With the end of the month approaching, deadlines for several grants and incubators are just around the corner. Not sure you can make the deadline to have a proposal ready for Wednesday? Well, here are a few new funding and incubator opportunities you should know about too: Sponsor Compute.org Compute.org , a Seattle-based non-profit, announced on Friday that it would be awarding major seed grants to a variety of Internet and software startups. Grants will be range from from $10,000 to $50,000 and according to founder Andre Conru, “Compute.org is far more interested in startups that are able to provide a social and environmental impact.” The foundation has a goal for raising $5 million in financial support by the end of the year and hopes to seed between 50-100 startups. New Hampshire Innovation Commercialization Center The New Hampshire Innovation Commercialization Center ( NH-ICC ) is a new startup accelerator in the state, launched in partnership by the University of New Hampshire and a team of state tech entrepreneurs. The nonprofit center will provide some startup capital as well as business and legal expertise and is focused on software, networking, Internet, telecommunications and related areas. The NH-ICC hopes to “attract entrepreneurs from throughout New England to build their startup business in New Hampshire,” says Mark Gavin, NH-ICC managing director. And your June 30 deadlines: Creative Commons Catalyst Grants Creative Commons is accepting applications for their Catalyst Grants through the end of the month. These grants are meant to seed activities that support the Creative Commons mission. Applications due June 30. Startupbootcamp Copenhagen-based Startupbootcamp , member of TechStars global affiliate program, is accepting applications for its three-month incubator program. Companies accepted into the program receive DKK 25,000, office space in the incubator, and access to a network of over 50 mentors. Applications due June 30. Mini Seedcamp London Mini Seedcamp London is a one day event in London – July 27. This will be the last opportunity to apply for Mini Seedcamp, prior to Seedcamp Week 2010 in this fall. Applications due June 30 The ReadWriteStart Calendar tracks both startup-oriented events as well as application deadlines (for competitions, grants, and incubators, for example). If you’d like to add something to the calendar, leave a comment here or email us . Discuss

Click here to read more

An interesting chart released from Morgan Stanley Research this morning shows that during the month of April – the month the iPad launched – netbook sales stalled. Did the iPad really have that much impact on an industry that was once the fastest-growing segment of the PC market? Or was the netbook’s fall from grace bound to happen at some point, with or without the Apple tablet’s help, as consumers discovered how hard it is to type on those tiny keyboards? Sponsor The netbook market saw incredible growth around this time last year. CNNMoney’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt , who uncovered the chart in a research report about HP’s acquisition of Palm, notes that netbook sales peaked last summer at “an astonishing 641% year-over-year growth rate .” But in January, coincidentally (or not?) the same month that Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the forthcoming tablet computer dubbed the iPad, netbook sales took a nose dive. But by nose dive, we mean they only saw 68% year-over-year growth during this time frame, the first month of the new year. That’s not actually all that bad, is it? It only looks bad in comparison to the incredible numbers netbooks saw last summer. But what’s more telling is that the numbers continued to trend downwards since then: 53% in February, 25% in March and a meager 5% in April. Did consumers rush out and buy iPads instead of netbooks? Or do they plan to at some point, a decision which is now affecting netbook sales? Considering that the pre-iPad month of December saw a still respectable 179% year-over-year growth for the netbook market, it’s hard not to draw comparisons between Apple’s news and the netbook market as a whole. Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty certainly does, claiming the tanking sales are “collateral damage,” says DeWitt , from Apple’s tablet announcement and launch. iPad Cannibalizing Other Markets In case you’re still not convinced that this correlation is also causation, Huberty digs up a Morgan Stanley/Alphawise survey from March focused on consumer buying intent. Here, she found that 44% of U.S. consumers planned to buy an iPad instead of a notebook or netbook computer. Apple’s Initial Supply Struggles Apple, too, was caught a little off-guard by the iPad’s initial success, which led to supply issues that delayed the international launch by a month. On May 3, the company released a statement which quoted Jobs as saying that iPad “demand continues to exceed supply…” Some have claimed that Apple is creating artificial demand for the product to generate interest, but analysts believe that Apple is just having difficulty scaling up production due to manufacturing complexity. However, Broadpoint AmTech analyst Brian Marshall says the learning curve the company is facing is “only temporary.” Even with production delays, Apple sold 1 million iPads in 28 days, touts a recent press release – “less than half of the 74 days it took to achieve this milestone with the iPhone,” it reads. Clearly, there is still a pent-up desire for low-cost, portable computing, but it seems the tide may be shifting from netbook-sized “totables” to touch-screens. Discuss

Click here to read more

Because of U.S. export restrictions, Internet users from Cuba, Iran and Sudan haven’t been able to download Google Earth since 2007. This situation is about to change, however. According to the Ogle Earth blog, which has been monitoring this situation closely since Google first blocked these downloads, Internet users in these countries will soon be able to download Google Earth again. The U.S. government lifted its export restrictions earlier this month and Internet companies can now offer their services in Iran, Cuba and Sudan again. Sponsor Sadly, it will still take a little bit before Google will actually make Google Earth available in these countries. In a statement to the Ogle Earth blog, a Google representative noted that the company has been working on these changes “since the day of the US pronouncement. There is much to do, actually, but we are very excited about it!” Earlier this month, after the U.S. treasury department announced the end of these export restrictions, Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin rightly noted, “as recent events in Iran have shown, personal Internet-based communications like e-mail, instant messaging, and social networking are powerful tools. This software will foster and support the free flow of information–a basic human right–for all Iranians.” Image Credit: Ogle Earth Discuss

