Last summer, MySpace heard about Facebook’s still-unclear plans for a virtual currency and began hatching its own. While Facebook has been running possibly related experiments like credits, it’s been relatively quiet on its plans. MySpace, however, has been trying to move forward, or so a composite sketch of its efforts shows, based on information I’ve gathered from several sources. As of March, it was still in talks with PayPal to have the eBay subsidiary try to take over virtual gifts. It’s unclear where the company’s plans stand now.

MySpace just says it’s a work in progress. The work is happening amidst leadership turmoil at the company and as virtual goods have been proving themselves via third parties (notably, companies such as Playdom and Zynga). MySpace better start moving, given how much money those third-party social networking applications are making these days. Meanwhile, MySpace’s advertising-driven revenues haven’t been up to what the company’s owner, News Corp., has hoped.

Big plans

Through last December, according to sources, MySpace was talking about a full-featured virtual currency system that would have included a way for third-party developers to access it. This could have ranged from a MySpace-branded gift store where users could buy virtual gifts (virtual birthday cakes, virtual guitars, etc.) to send to each other on the site, to a universal currency that could be in third-party games. Recently-departed chief operating officer, Amit Kapur, let slip the plans during a conference last November, but didn’t provide many details.

Kapur was one of the people spearheading the effort, says one source, adding that it was recently departed chief executive Chris DeWolfe who seemed to have the “best head” when it came to thinking through some of the complexities of developing a currency. As difficulties — such as preventing the fraudulent use of MySpace’ users accounts — became clear, the company decided to look for a partner. Facebook’s lack of focus on anything more than its years-old gift store may have had something to do with that as well. MySpace decided it wanted somebody else to take over the job and handle everything from payments to creative aspects like virtual gift designs. Sometime last year, it began talking about revenue-sharing partnerships with Amazon, widget-maker Slide, and PayPal, if not other companies.

Hard reality

By last December, around the time rival social network Hi5 launched its virtual currency and virtual gift store, MySpace decided to scale back and just start out with a MySpace gift store. A currency was just too complicated to pull off. Over the course of the last few months, Amazon and Slide have dropped out, from what I have heard, while discussions were continuing with PayPal as of March. The eBay subsidiary apparently really wanted the business. One source said it created a 100-slide PowerPoint presentation about all the things it could do. The problem, however, is that PayPal doesn’t have experience managing virtual currencies, nor creating the sorts of attractive virtual items that MySpace would have wanted. As the most likely candidate that I know of at this point, PayPal still seems an awkward partner.

But maybe MySpace has worked out a deal with PayPal since March? Maybe MySpace has something else planned on its own? Maybe everything is on hold as the executive change takes place? Kapur left in early March. DeWolfe left earlier this month. Incoming chief executive Owen Van Natta and his two new lieutenants, new chief operating officer Mike Jones and new chief product officer Jason Hirschhorn, are probably thinking about this area seriously (certainly, others are telling them to). Van Natta already has some idea of the complexity of online transactions, having been the vice president of worldwide business and corporate development at Amazon before leaving for Facebook years ago. And he’s by all accounts good at execution. Given his connections, the look under MySpace’s hood that he must have gotten before taking the job, and everything he saw at Facebook, I’m expecting action. And a full virtual currency for developers, not just a gift store of some sort.

Time to move

And as a little encouragement, the longer MySpace takes to move, the more money it’s potentially missing out on. (Note: DeWolfe friend Jason Calacanis recently wrote a long post describing a virtual currency as one of the company’s top-10 priorities.) As a bonus, if MySpace can figure out some sort of slick payment system, partner or no partner, it might be able to beat old rival Facebook to this potentially significant new revenue stream.

Virtual goods began panning out for developers large and small as of early 2008 and have continued to accelerate, from what we and many others have heard since then. Playdom may be on track to make $40 million this year, mostly from games on MySpace. Zynga is on track to make between $40 million and $60 million, from what I’ve heard — although fresh reports indicate the number could be somewhere double that. Of course, virtual goods were pioneered in Asia and have been perfected by companies like Tencent — now, virtual goods are most likely a multi-billion dollar industry there. Developers on MySpace and Facebook are duplicating at least some of that success and have the cash to show for it — MySpace doesn’t.

In a world gone mad, this new BlackBerry app makes perfect sense.

Now, if you’re a traveling executive and you happen to be kidnapped, you can set off the spy software on your global positioning system (GPS) enabled BlackBerry that will let your company know your exact location.

