Foursquare, the New York-based location services startup, has more than 500,000 users and 1.4 million venues, it announced today, one year after it launched at SXSW. The company says it had its biggest day ever last Friday, with 275,000 check-ins.

The iPhone has many advantages over smartphone competitors, but one thing it hasn't had that users have been clamoring for is true multitasking. Now, true app backgrounding capabilities are said to be on the way in iPhone OS 4.0.

Microsoft faces a tough assignment when it comes to regaining its relevance in mobile, but there's no shortage of players who have a vested interest in seeing Windows Phone succeed. Here are some of those rooting for Microsoft's upcoming mobile OS to...

Betaworks, a New York City-based Internet company, has raised $20 million in new venture funding in a round led by Intel Capital and RRE Ventures. Softbank, Founders Collective, DFJ Growth, AOL Ventures and the New York Times are new investors in the...

My inbox is littered with friend requests on Gowalla, a check-in service that I can use to show my location. But when I get these emails from strangers I have never met, talked to, tweeted with or emailed, I don't really know what to do.

Verizon Wireless said it will launch its first LTE handsets by the middle of 2011. But the super-fast handsets are likely to come with usage pricing models that will see high-end users pay substantially more for 4G service than they're currently payi...

When iTunes web preview pages first appeared for songs and albums the industry was abuzz with the possibility that iTunes could be migrating to the cloud. iTunes preview has so far had little impact on how we use purchased media content, but it has h...

We know there are lot of entrants in the group deals space -- see my recent piece Groupon and the Wannabes -- but now the competitors are seriously bulking up. LivingSocial is today announcing it's raised a $25 million Series B round.

Digg, the San Francisco-based social media company, is dropping MySQL and instead betting its future on Cassandra, an open-source data store. It’s just the latest sign of the growing popularity of the software, which was developed (and open sourced...

Faced with declining revenues and increasingly dismal prospects, some mainstream media outlets are adopting questionable tactics. A liberally funded LA startup is only too quick to help them. The story starts with San Francisco-based sex writer Viole...

Future media will be consumed on the go, said Rob Glaser, former CEO of RealNetworks, in a speech today. He also forecast that by 2013 the installed base of smart and superphones will exceed the installed base of PCs.

Facebook redesigned at the beginning of February, moving its search box from the right side to the top middle of its home page, and it seems to have paid off, with the company's U.S. search queries growing 10 percent in February, according to comScor...

A little-known white-label mobile social network company is suing Google and Facebook for patent infringement. Wireless Ink, maker of Winksite, says it owns the intellectual property for enabling users to join social networks from their mobile phones...

Big consumer issues such as the availability of internet apps on mobile devices and metered broadband are outside FCC authority said Kevin Martin, the former FCC chairman speaking today in Seattle. He also expressed doubt that adding spectrum alone w...

CA today announced that it is acquiring privately held Nimsoft, which makes performance and availability monitoring software, in an all cash transaction valued at $350 million. According to CA, Nimsoft will help it better serve "emerging enterprises"...

From new data stores to large-scale databases to cloud-based storage services, it seems VC dollars these days are primarily flowing into two important (if somewhat unsexy) technology sectors: storage and big data. Here are some of the recent fundings...