Sprint is no stranger to forging big-name partnerships — the NASCAR Sprint Cup comes to mind — but this time the folks in Overland Park have struck a deal with a rather unexpected party. Sprint has just announced that after nine months of competition, they have been named the official wireless provider of San Diego, California.

According to the terms of the deal, Sprint will provide more than 3,000 devices to municipal staff, from their EVO series of Android phones to BlackBerrys to mobile broadband modems. Interestingly enough, iPhones don’t appear on the list of supported products, though I suspect more than a few staffers lobbied long and hard for them. Sprint, also looking to continue their focus on going green, is working to create a recycling program for all of the municipal government’s used wireless devices.

In exchange for their devices and service, Sprint stands to pick up a cool $2.6 million over the course of the city’s two-year contract. The San Diego municipal government has the option to extend the deal for up to another three years if needed, though given the strength of their competitors, it’s tough to say if Sprint can remain the most worthwhile option for the city over the next five years.

Still, Sprint has gotten a lot of mileage out of their government contracts over the years, and the addition of San Diego to the list adds to Sprint’s recent string of victories. In addition to breaking single-day sales records with the iPhone 4S, Sprint also reported solid Q3 financials a few weeks back.

Dropbox co-founder Drew Houston has one of the hottest startups in the game. With $257.2 million in funding and a $4-billion valuation it’s poised to triple an already impressive user base of 45-millon. So when did Houston know he was sitting on something pretty? Erick Schonfeld finds out in episode III of Drew Houston’s Founder Stories interview.

Houston says there “were a couple of important inflection points.” The first occurred after Dropbox released a demo video that captured Y Combinator’s attention and helped Dropbox secure an invitation to join the exclusive startup program. Milestone two occurred a year later when Dropbox released a separate video on Digg during its private beta launch.

In that second video, Houston says his team layered “easter eggs… aimed at the Digg audience” into the otherwise mainstream presentation. The splash of creativity worked. Within 24-hours Dropbox “had 75,000 people signup for the wait-list.” They were expecting 15,000, tops.

Not wanting to risk testing a buggy product on all 75,000, Dropbox carefully screened who could kick around early versions by extending invites through “a Gmail style closed beta.”  Their strategy paid off. Just seven months after public launch Dropbox hit 1-million users. Roughly a year later they counted 10 million.

With success in hand, Houston offers this advice to founders: “Research what other companies have done” but be cognizant of the fact that “often what works for one company is just completely the wrong thing for another company.”

Make sure to check out the entire video for additional advice and watch episodes I and II of Houston’s interview with Schonfeld.

Past episodes of Founder Stories featuring Alexis Ohanian, Fred Wilson and Kevin Ryan are here.

Episode IV of this interview is coming up.

Remember that one time Motorola and Verizon announced the new Droid RAZR, but failed to offer up any in-store availability dates? A date as vague as “November” can only tide over the masses for so long, which may be why Verizon “passed along” this internal document (full-size below) to Droid-Life, which details in-store availability across “all channels” on November 10. The beastly 4G-LTE packin’ RAZR will go for $299.99 on-contract.

In similar news, UK retailer Clove had originally listed RAZR availability for November 1, but then changed it to “the week commencing 7 November,” reports Pocket-Lint. In other words, it’ll probably arrive in customer hands by the 10th.

As a refresher, the Droid RAZR boasts a 7.1mm waist line making it the world’s thinnest smartphone, or so says Motorola. It packs a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, Android 2.3 Gingerbread (with a promised update to Ice Cream Sandwich), and support for Verizon’s 4G LTE network. You’ll find an 8-megapixel shooter on the back capable of video capture in 1080p, along with a 1.3-megapixel front-facing cam for video chat. Along with its 4.3-inch qHD Super AMOLED 960×540 display, the phone also ships with a Kevlar fiber casing along the back, to withstand the “back pocket test.”

Trustpilot, a site which rates the trustworthiness of shopping sites via a toolbar, has raised €3.3 million from two Nordic venture funds, SEED Capital and Northzone Ventures.

The money will be used to scale internationally. Right now it’s available in 10 European countries but plans further rollouts.

As was previously leaked, Google is now launching its new GoMo service, which aims to help businesses easily create a mobile-friendly website. The website for the service was discovered earlier this week, but the details sat behind a password-protected front page. Today, Google is making GoMo available to the public.

