How many times have you created a new account at a website and seen a message that said: “Thank you for creating an account. To activate your new account, please access your email and click the verification URL provided.”

Even though you just want to start using the website, this lengthy process requires you to manually perform a whole bunch of steps—including switching to your mailbox, trying to find the message the website sent you (which might be in your Spam folder), opening the message, clicking the link, etc. Until recently, we also required people to follow these steps if they wanted to sign up for a Google Account using their existing email address, such as a @yahoo.com, @hotmail.com, or other address.

To make this process simpler, we’re now using an Internet standard called OpenID which is supported by several email providers, including Yahoo!. Instead of the process above, Yahoo! users who sign up with Google see the page below with a button that sends them to Yahoo! for verification.

Once you click that button, Yahoo! shows you a page to get your consent to share your email address with Google.

After you agree, you’re done and can start using any Google service, such as Google Groups, Docs, Reader, AdWords, etc. We have found that a much larger number of people complete the email verification process when this method is used.

In the future we hope to expand this feature to other email providers, and we also hope other website operators will read more on the Google Code Blog about how they can implement a similar feature.

Posted by Eric Sachs, Senior Product Manager, Google Security

The Words episode of Radiolab (iTunes link) features an interesting segment on how Shakespeare behaved like a language chemist, combining words like elements. The relevant story starts at 22:00 in of the episode.According to James Shapiro, a Shakespeare scholar at Columbia, the un- prefix is something Shakespeare created (at least he was the first to use it in print or on stage). That means he invented the words unaware, uncomfortable, undress, uneducated, unwillingness, unsolicited, and unreal. Also, words like madcap and eyeball. That’s right, the word eyeball didn’t actually exist until Shakespeare came up with it.Plenty of Shakespeare phrases have stuck with us too. Some examples mentioned by Shapiro:Truth will out.What’s done is done.Dead as a doornail.Every dog will have its day.Fool’s paradise.The game is afoot.It’s Greek to me.Kill with kindness.Love is blind.All’s well that end’s well.See more of Shakespeare’s coinages (via EL). It’s neat to think about one person sitting down and actually creating so many of these words and phrases which now seem ubiquitous.

You've heard about Zend Framework (ZF). You've watched the screeencasts. Yet, you haven't put your toe into the ZF waters. Why? Most likely, you saw it as a lot of work to get started or perhaps you ran into issues with the demo that came packaged with the ZF you installed.You are not alone. Others had that exact same frustrations and created zfKit as "a starter kit for ZF to enable a productive 'out of the box' experience". Let's take a look. SponsorAlong comes zfKitzfKit was designed to be a download away from getting you up and going faster with some best practices on ZF. From the zfKit about page:zfKit provides Doctrine 1.3, PHPUnit and ZendFramework 1.10 in a ready to run package.You might imagine that zfKit streamlines the process of getting up and running. In fact, the instructions might have you wondering what is missing -- but it really is this simple to get started:Done!Alternatively, you can visit the github repository for zfKit to get started.Behind zfKitThe zfKit creator and developer, Michael Kimsal, shared the following with RWH regarding the project goals, approach, and planned enhancements:"zfKit aims to provide a starter kit for Zend Framework to enable a productive 'out of the box' experience."RWH: What led you or prompted you to create zfKit?Kimsal: Every time I'd used Zend Framework before, there was always a large amount of setup that I needed to do (decisions about what libraries to use, configuration options/settings, etc). zfKit was an effort to distill those decisions down to a reusable project.RWH: Why did you choose github to host zfKit?While I'm not a git guru, I'm liking git more and more because of the offline-nature. I can commit and branch locally as much as needed, and only push out the changes that really matter. github simply makes it easy to get started with git, but they also make it extremely easy to fork and modify other projects, then share those changes back. I recently had someone branch zfKit and add in some configuration options he finds handy - I wasn't even aware of them. :) That level of transparency, openness and sharing was not something I'd ever seen with sourceforge back in the olden days.RWH: What do you plan to add to zfKit in the future?Kimsal: I'm planning on adding in support for Doctrine2 in the near future, and would like to have a basic user/role/group management system in place by the end of the year. Beyond those, I'm open to requests or contributions from the community.Do you plan to try out zfKit or do have you have other starter projects you've enjoyed using? Let us know in the comments below!Discuss

