The Washington Post’s online sector will be hosting a series of online discussions between readers and presidential candidates. These live discussions, each of which will be an hour in length, will feature individual Republican and Democratic presidential candidates. First up is Sam Brownback,who will be available for discussion online this Wednesday at [...]

  Mixx, the social news site that just announced its upcoming public beta launch yesterday, now tells us about its first round of funding from Intersouth Partners. Financial details of the round were not disclosed. We first reviewed Mixx here.This latest Digg clone incorporates personalization options for content recommendation, and has partnered [...]

  Takkle, the sports social network, now has SI-TAKKLE Top 100 High School Football Players rankings. This is a new ranking system introduced by Sports Illustrated, that looks at the football players across the nation. Powered by Offense-Defense, a company that organizes football camps, the top 100 high school football players will get some [...]

  NBC Universal is acquiring Oxygen Media for $925 million, with $875 million net of financial assets. This deal shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. The cable network started by Oprah Winfrey, Tom Werner and Marcy Carsey, and backed by Paul Allen, has made a pretty big impact with its television programming as [...]

  Outside.in, the location-based social network, has raised $1.5 million in another round of funding. This round was led by Union Square Ventures, Milestone Ventures, Village Ventures, George Ceorge Crowley, John Seely Brown, Esther Dyson and John Borthwick, which are repeat investors. Outside.in’s previous round of funding amounted to $900,000, which took place [...]

  Shelfari has just introduced its latest version of its widget offering, adding in more customization options. The new widget is skinned in three different shelf options, and offers a plain text view as well. You can include your Amazon affiliate ID in order to make money through the books you promote, or import [...]

  ToneMine is a ringtone mixer that’s just been launched by mobile retailer LetsTalk.com. The ringtone mixer is slightly more extensive than most services out there, with a little bit of social networking mixed in as well. The mixing composer on the site lets you work from a basic music package, which covers [...]

  Jangl, the VoIP service that’s known for its integration with existing social networks, has finally been officially launched with Fubar, the “Facebook for grownups.” We first caught wind of Jangl’s partnership with Fubar earlier this summer, when the VoIP service announced four new partners, bringing its total reach to over 20 million [...]

  Jaiku has announced that it has been acquired by Google. Jaiku is the Twitter-like service for keeping up with your friends via the Web or SMS. Terms of the deal are not being disclosed by the companies.According to Jaiku:“Exciting news: Google has bought Jaiku today.What does that mean? First and foremost, we’re of [...]

  The Street View feature of Google Maps is expanding today to offer detailed views of six new cities: Chicago, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland and Tucson. The announcement continues Google’s roll out of Street View, which provides photos of the actual locations you’re looking at on Google Maps. Additionally, Google has added the ability [...]

  OkCupid.com, a free online dating site, has announced the launch of its quiz application for Facebook. Once completed, the OkCupid Dating Quiz gives you your personality type and allows you to add it to your Facebook profile. Next week, the application will expand to allow users to take any of OkCupid’s 30,000 relationship and lifestyle [...]

  Multiverse, which provides tools to allow developers to build their own virtual worlds (previous coverage), has announced a partnership to provide users access to Google’s 3D Warehouse and terrain maps from Google Earth. The deal will provide developers with millions of more images and options they can use to create their worlds, and allow [...]

  With the year drawing to a close, Ask.com has still not renewed its deal with Google to serve advertising in search results. This is fairly significant, given the contract between the two companies is set to expire at year end. According to Barry Diller, CEO of IAC/InterActiveCorp (parent of Ask.com), the search engine [...]

  PoliticalBase is a new site offering wikis for politicians and issues. The big difference between PoliticalBase and Wikipedia is that the features of the site steer users towards entering specific types of content, and all changes are reviewed by staff editors. For example, on the page for Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, you [...]