On HowToGoMo.com, business owners can enter in their current website’s URL to see what the site looks like on mobile. GoMo will then make suggestions and recommendations on how the site could be mobile-optimized. GoMo will also show examples of great mobile websites for inspiration and point to a list of mobile site developers who can help design a better experience.

Of course, Google itself provides this service through its recently updated Google Site Builder, which it is happy to link to. But credit to Google: it doesn’t make it the top link – that goes to Atmio, Inc. and DudaMobile, both of which sit above Google in the list. (Of course, that’s only because the list is in alphabetical order.)

The list of providers can also be filtered by service type (DIY, Full service), cost and timeframe to build.

GoMo is really more of a marketing effort and a push to get business owners to go mobile the latter which fits into Google’s overall goal of getting more websites on the (mobile) web so Google can expand its advertising reach.

Still, as a consumer struggling with the quite often non-mobile web on a tiny smartphone screen, it’s good to see something like this come about.

Despite RIM’s successive screw-ups (including a massive server outage that left thousands of customers without BBM or internet service… twice), there are still some hardcore BlackBerry fans out there. If you’re one of them, feel free to breathe a sigh of relief because the only news I bring you today is the announcement of three new BlackBerry models for AT&T: the BlackBerry Bold 9900, the BlackBerry Torch 9860, and the BlackBerry Curve 9360.

Then again, it’s not even noon yet.

The BlackBerry Bold 9900 looks and feels very similar to its predecessors. It packs the standard QWERTY keyboard RIM clings so tightly to, along with a 2.8-inch touchscreen display. A 1.2GHz processor is under the hood along with 768 MB of RAM, 8GB of on-board memory, a memory card slot, and support for AT&T’s 4G network. You’ll also find a 5-megapixel rear camera capable of video capture in 720p, with BlackBerry 7 OS running the show. The phone has earned MasterCard’s PayPass NFC certification, along with the Curve 9360. The Bold 9900 will go for $199.99 on-contract on November 6.

Up next, we have the BlackBerry Torch 9860, the first all-touch BlackBerry to hit AT&T. It sports a 3.7-inch touchscreen, and almost all the same specs as the Bold 9900, save for the PayPass certification. The Torch should be an interesting addition to BlackBerry’s lineup, seeing that many die-hard BlackBerry owners normally cite messaging (and thus, the full QWERTY keyboard) as the deal-maker. At the same time, a buttonless world is upon us, as the tech world tries to get as touch-sensitive as possible. The Torch 9860 will go for $99.99 on-contract on November 6, the same day as the Bold.

Last, but not least, we have the BlackBerry Curve 9360, with its flash-enabled 5-megapixel camera capable of video capture in 720p. The phone boasts a 2.44-inch display along with an 800MHz processor, while BlackBerry 7 OS runs the show. AT&T says that a version of the phone will be available without a camera, but hasn’t specified whether or not the price goes down on that model. The Curve will launch later than the other two, going for $29.99 on-contract on November 20. Government officials and enterprise customers will get first dibs, on November 14.

Add this site to your bookmarks because I guarantee you, at some point, you’re going to need it. CanIStream.it is a new search engine that shows you where you can stream, rent, download and buy movies. The site checks the libraries at Netflix, Amazon, iTunes and Hulu and provides links to the appropriate listings. And if a movie isn’t available, you can sign up for CanIStream.it, set a reminder and the service will email you when the movie’s availability changes.

The service is a side project from the team at UrbanPixels, a NY-based technology consulting, branding and design firm, who says they built the site because they were in need of something like this. (As were we all).

Thanks to all the competing services, the ever-changing content deals between movie studios and streaming providers and the maddening decision by some studios to enforce a 28-day window between DVD releases and streaming availability, it’s hard to know what’s available where, in what format and when. But now you can just search CanIStream.it.

There really isn’t much to using the service – you just enter a query and hit enter. Each search result has four icons: one for streaming, one for a digital rental, one for downloads and the last for where you can purchase the DVD. Click the link for the service where you want to view or buy the movie and you’re redirected there. That’s it.

My only complaint? It would be nice if they added TV shows, too.

