Phandroid.com
Apple holds second place US smartphone share
Macworld
Market research firm ComScore is back with the latest numbers on the battle for consumers' hearts and minds in the US smartphone arena. On the positive side, Apple's share continued to grow, holding steady in second place after BlackBerry-maker ...
Survey: Cellphone Music, Web Access Rising Along With Smartphone UseTwice
Google smartphone share more than doubles, Blackberry still No. 1Bizjournals.com
Android picks up more US subscribers as Windows Mobile share plungesBetaNews
Mobile Burn -TopNews United States -CNNMoney.com (blog)
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IT software giant CA has acquired cloud monitoring startup Nimsoft for $350 million according to a release issued today. Nimsoft offers performance monitoring software to businesses.

CA is making a big move towards the cloud. The company just bought up 3Tera, Cassatt, NetQoS and Oblicore.

Nimsoft’s solutions gives companies visibility into the performance and availability of their customers’ business applications across both internal and external IT infrastructures. Nimsoft has developed monitoring and reporting solutions for public cloud and on-demand offerings like Google Apps for Business, The Rackspace Cloud, Amazon Web Services and EC2, Salesforce.com, as well as internal applications, databases, and physical and virtual server environments. CA says that Nimsoft will help the company capitalize on the growth of cloud computing. Nimsoft has approximately 800 customers.

Founded in 2002, Nimsoft raised a total of $22.3 million in funding and acquired Indicative Software in 2008.

CrunchBase InformationNimsoftInformation provided by CrunchBase

CBC.ca
Science academies to review climate report production
USA Today
An international science academies panel will review the workings of the United Nation's Nobel-Prize-winning climate report, officials announced Wednesday. The move follows criticism of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report, ...
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CBC.ca
Best Buy Seeks First-Mover Advantage With 3D TV
Wall Street Journal
Best Buy Co. Inc. (BBY) has tied up with Panasonic Corp. (PC) to exclusively sell the Japanese electronics giant's first three-dimensional TV home-entertainment system bundle in the US The $2899.99 bundle--encompassing a 50-inch plasma ...
Panasonic, Best Buy double down on 3D TVCNET
Panasonic's first 3-D TV set in $2900 packageThe Associated Press
Panasonic ties with Best Buy for 3D TV promotionReuters
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MiamiHerald.com
Obama facing uprising over new NASA strategy
Reuters
WASHINGTON, March 10 (Reuters) - US President Barack Obama is trying to tamp down an uprising in politically vital Florida against a new strategy for NASA that has rankled space veterans and lawmakers and sparked fears of job losses. ...
NASA space shuttle gearing up for big phase outBusinessWeek
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Shuttle Program Could Keep Going With More MoneyRedOrbit
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TG Daily
OnLive Cloud Gaming Service to Launch in June
PC World
For the price of a low-end PC plus a monthly fee you'll soon be able to play ultra-high-end games like Borderlands, Mass Effect 2, Assassin's Creed 2, and Crysis. According to VentureBeat, the service, dubbed OnLive, will launch in June after eight ...
OnLive Remote Gaming Service Turns On in JunePC Magazine
Cloud video game service OnLive to launch in JuneReuters
Potential console killer OnLive to go live June 17CNET
InformationWeek -The Associated Press -Gamasutra
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Telegraph.co.uk
Google Maps for Biking: Where's the Mobile App?
PC World
Missing from Google's announcement Wednesday that biking directions would be added to Google Maps is any word of support for smartphones. For the bicycle bound, that own smartphones, it looks like you're going to have to print your maps out before you ...
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Today during a panel on disruptive game platforms at GDC’s GamesBeat, a panel of gaming execs took the stage to talk about the current situation in gaming. The standout speaker so far has been hi5 President and CTO Alex St. John, who has not pulled any punches in his criticisms of Facebook and other companies. Moments ago, he just attacked Zynga, calling its games mediocre and saying that its success stemmed from spamming users.

Here’s what he said (paraphrased): “Zynga makes mediocre games. What Zynga discovered is that Facebook had left an opening for spam. They acquired a lot of audience from a security loophole that Facebook has since closed. And they aren’t social. Their only social game is Poker — it’s the only one that you can chat in. All subsquent games are turn based and spread over days.”

The audience’s response? A round of clapping.

Earlier in the panel, St. John said that Facebook was somewhat schizophrenic, offering users both more professional features and gaming. Of course, hi5 is now a dedicated gaming platform, so he isn’t exactly an unbiased observer.

