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Yahoo! launches mobile social bookmarking tool - Yahoo! is set to launch a mobile social bookmarking tool as it continues to attempt to expand into the mobile space. OnePlace is scheduled for launch in coming months and will allow users to tag and track topics of interest they encounter online through their mobiles. Users can bookmark news feeds, links and search results and share their bookmarks with other users. Yahoo! says the service will recognise 52 different types of content, such as place names, video titles, album names and stock prices, with individual algorithms tailored for each content type to provide the most relevant related data.

Nielsen: Consumers Warming To Mobile Ads - A new report by Nielsen Mobile suggests consumers are gradually warming to mobile advertising. Among the findings, nearly a quarter of all U.S. mobile subscribers (23%) say they’ve viewed mobile advertising in the last 30 days. The Nielsen study also found that the number of mobile data users who recalled seeing advertising jumped 38% from 42 million to 58 million between the second and fourth quarters of 2007. Further, more than half of mobile data subscribers (51%), who saw an ad responded to it by sending a text-message, clicking on it, or calling a specific number. (Nielsen estimates 199 million Americans use some type of non-voice mobile service from text-messaging to video streaming.)

Microsoft, Yahoo Eye Larger Slices Of Mobile Pie - Microsoft and Yahoo sent clear signals Tuesday in separate announcements that both have set their sights on grabbing a larger piece of the mobile space, as advertising and marketing opportunities continue to rise. Microsoft signed a deal with Nokia to bring its Silverlight developer platform to the Series 60, which runs on the Symbian operating system. Nokia, the biggest seller of smartphones, also plans to offer the software in Internet-tablet devices.

AOL Steps Up Yahoo Talks - The Wall Street Journal reports that Yahoo and Time Warner’s AOL have taken merger discussions to the next level, and that AOL is now preparing a proposal that will be taken to Yahoo’s board and shareholders. Under the deal, AOL would be folded into Yahoo, with Time Warner taking a sizable chunk–perhaps one-quarter to one-third–of the combined company. Even so, the unnamed people familiar with the situation still believe a Yahoo purchase by Microsoft is the saga’s most likely outcome.

Intel Ups Investments in WiMax - The Santa Clara, Calif. chip giant warned late Monday that a steep drop in its flash memory prices will eat into 2008 projected margins. The news comes just days after Dell (DELL, Fortune 500), a key Intel customer, reported another disappointing quarter on falling PC sales. Intel’s dimmed outlook dampened tech stocks Tuesday, adding more pain to what has already been a terrible 2008 for tech investors. Both the Nasdaq Index and Intel (INTC, Fortune 500) shares were down about 1% in morning trading. So far this year, the index is off by 16%. Intel shares have slid 25 percent year-to-date. All eyes will be on Intel’s analysts’ conference Wednesday, where soothing jittery investors will be the chief objective. That could be a tall order: Some analysts and investors expect Intel to double-down on its bet that WiMax, an unproven successor to WiFi, will dominate wireless broadband. Through its financing arm Intel Capital, the company is expected to invest about $2 billion in a WiMax networking joint venture between Sprint (S, Fortune 500) and Clearwire.

FT.com To Give Facebook Students Free Four-Year Subs - FT.com will tomorrow begin giving free site subscriptions to college students via Facebook, the site has told us. The news site will launch an app that gives users a PIN code which can be redeemed for an annual premium sub. The app will only be available to those users who are identified at the social site as students and the subscriptions will expire after 12 months but can be renewed, again for free, for up to four years, which, at current prices, makes it worth £396 ($436; 476 euros). The app can be shared with users’ student friends, will appear in their newsfeeds and will place a badge on their profiles.

IAC: 100 Layoffs Coming At Ask.com; Search Deal With Google Possible - A source has confirmed to us a coming shakeup at IAC-owned Ask.com that includes about 100 layoffs in the April time frame. SAI reported this morning that the site may pull the plug on its own search efforts, and instead power itself with Google (NSDQ: GOOG ) search, a la AOL.

