Onstartups, a blog for entrepreneurs has 17 Pithy Insights For Startup Founders. I particularly like number 13 – “The problem you solve should be ugly. The solution you build should be beautiful.” Can’t say this description springs to mind all that often, though.

According to a report from Mintel, posted by  AOP the UK now does more of its Shopping online than any other European country.

Wired’s Monkey Bites blog has a write up on a new WYSIWYG web editing tool called Aptana that it says helps to get Web 2.0 effects quickly and easily.

MenuTree is a new mashup which shows restaurants on a map. It’s a lightweight mash-up, and is pretty light on content at the moment, but anyone publishing hospitality content should take a look.

Danny Sullivan asks if Yahoo! Answers may not be the next big thing on the web. He points out that it is growing nearly as fast as YouTube and MySpace (albeit from a smaller base).
Via Steve Rubel

Wired News reports that License Plate Tracking technology, for now the province of US police departments, is set to go public.

The systems, which cost about $25,000 are about the size of a can of baked beans and are powered by a cigarette lighter. Attached to a laptop they can check up to 60 plates a minute against a database, says Wired.

Wired quotes former policeman Andy Bucholz, who’s on the board of Virginia-based G2 Tactics, a manufacturer of the technology, saying the price is coming down and companies like ChoicePoint, who already provide masses of personal information on people, will be chomping at the bit to get hold of real-time locational data.

Online advertising spending is set to grow 25 per cent worldwide in 2006 says a report from Carat, quoted by the AOP.

Internet advertising will continue its rapid ascent in 2006 and help prop up growth in the ad market as a whole, according to a new report from Carat International.

The Aegis-owned network said in its latest “Global Market Update” that the online medium will grow 25 per cent year-on-year worldwide, and will overtake the amount of ad revenue generated by newspapers in the US by 2008.

In the UK, it overtook outdoor advertising in 2005 and is likely to outstrip magazines this year. For early adopters like Sweden and South Korea, the internet is forecast to become the third biggest advertising medium this year, after television and newspapers.

According to PaidContent.org Amazon.com’s movie service will launch in mid-August.

[The service], which has been in the works for some time now, will launch mid-August, report AdAge. The service, called Amazon Digital Video — or Amazon “DV” — has evolved over the past year from a music-themed offering to a video-centric one, mainly because of competing services. It will have movies and TV shows, and will have subscription and la carte download (download to own plus burn) options.

PaidContent.org notes the explosion of small live gigs which are being streamed live to satisfy the demand for niche content – another example of the democratisation of the medium. There are a number of companies springing up to satisfy the desire more more specialised content like Network Live and Livenation. The Long Tail is making itself known in virtually all media.

Zoli’s Blog was first with the news that Technorati has updated its UI, even stealing a march on David Sifry who was now has more details up.