With over 85,000 apps on Apple’s App Store alone, the task to find apps tailored to your needs and likes is daunting. Who wants to sift through that? Sidebar is hoping to help smartphone users with the process of finding the perfect apps for their phones. An app in itself, Sidebar will ask you a series of demographic questions (gender, age, location) and a series of questions to determine your interests and content preferences (i.e. what type of news do you prefer, do you play online games, what types of outdoor activities are you interested in). Once Sidebar figures out a rough sketch of who you are, the app will begin to recommend mobile content to you.

Sidebar will recommend daily content to you within the app, including videos, games, music, apps, ringtones, podcasts, promotions, news articles. The app will load no more than 12 content recommendations per day, which will last for 24 hours until the next batch of recs are sent to you. Recommendations include a short synopsis of the app or content and a screenshot or image. If you like the rec, you can save it and and download or access it later.

The startup has also recruited two seasoned professional to help run operations. Patrick Kennedy, a former Sony Pictures Digital exec, joins the company as president and CEO. At Sony, Kennedy oversaw Sony’s entry into mobile entertainment and the creation of Sony Pictures Mobile. Sidebar’s new COO is Kieran Hannon, former CMO of online retailer Cooking.com and former marketing EVP at Helio.

Kennedy tells us that the app, which is free, will be available on Apple’s App Store and for other smartphones, such as the Blackberry and Android within the next three months. The service around Sidebar is compelling. While there are other ways to find recommended apps, such as the App Store itself, and websites like 16 Apps, it’s great to receive the personalized recommendations on your mobile device.

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Nine months ago we wrote about Taxi Magic, a nifty service that hooks directly into local dispatch systems to let you book cabs from your smart phone. Since then the startup has been doing quite well — it now supports the iPhone, Blackberry, and SMS booking. It’s also grown from supporting 25 fully supported cities to 40. And tonight it’s launching a new feature that exposes it to an even broader audience: a web portal at TaxiMagic.com

The site features a directory for each of the service’s supported taxi providers, with some cities (like San Francisco and Washington, DC) offering multiple options. Once you’ve picked a taxi service, you enter an address and pickup time. At this point you can’t pay for the taxi online, but you can pay from your smartphone or via SMS using through TaxiMagic if you’d rather not deal with cash or hand over your credit card (the service charges a $1.50 fee for this).

Aside from the new website, TaxiMagic has made quite a few changes since we last covered them. As mentioned above, you can now pay for taxis using your TaxiMagic account that’s been linked to a credit card (before you could only book cabs and would have to pay the old fashioned way). And the service now offers support for SMS, which means you can shoot a text from bascially any phone to TaxiMagic with your current address to request a pickup. TaxiMagic will respond with a text message indicating the cab drive’s name and distance.

Finally, the service’s iPhone application has seen quite a few upgrades, including the ability to actually see where your cab currently is as it drives to pick you up.

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What recession? We’ve confirmed that startup Delivery Agent has just raised $25 million in Series D funding led by new investor Focus Ventures with T-Venture, Coral Group, Ironwood Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Worldview Technology Partners and Cardinal Venture Capital participating. This brings Delivery Agent’s total funding up to $60 million.

In a nutshell, Delivery Agent helps TV networks monetize content through two distinct channels. First, the company creates online marketplaces for products and merchandise that are seen on television shows. Delivery Agent has signed on all the major networks, including ABC, CBS, NBC Universal, Twentieth Century Fox, and MTV Networks. Similar to GumGum’s ShopThisLook feature, Delivery Agent catalogues products appearing in movies and shows and then creates an e-commerce site where products can be purchases. By outsourcing all e-commerce for products seen on their networks to Delivery Agent, networks are able to monetize their content while keeping their overhead costs low.

Delivery Agent’s second service is coordinating advertising from the brands that manufacture the products that are shown on a networks’ TV shows. Delivery Agent will go through the index of products that will be airing on a show prior to when the episode airs, and then reach out to the brand and offer them the ability to buy an ad package for the show.

Mike Fitzsimmons, Delivery Agent’s founder and CEO, tells me that the new funds will be used to develop “click-to-buy” applications for online video and mobile content. In fact, Delivery Agent will soon launch a partnership with a major cable operator that will allow consumers to click and buy a product they see on TV with their remote control. Fitzsimmons also add that Delivery Agent will be using the funds to pursue international growth, and launch their content-monetization services in markets in Europe and Asia.

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