The long-running “Live” name Microsoft has placed on its many connected services (Mail, messenger, photos, etc) is coming to an end in Windows 8, as part of their ongoing, major brand rehaul. Zune, of course, has been on its way out for some time, but will receive the coup de grace in Windows 8.

Their main services are being rolled into bundled applications with a native Metro look and simpler names — Mail instead of Windows Live Mail, Photos instead of Windows Live Photo Gallery, and so on. The new apps will be tightly integrated, as we’ve seen in demos, and will retain much of the Live cross-service functionality. They’ll be unified by a single “Microsoft Account.”

But Live isn’t going away entirely: the name is too strong to take away from Xbox Live and its subsidiary components, and in fact Xbox Live may be coming to Windows as the main entertainment brand — for music, games, and video content. This will replace Zune, which Microsoft has been gradually sweeping under the rug over the past two years. Zune fans mustn’t despair, though: Zune pass functionality will remain intact, and chances are the old desktop player and Zune hardware will continue to be supported in some way. And the fact is that Zune has left an indelible mark on Microsoft’s operations, pioneering the look and feel found in Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8.

Smaller services, like Writer and Games for Windows Live, will likely be rolled into existing products. It’s in major brand shakedowns like this that one starts to realize just how many platforms and pieces of software Microsoft actually has and supports. This coalescence of services is probably coming as a huge relief to the company, though the labor involved in repurposing them is, naturally, Herculean.

Conspicuously absent from the lineup mentioned is Messenger, which may be seeing some integration with Skype. A multi-service messenger/video-chat app with Skype built in seems likely, though Skype would definitely have to have a discrete presence as well for power users.

No doubt they’ll leave behind many irate users who want things to remain the same — and indeed how Microsoft intends to accommodate these legacy users isn’t clear. Their new clean-break approach maroons many people on the old Windows XP/7 mainland, where they’ll likely remain until the launch quakes of Windows 8 clear away and the new land is safe for colonization.

(This failed to publish earlier in the day, which accounts for its lateness)

Digg’s January saw an increase in page views by 35 percent and was its highest traffic month since October 2010. When it dug into why, it found we’re proud to look smart, hip, or funny by sharing tech news and offbeat content, but we keep our guilty pleasure entertainment and divisive political reading to ourselves.

Specifically, Digg analyzed what people read vs what they shared to their Facebook Timeline in part through the new Digg Social Reader Open Graph which has helped boost Facebook referral traffic by 67 percent. It discovered telling psychological trends in how people want to portray idealized versions of themselves.

According to Digg’s data, ”Entertainment stories were 14 percent of all stories read but less than 4 percent of those added to the Timeline. Likewise, political stories comprise less than 2 percent of those added to a user’s Timeline but close to 10 percent of what people read”. Gaming was another content type rarely shared.

It seems that while many of us are addicted to celebrity gossip and war games, we don’t want everyone to know. We might geek out privately with fellow enthusiasts about Kim Kardashian’s latest romance or a new Call Of Duty map pack, but there’s a stigma about allowing those interests to define our identities. Meanwhile, our social graphs often span across party lines, so we’d rather not share polarizing political content. Better to stay silent than offend someone, it seems. Out of top 100 stories most often published to Timeline, only 244 shares were political and 72 were gaming stories.

[Postscript: Yes, maybe people don't share niche content because they think it will bore most of their friends. But what really bores me is the softball, middle of the road content I can find anywhere. Expose me to your niche, show me why you love it, and I might just geek out with you.]

Instead we try to put our best foot forward, showing off our sense of humor and how in the know we are about developments in tech. Of the stories most shared to Timeline, tech stories got 5,086 shares, 2,060 for offbeat, 951 for world news, and 785 were of business related stories. The first data points are certainly biased by the irreverent tech-loving demographic Digg appeals to. However, the significant presence of world news and business show our desire to appear cultured and motivated. Diggers are gamers and many lean left, but you couldn’t tell from their Timelines.

Screw that. We shouldn’t be embarrassed. Sharing what we’re truly interested in attracts people who love us for who we really are. Why surround yourself with people who don’t get what excites you? No, you don’t need to be overtly confrontational by sharing every hate piece about the demopublican party, but be willing to say something controversial if you believe in it. You’ll spark discussion, and hear conflicting perspectives that help refine your views.

At their worst, social networks like Facebook let us compartmentalize our identity and show different sides to different people. At their best, they connect the different sides and encourage us to be mindful not of what we share, but of how we actually spend our time. That’s what really defines us. So BRB, I’m going to share my love of Marvel comic books, because that’s me.

Look, sometimes you just have to take a break and skim Etsy for cool iPad stuff. Are you thinking of picking up a new iPad 3 when they come out, or maybe just celebrating the release with a cool new case for your existing tablet? Check out this little round-up of cases collected by a felt-loving blogger on a Friday afternoon.

These are mostly iPad-sized, but many are made to order and could easily accommodate a smaller (Kindle Fire) or larger (Transformer) device if you ask nicely. And most are soft enough to accommodate a small change in size, like what’s expected for the iPad 3. Note that I have not tried these out! I just think they are all great.

Felt & Leather

Here are some lovely, sober grey wool items with leather accents. Perfect for someone who doesn’t need to express themselves through decals or color, yet loves good design. Like me. From top left, these are available from Charbonize (you can customize the tag), Feruto Bags, Freckle Cases, and England Caramel, who says theirs is the perfect Valentine’s Day gift. Yeah, if your girlfriend is an iPad.

