulu and then charge for access to lessons based around that "premium" content, and open-source forum software Vanilla charges for the hosted version of its product.

Granted, these business models still have their pratfalls: namely, the fact that they actually have to find individuals or companies who are willing to pay, something that often requires the formation of a solid marketing or sales department before profits can start to roll in. That was why many of them said they were looking to close early-stage funding rounds soon.

But those solicitations for funding were not lofty. Almost all of the TechStars presentations provided a target amount that they were seeking for their angel or Series A rounds (a few had closed rounds already), and the vast majority were south of $1 million--far south, in some cases.

Originally posted at The Social

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CHICAGO--On most days it takes the right access badge and a biometric scan ...

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Google is offering Web publishers a free tool for providing translation services on their pages.

Lots of big companies based outside the U.S. offer English-language versions of their Web site with a click of a button, but Google's new service actually detects the home language of a visitor to your site and offers them a translated version of the page based on their browser settings. Fifty-one languages will be supported by the service, which Webmasters can offer by pasting a bit of code into their pages.

Such a service is only as useful as its accuracy, however. Google admitted the service is really designed to offer a "quick gist" of a page's content and hailed the work of professional translators on what is apparently International Translation Day. (Unbelievably, Hallmark does not appear to make a card commemorating this day.)

Interested publishers can test out the code here.

Originally posted at Relevant Results

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Travel discount site Hotwire announced on Wednesday that it has partnered with travel itinerary service TripIt to help its users organize and share their travel plans.

According to the company, users booking a trip through Hotwire will now be able to click an "Add to TripIt" button after completing their travel plans. Upon doing so, those plans are added to a TripIt itinerary.

TripIt, which is a main competitor to the recently acquired Dopplr, will also bring its premium "pro" package to the service. The feature, which costs $69 per year, monitors itineraries and sends mobile alerts when delays occur. It also finds alternate flight options.

Hotwire joins what is becoming a growing list of TripIt partners that are utilizing the company's "open itinerary platform." Currently, Virgin America, Plaxo, LinkedIn, and several other services are using TripIt's itinerary tool.

"Our strategy of building an open itinerary platform is becoming a reality with a growing number of travel users and new partnerships," a company representative said in an e-mailed statement. "There are now over 250 developers signed up for the TripIt Developer Program and we're offering commissions to partners who sell our TripIt Pro premium service."

It's that last element that TripIt hopes will help it increase sales. According to the company, it will now share with partners the revenue generated from sites that offer its TripIt Pro version. The company wouldn't divulge any more details on the sharing agreement. But since it's offering access to TripIt Pro, Hotwire stands to gain from its partnership with TripIt.

Related story: TripIt aggregates your travel info

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Online collaboration service Huddle announced the addition of Web conferencing, an iPhone app, and a Microsoft Office plug-in to its service on Wednesday.

The company's new Web conferencing feature is fully integrated into Huddle. Users will now be able to schedule recurring meetings. They can also share content with outside participants by providing viewing privileges to a member's desktop. A limited number of minutes will be made available, depending on the user's plan. Unlimited conferencing can be purchased separately.

For now, Huddle's Web-conferencing feature is only available to its high-paying Enterprise plan-holders. It plans to roll it out to other paid members over the next few weeks.

On the desktop side, Huddle offered up a new plug-in for Microsoft Office users. The feature will provide access to Huddle files from within Microsoft's office productivity suite. It also lets users save local files directly to Huddle. Users will have the ability to view and edit files, request task approval from other team members, or send notifications. Huddle's Office plug-in is currently in beta testing. The company hopes to make it available by early October.

Finally, Huddle announced a new iPhone app, giving users the ability to access documents, project tasks, and discussions within the group. It's available now for free in Apple's App Store.