New York-based BrickHouse Security has launched this kidnapping safety app for travelers. Dubbed the Executrac mobile GPS tracking software, it’s an invisible application that turns any BlackBerry or smart phone into a covert GPS tracker with an emergency panic button.

The $19.95-a-month application is so covert that it can be deployed wirelessly in seconds to thousands of company-owned BlackBerrys unbeknownst to the user, or the user’s kidnappers.

Of course, this app could also be used in an Orwellian way. Employees now have the power to closely monitor employees anywhere in the world. Companies can check to see if remote employees are really doing their work or not. The company could do this with or without the employees’ knowledge.

BrickHouse is recommending the app to journalists and executives who travel to dangerous areas.

The tracking is accurate to within 5 to 15 meters, and the software starts working within nine seconds of being turned on. Over 24 hours, the app uses less than 15 percent of a BlackBerry’s battery.

This app gets my vote for the oddball mobile app of the day. But a close second was the pimple popping application for the iPhone from Room Candy Games.

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Ninjas and iPhones are a good mix. That’s clear to Axo Studios, which is launching the deliberately ungrammatical game, I am Ninja, on the iPhone today.

The game is based on the Ask a Ninja brand, made famous through wacky video podcasts on the iPod. Those shows, where a ninja (speaking in what I consider to be offensive faux Japanese accents — call me a party pooper) answers questions in a comic and irreverent manner, have drawn millions of viewers on the iPod, the Ask a Ninja web site, and YouTube.

Now the game (here on iTunes) will pick up where the show leaves off, allowing iPhone users to act out their ninja fantasies as they beat up bad guys and perform various stunts. As far as violent and bloody games go, this one is cute. The two-dimensional ninja characters are like something out of South Park, and the sounds are goofy. The main game is dubbed “Confrontation,” with the subtitle “Just another word for killing people.” In it, you kill pirates, zombies and evil ninjas with blow darts. You can upgrade your weapons, such as fire arrows or “Da Bomb,” along the way. You can aim using the iPhone’s accelerometer and shoot by tapping the screen. If you die, a ninja character asks you, “Where did you learn to blow?”

The game has features for show fans, such as a built-in viewer for watching Ask a Ninja videos. There are mini games within the game where you can balance on a pole or shoot arrows at ninjas. You can submit your score to the global scoreboard. There’s also a running contest where the top 10 players of the day earn the right to view a secret video.

Hamid Shojaee, chief executive at Axosoft in Scottsdale, Ariz., said his seven-year-old company is a project management software maker that started making iPhone games on the side in January. In February, at the TED conference, he met with the Ask a Ninja founders at Beatbox Productions and agreed to make an iPhone game based on the brand. They agreed, as suggested by TED speaker Sylvia Earle, to donate 10 percent of the proceeds to the Deep Search Foundation, a nonprofit headed by Earle, whose aim is to save the oceans. The game is called I am Ninja after the theme song of the podcasts.

It took the team of six developers about two months to make the game. If it does well, Shojaee said he may spin out the studio from Axosoft as Axo Studios. This is the studio’s third game. The first one was a Frogger clone with a ladybug as the main character. The second was iScream, where you tried to scare someone in a maze. Both were considered experiments, while I am Ninja is a major commercial effort.

The game is selling for $1.99 on iTunes. Below is a video of Shojaee talking about the features of the game.

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PhotoThera, Inc., the developer of transcranial laser therapy designed for the treatment of acute ischemic stroke within 24 hours of stroke onset, announced today that it has closed a US$50 million Series D round of financing led by Warburg Pincus, a leading global private equity firm, to fund a planned follow-on phase III 'NEST-3' clinical study.

There’s been a lot of buzz around personal finance websites like Mint and Wesabe, but finance software maker Intuit has joined the online fray too– and no, not just by sending threatening letters to Mint. It launched its Quicken Online service back in January 2008, and made it free in October. Now it’s rolling out an iPhone application, which may turn out to be just right for the “paycheck-to-paycheck” users that Intuit is targeting.

Jim Del Favero, Intuit’s product manager for Quicken, tells me the online service is meant for a very specific audience — not the financially responsible folks who use the desktop version of Quicken, but rather people more like, um, me. In other words, people who are a lot less savvy about these financial issues, and who use Quicken Online is less to track long-term financial goals or managing dozens of accounts, and more to letting find out whether they’ll have enough money to make rent. An iPhone app is a great way to reach those users, because it allows them to check their finances as they make purchases, and because iPhone adoption is reportedly growing the fastest among consumers making between $25,000 and $50,000 per year.