UrbanPixels Co-Founder Alex Petrescu says they’re not in it for the money – they just wanted to build a tool for the community to use.

Thanks, guys.

The future may be mobile, but trying to shop at an online retailer from your phone is often a surefire way to get a headache.

Sure, online stores are now much better about offering mobile-optimized sites than they were a few years ago — but even then, plugging in your credit card information on your phone’s keyboard is a pain, and quickly buying multiple items from multiple stories is basically out of the question. There are a few good experiences to be had (I’ve used Amazon’s mobile apps plenty of times, and they generally work well). But it’s the exception, not the rule.

That’s why Kima Labs built TapBuy, a new mobile app (and platform) with a focus on making the mobile shopping experience as good as it should be. You enter your credit card information once, and can use it across multiple stores. There’s no shopping cart — you just tap and buy, without having to go through a lengthy purchase/shipping flow. You can download their first app, TapBuy Deals for iOS, right here.

Kima Labs was started by a team of ex-Amazon employees, including CEO Blake Scholl, who did Amazon’s first AdWords purchase way back when and later headed Amazon’s global search engine marketing. The company has raised $770k from Naval Ravikant, SV Angel, Owen Van Natta and former execs from Amazon, Facebook, Google and Wal-Mart.

When you first fire up TapBuy Deals, you’ll see a stream of discounted items the service has found online (it’s constantly crawling various retailers and detecting price changes, so it’ll even catch things that aren’t advertised). You can filter by the type of deal you want to see, and you can delete retailers you aren’t interested in. The service will support top brands like Gap, Target, and Old Navy.

The first time you buy something you’ll have to enter your credit card information and shipping address. From then on, the buying flow simply requires you to enter a 4-digit PIN (which is used to protect you in case you lose your phone) — the payment and shipping information is handled by TapBuy automatically, so you can literally purchase something (even from a retailer you’ve never shopped with) in a few seconds. There are some other niceties included as well — for instance, the app will automatically enter any relevant coupon codes it can find online for the site you’re ordering from.

The interesting bit about TapBuy’s technology is that it doesn’t have special API access to each of these retailer sites. Instead, the company has essentially built a ‘browser in the cloud’ — each time you buy something using the app, a computer program on TapBuy’s servers will actually click through the retailer’s checkout process, filling in your information as appropriate. This sounds a little goofy, but it has a key benefit: merchants don’t have to do any work to become ‘TapBuy-enabled’, so the company can onboard them more quickly. Scholl adds that this actually took a lot of work to get working reliably at scale.

The one caveat: at launch some of the items seen in the TapBuy Deals app aren’t actually TapBuy enabled — in other words, you’ll have to go through the retailer’s normal website to actually buy them. But Scholl says they’re working hard to make all of them work with the streamlined buying experience.

And this is just the start. In the future, the company will also be releasing more apps that include this functionality, and third-party developers will be able to integrate it as well.  Android fans can expect to start seeing TapBuy-enabled apps next year.

People take photos of food with their mobile phones all the time. But to what end other than to gain cred on Foodspotting or brag about your gourmet meal on Instagram and Twitter? The Eatery is a different type of photo app. It is about you, and taking photos to make yourself aware of what you are eating so that you can change your behavior and eat healthier foods.

The Eatery is the first app from Massive Health, co-founders Sutha Kamal’s and Aza Raskin’s startup which wants to make people healthier by arming them with better data about what they doing to their bodies. The iPhone app is simple. You take pictures of everything you eat and rate it on a scale from “fit” to “fat.”

You share these pictures with your friends, who can then give it a thumbs up (fit) or a thumbs down (fat). The food data you collect gets measured in a health dial that scores how well or poorly you’ve been eating. There is also a feed of what your friends are eating, with pictures and comments.

You don’t have to guess how many calories each meal contains or do anything else. The whole point of the app is just to make you constantly aware of what you are eating, and when you are eating healthy and when you are eating fatty foods. You can also check into paces where you are eating such as coffee shops and restaurants.

The more you use the app, the more data it shows you over time, charting your food habits in a very systematic way. The social aspect helps keep you honest, and the game mechanics keep it fun.

