While there is an app to match nearly every desire, finding exactly what you want in the App Store can be a daunting project–so much so that it’s now considered good business simply steering users toward what they’re after.

Appolicious Inc., which uses a Web-based service to do just that, has raised $1.5 million from Apex Partners, after having raised a seed round of $500,000 from the same firm in May.

“In the real world, you just turn to your buddy and say, ‘What’s the best app for football scores?’ That’s what Appolicious is,” Chief Executive Alan Warms said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

About a month ago, BoomTown reported that MSN executive producer and general manager Jeff Dossett (pictured here) was contemplating joining Yahoo.

Microsoft (MSFT) released a statement that day saying Dossett was indeed stepping down from his MSN duties, as I had posted, but noted that he was staying put at the software giant.

Oops, it looks like I was right in my initial report: “The Secret Microsoft Invasion of Yahoo Continues: MSN GM Headed There Soon?”

Dossett has accepted a job as SVP, U.S. Audience at Yahoo, Yahoo (YHOO) said in a press release this afternoon.

“I am very excited about this new leadership opportunity at Yahoo,” wrote Dossett in an email to me. “Of course, I have great respect for my many friends and colleagues at Microsoft and I wish them well.”

But is the hire linked to my report earlier today of Yahoo Media Group SVP Scott Moore leaving?

You betcha, as Governor Sarah Palin says.

While the company had already been deep in conversations with Dossett for another job, as head of business development, management scrambled after Moore reportedly told Yahoo of his plans to leave a week ago.

After BoomTown this morning reported that Moore, as well as Yahoo News general manager Alan Warms, were departing later this week, Yahoo confirmed the departures this afternoon.

Dossett will report to Hilary Schneider, executive vice president of Yahoo U.S., and fill the role previously held by Moore, although the title is different. Yahoo said Moore was leaving “to pursue other opportunities.”

A Yahoo spokesman also said later about Warms:

“We’ve worked with Alan over the last couple of months on an orderly transition plan of his responsibilities over to Neeraj Khemlani, who will continue to lead Programming & Development for News & Information at Yahoo. We wish Alan much success in his future endeavors and know that Neeraj will continue driving Yahoo News to even greater success.”

Dossett will have presumably have purview over all that and more.

A longtime and experienced mountain climber, he has been one of the more senior digital execs at Microsoft.

The reason given for Dossett’s departure from Microsoft, announced internally in mid-September, was to also “pursue other opportunities” (I still love this phrase, as oily as it is.)

As I wrote then: “While the hire is not yet complete, that apparently means that he is likely going to rival and onetime Microsoft quarry Yahoo as a senior exec.”

It has all been an interesting digital-musical-chair trend, in fact. Also last month, another former Microsoft big shot, Joanne Bradford, started her job as Yahoo’s top U.S. ad sales exec.

Bradford came to Yahoo after a very short stint as national ad sales head at the trendy Los Angeles start-up, Spot Runner.

Previous to that, Bradford (pictured here) had been at Microsoft for many years, most recently as VP and chief media officer of MSN Media Network.

While at Microsoft, Jeff Dossett was a close colleague of Bradford, so his moving to Yahoo is probably not that much of a surprise.

Outgoing Yahoo Media Group SVP Moore, who has been at Yahoo since 2005, is another former Microsoft digital exec, where he worked all over the company.

In his job at MSN, Dossett was the lead for audience, content and programming strategy and execution in the U.S.

He had worked at the company since 1991, in a variety of sales and marketing jobs in Canada, and later worked on strategy and business development for MSN.

Dossett was also CEO of Carpoint, now MSN Autos, and was GM of its real estate arm.

He also took two years off from Microsoft in 2002 to climb the highest mountains on each of the seven continents, finally reaching the summit of Mount Everest in May of 2004.

Dossett reached the summit of Everest again for a second time this past May.

Here is Yahoo’s press release about his appointment in its entirety:

JEFF DOSSETT JOINS YAHOO! TO LEAD US AUDIENCE BUSINESSES

In 2002, Dossett took two years away from his career at Microsoft to pursue his passion for adventure with a goal to climb the highest mountain on each of the seven continents, known as the “Seven Summits.” Reaching the summit of Mount Everest on May 24, 2004, Dossett became the third Canadian in history to successfully complete the Seven Summits. On May 22nd, 2008, Jeff became the second Canadian in history to reach the summit Mount Everest for the second time. He serves on the Board of Advisors of VillageReach (www.villagereach.org), GOOD Worldwide Inc. (www.good.is), and Live Mocha (www.livemocha.com). Dossett holds a degree in business administration with honors from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario in Canada.

Aside from upcoming layoffs, it seemed as if Yahoo had stanched the flow of major execs from the company.

Not so, it seems, as several sources with knowledge of the situation confirm that the two top execs of the troubled Internet company’s media unit will be announcing their departures later this week.

SVP Scott Moore (pictured here), who runs Yahoo’s media group out of its offices in Santa Monica, Calif., and also Alan Warms, who came to Yahoo from its BuzzTracker acquisition last year and is head of Yahoo News, Tech and Education, will both be leaving.

It is not clear what their future plans are.

Moore declined to comment when reached by phone, and Warms did not return an email requesting comment. Yahoo also did not yet respond to a request for comment.

