ReadWriteWeb

Last month, I wrote about a startup with a win-win proposition called BetaBait, which helps beta apps connect with testers. It allows developers to list their app in an email to interested testers for free. It charges $50 for a sponsor slot featured at the top of the email. No-brainer, right?

Co-founder Cody Barbierri wrote in to let me know that, in the two weeks since launch (and it was over the holidays, too!), they added over 1,400 testers and 250 start-ups. The email was getting too long, so they've revamped the process. Only newly submitted apps will be in the email, and the rest are listed on the BetaBait site.

From the blogging-as-a-service department, here's a tool I think any app development team could use. BetaBait offers a simple proposition: sign up to try new apps on one side, sign up to find beta testers on the other.

It's a free, email-driven service. When you join, you're on the daily email list, which breaks down the apps by category. BetaBait charges $50 for a sponsor slot at the top of the email, so readers see sponsor apps first. That's it. If you've got an app, there's no reason not to use it.

This could be your next social productivity platform. It's free, it's cloud-based, it's synchronized, and it can integrate with your Gmail. And even if you've never heard of Salesforce.com, you'll know it now. Do.com is for real.

ReadWriteWeb has been authorized by Salesforce to grant 200 invites exclusively to the first of our readers who sign up.

The question being posed by a new generation of news readers who now depend more upon online sources than any other, is whether the editorial process for deciding the precedence of articles in a publication - for deciding what you read, when you read the publication - matters. In a world full of thousands of "sources," some of them actually legitimate, most Web readers today have adopted a pick-and-choose mentality. In many cases, they end up making those choices based on headlines and not their sources. (Just a reminder to that end, you're currently reading ReadWriteWeb.)

The dream of online publishers is to be able to use logic to build news packages that cater to the specific interests of each individual member of their readerships. But how exactly should that logic work? The publishers of a Web service we've covered here, News360 - which launched an autosyncing phone app for iOS and Android on Tuesday - are exploring whether the order and presentation of news can be determined using a Pandora-like dynamic formula, learning what you like to read by what you tend to read.

Mono for Android, aka MonoDroid, has just launched its Android preview program. MonoDroid, for those unaware, is a development stack for using C# and core .NET APIs to develop Android-based applications. It will be a commercial product in the future, like Mono for iPhone ("MonoTouch") is now.

The beta version of the Opera 11 browser just launched this morning with a notable new feature: tab stacking. Traditionally, tabs were opened side-by-side, says the company, now Opera users can stack tabs on top of each other instead.

The result isn't as messy as it may sound - in fact, it could become a must-have for tabaholics who typically keep a dozen or more tabs open at any time. But is it useful enough to get you to switch?

TestFlight is a new tool for mobile developers which is being billed as an application that fixes the somewhat painful process of beta testing iOS 4 (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) applications. And it does so without requiring the use of iTunes, manual syncing, private APIs (application programming interfaces) or jailbreaking.

Is that even possible?

Your choice in Web browser is about to get more interesting as all three of the top browsers on the market today - Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome - prepare and launch updated beta versions, each offering compelling, and in some cases unique, new features.

Although IE's beta launch is still weeks away, the company has detailed its plans for the improved browser, which include additions like hardware acceleration, HTML5 support and a faster JavaScript engine. Firefox, meanwhile, has added multi-touch support for Windows 7, among other things. And Chrome's latest has added form autofill, plus extension and autofill synchronization.

When Sigma Partners' Richard Dale posted a video of a random dancing guy to his Venture Cyclist blog I was skeptical. I'd seen the original video sans narration and dismissed it as a strange sociological phenomenon condensed into a quick three minute clip. Nevertheless, when the same video is narrated by MuckWork and CDBaby founder Derek Sivers, it provides some valuable leadership lessons for entrepreneurs.

Today Adobe released new beta versions of the company's Flash Player and AIR. The Flash Player 10.1 technology now includes HTTP streaming and hardware decoding of H.264 video. The company plans to bring the updated Flash Player to mobile devices too, starting with the Palm Pre and then completing versions for other major smartphones by the first half of 2010 (with the notable exception of the iPhone, of course).

However, out of the two updates, it's Adobe AIR 2 that received the biggest overhaul. The new runtime allows developers to create entirely new types of applications that simply weren't possible using AIR 1. What sort of apps are those? Adobe's gallery of sample apps should give you some ideas of what's to come.