Welcome to the brave new world, everyone. AT&T announced today new guidelines in regards to older so-called unlimited data plans. Subscribers will still be able to keep these plans but they’re essentially limited to AT&T’s new 3GB/5GB data plans.

Let’s be clear: AT&T’s unlimited plans are now officially limited.

AT&T, like other most other wireless carriers, started selling unlimited data plans several years ago to curb anxiety in regards to data usage. At that time, mobile data was still limited to email, web browsing and the photo messaging. Streaming media was still very rare. These unlimited plans offered carrier’s marketers and salesmen an easy tool to get people to upgrade to smartphones. But now they’re supposedly killing the network — or so carriers would have consumers believe.

Today’s change essentially caps these legacy data plans at 3GB for HSPA+ and 5GB for LTE. Any overage will result in throttling, which as anyone who has been throttled before will attest, essentially kills data connectivity. Even mundane tasks as browsing the internet are painfully slow. This cap remains in place until the end of the billing cycle. You will still have unlimited data, but on AT&T’s terms.

AT&T started throttling customers in 2011 in response to increase data usage. However, it was always somewhat shrouded in mystery. The policy was public, which caused misconceptions and confusion. The caps were also set at 2GB even after AT&T rolled out new, $30 3GB data plan. This new move by AT&T, while shaddy at best and a breach of contract at worst, at least puts the company’s policy in clear view. It even gives tips on how to better manage data.

However, as I stated previously, throttling those on legacy products affects those nearing their end of their AT&T contracts. AT&T should be courting these people rather than driving them towards other carriers.

As we heard last week, mobile payments platform Square pitched the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission to replace the current taxi TVs and payments technology in 50 cabs. The company says today that the pilot has been approved, and Square will be tested in up to 30 cabs in the test. AllThingsD first reported the news.

Drivers in the pilot will use a version of Square's existing software modified with new features specifically designed for taxis. An iPhone will be plugged into the meter, from which drivers can select tolls, view current traffic patterns, receive messages, and be able to view their trip history.

In terms of the consumer experience, an iPad will be installed in the partition. On the display, can passengers view information about their trip, such as their current location, running payment total, and other details. Users can pay with their credit cards using the attached swiper, add a tip, and more.

A spokesperson for Square tells us: "Taxi drivers are among our most active and loyal users, with thousands of drivers around the country choosing Square as a more simple, cost-effective way to get paid for their work. By partnering with the NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission on this pilot, we’ve built a system that meets the specific needs of NYC taxi drivers and makes the payment experience even better for their passengers."

Currently, Verifone Media and Creative Mobile Technologies run the payments and entertainment TVs that are currently in cabs in New York. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Taxi and Limousine commission will also soliciting proposals from Verifone and CMT on a new payments system to be integrated in taxi cabs in a similar pilot.

Obviously, this is a big win for Square, which is already being used in taxis in San Francisco and other cities. What’s interesting about the announcement is that Square will be launching a special version of the platform catered towards taxi drivers. If the company is launching a specific product for this group, perhaps Square will be customizing its mobile payments platform for other merchant categories in the future.

Photo Credit/Flickr/adrian8_8

Remember how, earlier this month, mobile development company Ansca Mobile accused its partner PapayaMobile of ripping off parts of its SDK for use in Papaya’s Social Game Engine? Well, it seems things are still tense between the two companies, even though they are keeping their business partnership in place for now. PapayaMobile is chalking up the whole situation to a “miscommunication,” and wants to move on to talk about other news. But when pressed for details, the company won’t go on the record with anything more than a canned statement regarding their actions.

Ansca Mobile COO David Rangel, who originally brought the issue to our attention, says the situation is resolved, but also declined to provide additional public comment.

For background, the situation that occurred involved PapayaMobile using what Rangel called a “blatant copy” of some aspects of Ansca’s own Corona SDK within its gaming engine. The engine included some of PapayaMobile’s syntax and sample code, and the company even used Ansca’s graphics to promote it on their company website.

The situation doesn’t appear to be malicious in nature, though – because, after all, if you’re going to try to be sneaky about things, you don’t post an image that actually includes the Ansca Mobile logo right there on your homepage. But it did seem odd, especially since the details of how this happened were never explained.

In addition, Ansca’s assets remained available in Papaya’s download for some time after the graphic was removed from the website, instead of being immediately taken done. They are, however, gone now.

