Editor’s Note: If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion in “The Startup Review” series, please see the details here.

STARTUP DETAILS:

Company Name: TenantWIZ

20-word Description: TenantWIZ enables vacation homeowners to streamline the management of their property online using TenantWIZ Vacation Rental Software.

CEO’s 100-word Pitch: TenantWIZ enables vacation homeowners, property managers, agents and rental businesses the ability to easily and securely build a real-time property rental site using its TenantWIZ Vacation Rental Software. The software provides users with an exstensive suite of Web-based tools for managing properties online anytime from anywhere. The application encompasses all aspects of vacation proptery rental and management including instant pricing & availability data, renter and owner account access, digital contracts with electronic signatures, online payments and unlocking the property remotely.

Mashable’s Take: Taking good care of your home and keeping up with all the bills can be daunting at times, especially when you own more than one or you are constantly on the move. What TenantWIZ provides is a medium through which you can access all the information about your properties from anywhere in the world. As long as you have an internet connection, you can connect to the web and instantly manage your vacation homes, rental rates, and more.

TenantWIZ covers every nook and cranny when it comes to the small details that are involved in homeowning. The site lets you add amenities and activities, generate and view multiple reports, and upload images.

I must admit I am not a homeowner myself, but I have been exposed to the details of managing a house or multiple houses and I must say that TenantWIZ definitely offers an extensive list of features that could be useful for people who cannot be present and on location. The site makes the difficulties of owning vacation homes look like a walk in the park. From the comfort of any computer, users can book properties, manage their accounts, digitally sign rental contracts and print online invoices.

The TenantWIZ Vacation Rental Software, however, is not a free service. It costs $69/month and there is a $69 one-time setup fee. In the world of free music, movies, pictures, and web services it can be confusing to have to pay for software, but it seems clear that TenantWIZ is created for the professional, serious homeowner who is organized and on top of their personal finances.

Sponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials

But apparently CNet has acquired Loren Feldman, the creative force behind the 1938Media productions. In case the names Loren Feldman and 1938Media don’t ring a bell to you, perhaps you’ll have your memory jogged if I mention the TechRooster and the Shel Israel puppet at ShelIsrael.com (both creations of Loren Feldman).

Loren Feldman put out a couple minute video post today describing a meeting with CNet’s Dan Farber, one in which they both hit it off pretty well.

“I met Mr. Farber, we got along. Next thing you know, this happens,” said Feldman.

He’ll be blogging and doing videos presumably in the same style of his present videos, though questions regarding the non G-Rated language are still unanswered.

A hearty round congratulations to Loren are in order, proving that his unorthodox style of technology analysis is indeed a marketable brand of information delivery, despite what others may argue regarding the longer naked conversations style that Feldman is averse to.

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Tencent Inc, a company purportedly responsible for the largest IM service in China, has launched QQ Xiaoyou, a network currently allowing invited QQ users for testing ahead of a broader public launch, according to Tangos of China Web 2.0 Review. Amit Chowdry of Pulse 2.0 translates the network’s meaning as equatable to “Alumni.”

Founded in 1998, Tencent has grown its QQ-branded network of services, including QQ.com, QQ Instant Messenger, QQ Mail, QQ show, QQ Pet, QQ Game, and QQ Music/Radio/Live into one catering to a claimed user base hundreds of millions strong. A strong emphasis on claimed, there, due to the fact that China’s collective Web usership falls far short of Tencent’s hugely irregular 783.4 million touted users (for its IM network alone). China only recently surpassed the US in total Internet users, landing somewhere in the mid-200m territory. Given that Web giants Microsoft and Yahoo each cater to user counts somewhere north of 250 million each, Tencent’s claims are heavily suspect.

Nonetheless, QQ Xiaoyou appears to be an active property upon first glance. China Web 2.0 Review says the site, like all other Tencent properties, follows the strict requirements of Internet monitors in the country, with Xiaoyou mandating users register real names and photos, per China’s governing party’s request for greater Web user transparency. If the vetting process is as thorough as is alleged, those registrees will be put through an authentication process that takes up to three days’ time.

