Twitter, the San Francisco-based micro-messaging start-up, recently raised about $98 million dollars from T. Rowe Price, Insight Venture Partners, Spark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners. valuing the company at a whopping $1.1 billion. NeXt Up Research, the firm founded by veteran financial analyst, Michael Moe, disagrees with that post money valuation, and instead values Twitter at about $526-to-$674 million. NeXt Up’s research report is offered to users of SharesPost, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based private online exchange that allows the sale of shares of private companies to willing buyers. Most of their concern is coming from the lack of revenues and worries that any diversification into money-making services could alienate the Twitter user base. According to the report, Twitter has over 70 million users.

The company‘s revenue model has yet to be tested. We believe that most revenue generation options available to the company have the potential to alienate at least some of Twitter‘s user base. Twitter may not have adequate time to revise its models before it loses its critical mass and reputation. Our estimated valuation of $526M – $674M is below the recent preferred funding round at a $1.1B valuation. However, we note that the preferred shares benefit from liquidation preference that limit the downside. We expect common share valuation to be driven by the company‘s revenue growth and profitability potential over the next 3 – 5 years.

They are estimating that Twitter will make between $114-to-$134 million in 2013 and between $126-to-$148 million in 2014. I bet these numbers don’t take into account the gobs of money Twitter is going to be making by licensing its data to both Microsoft and Google. No one really knows how much the two giants are ponying up for the Twitter fire hose.

Nevertheless, the report points out that Twitter has a special appeal for marketers. Twitter can share in the revenues generated by big brands.

We estimate that Twitter‘s opt-in feature allows for one of the most cost effective approaches for direct marketers. The cost of an effective message through Twitter, in our estimate, is likely to be (depending on how Twitter chooses to price it) less than $0.50, far lower than other approaches such as telemarketing or direct mail, which can cost an order of magnitude more.

For instance, Dell has indicated that it generated $3M in revenues from June 2007 to June 2009, of which $1M were in the last six months. The followers of Dell (who have opted in to receive messages) soared from 11k in December 2008 to 1.3 million in October 2009. We believe there are hundreds of businesses which have the potential to generate over $1M in revenues, allowing Twitter to claim a share for referral.

This type of marketing approach is no different than the Fan Pages being established by large brands on Facebook. In both cases, users have to opt-in to participate in various marketing efforts, essentially making them more valuable than recipients of say, random email newsletter-based offers.

There are some other tidbits in the report about Twitter that might be of some interest to you.

* US has the largest number of Twitter users 57.4 percent, followed by UK with 8.2 percent, Canada (5.9 percent), Australia (2.9 percent), Brazil (2.1 percent), Germany (1.6 percent) and Netherlands (1.3 percent.)

* Nearly 28 percent of Twitter users are above the age of 45, while 26 percent users are between the ages of 15-24.

* About 18.4 percent Tweets emerge from Tweetdeck, while Tweetie accounts for 9.1 percent and Seesmic is at 6 percent of the total. Web interface accounts for 17.8 percent of total tweets.

Meg Whitman, former chief executive officer of eBay,  defended her decision to buy Skype in a radio interview with KTKZ’s Capitol Hour featuring Eric Hogue. Whitman is running for the office of the Governor of California on a Republican ticket, and is currently leading in the Republican primaries. Here is what she had to say on the show.

Hogue noted that “one of your opponents, Steve Poizner, referred to the fact that it was you as CEO of eBay that spent $2.1 billion on Skype, and that didn’t work, and he’s drawing the comparison here. Is that a fair or unfair comparison here, Meg?” She answered:

You know, we made so many acquisitions at eBay, so many of which were absolutely terrific. PayPal, a lot of our classified sites. And actually I think Skype will prove to be a good acquisition for eBay. You probably read that the company just sold about two-thirds of the interest in Skype to an investor group, kept a portion, and got almost all the money back, and I think Skype will be very effective. So I am very proud of my tenure at eBay. You know we took eBay from 30 individuals, 30 employees to 15,000, from $4.7 million in revenues to nearly $8 billion in revenues. So I’m very proud of the record and proud of the acquisition record.

I commend her for riding the eBay rocket ship, but when it comes to Skype, we all know she blew it. And once again, she dodged the question. How can she defend overlooking and not buying the JoltID technology from Skype co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis? That decision cost eBay another 5 percent of Skype when the auction giant had to settle with the two co-founders.

