Soundcloud CEO Mr. Ljung (Photo: Twitter.com)

SoundCloud Busts Out Of Beta At this point, SoundCloud is basically the audio version of YouTube. A private-beta version of the site launched earlier this year called Next and the newest version integrates a bunch of those social features that the company hopes will help its users discover new music. “From today, ‘Next’ is now simply SoundCloud,” said Alexander Ljung, founder and CEO of SoundCloud in a press release sent to Betabeat. “It’s a platform for people to discover new, original music and audio, for creators to build audiences, and for everyone to share what they hear whether online or on mobile.”

The company claims that users now post over 10 hours of music and audio every minute while reaching over 180 million people. That’s a staggering 8% of the entire internet population, every month. On December 6th, mobile users will be able to enjoy reposts, updated mobile search, and UX updates on both iOS and Android SoundCloud apps.

Birds Do It, Bees Do It Online dating site HowAboutWe is now partnering with AARP to launch a new dating site for 50+ adults. Although millenials might find it the concept hard to swallow, it has potential to be one of the biggest sites out of HowAboutWe’s 32 partnered sites. The 50+ demographic is a huge growing dating demographic because of a huge increase in the divorce rate for people over 50. Hey, everybody needs some love!

Remember, Remember, The Facebook Of Last December Timehop, the app that reminds you of all the social media memories you made in your not-so-distant past, has a bunch of updates dropping in its latest update. You can now share pictures from your camera roll in your Timehop feed. First Foursquare checkins are now integrated into your memories too. Just when everyone forgot you were once mayor of Tom and Jerry’s…

You Must Be This Rich To Ride Free Valet, the travel membership site that offers you rewards and guides for $199 a year, told Betabeat over email that it's now in more than 52 cities and more than 100 hotels. They've offering free rides to the airport until February 1st for members staying at any of their New York hotels. The deal is also being offered to New York members who are on their way to stay at a Valet site somewhere else.

We Like To (Watch Them) Move It Move It Yesterday, Unpakt, the site that lets you compare movers, kicked off its "Innovators on the Move" series. It features tech entrepreneurs reflecting on recent moves in their lives. The first video in the series features the wedding planning tool, Lover.ly, founder Kellee Khalil. Lover.ly is moving into a brand new New York office and the video chronicles the move.

Innovators on the Move: Kellee from Unpakt on Vimeo.

Etsy Goes Full Mobile Etsy has officially released an Android version of its mobile app, after last week's launch of the company's iPad app. In a press release sent to Betabeat, Etsy said that nearly a quarter of its mobile web visitors come from Android devices all over the world. To celebrate the occasion, you should buy yourself this Android mascot cookie jar.

Big Money To Nice People Google is trying hard to tip the scales more toward good than evil. The company has just launched the Global Impact Awards, which honors nonprofits using technology to tackle problems. The inaugural recipients include a $5 million gift to charity: water, a $5 million prize to Donors Choose, and $2.4 million to Givedirectly, a much younger company than the others.

Lose That Basic Black Jackthreads and designer Adam Gianotti have just released the new collection of their line, Viveshirt. The team has also just put their fall collection from their line Goodale on sale. There's a lot of French terry in both collections and some perfect pieces for that "fancy hoodie" look.

Tweeters Be Shopping Some of those absymal Black Friday stats may be misleading. While IBM reported that 0.34 percent of all online sales over Thanksgiving weekend came from social sites, Jirafe, an ecommerce analytics platform found much higher numbers. Using their unique analytics, the company found that 1.27 percent of sales come from social sites like Facebook and Twitter. A key difference between their analytics is that Jirafe looks at the social media profiles of shoppers. Say for instance a customer buys a product after clicking through from a tweet featuring a new deal. Jirafe can track this data while IBM only looks at ads.

Consumer Cash Flow Consmr, a mobile app that provides ratings and reviews for products, announced earlier this week that it has secured $565,000 in seed funding. The round was led by Lerer Ventures with participation from IA Ventures and MESA+. In a press release sent to Betabeat, CEO Ryan Charles said, “Consmr is well positioned to mobilize the wisdom of the crowds and extend it to everyday product decisions.”