XM And Sirius Extend Merger Agreement Until May 1 -This should be long enough: XM (NSDQ: XMSR) and Sirius (NSDQ: SIRI) have extended their merger agreement to May 1, as the clock continues to tick on regulatory approval. Both companies have said they expect approval in the near future, but the agreement had been set to expire tomorrow, so they had no choice but to extend. Last week, the agreement to merge turned a year old, a year in which numerous rumors of an “imminent approval” were proven wrong.

PwC Media Outlook: Strategic Buyers To Dominate In ‘08; Fewer Mega Deals; More Consolidation - In light of the credit markets, PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts media deals in 2008 will be dominated by strategic buyers, but that private equity buyers aren’t going to disappear. While leverage-backed buyers obviously face challenging conditions, they continue to raise prodigious gobs of cash-$281 billion in 2007-that will be parked somewhere. For 2008, there’s no indication (yet) that investors are planning to allocate less money to these firms. Old line media assets, like cable and publishing are the most likely acquisition targets. As for strategic media buyers, the song in 2008 will remain the same: traditional media companies will keep making deals to help them navigate sand shifts brought on by digital.

Will RealNetworks End Up Buying Scrabulous? -I had the exact same thought that Om had after I read the NYT piece last night AND when RealNetworks (NSDQ: RNWK) PR sent out a note about the story, explaining their neutral position in the copyright controversy over the crazily popular Facebook app. Scrabulous is the new Tetris. The game, which claims to attract more than 700,000 daily players, was created last year by Kolkata, India-based brothers Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla. But it didn’t take off until it was added to Facebook a few months ago, where it quickly became one of the top 10 apps. Negotiations have been going on between Hasbro and Mattel (joint owners of Scrabble right) on one hand; and Electronic Arts (NSDQ: ERTS) and RealNetworks on the other hand (joint owners of digital rights), and the two brothers.

Global Radio bids USD737.3m for GCap in final offer - Global Radio is raising its offer for GCap Media to GBP370.9m (USD737.3m), with less than one day to go before the Mar 5 deadline set by the Takeover Panel. The improved bid values the radio group at 225p a share, 11% more than last month’s 202p per share offer. The bid also represents a 20% premium on Monday’s GCap closing price and is 86% higher than GCap’s stock price before the takeover attempt began. Global Radio, led by Former ITV CEO Charles Allen, has urged GCap shareholders to encourage the board to accept the offer.”

Gamer Ad Network Reaches 9 Billion Monthly Impressions - Intergi has emerged as the latest contender in the vertical ad network space, as the gaming and entertainment-focused ad network has hit the 9 billion mark in terms of monthly impressions–and boasts average campaign click through rates (CTRs) of 0.5% network-wide. Barely a year old, Deerfield Beach, Fla.-based Intergi has grown to include more than 500 properties, including independent sites devoted to massively multiplayer online (MMO) games like Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, as well as properties under the Sony Online Entertainment and Wizards of the Coast umbrellas.

Qtrax Strikes Deals With Music Publishers - In a step toward offering free music downloads, Qtrax Monday announced it had agreements with two publishers: Sony/ATV Music Publishing, which expanded a prior deal with Qtrax, and EMI Publishing, which renewed one with the company.

Mobile TV Needs To Be Free - Experts claim that to take off, mobile video will either have to be free and ad-supported or cost very little and be ad-supported. A survey of 1,004 users last year from In-Stat found that while most people are interested in viewing video content on their mobile phones, 80 percent said they wouldn’t pay $15 per month for it. In fact, IDC Research adds that even among those who do watch mobile content on their phones (roughly 2 percent of U.S. wireless users according to M:Metrics), the vast majority opt for $2 downloads rather than pay a monthly subscription.

Microsoft Strike Silverlight Deal With Nokia - Microsoft on Tuesday announced a new deal with Nokia to put its Silverlight technology in front of the Finnish handset maker’s millions of mobile phone users. Silverlight allows developers to create multimedia applications independent of browser, operating system and handset. Because of its interoperability, the technology is seen as a direct competitor to Adobe’s market-dominating Flash, which is already on millions of mobile phones.

