Clustrix, a Y Combinator graduate from 2006, launched today with the claim that it’s built a transaction database with MySQL-like functionality and reliability that can scale to billions of entries. Clustrix plans to sell its appliance (which consists of more than a terabyte of memory and its proprietary software) to web firms that don’t want to take on the complicated task of sharding their data (replicating it across multiple databases), or moving to less robust database options like Cassandra or a key value store such as what’s provided by Twitter.

This is big stuff. Indeed, Paul Mikesell — CEO of Clustrix and the former co-founder of storage system success story Isilon — said the goal is to use its appliance to solve a growing problem for companies managing large amounts of data, such as big travel, e-commerce and social websites. As the web grows more social, companies are trying to keep track of more pieces of data about users and their relationships to other users. This creates complicated and large databases that can slow down access to user information, and thus the end user experience.

We’ve written about myriad attempts to solve these data scalability problems, attempts that have spawned appliance startups and whole branches of code designed to help sites scale their data, from Hadoop to Cassandra to Twitter’s Gizzard. Mikesell said the product could replace the need for caching appliances such as those offered by Schooner or Northscale, but could also work in conjunction with them.

As for some of the open source options, new programming languages like Bloom, or cloud-based scalable databases such as Microsoft’s SQL Azure or Rackspace’s partnership with FathomDB, Mikesell is confident that the ability to replicate the functionality of a relational database at webscale without sharding or tweaking the existing code is powerful enough that customers would pay $80,000 for a 3-node machine containing the software. There are plenty of companies reluctant to trust the open-source spin-outs from companies like Twitter and Facebook.

The market is clearly there for scalable relational database products (GigaOM Pro, sub req’d), so if Clustrix can take the $18 million invested in it from Sequoia, ATA Ventures and US Venture Partners and turn it into an Isilon-like exit, more power to it.

Is there a tablet in Google’s future with a three-dimensional, multitouch user interface? It’s increasingly likely, given that the search giant has just acquired BumpTop, a startup whose unique software creates a 3-D environment where users can toss files and folders around as though they were playing cards, stack them in related piles and “hang” them on the virtual walls. If Google is working on an iPad-style tablet, as many believe that it is, a BumpTop-style interface would be dramatic departure from the typical 2-D app/icon approach, and could provide a significant alternative to the look and feel of Apple’s iPad.

A post on the BumpTop website on Sunday confirmed the acquisition, and said the company’s existing software (which was available for both Windows and Mac computers) “will no longer be available for sale [and] no updates to the products are planned.” Despite this, however, sources say the purchase of the company isn’t just another case of Google “acqu-hiring” some talented developers (something it has been doing a lot of recently).

Instead, they say Google is looking at the company’s 3-D, multitouch interface — or elements of it — as a potential addition to a tablet device. Mark McQueen at Wellington Financial also seems to see the potential for this, saying in his blog post:

Given the arm wrestling going on between Apple and Google over who will have the sweetest user experience, Bumptop’s cool desktop and underlying technology are a natural piece of Google’s user interface puzzle as they prepare to take on the current kings of all consumer electronics. The ones down the street in Cupertino.

There’s no question that the iPad is a revolutionary device in many ways, with its form factor and multitouch interface, but the look of the desktop is surprisingly boring, with tiny app icons spread out in a typical desktop grid. If Google is looking for something more dramatic to set its own tablet-type device apart from the crowd, BumpTop’s 3-D desktop would certainly fit the bill. As shown in the video below, icons representing files and folders can be flipped, stacked, fanned out, resized and manipulated in various ways. And perhaps just as important, BumpTop also holds patents on its interface.

Terms of the acquisition weren’t disclosed, but the Wellington Financial blog speculates that the price was in the $35-$40 million range. According to a recent profile of the company in the Globe and Mail, the Toronto-based company has raised $1.65 million from GrowthWorks Capital and Extreme Venture Partners, as well as angel investor and former Macintosh designer Andy Hertzfeld. According to Startup North, Canadian entrepreneur and angel investor Austin Hill was also involved in funding the company.

Speculation about a Google acquisition began with a tweet from someone in the Canadian startup community, which was noticed by TechCrunch, but then deleted (although StartupNorth got a screenshot). A post then appeared at the Wellington Financial blog speculating that the company had been acquired by Google, and the BumpTop website was later updated with confirmation of the deal.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Why the iPad is Right For the Enterprise

SpringSource, a division of VMware, has purchased the open-source cloud messaging company behind the RabbitMQ software. The value of the deal was undisclosed, but the purchase of Rabbit Technologies Ltd. is yet another effort by VMware to become the operating system for enterprise clouds (GigaOM Pro, sub req’d) and add value to its commoditized hypervisor. It’s also the latest example of a company selling proprietary software buying up an open-source software company aimed at the cloud.