Felten

For someone who wants something with a little more personality. From top left: the Soul Sleeve, which is just about as cute as possible; a dyed felt case from MaricFineGoods (also available in mustard yellow); a case from PinsnNeedles that is actually for e-readers but was too cool to pass up; another from PinsnNeedles that kind of looks like an elephant. Oh, and they make a cozy for your French press as well.

Herringbone

If you’re tired of herringbone, you’re tired of life. These two come from MariForsell — iPad bag, iPad case.

Hemp and Fluff

I love these soft, natural-fiber cases from ColcaSac. The natural hemp-colored one is the Uintah and the black one is the Zagora. They’re made with pesticide-free Chinese hemp, from China you understand. The blue one, Cusco, uses traditionally-grown cotton from Oaxaca.

Leather

Here are two leather options, comprising the two reasons leather exists: to look old, and to look fancy. The one on the left is made to order, hand-tooled, and antiqued. Perfect for watching Game of Thrones on the go. The one on the right is strictly for having in your hand when you step of your private jet. Is my car here yet? No?

Wood

The wooden smart covers are Narra and Cherry respectively, but don’t worry, there’s nice brown leather underneath. The flip-top case is made of Black Walnut and Baltic Birch, and fastens with a magnet. Just looks cool as hell. The newsprint one is not, in fact, wood, I have deceived you. It’s cotton, and closes with Velcro. I just like the way it looks and had an extra spot in the “wood” image. And cotton is a plant, so it’s kind of true.

The Los Angeles Times reports that The Los Angeles Times will be adopting a paywall (they prefer the term “membership program”) starting March 5th, joining the ranks of other large newspapers hoping to replace plummeting subscription revenues. Readers, naturally, are incensed, though the change was inevitable for such a large newspaper.

Although the move to a paid or at least somehow powerfully monetized online model is going to be critical for the L.A. Times and other major print establishments, it appears that everyone in the industry is still in the “flailing” stage, and hoping that a model rejected and circumvented by readers will somehow work for them as it has (in a way) worked for others.

Because the fact is that, in fact, paywalls can work, and do. But something like the New York Times’ paywall has worked in strange ways and also because of a huge emphasis on publishing online via apps and mobile. Is the L.A. times giving an opportunity to readers to pay to get content in a new and better way, or is it just installing a ticket booth?

Their model is very similar to the New York Times: 99 cents for the first four weeks, then $3.99 per week, or, bizarrely, $1.99 per week if you want the the Sunday paper in addition to your digital copy. The reasoning for this is that the Sunday paper is chock full of advertisements, so much so that the L.A. Times will essentially pay you $2/week to receive it.

So the model isn’t new, and it’s not unreasonable. Many will choose to go around the paywall (mobile and tablet browsers will automatically skip it, it seems) but many, as others have shown, will pay rather than go through the rigamarole of adding referrers to their URL or installing a browser extension to do it for them.

The article announcing this change is a treat to read. It is written as though it is a normal news story and not an internally produced announcement, and has the air of people trying unsuccessfully to convince themselves that this is going to turn out great. It may end up fine in the end, but the tone of the article is unrelentingly self-deceiving to a degree even consumer electronics press releases fail to reach.

[via PaidContent]

A single blogger recently relayed comments made by a single Tesla service tech who reportedly knew of five Teslas that were “bricked” by owners who left them off the charger too long. This single unverified report spread like wildfire across the blogosphere. Tesla came out and acknowledged that it was possible to destroy the Roadster’s battery pack by keeping it unplugged but Tesla has employed numerous counter-measures to prevent that from happening. The company responded further today in a lengthy blog post titled “Plug It In.

Here’s a key excerpt from the blog post,

A plugged-in Tesla is not only charging its battery, it is also keeping key systems within the car functioning properly. Tesla owners around the world keep their cars charged on a daily basis without any issues at all. If ever the battery in your Tesla runs low, the car is designed to let you know with repeated visual and audible warnings. If you continue to ignore the warnings, they will persist and increase. The vehicle also protects the battery itself by communicating with other systems in the car to conserve energy when the state of charge gets too low. Starting with Roadster 2.0, owners can also elect for their car to contact Tesla headquarters once the state of charge falls below a specified level, and we can then contact the owner.

For what it’s worth Autoblog, our sister site in our Aol Huffington Post Media Group, did a little Googling and discovered that the random blogger and apparent Tesla owner are long-time business partners and not random acquaintances as the original blog post would have you believe.

Tesla’s service is legendary. I’ve spent a lot of time following the company over the last four years and have only heard extraordinary reports. I’m not saying the company is perfect, and it is totally possible to brick a Tesla, but the company has taken reasonable steps to prevent that from happening. But sometimes morons slip through the cracks.

It’s hard to believe that Mobile World Congress is right around the corner, but here we are with just under two days to go until the festivities begin.

TechCrunch’s MWC delegation is ready to bring you the latest and greatest in mobile tech straight from the heart of Barcelona from the moment MWC kicks off, but there’s going to be gobs upon gobs of nifty stuff on the show floor. Just for your reference, here’s a quick recap of some of the things you should see once we touch down and head into the breach.

LG

LG’s handset business has seen better days, which is why the company seems so intent on making a splash at MWC. In addition to the (peculiar) Galaxy Note LG Optimus Vu the company has announced something like seven new Android smartphones to be released this year — here’s a quick rundown:

Optimus 4X HD: This Ice Cream Sandwich-powered handset sports a 4.7-inch 720p display and 1.5GHz quad-core Tegra 3 processor. Expect this bad boy to be LG’s flagship going forward.