Meanwhile, PapayaMobile’s only comment on the situation is that everything has been resolved. The company even takes somewhat of hurt tone, as if they were the victim here:

We have carried out our investigation of the allegations made by Ansca reported by TechCrunch on February 3rd. We wish that our partner would have come to us directly about this issue considering we are business partners. However, all material that was in question has been removed and we now consider the situation resolved between the two companies.

What’s lacking here is an apology, which is interesting. It even begs the question as to whether Papaya thinks they had the right to do what they did, which, considering Ansca’s response to the situation, seems to be the wrong opinion.

Papaya declined to comment any further when we reached out with additional questions. The company says it believes to have removed the assets in question, and is doing due diligence to make sure that’s the case.

The situation, miscommunication or not, appears to be now resolved, and the two companies are remaining partners, at least for the time being.

News.me, the news service developed in The New York Times’ R&D labs and incubated at betaworks, is launching its iPhone app today.

A bit unusually, the part of the app that you’ll use first may actually be the least interesting. In some ways, the new app is just a redesign of what News.me was already offering through its iPad and email products — a list of news stories, pulled from your Facebook and Twitter streams, then curated based on signals from Twitter and bit.ly, and presented with the context of the initial tweet or Facebook comment.

I’ve played with the app, and as a straightforward, curated newsreading service, it’s already pretty useful. But it sounds like General Manager Jake Levine has bigger ambitions. The app includes a feature called News.me Reactions, which Levine calls a “purpose-built social network” — in other words, a social network for sharing news and your reactions. You can post a reaction to the stories in your stream, then follow other users and comment on their shared stories too.

To make things easier, you don’t even have to come up with a smart remark of your own. Instead, you can just select one of five pre-written responses — “Ha!”, “Wow”, “Awesome”, “Sad”, and “Really?”

The hope, Levine says, is that users will download the iPhone app and immediately get use out of it through the curated news feed, then over time, build a smaller network of friends who they want to discuss the news with. Early users are already reporting that they feel more comfortable posting honest reactions in News.me, rather than on Facebook and Twitter (Levine argues that the larger social networks have “evolved from conversational media to broadcast media.”)

Ultimately, it’s the News.me Reactions social network that will be “defensible,” he says.

News.me has been working on the iPhone app for the past four months, and Levine says it’s the company’s first product since making some key hires, including designer Justin Van Slembrouck (who designed the Wired iPad app and the New York Times’ Times Reader app) and iOS developer Rob Haining (who developed Epicurious and the original GQ app). Although the company has been focused on the iPhone recently, and even though the iPad app has been less successful than the email digest, it sounds like Levine plans to add the new features to the iPad eventually.

You can download the app here.

Netflix now provides content with captions or subtitles for more than 80 percent of the hours streamed in the U.S. To be clear, this doesn’t mean that 80+ percent of Netflix’s streaming content has captions, but that of all the hours of streaming content watched in the U.S., over 80 percent of it was captioned in some way.

This is a significant improvement, considering that captions were only present on 40 percent of hours streamed in June, and 60 percent in November. Netflix is also pushing content providers to offer up already-captioned content, while authoring subtitles for content that doesn’t already have them, according to this blog post.

But the company warns, that final 20 percent won’t be completed as quickly as the rest. This is because it’s mostly content that is rarely watched, so even if Netflix adds captions at a crazy rate, the metric itself will take some time to catch up.

Back in June, Netflix was sued by the National Association of the Deaf for not providing captions for most of its streaming content. If you’ll notice, that’s around the same time that Netflix picked up the pace to now double the number of hours streamed with captions.

If you’re like me and watch almost all of your Netflix streaming TV/movies on a laptop, captioning isn’t just helpful, it’s necessary. Those little speakers don’t help much at all when I need to pick up every little detail in Battlestar Galactica and Lost, so we’re glad to see Netflix keep up the pace.

Viximo, originally a virtual goods marketplace until moving into web-based social game distribution a couple of years back, is shifting yet again. This time, Viximo is moving to mobile. Today, the company is introducing a platform for mobile game developers called SocialZone which delivers a modular set of tools that developers can pick and choose from in order to make their games more social, including messaging, social presence, social graph, notifications, recommendations and more.

This backend toolkit shares some similarities with other service providers operating in this space, including companies like Urban Airship, Parse, and StackMob, for example. Like those, Viximo is meant to do some of the heavy lifting in terms of integrating different types of functionality into developers’ apps to help speed the time to market.

But the difference with Viximo’s offering, CEO Dale Strang tells us, is that Viximo has been built from the ground-up to be social.

