Groupon And The Problem With The Daily Deal Religion [Video]

With the debut of Groupon personalization, I have little doubt that the daily deal site will double the number of deals (and double its revenue run rate) in just a few months. According to CEO Andrew Mason, the service is churning out 75,000 transactions per day. Through personalization, Groupon will be able to offer 20, 30 or more deals per city per day. Assuming the current growth rate in subscribers --- in the last four months the site has more than doubled to 12 million registered users--- 2x is likely a prudish estimate. It's hard to fault a company that is making money hand over fist; however, as a user, I do have one piece of advice: loosen that death grip on the daily deal mantra.

Kindle iPhone/iPad App Now Smarter With A Dictionary, Wikipedia, And Google

Despite their clear commitment to the hardware version of the Kindle, Amazon continues to make the Kindle apps that run on the iPad and iPhone better. Today, version 2.2 of the app brings a full dictionary with it. This matches the functionality of Apple's own iBooks app, but the Kindle implementation is even a little better. Now in the Kindle app when you highlight a word, a definition will automatically appears at the bottom of the screen. And that's not all -- there you'll also find links to further investigate the word on Google or Wikipedia. Though this dumps you out of the app and into the iPhone/iPad web browser, it's a pretty nice feature.

Google Confirms: We’re Not Currently Blocked In China

We've just received word from Google confirming that they are not currently blocked in China and that a server issue was most likely the cause of their dashboard misread. One month ago, Google put up their watered-down engine to avoid being shut down completely in China. Because the Chinese government did not like the auto redirect to Google Hong Kong which was previously in place, the new degraded version at the center of all today's confusion simply links to Google Hong Kong.

Google Opens Places API With Initial Focus On Check-In Apps

At Google I/O in May, the search giant indicated that they were about to take their commitment to location to the next level. Sure, Latitude had been around for a while, but everyone knew that Google could do more in the space. The announcement of some new location APIs seemed to a big part of the solution. And now comes the fun part. Today on their Geo blog, Google is announcing that they're beginning to open the Places API for business. The first developers getting access? Those working on check-in services.

Panasonic Buying Out Solar Tech and Rechargeable Battery Makers

Panasonic announced today that it will buy out two of its subsidiaries, Sanyo and Panasonic Electric Works, for $9.4 billion. Sanyo is the largest lithium-ion rechargeable battery producer and 11th-largest solar cell producer in the world with a quickly-growing solar panel manufacturing arm according to company statements.