Its not often I see a tech demo that makes me go wow. But I am really impressed with what I have seen so far with new social networking platform Solaborate.

Solaborate is the first social networking platform dedicated to technology professionals. And it pushes all the right buttons for techies too.

Launching in beta today, Solaborate enables tech professionals and companies to connect, collaborate and create an ecosystem around products and services.

Trustev, a Startup Battlefield company presenting today at TC Disrupt NY 2013, has developed a product to tackle online fraud using an algorithmic system of social signals, behavioural data and transaction history to create a “digital fingerprint” that lets companies verify that you are who you say you are when you are buying something online.

The problem that Trustev — based out of Cork, Ireland — is tackling is big, and growing bigger. E-commerce is booming, with sales topping $1 trillion globally in 2012 and still on the rise. But the market also has a dark undercurrent in the form of fraud — specifically around people using other people’s identities to purchase goods online. Currently ID fraud is a $20 billion problem and growing at twice the rate of the e-commerce market.

Beyond the very obvious issue of costing companies a lot of money, and consumers a lot of pain, there is another issue: traditional methods for trying to stem the problem are based mainly around human vetting.

Google’s number one strength is its search product, so it makes sense that all of their products feed back into it somehow. Today, the company announced the introduction of “App Activities” into Search. What this means is that when you search for something like “Fandango,” which uses Google+ sign-in, you’ll see top movies based on what users are rating.

Today at Disrupt NYC, Seth Sternberg, Director of Product Management for Google+, is demoing the new feature.

The plan is to surface interesting in-app content, using search to dig deeper into what people are doing on those apps. The launch apps are music and movie ones, which lend themselves to lists of top content based on listens and ratings. Google is rolling this out in the next few weeks for Fandango, Soundcloud, Deezer, Flixster, Slacker Radio, Songza and TuneIn. Up until now, app activity was only showing on profile pages:

Since graduating from Y Combinator in 2012, Grouper has been on a mission to help busy, overworked young people get away from the glow of computer screens and out into the real world to meet new people. To do that, the startup sends its members on “Groupers,” which are essentially blind, group dates between two groups of friends, designed to take the awkwardness out of one-on-one dating.

Eager to avoid being seen as another dating site, the startup instead wants to appeal to younger generations who prefer casual meetups over drinks at a local bar to traditional “dinner-and-a-movie” dates. Since launch, the service has expanded into 20 U.S. cities, and members have shared hundreds of thousands of drinks. Up until now, Grouper has existed exclusively on the Web, but today the startup is looking to take its offline social network to the next level by bringing Groupers to the iPhone.

“Grouper has always made more sense from a phone,” says founder and CEO Michael Waxman. “As a device, it has the ability to get out of your way and let you enjoy the real world, which is what we think Grouper is all about.” To make the dating experience more manageable, Grouper allows anyone to sign up, choose two friends who are up for a blind date, and pre-pay for a round of drinks at a local bar.

After three years of slow roll outs and testing with specific partners, Twitter’s Senior Director of Product for Revenue Kevin Weil just announced the general availability of its advertising options for all US business. Businesses don’t need an invite any more. Weil revealed the move on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, which could ramp up revenues and prep Twitter for a widely anticipated IPO.

Twitter first announced in April 2010 that it would begin showing ads. Since then it’s revealed Promoted Tweets and Promoted accounts, which let businesses pay to get their updates seen and their profiles followed. More recently, Twitter announced limited availability of a self-serve tool for buying ads in March 2012, and an Ads API for programmatic buying of huge campaigns in February 2013. Then just last week, Twitter announced that its ads could be targeted based on keywords tweeted or within tweets engaged with by users, which lets Twitter move toward demand fulfillment like Google Search ads.

Lars Rasmussen — one half of the dream team that led in the creation of Facebook’s new Graph Search and run its development — is leaving Menlo Park and setting up shop in Facebook’s office in London. Graph Search, or at least the engineering part that he oversees, is coming with him. I took the opportunity of a quick reconnaissance mission he made to the city this week to ask Rasmussen about why he’s coming to the UK, what is on the road map for Graph Search, internationally and otherwise, and what challenges lie ahead.

Graph Search has yet to launch in any other language other than English, and Facebook’s international user base is growing faster than its U.S. audience. But neither of these are the motivations for his move.

Rasmussen is coming for personal reasons: his girlfriend lives in Athens, and he’s tired of the commute from California to see her. So, because he has no intention of leaving Facebook, he’s decided to move as close as he can to Athens while continuing to work for the social network. And Graph Search, his baby, is coming with him.

Finding a parking space right next to your favourite café can seem like playing the lottery, but Park Tag wants to change all that. The startup, which is exhibiting at Disrupt NY’s Startup Alley, wants to make parking social so it’s easier to find your next space.

The Park Tag iOS app lets users invite their neighbours and colleagues to form a community of drivers who can help each other out by posting a parking space they are using before they’re going to vacate it so that another Park Tag user can book it. In return for posting and then successfully trading their parking spot, the user who posted it gets in-app credits to redeem on future parking spots when they’re in need of a slot.

“Three hundred million people globally have a parking problem every day and we help them solve it,” founder Silvan Rath told TechCrunch. He said the social parking system can help drivers save time and money and even get to know their neighbours. CO2 emissions caused by people driving around looking for a parking place or leaving the engine idling when they wait for a space to be vacated is another problem the startup is hoping to address.

The concept of the “Internet of Things” has driven forward the idea that in future, ‘smart’ homes will contain appliances and devices which will be connected and controllable from smartphones and tablets.

There is a wide choice of wireless alternatives – from technologies like ZigBee and Z-Wave which are used by smart home solutions today -- to promising new technologies including Bluetooth Smart and DECT ULE -- which are appropriate for devices that are not connected to mains power (such as sensors).

However, in a real-world home environment, all of these wireless protocols suffer from the vagaries of signal propagation and interference from appliances and solidly built brick interior dividing walls in old homes.

MallWeGo is a New York-based startup launching at the Disrupt NY 2013 Startup Alley today with a social, gaming shopping experience for web and mobile. The company has built a virtual world for socialising with friends in avatar form, which looks like a simplified Second Life or The Sims, but the kicker is it’s built for shopping, with a virtual mall where people can visit virtual stores and browse (and buy) actual products.

The app also includes a gaming element, with a free, built-in casino game through which users can win coupons to redeem at the associated retailers’ stores — as another way to encourage users to stay and spend in-world. Each user also gets their own home from home in MallWeGo: an apartment (below right) where they can view all the virtual stuff they’ve acquired, hang out with friends and do stuff like opt in to have ads displayed on their walls in order to earn more redeemable rewards. 

Bryan Ortiz, co-founder, said the idea is a combination of his favourite things: online shopping, gaming and social networking. “It’s pretty much taking the Amazon concept of vendors and putting together a Sims like approach,” he told TechCrunch. “That’s really what I was trying to create — something that’s fun but at the same time trying to make sure all the users are benefiting.