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I’ve recently had the chance to preview two new websites that promise to significantly advance the quality of social gaming as delivered through the browser.

The first is a project led by GarageGames and backed by IAC called InstantAction that brings straight into the browser graphically complex games that appeal to competitive gamers.

The second is a site called Cafe.com by an international company called Boonty. It is intended more for casual gamers who want to use gaming more as a way to meet people and socialize online rather than compete.

InstantAction is going live today so anyone can go and check it out (they’ll have four games available to start and more coming soon). Cafe.com will remain in private beta for awhile longer, but the company has given us 10,000 invitations - just go here and enter “techcrunch” as your invitation code. You’ll also start off with 10,000 CafeCoins, the site’s virtual currency, which are worth about $10 and can be used to buy virtual goods.

InstantAction

With InstantAction, you can play games in-browser that look more like Xbox or PC games. To fully appreciate the quality improvements, you have to see them for yourself:

What’s especially impressive is that these games are not even based in Flash or Silverlight. Rather, they run on top of a cross-browser compatible, 150k custom plugin that only has to be downloaded once. The plugin, which has been developed for two and a half years, works with games that are programmed in pretty much any language (C++, Java, Python, etc.).

Right now the following four titles are available - Marble Blast, Screw Jumper, Think Tanks, and Cyclomite. The first two are actually popular Xbox games that have been ported over to InstantAction’s platform. While these games have single player versions, the focus is on competitive multiplayer games. And inviting your friends to the service is easy; you only have to give them a URL and they can join you quite quickly, even if your game has already begun.

The site does use a good deal of Flash and Ajax to manage game lobbies, friends lists, and chat. When playing games, you’ll always see a list of the people in your party and a chat room on the right-hand side of the screen. You can use this area to communicate with others and quickly switch over to new games while keeping the same group of people participating.

The games to be included on the site will come mostly from smaller game studios run by veterans of the bigger studios who have escaped their more corporate environments. These include Wideload Studios, run by the same guy who founded Bungee and came up with Halo.

Among the advantages of running games from the browser is the ability to make updates and fixes without imposing downloads on users. Producers can also make money from new revenue sources such as the sale of virtual goods, subscriptions, and tournament fees.

I suspect that over time we’ll see even more advanced games run through InstantAction; ones that appeal even more to hardcore gamers who just don’t have the time to buy, install, and learn new games anymore. The next game to be added - Fallen Empire: Legions - is particularly impressive and will certainly take the platform in that direction (see a sneak preview of the game here).

Cafe.com

Browser-based casual gaming is nothing new (see Kongregate, the gaming networks on Facebook, and the astronomical popularity of Scrabulous in particular). But Cafe.com is the most developed social networking-gaming hybrid that I’ve seen so far, both in terms of the integration of social features and the quality of gameplay.

In contrast to InstantAction, Cafe.com will appeal to a broader audience that includes housewives and females in general (who actually make up the primary audience for online casual games). CEO Roman Nouzareth says that the target demographic is Generation X, which consists of 25-40 year olds.

The design and functionality of the site reflects that it was designed for a less “gamer” audience in mind. The tone is lighthearted and only mildly competitive. Games include pictionary, chinese checkers, Sodoku, and billiards.

As with InstantAction, the focus is on multiplayer games that can be played instantly with friends (Cafe.com bases its games primarily in Flash and HTML). But Cafe.com has also been constructed with an emphasis on member reputations and personas. Users can build out profiles with highly customizable 3D avatars (called “MiniMes”) that will be loaded into games themselves to represent characters there. As with other social networks, you can make friends with other members and message them. Nouzareth says that he wants Cafe.com to be the place where people manage their online gaming personas, while they go elsewhere to manage their more generic personas.

Virtual currency and the purchase of so-called “boosts” are particularly central to Cafe.com’s ecosystem. Members can purchase CafeCoins using real money and then use them to buy three main types of goods: attacks, defenses, and social items like virtual flowers. Gaming-specific goods can be purchased outside of gameplay and added to one’s collection for use when the time comes during gameplay. CafeCoins can also be used to buy things like new clothes for your avatar.

Two APIs are being worked on for Cafe.com: one that allows for the integration of games into the site, and one that will allow for the exporting of data elsewhere. The former is already available and being used both by the company’s own developers and by the handful of outside developers that it has worked with so far. The idea with the latter API is that users eventually will be able to export their Cafe.com profile information elsewhere, for example, to display their gaming reputations other social networking profiles.

Nouzareth says in reference to Pogo.com, one of the biggest social gaming sites in the United States: if Pogo were to have a baby with Facebook, that baby would be named Cafe.com. Grab your invitation and CafeCoins (see above) to find out yourself how that comparison holds up. This will give you a taste:

Social lending site Zopa is to launch in Japan, following its expansion to the US and Italy from its UK base. The site, three years old today, has attracted around £18 million of funding, including that from Benchmark Capital, which has also invested in US competitor Prosper. Zopa is an online marketplace where people meet to lend and borrow money. With no bank in the middle, both parties can potentially get better rates. Since March of 2005, Zopa has handled more than £20m in unsecured personal loans in the UK. However, although Zopa was the first, there are now more than 20 person-to-person online social lenders around the globe. GlobeFunder is a US competitor which launched in January this year. Gartner predicts that by 2010 social banking will make up 10% of the banking market. More on TechCrunch UK.