Broadcom is hoping to lower the price of high-definition VoIP services by taking its BroadVoice codecs open source. But even if this move lowers the price for HD voice, will consumers pay even a marginal premium for a better quality call?

The Irvine, Calif.-based company’s BroadVoice family of voice codecs comprises two variants: BroadVoice32 for wideband speech sampled at 16 kHz, and BroadVoice16 for narrowband telephone-bandwidth speech sampled at 8 kHz. Both will be made available as C source code in an effort to lower the price for broadband operators looking to upgrade the audio quality of subscribers’ calls.

Higher-quality calls are a good thing, of course, and may be a selling point for service providers looking to stand out from the crowd. (Whether they can actually save wireline is far from certain, though.) But quality has often been a less-important feature for consumers, as cell phones (with their mobility) and VoIP (with their lower cost) have demonstrated. Broadcom’s move to open source may result in cheaper HD voice services, but until those prices are nearly indistinguishable from traditional services HD is likely to remain a small market.

Logitech, a Swiss maker of peripherals for computers and digital consumer devices, is buying 6-year-old Austin, Texas-based video conferencing device maker LifeSize Communications for $405 million in cash. LifeSize has raised $80 million in funding from Norwest, Austin Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures and Pinnacle Ventures. It makes high-definition video conferencing systems that use standard broadband connections and IP technologies to connect distributed offices and locations. The deal will put Logitech in direct competition with Cisco Systems in the hotly contested video conferencing equipment market.

LifeSize is a competitor to Cisco Systems and Tandberg, a Norwegian video conferencing company that Cisco wants to buy for some $3 billion. LifeSize currently has over 9,000 customers and is sold across the world. In a previous post, Stacey pointed out that Cisco’s Telepresence gear “provides an immersive HD experience, is expensive, and is aimed squarely at the high end of the market, where it competes with services such as HP’s Halo. Tandberg gear, on the other hand, is cheaper and aimed at the middle market.”

Tandberg’s biggest competitor is LifeSize. Logitech also owns SightSpeed, a software-based video conferencing product that works with most PC cameras. While SightSpeed and Skype are good for low-end, free video conferencing, most companies want something larger, but don’t want to spend millions. LifeSize fits into that sweet spot, which is why I liked them in the first place.

I first wrote about LifeSize in 2005, when the company was being incubated inside the offices of Norwest Venture Partners, LifeSize’s biggest investor. Norwest partner Vab Goel is a co-founder of the company that’s spearheaded by Craig Malloy. As part of the deal, Malloy will stay at the helm of LifeSize, which will in turn become a division of Logitech.

I was impressed by the company and what it had been able to do. “Using off-the-shelf components, and adding some magical software sauce, these guys have worked out a way to stream HD signals over a one-megabit-per-second connection. I think these are the types of applications which are going to push the demand for broadband,” is what I wrote at the time.

The video conferencing market has exploded since then. Cisco in particular has been touting its vision of telepresence. In his column for GigaOM, Cisco CEO John Chambers said: “High-speed networking enables new human collaboration at a profound level, and such collaboration will radically change the way we think.” Video is part of that change, which is why he spending billions of dollars trying to buy Tandberg.

It’s official — following several tweets today from Adobe employees, a company spokesperson confirmed for us that Adobe “filed an 8-K this afternoon [that]  reports a company restructuring which will result in a 9 percent reduction in the company’s work force (approximately 680 employees).” You can read the filing here.

“Adobe is restructuring its business to align costs with its fiscal 2010 operating plan and budget, the company’s three-year strategic priorities and the realities of the business environment, as well as to ensure its ability to continue investing in long-term growth opportunities,” the spokesperson continued. The advisory we received also noted that at the close of its acquisition of Omniture, Adobe reduced the Web analytics firm’s work force by 9 percent.

These are tough times for some folks in the software industry. Adobe’s announcement comes right on the heels of Microsoft laying off 800 employees.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past several weeks, you’ve no doubt been bombarded with the heavy marketing surrounding the new Droid smartphone. Today, TheAppleBlog has a good analysis of the first weekend of sales for the Droid — in which 100,000 units moved — compared with the weekend openings of the iPhone, the iPhone 3G, the iPhone 3GS, and the Palm Pre. In short, the Droid did well, but nowhere near the iPhone releases. The numbers are collected in the chart below. Check Stacey’s thoughts from earlier today as well as TheAppleBlog’s analysis here.

