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The official Foursquare account just sent out a tweet letting everyone know that today is already the service’s biggest day ever. This is interesting since it’s actually the day before the SXSW conference kicks off in Austin, Texas. According to the tweet, Foursquare broke 275,000 check-ins (the previous record, set last Friday) for the day “hours ago.” This means they’re very likely well past 300,000 now and perhaps even higher. To put that in some perspective, just a month ago , Foursquare set a record with 1.2 million check-ins for the entire week. And that was double was it was the month prior. At today’s rate, Foursquare would be doing well over 2 million check-ins a week. Today happens to be the first birthday of Foursquare, so they shared some numbers earlier . The service now has over 500,000 users, they’ve given out over 1 million badges, there are over 1.4 million venues in the system, with over 1,200 specials available. And in total, there have been some 15.5 million check-ins. But that was before today’s record numbers. While there are well over a dozen location-based services launching something at SXSW, the main two competitors vying for users’ time are expected to be Foursquare and Austin-native Gowalla . For its part, Gowalla noted that it was “ Amazing to watch the Gowalla action on the eve of SXSW. AMAAAAAAZING! ,” earlier today. Both recently revamped their websites, and both yesterday launched their new iPhone apps. And judging from the Vicarious.ly data provided by SimpleGeo , both are absolutely on fire right now and could go nuclear this weekend. Update : Gowalla has a range of just about every possible venue you can imagine for SXSW and so far (again, the day before the conference), they’ve seen 352 check-ins at the SXSW Badge Pick-Up alone. CrunchBase Information Foursquare Gowalla Information provided by CrunchBase

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There are no shortage of location-based services launching this week at SXSW in Austin, Texas. Many of them allow you to “check-in” places to let others know you are there. So how do you differentiate between then and decide which to use? Well, here’s one good way. CauseWorld , is a free iPhone and Android app that lets you check-in places, but it has an added real-world bonus: big brands give money to charity when you do so . And this week at SXSW, CauseWorld is teaming up with TechCrunch to offer double point (which they aptly call “karma”) when you check in to one of over 50 venues around Austin (I’ll paste the full list at the bottom of the post), including the Austin Convention Center (where SXSW is held). We’ve covered CauseWorld, which is the first offering from the soon-to-launch ShopKick , a few times now. It’s a great product because it takes an area that is red hot right now, location-based check-ins, and converts it into good deeds in the real world. For example, if you check-in at a store, you may earn 20 karma points. As you continue to accumulate these, you can turn them into real dollar donations for causes such as water in Sudan or trees in the Amazon. Brands such as Kraft Foods and Citi are currently giving the donations based on what users choose to trade their karma points for. The best part is, you don’t even have to buy anything — you simply check-in at various venues and earn the points. And again, this week at SXSW, checking-in with the app at a bunch of venues will earn you double karma points. And like any good service with a gaming element, there’s a leaderboard to show who has donated the most karma points. And yes, checking-in can earn you badges, such as the TechCrunch one show in this post. So if you’re going to be in Austin for SXSW this week. Or really, if you just want to do some good with your mobile device, check out CauseWorld. Find it in the App Store here , or in the Android Market (on your Android device). Below find the 54 participating double karma Austin check-in spots: Aces Lounge Alamo Drafthouse Amsterdam Café Austin Convention Center Austin Music Hall B D Riley’s Irish Pub Barbarella Beso Cantina Bob Bullock Theater Buffalo Billiard Café Mozart Carver Museum and Cultural Center Cedar Door Chupacabra Cantina Chuy’s Clay Pit Club Deville Cuba Libre Dirty Dog Bar Elysium Emo’s Emo’s Annex Flamingo Cantina Hyde Park Bar & Grill Iron Cactus Karma Lounge Kenichi Kerbey Lane La Zona Rosa Lambert’s Downtown Lustre Pearl, Lustre Pearl Bar Malaga, Malaga Tapas & Bar Malverde Mellow Johnny’s Molotov Lounge Moonshine Bar and Grill Opal Divines Palm Door Red 7 Red Eye Fly Rudy’s Country Store and BBQ Rusty Spurs Salt Lick BBQ Spider House Café Stubb’s BBQ Stubbs The Belmont The Best Wurst I The Highball The Scoot Inn Uncorked Tasting Room Velveeta Room Victory Grill Vortex Repertory

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Lucid Imagination , the startup that commercially distributes the open source Apache Lucene and Apache Solr search technology, has raised $10 million in Series B funding from Shasta Ventures with Granite Ventures and Walden International participating in the round. This brings the company’s total funding to $16 million. Lucid powers enterprise search technologies using the open source Lucene/Solr search. Customers include Zappos, Nike and Netflix. The new funding will be used to accelerate the adoption of Lucene/Solr search technology. Launched in 2009, Lucid is seeing revenue in the “millions,” and counts Google’s enterprise search product as a direct competitor. CrunchBase Information Lucid Imagination Information provided by CrunchBase

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Sure, Opera Mini may ( or may not ) already be the most popular mobile browser in the world — but why stop there? Following up on the Android release of Opera Mobile 4 just over a year ago , Opera has just launched Opera Mini 5 for Android into public beta. The jump from version 4 to version 5 is pretty huge, introducing a handful of features that Opera says “makes your mobile browsing experience as close as it can be to your desktop experience.” Read the rest at MobileCrunch > >

