Facebook just announced that it has become a Gold sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation. According to Facebook’s David Recordon, the company wants to give back to the open source community that allowed Facebook to develop and contribute to projects like the Thrift framework, Hive , memcached and Cassandra . Apache Gold members donate $40,000 per year to the project. It’s worth noting that this is not Apache’s highest sponsorship level. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are platinum sponsors and give $100,000 per year. Sponsor In total, Facebook has developed or contributes to over 20 open source projects . Facebook also released the real-time web framework Tornado , one of FriendFeed ‘s core technologies, as an open source project shortly after it acquired FriendFeed in August 2009. As Recordon notes in today’s announcement, technologies like Hive and Cassandra that were first developed in-house by Facebook are now being used and sponsored by a diverse group of companies ranging from CBS and Rackspace to Digg, last.fm and Twitter. There can be little doubt, however, that open source is, as Apache Foundation chairman Jim Jagielski puts it, “in Facebook’s DNA.” We can’t help but wonder, though, why Facebook didn’t decide to go all the way and buy the Platinum sponsorship package . Become a Friend of ReadWriteWeb on Facebook . Discuss

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Open Source: Facebook Is Now an Apache Software Foundation Gold Sponsor

The first quarter of 2010 could see a higher number of investments by venture capital firms than the fourth quarter of 2009, according to figures from new reports by the National Venture Capital Association and information and data services company ChubbyBrain . Data from a report relased by the NVCA yesterday shows that the fourth quarter of 2009 saw a growth of $1.7 billion in venture funds over the previous quarter, similar to numbers seen from Q4 2008 to Q1 2009. Data released today by ChubbyBrain shows that following the earlier growth in venture funds, Q2 2009 saw a $1.4 billion increase in VC investments, a trend that could mean big bucks for startups in the first quarter of 2010. Sponsor As we reported last week , 2009 was a difficult year for startups and venture capital firms, with venture-backed mergers and acquisitions continuing a downward trend in 2009. Carolynn Duncan, founder and director of the startup incubator Portland Ten , says that the “pressure crunch” of 2009 caused VCs to give prospective startups more than the third degree. “It was more like the fifth degree,” Duncan told ReadWriteWeb. “It was so intense, even for the companies showing great traction and that had bootstrapped the hell out of their project.” Duncan believes that as the new year kicks off VCs that raised funds at the end of 2009 will be looking at a new class of startups to invest in. When asked if 2010 would be an easier year to find funding, Duncan was hesitant, but optimistic. “I don’t think ‘easier’ is the right word, maybe just not as demanding,” she said. “People are just glad its 2010 and not 2009 anymore.” Photo by Flickr user borman818 . Discuss

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New Year’s Resolution? VCs Could Spend More In 2010

While Google continues to digitize everything from the view from the driver’s seat to the contents of your appointment book , their tremendous attempt at digitizing the written word, Google Books , has run into a snag in the most ironic of places – China. While the country is infamous for copyright infringement , especially of intellectual property, it too is working to prevent the unfair use of its citizen’s copyrighted works. Bloomberg reported this morning that Google “has agreed to meet demands from a local writers’ group that it stop scanning and uploading books to the company’s online library without authors’ permission.” Sponsor The company found itself in a Chinese court last month facing allegations of copyright infringement by Chinese author Mian Mian, whose book can still be seen in preview on the Google service . This certainly isn’t the first time Google has run into complaints over its practices with the project. Last month, the company was convicted of violating France’s copyright laws . A Globe and Mail report on Google’s practices stated that over 80% of the French books offered were still under copyright. The company has also faced criticism in Germany over its Google Books service, where today the German minister of Justice warned that the company may be reaching monopoly status, requiring government intervention. The Bloomberg article notes that in China, Google trails behind the search engine Baidu . This is in a country with more Internet users than the entire population of the United States. But is the problem of supposed copyright infringement a public relations issue in a country where the average consumer sees counterfeit products in nearly every storefront window? While we stand on the side of writers getting paid for their work, we’re not sure this issue would really stand in the way of Google gaining popularity in China. Discuss

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Google Faces Copyright Trial in Chinese Courts

It’s too often that we read about a startup with an intriguing idea only to be completely turned off by the bland-looking design of their website. Granted, we don’t all have the Jedi-like abilities it takes to create a snazzy logo or website, so when we need something designed, we outsource it to a graphic designer – and there are tons to choose from. In most cases, the company in need will look over a selection of designers, review portfolios, and pick one to come up with a design. But why only choose to employ the abilities of one designer when you can crowdsource the project and pick from an unlimited number of submissions from a vast community of designers? The controversial but still successful crowdSPRING does just that. Sponsor Founded in 2008, the Chicago-based company is an online marketplace for creative services that connects small business in need of graphic design with freelance designers. The business creates a project, outlines the details and requirements of the design, sets a deadline and places a cash reward for the potential winner. Then designers submit their entries and once the deadline is reached, the company picks a winning design. CrowdSPRING has recently been at the center of heated debates in the design community as some denounce the site for promoting “spec work” – a term used to describe work done without any guarantee of compensation. Sites like Spec Watch and NO!SPEC are attempting to raise awareness about spec work, pinpointing sites like crowdSPRING as unethical businesses. “There is a certain irony in spec work,” writes Elisabetta Bruno on NO!SPEC. “A prospect requesting it is ultimately saying, ‘My project isn’t important enough to hire a professional who will take the time to understand my situation and goals and invest the time needed to create a suitable solution’.” For providing their platform, crowdSPRING takes a 15% cut on all deals made through the site, but offers a money-back guarantee if a project receives less than 25 entires. If your project passes this number, you better be satisfied with the designs because you’re then “promising to pick a winner,” the site says. Regardless of these criticisms, crowdSPRING has continued to grow, claiming that over 47,000 designers use the site in over 150 countries, and that more than 6,000 contests have been completed. The company has even attracted large brands like Italian pasta company Barilla, which has created a contest calling for a unique new pasta shape with three $1,000 payouts. Discuss

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crowdSPRING: Creative Solutions Platform or ‘Spec Work’ Enabler?

