Rummble is now available on an enormous number of cell phones and can be accessed via the mobile Web as well as SMS, although it’s user base (which numbered 60,000 this summer) is currently mostly in the UK.

The service has been quietly operating for the last year or so. It combines some of the things that make Foursquare and Gowalla great, with some of what people have grown to love about applications like Yelp and Urbanspoon. It combines your friend and social graph with information about what people like and do.

Once you’ve signed up for Rummble — which you can do via Facebook or Twitter (using either of them lets you integrate Rummble into what you already do) — the service tries to figure out who it is that you trust. It taps into your contacts through Gmail, Linkedin, and the like, trying to figure out who you care about.

Once you’ve built a network of friends, Rummble will show you recommendations for particular places and things near you, based on who you trust. Instead of something like Yelp, which just aggregates and shares reviews with everyone, Rummble uses its algorithm to deliver personalized recommendations for where you should go, and what you should do, based on whose opinion you trust. You also review and rate places as you visit them, and Rummble’s recommendations get better for you and for others.

Location-based social networking — finding out what your friends are doing, where they are, and connecting with the world based on what you do and where — is a lot of people’s guess for the next big thing. Foursquare is the current cool kid on the block in the world of social location, but companies like Loopt and Gowalla have been making waves.

Meanwhile, mobile use of social networks is booming. Facebook, for instance, has tripled its mobile usage, to 65 million users, in only the past year. Today, MocoSpace, still the leader in mobile-only social networking (even though Facebook and others, launched after MocoSpace, have rocketed past it), also announced that it has moved past the 10 million user mark for the first time.

Thanks to today’s announcement of an application in the Windows Phone Marketplace, Rummble adds the third most popular phone platform to its repertoire, and opens native Rummble apps to millions more users. Now, anyone with an Android phone, iPhone, or Windows Phone can get a native app, although there’s still the SMS and mobile Web versions for any other phones.

My concern for Rummble is the same as my concern for any other location-based service, and for any other reviews-based application: if no one uses it, it’s useless to me. Without the social aspect of sites like Gowalla and Foursquare, with crowds of people using them actively, there’s very little draw. We’ve talked about this problem before, but it persists.

It’s possible that apps like this will eventually integrate with existing social networks, or perhaps that Facebook or Twitter will create their own location-aware network. Twitter, by allowing users to geo-tag their tweets, is already taking steps in that direction. Rummble, incidentally, can geo-tag tweets you automatically send, making your location available to not only your Rummble friends, but your Twitter followers as well.

All that said, I love the idea of Rummble. Instead of Yelp or Urbanspoon, which give me hundreds of reviews from people I don’t know and whose opinions I don’t care about, Rummble can tell me what people whose opinions I trust think about certain places. I’d rather go to a restaurant on a friend’s recommendation than a website’s any day.

Rummble is a six-employee company based in London.

But now that there are more than 100,000 apps in the store, weeding through them all to find the ones I actually want is becoming a full-time job. You can find reviews of iPhone apps everywhere — some in videos, some in podcasts, and even apps on sale — but it’s hard to find reviews and recommendations meant only for you. Luckily, Apptizr has come along. It’s destined to be for iPhone apps what Pandora is to music – recommendations based on what you like, and most importantly on what you hate.

Signing up for Apptizr is easy and only takes a few minutes. After a briefly existential moment when Apptizr asked me what words described me, and then gave options like “Pet Lover,” “Baby,” and “Road Warrier,” I got it set up to give me recommendations with only a little personal information – gender, age, and some interest-based questions.

The first thing I loved about Apptizr is that it filters apps for you based on what device you use. If you’ve got an old iPhone, or an iPod Touch, some of the apps just don’t matter to you. Apptizr smartly asks about that at the beginning and gets rid of everything you don’t care about.

Once it knows who you are, it recommends lots of apps from a whole variety of realms, each with a description, reviews pulled from the iTunes store, and a link to go get the app. If you like the app, or hate it, or already own it, one click makes the recommendations even better. You’ll see, 10 recommendations at a time.

If you thumbs-down an app (fart apps, goodbye), it leaves the list. Thumb one up, and it gets added to your “My Apps” section, where you can go to download apps and remember what you liked.

