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TechCrunch is a group-edited blog that profiles the companies, products and events defining and transforming the new web.

Apple Releases Aperture 3 – Retail Price Is $199, Upgrade Costs $99Today

It’s been almost 2 years to the day when Apple released Aperture 2.0, and this morning the company announced that the third iteration of the photo editing and management software is available. Some of the new features include Faces, Places and Brushes, many of which will be familiar to people using iPhoto ‘09.

With the new version, Apple makes it easier for people to step up from iPhoto to Aperture, while still providing professional photographers with a powerful program for editing and managing their libraries. Apple says the new software boasts over 200 new features.

One of those, Faces, works just like in iPhoto, using face recognition technology to find and organize photos by the people in them. You can view faces across your entire photo library or view just the faces that appear in selected projects. In a new view, Aperture 3 displays faces that have been detected but haven’t yet been named.

Places lets you explore photos based on the location they were taken, and like in iPhoto, Places automatically r

Flush With $10 Million In Fresh Cash, Yammer Strengthens Executive TeamToday

Yammer, the San Francisco startup that offers a solid enterprise-grade microsharing and realtime communications service, is expanding its executive team after successfully closing a Series B funding round to the tune of $10 million earlier this month.

The company made one internal promotion, appointing co-founder and VP of Technology Adam Pisoni to CTO. In addition, Yammer recruited David Satterwhite to lead its sales efforts, while Steve Apfelberg was brought in as VP of Marketing.

Before working at Yammer, Adam Pisoni served in senior engineering roles at Geni and Shopzilla and co-founded and was CTO at Cnation. The company says Pisoni played an instrumental role in building Yammer’s communication platform from the ground up, adding that is now in use by over 60,000 companies and organizations (including TechCrunch).

David Satterwhite, who recently joined as e

Tiny Speck Uncovers Glitch, A New Flash-Based Massively Multiplayer GameToday

Last July, we reported that the new company by Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield had received a name, and was looking to hire. Tonight, Tiny Speck’s first project has revealed itself to the world: Glitch.

So what is it? As we suspected, it’s an online game in the vein of Game Neverending, the gaming project that eventually became Flickr (weird, I know). It’s a Flash-based massively multiplayer game that revolves around solving puzzles. While the game itself will be free, there will be some level of in-game purchases. Or as it’s described on the site:

This is not something you’ve seen before. Glitch is a neverending feast of imagination, a celebration of creativity, a labor of love, and a monument to play.

Or, in English:

Glitch is a massively-multiplayer game, playable in the browser and built in the spirit of the web. It is currently in development and will launch late in 2010. Private alpha

Back to the Future: How Apple is Becoming More Like a Carrier Every DayToday

Editor’s note: Is Apple going too far with its restrictions on developers? Alistair Goodman thinks so and explains why in this guest post. He is the CEO of 1020 Placecast, a location-based mobile advertising startup.

Apple’s recent behavior bears an increasing resemblance to carriers with respect to the walled garden they are creating around the iPhone. Restricting applications, restricting the use of location on the device, blocking Flash, and now potentially taking advertising in house—these moves are taken from the carrier’s playbook with the hope of locking out meaningful competition. Ironically, Apple may very well become the barrier to open innovation in mobile in much the same way as carriers have been before the iPhone came along.

What is clear from the announcement to developers last week about plans to

Foursquare Signing Mainstream Partnership Deals Left And RightToday

Foursquare continues to sign interesting deals with major players in a wide range of fields. Following the service’s Bravo deal a couple weeks ago, they’ve reached a deal with restaurant rating guide Zagat, according to The New York Times. And AdAge has some details about deals with even more partners, including HBO, Warner Brothers, and the History Channel.

The service has been on a roll lately. They’re now seeing over a million check-ins a week, with that rate doubling in the last month alone. And these new deals can only help them as they bring the type of mainstream appeal that it took services like Twitter so long to find.

While Zagat is an obvious partner thanks to its restaurante recommendations, the entertainment partnership appeal may not be immediately apparent. But as you can see on the Foursquare page for the movie Valentine’s Day, those promoting the movie have added 50 “Romantic Tips” around the cities that the movie takes place in, N