It may still be a feature phone world , and mobile payments are a work in progress, but the big movers in the space are happy to be the guinea pigs, knowing it will pay off down the line.

Going to a fancy State Gala? Married to a Rovio executive? Angry Birds dresses are SO IN this season.

Another example of creative use of Augmented Reality rears its head in the form of an online scavenger hunt with a chance to win an iPad 2. The team at Metaio who created the Junaio Augmented Reality browser and German creative shop  Kreativagentur Thomas have partnered to create a scavenger hunt where you can use Junaio to scan special images hidden around the web to unlock AR content and experiences.

Which event caused a greater spike in tweets this year, the Japanese earthquake, Steve Jobs’ death, or Beyonce’s pregnancy announcement at the MTV Music Awards?

Yesterday news broke that Verizon would be blocking Google’s flagship Galaxy Nexus phone from including Google Wallet, the NFC-based system that will let you tap your phone against special sensors to pay for goods and services.

I sat down with Sundance DiGiovanni, CEO of Major League Gaming, who had some alarming and interesting statistics to share. First, the championships saw viewerships of over 3.6 million while fans watch 15 million hours of video during the Pro Circuit leading up to the championships.

To search these days is really an incredibly service-intensive process.

Listen, I’ve yet to play with the new Xoom 2 models — or, as the new devices are called at Verizon, the XYBoards . I’m sure both the 8.9 and 10.1 models are fine tablets

Lots of US cities claim they’re the best place to do a startup. So where are entrepreneurs actually starting companies these days

MoPub , a mobile advertising startup founded by ex-AdMob and Google employees, is launching support for in-game ads and is also announcing a deal to power advertising in DeNa-owned ngmoco’s Mobage gaming network. MoPub, which is backed by Accel Partners and others, develops a self-serve ad serving platform for mobile applications and websites that allows mobile publishers to serve direct-sold rich media banner and interstitial ads in addition to optimizing their remnant inventory with networks like AdMob, Jumptap, and Millennial Media.