Location-based mobile applications, also now being called "check-in services" to differentiate themselves from other geo-aware apps like Google Maps, are the hottest new social applications on the mobile scene today. The lineup includes game-based applications like Foursquare and MyTown, which each provide points, credits and/or badges for "checking in" (registering your physical presence) with a particular venue. There are also dedicated shopping-related check-in services like Shopkick, which rewards retail customers with discounts and deals for patronizing select establishments. But almost all of the check-in apps integrate some form of mobile advertising. After months of experimentation with various formats, marketers are starting to discover what strategies actually work.SponsorDespite the media craze for apps like this, some analysts are rationally advising caution to marketers who are tempted to jump on this latest bandwagon - after all, only 4% of U.S. adults have ever used these location-based check-in services and only 1% out of those that use them do so more than once per week. But businesses, hopeful of reaching their most engaged customers, see check-in apps as a big opportunity for marketing initiatives, not to mention a rich resource of consumer data ripe for mining.  Case in point: analyst firm ABI Research has just released a new study that finds businesses are primed to spend $1.8 billion on location-based ads in 2015, a somewhat surprising number given the small crowd of early adopters currently using apps like these. According to ABI Research's Neil Strother, check-in apps today may raise privacy concerns among some users, but those issues can be overcome by offering consumers deals, discounts and rewards. The "value-exchange" of receiving these rewards will be high enough that consumers won't mind giving up privacy in order to take advantage of the benefits. "If you care about getting discounts or being rewarded for shopping," he explains, "you'll accept having your whereabouts known."So What Sort of Benefits Actually Work? Marketing news site Clickz has uncovered strategies that have, so far, proved successful for location-based advertising, both on mobile and elsewhere. On mobile platforms, they agree with ABI, the clear winner is the reward system. Activity-based advertising rewards consumers for taking specific actions. Although Clickz cites examples that have been proven successful on the iPhone, they could easily be successful on other platforms as well, we think, there just haven't been as many mobile applications with which to test this strategy. Clickz specifically cited two example of reward-based systems, the first being TV network Bravo's Foursquare promotion which awarded badges to Foursquare users who checked in to venues associated with the network's shows. The other example was wireless charging company Powermat's MyTown promotion involving a sweepstakes. Users could enter to win a Powermat by interacting with the product in the store.ABI's research report analyzes even more cases studies including clothing company H&M's virtual goods in MyTown, Chili's Foursquare promotion, Sharpie's badges on Brightkite and more. We've reported on several other such initiatives ourselves, including Shopkick's incentive program, SCVNGR's partnership with shoe company Journeys, NYC-based hyperlocal location/group-buying startup, GroupTabs, travel rewards for frequent travelers from TopGuest, white-labeled geofenced text messasaging service ShopAlerts and many, many others. Now that app makers and marketers know rewards are the key to success, it's a great time for companies and advertisers alike to experiment with various reward systems, promotions and deals to figure out what types of incentives actually work. Discuss

Mashable is proud to be partnering with the UN Foundation, 92Y, Livestream.com, CNN and a host of teams and organizations to produce a unique opportunity to make UN Week accessible to the public — both online and offline.Today the…

One of the big problems with video on the Web is that other than the title, description and some meta tags, it is mostly invisible to Google and other search engines. One way to make video more SEO-friendly is to add transcriptions, but that can get expensive. An angel-funded startup called SpeakerText is (re)launching today with a very clever way to automate the transcription process and attach the full transcript as part of the video player in a drop down window. You can see an example of how this works below. And if you publish a lot of videos and want to try it out yourself, we have 100 beta invites (use the code: techcrunch).Once a video is transcribed, it appears in a collapsible window below each player. Not only is all the text visible to search engines, and thus should help drive more search traffic to individual videos, but the text is all time-stamped. So you can click on any sentence and it will jump to that point in the video. Anytime somebody cuts and pastes a portion of the transcript in a blog or other site, a link back to that point in the video is also included. The startup tried doing a Flash wrapper before for the YouTube player. It completely reworked its technology into what it is now calling the SpeakerBar that is more of a transcript plug-in that detects any video on your site that has a matching plug-in. SpeakerText works with video players from YouTube, Brightcove, and Blip.tv, and there is also a WordPress plug-in.

As Skype looks to build out revenue streams following its IPO, the company has been launching programs targeting enterprise customers. Last week, Skype launched Skype Connect, which is a way for business’ employees to make domestic and international calls using regular office telephones. Today, Skype is unveiling its Skype Channel Partner Program that allows partners in the United States to sell endorsed IT support for Skype's enterprise products. The program will train Channel Partners in sales and marketing, customer tracking and reporting tools, as well as support and account management from Skype. Once trained and certified by Skype, Skype Channel Partners can provide their own consulting, installation, configuration, maintenance and support services to business customers who want to use Skype’s business offerings, including the Skype Business Client, Skype Manager and Skype Connect.

HDTVs are the next consumer electronic battlefield and Samsung is apparently testing out Android on its sets in order to step up their offering in response to the latest from Sony, Apple and others. Currently, Samsung is the world's leader in HDTVs sold but there's a shake-up looming and Samsung no doubt wants to retain its title. Android may or may not be the answer.