This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder and CEO of GarysGuide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.

Don't miss the upcoming TEDxSiliconAlley event on December 4. The theme is "Rise of the Machines" and the keynote speaker is Ray Kurzweil (author of New York Times best-seller The Singularity Is Near). Other keynoters include Bre Pettis (founder, Makerbot), Jincey Lumpkin (attorney & Huffington Post sex columnist) and Ken Segall (creative director of Apple's "Think Different" campaign).

DEMO will be hosting an event at First Round Capital on December 13 to meet and select potential startups to present next year at DEMO Mobile. Deadline to apply for a meeting is November 28.

Congrats to ZenMenu, Planet Expat and Cielo--the winners of the Who Would You Fund TechStartup Challenge 2012. And kudos to everyone who participated!

Here's something interesting: Wu-Tang Clan member GZA is teaming up with Columbia University professor Christopher Emdin and Andreesseen Horowitz-backed startup Rap Genius to do a pilot project to use hip-hop to teach science in ten New York City public schools.

Seeing a crazy increase in the number of moustaches around you recently? Well that's cuz its Movember, meant to raise vital awareness and funds for men's health issues. So don't delay, start growing a 'stache today!

And if you like drinking beer (and who doesn't?), I have a feeling you're gonna like it even more if you drink it out of a horn :) My friend Laurie Segall's brother David has a Kickstarter project aiming to help you do just that. I present to you the definitive drinking horn: Das Horn!

Another week, another awesome movie recommendation. No, no, not Breaking Dawn. I'm talking about Lincoln. Combine a legendary filmmaker (Spielberg) with a terrific actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), add a historical backdrop (Civil War) and a riveting and inspiring central character (Abraham Lincoln) and you have magic. Must see.

And now let's see whats going down in the Alley this week...

Technology You Can Touch
Network with hard sciences engineers, entrepreneurs, and capital sources. Organized by NYC Tech Connect, the Partnership for New York City Fund and Columbia University.
Monday (Nov. 19), 5:30 p.m. @ Columbia University Earl Hall, W. 116th Street and Broadway

Mediabistro TVNewser and TVSpy Party in New York
Hosted by TVNewser senior editor Alex Weprin, TVSpy editor Kevin Eck, and TVSpy senior editor and TVNewser co-editor, Merrill Knox.
Monday (Nov. 19), 6:30 p.m. @ SideBAR, 120 E. 15th Street

Everything you wanted to know about Startup Law
What not to do when you create a start up, forming and organizing a startup, term sheets, founder stock and equity incentives and other topics.
Monday (Nov. 19), 7 p.m. @ Pivotal Labs, 841 Broadway, 8th Fl.

Future of Fashion Startup Series
Panelists include Jenn Talley (digital development editor, Teen Vogue), Susan Barber (art director, Opening Ceremony) and Nick Chirls (investments, Betaworks). Demos by Merocrat, Stylitics, Little Black Bag, Fashion Qlic and Bib + Tuck.
Monday (Nov. 19), 7 p.m. @ Projective Space L.E.S., 72 Allen Street, 3rd Fl.

PGA New Media Council: Cutting to the Beat
With Sarah Landy (senior director, Stache/RED Media), Zack Beatty (VP biz dev, PlayMySong), Frank Woodworth (director biz dev, Thrillcall) and Karimah Day (cofounder & COO, Sir Groovy).
Monday (Nov. 19), 7 p.m. @ Theresa Lang Auditorium The New School, 55 W. 13th Street

Healthcare Information Technology: Change Outlook & Opportunity
With Esther Dyson (EDventure Holdings), Andrew Litt (Dell), David Feygin (Becton Dickinson), Jean-Luc Neptune (Health 2.0 Conference), Andy Weissman (Union Square Ventures), Todd Pietri (Milestone Ventures) and others.
Tuesday (Nov. 20), 8:30 a.m. @ Alston & Bird, LLP, 90 Park Ave

NYC Data Business Meetup #10
With Christopher Ahlberg (CEO, Recorded Future), Josh Becker (CEO, Lex Machina), Nik Bonaddio (CEO, numberFire) and Hjalmar Gislason (CEO, DataMarket).
Tuesday (Nov. 20), 6 p.m. @ Bloomberg LP, 731 Lexington Ave, 7th Fl.

