We’re in the midst of full-on location war is raging this year at SXSW in Austin, Texas this year. But actually, someone has already won: AT&T.

Yes, despite my concerns, I’m happy to report that the network has been incredibly stable over the past several days. In fact, it’s the best I’ve ever seen AT&T’s network perform — anywhere. Over the past three days I haven’t dropped one call, haven’t missed one voicemail, haven’t been missed any text messages, and the data is flowing freely, allowing my iPhone to actually work.

All naysaying aside, people are pretty excited about Windows Phone 7. Our readers are excited for it. I’d be outright lying if I said I wasn’t excited about it, too. Know who else is excited? The Windows Phone 7 team — but perhaps not for the reasons you’d expect.

With a few years of work finally coming to a head, some of the folks on the Windows Phone 7 team are taking a step back, looking at the fruits of their labor… and leaving. Not because they’re ashamed, and not because they’re being poached by the competition — but because instead of making Windows Phone 7, they want to make things for Windows Phone 7.

Startup Seesmic has perfected the art of developing compelling Twitter clients on a variety of platforms. Seesmic offers a web client, an Adobe Air-powered desktop client, an Android app, a BlackBerry app, a brand friendly Twitter client and a native Windows desktop client. At developer conference MIX today, Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur is announcing a new Silverlight-powered development platform and Seesmic for the Windows Phone.

The new desktop platform from Seesmic is built based off of Silverlight, which is a refreshing change from the buggy Adobe Air platform. The design itself is similar in look and feel to the Windows client, and includes functionality for integrating your Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin accounts. You can also personalize your background of the app. And the new platform works on both Macs and PCs.

The list of people I interviewed at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland earlier this year is starting to look like more like a hit list than a VIP list. Two of them have been relieved of their current positions – MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta and now Ning CEO Gina Bianchini. If I were Jeremy Allaire, Max Levchin, Sheryl Sandberg or Evan Williams, I’d watch my back. They may be coming for you next.

Facing competition from recently acquired AdMob (Google) and Quattro Wireless (Apple), mobile ad network has been steadily working to strengthen their products and offerings. The startup just acquired iPhone app sales analytics software Heartbeat and announced a deal to offer Nielsen’s ad targeting data into its ad exchange to enhance ad targeting. Today, Mobclix is officially launching one of the first SDKs for iPad advertising.

Apple’s new tablet device, which will be delivered to consumers in a few weeks, poses a tremendous opportunity for advertising. The size of the tablet not only allows for larger ad sixes but ads can also be more engaging and media rich, with the possibility of incorporating video and other interactive features. And these means more revenue for advertisers and developers.

I’m here in Austin, Texas, where MOG CEO David Hyman is introducing the service’s new mobile functionality. This is a major step for MOG, and may be an inflection point in the success of the service. Up until now, users have been restricted to using MOG’s streaming music service on their computers. That’s fine for casual listening at work, but as we’ve seen with the success of the mobile versions of Pandora, users want mobile. And that’s what MOG is unveiling today. Read below for my notes.

Hyman kicked off the talk with some background information. MOG Music Network, the editorial-based site hosted at MOG.com reaches 16 million unique visitors a month. In December, the company launched MOG ALL ACCESS, its streaming music service that costs $5/month for all-you-can-eat streaming music. The company is getting 17% conversion from its 3 day free trial (which is high). MOG, Hyman says, is a music service people will actually pay for. But the key will be portability.

MOG’s mobile applications for Android and iPhone will launch in Q2, featuring on-demand streams, downloads, MOG Radio, your library and playlists, High Quality audio, and a $10/month price tag.

Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell, two of Chicago’s best-known tech entrepreneurs, plan to invest as much as $10 million annually in early-stage technology companies through a new fund dubbed Lightbank.