Startup incubators are popping up everywhere. Year One Labs is launching today as a "seed accelerator" in Montreal. Similar to recently announced startup incubator AngelPad, Year One Labs was founded by four software entrepreneurs, Ben Yoskovitz, Raymond Luk, Alistair Croll and Ian Rae; with the hope of advising and funding Canadian startups based in Montreal.

This series is brought to you by HTC EVO 4G, America's first 4G phone. Only from Sprint. The "First to Know" series keeps you in the know on what's happening now in the world of social media and technology.

Guest blogger Adam DuVander is the author of "Map Scripting 101," an example-driven guide to building interactive maps on multiple platforms. He also serves as executive editor of ProgrammableWeb.Maps took over the web in mid-2005, shortly after the first Where 2.0 conference. They quickly moved from fancy feature to necessary element of any site that contained even a trace of geographic content. Today we're amidst another location and mapping revolution, with mobile making its impact on the web. And with it, we're seeing even more geo services provided by both the old guard and innovative new mapping platforms.Though the map itself continues to be important, other geographic data is having a larger impact. Providers are making this data, such as driving directions and business listings, available in increasingly open ways.The old guardA screenshot from Marcelo Montagna's "Custom Tile Layers with Opacity" Google Maps demo.Google had the first mapping API and continues to keep its lead by adding useful new features. The company's Maps V3 was originally optimized for mobile, but in May Google made it the go-to platform for the web as well. With this move, Google showed that the mobile web is at least as important as the web we access from our homes and offices.Another sign of mobile's influence on mobile appears in how Google is making some of its newest services available. Geocoding, driving directions and business listings are no longer confined to access via JavaScript. Instead, Google has made these all available via web services, giving developers the freedom to use the results in multiple ways, such as in a native smart phone application.Yahoo has done little to expand its mapping platform in recent years, though it is almost as old as Google's. Due to Yahoo's more lenient terms, its auxiliary geo services, such as geocoding and static maps, get consistent interest from developers. And the company has made improvements, such as its next-generation geocoder, PlaceFinder, which it announced in June.Yet, with Yahoo's tremendous potential, the mapping platform remains untouched. There's hope, given the recent deal with Nokia to provide maps on Yahoo proper. Both Yahoo and Nokia are mum on whether the deal will extend to Yahoo's developer platform, which makes me wonder if it will leave behind an industry it helped create.MapQuest is oft-forgotten by developers, though it has made some of the largest strides with its mapping platform in the last year. A sixth version of its JavaScript API, written from the ground up, recently came out of beta. The new platform takes advantage of the web services that MapQuest has released. It's an attempt to make the thin client code even thinner.One of these web services, Directions, made MapQuest a leader among mapping APIs. Launched a year ago, Directions marked the first time routing was available for free without being constricted with JavaScript-only access. Most recently MapQuest made the same service available built on top of OpenStreetMap data.The newcomersBing may seem like a strange newcomer, since Microsoft has had a mapping API for some time. Previously called Virtual Earth, it was re-branded in 2009 along with the launch of Microsoft's new search engine. But it's not just surface-level changes. Microsoft has continued to launch new developer services with Bing.In addition to the JavaScript SDK, Bing Maps can also be created with Silverlight, which makes for smoother transitions and animation. The Bing Maps site itself runs on Silverlight, and in June Microsoft launched the ability to create map apps, which can run on the main Bing Maps site.CloudMade is a company built upon OpenStreetMap, the project creating a wiki-like map that anyone can edit. Using this open data, CloudMade's API gives you access to the Open Street Map tiles in a way that is more reliable -- and style-able -- than the project itself.CloudMade's Map Style Editor lets you set colors for features, such as roads and parks. Then, make your own style available for embedding using the JavaScript API. CloudMade supplies much of the same power that super-users have when making map tiles server-side in a point-and-click interface.Where have all the hackers gone?With so many official mapping APIs available, it's easy to forget that the map mashup culture was founded upon hacking. Paul Rademacher created HousingMaps to show Craigslist rentals and homes for sale on a Google Map before Google had an API. Adrian Holovaty made Chicago Crime to show crime data (which he scraped from the police bureau's website) on a hacked and embedded Google Map.Rademacher joined Google in 2005, created the Google Earth plugin and now is part of the team that makes Google Maps. Holovaty's Chicago Crime project became part of EveryBlock, a local news aggregator that sold to MSNBC last year. Ironically, EveryBlock doesn't use any mapping API, instead opting for using its own minimalist map tiles.The mapping hackers of 2010 have also gone server-side, away from the APIs. Using tools like Mapnik, they're styling their own maps, almost always with OpenStreetMap data. Sometimes it's for fun, like Brett Camper's 8-Bit City. And when an earthquake struck Haiti, map hackers responded.Mapping the futureMapping providers will likely make it easier to create your own customized maps. Already Google Maps V3 has simple styling via CSS-like code. And the process of creating OpenStreetMap tiles is greatly simplified by Tile Drawer.But it's not just making the map itself that needs simplification, but storing and accessing the data on top of it. For years developers have had to set up their own databases of locations, which raises the bar for the type of developer who can use maps. Now there are tools like SimpleGeo to make the process easier. However, it would be useful to see these tools baked into the mapping APIs and we likely will soon.Similarly, we need easier ways of expressing data without just adding more markers. Graphic overlays, such as choropleths (regions shaded based on data) and heatmaps, are not accessible to most developers. The processes need to run on a server capable of geo-referencing the graphic it outputs. And services available to do this tend to charge. The open government movement is already tied closely to mapping. Hopefully projects for the greater good will fill in feature gaps where mapping providers don't see business opportunities.Obviously, mobile will play a huge role in the future of mapping. Already we've seen an impact, yet there are far fewer sites taking advantage of the user's location than could. Expect the next generation of store locators, for example, to be much more exciting. But that's just the beginning.Related: Toward a local syzygy: aligning deals, check-ins and places Video: Jack Dangermond, ESRI founder and president, on the future of mapping Video: Matt Galligan, "Getting to Know SimpleGeo" Waze: Make your own maps in realtime