Despite its simplicity, The Eatery is asking a lot of its users: to take a picture of every single meal and snack. “Everyone asumes you are taking food porn pictures,” notes Raskin. He wants to give people enough motivation to take a picture of what they are eating as a way to track your intake. Some people will be obsessive about it, but for many people it may prove to be too much. Stop taking pictures and eat your food!

Can this data really make you healthier? The app follows the dictum that you can’t change something unless you measure it, and at least it is attempting to measure the right thing. “This is just about answering a simple question,” says Raskin: “Are you eating better today than yesterday.”

Mobile advertising Pontiflex is releasing an update to its AppLeads Smart SDK today, which brings its online “signup” platform to iOS5 devices and Android tablets, including the Kindle Fire. Previously, the system worked on older versions of iOS and Android smartphones.

These signup ads are a different type of mobile advertising – one where the click-through is not the goal, but getting the customer to opt-in to hear more from the advertiser in question, is.

Signup ads let customers interact with the ad without leaving the app. For now, that means entering in a zip code and email address, although Pontiflex is working on a version of the product that would introduce a social element to ads. For example, consumers could “like” the advertiser on Facebook or even share the ad with their friends. (Don’t laugh – some people really do share ads. Heck, some even blog about ads they like.) The possibility for social sharing increases when the advertiser is pitching a great deal, coupon, discount or sale, of course, which they likely would do.

Pontiflex says it now has just under 1,000 applications running its ads on iOS and sees 4 million sign-ups per month. Some big-name advertisers are participating in the platform, including 1-800 Flowers, Southwest Airlines, Sak’s, Barney’s, Kimberly-Clark (Huggies) and others. As consumers interact with the ads, the algorithm, which takes into account 27 different types of signals, learns from that interaction, and guesses which ads the consumer would be most interested in seeing.

Pontiflex is backed by New Atlantic Ventures, Tribeca Venture Partners and RRE Ventures. It has raised $14 million in funding to date. For a demo of AppLeads in action, go here.

We’ve written a number of times about Trunk Club, a personal shopping service for men. The model is pretty simple-professional stylists on staff coordinate with clients via phone and email, and actually purchase goods for clients from retailers. A FedEx package is sent to clients with the hand-picked styles and the men can keep what they want and send back the clothes that don’t work. Today, CakeStyle is launching a similar service, but for women.

CakeStyle buys fashions and accessories from designers, like Kate Spade, Elie Tahari, Rag & Bone and more, at wholesale prices and stores them in its warehouse. Personal stylists coordinate with clients via email and phone on what their style and preferences are, and will curate a collection of clothes for each season.

The clothes are shipped to a client’s home and she can keep what she loves and send the rest back. The CakeStyle service and shipping (including returns) are free—users pay regular retail prices only for those items you choose to keep. Backed by Sandbox Industries, CakeStyle also offers a showroom in Chicago where clients meet stylists in person and try on clothes.

Each shipment (per season) costs on average $2,000 to $3,000 for the client.

It should be interesting to see if Trunk Club’s model will work for women. Personally, I enjoy the shopping experience of finding and trying on clothes in a store, so I wouldn’t be an ideal customer. But there are plenty of women who don’t enjoy shopping or don’t have the time to shop, and CakeStyle could be an appealing alternative.

If Apple was a melody and Samsung was a beat, their legal battle would be the song that never ends. On the whole, the war has lasted more than six months, spanned more than half the continents, and is still only in its formative stages. Final decisions have yet to be made in almost all of the cases, and in predictable fashion, the duo are igniting new battles at what feels like a daily rate. This time, Samsung is asking for some juicy deets in its Australian counter suit against Apple.

After Apple won a preliminary injunction on the Galaxy Tab 10.1, Samsung vowed to get more aggressive. And so they have, filing for a preliminary injunction against Apple’s brand new iPhone 4S. In doing so, Samsung has requested the source code for the iPhone 4S, as well as details on Apple’s subsidy deals with Australian carriers.

Samsung’s argument is that the iPhone 4S infringes three patents it holds, all concerned with 3G wireless technology and the transmission of mobile data. However, the patents in question are standard essentials patents, which means the technology they cover is a necessity industry-wide, rather than a specific brand innovation. In that case, Samsung is required to offer FRAND (Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory) licensing terms, which, according to Samsung, Apple refused. Apple, on the other hand, says its covered by a third-party licensing agreement made by Qualcomm on the MDM6610 chipset, reports SmartOffice. Still, Samsung asserts that whatever licensing deal is in place may not extend into Australian turf.

