We’ve covered more than a few file sharing services here at TNW. It’s one of those things that we are constantly looking at because we’re always seeing new and great ones come about. The latest,Crate, will make the minimalist inside you very happy. Crate bills itself as “ridiculously easy file sharing”. They’re right. Simply go to the site, pick a username, give an email and you’re set. You can start creating Crates, which are files or folders, then sharing them to your heart’s content....

During a routine scan on Twitter of all things Microsoft we ran across a ratherodd tweetfrom the ubiquitous @MajorNelson: “You can now unleash your #Xbox LIVE Avatar to the real world.” Naturally we had to find out what the heck was going on. Do you love your Xbox Live Avatar? Do you want it on your wall so that when you ‘pwn’ some ‘noobs’ you can ‘rofl’ in ‘rl’ with a life-sized version of your in-game self?...

In the light of existing or pending Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigations against Twitter, Facebook and Google, a new petition from regulatory watchdog Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (CRE) seeks to better protect US-based Internet companies from unnecessary investigations by calling for clearly defined acts or practices which are considered unacceptable. The CRE specifies that as the FTC has the authority to ban acts or practices that cause “substantial injury to consumers which is not reasonably avoidable by consumers themselves and not outweighed by countervailing benefits to consumers or to competition,” the watchdog believes that with an absence of rules for web-based services, the FTC would lack “sound intellectual and legal framework for its work” possibly resulting in commission utilising ambiguous rules to settle on a ruling....

We’ve previously covered services that turn yourtweetsandFacebook statusesinto books, so why not your emails too? While many emails are quick, unimportant exchanges, some could well be the kinds of important letters to friends and family that you might want to keep a permanent physical record of. Memeoirscomes from Belgian companyFitMemesand makes the process of creating a paperback or hard cover volume of your favourite email messages quick and easy. Supporting Gmail and Yahoo Mail, the site connects to your email account....

San Francisco startup Flotype this week releasedNowJS, a web framework that makes developing real-time apps easier. The framework essentially allows real-time communication between server-side and client-side code so that they behave like a single program. This simplifies the process of developing complicated real-time applications, such as chatrooms, news web apps and notification systems. In true startup style, the company was founded by a group of Berkeley drop-outs — Darshan Shankar, Eric Zhang and Sridatta Thatipamala....