The goal is to provide early-stage startups with seed financing, ranging from 100k to $1 million and fund companies with up to $10 million on an annual basis for the next 10 years. In addition to investing capital, Lightbank intends to take an active role in guiding and nurturing companies through all stages of growth.

The microfinance model has proved to be a valuable way to raise funds for entrepreneurs all over the country, as exemplified by the success of Kiva. Seattle-based Vittana is taking a similar approach to helping fund education in developing countries by allowing you to lend directly to students in the developing world. The idea is to bring student loans to the developing world through the power of person-to-person microlending. Today, the site is existing its beta period.

Vittana partners with microfinance organizations located in developing countries to donate to students in need of funding. Loans for students range from $200 to $1,500, are then funded by individual lenders, via $25 donations or more, on the Vittana website. One hundred percent of the loans are given to the student. Launched in beta last May, the Vittana community has made over $110,000 in loans to nearly 200 students around the world, who are now getting their degrees. Thus far, Vittana has programs in Mongolia, Nicaragua, Paraguay Peru and Vietnam and plans to expand to India and countries in Africa soon. And Vittana students have had a 97 percent repayment rate.

Ning CEO Gina Bianchini is being replaced as the CEO of Ning by COO Jason Rosenthal. Bianchini founded the DIY network of social networks with Marc Andreessen. But after five and half years at the helm, she is ready to try something new. She will transition to an entrepreneur in residence role at Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm started by Andreessen.

In a blog post, Andreessen (who remains chairman of Ning) notes:

A trio of entrepreneurs who led online advertising technology company Accipiter to an acquisition by aQuantive – which was in turn acquired by Microsoft for $6 billion in May 2007 – have returned to startup life after serving a variety of roles in advertising and sales at the Redmond software behemoth.

Jeff Wood, Guy Taylor and Ryan Treichler are today announced their new company, aiMatch, as well as the limited availability for “early adopters” of its online ad technology platform. In addition, the threesome said they have also convinced former Head of Publisher Solutions EMEA for Microsoft Advertising Steve Perks to join the club.

As Apple goes on the offensive against Android, it risks alienating more and more developers. Today, another prominent developer is chose the opposing side. Tim Bray, the well-known software architect and blogger, is joining Google to help rally even more developers around the Android mobile operating system.

Bray is the co-inventor of the XML Web standard, and most recently worked at Sun Microsystems. In a blog post, he explains that he is drawn to Google in part because he hates the iPhone, or at least its closed and controlling environment from a developer’s perspective.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple months, you know that Toyota has had problems with sudden acceleration of some of its vehicles. Apparently, the root cause of the problem is still unknown, which is a little troubling to the average consumer. Toyota claims to be doing everything they can to investigate, but that doesn’t seem to be enough. Now everyone and their brother are suddenly product design engineers and have the gall to tell Toyota what to do and how to do it.

Witness this opinion piece in the LA Times by David M. Cummings entitled “Haven’t found that software glitch, Toyota? Keep trying“. Mr. Cummings worked on the Mars Pathfinder project for NASA, so he has some credibility to his name when it comes to software design and product testing. But his opinion piece seems to completely miss the point of the PR nightmare that Toyota is dealing with.

Waiting in line for movie tickets is still the worst part of going to the movies (unless you are going to see The Bounty Hunter). With so many mobile phone movie apps, it’s easy to find what’s playing at nearby theaters and even purchase tickets right from your mobile phone, but then you still have to get a paper ticket from the dispenser or the ticket agent. But your ticket could easily be delivered to your mobile phone via a 2D barcode.

Today, Fandango is launching a mobile ticket program in eight cities which lets moviegoers finally go paperless. Your ticket is delivered to your mobile phone via an SMS or MMS message linked to a 2D barcode, which the ticket-takers can scan. Movie theaters need to equip their attendees with special scanners, which is why it is only available in a few markets. (MovieTickets.com is testing a similar program).