There’s also an “All Apps” menu, that lets you browse all the apps available in the store – it’s no different than the iTunes store, but it’s easier and faster to navigate than the sometimes clunky iTunes.

Personally, I went through and clicked “Already Own It” for nearly the entire first page of recommendations (pretty impressive that it had me pegged so well). Then I added about 25 new ones in the span of an hour. My wallet hates Apptizr, but my iPod Touch loves it.

I really wish I could give Apptizr my iTunes login information and have it figure out what I already own, what I’ve rated, and all the information I’ve already put into the App Store, but alas, no such luck. Pretty quickly, though, I managed to get Apptizr to figure out what I had and what I didn’t, and the reviews got good in a hurry. There’s a Genius feature on the iPhone itself that gives recommendations for the App Store, but most of those did nothing for me and weren’t nearly as good as the ones Apptizr gave once it got to know me.

Apptizr is still invite-only, but it’s offering 500 invites for VentureBeat readers. You can sign up for Apptizr at this link. When prompted, enter the code ‘4VentureBt’ without the quotes.

Apptizr is a brand-new company, based in Mountain View, Calif., and was co-founded in 2009 by two former employees of Danger, PayPal, eBay, and Oodle. Apptizr hasn’t received any funding thus far and plans to look for investors next year.

Watch it in YouTube HD format below. (I’m still trying to find out which agency made the ad. Tip me at paul@venturebeat.com if you know.)

The iPhone isn’t mentioned by name, but the ad’s opening shot invokes the look-but-don’t-touch glass case that confounded Macworld attendees at the phone’s debut in 2007 who wanted to get their hands on an iPhone for a test drive.

Good one. But the ad then moves onto a montage of dolls dressed up as beauty queens, flashing the word “clueless” atop their faces and bodies. Nope, no misogyny here!

It gets worse after that. Here’s the full text of the ad:

Should a phone be pretty? Should it be a tiara-wearing, digitally clueless beauty pageant queen?

Or should it be fast? Racehorse-duct-taped-to-a-Scud-missile fast? We say the latter. So we built a phone that does, does rip through the Web like a circular saw through a ripe banana.

Is it a precious porcelain figurine of a phone? In truth, no. It’s not a princess. It’s a robot. A phone that trades hairdo … for can-do.

How does the ad rate?

The Good: Duct tape, robots.

The Bad: Stereotyping pretty girls as dumb.

The Just Plain Wrong: Likening the Droid phone to the Scud missile, a not-very-fast Russian rocket used by Saddam Hussein’s regime. A Scud killed 28 Americans at an airbase in Saudi Arabia in 1991. Other Scuds have killed lots more civilians in the Middle East.

Is this ad edgy? No, it’s just clueless.

Watch it in YouTube HD format below. (I’m still trying to find out which agency made the ad. Tip me at paul@venturebeat.com if you know.)

The iPhone isn’t mentioned by name, but the ad’s opening shot invokes the look-but-don’t-touch glass case that confounded Macworld attendees at the phone’s debut in 2007 who wanted to get their hands on an iPhone for a test drive.

Good one. But the ad then moves onto a montage of dolls dressed up as beauty queens, flashing the word “clueless” atop their faces and bodies. Nope, no misogyny here!

It gets worse after that. Here’s the full text of the ad:

Should a phone be pretty? Should it be a tiara-wearing, digitally clueless beauty pageant queen?

Or should it be fast? Racehorse-duct-taped-to-a-Scud-missile fast? We say the latter. So we built a phone that does, does rip through the Web like a circular saw through a ripe banana.

Is it a precious porcelain figurine of a phone? In truth, no. It’s not a princess. It’s a robot. A phone that trades hairdo … for can-do.

How does the ad rate?

The Good: Duct tape, robots.

The Bad: Stereotyping pretty girls as dumb.

The Just Plain Wrong: Likening the Droid phone to the Scud missile, a not-very-fast Russian rocket used by Saddam Hussein’s regime. A Scud killed 28 Americans at an airbase in Saudi Arabia in 1991. Other Scuds have killed lots more civilians in the Middle East.

Is this ad edgy? No, it’s just clueless.

The obstacle has always been the expense of divorce in the form of ETFs, or early termination fees. For many, the cost of canceling a contract is enough deterrent to stay in an unhealthy relationship — and the penalties seem to be getting worse. Thankfully, there may be some help on the way.

Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar introduced a bill to “rein in early termination fees” yesterday together with Senator Russ Feingold (WI), Senator Jim Webb (VA), and Senator Mark Begich (AK). The highlights of the bill include limiting the ETF for any provider to the amount of discount offered at signup. It would also require that in a two year contract, the ETF be prorated to 50 percent after one year and to zero after the second year.

This bill is contiguous with a series of actions by Kobluchar, who has battled for consumer rights with regards to mobile service before. Previously she has fought for the right of soldiers deployed to Iraq to leave the contracts without penalty and for anyone else who has moved to areas without service to do the same. Kobluchar’s web site makes mention of Verizon as a prime motivator for her latest bill.

Verizon Wireless recently upped its ETF for smart phone users from $150 to $350 dollars. When asked about the increase, Verizon stated that it was necessary to help offset the cost of discounting smart phones when a contract is signed. On a month to month basis, a Droid costs $559 dollars. With a two year contract and the guaranteed revenue of your cellular bill, Verizon is able to offer the Droid at $199 through its online store. In this case, the increased ETF makes sense — it is enough to offset the cost of the discount offered at purchase. Of course, the ETF is a flat rate. If a customer bought an HTC Ozone with a two year contract, it would cost them $50. With a no-contract MSRP of $350, the cancellation yields a $50 benefit to Verizon beyond offsetting the discount.

The FCC has written Verizon a letter inquiring about the matter and is expecting a response by December 17. The FCC wants to know how the ETF directly correlates to the cost of subsidizing smart phones. It also asked Verizon whether the ETF prorate plan was clear before purchase. Finally, the FCC wanted to know how it was that no other carriers had raised their ETFs if it was economically necessary to offset the cost of discounting smart phones.

[Image credit: current.com]

The company isn’t a  mobile ad network, but rather allows publishers to pull the most valuable ads for their websites and apps from multiple other networks. Chief executive and co-founder Ragnar Kruse said Smaato is particularly popular among publishers who are trying to reach an international audience. Delivering advertising overseas involves big challenges, such as serving ads without long-distance delays. Smaato serves those ads from a local network over there.

Als0, individual networks often have trouble selling enough ads to fill a publisher’s inventory, which means they’re left “leaving money on the table,” Kruse said. ”That is where our add-value really kicks in,” he added. “Having several ad networks, we can overcome technical issues, we can overcome latencies, and so on.”

The last year has been a period of rapid growth for Smaato, headquartered in Redwood Shores, Calif. It went from serving 100 publishers to 1,000, and Kruse said the company served 3 billion ad requests in November. Smaato is available in more than 215 companies and pulls advertising from 33 ad networks.

The funding was led by Aeris Capital, which also participated in the $3.5 million Smaato raised in January 2008. Although this is technically Smaato’s second round, Kruse told me thinks of it as the company’s first real institutional funding.

And the competiton? Adwhirl, another company that aggregates ad networks for publishers, was recently acquired by Admob, which is in turn being acquired by Google.

For non-jailbroken phones, true live streaming remains in App-Store limbo — a potential source of major Android envy, since Android phones, including Motorola’s new Droid phone, don’t have the same barrier. But if you are on a non-jailbroken iPhone, there are a couple of services available to help you share video quickly.

Qik for iPhone: Dead Simple

Qik provides a dead-simple user experience to shoot, upload, and share video. Setting it up requires a tiny amount of effort: via the phone you can register and instantly shoot and share video that will be immediately viewable at the Qik site. You must log in via the website to enable Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube sharing.

Beyond these initial set-up tasks, design minimalism rules this superb, simple app. Once you shoot video, the upload to the Qik site happens immediately — a nice piece of by-the-horns automation that eliminates hand-wringing as to whether you have time for the upload.

Then Qik offers a simple push-button interface to publish to YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, which posts a link to the video hosted at the Qik site. Additional features use GPS tracking to show where the video was shot.

iPhone, Ustream, WeLike

Hot on the heels of Qik is a robust Ustream Recorder app that reproduces many of the same features, albeit without the elegant interface. After a quick in-phone registration, which requires a birth date, users can shoot video and upload to the Ustream site, as with Qik. As with Qik, enabling Facebook, Youtube, or Twitter sharing again requires set up via the mother website.