TiE Entrepreneur Week will be held over a four-day period from Monday, Nov. 16 to Thursday, Nov. 19. Entrepreneur Week will consist of four intensive one-day sessions, each of which will focus on one segment: wireless, software, cleantech and Internet. The week will conclude with a wrap-up session to bring all of the participants together with the broader TiE audience. Each one-day session during Entrepreneur Week will bring together a group of TiE Charter Members, members, and other entrepreneurs with interest and experience around their chosen industry segment. Much like the sessions held at TiEcon 2009, each day will have a more intimate “PowerConnect” gathering around a specific topic of interest, as well as a panel of industry luminaries who will discuss and debate trends and issues that are relevant to the audience. Event hosts for E-Week are Visa, Sybase, and the San Jose Redevelopment Agency. Register now.

The two government agencies responsible for distributing the $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus grants said today that they’ve consolidated the two remaining funding rounds into one, and have asked for more input to improve the application process. The stimulus program, which closed the first round of applications in August, and will distribute the $4 billion in initial funds a little later than planned, has so far been a hit with about 2,200 applicants asking for more than $28 billion. However, the process of scoring applications and getting the money out the door has been slow, so the agencies, under a Sept. 10, 2010 deadline to get the full $7.2 billion deployed, are streamlining the process.

Apple became the world’s most profitable handset vendor in the third quarter of this year, reports Strategy Analytics. “We estimate Apple’s operating profit for its iPhone handset division stood at $1.6 billion in the third quarter of 2009,” wrote analyst Alex Spektor. That means Apple overtook Nokia, whose operating profit came in at just $1.1 billion. As Spektor noted, “With strong volumes, high wholesale prices and tight cost controls, the PC vendor has successfully broken into the mobile phone market in just two years.”

Well I don’t know if Apple can accurately be described as a “PC vendor,” but I do know that it’s seen unprecedented success with its App Store, that Nokia’s share of the smartphone market continues to slide, and that, going forward, Google’s Android may represent the real competition for Apple.

The iPhone’s success has everything to do with the huge and healthy ecosystem of great applications available for it. Strategy Analytics’ estimates only highlight how many ways Nokia, by comparison, has dropped the ball. For example, the company announced plans to focus on a new, open-source version of the Symbian operating system more than a year ago.

Fast-forward to today, and the Symbian Foundation has only recently open sourced the operating system’s microkernel. Meanwhile, Nokia reported terrible financial results for its latest quarter, capped by a 31 percent decline in North American sales. If the Finnish handset maker had a more fleet-footed, organized operating system and application strategy, it might have avoided having its lunch eaten by Apple.

Both the Windows Mobile and BlackBerry line of devices are being forced to confront the power of Android, and the  open source operating system is likely to provide some significant competition for the iPhone as well. As Stacey pointed out this morning, Verizon and Motorola moved more than 100,000 Droid phones this weekend.

It’s especially worth noting the comment made by Motorola’s Sanjay Jha analyst Mark McKechnie with Broadpoint AmTech, quoted in Stacey’s post, who said: “We estimate each Android unit contributes 4x the gross profit of a feature phone unit and that 10 million Android units will contribute nearly half of the gross profits in MOT’s handset division.” Indeed, from a profitability standpoint, Apple and the Android-based handset players are becoming the ones to watch.

Nokia is hoping to recapture some of its lost glory in the smartphone space with the N900, the flagship device that began shipping today. The long-awaited handset runs Nokia’s new Maemo 5 operating system and boasts some pretty impressive features, including 32GB on onboard memory, multitasking functionality, and a 5-megapixel camera with video capability.

While the N900 may not be the iPhone-killer Nokia would love to produce — as Om opined last month — it has received positive reviews, thanks largely to Maemo 5’s web browser. Maemo-based Internet tablets have fared poorly in the U.S., but with Symbian gathering dust — and losing customers — Maemo increasingly appears to be Nokia’s best hope for catching up to its rivals in the superphone era. As Fjord’s Christian Lindholm told Om last week (see the clip below), a typical mobile operating system has a shelf life of about 10 years, and building a mobile OS from scratch is a daunting task. If Nokia can find much of an audience with its N900 and Maemo 5, it may be a first step in reversing its fortunes.