“The problem we found in the game developer world,” explains Strang, “is that if you’re a game developer, it’s not easy to create the same kind of social mechanics and backend functionality that you would find on the web, like on Facebook or another social network,” he says. “Developers are challenged to access the social graph of the user, or do cross-platform notifications, for example.”

Strang also believes that a lot of the platforms serving this market now are built around things that harken back to an era he calls “mobile gaming 1.0.” They offer things like leaderboards, achievements, and other features that are reminiscent of console gaming.

Viximo’s APIs, on the other hand, have been designed purely for social, mobile gaming, Strang explains.

The platform includes four major components: social graph, presence, messaging/push notifications, and recommendations. The pieces are modular, too, which means developers can choose those they want, then customize to meet their needs. And developers only have to pay for what they use, of course.

One interesting feature in Viximo’s platform is the the social networking integration. This piece lets you see if your Facebook and Twitter friends, or those from your address book, are available to play with. The function is updated continually in Viximo’s platform, so that every time a user logs in, they can be alerted to new friends who may have recently joined the network. They can also see which friends are currently online, what games they’re playing and supports messaging them invites to play.

For now, the challenge for Viximo is to grow its network. Without developer support,   none of these social features would have much impact. And since Viximo hasn’t been beta testing the product at scale, the network will start off small. But Viximo has a lot of history working in the gaming space, if not necessarily on mobile. And the mobile gaming ecosystem is still new enough for platforms like this one to have potential.

The mobile toolkit is available now for iOS and Android here on Viximo’s website. Pricing details have not yet been worked out, but it will be free while in beta.

At the 2010 TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, Benchmark Capital Partner Matt Cohler took to the stage to talk about the state of the venture capital industry. In so doing, Cohler said that he thought too many investors were becoming focused on risk mitigation, which can often deter investors from going after companies that may be building something really big, trying to change the world — but will be slower to monetize and offer the requisite immediate ROI.

He then mentioned that he had recently led an investment in a company called ResearchGate, because when he asked the company’s founder, Ijad Madisch, what would constitute success in his mind, Madish replied, simply, “winning the Nobel Prize.”

“That sounds like aspiration and ambition to me,” Cohler said. And you have to give props to both the founder, for being so resolute in his goal, and to Cohler and the company’s other investors, for being willing to put money into a venture that certainly had no short-term plans to become a billion-dollar company. At the time, ResearchGate had just closed a series A round from investors like Accel Partners, Simon Levene, Bebo Co-founder Michael Birch, Joachim Schoss, Martin Sinner, Ulrich Essmann, Christian Vollmann and Rolf Christof Dienst.

What’s more, last week, ResearchGate closed its series B round, which was this time led by Founders Fund, with follow-on contribution from Benchmark Capital, Accel Partners, and Michael Birch, as well as Yammer CEO David Sacks. Again, true to form, Madisch is not revealing how much his company has raised, in either of its two rounds, because he doesn’t want the focus to be on the money. (Though both rounds were supposedly typical for series A and B, likely putting them in the range of $3-$5 million and $6-$8 million, respectively.)

As part of the series B round, Madisch told us that PayPal Co-founder and Founders Fund Partner Luke Nosek will both be joining Cohler on the startup’s board of directors. Madisch said that both investors had been long-time advisors to the company since he had initially visited Silicon Valley and had no idea what a “partner meeting” was.

So what is it about ResearchGate that has these investors thinking long-term impact, rather than short-term gain? The startup has been called a “Facebook for scientists,” which has increased poignancy given the fact that the founder tells us that he’s just hired a bunch of senior engineering staff from Germany’s Facebook equivalent, StudiVZ. (The company has headquarters in Germany, where Madisch is from, and Boston, and will soon be opening new offices in Silicon Valley for its staff of 75.)

Nonetheless, the founder explains that the Facebook for scientists is an oversimplification of what he and his team are up to, which is building a communication and crowdsourcing platform by which scientists can share their research and more.

Madisch, who has a bachelor’s degree in computer science, a Harvard medical degree, a Ph.D in virology, knows what it means to be on either side of the medical world, as both physician and researcher — and how to code. He told us that, when it comes to medical research, academics study very specific problems, and if they want help with a particular study or test, they look for someone with a very specific skill and research set. That, in and of itself, is extremely difficult, as there are few public resources to enable quick discovery of those researching in similar niche fields. On top of that, searching for particular scientific papers that would lend insight into the particular problem — also not so easy.