Ustream lacks Qik’s pick-and-choose interface, in which users can elect to share video on one platform but not another. Instead, Ustream automatically uploads everything immediately to pre-chosen destinations. Some users might miss Qik’s ability to control their audience — say, sharing a video just with friends on Facebook without broadcasting a link publicly on Twitter. But bulk users looking for a near-live experience will be happy to shoot and upload without finicky extra options.

Ustream’s Recorder is complemented by a Viewer app, that gives you the ability to view content from the company’s well-known live-streaming website.

Christmas: Red and Green with Android Envy

The above apps allow for a near live, shoot-and-share experience. And that’s well and good — until you see live broadcasting apps from both companies, available on jailbroken iPhones, as well as Android and Nokia devices. As broadcasting-enabled devices like the Droid gain market share, expect iPhone owners’ lower lips to drop in the biggest case of phone envy since Google’s free Android-only GPS.

With the amazing Ustream Broadcaster, jailbroken iPhone and Android users can initiate a live broadcast, see ongoing viewer chat, and even initiate live polls for chat-room members. See Ty of tysiphonehelp.com offer a jailbroken demo of Ustream. For Qik, you may want to check out Steve Garfield shocking an ABC News crew by doing everything they do with just his phone (or just check out Kevin Rose enthusiastically demoing the pre-release app).

Unsurprisingly, both apps remain in App Store purgatory. If AT&T trembled at MMS on the iPhone, it’s unlikely to give the nod soon to broadcasting, the ultimate bandwidth hog.

However both Qik and Ustream do offer broadcaster apps on Android Market, as well as for several Nokia devices. Hard-core broadcasters may want to check out a head-to-head smackdown with a pair of Nokia N95s, in which Ustream got the jump on Qik in minimizing lagtime between shooting video and seeing it live on the web. For jailbroken iPhones there’s also Bambuser and longtime player Flixwagon.

Knocking, Fring, and WiFi to the Rescue?

Knocking — a brand-new and App Store-approved entrant — has made big steps to overcoming live 3G broadcasting hurdles by offering a peer-to-peer service that transmits live video from one iPhone to another. While this technically makes Knocking a calling app, as opposed to a sharing one, I assume it’d be possible to build out broader broadcasting functionality.

Of course, another approach is just to compromise, circumventing a weak 3G network and allow live broadcasting strictly via WiFi connections instead. Curiously, no apps yet offer this soluton, and app designers I spoke to declined to comment on why, citing it as an App Store process issue.

However, this week all-around communications utility Fring brought a ray of hope to the problem by adding capability to receive live video calls from Skype, as in this demo. A WiFi-only solution, Fring shows that live broadcasting could circumvent the 3G network and provide a compromise alternative in the near future.

Kyte

Despite the company’s enterprise focus, Kyte offers a Producer app that doubles as an excellent shoot-and-share product for consumers. The bare-bones app rivals Qik in ease and simplicity and requires no set-up trips to the Kyte website. Advanced users will moan that the application currently lacks the ability to share via Facebook, YouTube or Twitter — but intelligently Kyte emphasizes the one sharing tool that all users will understand, e-mail. An Android Producer app is expected soon.

Kyte’s Producer app integrates into its intricate video platform, which has long offered customizable video players for corporate customers like ESPN and Armani Exchange. The unified platform offers additional broadcasting controls that would keep an employee from tarnishing the brand with inappropriate content.

12Seconds.tv

A video counterpart to the 146-character brevity of Twitter, 12Seconds allows for shooting and sharing videos limited to (yes) 12 seconds. Most will want to avoid the original “12Seconds” bare-bones app — a simple early release while the App Store dithered on approving other video products. This original app only allows for the uploading of images and recorded sound, providing a kind of video slide show.

Instead you’ll want the 12Mail Video Messenger, which sends video messages to Facebook and Twitter contacts much like you’d send texts to a friend. A 12UP app simply uploads video to the 12Seconds site, posting a Twitter link at the same time.

Both well-designed apps are functional and provide a potentially superior alternative to MMS. However new users will need time getting used to shooting in very short bursts — trickier than it sounds. Those looking to shoot a two-hour holiday documentary will have to go elsewhere.