Optimus 3D MAX and 3D Cube: Remember the LG Optimus 3D/Thrill? Meet its new brothers, which both happen to pack a 4.3-inch 3D display, a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, and NFC support into a 9.6mm thick body. The big difference between the two? Well, the MAX ironically only has 8GB internal memory while the Cube has 16GB; the Cube also sports a NOVA IPS display panel while no mention of the MAX’s screen tech has been made.

L-Style Series: Despite some recent twists and turns, LG is fully capable of designing and producing some striking phones (the Chocolate series, anyone?). This new line of Android phones consists of three devices meant to strike at premium, mid-range, and low-end niches, and aspire to five lofty “aesthetic elements.”

While these are all interesting in their own right, I’m personally looking forward to the possibility of an LG phone running on Mozilla’s Boot-To-Gecko mobile OS.

Nokia

The success of Nokia’s first Windows Phones already propelled them to the top of the vendor heap, and the folks at Espoo are looking to keep it that way with the introduction of two new devices.

Well, maybe just one new devices. The Lumia 900 already got a bit of spotlight when it debuted at this year’s CES, and Nokia is expected to unveil a Europe-bound version (sans LTE support) at the show. Nothing new here.

Meanwhile, the Lumia 610 is reportedly a new budget-conscious offering that’s expected have the specs to match the price tag. It always seemed to me as though the 710 was meant to plug that particular hole in the market, but with the Windows Phone Tango update poised to target developing markets, more low-cost hardware certainly couldn’t hurt.

Nokia also took to teasing us with a video hyping their Pure View camera technology, which only begs a new question – which phone will it end up in first?

Samsung

Samsung surprised many of us when they announced that they wouldn’t hold a keynote at the show that previously saw the announcement of their flagship Galaxy S II. Don’t count Samsung out just because they’re not packing a new Galaxy successor though — they’ve got more than a few gadgets that will probably enjoy their turn in the spotlight.

The new 7-inch Galaxy Tab 2 (pictured right) is likely to be one of them, as well as Samsung’s speedy new spate of quad-core Exynos processors. And who could forget handsets like the Galaxy Ace 2 and the Galaxy Mini 2? (I just did, honestly.) If nothing else, it’ll tide us over until the separate event scheduled later this year where the Galaxy S III is expected to be unveiled.

HTC

We’ve already taken a look at what HTC will be bringing to the Barcelonian table, but here’s a quick recap in case you don’t much feel like clicking. The Taiwanese company is expected to unveil three new handsets, all sporting the One-series moniker.

The slim One X (previously known as the HTC Edge/Endeavor) looks to be the flagship model in the line, while the even-slimmer One S (aka the HTC Ville) shoots for the mid-range. Meanwhile, the music-oriented One V (which is expected to be a twist on the HTC Rhyme) is expected to round out the trio.

Those three handsets could be joined by the HTC One XL tablet, which previously made the rounds under the guise of the HTC Whatever. If the tablet does indeed materialize on the show floor, don’t expect a follow-up anytime soon — HTC has said they will be reducing their presence in the tablet market at least for a while.

Microsoft:

Windows 8. Windows 8. Windows 8.

Yep, if you haven’t heard, the Windows 8 Consumer Preview will be launched and demoed on the 29th.

Oh, and expect Microsoft to spend some time talking up their forthcoming Windows Phone updates – Windows Phone Tango is meant to run on less-robust hardware making it an ideal fit for low-end, high-volume devices, while Apollo should pack support for LTE, multiple screens, and considerable integration with Windows 8.

Asus

After CEO Jonney Shih’s legendary unveiling of the company’s Padfone, I’ve long wondered when this magical (and more than a little ridiculous) thing would see the light of day. The answer, it would seem, is at MWC 2012.

Asus also teased us with their “Twice The Detail” video, which points pretty markedly at a high-resolution tablet of some sort. It’s very possible that the company’s high-res Transformer Prime TF700T tablet will be making an appearance on the show floor, but I’m hoping that Asus has something new and shiny for us to drool over.

The Rest Of The Pack

• Motorola: Reps from the company told PCMag specifically not to expect much this year, although some news related to their partnership with Intel on mobile processors wouldn’t come out of left field.
• Sony: This will be Sony’s first MWC after their public divorce from Sweden-based Ericsson, and they’ve managed to keep things buttoned up tight. The smaller Xperia U will likely be on display, and if we’re very very lucky, we may end up seeing a Sony-made Windows Phone. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for that one.
• ZTE: The other Asian hardware vendor with a three-letter name will be in attendance with a whopping eight smartphones in tow. ZTE is definitely trying to make a big push into the high-end smartphone market, so here’s hoping their eclectic mix of Android devices and Windows Phones does the trick.

If this seems like a lot of gear to keep tabs of, you don’t know the half of it. This is just a fraction of the stuff to be seen at MWC, and I have a feeling that some of the best stuff is yet to come. Stay tuned!

Even though Google recently introduced a malware-blocking system called Bouncer to keep the Android Market safe from malicious software, crafty spammers and fraudsters are still managing to find ways around the restrictions to get their software onto users’ phones. The latest example? A malware program disguised, innocuously, as an Android app called “any_name.apk.” And it appears the malware is using Facebook’s app on Android phones in order to spread.

The software was discovered by security firm Sophos, which came across the malware after receiving a Facebook friend request. When checking out the user’s profile, the researcher, Vanja Svajcer, found a link posted to the requester’s Facebook profile page that, when clicked, directed the browser to a webpage which started an automatic download of an unknown software application to the device.

The software installed and downloaded immediately, without any request for authorization or input from the end user. However, although Svajcer doesn’t mention this in his analysis, for software to automatically install from outside the Google Android Market, the phone’s default settings must have been changed. Typically, Android phones are shipped with a setting switched on that prevents mobile apps from installing from sources besides the official Android Market. Many savvy Android users switch this setting off, though, because they enjoy the freedom that Android provides in discovering apps from alternative app stores and download locations – like the treasure trove that is the XDA Developers forum, for example.