While its Symbian platform remains atop the smartphone space in terms of market share, Nokia is in desperate need of a high-end, web-friendly handset that can compete with the iPhone. The manufacturer continues to lose ground in the vital U.S. market and has watched its dominance erode in its home market of Western Europe as Apple, Research In Motion and others close the gap. And Nokia will surely lose substantial ground to Android in the next few months as Google’s mobile OS gains traction in North America and Europe. The Finnish manufacturer must continue to support its massive base of Symbian customers, of course, but Nokia’s best hope for the long-term appears to be Maemo 5.

When the Mobile World Congress conference happened at the beginning of  this year, Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO of Funambol, a mobile application company, described the Android operating system as “a shocking no-show.” Hardly any smartphones there were based on it. That, of course, has radically changed as we approach the end of the year. There is, in fact, so much action surrounding Android on smartphones (GigaOM Pro, subscription required) that its non-phone prospects are being overshadowed. Android has the potential to be disruptive on many types of hardware platforms, and here are four scenarios for what the OS might do beyond phones.

Usher in Next-Gen Navigation Devices. I recently asked Chris DiBona, Open Source Program Manager at Google and one of the overseers of Android, what he thought of the new Droid phone during a casual, non-interview conversation. He immediately answered that he really liked the new, free Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0 features, and made some citations that let me know for sure he wasn’t just feeding me a press release. He especially appreciates the fact that you can just pop your Droid into a cradle in your car and it will go straight into the navigation and mapping environment. jkOnTheRun has given the navigation features rave reviews, too, and suggested that they make break new ground for Android in the overall GPS space.

Become the Most Flexible e-Book Platform. The looming battle between Amazon’s Kindle eBook device and Barnes & Noble’s Nook could “portend the next wave of Android disruption,” Joel West recently noted, hitting the nail on the head. Having Android on the Nook opens the device up to the fast-growing ecosystem of Android applications — potentially a major advantage over the Kindle. It’s puzzling, though, why Barnes & Noble hasn’t included a browser on the Nook device, which would make it even more flexible.

Bring Intelligence to Digital Entertainment Devices. MIPS Technologies, which provides processors and architectures for home entertainment, portable multimedia, and communications devices, is moving ahead with a number of initiatives focused on the Android operating system.  It has its own Android port that it has open sourced for players in the digital entertainment space to work with. Blu-ray players, set-top boxes, and digital TVs are just some of the hardware devices that MIPS is targeting with its Android port, as EETimes has reported. MIPS has already demonstrated Android running on a home media player and other devices. Archos also has its Archos 5 — a slick video player based on Android, and possibly a hot seller over the holidays. It’s shown at left.

Biggest Non-Phone Prospects Arrive From Japan. The Open Embedded Software Foundation (OESF) doesn’t get a lot of press in the U.S. and Europe, but it is extremely focused on bringing Android to non-phone platforms, as OStatic covered here. Many heavy-hitting companies are working with Japan’s OESF to take Android to non-phone devices, including ARM, KDDI, Japan Cable Laboratories, Alpine Electronics and Fujitsu Software Technologies. OESF working groups are also collaborating with MIPS on its non-phone Android plans.

It’s hard to believe that as recently as April of this year, many observers were wondering if Android had already failed. Fast-forward to today, and we’re seeing approximately 20 Android handsets arrive before year’s end — and numerous promising prospects for the OS on non-phone platforms.

Clearwire, as expected, said today that it’s managed to cajole $1.56 billion out of most of its previous investors to continue its buildout of the Clear WiMAX network. However, those doubling down on WiMAX (see chart) as the ideal fourth-generation wireless technology are likely throwing good money after bad. Even if we ignore the incredible writedowns these companies have had to make related to their first bet on Clearwire and WiMAX, the potential for return on the latest investment is still low. Why? Because Clearwire’s Clear service is stuck between a rock and hard place.

The Rock

Knowing that mobile broadband demand will continue to skyrocket, both Sprint and Clearwire  elected to build out WiMAX-based networks under the assumption that they could roll out nationwide mobile broadband before the cellular carriers could. But given that Verizon plans to cover 100 million people with a 4G Long Term Evolution network by the end of 2010 with AT&T to follow two years later, the WiMAX experience for many will be weighed against the cellular experience. And Clearwire can’t provide LTE for two more years, even it if wanted to. To compete, Clearwire, the cable providers reselling the service, and Sprint will have to create compelling packages and services that the cellular providers aren’t offering.