PC World
Microsoft's Patch Tuesday Party Gets Troublesome Surprise
TechNewsWorld
The expected batch of patches wasn't the only thing Windows users got with Microsoft's latest Patch Tuesday update. The set of fixes was accompanied by a warning about an unpatched zero-day exploit for Internet Explorer. ...
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Microsoft Bares Internet Explorer Weakness Targeted By HackersAHN | All Headline News
Microsoft Fixes Eight Flaws In Excel, Movie MakerChannelWeb
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If you’re excited about the mysterious array of special Foursquare badges promised for this year’s SXSW, then you’ll probably want to skip this post. Otherwise, read on.

A site dedicated to Foursquare badges appropriately called Foursquarebadg.es has taken advantage of a technical glitch this morning to identify 15 special badges that will be available during this year’s SXSW conference, which starts this week in Austin, Texas.

The criteria needed to unlock some of the badges are still unknown, but some of them are pretty easy to guess based on their titles. Hangover is apparently earned by checking in late at night and then early the following morning. Karaoke RV is earned by taking a ride on the infamous vehicle, which cruises around downtown Austin as its occupants belt out bad renditions of Journey. There’s Panel Nerd, which the site guesses is earned by heading to the Convention Center before noon for three days during the conference. And Early Adopter goes to the not-so-elite crowd that was checking in at SXSW using Foursquare last year, when the service was just getting started. For the full list, check out the Foursquarebadg.es page.

Personally, I stopped caring much about my Foursquare badges around 9 months ago (hence my previous post on why I think this model will grow old, and why Foursquare needs to innovate beyond just making new badges). That said, I’m sure the rampant use of Foursquare at SXSW by fellow techies will rekindle my competitive attitude for at least a few days. And for no apparent reason, I really want to get the still-mysterious special  Swimmies badge.

CrunchBase Information Foursquare Information provided by CrunchBase

When Blippy launched a few months ago, the idea was to get the site up there as bare-bones as possible so it was simple to people. That makes sense since the idea of sharing your credit card transaction data was (and remains) highly controversial. But despite the controversy, users have embraced Blippy. So now it’s time to give it a fresh coat of paint — and a new privacy feature.

Today, Blippy has undergone a massive redesign. Previously, Blippy was a stream of your friends’ transactions and little else. Now, it’s much more robust. In fact, it looks very similar to the most recent redesign of Facebook. You’ll notice the new update indicators next to the logo that get badged with a number when there is an update. You’ll also notice a search box front and center (for now, this is only to search for businesses or users).

More important than the redesign is the new feature Blippy is launching. Starting today, you can manually review each purchase before it’s displayed on Blippy. This is an important step in the direction of better privacy controls. Previously, you could pick and choose which sources you imported your transaction data from, but it was an all-or-nothing proposition. You could remove items after they appeared in your stream, but not before. Now you can do that by approving each one. A bit of a pain? Sure, but for some who are really concerned about privacy, this is a welcome addition (of course, you may wonder why they’d be using Blippy in the first place, but hey, people are weird).

This new setting will be displayed when users hook up their credit card or e-commerce account for the first time to Blippy.

Blippy has already streamed about $15 million in purchases, co-founder Philip Kaplan notes. “Today, thousands of people are automatically sharing purchases on Blippy. I think of it as ‘a stream of cool stuff my friends are buying.’ The additional level of control we’re introducing will make it even easier for people to share just want they want to share — whether a new iPhone app, movie from Netflix, favorite bar or restaurant, or grocery store run,” Kaplan says.

In January, Blippy raised a $1.6 million round of funding. The company is also getting some traction with retailers — though not all of them.

CrunchBase InformationBlippyInformation provided by CrunchBase

No wonder Apple is suing HTC for patent infringement over its Android phones. In the three months between October and January, Android’s overall share of smartphone subscribers in the U.S. rose 4.3 points to 7.1 percent, according to mobile market share data released by comScore.  Android showed the biggest single gain of any of the top five smartphone platforms.  Apple’s share was virtually flat at 25.2 percent (up 0.3 percent), while RIM’s Blackberries saw a 1.7 percent gain to 43 percent.

Overall, 42.7 million people in the U.S. owned a  smartphone during the period, up 18 percent. So even though Apple’s relative share didn’t go anywhere, it still grew with the market.  But watching RIM and Android phones take share cannot be pleasant for the folks at Cupertino.  The iPhone still rules the mobile Web, but again here Android is catching up fast.  Time to release a new iPhone.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile and Palm saw drops in their shares.  Windows Mobile was down 4 percent and Palm was down 2.1 percent.

Top Smartphone Platforms

3 Month Avg. Ending Jan. 2010 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Oct. 2009

Total U.S. Age 13+
Source: comScore MobiLens Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers Oct-09 Jan-10 Point Change Total Smartphone Subscribers 100.0% 100.0% N/A RIM 41.3% 43.0% 1.7 Apple 24.8% 25.1% 0.3 Microsoft 19.7% 15.7% -4.0 Google 2.8% 7.1% 4.3 Palm 7.8% 5.7% -2.1

Photo credit: Flickr/svensonsan.

