A source just tipped us on some interesting changes Google-owned YouTube has made that give its partners more control over the blocking of video content they upload to the service.Basically, there are two new buttons in the interface for partners. One says 'Block by Country' and provides content partners with the ability to geo-block a single video rather than an entire account, an oft-requested feature that allows partners to restrict the geographical rights for specific videos.

  Electronic Arts has brought its very popular Spore franchise to Facebook, with the launch of a new game called Spore Islands. The game, while thematically similar to the well known PC game that was released last year, has gameplay that's entirely different. Rather than roaming around a 3D world, Spore for Facebook is more of a stategy game: you tweak your creature and then watch how it fares against the other beasts inhabiting your island.I took the game for a spin last night and found it to be pretty fun, though there's a bit of a learning curve. The game is effectively broken down into two main sections: the creature builder, where you can tweak both the appearance and the attributes of your character (things like speed, reproductive rate, and over a dozen others). Once you've fine tuned your creature to your satisfaction, you can go into 'observation' mode, where you watch miniature versions of the island's animals fight over food, eat each other, and reproduce (by way of eggs hatching). The graphics in the simulation portion are pretty basic — everything is presented in a 2D, top-down view, but they're charming and get the job done.

  [France] Paris-based Deezer is not waiting for Spotify to expand into new territories and is moving forward with its own plans pretty quickly. The French startup recently raised $9.5 million (€6.5 million), bringing the total invested into the company to nearly $20 million, and today the company's launching its previously rumored premium offering and a couple of new products.Basically, the Deezer website, where users can listen to streaming music and create playlists, will remain free of charge while users who would like better sound quality (up to 320 kb/s) and no more advertisements can opt to pay €4.99 per month for Deezer HQ. The Premium offering (€9.99 / month) is the most interesting though, since it gives users the opportunity to download a full-fledged Adobe AIR desktop application and lets them gain access to their accounts through a wide range of mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPod Touch and multiple Android-run and Blackberry devices.

  The more Google products you use, the more data it collects about everything you do online—your search history, your emails, the blogs and news sites you read, which videos you watch on YouTube, your news alerts, tasks ,and even shopping lists. For some of these, you need to explicitly grant Google permission to keep track of data associated with your profile. But it's hard to keep up with everything Google is tracking.So now the company is launching a Google Dashboard, which will give you a high-level summary of everything Google knows about you by virtue of the Google products you use. This might include how many emails are in your inbox, recent subject lines, which YouTube video you've watched lately (yes, all of them), appointments on your calendar, and more.

  A Facebook developer named Yvo Schaap has uncovered a massive security flaw present on both Facebook and MySpace that would give hackers the ability to steal all of your account data, including your photos, personal messages, and basically everything else you've ever put on the social networks, without you ever realizing it.Schaap stumbled upon the exploit and contacted both Facebook and MySpace. According to his blog MySpace has since fixed the bug, and while his blog indicates that Facebook is still working on it we've confirmed that they've fixed it as well (we're waiting on a statement from MySpace). So what exactly could the exploit do? From Schaap's blog:You don't need much time to think of all the ways this could be exploited. All what has to happen is a active session, or a "auto login"-cookie and a URL which hosts a exploiting Flash file. For example when accessed, a automatic "post update" could be made, that would lure friends of the user to access the exploit URL, and the exploit would spread virally. An more invasive and hidden exploit could harvest all the users personal photo's, data and messages to a central server without any trace, and there is no reason why this wouldn't be happening already with both Facebook and MySpace data.

  More expansion news from Adeo Ressi's Founder Institute. The startup incubator is steadily expanding. It recently opened up an outpost in Seattle, and now is expanding to New York. "New York City needs a kick in the pants," says Ressi.The Winter New York City Semester will be led by Razorfish co-founder Craig Kanarick. Mentors for the program will include Munjal Shah, Patrick Keane, Max Hoat and others. You can apply here.

  It wasn't all that long ago that Digg captured our collective imagination. In fact, even last year Google thought it was important enough to seriously consider buying Digg, only to back out at the last minute. Digg was the future of news. It was crowdsourced, democratic editorial. The masses decided what was news, not some 50 year old guy in a skyscraper in New York, who secretly hated the Internet.a lot of the shine has come off Digg. And while it still drives a tremendous amount of traffic, it's amazing to see just how completely it has been eclipsed by Twitter, which in turn is still just a drop in the Facebook bucket. Comscore worldwide data says Digg, Twitter and Facebook have 32 million, 58 million and 411 million unique monthly visitors (September 2009), respectively. Google Trends says much the same thing, but the growth over time is fascinating visually. We started with Digg, then added Twitter, and then added Facebook. In the end, Digg and Twitter are just footnote blips in the chart.About a third of all Internet users worldwide visited Facebook in September 2009, says Comscore. A year ago it was 17%. And what about Digg? They grew from 15 million worldwide unique visitors a year ago to 32 million today. And they tripled page views to 171 million. So it's not really about Digg doing anything wrong. They just pale in comparison to the guys currently in the spotlight - Twitter and Facebook.If you could only use one service, which one would you choose? I'd be unhappy about the forced decision, but I'd go with Twitter, even with all its flaws.Charts below:

  First, there was Google Voice. And all was good, and not so good. But it showed that there is a better way to manage voicemails than to listen to 15 in a row just to get to the one you care about. Now, there is an alternative to Google Voice called Ribbit Mobile. And it too is very good. Ribbit Mobile is in private beta, but the first 500 people to sign up with the invite code "techcrunch" will jump to the front of the line.