In other words, this dueling duo can’t seem to get their licensing deals straight, or are at least doing a helluva job making it appear that way to the judge. Speaking of the judge, the same judge that ruled in the Apple vs. Samsung Galaxy Tab case is taking the reigns here: Judge Annabelle Bennett.

She listened this morning as Samsung counsel Cynthia Cochrane asked for the iPhone source code, along with subsidy agreement details in order to make a case for a sales ban. “If subsidies are given for the iPhone 4S, there are less to go around for my client’s products,” said Cochrane. Samsung is looking to get the subsidy numbers from Vodafone, Telstra and Optus, the three major carriers in Australia.

Meanwhile, Apple is looking for advice from counsel before agreeing to hand over the source code, which is a pretty solid idea. Who knows what infringing features Samsung will find in there?

In any case, this is much less of a blow to Apple than the Galaxy Tab sales ban is for Samsung. The iPhone 4S is “a horse [that has] already bolted,” according to Apple’s lawyers. The iPhone, in particular, tends to sell fast directly at launch, presumably because people want as much time as possible with the “new” iPhone before Apple tosses something better into the market. Plus, if you don’t move fast for a new Apple product, it usually sells out. Despite Samsung’s 4S sales publicity stunt, Apple lawyers are indeed correct in saying that the iPhone has already left the building, while the GalTab never even made it to shelves.

Past that, if Samsung can’t find any further infringement (should Apple offer up the source code), then the case will most likely result in FRAND licensing deals between Samsung and Apple. That is, if Apple’s Qualcomm deal doesn’t hold up. Summarily, Apple has more than a few lines of defense against this attack, and if Samsung wants more than a headache out of this, it’ll surely be an uphill battle.

The case will continue on Friday, November 4.

D.C.-based Seva Search has raised $1.3 million in Series A funding for its first product, Seva Call, a search engine that lets consumers connect with local businesses in near real-time via the phone. On the Seva Call site (and soon, mobile app), you’ll be able to search for local businesses like plumbers, contractors, computer repair techs, taxi cabs or any other type of business relying on incoming phone calls for new work.

To use the service, you’ll enter in the dates and times that are convenient to you, plus your name, phone number and a description of the service you need. Then, the businesses call you.

Investors in the Series A round include Fortify.vc, Ed Mathias, Tim Sykes, Jay Virdy, David Eisner, Andrew Bachman, Jigar Shah, Krishna Subramanian, Vishal Gurbaxani, Arjun Dev Arora, Saket Saurabh, plus angels Paul Silber, David Krauskopf, John Lapides, Roger Richter, Glen Hellman and John Cammack. Badder Alghanim, James and David Dingman, Alex Edmans and John Villa were listed by the company as “supporters.”

Seva Search was founded by Gurpreet Singh (CEO), Manpreet Singh (COO) and Amandeep Bakshi (Head of Products). Gurpreet Singh is a veteran entrepreneur, who previously served as Managing Partner in the I.T. consulting firm Geeks On-Site.

Initially, the company found that trying to get businesses to sign up to participate in the service was difficult – they didn’t want to be pitched another place to advertise. So instead, the company’s founders just started sending them calls. Then, the businesses came to them instead, wanting to know more. Of those businesses that have a relationship with Seva Search, 1 in 4 companies will answer an incoming phone call. Of those that don’t, only 1 in 8 do.

But the idea is not to call each business one by one – it’s to call all of them at once. Whomever answers first and who meets the consumer’s needs for the date and time (and, in the future, price), will be the business that ends up connecting with the customer. To ring the customer back, it’s just a matter of pushing a button. Meanwhile, the customer’s personal data (name, phone number, etc.) remains out of the businesses’ hands until they choose to give it to them.

In time, by tracking calls, appointment bookings and other data, Seva Search’s algorithm will get smarter, learning which businesses to call first and when. It will also begin to follow up with customers about the work they had done, and ask them to rate it.

Businesses are able to get the incoming requests via text and email, too, but need to dial Seva’s 1-800 number to reach the customers.

Seva Call has been in private beta testing, but will be rolling out to the D.C. Metro area in a month, and nationwide by the beginning of 2012.