Unfortunately, malware like this is the nasty side effect. And there’s nothing Bouncer can do about it. The link the researcher clicked did not appear to be an APK file by nature of its URL, just a typical website. And it was placed into the user’s About Me section on Facebook, as if it was a link to that person’s homepage.

Of course, many folks would simply ignore a friend request from someone they didn’t know, but curiosity often gets the better of us. (Do I know them? Did we meet at some point, and I forgot?) One errant click, and oops, you’re infected.

In this particular case, the malware in question appears to be a program designed to earn money for fraudsters through premium rate phone services, a scam popular outside the U.S. for the most part, which involves having unsuspecting users send out text messages to premium rate numbers (those that charge). The scammers, who are operating the numbers, end up collecting the money from the victims’ accounts.

The app attempts to associate itself with the Opera browser, and an encrypted configuration file contains the dialing codes for all the supported countries where the premium rate numbers are hosted.

As a side note: a few days later, the researcher visited the same URL, but was directed to an all-new website where another APK file was automatically downloaded (hilariously called “allnew.apk”). This one was functionally similar, but different on the binary level, indicating it was a new variant of the same malware.

Maybe it’s time for Android’s Bouncer guy to get pre-installed on handsets, too?

UPDATE: We spoke to Google about this issue, and they’re telling us that the software installation process portrayed in the Sophos video could not have occurred as demonstrated. Even with an off-market malware-ridden APK file, the app would have downloaded to the device, but additional user-initiated steps would need to have taken place before the software installed and ran as shown. We’re still awaiting a response from Sophos on that front.

To be clear, Bouncer is a good first step towards protecting Android users, but regardless of what methods are used to lock down the Android Market, spammers and scammers can always find another way in.

I’ve been mulling this concept over for a long while and it took Josh Helfferich’s single image to bring the concept into sharp focus. My thesis (and you won’t like this) is that every major “flagship” phone in the Western market is now made in the same mold, with the same trade dress, with one goal in mind: to fool the casual observer into thinking that everything is an iPhone. While you can argue on the outliers, the truth is right there. Every major phone released in the past four years has cleaved to this design for dear life. The trend began, popularly, with the Nokia 5800 (some would argue that Meizu M8 was the first) and hasn’t stopped since.

The manufacturers’ fear is palpable and it’s time this parade of phones, designed to mimic one major phone, stopped. It’s bad for the consumer, it’s bad for the carrier, and it’s bad for the manufacturer.

Before iPhone (BI), manufacturers were fat and sassy, designing phones that came in odd cases and featured whimsical Java stacks. No phone looked like any other and every year designers would pick up cues from each other in terms of popularity. One year it was rugged, the next year it was piano black, the next year it was dark red. Phones came and went and they all looked different.

Except for a few lower-end exceptions, going into a phone store now is an exercise in futility. There is no differentiation nor is any phone better than any other. Just as every tablet looks strikingly like every other, every phone looks and works strikingly like every other. The results of this marketing nightmare are clear. You have advertisements that tout meaningless clock speed numbers – as if you’re going to play Angry Birds faster on your Nexus vs. a Samsung Fascinate. Programmers are forced by the vagaries of software to design for the lowest possible system specs. The result, then, is a marketplace cluttered with the same phone, over and over, with various bursts of nervous energy spent championing one identical handset over the rest… until the next model comes out.

This constant churn is what is stagnating the mobile industry. For two years after the iPhone the common refrain was “Why don’t manufacturers hire three (or thirty) really good guys, put them in a room for a year, and make them make the best cellphone ever.” This happened exactly once – at Palm – and never happened again. The closest to this vision, I would argue, is HTC, and they’re no great shakes.

Apple has done their thing. They’re going to keep doing their thing. They are, to continue the evolutionary metaphor, like a very specialized bird with a beak evolved to eat, say, termites. The rest of the birds saw that the termite bird was thriving so they developed a beak to eat ants – they aimed at exactly the wrong target and now each manufacturer is falling over itself – and starving – as it goes after the well-hunted ants in a non-diverse ecosystem.

Samsung, HTC, RIM, LG, Nokia: stop it. Play to your strengths. Reduce your lines to low, mid, and high-end phones. Streamline. The manufacturers took what matters least about the iPhone – the trade dress – and made that an obsession. Take what matters most – Apple’s consumer-focused clarity of vision – and see where that gets you.

Ever wish you could explore Paris on a Vespa? Or how about a tour of Santa Barbara wineries from a local? Vayable connects you with guides around the world who offer unique experiences in their city.

In the interview above, Jamie Wong, Co-Founder and CEO of Vayable, talks about why she started Vayable, who the guides are, how she built a community and some notable experiences listed on the site including the controversial homelessness tour.

While Jamie was living in New York, friends came to her for travel tips and occasionally she would show them around the city Her travel tips became a blog and that led her to realize there were others like her that would be willing to give tours around their cities. So, she created Vayable to be a platform that connects you with locals who offer some kind of experience you find interesting. Categories include arts & culture, food & wine, adventure, and more.

There are plenty of interesting experiences listed on the site, but one stands out. A homelessness walking tour in San Francisco. You can even see what it’s like to go homeless for a day. Tim Ferriss said it gave him “a much needed perspective/ appreciation reset.”

Vayable has the opportunity to facilitate cultural learning in places you visit or even in your own city. Unlike most travel experiences or tours, you can see and leave reviews for your guide. And guides are passionate about the experiences they list. That beats signing up for a more lackluster experience you’d find advertised on sites like Orbitz or local tour companies.

