Startup Search has launched today and is an undeniable who’s who of Web 2.0. Startup Search provides quick to find information on companies, products, people, investors, and partners from Silicon Valley and beyond. Right now their coverage is limited but they are sure to continue to build on this product and add more information as quickly as possible.

The information is quickly accessible and provides a vast amount of data about your selected query. For example, a look at 37signals’ entry gives a short introduction, a list of their products, a Google map to their offices, headlines from their blog, and much more.

Each entry is also given a “Startup Search score” which is a numerical standard of comparison based on that particular queries blogosphere buzz and traffic rankings.

Check out the screenshots below of the Startup Search data on 37signals, Kevin Rose, and Meebo.

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Jason Calacanis has launched his highly anticipated search engine Mahalo today. Rather than have software run around the Internet, determining what a particular website is about and what terms should return that site as a result, Mahalo employs a team of actual people who determine search results.

Jason says the top 100,000 search terms account for 24% of all searches. If Mahalo can generate great results for these terms they can become the “place to go” for standard search queries. For those obscure searches, Mahalo serves up Google results, which may lead Mahalo to becoming a sort of front-end to Google (”give me some hand-picked results, but if you can’t - I’ll take Google”).

The result Mahalo returns for Google are concise but there is just something about them that makes me read right over them (maybe ad blindness thinking they are Sponsored Results?). One nice thing Mahalo does is expand upon certain results they may confuse users. For example, a link to a Technorati page concerning a particular website feature a “What is?” icon that will explain exactly what Technorati is to the user.

I don’t see Mahalo proving useful to the techies in the world - who are pretty stuck on using Google for the moment. But, Mahalo could really prove to be a useful feature for the elder generation, that tends to get lost when really trying to find information. For example, a search for mortgage on Mahalo returns some pretty amazing results including Bankrate, MSN Money, and Quicken Loans. Google returns result after result of spam and calculators (Wikipedia was in there as well, a decent result).

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Creating the largest Web 2.0 acquisition in the United Kingdom, CBS has purchased last.fm for $280 million. CBS announced a few weeks ago how they will being partnering with as many Web 2.0 sites as possible to spread their content around - but this wasn’t expected. Last.fm launched 5 years ago, has about 15 million users, and recently added a video component to their services.

“Last.fm is one of the most well established, fastest growing online community networks out there,” said CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves. “Music has the unique ability to unite large groups of people and engage them around a shared passion. Part of our interactive strategy has been to build communities around all of our properties. CBS Radio has given us a powerful way to create such communities for decades, and it continues to do so. With Last.fm we’re adding a next-generation platform to allow audiences to communicate with us and each other as never before.”

The team working on last.fm will not change which will lend a helping hand to cohesiveness, morale, and getting more features out the door. Let’s hope CBS can make this acquisition really work for themselves, last.fm, and more importantly - the users. CBS also recently acquired Wallstrip.

Previously, Viacom was expected to purchase last.fm for $450 million.

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Yesterday the big news was that Microsoft would be launching a new product today (well, at midnight). The most popular guess was the ZunePhone but it turns out this product has been in development for much longer - since 2001, in fact.

Microsoft’s Surface is a 30-inch tabletop that offers direct interaction through touch. User can actually grab items on screen and interact with them - for instance, sorting a stack of pictures.

The Surface is a pretty exciting technology that Microsoft is marketing to hotels, retailers, and public entertainment venues first. Wireless providers could allow customers to select multiple phones, place them on the Surface, and quickly compare them heads-up with one another. Hotels could provide concierge service to their visitors with maps and local information. Restaurants could allow customers to place an order directly from their table or match dishes up with suggested wines. Casinos could track player stats and provide instant notification of how much money is in the pot or in a player’s chip stack.

The list goes on an on - I definitely want one of these for the house.

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I came across a very interesting new concept at Ben Maurer’s blog today: reCaptcha. We’re all familiar with the standard Captcha - a word that is slightly disfigured and used to prevent bots from submitting a form.

reCaptcha expands on this issue by presenting two Captcha words. The first is a word the system knows and understands - to ensure you are not a bot. The second, is a word the system doesn’t know. By entering your solution to the second word, you are assisting the Internet Archive in solving words their OCR software doesn’t understand.

Around 60 million Captchas are solved each day, which amounts to about 150,000 hours of work. By leveraging this work, reCaptcha is providing an excellent service to the Internet Archive. Various plugins are available for the major software applications out there, including Wordpress, Mediawiki, and phpBB. To learn how you can use reCaptcha on your site - visit the reCaptcha website.

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Last week we discussed the possibility that Google would be acquiring Feedburner (Google to Acquire Feedburner). Techcrunch has confirmed that this deal is going through and is currently under a binding term sheet and should close in 2-3 weeks.

Google will be acquiring Feedburner for around $100 million in cash which is a large payout for the Feedburner team - they only accepted $10 million in funding.

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The Pirate Bay, one of the most popular BitTorrent trackers, has officially announced they are indeed launching a streaming video site, tentatively named The Video Bay. The Video Bay is being touted by the blogosphere as a YouTube killer which I believe is a bit of a stretch. YouTube has a dedicated user-base that won’t deviate far from their home turf.

But, this doesn’t mean The Video Bay won’t meet great success. The Pirate Bay has a great team of lawyers that make sure they stay within the legal bounds of their native country, Sweden, where they operate. I can only see The Pirate Bay jumping into this niche if they will be providing streaming video of copyrighted content - since the team behind The Pirate Bay believes in the freedom of information. The Video Bay can go two routes with this new website - since I’m not completely up on my Swedish law, I’ll outline both of the possibilities.

First, The Video Bay could act as a video tracking service, much like The Pirate Bay currently does with torrents. This would save them a lot of legal battles, as they are merely linking to the offending property. This is the defense they have quite often stood behind in their previous legal battles and they are 100% correct - under Swedish law they are doing nothing wrong.

The other option, is to actually host the copyrighted videos on their own servers! Like I said, I’m not up on my Swedish law, so I can’t say whether this is a viable option for them or not. If it is, there will be some very interesting legal battles coming in the future that could redefine international copyright law as we know it.

Regardless, this is going to be a sure money-maker for the Pirate Bay crew. They already have a huge following within the pirating scene and have managed to dodge quite an amazing number of lawsuits. I don’t see The Video Bay being a direct competitor with YouTube - I don’t think the Pirate Bay team is interested in people’s cats or children’s magic shows - I think The Video Bay will be taking the TV, music video, and movie route with this one.

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