Porn sells. That’s the dirty truth of the Internet and Boxee is adding a new source of adult material on its streaming platform. FyreTV (NSFW LINK) joins YouPorn, Husler, PinkVisual in serving up, ummm, NSFTW (not safe for the wife) material on both the Boxee app and the standalone Boxee Box. For $10 a month, the FyreTV app opens a door to 15,000 movies from over 100 studios. Take that, Netflix!

Porn isn’t a new venture for Boxee. The streaming app has featured adult apps for some time and allows users to lock out that content through a password-protected setting. There’s even a new dedicated adult app category.

FyreTV recently launched on Roku devices as well, leaving behind its older model of leasing dedicated porn streaming boxes (our video review is below). Once again, consumers do not want a single use set-top box, especially one that’s dedicated just to smut. By bringing their huge porn library to popular streamers, FyreTV eliminates the expense of selling and supporting hardware while reaching a broader audience.

Boxee likely doesn’t want to be known as the porn streamer box. However, as long as there’s sufficient parental controls in place (which there seems to be), the company is simply growing its business by offering more content to its users. It’s hard to hate on that.

Adknowledge, which bills itself as the operator of the world’s largest privately held Internet advertising network, has acquired AdParlor, a Facebook Ads management platform that manages over one billion impressions per day on Facebook. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

AdParlor, which has never taken any outside funding, manages large ad spend on Facebook for companies like Groupon and Ubisoft, and offers a self-service platform for companies to manage ads on the social network.

For example, AdParlor runs all of a company’s ads on the right-hand column of Facebook through a wide variety of campaigns – from generic ads driving users to sign-up for emails to deal-specific advertising units with a focus on driving direct sales.

Founded in 2004, Adknowledge employs over 300 employees and has revenues of $300 million, according to its website. The company says it focuses on the ‘long-tail’ of advertising, which is why AdParlor makes sense as an addition to its offerings. It’s been quite acquisitive over the past few years, as you can tell from the list of bought companies on CrunchBase. AdKnowledge has raised over $200 million in funding.

While most of the furor over the the new iPhone has died down around these parts, Apple has announced that a few new markets will be able to get their proverbial hands on the iPhone 4S very shortly. The 4S is poised to hit 15 new countries by November 11, including major Asian markets like South Korea and Hong Kong.

Outside of Asia, the 4S is slated to hit Albania, Armenia, Bulgaria, El Salvador, Greece, Guatemala, Malta, Montenegro, New Zealand, Panama, Poland, Portugal, and Romania.

A very sincere sorry goes out to all you folks in Albania, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malta, Montenegro and Panama — unlike the other countries on the list, you won’t be able to lock in your iPhone 4S pre-order come November 4, so you’re pretty much stuck slugging it out for one at your favorite local iRetailer.

Apple just recently released the iPhone 4S in 22 additional countries, so they seem to be well on their way to executing the “fastest rollout ever” as promised at their launch event. That’s got to be grin-worthy news for Apple’s top brass, but they can’t stop to breathe just yet — they still need to deliver the 4S to around 30 more countries by the end of the year.

Editor’s note: Guest contributor Steve Rosnebaum is CEO of Magnify.

With two weeks to go before Amazon ships its highly anticipated Kindle Fire to the first 500,000 pre-order customers, folks in the developer community are finding it hard to sort out just what flavor of Android will run on the platform. One thing is for sure, Mobi is out—as Amazon embraces both HTML5 and CSS3 in the new format.

Today Kindle Format 8 powers the book reader on the Kindle Fire device, and Amazon is now telling developers that KF8 will be available on all Kindle e-ink devices in months ahead, and importantly, KF8 will be available on the free Kindle reading apps as well. This means KF8 should be available on the iPad—which could be very interesting.

KF8 is a major improvement over Mobi, with 150 new formatting styles including embedded fonts, drop caps and CSS selectors such as line spacing, alignment, justification, margin, color, style and borders.

But, as of today, the tools to build in the KF8 format aren’t available—with ‘coming soon’ being as much as we know for the important KindleGen2 Publisher Tool and Kindle Previewer 2. Even the Kindle Publishing Guidelines aren’t yet published, leaving content owners with a lot of enthusiasm, but little actionable information.

