Venture Capitalists Ron Conway And Sean Parker Battle For CharitySean Parker (Founders Fund, Facebook, Plaxo, Napster) and angel investor Ron Conway are doing a little smack talking over who’ll raise the most money for charity. Conway is raising for the UCSF Foundation, and Parker is fighting Malaria through Malaria No More.

So far Parker is in the lead, with more than $15,000 raised (he’s tying it to his 30th birthday party tonight). Conway, who started later, has nearly $7,500. They’re both using Causes on Facebook, one of Parker’s companies, to raise the money.

We’re not picking sides, and both are very worthy causes. Donate early and often. And consider asking friends to donate instead of giving holiday gifts.

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 Venture Capitalists Ron Conway And Sean Parker Battle For Charity
 Venture Capitalists Ron Conway And Sean Parker Battle For Charity

 Venture Capitalists Ron Conway And Sean Parker Battle For Charity  Venture Capitalists Ron Conway And Sean Parker Battle For Charity  Venture Capitalists Ron Conway And Sean Parker Battle For Charity  Venture Capitalists Ron Conway And Sean Parker Battle For Charity  Venture Capitalists Ron Conway And Sean Parker Battle For Charity

 Venture Capitalists Ron Conway And Sean Parker Battle For Charity

Here’s a tip for all you iPhone app developers out there. If you want to make sure your app doesn’t join the long list of rejected iPhone apps out there, make sure it doesn’t advertise a competing product, especially if that product runs the Android operating system. Swavv Apps (creators of Beer Pong) learned that lesson recently when they tried to get their iDroid app past the App Store censors.

The iDroid didn’t do much. It didn’t replicate any Droid features or take over any functionality of the iPhone (that would have made it a worthwhile app). All it did was display the glowing red Droid eye. If you tapped on the eye, it then showed some marketing bullet points about the competing phone such as the fact that it can run simultaneous apps and has a slide-out keyboard (something the iPhone lacks). The second page also shows a picture of the Droid with its keyboard out.

Apple rejected the app because it was nothing more than an ad for a competitor. I kinda have to side with Apple on this one, although I think it would have been smarter for them to let the app through.

Sure, the iDroid was an ad for the Droid phone. But what’s the real message it would have sent? What it says is that the iPhone is a powerful marketing vehicle for anything mobile, perhaps even more powerful than Times Square billboards or Google’s homepage.

If you can get someone to download an app to their iPhone and show it to their friends that’s more likely to make a lasting impression than a glaring billboard. Now, why anyone would want to download the iDroid app other than to get the increasingly-familiar, if somewhat spooky, Droid eye on their iPhone as a lark is beyond me.

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 iDroid App Rejected By Apple.  Well, Duh.

Boondoggle, a Belgian interactive agency, has cooked up a deliciously useless product called TweetNotebook that basically lets you create a physical notebook that features a random set of your Twitter messages.

No joke.

Here’s how it works: you go to the website, enter any username (make sure the owner’s tweet aren’t protected) and let the app browse through the account owner’s 3200 latest tweets and automatically select some to populate the bottom sections of your notebook pages.

While you wait for the tweets to get selected, you can enter a custom message on the cover of your notebook (max. 140 characters, of course). Once the app is done selecting, you’ll get to preview your custom 320-page notebook, tweets included, before you order. You have three color choices: white and turquoise, black and turquoise or plain white.

The cost of the überpersonalized notebook is €12 (or $12), not including the shipping costs, which obviously differ from location to location.

I wish there was an option to select your tweets manually, or have them fetched from the Favstar.fm site, although that would create unwelcome copyright issues.

All in all, @TweetNotebook is a fun concept, which reminds me of Nick Douglas’ book Twitter Wit (which I enjoyed reading).

Now let’s see if they can get some traction on Twitter.

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 Create A Custom Notebook, Featuring Your Tweets. Seriously.
 Create A Custom Notebook, Featuring Your Tweets. Seriously.

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 Create A Custom Notebook, Featuring Your Tweets. Seriously.

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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 Sidebar Will Deliver Personalized Mobile Apps And Content To Your...
 Sidebar Will Deliver Personalized Mobile Apps And Content To Your...
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