Like AirBnB, Vayable is helping its guides earn extra income. If you’re someone who has a passion like hiking or local art, you can take travelers on your adventure and charge a price you see fit. As with similar marketplaces, Vayable takes a 15 percent cut of everything booked through the site.

So, now you too can explore the side of Los Angeles most usually never see or find out what island life in Bocas really is like (hint: it apparently involves scuba gear and dancing shoes). The choice is yours.

Hey everyone, we have a special giveaway for you this week. Yes, the iPad 3 is well on its way, but the iPad 2 is still one of the most sought after gadgets out there. With special thanks to our friends over at GreatApps.com, we have a brand new black iPad 2 32G to give away, ALONG with a Hip Street iPad 2 Bluetooth Keyboard Case, PLUS a $200 iTunes gift card. The lucky winner of this giveaway will win all three items.

The giveaway will run for three days, starting now and ending this Sunday, at 7:30pm PT. Make sure you follow the steps below if you’d like to enter.

1) Become a fan of our TechCrunch Facebook Page:

2) Then do one of the following:

- Retweet this post (including the #TechCrunch hashtag)
- Or leave us a comment below telling us why you want these prizes

The contest starts now and ends Sunday, February 26th, at 7:30pm PT. We’ll go through all of the comments and make sure you followed the steps correctly before picking our winner. We’ll choose the winner at random and contact them this weekend. Make sure you only tweet the message once, or you will unfortunately be disqualified.

It seems as though nobody’s a fan of RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook. Last year, I would’ve agreed wholeheartedly. What’s a tablet good for — ahem, an enterprise-style tablet no less — if you can’t natively check email, store contacts, or access a calendar.

But even though much of that’s going to change with the release of PlayBook 2.0 OS, some peeps still can’t get on board. In this instance, it would be Netflix. According to Reuters, Netflix has stated that it has no plans to support the BlackBerry PlayBook or any other BlackBerry device for that matter.

Even with the issues Netflix has had in the past year — including awful streaming margins and a price hike backlash — the fact that consumers are putting even more screens in front of their faces should bode well. Still, Netflix doesn’t seem to be too enthused with RIM or their offerings.

Netflix is already available on the iPad, iPhone, and various Android devices. Since the PlayBook 2.0 OS comes with an Android emulator (which lets people play with Android apps on the PlayBook), we had thought that it would be relatively easy for the Android app to be ported over to the PlayBook. Unfortunately, no such luck.

With all the developments we’ve seen in online advertising over the years, you’d have thought that someone would have figured out how to put a halt to what must be one of the biggest issues of all: people are getting fed up with digital ads.

A new report from YouGov, commissioned by mobile marketing company Upstream and provided to TechCrunch before wider release, indicate that people basically feel like there are too many ads, and that they are too pervasive.

The situation seems to be a vicious circle. Users are engaging with ads less and less: response rates that were at an average of 7 percent in 1997 have today plummeted down to 0.1 percent for an average online ad.

The solution? Serve more ads to get the respond numbers up. The result? More annoyance with online ads, and even less engagement: total digital ad impressions for all media in 2011 were at 5 trilliion, compared to 200 billion in 1997, according to comScore.

Surveys like this speak to some of the issues that the online ad industry is going to have to sort out as it keeps growing, and means opportunity for new players and new formats like those being developed by Facebook. But as information gathering becomes more sophisticated, issues around invasiveness and privacy will also grow.

“How you connect with people effectively is going to be a major battleground over the next few years,” said Marco Veremis, chairman of Upstream. “We need to look at targeting in a different way than we’ve been taught as marketeers.”

Surveying 4,150 consumers across the U.S. and UK, YouGov found that 66 percent said that they got bombarded with too many digital ads — online and on their mobile devices.

An equal number, 66 percent, said their perception of brands changed when felt their promotions became too invasive.

But it can be more damaging than that: some 27 per cent of UK and 20 per cent of U.S. consumers said that too frequent advertising or promotional messages would result in them not using the product from the brand in question completely, while only 1 per cent of UK and U.S. consumers said that excessive messages led them to use products more. And around 10 percent said that they would go activist as a result, taking to social media sites to complain.

That has a lot of resonance when you think about some of the more prominent direct marketing campaigns of late — those of daily deal sites that email offers to their users — and the fatigue that has meant less engagement in those promotions.

In the UK, YouGov found that some of that dislike related to economic grouping, with upper middle class users less happy with ads than those with less money. (Corresponding numbers were not available for the U.S.) Young adults in both markets (18-34) were slightly more tolerant of ads than older users. Women were more tolerant than men when it came to digital ads.

Devices. A clear line was drawn on platform: mobile ads are a much more personal, and potentially more invasive, than other channels. When it came to unwanted ads, while PCs and even tablets scored at under 10 percent for offensiveness, mobile handsets rated at 64 percent (UK) and 67 percent (U.S.).

That seems to indicate that although some analysts like eMarketer project that mobile ads will make $2.5 billion in revenue in the U.S. this year — their effectiveness may not match that investment.

Mediums. Connected to the sensitivity around mobile, SMS and mobile apps were two of the least-liked channels for receiving ads.

But in what might be good news for Twitter as it rolls out its advertising services, it scored as the least-annoying channel for ads compared to Facebook and Google.

Where is the silver lining? There do seem to be some small shoots of hope for the digital marketing industry — if advertisers can think of better ways of matching their brands (or their campaigns) to their target audiences.

