Photo Tagger, which launched to a limited group of users in July, scans a user’s photo albums on the social-networking site, then lets him tag faces it identifies. It groups multiple shots of each person, making it easy to tag large albums, and users can also adjust or remove incorrectly tagged pictures.

Once a member has been identified, the app prompts him or her to approve the tag — a crucial privacy step, since he or she may not want to be labeled in a photo. It also works with a member’s current photo-privacy settings on Facebook.

For users with lots of friends and photos, Photo Tagger helps them spread the word and ensure that their contacts see relevant shots on their news feeds, said Gil Hirsch, Face.com’s chief executive.

“If you don’t tag an album, people don’t know about it,” he said. “What we’re doing is basically supporting the existing mechanism and augmenting it.”

The Tel Aviv-based company’s facial-recognition technology specializes in pictures in which the subject isn’t looking at the camera, as well as low-resolution or out-of-focus images, “what we refer to as everyday photos,” Mr. Hirsch said. “All these different things that make photos real.”

Photo Tagger is free, though he said Face.com is considering fee-based services that it could provide over the system. He declined to say what they might be.

Face.com is also introducing a new Photo Tagger feature, dubbed Face Alerts, along with the launch. It allows members to be notified through Facebook or email when new public photos are uploaded of them or their friends. “It’s a Google Alerts for faces,” Mr. Hirsch said, and a way for members to gain more control over where their image appears.

The app has taken off even in its alpha phase — he said more than 35,000 people have tried it. TechCrunch called it a “time vampire” because of its addictive nature, though VentureBeat noted that it might even work too well, and that it could lead to more people tweaking their privacy settings to avoid the limelight.

Mr. Hirsch said the company is sensitive to privacy concerns. “While for some folks face-recognition technology feels a little creepy, we’ve had no complaints or direct issues with the applications,” he added. “In fact, we’ve had quite a few privacy-aware users who tried out our apps, and their feedback was very positive, and with the new Face Alerts feature felt it actually helps them gain control of their online image.”

Apple Emerges as Game Rival for Nintendo: Nintendo’s brass argue that the DS hand-held device doesn’t compete with the iPhone, but Apple has made clear that it intends to go after Nintendo’s turf.

EU Stance in Oracle Deal May Reopen Rift: The EU’s objection to the Oracle-Sun deal opens up new legal questions and strains the bloc’s regulatory relationship with the U.S.

Mobile Venture Lifts Hope in West Bank: The Palestinian territories’s second cellphone carrier, Wataniya Mobile, launched Tuesday, injecting competition into the wireless market and delivering a significant vote of confidence by foreign investors.

A Svelte BlackBerry Bold:  The Mossberg Solution compares the new BlackBerry Bold with the Curve and the Touch.

A new research report says Windows 7 on Saturday surpassed 4% of all devices visiting Web sites that day, a little over two weeks after the commercial launch of the product. It took Windows Vista, in contrast, about seven months to pass 4% after it was introduced to businesses in November 2006, according to the report from Net Applications, a firm that tracks online usage.

The report doesn’t measure traditional sales market share for computers, counting instead the types of operating systems and other software used by people visiting a network of more than 40,000 Web sites around the globe.

The figures also don’t reveal whether a Web-site visitor actually paid for a copy of Windows 7, an important consideration when bootlegged copies of Windows are selling for around $3 in markets in China. Still, coupled with early strong sales figures for Windows 7 in U.S. stores, the news is a good sign for Microsoft.

The Windows 7 figures are also a stark reminder of how it remains a Windows world, despite Apple’s stunning success in recent years. While Apple’s Macintosh may occupy an outsized share of buzz in the tech industry — and even a majority of computers in, say, cafés in San Francisco — the Mac still accounted for only 5.19% of Web usage during the week of Nov. 1, according to Net Applications.

While all versions of Windows accounted for 92.43% of Web usage, Windows 7 by itself has come within striking distance of the Mac’s share in just over a fortnight since it went on sale.

According to the Fenwick & West survey, which covers the third quarter, 41% of new venture financings in that period were for up rounds, which means a company was given a higher valuation when it received venture money. That compares to 36% down rounds and 23% flat rounds. It was the first quarter this year where up rounds exceeded down rounds, said the survey.

Indeed, there were 46% down rounds in the second quarter versus 32% up rounds, while there were 46% down rounds in the first quarter compared with just 25% up rounds, according to Fenwick & West attorney Barry Kramer.

The up rounds weren’t evenly spread across venture-capital sectors, however. Many of the up rounds happened in the digital media and Web 2.0 sectors, where approximately 70% of the financings were up rounds in the third quarter, according to the survey.

Kramer posits that the increase in up rounds was driven by factors such as the surging Nasdaq stock market, which rose in the third quarter. “There’s also the feeling that the world just didn’t fall off a cliff,” Kramer added.