WeStory with Scott Harrison
Featuring Scott Harrison, the founder and CEO of charity: water.
Tuesday (Nov. 20), 7 p.m. @ WeWork Lounge, 154 Grand Street

Ray Kurzweil: Engineering The Brain
The bold futurist and author of the New York Times best-seller The Singularity Is Near explores the limitless potential of reverse-engineering the human brain to create more intelligent machines.
Tuesday (Nov. 20), 8 p.m. @ Kaufmann Concert Hall, Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street

More events on the horizon...
Business Insider: Ignition - Future Of Digital on Nov. 27 @ Time Warner Center, 10 on the Park
MakeIt NYC: Secrets of Kickstarter Panel on Nov. 27 @ University Settlement - Speyer Hall
Ultra Light / NY Angels Novemberfest Showcase on Nov. 28 @ Alley NYC
Dwolla + Derby Jackpot Party! on Nov. 28 @ Tavern on Third
NYTECH Fall Networking Cocktail Reception on Nov. 29 @ National Showroom
November NY Enterprise Technology Meetup on Nov. 29 @ Cooley
tilt@vc: ff Venture Capital on Nov. 29 @ ff Venture Capital
Mashable Media Summit 2012 on Nov. 30 @ The TimesCenter
Founders@Fail: The Dos & Donts of Pitching Ad Agencies on Dec. 3 @ General Assembly
Vator Splash NY 2012 on Dec. 5 @ Le Poisson Rouge
FashInvest 2012 Capital Conference on Dec. 11 @ Fashion Institute of Technology

Until next week. Stay thirsty social, my friends! ;)

Kathleen Henkel attempts to play Solitaire Blitz for 30 hours straight with only a ten-minute break per hour. (Photo: Jess Schiewe)

It was lunch hour on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 47th and the intersection was teeming with people. A Prêt-A-Manger employee proffered brownie samples to passersby on a silver tray. A family of five, laden with backpacks and rolling suitcases, searched for a cab. A man in a suit peeled a banana. A panhandler begged for money. A knock-off purse salesman set up shop. And Kathleen Henkel, a 68-year-old retiree from Oakland, New Jersey, played another round of solitaire.

“This game is great,” said Ms. Henkel, a sprightly red-head wearing a patterned shirt and skirt outfit that she bought in West Africa and a beaded ankle bracelet. “It’s addicting.”

She was sitting in front of laptop computer in a white corner room penned in by two walls of floor-to-ceiling windows facing out to the street. Cameramen and videographers crowded around her, snapping pictures and rolling film. Curious pedestrians, passing by, paused to peer in. Models—Dan Metz, Brandon Collins, Jay Parks, and Georgie Badel— and minor celebrities—Kenley Collins, Chelsea Krost, and Lady Jenn Bocian—ostensibly there for the publicity—“What is this for again?” said Ms. Collins—preened in the background.

Ms. Henkel hardly noticed them. Her eyes, hidden behind red-wire glasses, were glued to the screen in front of her. She’d played solitaire before, but today was different. Today she is attempting to break the world record for the longest videogame marathon playing a card game. She’s not alone: 31-year-old mother of three, Laura Rich, from South Wales, is attempting to do the same on the other side of the pond.

A few months ago, both women were contacted by PopCap Games, a video game developer based in Seattle, best known for their 2000 gem-swapping game, Bejeweled. The idea, they were told, was two-pronged: create publicity for their new social media game, Solitaire Blitz, and raise money for charity.