Hype Machine , the smart, long-running MP3 blog aggregator, has posted its annual collection of the most-blogged-about albums, songs and musical artists of the year . Once again, the project is a pleasure to consume and will unfold throughout the month of January. Top albums 50 through 41 , Mumford and Sons through Monsters of Folk, are available now in full for streaming. The album collection combines weighted rankings – based on submitted top 10 lists from 550 MP3 blogs – with a widget from Grooveshark to listen to the album, and a Creative Commons photo of each band. It’s quite nice. The newest addition to the project is unusually low-tech; it’s artist renditions of the top 50 musical artists of the year . Sponsor Last year’s Zeitgeist combined different technology to present the top albums and is still available as a list . It’s not as easy to listen to, though, perhaps because it was powered by Imeem, which MySpace bought and made a tragic mess of last month . This year’s Hype Machine Zeitgeist is another example of the awesome potential of free online music combined with smart technology and excellent design. Check it out and be inspired. Is this era the end of the music industry? It sure doesn’t need to be. Discuss

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The 50 Most-Blogged Albums of 2009, Streaming Free: HypeMachine Zeitgeist Out Now

Just as many of us are getting used to augmented reality applications for cellphones and digital cameras, Babak Amir Parviz and his University of Washington students are taking it one step further. The group is working on a human machine interface where LEDs are embedded into contact lenses in order to display information to the wearer. You heard right, in a few years your cyborg eye will talk to you. In an article with the IEEE Spectrum , Parviz relays the challenges of custom-building semi-transparent circuitry into a polymer lens roughly 1.2 millimeters in diameter. Sponsor Editor’s note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we’ll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year – and ahead to what next year holds – we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It’s not just a best-of list, it’s also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb! Says Parviz, “We’re starting with a simple product, a contact lens with a single light source, and we aim to work up to more sophisticated lenses that can superimpose computer-generated high-resolution color graphics on a user’s real field of vision.” For now, Parviz mentions that single pixel visual cues for gamers and the hearing impaired are already quite possible with the lens prototypes. The group has also experimented with non-invasive biomonitoring including checking glucose levels for diabetics. Some of the obvious challenges of building an augmented reality contact lens include: 1. The Need for Custom Parts: Regular circuitry and LEDs are incompatible with regular contact lenses. Every piece of this project must be fabricated from scratch. 2. Physical Constraints: The group must attempt to fit transistors, radio chips, antennas, diffusion resistors, LEDs and photodetectors onto a minuscule polymer disc. Additionally, the team is required to control lens position and light intensity relative to the pupil. And finally, because the lens is so close to the corneal surface, the group must project images away from the cornea using either micro-lenses or lasers. 3. User Safety: In addition to protecting the eye against chemicals, heat and toxins, the lens components must be semi-transparent in order for the wearer to view their surroundings. “We already see a future in which the humble contact lens becomes a real platform, like the iPhone is today, with lots of developers contributing their ideas and inventions. As far as we’re concerned, the possibilities extend as far as the eye can see.” And you thought the iPhone SDK was a tough nut to crack. For Parviz’s complete seven-page article, check out the IEEE Spectrum’s Biomedical page. Discuss

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Your Cyborg Eye Will Talk to You

Digg and Revision3 co-founders Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson have provided crowdsourcing startup 3Crowd Technologies and its founder Barrett Lyon with an early Christmas present of funding. Lyon says the angel investors join Storm Ventures and Greenwich Technology Associates to “give 3Crowd the shot in the arm it needs to take off,” likely sometime early next year. Sponsor This marks the second time Rose and Adelson have crossed paths with Lyon, who co-founded BitGravity , the streaming video service that Internet television studio Revision3 utilizes. San Mateo, California-based 3Crowd has yet to reveal how they plan to transform crowdsourcing (or how much funding they have secured), but Lyon’s history and apparent entrepreneurial fervor to change the web has clearly excited 3Crowd’s investors. “This concept is yet another disrupting, dis-intermediating idea from Barrett. These are the technologies that change the game,” Adelson says. Lyon, who is also the subject of the forthcoming book Fatal System Error by Joseph Menn, says that while the Internet has provided the platform for much success, it is still imperfect and needs to change. “At this point, my goal is to make change – to take the Internet in its current form (resembling digital duct tape) and transform it into something stronger and more scalable,” Lyon says. Before co-founding BitGravity, Lyon created the Opte Project : “software that traced all the routes of the Internet,” he says. Images from Opte Project have been used in movies, books and are permanently on display in museums of art and science in both New York and Boston. Discuss

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Digg’s Rose, Adelson Back Crowdsourcing Startup 3Crowd