Other Players: Follow or Wait?

Major players yet to enter the iPhone video space face the uncomfortable dilemma of spending to establish a presence with yet another shoot-and-share app — or waiting for the gates to open for live broadcasting, which doesn’t promise to happen anytime soon. Searches for recorders for Livestream, Brightcove, Magnify, Kaltura, Stickam, and Ooyala on Apple’s App Store turned up nothing (although Qik users can publish to many of these platforms). Seesmic is offering Android and Blackberry viewing-only apps at press time.

Long a staple in the desktop broadcast-yourself category, Justin.tv has yet to unveil either a sanctioned or jailbroken broadcasting iPhone app, although VP of Marketing Evan Solomon reports that a viewing app is in development. Solomon points out a key problem for broadcasting sites — while non-live clips are a mainstay at YouTube and Facebook, they constitute a tiny percentage of views on live-oriented sites like Justin.tv. As such, the shoot-and-share approach of current sanctioned apps provides marginal benefit to Justin.tv users.

Of course, an ideal app for video sharing on Facebook might be the Facebook app itself. With Facebook video growing like mad, we expect broadcasting to be integrated into the Facebook app as the network issues sort themselves out.

Conquering the Natives

Until then, sanctioned app developers like Qik, Ustream, Kyte and 12Seconds face one last daunting challenge — winning casual users away from the iPhone’s already-installed native application. All of the above apps require registration before shooting video, not to mention the web-site-only step of setting up additional platforms. Conversely Apple’s native iPhone suite lets users shoot, register, and publish to YouTube with a new phone out of the box.

While advanced users will quickly be converted, general consumers will not. Much like MMS, shoot-and-share video remains a specialty application, whipped out for parties, sporting events, or for showing your wife that lawn-chair you’re about to buy at Home Depot. Until usage spikes dramatically — and native-app limitations prompt users to look elsewhere — one expects Apple’s standard package to dominate.

But things will definitely get interesting once Qik or Ustream escape App Store limbo — even if it’s only with a WiFi-compromise solution. The initial introduction of the 3G S triggered a 400% increase of uploaded cell video at YouTube. A WiFi compromise might well trigger a second hockey-stick moment, as live broadcasting at last graduates from its current specialty existence.

[Image credit: www.telegraph.co.uk]

And the winner is: Orbital (pictured right), an iPhone game from developer Bitforge. It’s hard to describe but addictive. You shoot orbs up into space and try to knock out previously launched orbs, without allowing any orbs to fall below the line across the bottom of the screen. That gets harder to do as the screen gets crowded and the orbs bounce around and are affected by the pull of gravity. This physics-embued game has had modest sales of 27,000 to date since its launch on Sept. 19, so it is truly an undiscovered gem. The average user has played for 5.5 hours, with some users topping 100 hours. The app was nominated by Sam Dalsimer at Triplepoint.

[EMBED1]The runner-ups are: Tilt: An Adventure in 1.5 Dimensions, Today Todo Pro, FaceFighter, and AlwaysOnPC.

In Tilt, you use tilt the iPhone to control a little character that eats carbon out of the air; it’s an iPhone game with a story and is currently in beta testing and should be available in the AppStore soon. It was created by Nicole Lazarro and her team at XEO Design.

Today Todo Pro is a productivity app that lets you use your iPhone to manage your daily to-do list. It does so with a simple interface, allowing you to swipe at the screen if you want to get rid of one of your to-do items. You can create a to-do item by turning the iPhone 90 degrees, taking advantage of the accelerometer controls. It debuted in September and was created by Spielhaus.

FaceFighter is a boxing game created by Appy Entertainment. It grew out of a photo technology created by the company for its first app, Appy Newz. It’s a lot of fun punching a cartoonish boxer (by tapping the iPhone touchscreen) and doing real (comic violence) damage to the fighter’s face. You can also snap a picture of a friend and fight via multiplayer over Bluetooth. The iPhone app debuted on Apple’s AppStore in June.

And AlwaysOnPC is a $25 app (yes, you heard right) that turns on iPhone or iPod Touch into a productive, full-fledged computer. You can use it to create a virtual cloud-based computer experience, where you connect with a remote computer and run applications that could never run on a mobile device. The app was created by Xform Computing and it debuted on the AppStore in August. A version for Google Android-based Droid phones is coming next quarter.