A lot of the features in the Quicken iPhone app are also available on the website, but judging from the demo Del Favero gave me, they’ve been ported over effectively. For example, you can bring up a chart showing the ups and downs in your finances, use the iPhone’s touchscreen to zoom in on specific areas, and tpa on specific points to see which transactions ravaged your account. You can also see how much money you have left to spend — not just how much is still in your account, but how much is left after you subtract all your upcoming bills and other financial obligations for the next 30 days — and it’s nice to be able to check that right before you get in line to buy that new electronic toy.

There are also two features that would only make sense on a mobile app. For one thing, you can manually enter your cash purchases and have them uploaded into your Quicken Online account. That’s much more feasible that trying to write down those purchases and entering them when you return to your computer. And when you run out of cash, the app uses the iPhone’s GPS to find nearby ATMs, and identify which ones will charge a fee and which ones will be free.

Oh, and despite the fuss about Mint hitting 1 million users, Del Favero says Quicken Online crossed the same mark on April 11, and is now up to around 1.15 million users.

Here’s the latest action:

Windows 7 readying for birth — Microsoft’s new operating system is entering its final stages of testing and the company has a “release candidate” ready, possibly for launch on May 5. It will be interesting to see if it lifts computer sales in the midst of the recession.

Walt Disney takes nearly 30 percent stake in Hulu — News of the Disney relationship with the Web video aggregator is here.

Anyone remember the Razr? — Motorola posts a sharp loss as demand for its cell phones plummets on a worldwide basis. The New York Times has more.

Should VCs hold onto public stock for years? — At the Boston meeting of the National Venture Capital Association, limited partners weigh in on a controversial topic.

Assessing used game sales at GameStop — The nation’s biggest game retailer doesn’t disclose the breakdown between used and new game sales. But Gamasutra has an analysis with its own estimates.

Facebook hit with phishing attacks — For the second day in a row, hackers are attacking the social network’s security system. Beware of FBStarter.com and BAction.net.

Rumors of new Palm surface — The Palm Pre is debuting with Sprint. But does AT&T have a new Palm device up its sleeve? Engadget reports on the Palm Eos.

Cheaper Macs on the way – Rumors have surfaced of new low-cost Macs coming in response to the recession. Apple Insider has more. Meanwhile, Apple’s iPhone won the latest J.D. Power customer satisfaction award.

Twitter makes the Time 100 — Time magazine’s list of the most important people includes the founders of Twitter. Actor Ashton Kutcher, he of the million Twitter followers, wrote the article on them. [Photo at right: Time]

Google expands flu tracker — As part of an effort to aid Mexico, Google expands its flu-tracking system by detecting searches for swine flu.

Big Blue to fuel recovery — IBM pledges $2 billion in bridge loans to get high-tech infrastructure projects off the ground while everyone awaits government money.

Flickr hit by layoffs – Yahoo’s photo site takes a hit. Its leaders go off to start a new business.

Dean Takahashi giving keynote speech at Login conference — On Tuesday, May 12, VentureBeat’s lead writer for digital media will give a speech at online game conference Login in Seattle. The talk will focus on the latest trends for game startups.

From the iPhone to Microsoft Surface, multi-touch displays are one of the most fashionable new user-interface technologies.

N-trig, an Israeli company, hopes to make these displays even more versatile by creating displays that can respond to inputs from both fingers and pens. This week it launched a development system to enable software companies to develop software to take advantage of these screens.

Usually, it’s one or the other other. Capacitive-touch screens work via small electrical fields that respond to human touch. They usually don’t work with a stylus or pen. And the screens that work with pens don’t work with fingers. N-trig has created the DuoSense multi-touch manipulation development system to allow both kinds of contact.

Microsoft recently led a $24 million round of investment in Kfar Saba, Israel-based N-trig in part because this technology will help computer makers create machines that can take advantage of the touch-screen technology built into the Windows 7 operating system. Computer makers such as Hewlett-Packard have launched multi-touch computers, but the technology is expected to become far more useful with Windows 7.

N-trig was founded in 1999 and has more than 100 employees. Besides Microsoft, investors included Aurum Ventures, Challenger Ltd., Canaan Partners, and Evergreen Venture Partners

A special, lowered capital gains tax for investors in companies that debut on public stock exchanges could help stimulate the economy and create many new jobs, leaders of a national venture capital group said Wednesday.

