Five Airbnb Rentals in Dangerous Neighborhoods

[ Photo by Shawn Carpenter via creative commons license. ]

When Antionette "Annie" Wonsey began renting out rooms via Airbnb, police officers patrolling her Chicago neighborhood of Englewood reportedly stopped her white guests because they were in a dangerous area [ full coverage of Annie's story starts here ].

Clearly, deal-seekers should research neighborhood safety as they narrow down their choices on Airbnb. LAUNCH found five Airbnb rentals in popular tourist destinations you might want to investigate further before hitting the "book it" button. It's worth noting that their hosts haven't marketed their residences well: poorly staged photos, not enough photos and...

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Chill Adds New Avatars and Option to Fan VJs

Launched just two weeks ago by the founders of Namesake, Turntable-for-video startup Chill has just added new avatars and the ability to fan a VJ.

Right now, you need at least 50 points to choose a monster avatar [ see above ] and 300 for a mask avatar.

When you fan a VJ, that person gets a notification, and...

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Digg's Runway Definitely Longer Than Five Months as CEO Readies New Product

Social media commentator Muhammad Saleem wrote in SocialBeat earlier this month that content-discovery site Digg had only five months of runway -- a statement he corrected in the article's comments and confirmed to LAUNCH.

"I had referenced this Techcrunch story in my post, however as a commenter pointed out, they raised more money, giving them a longer runway," Muhammad explained.

"In my response in the comments, I pointed out that he was correct, and I added that we must still take into account that Digg also has $1.5 million in outstanding debt."

Digg CEO Matt Williams, who joined the company about a year ago, told LAUNCH by email, "The numbers in the VentureBeat Guest Post are ...

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United Airlines to Deploy 11K iPads – and First to Replace Paper Maps

[ Jeppesen's Mobile FlightDeck iPad app -- as shown in the App Store. ]

United Continental is the first major airline to replace the 38 pounds of paper maps, data and charts pilots carry with iPads that include the FliteDeck iPad app.

Pilots will only be able to use the iPads when they are above 10K feet (just like passengers).

United plans to deploy 11K iPads, which it began distributing earlier this month, and expects all its pilots to have them by the end of the year. The airline says the change will save 16M sheets of paper and 326K gallons of jet fuel a year.

Produced by Jeppesen, a Boeing company, the FliteDeck app features data-driven and interactive digital enroute navigation information -- things that help pilots better understand where they are. It builds on Jeppesen's Mobile TC for iPad app, released in mid-2010, which aviation reviews said was good for viewing maps but...

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Updates to Google+ for Android: Reshare Posts, Bugs Fixed

An update for the Google+ for Android app now lets users reshare posts -- the most requested feature for mobile, Google says -- receive more reliable notifications and access the app in 38 languages.

The reshare option is currently available only on Android devices, but will soon make its way to iOS and mobile web applications, Mobile Product Manager Ben Eidelson says in this video.

The update also fixes several bugs. Huddles now reappear after users send messages, and there are no longer duplicates when...

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