“We wanted to do something unique,” said Laura Jackson, a public relations representative for PopCap Games who produced the New York event, “and we knew this would be the way to do that.” Solitaire Blitz is an animated, nautical-themed online card game that can be played for free on Facebook. Since its release in March, over two billion hands of the game have been played, the company said, with an average of 1.6 million sessions played per day.

To find players who were up for the challenge, PopCap Games looked at a list of the most frequent Solitaire Blitz players. The results were surprisingly unvaried, said Ms. Jackson who was part of the selection, and consisted mostly of women over the age of 35. But finding a player was difficult. “I was reaching out to players and I wasn’t the getting the sense that any of them were right,” said Ms. Jackson. “I had to be able to pick someone who would be able to go the 30 hours and I wasn’t getting that sense that any of them were very motivated.”

Ms. Rich, the London player, was selected from the list of avid players, but this was not the case with Ms. Henkel. In fact, prior to finding out about the event, she had never even played Solitaire Blitz. “But it’s not like I hadn’t seen the game before,” Ms. Henkel said. “I am on Facebook.”

So how did Ms. Jackson choose Ms. Henkel to be the New York Solitaire Blitz player? “I remember distinctly it was 5 a.m. and I woke up and I thought, ‘Kathleen Henkel,’” Ms. Jackson said.  “She’d be our player.” The women had met three years earlier while taking an African drumming seminar in Guinea, West Africa, but had lost touch once they returned to the States. “But I knew she was the one,” Ms. Jackson said. And it turned out she was right. Ms. Henkel, a life-long solitaire player, was interested in the challenge, and she was also a fan of the organization that it would be raising funds for, charity: water. The donated funds are used to bring clean and safe drinking water to people in developing countries through the construction of wells and education about hygiene and sanitation.

Her role in the solitaire challenge was meant to be, she told Betabeat. She's been playing solitaire since she was young, and she retired from her job as a substance abuse counselor for criminal offenders to pursue projects providing access to water after a visit to West Africa.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records rules, she is allowed a ten-minute break every hour, which she plans to spend doing Qigong stretches, visiting the bathroom, or eating a snack.

“Right now I’m doing okay," she said, after almost five hours of playing. She spent the last few weeks training by playing the game for a few hours each day, and had a bran muffin and Greek yogurt for breakfast. But there’s another thing she attributes her strength to: her amber necklace. “I’m a crystal fanatic,” Ms. Henkel said. “I was going to wear a Labradorite necklace but when I looked up the properties of this one, I just had to wear it today.” It is believed that amber brings good luck and protection.

If all goes to plan, Ms. Henkel will be playing Solitaire Blitz in the corner space of the Roger Smith Hotel on Lexington Avenue until 3 p.m. Wednesday, June 27th. "Fresh juice would be nice," she said, glancing up briefly from the computer screen to muse about lunch. "I heard they have a place around here."

Mr. Harrison

It's hard to find a more social media-savvy philanthropic organization than Charity Water, whose good deeds are often being tweeted by the same folks who finance startups and launch tech companies. Over at Bits today, Nick Bilton interviews founder and CEO Scott Harrison about the non-profit's tech bona fides.

Mr. Harrison, a former club promoter who used to make a living "selling people $16 drinks and $300 bottles of vodka," got the idea for Charity Water, which provides clean and safe drinking water to people in the developing world, after living in Liberia with a group of humanitarian and surgeons.

The tech connection came very early on in the non-profit's history. 

"For example, Michael Birch, who successfully exited Bebo, was our initial bridge to Silicon Valley. Through Michael we started spending more time in Silicon Valley and got to meet people like Dennis Crowley and Jack Dorsey."

"Because we acted like a start-up, people who run start-ups could associate with us," Mr. Harrison tells Bits.

Since launching five years ago, Charity Water has raised more than $58 million from 250,000 donors, which brings up the other startup-esque characteristic. Mr. Harrison has been particularly successful at raising money online, where 75 percent of its donations come from.