  Searching retail sites can be frustrating at times. While many retailers try to present product search in a visually appealing way, search can often be slow or difficult to refine. Tonight, Google is making a huge play in retail space with the launch of Commerce Search, a hosted enterprise search product to power online retail stores and e-commerce websites.Google offers a general hosted search product that is used by organizations that want to add customized Google search functionality to their websites. Google is now entering the vertical space, by the first tailor-made enterprise product, with retail optimized space. There are four key components to thew new search offering for retailers:

  As more games on the web begin to embrace virtual currency, users often run into the same problem: they've racked up mountains of whatever currency they've been playing with, but then don't have a way to actually do anything with it outside of that game. Sure, they can always buy the latest tractor or weapon to arrive in their game, but at some point that gets old and they're ready to cash out and move on to something new. Enter Bodega, a new platform that's looking to help users swap virtual goods and currencies across different games, and even across different social networks. Bodega lets users sell their virtual goods at auction in return for for Bodega's own currency, the Bodega Bill. When you go to sell your virtual goods, you can either put it up as a 'buy it now' style purchase or an auction, with a minimum reserve if you want. Users looking to purchase virtual goods can obtain Bodega Bills by completing offers, buying them with their credit cards, or by selling their own virtual goods in the marketplace. You can also earn Bodega Bills by completing actions on the site, like adding another user as a friend or listing an item for sale.

  On Monday, ngmoco released worldwide its latest game for the iPhone and iPod Touch: Eliminate Pro. It's been downloaded 500,000 times so far at a rate of about 25,000 an hour, currently making it the top free app in iTunes. The top paid app, Skeeball, also happens to be affiliated with ngmoco through its Plus+ social game network. ngmoco has had it's own top paid apps as well, like Rolando, but CEO Neil Young says that Eliminate Pro is more "representive of where we have been moving our business—free applications, that we monetize with in-app purchases."Ever since Apple opened up in-app purchases for free apps two weeks ago, it's been catching on. In general, free apps are downloaded 10 to 20 times as much as comparable paid apps. Now, says Young, the payments can be "built into the compulsion loop of the game." In other words, developers will get consumers to try their apps and then ask them to pay only once they are hooked.

  Twitter has a problem: A number of users tweet, then lose interest. It needs a way to reengage them in the site. And tonight it's starting to test one way: Notifications.The test is currently only rolled out to a "limited" number of users right now, according to this update. But those who have it should notice an indicator similar to what Twitter does to let you know there are new search results on a query (see a capture above and below). There's another service that does these types of notifications for new messages also: Facebook. Yes, Twitter for once is taking a playbook from its rival rather than the other way around.

  Offerpal Media, the central character in the Scamville drama, is changing CEOs. Anu Shukla is no longer the CEO of the company she cofounded. Veteran executive George Garrick, most recently the CEO of Mochi Media, is now the CEO of the company.From the press release quietly announcing the change:Offerpal Media, the leader in virtual currency monetization for online games, virtual worlds and social networks, announced today that George Garrick has been named chief executive officer.Garrick brings more than 25 years of experience in technology, advertising and consumer businesses to Offerpal Media. His track record of accelerating revenue growth and brokering strategic relationships with customers and partners will be critical assets in leading Offerpal Media.I had an...interesting public exchange with Shukla last week at the Virtual Goods Summit in San Francisco (see video at end of this post). I've also embedded it below.She vehemently denied that her company's offers ever scammed users. Despite her defense of the industry, MySpace, Zynga, RockYou and others have since made significant policy changes to protect consumers from the types of offers Offerpal peddles.

  Brad Garlinghouse, a former SVP at Yahoo, joined AOL as President of Internet and Mobile Communications two months ago. And he's clearly doing a little housekeeping, and forming his own exec team. His first major hire? Kiersten Hollars, a Digg PR exec.Hollars is part of Garlinghouse's old team at Yahoo, and left the company shortly after Garlinghouse did to take over PR and communications at Digg. She joins AOL later this month."This is more about working with Brad again, and nothing about Digg," she told us in a phone interview this morning, adding that she's excited about the turnaround opportunity at AOL. She joins AOL as senior director of corporate communications, reporting to both Garlinghouse and EVP Corporate Communications Tricia Primrose.Digg's looking for Hollars' replacement immediately. So if you want be the person to handle all corporate communications and Kevin Rose babysitting duties at Digg, let them know.