Cloud providers use RabbitMQ to create a messaging server allowing them to quickly manage the flow of messages between applications. It can also be used to notify users of a web service when content on the site has changed, such as when someone posts a Facebook photo and the service sends an email out notifying all a user’s friends.

The RabbitMQ code was created by Cohesive FT and LShift based on the relatively young AMQP standards effort backed by major banks, Cisco and a handful of smaller companies. As hardware is virtualized, translating some of the network equipment like load balancers into software allow services running on the virtualized hardware to scale better. Hopefully we’ll learn more about SpringSource, RabbitMQ and VMware’s plans for becoming the cloud OS when VMware CEO Paul Maritz speaks at our Structure conference in June.

Introduction to AMQP Messaging with RabbitMQ
View more presentations from Dmitriy Samovskiy.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Joshua Davis

About six months ago, I wrote about Augmented Search, a new way of enhancing search results. It was developed by Xmarks, a San Francisco-based company that started life as Foxmarks, a Firefox plugin that backed up browser bookmarks on its servers and allowed consumers to sync browsers on different machines. (You can read how Augmented Search works here.)

Based on that concept, Xmarks is launching a new product called SearchBoost. “As I hinted earlier, this is our business model,” said James Joaquin, the chief executive officer of Xmarks. “The paid service overlays ratings and reviews onto their pay-per-click (PPC) ads across the 450 million searches performed by Xmarks users each month.” The company currently has 4.5 million active add-on users and has a billion bookmarks in its database. Joaquin says that the company ran “an extensive 30-day test across 200K users and found that, on average, SearchBoost increases PPC click-through rates by 15 percent.”

Well now all they have to do is find customers and convince them to pay for this service.

There’s no point in worrying about your reputation anymore, TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington has decided; everything will eventually find its way into the public sphere anyway. Union Square Ventures investor Fred Wilson, however, thinks there is a way to manage your reputation, namely having your community of friends and those who know you through social networks defend you. Pete Kazanjy says his new service Unvarnished, a social network for reputation management that launched yesterday, takes something from both of those ideas.

Unlike LinkedIn, which gives a user ultimate control over what appears on their profile, Unvarnished takes the same approach as Yelp does to restaurants: Anyone can create a profile for any person and then review them, at which point the person being reviewed can “claim” their profile. They can’t delete or vote on negative reviews they’ve received, but they can respond to them — and they can encourage their friends, coworkers and social network followers to vote on them or provide their own.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Unvarnished is that the reviews are anonymous (Kazanjy prefers to say that the reviewer’s identity has been “obscured”) so that you never know, for example, who exactly provided that two-star rating. Although it seems like the kind of thing that no one in their right mind would want, Kazanjy says such anonymity is a crucial part of what makes Unvarnished different from LinkedIn. Human nature, he says, means that the reviews on a LinkedIn profile are almost always positive, and are often so banal and vague that they convey virtually no real information whatsoever.




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In some cases, those reviews may even be flat-out wrong. But no one will actually say what they really think because they don’t want to offend the person they’re reviewing — and besides, no one would ever authorize anything less than an enthusiastic review on their LinkedIn profile. Which, Kazanjy says, is like letting the owners of restaurants control what reviews appear on their Yelp pages — it ensures that nothing bad ever appears, and thus that no one ever gets a completely objective summary of all the information about that restaurant.

Even though you don’t know the identity of the person who left that bad review on Unvarnished, Kazanjy says the system is designed to track their behavior throughout the site, and that over time it creates a kind of persistent identity that’s almost as good as knowing who the person is (and users can reveal themselves in a comment or review at any time if they want to). Reviewers gain trust within the system by providing more reviews, and the service has an algorithm that looks at how long they’ve been a member, how many of their reviews are one-star vs. four or five, and so on. Users are awarded badges — new, novice and trusted — based on their activity, that others can view.

The bottom line is that the principle behind Unvarnished is a very real one: Your reputation is already being outsourced, whether you like it or not. All you can do is respond to criticism wherever it appears, and to get your friends and coworkers to do the same. Unvarnished offers a way to do that all in one place. It’s a valiant effort — but will it take off? The biggest issue for the service is that not everyone is going to want to confront those negative reviews, and/or hustle their friends to review them positively to counterbalance them. Of course, people already do that to some extent with LinkedIn, so what Unvarnished has to do is show that there is more value in the way it approaches online reputation.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user seeveeaar

Addicted to Groupon, LivingSocial, YouSwoop and TownHog (and the many other Groupon groupies), where the appeal of an amazing expiring deal snags you — but then you get busy and forget to ever print or use the coupon you bought? It happens to all too many of us. But now there’s a site — DealsGoRound — where you can buy and sell daily deals rather than let them go to waste.