If QQ Xiaoyou is to be a serious entry in the market - “QQ Campus,” a previous attempt, is said to have performed poorly relative to competitors - it will be aiming at Xiaonei, a social network that serves university students with 15 million users, according to BeijingReview.com, a national weekly magazine. QQ Xiaoyou, though its color palette is unlike Facebook’s, could perhaps be seen as taking cues from the well-regarded US-based website, much as Xiaonei has shown to do.

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Last.FM marked a company milestone many months ago when it signed a number of music industry giants to its multi-million-strong audio track list. The now CBS-owned service counted Warner Music Group as one of the first participants. No more. This week, Warner retracted its catalogue, as was reported first by Peter Kafka of Silicon Alley Insider. The reason? Greenbacks. Not enough of ‘em coming through, apparently.

As Saul Hansell of The New York Times explains it, Warner saw that its contract with Last.FM had come upon its final hours, and because CBS wasn’t willing to offer up the bucks Warner was requesting to allow the online streaming service to continue serving its songs - on-demand or otherwise - goodbyes were given.

Executives “briefed on the negotiations” claim that Warner wasn’t happy that Last.FM hadn’t yet enacted a planned fee-based subscription service, which the music giant had hoped to see, but I imagine that had little to do with its departure. Paid subscription music services on the Web have not shown strong growth in the past, and there’s little reason to expect Last.FM to put on a significantly better performance in that department. Instead, I presume the probable cause rests exclusively in the ad-suppported per-track playback fee, which Hansell describes as one purported soft spot responsible for discontinued relations. Warner claims to have found that services like Imeem and MySpace Music “offer richer deals.”

As with the largest service-provider-versus-song-provider battle in the purchase-to-own digital download arena (as many now know, the majority of record companies have maintained restrictions on several million songs within the increasingly fast-selling iTunes Store from being sold as high(er)-quality, DRM-free selections), this exit by Warner from Last.FM serves the former no benefit.

I’ve said repeatedly that the music industry giants are really in no position to act overzealously when it comes to dealing with Web services. If Warner cannot get Last.FM to present a larger bounty per track playback, or even a broader ad-revenue sharing deal of some sort, it is likely because Last.FM cannot effectively muster such an increase. And for Warner to remove its catalogue is to potentially inhibit growth for Last.FM, which means it will logically take a longer span of time for Last.FM to build its usage figures (sans Warner in its repertoire) enough to warrant the desired increase in “royalty” fees.

Yes, CBS still maintains working relations with EMI, Sony, and Universal, which is certainly helpful to Last.FM. Those deals stave of a collapse of the service, which would undoubtedly come as a very inconvenient shock to many a music fan. But there is no trifecta in the music business. The only ideal is the four-play. (Unless further consolidation in the industry is realized.) And it is in the RIAA’s best interest to work collective, comprehensive deals wherever popular services may be found, because they then encourage growth of memberships for those respective services, and subsequently expand their own revenue streams, which have shrunk considerably in the past few years.

There’s really only one conclusion to make of this week’s news. A bad move by Warner brought bad news for Last.FM. There’s no winner to come of this severance. The still-rocky musical food chain could use all the mutual support it can get. That means all RIAA members need to lower their fences many more notches and start getting a good bit more liberal with how they distribute content.

Memo to Warner: Remove the blinds, guys. The strongarm approach won’t help your cause. Last.FM is no frenemy. Don’t keep it at arm’s length. Get close, and stay close.

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Only several days have passed since Starbucks and AT&T officially made available free Wi-Fi to US customers (upon purchase, registration, and use of a Starbucks Card with corresponding rewards program), and already T-Mobile, the coffee chain’s pre-existing wireless Internet service partner, has presented a lawsuit in New York state court.

Reuters reported on T-Mobile’s filing Friday evening, in which the company claims that Starbucks “secretly colluded with AT&T to offer free Wi-Fi Internet access in its cafes despite an exclusive agreement with T-Mobile.” T-Mobile is said to be “seeking unspecified damages against Starbucks for breach of its contract and unfair competition.”

