Webby News

If you’ve traveled enough, there’s a good chance you’ve lost your luggage before. Sure, it’s annoying as hell, but most people get it back within a few days. However, some people, for whatever reason, never claim their lost luggage, and the airlines then auction it off for charity. That’s where isthisyourluggage.com comes in.

The site, run by some anonymous person, collects this auctioned off luggage, and takes pictures of it to put on the site. Yes, this person opens the lugguage, takes out all of the items, and photographs them. Yes, this is creepy.

Dropbox, the Y Combinator and Sequoia-funded file synchronization startup that makes it easy to share files across multiple computers at once, just hit a major milestone: it now has over 1 million members. And as the graph below shows, much of that growth has come in the last few months, with over 900,000 signups since the product’s public debut at TechCrunch50 last September.

We don’t hear about Dropbox too often (it seems that they’re a bit too secretive for their own good at times), but their product rocks, and is gaining fans quickly. We’ve been using it around the TechCrunch office for over a year now to collaborate on group projects and keep key files handy regardless of which computer we’re using. And we’re not alone - I often hear about other startups that are using Dropbox for their own projects, including Facebook’s Dave Morin.

The conference was allegedly scheduled to start at 9:00 with reception and signing in, and the first lecture to start at 9:45. Strangely, when I arrived at around 9:30, the introduction to the conference by Gadi Kfir had already taken place and the first

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A business built on top of a business built on top of Twitter? That’s what Chart.ly, a TwitPic for stock market investors of sorts, is launching today. The service is designed as an add-on for StockTwits, the investment community built around Twitter users appending stock symbols (i.e. - $GOOG) to their tweets.

Chart.ly lets users upload stock market charts – which are the lifeblood of many traders –and share them via Twitter with a shortened Chart.ly URL. When you upload a chart, Chart.ly lets you include the stock symbol, some tags, and the tweet you’d like to send out. These tweets are then simulcast to the StockTwits community, which sorts all tweets about specific stocks (so, for example, you can see all tweets about $GOOG, the stock symbol for Google, in the same place).

The site was built in partnership with StockTwits, who actually owns the code. StockTwits investor Howard Lindzon endorses the service on the front page - “Behold… chart.ly for stocktwits! Sharing stock charts has never been easier.”

The big thing the site needs is its own charting tool, and that will be launched in the next couple weeks, Chart.ly creator Adarsh Dilip tells me. In the meantime, Dilip suggests using sites like bigcharts.com to generate the chart, and Chart.ly to upload and share on Twitter and StockTwits. Ultimately, Chart.ly fills a need within the Twitter ecosystem (for a clientele with money, no less), and should benefit from the continued growth of Twitter and StockTwits.

Reviews: Google, Twitpic, Twitter

Tags: investing, stock market, StockTwits, twitter

Last month, the social network hi5 cut a large percentage of its staff following a new round of funding that didn’t materialized. Now, the self-dubbed “world’s leading social entertainment web site” is getting a new leader at the top. Bill Gossman, formerly the CEO of the online advertising service Audience Science, is taking over as CEO of Hi5. Grossman was brought in by Hi5’s largest shareholder Mohr Davidow Ventures, where Grossman was a former partner and is a current executive in residence.

In the release (below) you can read between the lines to see where Hi5 is looking to head as it continues on at a smaller size. The site, is now focusing on forms of entertainment like casual gaming and micro-payments. Hi5 also recently partnered with Paymo to power mobile payments for virtual goods. Gossman, who obviously has experience in monetization, will now try to monetize hi5. The company’s former CEO, founder Ramu Yalamanchi, will stay on and take the roll of Chief Product Officer.

On April 14, Australian actor/producer Hugh Jackman pledged to give AUS $100,000 to charity via Twitter - that’s around $72,000 USD. Twitter users made pitches in 140 characters or less explaining why their chosen charities should receive the cash. Today, Jackman announced the recipients of the donation live on Ryan Seacrest’s radio show. The audio of the interview is embedded below, courtesy RyanSeacrest.com.

PLAY AUDIO:

Unable to choose just one deserving charity, Jackman split the $100K between two causes. $50K went to Operation of Hope, a not-for-profit medical foundation that donates surgical procedures to children in developing countries born with facial deformities.

The remaining $50K went to Charity:Water, a New York-based initiative that brings clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations. It’s a cause that’s very familiar to those in the social media space: in September 2008, Mashable, our Twitter followers and Twitter users Paull Young and Sarah Townsend raised enough to fund the building of a well. In December 2008, social media thought-leader Laura Fitton raised $25,000 for Charity:Water by hosting the Well Wishes campaign on Twitter. And in February 2009, we were proud to play a part in Twestival, a global Twitter fundraiser that earned a staggering $250,000 for the cause. This month, the Twestival drill began in Ethiopia, and the team posted videos (below) documenting the event.

Social media - and Twitter in particular - has played host to scores of successful charity campaigns. You can read more about these in our charity section.

Tags: charity, hugh jackman, ryan seacrest, twitter

The book focuses on the sustainable practice known as “IT greening,” or the process of using information technology more effectively to reduce fossil fuel-based energy consumption. IT and data centers are currently trending toward an exponential increase in the world’s consumption of electric energy. Lamb emphasizes the importance of IT managers understanding how to create and maintain green data centers, facilities in which the mechanical, lighting, electrical, and computer systems are designed for maximum energy efficiency and minimum environmental impact. Given the frequent “refresh cycles” for equipment, Lamb says IT groups are often well-positioned to innovate with these new technologies.

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