Kindle Fire will be backwards compatible, so all content published in Mobi format will work on the new devices, which may be one reason that Amazon isn’t rushing to put the KF8 tools in the market. Kindle Fire will launch with plenty of content, just not as snazzy as it could be if HTML5 and CSS3 specs for the device were in the hands of content owners a bit earlier.

Once the Kindle Previewer 2 is available, publishers will be able to port old titles over from Mobi, and see how they appear on a range of new Kindle devices and free reader apps.

So, for the ‘reader’ content world, there’s a clear path to the new world of KF8 – even if the timing of the publishing guidelines and tools are somewhat fuzzy.

But, for Kindle Fire App developers, the roadmap to the device is less clear.

The Kindle Fire is a tablet built on Android. Amazon developers forked Android along the way (rumors say either the Frozen Yogurt 2.2 or Gingerbread 2.3.4) Actually this a tablet built off a smartphone OS and not the current Android tablet OS, Ice Cream Sandwich.

All developers know for sure are the specs of the device, and what it won’t support.

At a high level, it must be optimized for Android 2.3.4 (Gingerbread) and a 7″ screen with a resolution of 1024 x 600. Your app cannot require Google Mobile Services (GMS), a gyroscope, camera, WAN module, Bluetooth, microphone, GPS, or micro-SD to function. Adobe AIR is pre-installed on Kindle Fire. And Amazon says that to increase the ‘probability’ that your app will be compatible with Kindle Fire, you should only use Ice Cream Sandwich APIs that are backwards compatible with Gingerbread. What about testing? Amazon suggests developers configure a standard Android emulator to simulate the Kindle Fire device platform at this time.

It seems like the current focus at Amazon is testing the entire existing Amazon Marketplace Android marketplace, and then alerting app developers know if their app will work on the Kindle Fire. If it fails QA, then developers have a change to make fixes and republishing the app in the Android Marketplace.

Given the massive content resources of Amazon, it appears that the tablet wars are going to be a major theme of 2012. Already JP Morgan is reporting sales of the Fire on pace to sell up to 5 million units in Q4 of 2011. A fast start against the iPad market which currently reports 32 million iPads in consumer’s hands.

The blog Cult of Android reported a "source" provided it with "exclusive screenshots of Amazon's internal inventory system" showing that 254,074 Kindle Fires were pre-ordered in the first 5 days: "over 2,000 units per hour, or over 50,000 per day." This puts the Kindle Fire on track to beat the iPad and iPad 2's first-month sales

So, the Kindle Crusade is very much on a roll. Sales are robust. The KF8 standard will impact the current e-pub3 world. And the Kindle Fire will provide a new, large, and potentially profitable outlet for app developers once there’s clarity around the flavor of Android that will power the device and once the dev tools and an emulator make their way into the market.

If Fire ends up equalling Android Tablet, Amazon will have created a powerful edge in race to win the new portable content consumer.

Traditional publishers and fledgling digital publications alike are trying to find the best ways to monetize their content on the Web and take advantage of the benefits offered by hyperlocal content and the targeted advertising that (should) come with it. PaperG, an advertising technology startup founded in 2007, is trying to become that go-to solution for small and established online publishers that are looking for a quick and easy solution for their hyperlocal advertising needs.

PaperG has built a solution that automates local ad creation, sales, and management for these online publishers that automatically creates a custom rich-media ad for any local business in less than 60 seconds, according to PaperG Founder and CEO Victor Wong. In August of last year, the startup added well-known publishers including the Los Angeles Times, MediaNews Group, Lee Enterprises, and Sun Times Media Group to its roster of publishing partners, which also includes names like Hearst, McClatchy, Gannett, New York Times Regional, Boston Globe, Newsday and New York Post.

Today, the startup is announcing that it will be providing its local display advertising technology to another big player in the local news space: AOL Inc.'s hyperlocal platform of sites, Patch.com. (Disclosure: TechCrunch is owned by Aol.) PaperG’s technology will be released in over 100 of Patch’s markets, enabling Patch sales teams access instant ad creation, management, and optimization for their litany of local advertisers.