People can debate the propagation qualities of the WiMAX spectrum, but for the average person choosing a mobile broadband provider, the services and the devices will be the selling point, not the network. Right now, Clearwire and crew are selling basic broadband with relatively few devices. And the larger strategy of providing connectivity to devices like e-readers is pretty risky given that WiMAX isn’t available nationwide. Sprint even lost out on providing mobile broadband for the Amazon Kindle recently when the e-reader went international. Amazon is instead using AT&T, which has a GSM network and arrangements to ensure the e-reader works around the world. When it comes to device connectivity, global standards and large coverage areas win.

The Hard Place

With Clearwire fighting the cellular carriers to provide true mobile broadband connectivity for consumer data plans and for M2M deals, some believe it has an opportunity to provide local mobile broadband for folks who want to travel in their towns, but aren’t real road warriors going from city to city. This is a fairly compelling case as it doesn’t require total nationwide coverage, and Comcast, which has begun to offer WiMAX subscriptions as part of its service bundles, has seen strong interest from consumers. But Clearwire faces strong competition in this market from Wi-Fi.

Both AT&T and Verizon offer their customers free Wi-Fi for subscribers of their high-speed Internet services. Those with cable subscriptions may also have access to free Wi-Fi, and for those that don’t, there are plenty of sponsored hotspots and just a few hoops to jump through at places like your local Starbucks. If you’re going to be lugging your laptop around (and so far, that’s what most WiMAX modems are aimed at), you might as well find a place with Wi-Fi.

Of course, for some people, WiMAX will be a credible option, possibly as a replacement for wired access (although I’m not excited about that opportunity). My husband, for example, is eager to see how well it works in Austin (coming in mid-November) as he can’t get DSL or cable service at his office, and existing cellular speeds are lousy. Clearwire is also part of an agreement attempting to use WiMAX as the network for utilities’ smart grids, although how Clearwire would monetize that is uncertain. However, given the billions it’s costing Clearwire and its backers to build out its network, I’m not sure the space between the rock and the hard place is large enough for a multibillion-dollar company to thrive.

Has Microsoft suddenly awakened to open source? (OStatic)
Amazon delivers Kindle for PC — works great on a netbook (jkOnTheRun)
Battery startup ActaCell lassos cool $1M from Texas (Earth2Tech)
6 tips for using Google Wave on your first project (WebWorkerDaily)
Qik does DVD-quality capture on Droid (NewTeeVee)
MacBook vs. MacBook Pro: Which should you buy? (TheAppleBlog)

Samsung today unveiled plans to launch a new mobile software layer in the hopes of bringing high-end, smartphone-style apps to a broad range of its handsets. The question, of course, is whether it can lure developers to the platform.

Samsung’s bada – which means “ocean” in the Korean company’s native tongue — is an open platform designed to allow developers to create full-blown mobile apps for handsets that may not run a traditional smartphone operating system. While Samsung isn’t disclosing many details, bada is described as a software platform — not a competing OS — that rides atop the company’s proprietary phone software, and that could run on top of Linux. The manufacturer is releasing a full SDK and Samsung handset simulator, and plans to woo developers at a conference next month in Seoul, Korea, with events in London and San Francisco to follow in January.

But those developers have an ever-increasing number of attractive platforms on which to build their apps. Apple’s iPhone dominates the smartphone app space, of course, but Google is gaining traction in a big way with the recent launch of Verizon’s Droid initiative, and Research In Motion is building out an app store to serve its massive customer base. What’s more, those vendors are luring developers by dangling millions of dollars in prize money.

Described by one Samsung executive as the company’s “landmark, iconic new platform,” bada will launch for developers next month and will make its commercial debut in handsets in the first half of 2010. Apps developed using bada will be available through Samsung’s Application Store. As the company noted in a press release:

“By adopting Samsung bada, users will be able to easily enjoy various applications on their mobile,” the manufacturer said in a prepared statement. “Samsung bada also offers an easy-to-integrate platform for mobile operators so that mobile operators can provide unique and differentiated services to their customers.”