The trend of up rounds may be temporary. “It’s hard to generalize much from one quarter,” acknowledged Kramer. Still, “valuations seem to moving in the right direction.”

The network has picked up a comedy developed by Justin Halpern, the creator of the breakout Twitter account S—mydadsays, and his writing partner Patrick Schumacker.

S—mydadsays is an ongoing feed of Mr. Halpern’s father’s remarks, in all their brief, funny, often unprintable glory (for an example of all three, check out today’s).

The account has more than 700,000 followers (it follows only one Twitterer, LeVar Burton) and sparked interest from book publishers and producers after it gained notoriety.

Messrs. Halpern and Schumacker discussed a TV-show idea with Warner Brothers, who suggested they meet with Max Mutchnick and David Kohan, the creators of “Will & Grace,” Mr. Halpern said. They hit it off and made a successful pitch to CBS.

“If I wasn’t me, I would kind of hate me,” he said. “A lot of people are busting their ass, and a lot of people are really talented. And I just got lucky.”

While it’s too soon to say exactly what the show will be like, its setup is similar to how Mr. Halpern’s Twitter account started, as a mid- to late-20s man moves back in with his father, he said. “The tweets will kind of frame the show.”

It won’t go by the same name, but Mr. Halpern said he hopes to preserve the essence of his dad’s tweets (another recent one: “You look just like Stephen Hawking…Relax, I meant like a non-paralyzed version of him. Feel better?… Fine. Forget I said it”). “Obviously, I don’t think I can be dropping f-bombs, but I want to keep the same sort of aggressive nature of that character, my father, in the show, and I want it to be true to what people liked in the first place,” he said.

His father, who in the past declined to read the s—mydadsays tweets, is amused by the TV deal, Mr. Halpern said.

“He think it’s funny — sort of,” he said. His initial response was “Somebody gave you a f—ing TV deal? Who would do that?” Mr. Halpern added.

By the way, they’re still living together, though the posts have slowed down because of Mr. Halpern’s frequent trips to Los Angeles. “I have not moved,” he said. “I know that makes me sound like a big loser, but I’m still there.”

Each has a relatively new service it’s hoping to attract consumers to, whether it’s Google’s Chrome browser, Microsoft’s Bing search engine or Yahoo’s revamped home page and customization features.

Google is working with Wi-Fi providers Boingo Wireless and Advanced Wireless Group to provide connectivity at 47 airports, including Boston, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami and Seattle from today until Jan. 15 (sorry New Yorkers, JFK, LGA and EWR are not on the list).

“We know that this is a very hectic travel season for people, and we hope that free Wi-Fi will make both traveling and connecting with friends and family a little bit easier,” Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search, said in a statement.

Travelers will be prompted to try Web browsing on Chrome and to set Google.com as their home page after they connect to the network, though they will have Internet access even if they don’t opt in, a Google spokesman said.

Microsoft is also attempting to drum up some traffic on its Bing service with its promotion. It and mobile-advertising firm JiWire are offering free Wi-Fi at airports and hotels in exchange for a search through Bing.

“People are creatures of habit and one of the goals of this campaign is to open people up to new ways of finding what they are looking for on the Internet,” Jeff Bernstein, senior VP at UM, the agency that worked with Microsoft on the campaign, said in a statement.

Yahoo is taking a different approach, introducing free Wi-Fi to New York’s Times Square. It has created a landing page that features links to Yahoo Local restaurant listings, New York-centric Yahoo News headlines and Times Square-tagged Flickr photos. The promotion starts today and lasts a year.

The company Tuesday announced the Intel Reader, a device about the size of a paperback book that is designed to digitize printed text and read it aloud to users. Intel is not targeting book lovers who want to lighten their briefcases and backpacks; its audience, the company says, is people with poor eyesight, dyslexia or other conditions that make reading difficult or impossible.

Intel, of course, is known for chips that other companies put into computers and other products. One place the company deviates from that strategy is its digital health group, which has been developing hardware and software to help medical professionals and their patients.

In this case, Intel says the idea for the product came from Ben Foss, a company researcher who is dyslexic and has had to rely on people to read books and other printed material to him.

Not surprisingly, the Reader uses an Intel chip, the tiny Atom that is used in most netbook computers. But the most important features are a high-resolution digital camera that users point at pages they want to capture, and software that converts the captured text into an audio file. They can boost the type size on the display screen, choose between a male or female automated voice and how fast they want that voice to read.

Foss, in a demonstration video, notes that he and other power users like to accelerate the playback speed to absorb more information quickly. The audio files can be converted to the MP3 format and transferred to computers and other devices. Intel plans also to offer a peripheral device called the Portable Capture Station, which looks a bit like a slimmed-down overhead projector and is designed to make it easier to shoot images of many pages quickly.