Madisch told us that, as he went through his degrees and began studying and researching problems in virology, when a particular experiment didn’t work, for example, he would not share that with anyone, he wouldn’t write down the fact that, “hey, this virus isn’t growing on these cells, here’s why.” He said that he’s learned that this is typical of scientists and researchers, which leads to many experts simultaneously researching very similar, or related ideas to make the same mistakes, over and over again.

So, in short, the mission of ResearchGate has been to decrease research redundancy by creating a network in which scientists (of every stripe) can create a simple profile that contains information that would only be relevant to other scientists, like degrees, areas of focus, research keywords, advisors, publications, and so on. In turn, the team wants to give scientists a place where they can upload not only the journals they’ve published results in, but raw data, experiments that failed, etc., pooling those resources to make that knowledge and research accessible broadly, for free.

So far, nearly 1.5 million scientists from 192 countries have joined ResearchGate, which now contains 45 million abstracts, more than 10 million free, full-text PDFs on a diverse body of research, 15,000 job listings, and schedules for over 3,500 conferences. But, even so, the fact that scientists can upload additional data sets — beyond that which they’ve published in scientific journals — is huge, because, as Madisch says, records of research typically get lost or discarded, but now they can save it, upload it, and share it with others to help inform their research.

On top of that, ResearchGate offers scientists discussion topics and communities in which they can get answers from other specialists, help each other solve particular problems, whether it be coding PHP or investigating a polymer chain reaction. The idea is to increase interdisciplinary sharing of technical knowledge, enabling scientists to solve their problems faster. In addition, ResearchGate allows users to search through the largest scientific literature databases for articles and abstracts, as well as thousands of smaller open access databases, with the ability to bookmark and share those articles with colleagues.

In the big picture, Madisch is setting out to change the fundamental behavior of scientists and academics, who typically live mostly in the offline world, where they do research for 4 or 5 years, publish a paper, and raise funding based on what’s published. “Instead of having those 4 or 5 years exist offline, when scientists are gaining this incredible, specific technical knowledge that mostly goes unshared, I want them to have an online resource where they can use that knowledge to help other people,” the founder says.

Further provoking a potential change in the scientific community’s status quo, Madisch says the team has built out a reputation system (a la Klout), where users get a score based on their projects, how many questions they’ve answered, their activity within the community, etc.

“I want to change how scientists think about their data.” It’s a noble pursuit, and one that really could have global implications if it can achieve the kind of data-sharing and project collaboration that its platform aspires to create. But getting scientists to adopt and tend to reputation scores? That’s a tall order. No matter what kind of platform one builds, niche or not, it’s all about engagement, and with 20 percent of users logging in more than once a month, it’s going to take some time before the Nobel Prize is within their grasp.

But, there’s no doubt the investor belief is there. Says Founders Fund Partner Luke Nosek:

“We truly believe that the network has the potential to disrupt a much-outdated system, while leading the way in changing scientific discovery and the way research is disseminated.”

For more, check out ResearchGate at home here.

If you’ve ever wanted a whirring quadcopter to fly dangerously close to your head and then suddenly flip over completely, righting itself before your eyes, you may want to put $300 down for the AR Drone 2, Parrot’s latest version of their amazing device.

The Drone, controlled via your iPhone, iPad, or Android device, has a number of improved features including the aforementioned “flip” feature that cause it to spin in midair. The new device has a 720p video camera built-in. The device will ship on April 9, allowing for plenty of spring time fun – scaring children, flipping off bonnets, and spying on the neighbors.

You can see our interview with the Parrot CEO at CES where he allowed us to sit, unscathed, under the Drone’s whirring blades of death.
Product Page

Jason Jacobs is the co-founder and CEO of RunKeeper, one of the initial 200 apps sold in the iPhone app store. The app allows users to record their jogging distances and times, and in partnership with other fitness focused apps/devices, manage a host of additional health related activity, such as weight loss and strength training.

Having recently raised a $10 million Series B round, the Boston based Jacobs dropped by our New York studio to tell Chris Dixon, how it all began.

Jacobs says RunKeeper’s genesis dates back to 2007 when he was training for a marathon. At the time he was searching for a “big important problem to solve.” Influenced by what he describes as Nike’s user friendly Nike + iPod, he wondered, “why are these guys the only one doing this?”

He jumped in the game.

Initially operating on a shoestring budget, Jacobs built RunKeeper with the help of “moonlighting engineers that were working for equity.” Using his savings as a safety net while generating a bit of revenue, Jacobs intentionally fended off investors for about 18 months, saying the more time Runkeeper could focus on building the product “the higher the caliber of investors we would be able to attract and the less of the company we would have to give up in the process.”