In any case, the departures are troublesome as Yahoo (YHOO) tries to right itself, especially since its content operations are among its bright spots. Yahoo’s various sites are some of the largest on the Web, such as its news, finance and sports online franchises.

Overall, the media properties hit more than 70 million unique visitors monthly.

Losing top execs is also a problem as Yahoo also attempts to complete a merger with Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL. Talks between the companies have been ongoing for months.

With high-ranking Yahoo execs like Moore gone, it will likely fall to AOL execs, such as its content head Bill Wilson, who will be more likely to head integration efforts, if a deal is ever struck.

And while no replacement for Moore has been selected, insiders note that Yahoo Sports head James Pitaro, who has reportedly gotten a number of outside offers, would be a likely internal candidate for the job.

Then again, Yahoo’s management might reorganize yet again, creating another new set-up for its content operations or add new execs.

[Update: Later today, Yahoo named former Microsoft digital exec Jeff Dossett, who was the lead for audience, content and programming strategy and execution in the U.S., as its new SVP for Audience. I had reported last month that Dossett was being considered for a big job at Yahoo, although Microsoft denied it at the time.]

Rumors of Moore’s departure have been swirling for months, especially recently outside the company. BoomTown previously reported he was looking at starting a new venture.

I did a video interview in July (see below) with Moore about his plans for the Media Group, where he has worked since he came to Yahoo in mid-2005 from a series of major posts at Microsoft (MSFT).

At Microsoft, he ran its various content operations for many years. Moore came to Yahoo to work for Lloyd Braun, the Hollywood exec who left Yahoo under yet another swirl of controversy.

His portfolio grew when Braun’s other No. 2–Vince Broady–was re-orged out of his job last December, giving Moore purview over the whole Media Group.

In Yahoo’s latest reorganization, Moore has been reporting to U.S. head Hilary Schneider, in a move to better align its media and advertising sales.

Moore and his staff have tried a range of large and small experiments in original content, some of which have worked and some of which have not.

Interestingly, Yahoo has not abandoned its original content effort at all, doing newsy programming like political debates and even an online interview with President George Bush.

But the company seemed to be settling into a pattern best exemplified by its recently launched Tech Ticker, which is a combination of Yahoo’s own inexpensively produced but well done content and videos and that of outside contributors (AllThingsD.com content is featured there, for example).

More to come, but here is the interview with Moore from this summer:

Today, the Internet giant will announce the purchase of a clever Web site called BuzzTracker, which uses a combination of editorial selection and complex algorithms to aggregate content from all over the Web, allowing users to delve deeply into specific topics.

For those techies, it is not unlike the very fine TechMeme, which essentially has its digital thumb on the pulse of tech news and is a big traffic driver in the sector.

While Yahoo did not disclose the price it paid for BuzzTracker, sources close to the company said it bought the site–which is wholly owned by Chicago-based Participate Media–for about $5 million.

Earlier this week, Yahoo’s European head Toby Coppel struck an interesting ad and search deal with social-networking site Bebo. And last week, Yahoo bought behavorial ad-serving network BlueLithium for $300 million.

So it looks likes the lights might be on over there at Yahoo, which has been struggling to reinvigorate itself of late and by necessity under Yang’s leadership.

Back to BuzzTracker: Using its own technology, BuzzTracker creates “custom content feeds” automatically that aggregate news, blogs, reviews, discussions, video and audio. But to add a level of quality, it handpicks the 90,000 online content sources it uses.

Its motto is: “All the News the Buzz Approves.”

As BuzzTracker explains on its site: “Our goal has been to launch a news site that leverages the power of the ‘head of the long tail’ of the blogosphere to automatically generate news pages for a multitude of topics, both broad and narrow.”

To determine relevance of an item, for example, it looks at a range of elements, such as what the most blogged-about story for a particular topic is.

Yahoo had looked at other better-known competitors in the space, said sources, such as the San Francisco-based Sphere (which we use on this site for such content aggregation).

But those trendier (and more popular) start-ups apparently had too lofty valuations.

In an interview, Yahoo Media Group exec Scott Moore said he had connected with Participate’s founder and CEO Alan Warms, in fact, at our D5 conference in late May. (Another coincidence: I covered one of the early start-ups at which Warms was a senior exec called Freeloader, based in D.C., for the Washington Post.)

Moore said he had been looking around for such automated-news and content-discovery functionality, in order to augment the efforts of Yahoo’s 60-person news team.

“We want to connect our users to as much information as possible, anything from Britney Spears to the Santa Monica City Council meeting notes,” he said. “We love BuzzTracker’s usefulness, because if you’re interested enough, you might want related content we might not be publishing and hosting.”

The purchase is clearly part of Yahoo’s renewed efforts to link to more third-party content, rather than pointing at its own owned-and-operated properties.

As part of the deal, Warms will become vice president and general manager of Yahoo News, which Moore said currently has an audience of 36 million unique visitors a month.

Participate has said on its Web site that it will soon include user-review and discussion sites to layer over the aggregation at BuzzTracker, much like what happens on the popular Digg service.

According to sources at Yahoo, the company has already built a Digg competitor, but has not launched it yet. It is not clear if that effort would be integrated into BuzzTracker or not.