TrustedPlaces is a UK-based startup that launched two years ago in the hopes of providing a home for independent reviews of businesses. The reviews cover bars, restaurants, food, nightlife and cafes. They have just launched a Christmas section (should be the holiday section!).

TrustedPlaces is similar to Yelp here in the U.S. and another UK site we have reviewed, welovelocal. The company has raised $1 million in 2007. Last year TrustedPlaces introduced "learning" where you can find other good locations based on your profile from other TrustedPlaces members.

The site gets a bit odd if you navigate through the footer to other countries. Selecting the U.S., you are presented with a list of 20,000 locations but no navigation and no categorization. Instead the list is presented in alphabetical order. Clicking a navigation item takes you back to the UK site. Why not spend a few hours and create a proper US (and other countries) site?

TrustedPlaces offers login access through FacebookConnect and OpenID. Lastly, TrustedPlaces offers a very interactive widget for their members. You can create lists and widgetize them for your blog or social network profile.

Schmap has been around for a couple of years and provides a variety of pretty neat mapping services. Their main service are travel guides for about 200 cities worldwide. AS you can see from the screenshot below, they locate points of interest on a map and then provide some details on the location as you move around the map. Interesting note, Schmap uses Yahoo Maps for their mapping service.

There's also a downloadable version of Schmap which allows you to browse the guides locally. The 200 city pack will run you 338 mb in download size. They most recently launched Schmap Enable which allows websites to place mobile-friendly maps on their sites in seconds. The Schmap team tells me a paid premium version of Enable will be available in early 2009.

Schmap also offers a suite of embeddable widgets including a map of all of the NBA/MLB/NFL teams, concert tours (NKOTB!!) and the city guides can be widgetized as well.

Lastly Schmap offers iPhone and Blackberry map versions for on-the-go guide and location browsing.

Earlier today we reported on the launch of the CafeMom Plus Ad Network. This afternoon I learned that family-focused community site Kaboose launched the "family publisher community" earlier this month. In addition to Kaboose, the other sites in the family publisher community include: MommyandMe.com, PlanningFamily.com, TheCuteKid.com, ParentSociety.com and MyGroceryDeals.com.

Basically the sites in the community will be represented by Kaboose for online advertising. Kaboose self-reports that the total community increased Kaboose's online inventory by 30%.

If we assume that the reports are right and online advertising will drop over the next year, sites that can work together to sell ads might be in a better position than those selling independently. As a former large media buyer, I can tell you it's always easier to buy one campaign on a network versus multiple smaller ad buys.

White label multimedia provider Pixsy has announced a variety of new distribution partnerships today. The following sites will use Pixsy's Video Search Playback: eZanga, GenieKnows.com, IceRocket, EgoTVOnline, and GossipGirls.

Pixsy explains how the Video Search Playback functionality works, "videos can be searched and embedded into any website, providing a unique source of targeted video content for users to search and view. Websites also benefit from adding a significant source of new video content to their sites, with targeted metadata, that drives increased pageviews and new advertising monetization opportunities."

Over the past year, Pixsy has signed a good number of distribution deals for their search and video player functionality.

Berlin-based music recommendation service Mufin has moved into public beta today. Mufin launched in private beta in October. Check out initial Mufin reviews on VentureBeat, Download Squad and Webware. It looks like Mufin provides song previews and in my testing, many of the songs had no previews. However there are lots of links to buy the songs and/or albums.

The company notes that they have 4 million songs (previews??) in their database. Since their initial private beta launch, Mufin has added a Facebook application along with the ability to tie Mufin into an iTunes account and generate recommendations from songs in an iTunes playlist.

While their technology sounds and looks very impressive, the service just doesn't seem ready for primetime -- it feels incomplete. What good is it to recommend a song that I can't listen to? I really like the idea of taking my iTunes library and recommending other music close to it as you know I am all about discovery. I'd like to see them tie into more music retailers and clearly if possible they need to provide the ability to listen to the entire song.

NY-based CafeMom has announced the launch of a new ad network today. The CafeMom Plus Ad Network could help CafeMom sell more ads by selling not only into CafeMom but into a variety of other mom-related websites. The other sites in the network include: Greatschools.net, Sittercity.com, Education.com, Baby-Gaga.com, BettyConfidential.com, SavvySource.com and BabySpot.com.