The numbers are still not brilliant, but at least 26 percent said they would be happy to get ads aimed at their personal interests; 21 percent were interested in ads that were “contextually relevant” and between 19 and 22 percent liked the idea of ads that were location specific.

(image: Andrew Huff, Flickr)

One of the marks of a great blogger is following your convictions and convincing the world of the truth you know in your heart. Jason Kincaid is that blogger, whether he is calling out Apple for enabling patent trolls or VEVO’s hypocrisy in using pirated video at an event. Jason joined TechCrunch in 2008 straight out of college. He learned fast and just kept getting better, even veering off into video. Here he is interviewing Al Franken, and he also hosted one of our most popular TCTV shows, TC Cribs. (He is also incredibly stylish).

After four years, Jason is leaving TechCrunch. He decided to write his farewell on his own personal blog, which I encourage you to read. Jason has many fans here among readers and the staff alike. He helped to define the character of TechCrunch during our formative years, and he will always be a part of our family. In his farewell, Jason comes back to what makes TechCrunch special and what kept him working here tirelessly. It all comes down to the startups and the conversation writers like him get to have with them:

That conversation never gets old. And, better yet, I always got to ask them questions about everything ranging from data mining to real estate to the optimal times to plant vegetables — all of which, somehow, fall under the wide-sweeping umbrella of ‘tech’, provided they have a website or smartphone app. And when I wasn’t meeting with startups, I was often tasked with things that made the lifelong tech geek inside of me gleeful.

Jason is not sure what he is going to do next, but he feels it is time to move on. Truth be told, he’s been feeling that for a while, as he notes in his post. Thank you, Jason, for all you’ve given to TechCrunch and sticking it through as long as you did. We can’t wait to see what you do next.

If my Mom asked me what smartphone to buy right this second, I’d tell her to wait — wait until the Nokia Lumia 900 is released. It’s that good. Windows Phone 7 is that good. It’s faster and more idiot-proof than Android and presents core functions like phone calling and messaging better than iOS. Windows Phone is, in my humble opinion, a fantastic product.

Nokia has had a rough decade. Trouble started in the States where the company continued to pump budget phones into a market that went upscale. They were an early entrant in the smartphone race, but didn’t curate a developer-friendly ecosystem as quickly as others. They were down, out, and looking dead in the water. Then Microsoft floated by and threw out a life preserver worth $250 million. Now, after just one quarter, Nokia is the top dog of the third most popular smartphone platform. That’s a great spot to be in.

I have a T-Mobile Lumia 710 sitting in front of me right now. As John said in our review, it’s impressive to a point. The battery easily lasts days, outlasting an iPhone 4S or even the Droid RAZR MAXX. The hardware feels of the Nokia of old: a tad plasticy but very solid. I doubt it’s as durable as 3310 or 1110i but it can certainly survive drops. I’m not sure I would use it as a daily driver, but I would wholeheartedly recommend it to someone looking for a reliable and simple phone.

But this as much about Microsoft as it is Nokia. The partnership is nearly perfect. Microsoft knows software and Nokia knows hardware. Take the Zune: fantastic software hampered by just average hardware that had limited market distribution. Likewise, the Nokia N8 is one of the finest phones I’ve ever felt but the Symbian OS made it unsellable. When separate, these two companies were being pushed out of the mobile race. But together, they’re a major force.

Windows Phone 7 might never overtake Android or iOS in marketshare. Apple has legions of fans and Android is growing at an exponential pace fueled by an explosion of devices. But market share only matters to a point. Windows Phone does not have to be first in order to be successful.

Still, Microsoft, Nokia and all the rest of the Windows Phone makers are fighting an uphill battle. And they need to fight harder. It’s not cool to own a Windows Phone like it is an iPhone or Droid. Windows Phone needs stronger, more aggressive marketing. Look at Samsung with the Galaxy S II. They’re doing it right. Carriers need a better selection of hardware (read: Nokia needs to get on Verizon). The prices are right but the products are still relatively unknown by consumers. Buy salesman’s love. It’s dirty but spiffs and incentives generally result in higher sales.

Per today’s news Nokia holds 33 percent of the Windows Phone 7 market share and they reached that point in just one quarter using classic Nokia tactics. The Lumia 710 is wonderfully inexpensive and the Lumia 800 is not an iPhone competitor in the traditional hardware sense. But people still want them. The large Lumia 900 is hitting soon, which will no doubt increase Nokia’s dominance in the market.

If you’re like me, you’re fed up with Android’s nonsense and don’t really want an iPhone. My hope is that Nokia and Verizon releases a LTE-enabled 900 with a battery life comparable to that of the 800. That’s what I want.

Nokia bet all their chips on Microsoft. It was a bold move. Windows Phone 7 had yet to show signs of real life and it’s still a tiny sliver on the smartphone market share pie. But there’s still money to be made in third place and Nokia’s bet is looking smarter all the time.

Mail.Ru has issued a preliminary trading statement for the fiscal year 2011. The largest Russian-language Internet company, is looking at a margin outlook of 50 percent this year according to CEO Dmitry Grishin, speaking on a conference call, and plans to reinvest the cash to improve its products. Net income in the second half of 2011 almost tripled year on year to $122.9 million. Shares were up on the news.

Mail.ru has seen stronger advertising revenue than it expected in the fourth quarter and plans to focus on higher quality products with its online game business.

In terms of numbers, the monthly audience of the Mail.Ru portal in December 2011 (according to TNS Russia) reached 30 million Russian users. They had continued growth in social networking and instant messaging with the social network Odnoklassniki reaching 20.8m monthly users (TNS Russia) and Mail.ru Agent, it’s IM network, hitting 22.9m monthly users. In the last year Mail.ru’s web-interface for its email was revamped and improved and they issued updates and releases of desktop and mobile client apps (iOS, Android, WP7, Java, Symbian, Blackberry) of Mail.Ru Agent and ICQ.