Of course, the idea of using computer technology to help visually impaired people is not new. Character recognition technology has existed for some time, as has technology that converts text into speech. The key is how accurately text can be captured and interpreted; Claudine Mangano, an Intel spokeswoman, notes that users have to learn how to take a good image, which is affected by lighting and other factors.

Another issue is speed. Intel says it takes about 30 seconds to process each page of text, though the time can vary based on images and the complexity of the layout. It took Foss about 30 minutes to scan in the pages of a 250-page book and then one hour to process them, she said.

Intel said the Reader has a list price of $1,499, and is available immediately in the U.S. and Canada through resellers that include CTL, Don Johnston Incorporated, GTSI, Howard Technology Solutions and HumanWare. Sales partners in the United Kingdom are expected to be announced shortly; other countries and languages also are being considered, Ms. Mangano said.

From China Real Time Report:

The China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center has released the latest list of “vulgar content” offenders (in Chinese). This time, Google escaped mention — but Yahoo China and a popular real-estate portal, Soufun, did not.

The list referred to user-generated content on a section of Yahoo China’s Web site called “Yahoo Space,” which is not currently in operation. But a subsequent notice released today by the center said remnants of the “vulgar” content from Yahoo Space could still be found in other parts of Yahoo’s portal.

The Web sites “didn’t continue to follow the government’s call to effectively crack down on vulgar content and information on the Internet, and relaxed supervision of their Web sites, which ultimately led to the appearance of a lot of vulgar content, which is against social morals and does harm to the physical and mental health of the youth,” the center said in a notice. “Such behavior…has led to the anger of our public and should be strongly condemned.”

The public condemning of these sites follows a similar notice earlier this year that implicated Google for allowing pornographic content, which is illegal in China, to show up in its search results. The company was ordered to temporarily disable some of its services as a result.

An Alibaba spokesman said the company operates according to the laws and regulations of each country it operates in.

Yahoo gave Alibaba control of China Yahoo, also known as Yahoo China, as part of a 2005 deal in which Yahoo paid $1 billion for a 39% stake in Alibaba Group, making it the Chinese company’s biggest single shareholder. But under Alibaba’s watch, Yahoo’s share of China’s search market revenue shrunk to just 6% in the second quarter, compared with 21% four years ago.

Though the stake in Alibaba has been financially lucrative for Yahoo, its brand has suffered. In August, Alibaba restructured Yahoo China by stripping out a portion of its business to add it to sister company Taobao.com, and reducing its Yahoo China staff in Beijing.

FoxPop, a technology that makes its debut next month, works like a specialized Twitter feed, offering up a string of trivia, photos and shopping suggestions during selected movies.

Users can run the application on their computers or their iPhones or iPod touches. It syncs with the movie, displaying material that is supposed to be relevant to what is happening on-screen at that moment.

FoxPop is to make its debut Dec. 1 with the home-video release of “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian,” this year’s sequel to the 2006 Ben Stiller comedy. Fox hired a marketing company to write a string of informational tidbits and quizzes about the movie’s stars, props and setting, which is filled with artworks and artifacts from the museum’s archives.

Mary Daily, Fox’s head of home-entertainment marketing, said in a statement that the studio expects consumers to use FoxPop primarily during “repeat viewings.” Twentieth Century Fox is owned by News Corp., which also publishes The Wall Street Journal.

“We know from extensive research that audiences want to have a more interactive viewing experience at home,” Ms. Daily wrote. “On specific titles, we see this as a way of getting the entire family engaged, sort of a modern-day board game.”

Next up is “500 Days of Summer,” the romantic comedy that hits shelves Dec. 22. The FoxPop feed is to offer users links to Apple’s iTunes Store, studio executives said, to buy songs from the movie’s eclectic soundtrack.

FoxPop content for the third compatible film, “Jennifer’s Body,” is likely to focus heavily on images of star Megan Fox, a frequent favorite of men’s magazines like FHM and Maxim.

The FoxPop application was developed by Spot411, a technology company based in Orange County, Calif. Fox has exclusive rights until spring 2010 to use the technology underlying FoxPop. After that Spot411 will try persuade other studios to sign on for their own versions of the application, said Chief Executive Ajay Shah.

EU Objects to Sun-Oracle Deal: The EU issued a statement of objections Monday on Oracle’s proposed $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems, due to concerns the merger would hurt competition in the database market.

EA to Cut 17% of Staff and Buy Playfish:  Videogame publisher Electronic Arts said it plans to cut 17% of its work force while acquiring a U.K. online-videogame concern to build up its digital business.

Google, Verizon Deepen Ties: Verizon Wireless and Google are counting on an unlikely but growing friendship between their CEOs as they look to challenge AT&T and Apple’s iPhone.

Google to Purchase AdMob: Google agreed to buy start-up AdMob, which provides display ads for cellphones, for $750 million in stock.