CafeMom notes that the new Plus Ad Network will reach 8 million unique visitors a month. Back in January, Burst Media launched a moms ad network.

In other CafeMom news, Aimee Higgins joins CafeMom from MySpace as SVP, Sales Strategy and Creative Services.

Google Trends shows CafeMom dropping in traffic month-over-month since the summer:

Flo TV and Victoria's Secret have announced a very exciting new mobile television channel today. Models like Miranda Kerr (seen on the right) will be part of the channel which is a partnership with CBS.

The channel shows video clips now through the night of the live Victoria's Secret show on December 3. From December 4 - January 2, you can "re-live the excitement" anytime you want with post-event clips.

Call me lame but I can't imagine anyone who wants to see Miranda and the other models hit the runway in the lingerie will watch on a 2" mobile video player. Also note that the service only works on the Verizon and AT&T mobile services.

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LendingClub

Lending Club is a social lending network of borrowers and lenders. Lending Club allows qualified borrowers (a FICO score at least 640 and other credit characteristics) to obtain personal loans with interest rates that they find attractive. Lending Club also provides lenders with the opportunity to invest in Notes, which correspond to fractions of borrower loans, to earn attractive returns while helping other members meet their financial objectives. If you register using this link, you can receive a $25 signup bonus.

eBuddy

eBuddy, enables more than 12 million monthly global visitors with AOL, Google Talk, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo Messenger accounts to chat free of charge in one interface without having to download or install any application on their computer. Users can also access eBuddy on their mobile phone, independent of carrier or device via WAP or mobile internet browser. eBuddy recently added access to Facebook chat.

Consumer Electronics Association - Digital TV Transition

The Consumer Electronics Association is running a contest on YouTube to teach people about the upcoming digital TV conversion. They are giving away a variety of prizes and to enter you need to submit a video response on the CEA YouTube channel.

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NY-based KickApps has announced a new partnership with the New Orleans Hornets NBA team today. The partnership brings a new "Hornets Fanzone" social network which includes fan videos, photos, blogs, chat, a message board and groups.

What I've found with the social networks that KickApps powers for most of the sports teams they are working with is that it's nearly impossible to find the actual social network on the main sports team's website. On the new Hornets deal today, it's listed in their rotating news area but I can't find it elsewhere. The Seattle Seahaws installation is also missing or I can't seem to find it. On the positive side, the NY Rangers site seems to display a widget for the social network on the homepage.

While it's great that KickApps has signed a variety of pro sports teams to social networking deals, if the networks are nearly impossible to find, what good is that for KickApps, the sports team or the fans?

Here's a sample of the videos on the Hornets social network - watch the hornet mascots get down and boogie! Update: it looks like the widget embeds all of the videos, not just the one with the mascots - it's on the right if you want to watch it.

Akamai is out today with their third quarter 2008 "State of the Internet" report. The report is well worth a read as it covers a variety of topics including: security, connection speeds, geography, network access, and Internet penetration. Some of the interesting stats include:

• Akamai observed attack traffic originating from 179 unique countries around the world, up nearly 30% from the second quarter count of 139 countries. China ranked first with the U.S. right behind in second.
• In the third quarter of 2008, nearly 380 million unique IP addresses connected to the Akamai network – almost ten percent more than in the second quarter.
• Delaware has the highest fast Internet connectivity with 97% over 2 Mbps. Washington D.C and Washington State had the highest level of slow Internet connections (less than 256k) at 12% each.

Here are a couple of the charts from the report.

High Broadband Connectivity: Fastest International Countries

South Korea remains in the lead but drops from 64% to 58% of connections to Akamai occurring at over 5 Mbps. South Korea is down 10% in over 5 Mbps connections this year. Japan ranked second and the U.S. drops two slots to eighth.

Slowest International Countries

For those countries on some form of broadband, here are the countries with the slowest (less than 256k) connections. Mayotte moved into first place while former leader Rwanda dropped to sixth. The U.S. comes in just over 5.8% (down from 8% of all connections at this speed - my mother is one of those 5.8% as she is still on a 56k modem.