The Games.mail.ru portal is now the the largest MMO gaming portal in the “Runet” (shorthand for the “Russian Internet”) and it launched 16 new games launched, including more social and mobile games.

Grishin said interoperability between Agent and ICQ was introduced, as was support for authorization between other instant messengers and social networks.

About 43% of Mail.Ru Agent monthly users are accessing the service from their mobile devices, as well as 34% of their OK monthly users. In fact the mobile user growth is exceeding PC use, not unexpectedly.

In episode II of Chris Dixon’s Founder Stories interview with Warby Parker’s co-founders, David Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal, the trio discuss topics spanning Warby Parker’s social responsibility efforts to the state of e-commerce.

Off the bat, Gilboa tells Dixon that Warby Parker strives to be an environmentally friendly organization focused on giving back to the community. In addition to being “100% carbon neutral” Gilboa highlights Warby Parker’s “Buy a Pair, Give a Pair” initiative where Warby Parker donates a set of glasses for every set it sells.

Speaking to setting up shop in Manhattan, Gilboa (who previously lived in San Francisco) says, “I was sort of brainwashed into thinking that if you wanted to launch a startup, particularly anything Internet based, you had to do it in the Bay area.” His views have since changed and Gilboa is now in lockstep with co-founder Blumenthal who says, “New York was the right place to be because we are a fashion brand, and New York is the fashion capital of the world.”

As other New York e-commerce brands like Birchbox and Fab gain popularity, Galboa is bullish on Warby Parker’s future. He tells Dixon, “When we started looking at the eyewear industry, less than 1 percent of eyeglasses were sold online, but we are huge believers in the fact that eyeglasses are going to follow all these other consumer product categories and more and more of that spend is going to go online.”

Before the interview wraps, Gilboa take a moment to offer advice to budding entrepreneurs. Make sure to watch the entire interview to hear everything the pair has to say.

Episode I of Warby Parker’s Founder Stories interview is here. Links to Founder Stories episodes featuring BirchBox are here.

Past episodes of Founder Stories featuring leaders from Reddit, KickStarter, Tumblr, TripAdvisor, ZocDoc, Charity: Water and may other startups are here.

Snackr (no, not that Snackr!), is a new iPhone application that delivers personalized audio news in bite-sized chunks for listening to while on the go. The app offers you a “5 minute snack” of the current headlines, as well as audio streams by category, including topics like business, entertainment, tech and startups, “top news,”  and others.

But Snackr also has another cool feature, besides just serving up fresh audio news. The app delivers a daily greeting which tells you about the current weather, your friends’ birthdays, updates from your favorite sports teams, and more.

The app, coincidentally, arrived at a time when I was becoming frustrated with information overload (a regular occurrence), and tweeted out asking for suggestions of mobile apps that could read me my RSS feeds. BuzzVoice does an OK job at this but is $3.99 and then wants $3.99 per month to keep it ad-free. I’m also not a fan of the robot voice it uses – Snackr at least has a more pleasant, British-sounding robot reading the news.

The Snackr team never saw my original tweet, as it turned out, but when they reached out, the timing was perfect. Snackr is a great attempt at solving the info overload problem. As someone whose job involves keeping up with the fast-paced world of tech news, I often feel like I get behind on other news – you know, everything else that happens out there in the real world. When I finally have time to browse the news via Flipboard, or turn on the TV, or catch a little NPR, I don’t feel like I’m keeping up, exactly. I’ll catch a few stories, maybe, but it’s a hit-or-miss experience in terms of whether they were important or impactful .

Snackr’s customized channels let you tune in to just the news that you actually care about, and it even lets you build your own channels from a large selection of categories like gaming, science, sports, fun, music, and more, or any combination of those. The channel editor still needs a little work, though. It doesn’t currently seem possible to delete custom channels, for example (or if it is, that setting is buried!).

I also wish that Snackr would let me customize the experience even further, by selecting individual RSS feeds or news sources to build a channel. At present, it only offers these pre-packaged categories for your custom channels. That’s probably fine for most people – this is more of a power user’s request, I imagine.

But overall, the app itself is simple to use. You tap to play/pause the audio stream, star to add an audio briefing to your favorites (so you can come back later and actually read the article in question), or tap the email icon to have the story sent to you. For even more automation, settings are available so you can have Snackr automatically email you your favorite stories or share those stories and your stream to Facebook. However, these were turned on by default, which I didn’t care for.

I should also point out that Snackr isn’t summarizing the news, or reading the full articles – it only reads the first paragraph. “Think of this as the audio equivalent of scanning headlines,” explains Snackr co-founder Jason Tongbai.

He and Snackr’s other founder, Brian Brunner, met in a class at Stanford, where Brian is now a senior. (Jason has since graduated). The company received a little bit of funding through Plug-and-Play’s “University Start-up Camp” program last summer, but is currently bootstrapping the app.

Jason says the idea for Snackr came to him while he was walking to class and trying to read the news on his iPhone. “I looked ridiculous, and then I was about a hair’s breadth of getting run over by a bike. If you look around today, this behavior – as dangerous and ridiculous as it is – is becoming more and more the norm rather than the exception.” He said he wanted to make news consumption less “dangerous” (ha!) while also offering a more personalized experience.

The app is still considered a “beta” even though it’s live in the App Store right now. Next week, Snackr will have a more public debut.