Jacobs shares plenty more insights, so be sure to watch the entire video to hear more. Episode II of this interview is coming up.

Past episodes of Founder Stories featuring leaders of FindTheBest, KickStarter, Flipboard and many other statups are here.

A new generation of location apps is here, just in time for the world’s best event for using them: the South By South West music, film and tech extravaganza starting next week in Austin, Texas. Ahead of it, my favorite of the bunch, Highlight, is announcing that it’s pushing out a new version for the event, and bringing in funding.

But before I get into the news, what’s special about Highlight, and competitors like Glancee? Instead of asking you to check in, they simply run in the background, sending notifications to you when interesting people are physically near.  For SXSW, these apps can help you sort out the most relevant folks from the crowd.

The way Highlight’s iOS app works, in particular, is that it has you log in with Facebook, then it shows you anyone nearby who has friends or even just interests in common as you go about your day-to-day life (note that interests equals Facebook pages that you’ve mutually liked). In contrast with other location apps, like Foursquare, which are designed around users checking in to the places they go, there’s no friction — just pure discover. The simple map-focused interface and the easy messaging system have helped me meet a few long-lost friends already.

Onto the news: coming up for SXSW, the company says it’s planning to expand on these features by adding new ways of surfacing connections, and somehow saving them for future use. I haven’t had a chance to test, yet, but here’s how the company describes the update:

We want Highlight to make Austin even more fun for you – by surprising you with hidden connections, surfacing information about the people you meet, and helping you remember these people when you bump into them at a random New York coffee shop a year later. You can expect to see some useful enhancements to search and discovery, new ways to interact with people, and continued improvements to performance and battery life.

Reading between the lines, this sounds sort of like an address book service. Meet someone new but connected to you on Highlight, somehow note this on the app, and have this action make them more likely to surface on it later. The company has also just pushed the app out worldwide, which should be especially useful for SXSW attendees because the event attracts so many people from around the world.

The investment is a seed round led by Benchmark Capital, where cofounder Paul Davison was an entrepreneur in residence working on the idea, as well as SV Angel, CrunchFund and unnamed angel investors.

Although I think you’re better off not hosting your hot, hot beta launch screen yourself, if you simply must have complete control there’s LaunchEffect, a WordPress theme that recreates the complex process of asking for – and storing – email addresses of wannabe beta users.

The system supports three basic functions:

You can then track the most excited folks – the folks who referred the most people – and give them a special prize like a beta account, a goldfish, or a bag of onions.

LaunchEffect is free but a premium version adds an animated countdown, a more brandable experience, and a more formal blog layout. You can check out a demo of the premium version here. The premium version costs $35 for a single-site license.

Again, some folks like to have complete control and some like to cede a little control for proven performance. Either way, it’s a fun way to build a buzz.

With somewhat coincidental (?) timing, given this week’s Facebook Marketing Conference, a new article published today by Bloomberg Businessweek takes a deep dive into Twitter’s advertising’s business. Twitter is the other major social network after big brands’ ad dollars, and although its 100 million active members pale compared with Facebook’s 800 million+, there is the potential for a different kind of ad targeting arising on Twitter. The company is going after the “interest graph,” a concept we’ve covered in some detail before.

An interest graph is different than the social graph provided by Facebook, which looks at connections, likes, and detailed demographic data like hometown, age, education and more, in order to narrowly target specific groups with ads. Instead, the interest graph is about what you like, what you read, and, generally, what kind of person you are. But the question is, can Twitter get a better read on users’ interests and personalities than Facebook can?

After all, Facebook knows a lot about us already when it comes to the intersection of people and brands. We “like” advertisers’ pages, interact by posting on their walls, click through their links in our news feeds, and share their messages with our friends. Today, messages posts to our walls when we just read an article in an online news publication, or just installed a new mobile app. Plus, thanks to the introduction of Facebook’s Open Graph, which lets our external web activity show up in Facebook’s real-time activity feed in the sidebar ticker, our friends are seeing other interactions we engage in. Besides likes and comments, this section also shares details about the music we’re listening to (and the service used to do so), the games we’re playing (hi Zynga!) and maybe one day, what we’re watching on Netflix.

But Twitter is trying something different when it comes to targeting people with brands’ messaging. Twitter doesn’t know who you are, how old you are, where you went to school, where you live (unless you’ve volunteered that information or are geo-tagging your tweets), or any of those more traditional demographic details.

