SimpleGeo to Offer Flat-rate Plans for Developers

SimpleGeo, which provides a platform for developers to create location-aware applications, will move to flat-rate plans later this month and just made its free set of data from 63 countries downloadable.

SimpleGeo plans will be priced at $9, $49 and $79 per month. Total API calls, records stored and API rate limits will vary depending on the tier; the company has not yet released details. All plans will offer a 60-day free trial. Those who provide payment information at sign-up will get an additional 30 days free.

SimpleGeo made the pricing change because many users expressed nervousness about the unexpected nature of call-based pricing.

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Facebook Wins Last Week's Social Media Wars--Google+ in 2nd and Twitter Distant 3rd

When Google launched its social network Plus in late June, the social networking space was invigorated with much needed competition.

Sure, there was Twitter and Facebook, but comparing a site that took five years to have embeddable images and still doesn’t have threaded comments to Facebook is like comparing your local YMCA pickup team to the world-champion Dallas Mavericks.

Google Plus is a worth competitor to Facebook already, and Twitter is clearly aware that its chances are slipping away.

It seemed like a lock that Twitter would be Yahoo to Facebook’s Google position -- but now Twitter looks like it might wind up being Lycos or Infoseek. We guess that’s why they fired the product team.

Every week (or two) we’re going to handicap who won the last week in social media with a back-of-the-envelope (BOE) rating system.

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Apple Forces Amazon Appstore to Close Its Doors on Android Developers in Germany

Developers in Germany can no longer submit or register new Android applications in the Amazon Appstore because Apple has taken legal action in Germany to prevent Amazon from using the term “Appstore.”

Amazon confirmed the ban on new submissions that German developer Dirk Jackel reported on Twitter and Hacker News.

“We believe Apple’s claim is without merit and are actively contesting it,” Howard B. from the Amazon Appstore Account Team wrote in an email to LAUNCH. “We hope to begin accepting registrations and apps from German developers again soon.”

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Nodejitsu Takes on Heroku and Joyent as Node.js Goes Mainstream

WHAT: Cloud hosting for Node.js applications and websites, individuals to enterprises. Because Nodejitsu's platform is open-source, customers can use any cloud computing provider or their own hardware. Also, Nodejitsu focuses on the "user-land" part of Node.js, meaning everything outside the language's core functionality.

Coming soon: marketplace for Node.js apps so people can customize their Node.js sites.

LAUNCHERS:  Charlie Robbins (CEO), Marak Squires (chief evangelist), Paolo Fragomeni (CTO). All are developers.

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Bitomat Loses Data and MyBitCoin Shuts down -- New Bitcoin Crisis?

Poland-based bitcoin escrow service Bitomat has lost all wallet data -- meaning people's bitcoins -- due to a system failure July 26 and is now up for sale for 17K bitcoins, Bitomat founder Bartek Shabbat revealed on Sunday. In addition, bitcoin wallet site mybitcoin.com became inaccessible July 29 and appears to have disappeared, taking user's bitcoins with it.

There are no estimates as to how many bitcoins, an open-source, virtual currency that has no central authority, may have been lost on each site (more background on bitcoin in this LAUNCH article).

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