Between the geolocation wars of Facebook and Twitter and the flux of geolocation-based social networks and mobile apps that have been hitting the market recently, the competition is tough. Today, mobile networking startup NearVerse, is launching a free iPhone app, called LoKast, which allows people to share media between iPhones at super-fast speeds. The kicker: the app connects people in its network based on proximity.

LoKast, which is actually short for “local-casting,” allows you to set up a profile that will list all of your photos, selected contacts, videos, web links and music on your mobile phone. You can select which content you’d like to include to the public and which content you’d like to keep private. When a LoKast user is in proximity (300 feet) of other LoKast users, the app will automatically discover other users nearby and allow the user to view and download their content. For example, you can see the iTunes library of any user who is in close proximity to you. You can choose to download a 30-second clip of any song to your own profile and can also follow the link to the iTunes store to purchase the music (LoKast collects an affiliate fee for this, of course). Similarly, you can download photos, videos and even contacts from other users into your profile. You’ll also soon be able to share apps on your phone with other users.

Later today, Twitter CEO Evan Williams will be interviewed by Umair Haque of the Havas Media Lab at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas. We’ll of course be covering any announcements that will be made by Williams on stage, but we expect that at least part of the keynote address will be centered around the company’s advertising platform.

Twitter made a memorable splash at SXSW three years ago, and will likely have opted for the conference as the right place to detail its digital advertising plans, which it hopes will become a major source of revenue in addition to its realtime search outsourcing deals with major Internet players.

Didn’t I just write that the online video publishing market is heating up quickly? Here’s another testament to that notion: KIT digital this morning announced that it has agreed to acquire privately-held competitor Multicast Media for net consideration of approximately $18 million.

The acquisition sum is comprised of $4.9 million in cash and 1.3 million shares of KIT digital common stock, plus the assumption of approximately $4.6 million in long-term liabilities.

KIT digital plans to close the acquisition by the end of this month.

The war between the enterprise-grade online video platform providers rages on, and Brightcove will announce later today at the SXSW conference that it was won another small battle by signing up EMI Music, one of the “big four” record companies.

The EMI Group company will use Brightcove as its online video publishing and syndication platform of choice in North America, across all of its website properties and to some of its third-party syndication partners.

Media and legal news pundit Dan Abrams is expanding his Mediaite, mini-empire today with the launch of fashion news site Styleite. Abrams announced late last year that he has a definitive plan for expanding to other verticals, and most recently launched tech and geek culture site Geekosystem. Styleite is the Mediaite family’s venture into fashion journalism, with a little edge and pop culture stirred in. The site covers the news of what’s taking place in the industry and focuses on a blend of analysis and breaking news.

Stories range from Amy Winehouse’s new designs to Yves Saint Laurent’s latest exhibition to Lady Gaga’s best fashion moments in her latest music video. The site also features a fashion industry-focused Power Grid which is Mediaite’s trademark feature for ranking individuals and execs in various industries. The technology will rank 3,000 models, brands, execs, designers, reporters and others in the fashion industry based upon their power and media exposure weekly.

Earlier this morning, social networking giant Facebook announced on its blog that, one week after it said it would be opening an office in Austin, Texas, it will set up an additional support center in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, the capital of the state of Andhra Pradesh.

In the statement, the company says both offices will allow them to better serve its users, advertisers and developers. Facebook added that it is currently recruiting people to staff the online sales and operations teams for both office locations.

Recommendation engine Hunch confirms that they’ve raised a new round of financing – $12 million – led by Khosla Ventures. Partner Gideon Yu, who joined Khosla Ventures last year, was previously the CFO of Facebook. He is now joining Hunch’s board of directors as part of the deal. Hunch was valued at $52 million in the round.

I spoke to cofounder Caterina Fake this evening about the round. Fake says that Hunch, which is less than a year old, now has lots of data to work with in making recommendations. In fact, she says, users have answered nearly 50 million questions on Hunch since launch, and the company can use that data to make better and better recommendations.