Google has been cleared of any wrongdoing relating to Wi-Fi snooping in the UK. Well, partially cleared. The country’s Information Commissioner’s Office, whose job is to “uphold information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals,” has said that “it is unlikely that Google will have captured significant amounts of personal data” during its Street View mappings.

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With the debut of Groupon personalization, I have little doubt that the daily deal site will double the number of deals (and double its revenue run rate) in just a few months.

According to CEO Andrew Mason, the service is churning out 75,000 transactions per day. Through personalization, Groupon will be able to offer 20, 30 or more deals per city per day. Assuming the current growth rate in subscribers — in the last four months the site has more than doubled to 12 million registered users— 2x is likely a prudish estimate.

It’s hard to fault a company that is making money hand over fist; however, as a user, I do have one piece of advice: loosen that death grip on the daily deal mantra.

According to Mason, the personalization system will give a user one deal a day based on their preferences, their purchase history and their profile. Although there will be several, simultaneous deals in any given area, a user will only be able to access one main deal from his/her account. However, if the user finds a link to a different deal from a friend, a blog, or a daily deal aggregator, that link can be used by anyone. (In the early stage of the personalization program, Mason says, Groupon users may see multiple deals but eventually Groupon will turn that off.)

Thus, all the local deals are theoretically open to every subscriber but Groupon is playing air traffic controller in order to maximize the number of deals they can offer (aka cha-ching) and to ensure a nice distribution of users for their advertisers.  It’s easy understand Mason’s rationale here, at just one deal a day their hands were somewhat tied, unable to fully absorb the number of interested advertisers. In turn, Groupon’s limited inventory has directly benefited the “army of clones,” who have swooped in and picked up impatient retailers.

“We believe in the deal a day model, but we were running into a problem where the demand for merchants to be featured has been absolutely overwhelming,” Mason says. “We have something like 35,000 businesses lined up that want to be featured, 97% of the businesses that we feature want to be featured again, so the problem is only getting worse. And what it means is for every business we’re featuring, we have to turn away 7.” (See video above.)

Understandably, Groupon is trying to optimize the bottom line and enhance the consumer experience with personalized deals, but this structure also potentially creates a frustrating user experience. Under this system, a user knows that there could be 20, 30 deals floating around but s/he can only automatically access one. Thus, if a user doesn’t want their preselected deal of the day, she will have to scour the web and ping friends in a cyber goose chase. Of course, this search will be eased by the plethora of daily deal aggregators— but that doesn’t seem like an ideal solution for Groupon either. Why encourage users to jump off your website and spend more time on independent aggregators, where their wallets will be exposed to competitors’ deals.

From the launch of Groupon, Mason has adamantly defended the model of one deal a day, a structure that has obviously served his company well (and its army of clones) and catapulted Groupon to a billion-dollar-plus valuation. However, I believe the massive demand in the market indicates that there’s some flexibility in the business model. The data suggests that consumers can stomach several deals a day— maybe not hundreds— but certainly more than one.  From the vantage point of a user, I would like to see Groupon send just one personalized deal a day to my inbox because I think there is real value in that spotlight. However, on Groupon’s website, I also want the option to log-in and access all (or at least several) of my local deals in one simple repository, perhaps ranked according to my tastes and profile.

Groupon, consider this my 700-word comment card. However, regardless of how you tackle the challenge of personalization, I get the feeling you’ll probably do just fine.

Mason dropped by TechCrunch TV on Wednesday and we got a chance to discuss the new personalization campaign (above) and Groupon’s early days. In the second video (below), he discusses the key moment when Groupon kicked into second gear.

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Amazon announced the Kindle 3 last night, and it doesn’t look too shabby at all. The most important part is the inclusion of the next-generation E-Ink display, previously only found in the too-big-for-casual-use Kindle DX. (The low price, $139 for the Wi-Fi version, certainly doesn’t hurt.) Immediately following the announcement, I saw something that confused me. For whatever reason, it seems plenty of people are comparing the Kindle to the iPad, almost as if these people want the Kindle to be the iPad. Why is that?

