The Bing app for the iPhone and iPod Touch should now offer users a much-improved experience. Microsoft's released an updated version, and just about every aspect of the app was upgraded as part of this move. Microsoft paid attention to the basics by implementing some stability fixes and adding support for the first-generation iPod Touch. A post on the Bing Search Blog explained that the company performed some "usability tweaks" and "design updates," as well.

eBay has partnered with the National Retail Federation )NRF(, the trade association for the retail industry, to fight organized retail crime. The partnership between eBay and the NRF will receive support from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as part of an effort to halt crime in which items are stolen from physical stores and then sold online.

CBS and the NCAA said Friday their March Madness on Demand )MMOD( live-streaming video player attracted record traffic for the first day of the men's basketball tournament. In total, there were 3.4 million hours of live streaming video and audio consumed, over 20 percent growth compared to 2009, with 3 million more unique visitors to the MMOD video player. Both figures represent the largest single day of traffic for a live sporting event on the Internet.

Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other such sites are - in general, anyway - doing quite well on a global basis, according to new stats from Nielsen. Nielsen revealed this afternoon that people all over the world are dedicating a lot more time to social networks. A report stated, "On average, global web users across 10 countries spent roughly five and a half hours on social networks in February 2010, up more than two hours from the same time last year.

It may sound painfully dumb to point out that Yahoo's technology is important to the company, but there you have it. Unfortunately for the organization, that connection also makes it seem somewhat problematic that Yahoo's Chief Technologist has moved on. Benchmark Capital announced today that Sam Pullara, who was Yahoo's Chief Technologist, has joined it as an Entrepreneur in Residence. That means Pullara, EVP Ash Patel,

Real-time search engine OneRiot has launched RiotWise Trending Ad Units, which automatically refresh based on what's trending on the social web. Previously, OneRiot's Trending Ads were available only via OneRiot's API, meaning developers had to create a customized user interface for their ads. RiotWise Trending Ads link the latest published and relevant content from OneRiot's network of media partners.

The Kentucky Supreme court issued a ruling Thursday that it will not lift the freeze by registrars of 141 Internet gambling domain names unless an owner of the names comes forward. The ruling by the Court is not final, but the decision is being viewed as a temporary setback by the affected parties. Joe Brennan Jr. IMEGAs chairman "In the written decision, the Court clearly indicates they agree with our arguments, and are inviting us to refile,

As usual, this years South by Southwest Interactive conference was a blur. Between the people, the parties, and purveyors of all things bacon, it was a twenty ring circus of the sublime and bizarre. There was no shatteringly impactful takeaway from SXSW 2010, as it seems weve entered a )sure to be brief( innovation lull. But, I absorbed many smaller lessons that will help guide my thinking about the conference, technology, and social business in the coming months. 1.

Internet users who click on links posted on Facebook that lead to news and media websites are more loyal to those portals than those coming from Google News, according to new data from Hitwise. Among the most popular top 5 print media websites for the week ending March 6, 78 percent of Facebook users were returning visitors compared to 67 percent from Google news. The same was true for broadcast media,

Just how big is the market for mobile apps? Global mobile apps will be worth $17.5 billion by 2012, according to an independent report commissioned by app store GetJar . Mobile app downloads across all types of handset are also expected to increase from over 7 billion downloads in 2009 to almost 50 billion in 2012 - a year on year growth rate of 92%. This would mean that the value of apps sold would be greater than the projected $13.83 billion value of CDs sold in 2012.

As with traditional media, its different strokes for different folks on social media sites. And knowing your audiences needs and preferences is just as valid in PR today as it ever was. According to an analysis of social sites by online advertising network Chikita published by Mashable, people go to Twitter for news, MySpace for games and entertainment, Facebook for news and community and digg has a mixed bag.

The latest post from Hitwise discusses where users travel after leaving Twitter. The post further breaks down the various news and media sites which receive the greatest traffic from Twitter. Twitter.com accounted for 0.14% of upstream visits to News and Media sites last week. )Note that we are measuring website visits from Twitter.com only.( This compares to 3.64% from Facebook and 1.27% from Google News.

Google may end its search operations in China very soon, according to a new report. A local employee supposedly told a Chinese newspaper that Google will announce its plans to leave on Monday, March 22nd, and then actually pull out on Saturday, April 10th. It's hard to judge the accuracy of this information. On the one hand, there have been no shortages of rumors and hoaxes surrounding the situation in China. Also,

Google has released a Google Buzz widget for Android phones aimed at making it easier for users to update their status and share content with others. The Google Buzz widget allows users to post text and photos with a single tap, directly from the Android home screen. The Google Mobile Blog provides more details. "Like other mobile access points for Google Buzz, the widget lets you choose to tag your post with the location or place from which it was posted.

An undersea cable that Google helped finance is almost finished, according to a new report. Indeed, the completion of the Unity fiber optic cable, which will connect the U.S. to Japan, is supposed to be announced next week, and then Google and the company's Asia-based users should start seeing the benefits soon after. Tom Krazit wrote this afternoon, "[T]he Pacific undertaking will allow the company to link its data centers in the U.S.

There are many ways to market your business through Facebook. Some are obvious, and others not so much. One thing you can pretty much count on is that there are incredible masses of people on the social network that you can potentially reach, and in ways that will allow them not only to engage with your brand in a comfortable setting, but with other Facebook ecosystems they are already engaging with.

Almost exactly three years ago, Viacom sued YouTube for copyright infringement, and since then, neither side has been able to say much in public. But today, 108 pages' worth of court documents were released, and YouTube also issued a more comprehensible, 865-word statement. In the statement )which was posted on the YouTube Blog (, Zahavah Levine, YouTube Chief Counsel, raised several interesting points. One group of claims made Viacom sound like an absolute villain, too.

I sat in on the Future of Music Delivery Keynote interview with Spotify CEO Daniel Ek and author Eliot Van Buskirk on the last day of SXSW Interactive. Buskirk's covered the digital media industry for ten years in various publications. This keynote was not nearly as crowded as the Evan Williams one was at the beginning, but definitely kept a lot more people hanging around through its entirety. The first part of the keynote was essentially a product demo for Spotify,

As you may know, Google recently acquired social search service Aardvark . I attended a panel on social search at SXSW this week, in which Max Ventilla, the service's "Head Zookeeper" talked about not only the service, but what social search means for the industry in general. First off, here are a few Aardvark stats. Ventilla says 85% of questions are answered, and most in under 5 minutes.70% are rated "good" vs. "ok" or "bad". 45% of answers lead to cross-talk among users.

The use of the Internet to watch full television episodes has tripled since 2006 among those aged 13-to-54, according to a new report from Knowledge Networks. Among Internet users 13-to-54 viewing complete TV show episodes via streaming or downloaded video has grown from 8 percent to 22 percent. For Internet users 18-to-34 viewing of complete TV show episodes via streaming or downloading has climbed from 12 percent to 30 percent.