CrunchBase InformationiPhone 3GSAndroidResearch In MotionInformation provided by CrunchBase

Austin 360
Cable, sat TV firms ask gov't to stop TV blackouts
The Associated Press
Cable, satellite TV and other video providers have asked the government to intervene in ongoing fee disputes with TV networks — big-money fights that are expected to escalate this year as more contracts expire. The most recent showdown between the two ...
Cable and satellite companies ask FCC for helpUSA Today
The Networks vs. Cable: Oscar-Night Battle Is a Sign of Things to ComeTIME
Cable group wants US FCC to end fee disputesReuters
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Reuters
Former FCC Chair Says More Fiber Will Help Wireless Crunch
PC World
Laying more fiber is one way to make more efficient use of wireless spectrum, former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin said on Wednesday. Speaking at a Mobile Monday event in Seattle, ...
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2009 TechCrunch50 winner Redbeacon, a service that pairs consumers with service providers, is releasing a number of new features today, launching a distribution relationship and sharing key data from their beta trial. The 50,000 foot view is, this startup has legs.

Users go to Redbeacon and search for real world service providers (housekeepers, plumbers, handyman, personal trainers, etc.). The service sends you firm quotes from local service providers, based on price and other factors, such as previous reviews and expertise with the specific job you want done. You can book an appointment online, and Redbeacon takes a 10% fee from the service provider.

The service first went live in the San Francisco bay area in October, and now has thousands of local service providers.

Most queries receive firm quotes within an hour, they say, and many get quotes within minutes. 100% of queries have received firm quotes, and “a very high percentage” of users are then booking appointments, says cofounder Ethan Anderson.

But the beta period has given the company much needed feedback, too. Service provider profiles need to have a lot more information, they say, for users to feel comfortable booking with them (and perhaps bringing them into their home). So the company has greatly expanded profiles to give that information. Redbeacon has also created better tools to allow users and providers to communicate before, during and after a job.

User can now upload more information on a job, such as a picture of the problem (a hole in the wall for a handyman, etc.). That leads to more and better quotes, says Anderson. We sat down with him at TechCrunch yesterday to talk about the company:

New Features, New Deal

Today Redbeacon is adding a social feature to the product that allows users to ask friends about which quotes they should accept, or to recommend different providers. They’re doing this through Facebook Connect, and allowing users to post their questions directly onto Facebook. This has the added benefit of viral marketing, of course.

Recent studies have shown that people love to ask their friends for advice when it comes to buying goods and services, and the success of services like Aardvark, which allow exactly that, aren’t surprising.

Redbeacon is also adding organization memberships and badges for services providers (BBB, etc.). This gives extra assurance to users that the provider is legitimate.

First Distribution Deal

Redbeacon is also announcing their first third party distribution deal, with Bigtent. These deals push the Redbeacon product directly into third party sites in exchange for a revenue share with the partner. Look for more of these over time, says Anderson.

The Value In Redbeacon: Real Reviews

Redbeacon provides a valuable service that blows away things like the Yellow Pages. But there’s also a hidden gem – the service knows for sure when a transaction occurs, so a review by a user is going to be legitimate. All those problems with fake review on Yelp will be avoided on Redbeacon.

Redbeacon pulls in review from Yelp, Google, etc. as well. But over time the review data they gather will be far more valuable than those services, simply because of verified transactions.

What’s most amazing about Redbeacon is that the startup has held off on raising any outside capital at all until now, despite a feeding frenzy around the company (multiple venture capitalists and angel investors have begged us for introductions over the last few months). I’d imagine that fast will soon be over. Now’s the time to raise a good round of financing and push Redbeacon to multiple markets beyond the bay area.

CrunchBase InformationRedbeaconEthan AndersonInformation provided by CrunchBase

Yesterday brought news that Facebook is planning to launch its location offering at its f8 conference in the end of April. In first reporting the news, the New York Times noted that “the company was not trying to beat the smaller location-based social networks, such as Loopt, Foursquare and Gowalla.” From what we’re hearing, that’s true — because they could be using some of those services to federate check-ins.

How do we know? Because it appears that a Facebook employee has been showing the app around to friends. One person who has seen it notes that the icon for the location feature has a pushpin on a map. This was apparently a beta version of an app, but the functionality, if Facebook chooses to go with it, would likely be built into the massively popular Facebook iPhone app.

When reached for comment, all Facebook would say is, “We are constantly experimenting with new ideas and products internally. We don’t have anything more to share at this time.” That’s not exactly a denial at all.