Google has been busy using its Labs area (for experimental features) to integrate a bunch of its applications into Gmail. My favorite so far is probably the Google Calendar widget, which reminds me of upcoming meetings as long as I’m logged into my email. But there’s been one tool missing, one that Google is kind of well-known for: Google Search itself.

Now, Google just announced that you can add a web search bar in Gmail Labs. Obviously, that means you can perform web searches in Gmail without opening a separate tab; the results appear in a small box at the bottom of your screen. You can also open a menu of actions that you perform with a search result, such as including the result in an email reply or sending the search to a friend via instant message.

It’s becoming more and more clear that Google is making Gmail (at least potentially) the central hub of all users’ activity. That certainly appeals to me, since my Gmail account is the one tab I always keep open in my browser. Of course, that also creates some problems, as Gmail becomes more and more crowded. With so much activity happening in one window, I’ve noticed that I’m starting to miss new messages or alerts, and also having to scroll up and down frequently to access different widgets.

In the case of Google Search, the company recommends moving the widget to the top of the screen for easy access, and also notes that you can access search through keyboard shortcuts. But that doesn’t address the bigger issue — as Google piles cool features into Gmail, its designers need to start thinking about how all of those tools fit together.

Intelius, a company that performs background checks on people, has acquired Spock, a people search engine, for an undisclosed amount.

The deal was signed today, VentureBeat just confirmed with Spock’s co-founder Jaideep Singh. Unconfirmed rumors of the deal first appeared yesterday on Techcrunch.

We wrote about Spock when it first launched in 2007, and became the first search engine to add a range of new social networking features, including letting users choose what sort of personality tags befitted each Spock profile. For example, if you think I’m conniving, you can tag me “conniving,” and others can vote that tag up or down depending on whether they think it is true.

Spock’s initial marketing launch sparked a little buzz here in Silicon Valley, but over time much more attention continued to go to people-focused sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. Facebook remains more closed to users searching data about other people, but LinkedIn, while having less of a community around it, allows open searching. Spock remained more behind the scenes: It was early to create widgets that resided on other sites; it also created syndication deals that powered search on other sites (Friendster, for example).

Spock tried a number of models, we’ve heard, but none of them gained enough traction for it to make money. Singh says the site gets 10 million uniques a month, which is solid growth from two years ago. However, it’s not enough to make enough advertising to cover the cost of 23 full-time employees. It burned through the $8 million it had raised in venture capital from Clearstone and other investors ($1M originally, and then $7 million in a round two years ago), and so knew it had to find a buyer.

While several buyers passed on Intelius, several others made offers, Singh said. “There was strong interest,” he said. Intelius made sense as a buyer, because Intelius charges money to people who want to do background checks on others. Spock fits with that mission, Singh said, because it too recently moved to a mixed free-premium model, where Spock offers users basic information about people, but requires extra payment to get more detailed data. So now, when a user lands on a user’s profile, Spock can also refer the user to Intelius’ service to do a more in-depth background or credit searches. Call it “Spook” if you want. :)

Some controversy surrounds Intelius founder Naveen Jain, stemming from his days at InfoSpace duing the last boom. And Intelius has faced its share of legal disputes. However Spock’s Singh says he checked the evidence, and found that “there’s nothing major there.” On the contrary, Singh said, he found the company’s business execution impressive, and that Jain was running it professionally. “It was the biggest fish, and has the strongest team in the business,” Singh said.

Other parts of Intelius’ business are controversial. Its iSearch business has raised privacy concerns, since it enables easy background checks on just about anyone. Singh said Intelius is potentially on track to hit $1 billion in revenue within 3 years. The company hasn’t taken any outside venture backing, but has manged to climbed to revenues of $35 million in the first quarter alone, and very profitable. It has filed to go public.

Singh also took issue with a contention made by Techcrunch that Jain has had trouble with acquisitions. In fact, Singh noted, all of Jain’s top lieutenants (Ed Petersen, who runs sales and marketing; John Arnold, who runs product; Niraj Shah, VP of engineering; and Kevin Marcus) are founders or executives from companies Jain acquired from MySpace.  That’s proof that Jain has a record of trust with companies he’s acquired, says Singh.

Singh wouldn’t comment on the deal specifics, other than to say it was “successful” and that investors and employers are all “happy.” Singh will stay on to run the search engine side of Intelius’ business, he said.

Other competitors to Intelius are White Pages and Reunion (recently renamed to MyLife), which earlier bought Wink, a competitor to Spock.