However, the thing that struck me about the article was the little piece near the end, where CEO Dick Costolo explains how Twitter is going after the interest graph. Bloomberg’s Brad Stone describes the data Twitter collects as “both revealing and noninvasive,” which seems like an accurate description.

“These accounts I follow paint a very compelling picture of the kind of person I am, even if it doesn’t paint a picture of exactly which uniquely identifiable individual in the world I am, Costolo explains. “I think that allows us to deliver powerful value to advertisers, and powerful value to those who want to speak freely.”

Developing an interest graph means that Twitter, instead of being able to (creepily?) go after all 20-year old Jewish women who live within 5 miles of New York, who have completed college and who are married, for example, can target a specific kind of person. Those who seem interested in politics, or tech, or celebrity news, or education, or art, or music. But building a good interest graph – one that doesn’t just think that because you follow Lady Gaga, you’re a fan of all pop music – is far more challenging.

Costolo doesn’t give Stone much to go on as to the specifics of how Twitter’s interest graph works (or Stone didn’t publish them), but he does say that Twitter is tracking things like who you follow and what you click on.

Today, Twitter has a suite of advertising products known as Promoted Products, which includes Promoted Trends, Searches and Accounts. A Promoted Trend goes for around $120,000 per day in the U.S., the article confirms. And the expectation is that Twitter is now on track to earn $260 million in 2012, according to eMarkter, using these tools.

But it’s all still very much in the early stages. Costolo notes that the company’s ad business is only 18 months old. ”2011 was the year we began scaling it,” he said. “And 2012 is the year when we demonstrate that it’s a juggernaut.”

He also admitted that Twitter’s targeting tools aren’t as refined as Facebook’s. He’s not concerned, however, because he thinks he’s built the next big thing in terms of ad targeting. The interest graph. Over time, the algorithms behind Twitter’s interest graph could grow more refined, as it learns what we click, what we re-tweet, and maybe even things like the sentiment behind our words. Someone may tweet about Obama, but that doesn’t mean they support them. And since one of Twitter’s latest additions is a tool that lets politicians talk to Twitter’s users through Promoted Searches (search results that stay stuck to the top of the page), it would be incredibly helpful if, say, a candidate could go after supporters, non-supporters and on-the-fence sitters in different ways.

For now, though, the system is much more simple. Search for a candidate’s name, see his Promoted Search result. There’s a lot of potential here to make that system more refined, more exact, and generally more intelligent. If anything ever has a chance at competing with Facebook, it’s not going to be yet another social network mining the same demographic data in the same ways, it’s going to be a network that figures out how to mine new data in new ways – data that defines who people are by their activity, interactions and behavior. It’s going to be the network that figures out the interest graph. And Twitter is off to a good start.

Image credit: Research.ly, via Brian Solis

HTC has been making a big push with their Beats Audio integration. It first appeared on the HTC Rezound, and has since been present on all of HTC’s new devices, including the freshly announced One series.

But as you likely already know, it has nothing to do with hardware — it’s simply an advanced audio equalizer. That said, XDA forum member fuss132 has found a way to port the Beats equalizer onto all Gingerbread devices.

Beats Audio had already been ported to a Photon 4G by one RockoDev, another XDA forum member and hacker. While it won’t make you feel like you’re at a dance party, Beats Audio truly does make music sound more natural and clear. Equalization in general refers to the removal of unwanted noises, while making the good stuff (voices, highs, lows and mids) more prominent and natural.

Just check out the difference Beats made on this Galaxy SL:

It’s also worth wondering how HTC might feel about this. Beats Audio is a feature the company has been pushing, and they likely paid a great deal for the partnership. The fact that any device running Gingerbread now has access to it probably doesn’t sit too well with them.

Here’s the original thread with the recovery-flashable update.zip.

It’s a tipping point of sorts: smartphones are not (yet) being used by the majority of U.S. residents, but among mobile users, it looks like they have now outnumbered those on lower-end devices — or so consumers think — according to research out today from Pew.

As of February 2012, 46 percent of the 2,253 adults surveyed said they are now smartphone owners — growing 11 percent in the last nine months, while 41 percent of adults own a device that is not a smartphone.

What’s interesting is that these are averages, meaning that we really are seeing a critical mass affecting different demographics. The numbers are actually significantly higher in certain age groups like young adults: among college graduates, 18-35 year olds and the well off, those who said they used a smartphone was at 60 percent and up.

(The converse: very low numbers in another group, those aged 65 and up: only 13 percent of them own smartphones.)

Unlike a lot of the market research that comes from the likes of IDC, Gartner, Strategy Analytics and so on, Pew’s findings are not based on “channel checks” with operators and retailers and vendors who ship devices; rather, they are based on how users describe their mobile status.