Upon announcement of the new deal, Starbucks said that it’s long-standing arrangement with T-Mobile would be phased out in 2008, a plan T-Mobile allows is true, though it says that the stipulations of said plan was that the original provider for Starbucks was to maintain “the exclusive right to ‘sell, market and promote its services’ in Starbucks stores until those stores were fully converted to the AT&T system.” The suit goes on to allege in greater detail that “Starbucks stores would be transitioned (away from T-Mobile) ‘on a market-to-market basis.’” T-Mobile stated that, as of Thursday, the original date of the suit, only locations within San Antonio, TX, and Bakersfield, CA, had completely made the transition.

Though T-Mobile may claim Starbucks has breached their previous agreement, it seems that the coffee giant can perhaps slide past negative judgement in court - if the case is to proceed that far. T-Mobile’s admittance that a gradual, market-to-market transition may well give Starbucks a wide enough window to respond with the technical argument that has followed those rules. It could be exceedingly difficult - save for a good supply of evidence of conflicting transgressions - for T-Mobile to secure a win.

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Revision3 has been in the news more than usual the past two week, mostly due to its falling victim to a denial-of-service attack on its servers by the RIAA and MPAA associate MediaDefender, a subset of ARTISTSdirect, Inc. Yesterday the independent video producer’s CEO announced another loss - though this time one quite a bit less intense. Or maybe not. It really depends on one’s view of a project recently introduced by the company called Social Brew.

Indeed, Revision3’s show devoted to all things people-plus-Web has been retired. Totally. You’ll have to refer to the network’s archive of “Gone But Not Forgotten” material to check out the four episodes if you’re interested to see what didn’t catch on for viewers in any sustainable way. I recall watching only a few minutes of the first installation of Social Brew, and if the pilot was anything to go by, it seemed to me bound for relatively quick expiration.

CEO Jim Louderback offered his reasoning for the decision Friday:

“From where I sit, it just wasn’t working. It wasn’t the hosts, it wasn’t the producer and it wasn’t the execution. It just didn’t come together, and I really think the concept was flawed from the outset - and that’s 100% my fault.

Behind the scenes the team worked extremely hard to try to pull it off. We went through a number of pilots, tried out a number of hosts, but in the end it just didn’t have that certain something that would make Social Brew into a big, popular show - the kind that we need to have on Revision3.”

If you’re thinking Revision3 now distributes one less show, and thus offers that much less visual material to enjoy, the company may well get out on a technicality. Just two days ago Revision3 formally announced its partnership with EPIC FU, a variety show hosted by Zadi Diaz covering tech, art and design, music, and anything else that piques its creators’ interests. EPIC FU’s previous backing company, Next New Networks, previously announced its separation from the show late last month.

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The tournament for the 2008 UEFA European Football Championship, or Euro 2008 for short, commenced this weekend, and will carry through to June 29. Fans of the games will of course been keeping a close eye on their television sets, whether watching competing teams square off in Austria or Switzerland, the two host countries this year.

Still, if you’re planning to undertake an in-person tour of the multinational event, Google can help you find your way around the highlight Swiss cities of Basel, Bern, Geneve, and Zurich and the Austrian cities of Innsbruck, Klagenfurt, Salzburg, and Wien (Vienna) with a custom map created with help of transit authorities SBB and VBZ of Switzerland and OBB of Austria. This data will certainly come as a convenience for those who wish to watch the players work the three-week bracket while standing (and jumping and screaming) tens or hundreds of feet away.

The visual aids don’t stop there, though. Match data - statistics as well as the game schedule - for each stadium is presented in the mashup. Google has also added representations of “all eight stadiums hosting the games to the ‘3D Buildings’ layer” of its Earth utility.

Of course, you could always go to the official Euro 2008 website to get match info as it comes in, but Google’s all-in-one setup is bound to get a good number of hits, too. And if those options weren’t enough, Netvibes this week announced the debut of a widget titled ‘Euro2008’ to get a glimpse of the match calendar, national team standings, and news. So whether you want to follow the wins and losses on a start page, an interactive map, or a virtual globe, you can.

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Sometimes small changes can grow into big issues. Especially if those changes are made by an online corporation with global spread and hundreds of millions of regular consumers or users. Enter, the Google favicon.