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People don’t send postcards anymore. Why bother when you can photo MMS a friend? Attempting to restore some of the social experience behind photography, SwingVine has created SwingVine Gallery an app that attempts to bring back some of the mystique and enjoyment of social photo sharing.

Using your iPhone’s camera and GPS, the SwingVine Gallery app allows you to send a photo to a friend “secretly,” which they are unable to see unless they also participate by sending a photo back, sort of like a mobile game of photo tag.

While both the idea and the app interface are simple, SwingVine gallery does have its appeal, as it’s pretty hard to resist wanting to see whatever photo postcard is under wraps.  I genuinely felt a level of excitement as I waited for my “secret” postcard to be revealed (It was, of course, a photo of the Eiffel Tower).

The app, expected to arrive in the app store within the next 24 hours, also functions as a photo album, with all the secret photos you receive being saved alongside your own personal photos. “Our goal is capturing people’s lives visually” says co-founder Ling Bao.

For those that can’t wait until it drops, you can try out the feature on the web here.

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Short Version
If Charlie the Unicorn has taught us anything it’s that the road to success is fraught with setbacks and, if you’re not careful, your best friends will cut out your kidneys. It is with these life-lessons in mind that we examine the Dell Streak, a 5-inch Android 1.6 tablet that shows much promise but is hobbled by Android OS fracturing.

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Facebook may be in the middle of negotiating a deal to acquire the check-in service Hot Potato, but that didn’t stop most employees from stopping by the cafeteria at the headquarters in Palo Alto today to see hip hop artist Kanye West freestyle.

West, dressed in a suit, appears to be standing on a table as his lets loose. First, he raps a bit about getting laid. But then, cheered on by the crowd, he comes back to freestyle about a number of others things — and if you listen closely, you can even hear him diss Facebook rival Twitter (I’m not even sure those in the audience picked up on it).

You may recall that early last year, West was mad as hell at Twitter — and blogged about it. Clearly, he’s a Facebook guy.

[thanks Jason for the pic and Joe for the vid]

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The Chevy Volt: $41,000. GM finally went live with the second to last piece of the Chevy Volt puzzle and select dealers are ready to take orders with delivery expected “later this year.” After the available $7,500 tax credit, the effective price drops down to a much more reasonable $33,500. A tad pricey, yes, but GM is fully prepared to counter that higher price with an affordable leasing program that gets drivers into the Volt for only $350 per month with $2,500 due at signing.

The Volt will slowly roll out nationwide starting with California, New York, Michigan, Connecticut, Texas, New Jersey, and the Washington D.C. area. GetMyVolt.com will locate your nearest dealership who should be able to start processing orders as soon as today. Customers will then receive a phone call from a dedicated Volt advisor who will be able to answer any further questions.

But will GM have any issue moving the $41k Volt off of dealer’s lots? Probably not.

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Earlier today Google Operating System noticed something odd in an official Google Docs demo video: an icon for an unreleased document editor called Google Punch. Numerous blogs have taken a stab at guessing what Google Punch may be (we initially speculated that it’s Google’s answer to Microsoft Publisher). But we’re hearing that it is something decidedly less exciting: Google Punch may just be a placeholder for a new version of an existing editor.

In other words, Google is testing a new version of Docs, Spreadsheets, Presentations, or one of its other existing apps, and just needed something to call it. So what exactly is this new editor going to feature? It’s possible that Google is working to integrate DocVerse, the service it acquired in March that allows users to collaborate on Microsoft Office files. The software will give Google a bridge between native Microsoft Office clients and Google Docs, which will be a big deal.  Or perhaps Punch could be the next version of Google’s Presentation app (note that the icons are quite similar).

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It’s no longer illegal under the DMCA to jailbreak your iPhone or bypass a DVD’s CSS in order to obtain fair use footage for educational purposes or criticism. These are the new rules that were handed down moments ago by the U.S. Copyright Office. This is really big. Like, really big.

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Look at me. Now look at the kitchen wall. Now look at me again. I’m on a horse. Look again? Look at the iPad on the wall!

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I’d like to present to you the Wallee, a thingamabob for your iPad that lets you attach it to your wall. That’s right: you’ve just made your own 10-inch Apple TV.

Read more…

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