In a way, that is almost a more telling indication of what is going on — especially if you compare the numbers against those provided by the analyst firms.

For example, Pew found that only 20 percent of mobile owners said they owned an Android device. That was only a rise of five percent on May 2011. Some 19 percent describe their phones as iPhones, a rise of nine percent on May  2011. BlackBerry went down to six percent from 10 percent in May.

Given that by many accounts Android is outnumbering iOS — recent numbers from comScore put the percentages at 47.3 and 29.6 percent — that says something about the brand currency of Google’s Android and how many people actually seem to consider that when they are choosing and using smartphones.

Branding and the idea of users staying loyal to their platforms is one question; another is around how these devices get used.

If the great promise of smartphones is to get users connected and communicating in ways they haven’t been able to do before, it’s something of a reality check to see that today some eight percent of mobile owners still couldn’t say with certainty whether they owned a smartphone or not. At least that number was down from 14 percent nine months ago.

(photo: navonod on Flickr)

Startup BumeBox throws social media “parties to help brands engage with their customers. Its latest success story: eBay.

Not that you actually need BumeBox to engage fans on social networks, but the service helps put together special, limited-time events, which can then be aggregated and embedded — so fans could participate directly on Twitter, or they could jump into the conversion from the company’s website.

BumeBox says it held its first party for eBay over the holiday season — a highlight, apparently, was a thread with more than 30 tweets that mentioned more than 40 board games. The companies also held a two-hour event over Valentine’s Day that was focused on “gifts for him and her.” BumeBox says that the associated hashtag, “#eBaywithLove” was viewed 14 million times.

I have to admit, there’s still a part of me of that has trouble believing people are genuinely excited about talking with large corporations (incidentally, that was one of the big themes at Facebook’s marketing event today), but apparently some were, and they were pretty darn excited — the average participant tweeted 10 times. (And to be clear, to many of the conversations were more about eBay than with eBay.) Most of the comments were quite positive, as you can see in the tag cloud above.

“It really seemed to be a pent-up demand for this kind of outlet,” says CEO Jon Fahrner.

eBay seems happy with the results, too — it’s expanded the program this week with daily parties focused on specific product categories, like Motor Mondays and Tech Tuesdays.

FiftyOne, an ecommerce platform that helps power international expansion and operations for online retailers, has acquired Borderfree, which helps companies expand ecommerce to Canada. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Borderfree offers a Canadian logistics program, which helps retailers provide shipping options optimized to fit the needs of Canadian online shoppers. The company counts retailers like Sephora, Patagonia and Eddie Bauer as clients.

For background, FiftyOne streamlines all aspects of the international shopping experience for retailers. FiftyOne will manage all aspects of the international order life cycle, including multi-currency pricing and payment processing, landed cost calculation, customs clearance and brokerage, international fraud management, international logistics orchestration, and more.

The addition of Borderfree will help FiftyOne expand its availability to Canada. FiftyOne has opened an office in Toronto, which will house the core Borderfree team.

If you haven’t heard already — perhaps because you live outside of the San Fran/NYC area or maybe because you’re averse to having fun — Picksie is a location-based app that helps you figure out what to do.

But it gets way more intensive than a Yelp!-style app because Picksie takes everything it can possibly learn about you and your surroundings to determine your options for the evening. This includes current weather, location, time, past ratings, biographical information from your user account, reviews, and search information.

The app’s been on iOS for some time now, but today is extending to a multitude of new devices courtesy of the Android Market. To celebrate, Picksie has set up a pretty awesome giveaway with us today, but I’m not going to spoil the surprise. All I’ll say is stay tuned.

Picksie has been improving its product ever since it came to market, including trying to understand what individuals want to do based on the city they live in. Back in November the app added Bookmarks and Favorites functionality, but that was just the beginning. A ticket purchasing platform should be rolling out soon to allow Picksie users to buy tickets for concerts or events straight from the app.

Picksie managing director Saju Thomas said that the company really wants to make a push into the dating market. Picksie already has what it needs to be a solid resource for couples trying to figure out their evening. With ticket purchasing on its way, the app should be even more suited to lovebirds.

Of course, tourists and travelers will likely get the most out of Picksie as well.

The application is available now in both the Apple App Store and the Android Market for free.