Like the rest of the tech world, however, he's still trying to figure out how best to incorporate those computers in your pocket into the mix. "No one has figured out mobile giving, yet. We’ve experimented with text campaigns with some degree of success, but we’re really looking for that big idea in mobile and giving."

Hmm, mobile + micro-giving? Your move, socially-conscious disruptors.

GRUMPY INCUMBENTS. Mobile payments sure make people catty. PayPal sent Betabeat several explicit and unsolicited statements about Google's announcement of its NFC-chipped phone, including: "As the mobile payment leader (we expect $2  billion in payment volume to transact over mobile devices via PayPal in 2011), we'd be happy to comment. Put simply--before you try mobile (or any other payments) solution, you need to be great at payments.  There is so much more than just technology involved to get payments right. Above all (and this is something that many tech pundits simply forget), any new solution must deliver something better than the existing way to do it. Not just different... better."

Visa chose to blog its disapproval. "It is certainly news that Google is getting in the game by testing a new payment service… something that we’ve been doing around the world for the past couple of years.  But I’d remind you that launching NFC payments in the U.S. this year was just one small aspect of our recent announcement regarding Visa’s plan to provide a global, comprehensive solution enabling consumers to transact wherever, whenever by using a card, a computer or a mobile device which kicks off later this year."

HOW TO GET A TECHNICAL CO-FOUNDER. Baitr.co by Aussie/SF developer Peter Watts was one of the simplest but stickiest hacks that launched at TechCrunch Disrupt. A fake splash page with animation that spins a user's email address into space, it pokes fun at the LaunchRock phenomenon that inspired a slew of splash pages that collect alpha and beta users for pre-launch start-ups that often never hatch. Mr. Watts got laughs, kudos and an interview with TechCrunch out of the joke, and now he's had a compelling job offer, transmitted via his About.me page:

im looking for a co-founder. i cannot code at all. sorry... while writing notes on my pre beta page, i stumbled on the TC article. i started laughing. how co-incidental. This is one. I believe in random co incidents. If you are in SF like your page says you are, that is more awesome. 2 Your linkedin further confirmed that you are took part in building something to catalog music. you also took some psych classes. this is 3. I want to build the best music startup in the world. With the sickest, most ridiculous marketing campaign. Im taking a leap of faith and saying that we should meet and talk. Hope to hear from you peter.

Mr. Watts was very excited to receive the communique, but it seems he's decided to pass on this one.

YOUR MOM IS NOW ON GROUP BUYING. A site, possibly Daily Deals for Moms, going by the pseudonym GroupMoms just emailed Betabeat about some embargoed news. "Think Groupon meets Avon--only better. The site, which empowers moms to source and promote daily deals, has been around for about a year but is announcing a round of funding this week." Oh wait, this already exists (PlumDistrict, $8.5 million), and exists (CafeMom, $24 million) and probably exists some more, but one can only Google "daily mom deals" for so long. "This round of funding will allow the company to expand its network and enable Group-moms to take on Groupon," the company says. They're based in San Francisco, but the CEO is based out of New York, and the company will use this round of funding to expand to New York.

NEXT. "First day of my last two weeks at work," charity:water devlopment officer Lane Wood Twttrd today. Moving on to better things? He's not sure, but took pains to say there's no drama here. "I’m not storming out nor am I getting pushed out. I won’t feel awkward when I come back to visit, and I will remain close with many of the people I have worked with... I remain your biggest fan," he wrote on Tumblr. Meanwhile, charity:water is big time hiring. "We've got plenty of open tech/web jobs," digital director Paul Young tweeted today.

PETER THIEL IN JEANS, T-SHIRT AND MONOCOLE IN NEW JERSEY. OR NOT. "Holy shit a billionare just walked past me," local entrepreneur Frank Denbow said today on Twttr. "Peter Thiel. Nobody gives a shit." Founder Michael LaVelle jumped in quickly with a "RT @billionaire: Holy shit I just walked past @FrankDenbow!"