What Foursquare and Gowalla (the two location apps specifically cited by a source) had to say was more interesting. Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley danced around the idea of working with Facebook on such a feature, but notes that anyone can access their check-in data through Foursquare’s API. And in fact, plenty of users are already pushing their check-ins to Facebook through Connect, he notes. Also, this page is sort of interesting. It’s what we call a placeholder.

Meanwhile, Gowalla founder Josh Williams said a bit more:

It’s no surprise that Facebook is wading into the location waters (cannonball!) — our ultimate goal at Gowalla is to provide the easiest and most fun way to share location with friends, regardless of where that information is distributed… Facebook, Twitter, etc. It will be important for folks like Facebook and Twitter to clearly spell out how this information is used and displayed.

That suggests that both Facebook and Twitter have been looking at ways to import check-in data. Twitter already syndicates the data through its Geolocation API, but as more and more players get involved in the space, it wouldn’t be surprising at all for the upstart players like Gowalla and Foursquare to ask the platforms (Facebook and Twitter) to make it more clear which data is being sent from where. And make no mistake, based on what we’re hearing, that’s exactly what Facebook aims to be with location: a platform. Yes, like their good buddies Twitter.

[photo: flickr/24oranges.nl]

CrunchBase InformationFacebookFoursquareGowallaInformation provided by CrunchBase

In the second installment of a series of open interviews with government leaders, YouTube is going to field questions to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, following the launch of the National Broadband Plan next Tuesday (The FCC is the federal agency that oversees all elements of the U.S. communications sector). The plan aims to connect all Americans to fast, affordable high-speed Internet.

Similar to the question and answer session with President Obama following the State of The Union speech, users can submit video or text questions on CitizenTube via Google Moderator You can then vote on your favorite questions submitted by the community. YouTube will present the top-voted questions to Chairman Genachowski in the interview next Tuesday. The deadline for submission is Sunday, March 14 at 11:59 p.m. PT.

Google and the Obama administration have been working to incorporate the social video sharing site into government events. YouTube also aired the debate between President Obama and lawmakers over the President’s proposed healthcare reform at the Healthcare Summit in February. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader John Boehner, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid answered select questions submitted via Google Moderator at the end of the summit.

CrunchBase InformationYouTubeInformation provided by CrunchBase

Tech Eye
Bing Search Up 37% Since Launch
InformationWeek
New data shows Microsoft making significant inroads against Google and Yahoo in the US search engine market. By Paul McDougall Microsoft's efforts to promote its Bing search engine appear to be paying off—at the expense of partner Yahoo. ...
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During the GamesBeat keynote at GDC today, OnLive CEO Steve Perlman took the stage to showcase the company’s game streaming technology, which allows gamers to play high quality 3D games without a console — OnLive does all of the intense rendering in the cloud, then streams it back to a lightweight client that will work on nearly any computer (it will work on TVs as well with an adapter). We’ve been hearing about the service for quite a while now (as well as its competitor, OTOY), but now OnLive finally has a solid release date: June 17, 2010. At launch, the service will be available in the 48 contiguous states.

The service will have a $14.95 per month base service fee, and then users will purchase games and rentals on an a la carte model on top of that. You’ll be able to purchase multiple months at a time to get a discount on the service. As a special for early users, OnLive is going to waive the service fee for three months for the first 25,000 users to pre-register at this page.

OnLive’s demos are always impressive. Today, Perlman showcased the service’s ability to play recent games like Crysis on a large TV, as well as on his mobile phone (because all the processing is done in the cloud, even an iPhone can handle it). He also showed off other features that OnLive will offer, like streaming movies and Xbox Live-like community features. It looks great, but OnLive still faces one very major hurdle: latency. Because gamers aren’t actually playing their games on a local machine, there’s a slight lag whenever they do anything. And in the case of ‘twitchy’ games like first person shooters, even 50 milliseconds of lag time can make the difference between a perfect kill and getting destroyed by your opponent. It’s unclear how much lag will be present once OnLive is deployed on a wide scale.

At launch OnLive will be available for PC and Mac only, and a MicroConsole TV adapter (which lets your TV hook up to the cloud service) will appear later this year. 1080p60 will be available in 2011 (Perlman says bandwidth available to consumers is what’s holding this back). International announcements are coming later this year.

Also be sure to check out our past coverage of OnLive competitor OTOY.

CrunchBase InformationOnLiveInformation provided by CrunchBase

Wired News
Social network hi5 launches program to court game developers
VentureBeat
Social network hi5 is unveiling a program today that it hopes will snare more social game developers who will make exclusive games for its 50 million users. “We are a gaming destination,” St. John said. “That is all we are going to be. ...
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