Peter Farago, vice president of marketing at Flurry and I were the judges. We were honored to get 22 entries altogether. One arrived to late. There were two duplicates. And four of them were disqualifed because they were already too well known. We wanted to find apps that were truly undiscovered gems. We hope you’ll agree that these ones are worth trying out.

“We want to congratulate all of the finalists who stood out from among a strong field of entrants.  Each presented elements of innovation, high production values and unique use of iPhone hardware functionality.” said Farago.  “Orbital, our choice for grand prize winner, stood above its competition with its highly original concept, insane replay value and ultra-cool polish. Congratulations!”

The winner gets two free tickets to DiscoveryBeat ($300 value). And the winner and all of the runner-ups also get the following:

1. Free promotional credit of $500 for AppCircle which will cross-promote the winning developer(s) application across Flurry’s network of participating AppCircle developers. Participation in AppCircle guarantees additional downloads.

2. Free 3 (three) month trial of Flurry Analytics Pro, which provides application developers additional, powerful insight to improve their in-application marketing, including:

– Free-to-Paid App Conversion Tracking: tracks how many downloaded free applications are converted to the premium version from within the application.
– App Cross-Sell Conversion Tracking: tracks how many downloads of other applications offered by the developer are converted to additional downloads from within the application.
– App Cross-Usage Tracking: tracks and reports which applications within a developer’s portfolio are used in combination across the developer’s user base.

Note that to redeem these prizes, developers need to use, or be willing to add, Flurry Analytics and Flurry AppCircle.

Please be sure to sign up for DiscoveryBeat. Tickets are here.

Massie Design Studio has solved this problem with its latest iPhone application creation dubbed The Smart Alarm. The Smart Alarm monitors the changing weather overnight and alerts you depending on your settings.

For example, if you set your base time wake-up for 7 am and the weather is good, then the alarm will wake you up at that time. However, if there’s bad weather, say rain, then the app will wake you up 20 minutes earlier. If there’s snow, it could wake you up an hour earlier. The idea is to give you additional time to deal with the bad weather and still make it to work on time. If you travel a lot for business, The Smart Alarm tracks your location using the GPS, Wi-Fi and cellular to know where you are and the weather in the area.

The iPhone application currently is approved for sale in iTunes store for $1.99 in the utilities category and is only for U.S. based devices.

Of course, if you live in Silicon Valley, you may not have a bad weather morning story? Maybe Massie Design Studio could think of an elegant way to incorporate traffic data, so you can get up early on days when there’s a big jam.

We’re meeting at the new hip Mighty Bar (119 Utah Street @ 15th, San Francisco – Google Map) from 7pm to 11pm. If you play an instrument, bring it along, because we’ll let you jump on stage and jam with the band, like we’ve done in past years. It’s an open bar from 7 to 8pm.

The party, which is open to the first 400 people who register (yes, quite a few people have already registered, so move quickly), is part of a wider effort we’re making to meet up with entrepreneurs and other high-tech oriented professionals, to tell them more about what we’re planning for DEMO. DEMO is the leading event where technology companies launch their products, and the next one is to take place March 21-23 in Palm Springs, Calif. So this is a sort of “pre-party.” I’m about to take several trips around the U.S., looking for the very best entrepreneurs interested in launching; but there’s probably no better place to start off than in S.F., home to some of the most innovative Web developers around right now.

You’ll also get to meet some of the top DEMO alumni, who we’re also inviting (indeed, the companies that have launched at DEMO show just how much we’ve taken care to select the very best: Salesforce, TiVo, Palm, Microsoft, Sun, ETrade, Adobe, Google and Symantec have all either launched their companies or products there — to name just a few). Other reasons for launching at DEMO is that it provides the highest production values around: Aside from the world’s media showing up, we offer an Internet that works without fail, coaching help and high-definition video of presentations that companies can use to market themselves. I’m really not aware of any comparable conference offering all of this, at such a professional level. I posted recently about some of the other cool things we’re doing.

Special thanks to our sponsors, Invest in France, Microsoft BizSpark and SpiderCloudWireless for the food, beverages and the band.

You’ll definitely want to stay until the end of the night when Invest in France will be giving away some of their finest wines.

See you there!