As a former dog owner, I know how challenging it can be to find the best care for your four-legged-friend when going on vacation or taking a trip. While boarding dogs at kennels is an option, I always prefer to have a dog sitter at an actual home (or at my own home) take care of my pet to ensure one-on-one care. The difficulty is actually finding dog lovers who want to babysit for dogs in their spare time. Enter DogVacay, a new marketplace out of Los Angeles incubator Science, that matches dog owners in need of pet-care services with qualified animal caregivers. The service is launching today in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Founded by a husband and wife team, Aaron Hirschhorn and Karine Nissim Hirschhorn, DogVacay was inspired by the couple’s desire to find a real, loving home for their own dogs, so that their boarding experience is as much a vacation as their owner's.

As Hirschhorn tells me, there are many caregivers who love pets and use this as a way to make supplemental income. While these people have generally been found via word of mouth or sites like Craigslist, DogVacay allows these pet care providers to sign up for a free listing for dog owners who are looking for boarding and dog-sitting options.

The platform gives hosts complete control, from setting their own rates, deciding what size and type of dogs to host, and more. Each host is vetted via interviews and background checks with DogVacay staff before posting on the site, where the startup evaluates potential caregivers based on the amount of room in their homes, past experience and more. And DogVacay also includes user reviews for each host, social network connections, and will even train hosts in basic dog care.

Dog owners can sign up on the site and book services similar to the way you would book an apartment on Airbnb. In addition to boarding services, users can also find dog walkers, trainers, day-care, pet-sitting (in their own home), and other unique services like pet massage. DogVacay takes a 5 to 10 percent service fee from the host.

DogVacay offers full insurance covering the dog (up to $25,000) for a variety of emergencies. The startup has also partnered with a number emergency pet care hospitals in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Additionally, DogVacay encourages pet-sitters to send regular photo and video updates via email or MMS to the clients, so that they have reassurance that their pet is in safe hands and enjoying its ‘DogVacay.’

This is actually a huge potential market, as Science CEO Mike Jones explains that Americans spend nearly $10 billion per year on pet boarding and other services. DogVacay faces competition from Rover.com. And who knows; maybe Airbnb will launch Dogbnb.

RadiumOne, an online ad network that aims to combine social and intent data to serve ads, is launching a new consumer-focused application today, Via.Me. Basically, the iOS app allows you to capture, filter, and share pictures, images, videos, audio and other content across multiple social networks.

At launch, Via.me’s app is fairly simple. The app features 17 photo filters (similar to an Instagram experience), so that users can create and share images from the app on Facebook and Twitter at the same time. Brands and publishers are also using Via.Me as a means to create, share and publish content. The app was developed by the Focal Labs team, which RadiumOne acquired last year.

But Via.Me is more than just a consumer focused content sharing app. Founder Gurbaksh Chahal says that Via.Me is a key part of RadiumOne's first party data product suite. For background, RadiumOne mines social data and uses this information to identify relevant consumers for brands. Through what Chahal calls "social retargeting,” RadiumOne analyzes how users interact with one another on social networks to find the consumers that identify with a brand's current customer base, and then serves advertisements to this audience across the company’s network of publishers.

Via.Me’s user data will be used to serve more targeted advertisements says, Chahal (of course, this is an opt-in experience for consumers). He explains that data from the consumer app is given to brands to serve more targeted display advertising.

RadiumOne also recently launched PingMe, a group messaging app.

When the Droid Razr Maxx first arrived I was filled with mixed emotions. On the one hand, I was truly excited that Motorola found a way to make the Razr a plausible option — the original battery life on that thing is atrocious. On the other hand, I felt bad for the folks who went out and bought a Razr only to have an (almost) identical device with twice the battery life land a couple months later.

But it turns out there may be a solution for you Razr owners after all. A senior member over at the XDA Developers forum has figured a way to slap a Razr Maxx battery and battery door onto the Razr, significantly improving battery life. But be warned, this is a rather dangerous mod with potentially devastating consequences, so do plenty of reading before you move forward and proceed with caution.

According to Wardo5757, the wizard who discovered this, putting the Maxx battery into the Razr leaves a little gap where the SIM card door and cover are. Both the Razr and the Razr Maxx are meant to have splash proof builds and be generally more rugged than other high-end smartphones, but after the mod chances are you’ll need to be a bit more careful around water and dust.

But the pros seem to far outweigh the cons. In my review, I found that the Razr Maxx lasted eight hours and fifteen minutes compared to just four and a half hours with the Razr. That’s almost twice the battery life.

More images and access to Wardo5757 can be found here. And if you decide to try it let us know how it goes, or if there’s anything else we should know.

Happy tinkering, everyone.