The do-it-yourself website space is so crowded right now that it's amazing to see anyone launch a product and cut through the noise. Still, we were captivated by the simplicity and design of Flavors.me. Similar to Card.ly, instead of forcing you to use Facebook, LinkedIn or your neglected blog to represent you, Flavors lets you build a basic vanity site in less than 10 minutes. As of this evening non-designers will have a chance to revel in their newly found web sex appeal.

Bit.ly, the reigning king of Twitter's short URL service is taking a good hard look at malware. In a blog post published earlier today, the company announced a partnership with three security giants to beef up protection for the millions of Bit.ly short links whizzing through Facebook and Twitter every month. The company will incorporate Verisign's iDefense IP reputation service, WebSense's ThreatSeeker Cloud Service and Sophos' Web Alert Services.

Developer Toby Padilla was one of the first to defend music content resolver Playdar when it was released to developers. Since then Padilla has contributed more than just his morale support. The former VP of Desktop and Client Software at Last.fm has since built Playgrub - a bookmarklet that scrapes supported sites for music metadata in order to create playlists.

After eating the best meal of your life, it's hard to forget the experience. It's not unusual for individuals to spend a decade in search of the perfect New York-style pizza in California or the best ramen in London. At this level of obsession, you simply can't be satiated by reading menus or scouring the blurry restaurant pictures and user-generated diatribes of regular review sites. Whether you've got a fixation on fresh lobster ragoût or a hankering for hickory smoked ham, Foodspotting lets hungry users peruse through what can only be described as food porn.

It's tough to find a great geek present during Black Friday sales. Thousands wait in line at department stores and electronic shops
in the hopes of scoring a bargain on laptops, netbooks and mobile accessories. For the shy netizen, the idea of facing these crowds can be daunting. Rather than scouring the malls for holiday presents, consider returning to your web-based roots. Below is ReadWriteWeb's list of 10 gadget, gear and geek gift sites.

Creathor Venture is a 25-year-old venture capital firm based in Germany and Switzerland. That makes it unusual. In 1984, when it started, not a lot of VC funds were in Europe. So, we decided to speak with Cédric Köhler in Creathor's Zurich office. As innovation accelerates and globalizes, we wanted to find out how a smaller regional fund like Creathor can compete with much larger Valley-based firms that have a global footprint. And of course, we wanted to find out what's hot on the European tech scene. Read on to find out.

If I see another screencast using the iMovie default songs, I'm going to go nuts. Music sets the tone for how you want others to perceive your company and choosing a generic soundtrack is like branding yourself boring. In the past, videographers were forced to work with lawyers to gain appropriate licenses for samples. Thanks to the Free Music Archive and a number of other services, we're free to use original songs while still maintaining the rights to attribution. This morning's launch of the Free Music Archive's guest curation series further expands on this environment of collaboration.

It's only late afternoon and we've already got a Thanksgiving mystery. API strategist Ben Metcalfe and former SVP of Marketing for Tesla Motors Plato's Forms. The duo are intent on "solving the problem of rapid proliferation of misinformation in online media." Although their recent blog post confirms the company's $545,000 dollars in new funding, they are keeping mum on product specifics and how they'll transform media in Spring 2010. In our commitment to truth, justice and better blogging, ReadWriteWeb has a list of issues we hope Plato's Forms addresses:

Between Skype, chat, texts, push news notifications and three screens of scrolling feeds, it's easy to get distracted while writing an email or post. If you've misspelled names, forgotten words or hit send prematurely on numerous occasions, then you probably just need to slow down. Rather than resorting to a life in the woods of hermit-like solitude, you could just take a few moments to think with Ommwriter.

Get your mind out of the gutter. This isn't about distributing your crude weekend photography, it's about being able to upload content outside the parameters of basic community categories. While we all know that YouTube is for video, Flickr is for photography and LinkedIn is for career-related content, it's hard to tell where we should be sharing our important but uncategorizable content. Nincha is a stealthy little community that just may infiltrate the community sharing space.