DealsGoRound is a side project of Chicago entrepreneur Kris Petersen, and since beta-launching in 52 cities on March 1 has hosted just 30 transactions. Petersen tells us that he came up with the idea after letting a $160 pair of Segway tours of downtown Chicago expire because he was too busy with work and training for a marathon. “I realized my impulses didn’t always coexist with my calendar,” he said. The site doesn’t verify deals but it doesn’t take a cut of them, either; Petersen wants to monetize through advertising.

DealsGoRound bears a parallel to sites like Cardpool (our profile) and Plastic Jungle, which have emerged recently to buy and sell unused purchases in the $100 billion gift card market. Though interest (and venture funding) in Groupon-type businesses is exploding, it’s not there yet.

But other sites like 8coupons and Yipit have launched side services for daily deals too — aggregating and repackaging them on a map or an email, respectively. In a sense, these sites help grow the Groupon economy in that they increase distribution for deals, which are ultimately monetized by the companies that set them up when people purchase them.

Yipit, for example, sends a very nicely formatted email newsletter of all the deals in your local area, giving top billing to the ones in categories you’ve indicated you like. It’s the kind of thing that makes you unsubscribe from Groupon, losing their tight connection with you and their quantifiable recurring email recipient. After all, being a deal seeker isn’t about brand loyalty; it’s about finding the absolute best and most relevant deal as quickly as possible!

But these are young and evolving concepts. The folks at Yipit told me they’re trying to put together a local advertising network to sell highly targeted deals ads on local blogs and news outlets. As far as new businesses go, that certainly seems like a better and more scalable idea than creating yet another Groupon groupie with its own local ad sales team in every city.

Back in early February, while aboard a red-eye to New York, Dave McClure wrote a long, humorous, rambling, profanity-laden rant of a blog post that focused on startup business models. While it makes for an entertaining read, McClure's post is also very insightful and makes a solid case for why startups should shift from advertising models and instead build their new businesses on subscriptions and micropayments. Earlier this month I had the chance to visit the headquarters of ZooLoo, a startup that witnessed this very shift first-hand with their own business model.

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During my visit I spoke with Aaron Baer, Director of Communications at the Scottsdale-based ZooLoo, a site that provides individuals with the ability to share and manage content on their own domain. Like many startups in the past decade, ZooLoo opened for business under an advertising business model, but eventually caught on to the changing trend McClure evangelized on his blog.

"[ZooLoo's original model] was an advertising platform, we had a shopping page, we would do affiliate marketing, you could buy and order prints off of our website - we had a very broad business model," says Baer. "We discovered that didn't work."

They also realized that it wasn't the model their customers wanted. Under the old model, users were presented with two options: a free basic service, and a premium service with more features in an "all or nothing," fashion. Customers complained that they wanted to upgrade and purchase premium services, but that they weren't willing to pony up the full price for a bunch of other features they didn't want.

In January, ZooLoo fundamentally changed their business model by creating a storefront through which customers could pick and choose features on a micropayment level. Now if a user wants to purchase their own domain name, but doesn't want to pay for ZooLoo's SEO services, they can do that instead of being forced into picking from a tiered package.

While customer feedback was a substantial motivator for the change, Baer says that potential investors also played a role in the addition of the storefront. "The investors said, 'You have a solid product, but I want to see you find a better way to package it, and a better way to sell it'," he says.

And the change worked. Since adding their micropayment storefront, ZooLoo has seen an increase in purchases of their premium services. The company is making more money marketing virtual goods in a micropayment system than they were when they bundled everything together at a higher price and relied on advertising and affiliate marketing. This is the exact paradigm shift in online marketing that Dave McClure preaches in his post mentioned earlier.

"Gradually we are discovering that the default revenue model on the internet should probably be the simplest one," writes McClure. "That is: basic transactions for physical or digital goods, and recurring transactions (aka subscriptions) for repeat usage."

Without repeat usage, McClure says that the biggest obstacle in the way of getting users on board with micropayments is that they forget their password. Honestly, if I was asked to login to my Amazon or PayPal accounts right now, I would be playing a guessing game with a handful of passwords because I don't use those services too often. But for iTunes, Google and Facebook - the services McClure says will be the leaders in eCommerce login in five years - I use those every day, and surely remember my password.