Surely you’ve noticed the company’s shift from a big, brawny capital ‘G’ to a more reserved, accentuated and scripted lowercase ‘g’. How does it suit you? Well? Does it not appeal? Does the move not concern you in the least? Wherever you sit, Google’s Marissa Meyer, vice president of Search Products and User Experience, as well as Michael Lopez, an individual listed as Web Designer for the company, have offered up brief peek at what the company’s options were in choosing its primary bookmark-friendly logo, so as to better explain to any and all curious folk the why behind their selection.

Meyer and Lopez make sure to note that the pick now visible to those who utilize some of Google’s services is not set in stone, and that the company is open to feedback from users. (Comments may offered at this page). Which, in my view, is a good thing. Because I’m just not feeling the option being tested publicly as of late. Not to get too tangential about art of symbolism or anything, the newest favicon belies the company’s character of dominance in the search market. The big ‘G’ was able to portray strength. The one to take its place…doesn’t.

Perhaps “little g” could be given to Google Reader, which might better connote the elegance of Mountain View’s primarily text-based RSS aggregator. Google Search, however, should really maintain its capital(ist) dimensions. If the company saw the previous, gloss-less icon (which apparently stood tenured for some 8.5 years, a seeming eternity in Internet years), as needing a refresh, its proposed blue, bubble-ized ‘G’ logo - seen in the fourth row of the menu of options shown below - would suffice. More so than its smaller alternative, anyhow. What do you think?

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If you have more than one Gmail account you regularly use (I have five), one of the most annoying aspects of dealing with it is the fact that you cannot have more than one opened (opening two instances of a web browser doesn’t help either, because the cookie is shared between them) at the same time. You have to log out and log in every time you want to switch. This is unacceptable if you simply must have several accounts opened at the same time.

So, I’ve searched the net for a quick fix, but unfortunately, there is no one perfect solution. Some obvious ones are annoying and tiresome; others are better but they also have certain flaws. Therefore, I’ll lay out five different methods and let you choose which one you like best.

(more…)

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Developing Web applications to be used within social networks and numerous other cloud-based structures is becoming more and more de rigueur for the entrepreneurial set. Both on the desktop and on the go, Web users in droves seek simple, unique software gadgets through which to access and manipulate data with easy while able to transfer seamlessly from the home to the office to weekend getaway.

So there’s really no mystery in the drive for some engineers to construct platforms upon which developers - particularly the small, self-financed class - can create those ever-present, soft devices in a setting that offers both the requisite toolset and perhaps even some market exposure to boot. One software provider Mashable has mentioned in the past is Sprout, which we deemed impressive when its WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) widget builder arrived on the scene in late January.

This week marked the arrival of another market entry in the form of Zembly, a self-described host and creation engine of social applications that is said to facilitate the construction of apps for use on a number of platforms and devices, including Facebook, OpenSocial, Meebo, Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Gadgets engine, and widgets that may be more broadly embedded.

Founded in 2007 and backed by Sun Microsystems (it is established on a framework comprised of Solaris, Java, Glassfish, and MySQL and operates via Sun’s Network.com cloud-computing business), with early praise given by Seth Sternberg, founder and CEO of Meebo, and Jon Aizen, co-founder and CTO of Dapper, Zembly appears to be off to an interesting start. Launched as a private beta, the service, while it does offer you the option to create and amend code, is meant to help those unfamiliar with the ins and outs of building widgets from scratch to piece together new items from previously-assembled components. Zembly describes its main role thusly:

“The whole point of zembly is to reuse and combine not just what other people at Zembly create, but to rely on the APIs and data from anywhere on the Web.”

So far, Zembly lists about ten or so API participants, including Del.icio.us, Amazon AWS, Flickr, Google, Twitter, Yahoo, YouTube, Zillow, and Zvents, among others, and invites any other Web API provider to join its list of partners to help broaden the possibilities for new applications through its engine. Of course, there’s only so much reach Zembly can have with its private beta restriction, but it is likely that with time, as Zembly establishes a more solid grip on the booming Web app and widget market, its influence will expand in kind.

Zembly has offered Mashable 100 invites. Just enter your email address in the widget linked here to get early access to the service.