You’re a start-up dude with carefully mussed hair. Your AWS is waiting. You’ve paid the designer. You and your family have created accounts. It’s been a mad dash. You’ve maxed out your credit cards. Your service is done. Now you wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Lots of people have ideas, but very few ideas gain much traction, and in those first few months it’s disheartening to see your subscriber numbers inch up far too slowly for anyone’s good. Every little bit of encouragement helps. That’s why the guys at Zipwhip (a service that basically lets you sync your text messages with your desktop) created an Arduino-powered flag to alert them when they got a new customer. The service itself is ready to go and waiting, they just wanted a way to celebrate when somebody created an account. And celebrate they do, cheering wildly as the flag slowly raises like the arm of Victory high above the bloodbath that is modern start-up creation.

“It’s a ton of fun to see something visual happen each time we get a new user,” they wrote on their blog. They’ve also released the plans and source code in their blog post so you and yours can build a flag, say, for celebrating new Twitter followers or to signal when it’s time to change your shirt (once a day is customary, but I’ve seen once a week work fine for many start-up founders).

Excelsior, Zipwhip, and may your flag fly off the freaking wall once people see this post.

Remember those two high-level executives from Swedish startup Klarna who were arrested earlier this month on sexual abuse charges?

Their names are Jens Saltin and Niklas Adalberth, and they were arrested at the W Hotel in New York after allegedly molesting a 19-year-old tourist from Texas.

Well after a little follow up (it’s not often that we get to call into the New York City District Attorney’s office), it would seem as though the case has been dismissed.

Here’s the official statement out of the DA’s office:

After conducting a thorough investigation that included but was not limited to interviewing relevant witnesses, viewing surveillance video and other hotel records and speaking extensively with the complainant we have concluded that we cannot prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt.

Saltin and Adalberth were released on $10,000 bail after their February 4 arrest. According to the police report “defendant Adalberth straddled informant, both defendants removed informant’s clothes, and defendant Adalberth grabbed informant’s breast. Deponent is further informed that she did not consent to said conduct.”

Shortly after, Klarna released a statement:

We are aware of the alleged incident in New York City involving Niklas Adalberth and Jens Saltin. Both Mr. Adalberth and Mr. Saltin maintain their innocence and have taken temporary leave from the company while the matter is being investigated.

Since the men were charged with a felony, neither reached the point in the court process where they were asked to plead guilty or not guilty, so we still haven’t really heard their side of the story.

We’ve sent out a request to Klarna for a statement and will update as soon as we hear more.

Update: Klarna has responded with the following statement:

As we have been expecting all along, the accusations brought against our employees have now been proven entirely unfounded and all charges have been dismissed.

Our employees did nothing wrong, did not break any law and should thus never have ended up in this very unfortunate situation. We now leave this incident behind us and welcome back our employees to their central roles within the company.

Popset, a new mobile app from the current Winter 2012 batch of Y Combinator startups, is a way for groups of friends to privately share photos. Oh what, you’ve heard that one before? Yes, it’s true – mobile photo-sharing is a crowded space. However, there hasn’t been a de facto leader established in the particular category Popset is after: sharing photos in private groups, easy photo album creation, and support for exporting entire albums to Facebook.

Each of Popset’s features may remind you somewhat of other apps, including group texting apps like Beluga and GroupMe, the earlier incarnation of Path, Batch, LiveShare, and others, but none of Popset’s competitors share the exact same feature set implemented in the exact same way.

Path, for example, has moved on from only photo-sharing to become a “share everything” app. GroupMe et al. are meant more for group texting, not photo album creation and sharing. Batch lets you upload to Facebook, but it posts links to your Wall – it doesn’t export entire albums. Plus, (and personal preference alert here!), Popset has a look-and-feel that puts it ahead of much of its photo-sharing competition right out of the gate. And for what it’s worth, it has created a good mix of both utility and pleasure.

The app is simple to set up, allowing you to sign in via Facebook, optionally invite friends, then jump right into creating your first album. Thanks to the app’s Facebook integration, you’ll also be able to see the photo albums shared by other Facebook friends who are Popset users, assuming those albums haven’t been set as private.

After starting your album, you give it a title, click next, then, on a very easy to understand screen, you answer three key questions related to privacy: Where? (check or uncheck to have the photos geotagged), Who can add photos? (You, those in your current location, or you plus specific friends), and Who can see this album? (Public or Private).

Albums, whether public, semi-public or private, work well in several scenarios, including private photo-sharing with just a few friends or family members, photo-sharing at events like weddings or parties or for sharing photos around a given topic or interest with other like-minded friends. And if you later decide to share the album on a larger social network like Facebook, exporting the entire album is an option.

However, even though Popset could be used for many purposes, it’s that Facebook export option that could end up being its best feature in the long run. Uploading a lot of photos to Facebook quickly and easily is still a challenge. There are a ton of utility-type applications out there for the purpose (I often use iLoader, for example), and while they get the job done, they don’t do so with any style. And they definitely don’t have Popset’s expanded feature set that could draw you in for other tasks, too, like tweeting out links to photo albums, emailing them, or sharing them over SMS text messaging, for example.

Popset still has to make some improvements though. The Facebook export option won’t support unlimited uploads until a later release (expected soon) – it only supports up to 10 photos at a time right now. The team already plans to add many other interesting features, too, like photo filters, selective photo exports, the ability to choose the album’s privacy settings on Facebook before export, syncing albums’ likes and comments to Facebook, and more.

Popset was founded this spring by a team of four, Phillip Wein, Jan Senderk, Nicolas Boes, and Daniel Wagner and has YC’s $20K in funding, plus the $150,000 from StartFund which all YC companies now receive.

You can grab the app here for free in iTunes.