Huddle competes in an extremely crowded space. Several companies, including Clarizen and OfficeZilla, provide similar services. Huddle attempts to carve out a niche in the market by making the service affordable. Users interested in Huddle can start using it for free, provided they need just one workspace and no more than 1GB of storage. Plans go up from there to $200 per month for larger organizations.

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Google has slowly been adding its location feature to Google's mobile applications. Last week, Windows Mobile phones were the latest to get the handy localization feature.

In Google's mobile maps apps, My Location appears as a blinking blue dot that shows either your approximate location, based on cell tower triangulation, or a more precise reading based on your phone's built-in GPS. The same principle now applies to search in the Google Mobile App. The blue dot will list your current location below the search box. Instead of specifying a city or zip code, you just type in your query, and Google will deliver the results closest to you.

The most recent version of Google Mobile App for Windows phones also weaves URL suggestions for Web pages into its search suggestions. By clicking one, you can bypass the search results page and go straight to the business' Web site. Furthermore, if you have Google Maps installed on your phone, the app can plot local search results on a map. Google signifies these locations in the search results with a red pin (pictured).

As a nod to those with privacy concerns, Google encrypts your location on its way to the server, and only stores the most recent location to make subsequent searching easier. Of course, not everyone wants to make their location known. You can disable the My Location feature in the settings under Advanced Options.

For those who use Google Mobile App to quickly find places nearby, this update does, indeed, make the app a more capable tool. It also steps into Yelp's mobile territory, delivering not only ratings as part of a search result, but also mapped locations. Combined with the map's directions feature, the mobile app could help drivers and passengers, especially, find their destinations faster.

Google Mobile App first became available for Windows Mobile phones in February 2009. To get the latest update, point the mobile browser to m.google.com.

Originally posted at The Download Blog

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Facebook made a dual set of announcements this week pertaining to Facebook Connect, the universal-log-in product that it offers to third-party developers and Web sites. Both are aimed at making Connect more ubiquitous: first, a tool called "Translations for Facebook Connect" that simplifies the process of translating the product into international languages, and second, the "Facebook Connect Wizard" for incorporating the product into a site with little developer expertise required.

Facebook first announced that Connect would be available in a multilingual format this summer. Now, the tool can be used to translate any site into the language of a given user who's logged in with Connect.

Last we heard, about 15,000 sites had implemented Facebook Connect, a product that statistics firm Hitwise says gave the social network enough momentum to propel it past once-bigger rival MySpace in terms of U.S. traffic. Launching international translations of the main Facebook site--which the company ended up "crowdsourcing" to users starting early last year--is largely credited with kickstarting the social network's growth overseas.

Facebook now has over 300 million active users around the world, a sizable majority of which are outside the U.S.

"Establishing a presence on the social Web requires fundamental building blocks," a post by Facebook employee Alex Himel explained as it announced the Facebook Connect Wizard. "Facebook provides these essential tools, including identity for a great registration system, and immediate access to 300 million active global users. Facebook Connect gives entrepreneurs of all sizes--and with varying developer resources--the ability to build traffic efficiently through reaching a relevant audience, while offering an engaging user experience."

The new Connect Wizard takes only three steps, Himel's post said.

Originally posted at The Social

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What's better than posting tweets from Twitter.com? Just about everything.

Third-party Twitter apps are typically more powerful, crammed with managerial features that get you quickly viewing, sorting, replying to messages, and retweeting in a click or tap. They automatically shorten URLs to fit Twitter's character limit, and help you post pictures through other services, like TwitPic and yfrog. Most of these desktop apps manage multiple Twitter accounts, are customizable, and are more attractive than Twitter online. They also sometimes succeed in posting your tweets during times when Twitter's site famously fails.

Convinced yet? Good. We've rounded up five desktop applications that help you post tweets and retweets to Twitter. Four run on the Adobe AIR runtime environment (Windows | Mac | Linux), which you need to download before you install the Twitter apps. But enough of the technical details--get tweeting!

Related story: Tweet your music preferences with these apps

Originally posted at The Download Blog

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