Apple made a number of major announcements today around the iPhone. We live blogged the event if you want to see all of the details. But if you want a summary of the important parts, read on.

Two things happened worth noting. First, the iPhone is no longer just a really fun phone/Internet device. It now supports Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, meaning it can hold its own against any other business device out there (more on that below). Second, Apple gave more details on its previously announced software development kit that will allow third parties to get their software onto the iPhone. From the demo’s shown today, developers by the thousands will be clamoring to jump on board.

The iPhone still has a tiny 0.14% market share in the mobile world. But even so, Apple CEO Steve Jobs claims that 71% of web browsing on smart phones occurs on iPhones. As someone who’s used many mobile devices over the last couple of years, that’s a believable statistic. Surfing the web on an iPhone, with the high resolution screen and touch interface is a superior experience.

iPhone: Enterprise Ready

Last summer we compared the iPhone to the BlackBerry 8820 on business features, and it lost hands down. The iPhone still has big limitations that make it less useful for business users, particularly battery life. And many users cannot adapt to the iPhone touch screen, preferring physical buttons. But announcements made today make the iPhone’s core office functionality as good as any other device out there. And the iPhone still has, by far, the superior browsing experience and user interface.

Version 2.0 of the iPhone software now supports Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync. That means much better syncing with the desktop, and not just when the iPhone is physically connected to your computer. If you use Microsoft Exchange, you can now easily set up the iPhone to work with it so you enjoy push email, calendar and contacts.

Business users will also have VPN connectivity, certificates and identities, enterprise WiFi, enforced security policies, device configuration, and remote data wipes.

While users can only configure one Exchange account at a time, setup takes only about 20 seconds (assuming your company already has an Exchange server running). The iPhone applications relevant to Exchange - such as Mail, Contacts, and Calendar - will all retain the same look and feel.

Apple has been working with Nike and Disney to test the new Exchange Server support.

Hi Developers, Come On In

Before today the iPhone was a closed platform that only gave third party applications access via the browser (or though hacks). The company says that over 1,000 iPhone specific websites have been created.

Now Apple is opening up all of its internal APIs and tools for 3rd party software developers. These include a version of the Cocoa programming environment called Cocoa Touch that focuses on the idea of touch as an input. It allows for multi-touch events and controls, use of the built-in accelerometer and camera, and other things like hierarchy views, localization, alerts, web views, people pickers, and image pickers.

There is also now a version of Xcode that can be used to build applications for the iPhone. It can code completely to the APIs in the iPhone SDK, and it can handle both project management and source control management. It has a debugger that can be used remotely on a Mac (plug your iPhone into your desktop and debug from there).

There are also three other new tools: Interface Builder, Instruments, and iPhone Simulator. Interface Builder lets you drag-n-drop an interface together for your new iPhone app. Instruments is a suite of performance analytics tools. And iPhone Simulator simulates the entire API stack of the iPhone letting you test an iPhone app from your Mac.

The SDK kit is available immediately. Go here to learn more. You have to join the Apple developer program ($99) to start making iPhone apps. Or iPod touch apps, for that matter, since the SDK applies to that device as well.

Application Demonstrations

Both Apple and its launching partners demonstrated new applications for the iPhone. Apple demonstrated a program called Touch Effects that let you easily distort photos you have taken and even erase them by just shaking your phone (think Photobooth for your handheld). A game called Touch Fighter was demonstrated to show how the accelerometer could be used as controls.

Among the launch partners, Electronic Arts debuted the highly-anticipated game Spore on the iPhone. Salesforce showed how iPhone users will be able to track sales leads, AOL showed off an instant messaging client, Epocrates demoed a drug lookup application, and SEGA played a Super Monkey Ball game.

Application Distribution

Apple confirmed the rumor that iTunes would be the only way for users to buy and download iPhone applications. Customers will be able to browse and search for applications, some of which will be provided for free. Developers will get 70% of the sales revenue paid monthly and with no credit card fees. Restrictions, however, have been placed on the type of applications that can be sold: no pornography, nothing illegal, no bandwidth hogs, and nothing that could cause “unforeseen” problems. VoIP will also not be allowed over cellular connections, just WiFi.

Even though application development starts today, users will not be able to download them until June. And companies who want to distribute applications internally will have to wait for Apple to come up with a solution for that.

iFund

Jobs’s “one more thing” today was the announcement of a so-called iFund by Kleiner Perkins that will dedicate $100M to companies who want to develop new applications for the iPhone or iPod touch. John Doerr called Jobs the “world’s greatest entrepreneur” and “supreme commander of the rebels” from onstage. See our post about the fund for more details.

Amazon is to starting selling wine from its site to US customers.

According to FT.com, Amazon is currently looking to recruit a senior wine buyer who will be responsible for “the acquisition of a massive new product selection.”

Online alcohol sales have been a difficult market in the United States due to the multitude of laws in relation to online alcohol sales in different states. The market though is somewhat easier to enter today than during the first web boom, with the US Supreme Court having ruled that state governments may not prohibit residents from ordering directly from out-of-state wineries in 2005.

Amazon invested $30 million into Wineshopper.com in 1999. The site lasted one year. Sales of wine in the United States totaled $30 billion in 2007.