While the thought of yet another mobile platform may seem ridiculous, the strategy at the heart of bada is compelling. As GetJar has proven, there’s a substantial demand for apps by users who don’t own high-end smartphones. If bada can help developers address a broad base of handsets simply by making a few small tweaks to existing smartphone apps — which is no mean feat — it may gain traction with the kingmakers of the mobile realm.

The estimate that Verizon sold 100,000 Droid phones this weekend as part of the Droid onslaught is pretty sweet for Motorola, as is the assumption from Mark McKechnie with Broadpoint AmTech that the cellular provider purchased 200,000 of the handsets from Motorola in anticipation of high demand. But the more interesting part of his research note wasn’t the past — it’s the future, namely that he thinks Motorola’s handset business should return to an operating profit next year on the strength of co-CEO’ Sanjay’s Jha’s bet on the Android operating system. From the analyst note:

We estimate each Android unit contributes 4x the gross profit of a feature phone unit and that 10 million Android units will contribute nearly half of the gross profits in MOT’s handset division.

And that profit boost is why Jha is betting on Android — and why the bet must succeed. Motorola doesn’t have any more aces, and consolidation is a real threat for the handset industry. After watching Apple’s iPhone and devices from Research In Motion steal profits from the handset industry, Jha hopes Android offers the winning hand that Motorola needs in order to take some of those profits back.

Maybe we should chalk it up to the upcoming season of jolly, but lately it seems like everyone wants to give away free Wi-Fi access to travelers. Well, free as long as you watch an ad or a promo for whichever company is sponsoring it, such as Yahoo, Microsoft and now Google. But while we might roll our eyes at what looks like just another way to serve up ads, the idea of free WiFi-based marketing is actually pretty smart. Among the current offers:

• Starting today, visitors to Times Square in New York City will be able to get free Wi-Fi on their computers and mobile phones, courtesy of Yahoo. If you log in from your mobile phone, it is going to take you to http://m.yahoo.com. On a computer, you end up at a Yahoo page filled with ads.
• Google is offering free Wi-Fi access on Virgin America through Jan 15, 2010.
• eBay is sponsoring free Wi-Fi on 250 flights on Delta Airlines during the week of Thanksgiving. Wi-Fi users will get access to the eBay home page and an invitation to shop there.
• Microsoft is working with JiWire to give away free Wi-Fi in premium hotspots in hotels and airports as long as they use Bing for search via their connection.
• Google is giving away free Wi-Fi in 47 airports across the U.S., including hubs such as Miami, Seattle, Houston and San Jose, Calif. The promotions will last through Jan. 15, 2010.

Google, from the looks of it, is using Boingo Wireless’ network. The Los Angeles-based hotspot operator today announced a new sponsored access program that will allow brand advertisers to engage with Wi-Fi users.

Wi-Fi usage has been on the upswing recently, thanks to the rise of smartphones, especially the iPhone. Whether it is airports or cafes, people are increasingly logging onto Wi-Fi networks. “People are creatures of habit and one of the goals of this campaign is to open people up to new ways of finding what they are looking for on the Internet,” said Jeff Bernstein, senior vice president at UM (the agency formerly known as Universal McCann). “JiWire’s media channel serves our goal because it gives people an incentive to try Bing and let the engine speak for itself.”

Given that many of the estimated 100 million travelers who will spend time in airports with Google-sponsored Wi-Fi will at some point in time encounter Google ads, the decision is more than a nice gesture. Google providing access to free Wi-Fi is kind of like publishing those free magazines littering coffeehouses. It’s all about the ad revenue.

A typical free Wi-Fi campaign from Boingo offers travelers 15-20 minutes of complimentary Internet access in exchange for watching a 30-second video, by which the user is engaged directly with the brand. Other opportunities to engage consumers include lead generation, product and service trials, social media applications, location-based searches, customer surveys and downloadable content, Boingo noted in a press release.

Giving users something in return for their attention is a smart way to engage with an audience, which increasingly glosses over display advertising. It’s a welcome development, one that strikes a better balance between the needs of a marketeer and the end user (and potential customer).

It’s also a recognition of how important Wi-Fi is in the quest for constant connectivity, especially as more and more folks tote around WiFi-enabled smartphones. With 70 minutes spent behind the security gates at airports on average, everyone from business travelers to harried parents looking for a kid-friendly diversion can now find something online. That’s all good, but one can imagine it’s going to get a lot harder to find an empty power outlet this season.

Photo courtesy of Yahoo