Click here to read more

Location based social network Brightkite plans to launch a universal check-in API that will let users update their information on competing services like Gowalla, Foursquare and others later this month at South by Southwest, we believe. In a poll we ran last night about competing location networks, Mark Krynsky, founder of Lifestreamblog and CheckInBlog , left the following comment: “I’d like to see a a multi-checkin service make its appearance at SXSW that would allow me to check into all 3 mentioned in the poll (more if possible) at once. Think Ping.fm for checkin services.” Brightkite co-founder Martin May replied : “working on exactly that.” Sponsor Brightkite executives declined to share any further details before they unveil whatever it is that they are working on, but there are additional reasons to believe that we’ll see a cross-system check-in tool from the company later this month. Brightkite API email list members were warned last month that major changes to the company’s development platform were coming at a time that roughly corresponds with SXSW. TechCrunch coverage of the company’s surprisingly high user numbers and local advertising deals from a week ago also includes brief mention of something coming around SXSW time. A universal check-in system is the next logical step for location based social networks. It’s just no fun to use one service but give up the ability to see where your friends on other networks are. Siloed social networks end up competing not on the quality of their services, but on the number of your friends they have locked-in to their network in particular. Setting users free through a universal, interoperable check-in would be a bold move. It will be interesting to see how Brightkite tries to do it and how its competitors respond. (We’ve got inquiries in asking a few of them.) Hopefully a universal check-in system will be good for all players in the field. That was the vision of Yahoo’s FireEagle , which you don’t hear a lot about these days. Brightkite says it has 2 million active monthly users and it was the clear winner in last night’s ReadWriteWeb poll asking which location service people would use at SXSW. But it gets far less media hype these days than Foursquare and Gowalla and admittedly approximate web traffic services don’t show Brightkite in the lead at all. Either way, offering up a way to read from and write across multiple location based social networks would be absolutely fabulous. Our fingers are crossed that this is what we’ll see from Brightkite in a few weeks and that it will be good. Update: Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley says this is news to him and a reader in comments points out that Gowalla’s API is read-only , making a universal check-in impossible. Gowalla has said it is working on a write capable version of its API, though. Time will tell what’s going on! If not Brightkite, then somebody needs to build a universal check-in system ASAP. Google Buzz may be a good place to look for this as well, see How Google Buzz is Disruptive: Open Data Standards . Our fingers remain crossed. Discuss

Click here to read more

Apps on the iPhone, there are so very many of them – how’s a person to find the best ones? We look at a whole lot of them here at ReadWriteWeb and we’d like to share with you some of our favorites we’ve discovered in the month of February. Some of us on the team are proud Android users but most of us are still using iPhones. I just discovered how incredibly effective the Genius recommendations on the phone can be, so I’ve been going nuts downloading new apps. Here are the ones our staff is most excited about this month. A semantic personal assistant, health and fitness apps, some great news apps, location based social networking apps and more are included this month. Sponsor Excited about iPhone apps? Don’t forget to download the ReadWriteWeb iPhone app . It’s a great way to read all our articles while on the go. Here are the ten apps we discovered this month and are most excited about. Siri – A semantic smart virtual personal assistant, chosen by Frederic Lardinois. “Siri is one of the most ambitious mobile services we have seen in the last few years. Imagine if you could just talk to you phone and tell it to call you a taxi, reserve a table at your favorite restaurant or tell you what the weather in New York City will be like tomorrow,” we wrote in our review . OboPay – A mobile payment app, chosen by Dana Oshiro. Lots of big companies are putting millions of dollars behind this startup that they believe could be the future of money transfers on the go. Google Voice Mobile Web App – An HTML5 mobile web app for Google Voice, chosen by Richard MacManus. When this app launched at the end of January, we ran a poll asking readers if it was good enough to use as a phone. 65% said it was. A month later, Richard still feels that way. iFitness – A mobile fitness app, picked by Richard, who wrote 2 weeks ago : “Described as ‘a personal trainer for your iPhone,’ the app lists over 260 exercises. It has text and photographic instructions for all of those exercises, with video for 100 of them… iFitness features exercise logging and graphing. In addition it has 12 routines for various goals; including weight loss, strength, golf program, and more. The app also allows you to create your own custom workout.” Data Logger from Pachube – An “Internet of Things” feed tracker, chosen by Richard. Pachube is an open source platform enabling developers to connect sensor data to the Web. We covered it in depth this Fall . iWriteWords – A much celebrated app to help kids learn to write, chosen by RWW’s Production Editor Abraham Hyatt. Gowalla – A design-centric location based social network, chosen by me, Marshall Kirkpatrick. I wrote about Gowalla in depth yesterday . I love it, I just with there were more people in Portland that were using it. Etsy Adict – An awesome 3rd party iPhone app for browsing Etsy listings. I love this app! I regularly spend hours strolling through listings for ceramic and fiber arts items. If you’re not familiar with the wildly popular site Etsy, check out this coverage of the company . The app is built on top of a Mashery -powered API and (disclosure) Mashery is a sponsor of ReadWriteWeb. SitbyUs – A mobile web app I reviewed last week and am really excited to use. It’s a seat-level check-in system for SXSW. It will tell you in which rooms and what sections your Twitter friends are sitting, so you can find them after a panel, etc. Guardian iPhone App – This daily news app is the best I’ve ever seen. It’s fantastic. It’s like $5 but it’s worth it, if only to see how they made it. But it’s lots of fun to use too. If you like this kind of thing, see also the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) app. Those are our favorite new iPhone apps, what are yours? Stay tuned for next month’s selections. Discuss

Click here to read more