The value proposition here for Aol’s Patch is that PaperG’s technology, which supports Flash, HTML5, and mobile ad units, can automatically build a custom ad for any local business in a jiffy (an example of which you can check out to the right). All that a sales rep or advertiser needs is the business’ name and address, and PaperG’s solution crawls the Web, aggregating all the important info for the business, including reviews, location, etc., and presto, it creates a display ad without the sales rep having so much as to open a new tab.

The key here, Wong says, is to supercharging sales and giving small newspapers and publishers an easy ad-creation platform without having to know how to code or create ad copy themselves. In the majority of situations, he says, the ad that’s created ends up being the final product, although teams then have the ability to tweak the design, color, ad copy, and so on, to complete the optimization process.

Wong says that PaperG wants local merchants to be able to target these ads as much as possible, through geo targeting, targeting by category, to enable small businesses to target the right audience and interest group the first time without the hassle. For merchants, the solution is absolutely free, and for publishers, the ability to avoid having to pay $50 for every ad that a solution creates is a huge leg up.

Thus, to make money, PaperG creates these commercial agreements, like the one it’s formed with Patch, to make its technology accessible to the variety of local outlets that are seeing syndicated content from the publisher. Those publishers have the opportunity to offer hyperlocal, targeted ads to an audience that is (they hope) far more likely to click on ad for their local pizza shop, which in turn makes those local businesses benefiting from this discounted advertising happy campers.

And so far, the strategy seems to be working, as Wong says that it’s technology has been able to double the close rates for sales reps. While Google has a strong business with AdWords and is leading search engine advertising by a long shot, Wong says that no one is really doing this for local display advertising, which remains one of the largest white spaces in online advertising, he says. With a solution that simplifies local advertising for online publishers and the small businesses they represent, this PaperG’s strategy potentially has some legs.

And considering the fact that Patch did its due diligence and considered a number of solutions before finally deciding to go with PaperG, the partnership is further confirmation that it they just might be onto something.

PaperG raised $1.1 million from LaunchCapital, Brian O’Kelley, Mark Potts, and Steve Taylor back in December 2009. For more on the startup, check ‘em out at home here.

Yahoo has just announced that it is purchasing Interclick, a data-driven ad network. The total acquisition price is around $270 million, or $9 per share.

Interclick is a technology company providing solutions for data-driven advertising. The Company's proprietary Open Segment Manager (OSM) platform organizes and valuates billions of data points daily to construct the most responsive digital audiences for major digital marketers. Interclick's proprietary advertising technology helps improve data targeting in online advertising and is optimized to work with large data volumes across multiple providers and marketplaces.

Yahoo’s EVP for the Americas Ross Levinsohn said in a release: "This investment underscores our focus on enhancing the performance of both our guaranteed and non-guaranteed display business across Yahoo and our partner sites and, combined with Yahoo's reach and advertising leadership, will deliver a powerful solution for marketers…interclick's innovative platform will allow Yahoo! to expand its targeting and data capabilities to deliver campaigns with stronger performance metrics."

Interclick founder Michael Katz says that the company has already worked ‘closely’ with Yahoo over the past few years, and believes the ‘combination of Yahoo!'s premium data and inventory with our platforms will create tremendous value for clients.’

It’s an odd time for Yahoo to be announcing a major acquisition considering the company’s less than stellar financial situation, following the departure of CEO Carol Bartz and amidst reports of a possible takeover.

The deal is expected to close in early 2012.

UPDATING

Online video advertising company Jivox has raised $8.2 million in new funding led by Fortinsure Ventures with existing investors Opus and Helion participating in the round. In addition to the new financing, Mani Subramanian, CEO of Fortisure Ventures and John Squires, CEO of Akademos will join Jivox's Board of Directors.

Jivox’s online self-serve platform provides video advertising opportunities to clients that allow them create and embed advertisements within their videos. Jivox, which currently delivers more than 1,000 interactive video ads a month, allows for interactive video ads to run on multiple screens with an automated process.

Additionally, Jivox says that its video ads can be created in less than three hours with many social sharing options that run both in-banner and on pre-roll, all with campaign analytics that measure interactions.

A number of media groups use Jivox, including Gannett, Media News Group, McClatchy and E.W. Scripps, and the company has delivered ad campaigns for a host of big-name companies including General Motors, Nokia, Microsoft, HP, Sony and Samsung.