ZooLoo realizes this too, which is why they foster repeat usage by connecting their services with Twitter, Facebook, and other popular online social networks. Users can also log into ZooLoo using Facebook Connect, which eliminates the problem of remembering a less frequently used password. ZooLoo and Baer are fully on board with this emerging model, and suggest others hop on as well.

"There is this social media bubble forming where all these services are saying, 'We're free, come use us!', but eventually those services need to make money," says Baer. "We think micropayments are the next big thing."

Photo by Flickr user r-z.

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Nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and fueled by leaders and social hubs such as Micah Baldwin, Tech Stars mentor, #followfriday creator and now chief community caretaker at Graphic.ly of Digital X, and Robert Reich, the founder of Boulder/Denver Tech Meet-up, Boulder's startup community is pumping, even in the midst of recession.

Boulder is the home of Blue Mountain cards, one of the first successful online greeting cards websites. In the 1990s, Fortune 1,000 tech companies popped up all over the Western prairie between Boulder and Denver. Since then, Boulder's creative, crunchy, beautiful mountain environment has nurtured a self-supporting startup tech ecosystem.

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We already wrote about Boulder in our Never Mind the Valley series, and recently had the chance to visit the city and lunch with four of the region's startups. Here is what we found.

Community Support

RWW's Never Mind the Valley series:

The Boulder startup community, continues to be a supportive, passionate community with talented individuals, inspired ideas that is affecting change politically and economically in the United States. Lunching with four startups that Micah Baldwin organized was like lunching with a family. The group we talked with share office space, mentor each other and talk proudly of each others ideas and accomplishments.

The Underground Rail Road

Attracting talent is foundational to any startup environment. Eric Marcoullier, co-founder of Gnip described the "underground railroad" of transients that have made their way from Silicon Valley to Boulder. "Weekly I would get emails asking about what Boulder was like. Eventually I just started telling people to come here, visit and ask the locals themselves," he said. Venture capitalists have also made their way from busy Silicon Valley to the Boulder Valley.

Affecting Change - The Startup Visa Act

Once you have the foundation of talented motivated individuals, ideas flow. Brad Feld of TechStars took the idea for a national startup visa bill and made it a reality. TechStars receives proposals from all over the world. Startups based in foreign countries come on tourist visas with great ideas - and potential jobs are being sent home with them. The startup bill seeks to change this. The bill will enable companies that do not have U.S. citizen or resident status, but who have blessed by at least $100,000 in VC investment, to start their companies in the United States.

Measuring Outcomes

The four thought-provoking, pioneering startups we met with had had nothing but positive things to say about TechStars and starting a business in Boulder. Each had a unique story; two of them were locals and all of them men.

Gnip

Eric Marcoullier, co-founder of Gnip, launched two years ago with the unique idea of providing data collection and analysis of social signals across multiple social websites to help companies improve their product and service experience. The Gnip platform and service bridges the gap between the data APIs between large companies and multiple social sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Post Rank. ReadWriteWeb has covered Gnip extensively. Since its launch, Gnip has changed its technology strategy and will be re-launching soon.

Everlater

Natty Zola and Nate Abbott spent one year sleeping on couches as they traveled across five continents before they came up with the concept for Everlater. Everlater allows travelers to easily record and share their travel experiences through Twitter and Facebook. The platform allows users to use data from across multiple photo sharing sites. People can also publish their travel "scrapbooks". An algorithm lays out the book automatically so you don't have to. For hopeless photo organizers like me, this is a godsend!

Next Big Sound

Alex White, co-founder Next Big Sound, provides cultural analytics specifically to music companies. Music professionals can track how fans interact with their music, or music from many musicians across sites such as MySpace and LastFM. It is currently developing a premium service.

Graphic.ly

Micah Baldwin is not only social hub-connector extraordinaire, but also works for the uniquely cool comic book community Graphic.ly. Graphic.ly, which is currently in private beta, hopes to open opportunities for comic book creators, publishers and enthusiasts that are currently suffering under a one distributor model - as well as reawaken America's and the world's love for online comics. Members can both purchase and discuss comic books on Graphic.ly.

Ties to the Universities

Startup's ties with Colorado universities are immature, but starting to materialize. The morning of our lunch someone from the Colorado startup community (who we promised not to name) had met with the University of Colorado. As the individual put it, "Universities are turning out graduates prepped for a traditional computer science career at the likes of Lockheed Martin. We don't need MBAs - we need coders." The local Universities are overlooking careers in startups that are based - literally - around the corner or down from "The Hill" as a viable career option. An exception, University of Colorado Law School is has been offering startups free legal advice in exchange for student experience.

Judging from the close-knit group of entrepreneurs we saw, Boulder has matured significantly since the dot-com boom and bust. The only thing lacking at lunch was more estrogen.

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