It's not every day we get to post about venture capital flowing a Southern African company with global ambitions, but here goes: FireID, a provider of security applications for mobile authentication, has secured 5 million euros (roughly $6.4 million) from Jersey-based early-stage investment firm 4Di Capital.The funding will be used to expand worldwide distribution of the company's mobile password authentication solution into key verticals, FireID says.

Backupify, a cloud computing service that backs up data on other cloud computing services, has raised $4.5 Million in Series A funding co-led by Avalon Ventures and General Catalyst, with Lowercase Capital and First Round Capital participating in the round.Founded in 2008 by Rob May, Backupify backs up all your data on services like Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Flickr, WordPress, Blogger, and YouTube. The service keeps all the raw data for you and creates a downloadable PDF with, for instance, all your Tweets, direct messages, followers, people you follow, and profile info. Backupify offers free and premium versions of the service.

Evan Jacobs is one of the developers doing some really interesting things with the Twitter API. Instead of using Twitter as a means of broadcasting information, Jacobs' apps are actually gathering information from Twitter to turn it into something more useful.

Digg founder Kevin Rose cheerfully responds to the mountains of criticism around the newly launched Digg 4. His overall theme is that users need to deal with it.Rose says that he's "gotta take risk" with the service in his quest to push it beyond the 30 million or so monthly visitors to the masses. He wants 20,000 - 30,000 diggs on the top stories v. the few hundred diggs that most top stories get today. To do that Digg is pushing stories that it thinks are more relevant to you, because people and entities you follow have pushed those stories, too. It's a lot like Twitter, most say, and the soul of Digg is gone.Video is below.

The never ending story between Apple Japan and the local government may have finally come to an end. Following months of disputes whether overheating first generation iPod nanos pose a security risk (some iPods caused fire) or not, Apple last month announced it will put up a special warning message on its Japanese company site and offer to replace batteries in all models affected for free.

Venture capital database VentureDeal this morning released complimentary VC Funding Quarterly reports, covering the second quarter of 2010. Let's take a look at the report TechCrunch readers are likely most interested in: the world of the Web, digital media, software and ecommerce.During Q2 2010, VentureDeal reports (PDF) that 366 companies raised a total of $2.1 billion in venture capital funding for those sectors, up 17% in total funding amount compared to the first quarter of this year and an increase of 30% in the number of companies funded. All four sectors showed gains in funding amounts and number of companies funded.

The Digg fiasco pushed our jobs post back a day. Check out the latest jobs posted on the CenterNetworks Job Board. Subscribe to the CN Jobs feed and get all of the latest Web industry jobs delivered directly to you.Featured Jobs:Director of Engineering at Buddy MediaCreative Director at Viewpoints NetworkMore Jobs:Senior Ruby Developer at

AOL just announced an interesting partnership today: The Ellen DeGeneres Show. AOL and the show's website, Ellentv.com, will now share promotion, traffic, and content. For AOL, the deal helps the company leverage traffic from Ellen's main demographic, women between the ages of 25-54. AOL will feature content from its network of sites on Ellentv.com. And sites in the the AOL Lifestyle and AOL Entertainment groups, such as KitchenDaily.com, AOL Television and Popeater, will carry Ellentv content and links.

GSMA, the organizers of the annual, massive Mobile World Congress, have announced a couple of new developments this morning. For one, the organization is to expand the developer-focused programme at the event to include new elements such as Macworld Mobile and the Brand App Challenge.In addition, the organization has announced new speakers, including Sir Martin Sorrell, chief exec of WPP and HTC head honcho Peter Chou.