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Yahoo is backing a cycling team . I don’t know why — but they’re doing it. And today their passion got a little boost: from Google. Google is announcing tomorrow at the National Bike Summit in Washington, DC that Google Maps will now include biking directions in the U.S. Apparently, this was the most-requested feature for the service, as some 57 million Americans ride bikes. Thousands of miles of bike trails have been added to the maps. And there is also step-by-step directions, much like you can see for driving or public transportation directions in the maps. There is also a new layer that shows bike trails and bike-friendly areas on roads. Yes, it’s a bike-lover’s dream. To make this new feature happen, Google partnered with Rails-to-Trails Conservancy , a nonprofit group that converts old rail lines into bike trails. The group have given Google information on some 12,000 miles worth of trails in the U.S. To coincide with the launch, Google also has a cycling contest . To enter, you simply have to tweet with the hashtag #bikewithgoogle. The randomly selected winner will get a voucher for $2,500 to be used at American Cyclery. I fully expect that hashtag to be dominated by members of Yahoo’s cycling team tomorrow. Find out more about the new feature in the video below. CrunchBase Information Google Maps Yahoo! Information provided by CrunchBase

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Jon [Miller] came to us and said, `Would you like to be co-presidents?’ We said, `Hell yeah.’ We didn’t have to move our desks,” – Former MySpace Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn’s reaction to the abrupt firing of his boss and his promotion to co-president of MySpace. CrunchBase Information Jason Hirschhorn MySpace Information provided by CrunchBase

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We’ve written about Twitter client Sobees, which is working to create the best social media client on the market, competing with both TweetDeck and Seesmic. Today Sobees is releasing a new version of its Windows native desktop app built in .NET, complete with realtime search, a redesign and more. The new client includes support for Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, FriendFeed and LinkedIn (which was added late last year). The most significant addition is the availability of realtime search on the client, with the ability to search Twitter, Friendfeed, OneRiot and FacteryLabs from within the application. Sobees integrated elements of its newly launched realtime web dashboard to power search in the client. Sobees has also added drag and drop technology for columns in order to change the place of a column within the client. Other technical updated include the ability to preview Tweets and maps, translate messages, and see pictures posted on TwitPic from within the Tweet. And Sobees will break out threaded conversations you have with friends. Sobees is competing in a crowded space where each client continues to innovate and offer users more options for managing their social media accounts and the reealtime web. For example, Seesmic has incorporated Ping.fm, to allows users to update more than 50 different social networks at the same time. And TweetDeck now incorporates YouTube and Flickr within its client. For now, Sobees doesn’t have any mobile clients but we are told that iPhone and Android apps are coming soon. CrunchBase Information sobees Information provided by CrunchBase

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Online vacation rental giant HomeAway this morning announced that it is expanding its global footprint and moving into South America with the acquisition of the publisher of AlugueTemporada.com.br , Brazil’s leading vacation rental site. The terms of the deal remain undisclosed. With its acquisition of what HomeAway claims is the largest vacation rental website in South America with over 12,000 property listings, the company is for the first time extending its virtual borders beyond North America and Europe and increasing its total vacation rental listings to a respectable 475,000 properties. AlugueTemporada.com.br will continue to operate as an independent brand from its office in Rio de Janeiro, the city that will – conveniently – be hosting both the 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics. Seems like HomeAway is on a bit of a buying spree more than two years after it raised a whopping $250 million in a single financing round – just last week it announced that it had purchased BedAndBreakfast.com for an equally undisclosed sum. HomeAway also operates HomeAway.com, VRBO.com, BedAndBreakfast.com and VacationRentals.com in the US and multiple vacation rental sites in France, the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Expect more small acquisitions from HomeAway in the months to come. CrunchBase Information HomeAway Information provided by CrunchBase

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Our full review of the Motorola Backflip should be up in a few days, but a few words of wisdom in the mean time: Don’t buy it. Between its crazy form-factor and the hidden trackpad tucked on the back of the display, everything we took as merits at face value have devolved into novelties. Worst of all, it seems AT&T has taken a page from their time with the iPhone that no one wanted them to take. Like the iPhone — but unlike any other Android handset we’ve seen — the Motorola Backflip can’t install applications from any sources beyond the official, on-handset application store. Read the rest at MobileCrunch > >

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As gaming on social network grows by leaps and bounds, there’s been a proliferation of startups that are helping game developers monetize by offering virtual currency deals in conjunction with advertisers. Offerpal , gWallet, Cherry Deals and others all partner with both developers and advertisers to offer virtual currency deals within games. Today, Boomerang Networks is entering the arena with its newly launched offer platform, Offerwall, which offers users the ability to rate and review virtual currency offers. As more users participate in clocking and buying into the deals, good offers float to the top and bad offers are kicked off the system. Users can rate each advertising offer, giving it a thumbs up or thumbs down. Based on their experience, users can also write reviews and comments, which are then visible to the game’s entire community of users. Offerwall’s algorithm that sets the order in which advertising offers are displayed, allowing popular offers to rise to the top and unpopular or poorly related offers to be eliminated all together. If the user gives a thumbs down to an advertising offer, that particular offer, as well as similar offers, are never presented to that user again. Similar to gWallet, Offerpal and others, Offerwall promises to avoid distributing spammy offers by employing a direct sales team that works with advertisers directly. Offerwall is also targeting international markets for its in-game offers and can be translated into all major languages including German, French, Italian, Spanish, Mandarin, Hindi, Vietnamese, Tagalog, and Russian. Boomerang has also built partnerships with international payments providers, tailoring payment options to the region where the deals are being offered. At launch Offerwall is being used by 50 game applications, including BarnBuddy from TheBroth and MouseHunt by HitGrab. As more players enter the virtual currency space, startups are developing innovative ways to make their offers more attractive. Offerpal recently launched Offerpal Tasks, gWallet just launched a new placement format for offers and Cherry Deals offers Groupon-like local deals to earn virtual currency. Offerwal’s international strategy and user-reviewed and rated format could help separate the startup from its rivals. CrunchBase Information Offerwall Information provided by CrunchBase

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