Liberty 4Q Revs Rise, Looks For e-Commerce Buys - As its QVC shopping channel and Starz Entertainment division suffered weak financial quarterly results, Liberty Media took stock. It is aggressively looking at making e-commerce acquisitions to complement QVC. Liberty wants to acquire Internet commerce businesses that will work with its QVC channel. Liberty Chief Executive Greg Maffei says the company will be casting somewhat of a wide net–looking at businesses anywhere from $50 million to $5 billion.

Turn Smart Network Combines Targeting Methods - Turn Inc. today formally launches its automated ad network more than a year after the service debuted in beta. Co-founded by former AltaVista CEO Jim Barnett, the Turn Smart Network aims to stand apart from myriad competitors by combining contextual, audience, behavioral, and other targeting methods to serve the optimal ad placement.

Amazon Launches Video Widget Program For Affiliates - Amazon has launched a service for registered Amazon affiliates to upload videos, and then select products to can be displayed with them. The Amazon Your Video Widget program has not launched with a destination portal–and so, for the time being, will not be competing directly with the YouTubes of the world. Your Video Widget welcomes a range of video from product review to personal family video, which are then monetized with ads paid as a percentage of generated sales rather than on a Cost-Per-Click or CPM basis.

Unicast Partners With AdMob To Power Mobile Web Pages - Unicast, a division of Enliven Marketing Technologies, is partnering with AdMob, a mobile advertising marketplace, to power mobile Web pages via the Unicast Rich Media Mobile platform. The Rich Media Mobile technology is a hosted delivery and tracking solution for optimized rich mobile Web page content aiming to help advertisers provide a richer experience for audiences that are both media- and mobile-savvy. The platform provides tools for advertisers and agencies to create, deliver, and measure the effectiveness of rich media mobile ad campaigns.

More Bad News From eBay - In an SEC filing last week, online auctioneer eBay revealed that its business faces many challenges in the coming months, including slowing growth in its three largest markets, the U.S., U.K. and Germany. Growth of listings, active users, new users and sales is expected to slow, driven by the weak economic climate in each of three countries. Regardless of a recession, ecommerce growth had been expected to continue its deceleration. Wall Street analysts expect eBay to earn revenue of $8.7 billion in 2008, a rise of 14 percent over 2007–which is a far cry from rates of 30 and 40 percent in recent years.

DoubleClick Groups Products, Partners With Seevast - DoubleClick has grouped its suite of ad products for Web publishers under the DoubleClick Revenue Center umbrella and upgraded its ad sales management and forecasting tools. Meanwhile, Seevast Corp. announces a new division called SyndiGO and a new partnership with DoubleClick.

Timex Launches Podcast Campaign To Promote iPod-Linked Watch - Timex is going after gym rats and joggers with a new podcast campaign for its Ironman iControl watch, a timepiece that can wirelessly control the owner’s iPod. Omnicom’s PHD is the media agency behind the campaign, with VoloMedia as the company providing the ad serving, tracking and reporting technology.

Wikileaks Back Online After Judge Reverses Order - Whistle-blower site Wikileaks.org got its domain name back Friday, after a federal judge reversed his prior shutdown order. “It is clear that in all but the most exceptional circumstances, an injunction restricting speech pending final resolution of the constitutional concerns is impermissible,” wrote San Francisco federal district court Judge Jeffrey White.

Zale Corp. Taps Bazaarvoice For Customer Reviews - Zale Corp. taps Bazaarvoice for customer reviews to power customer reviews and feedback on jewelry products for its Zales and Gordon’s Jewelers Brands. The fine jeweler recently deployed Austin-based Bazaarvoice’s Ratings & Reviews platform at Zales.com, and amassed more than 3,000 reviews in the process.

Hollywood, Silicon Alley Firms to Invest Together - Here’s a trio for the future: Hollywood talent agency William Morris is teaming up with Silicon Alley VC firms Accel Partners and Venrock to invest in digital media startups in the Southern California area. Telecom giant AT&T is also on board as a limited partner.