AT&T has officially opened its first Foundry facility aimed at increasing innovation in the mobile market. One of three such planned facilities around the globe, this one is in Plano, Texas, the company announced today.

The center will facilitate the company and mobile developers working together to "speed the pace of innovation to consumers and enterprises," the carrier said. The center is opening with expected development in rich media, HTML5, and location-based applications, among other areas.

Ultimately, AT&T's goal with its innovation centers is to get projects that might improve the use of … Read more

Windows Live Messenger is seeing its integration with Facebook chat grow rapidly.

Microsoft announced yesterday in a blog post that close to 18 million people have "connected" Facebook chat to Messenger since August, when it became possible to do so. And those folks have now accumulated more than 2.8 billion minutes of Facebook chat. All told, there have been 440 million chat sessions between Messenger and Facebook in less than six months, Microsoft said.

Microsoft, which owns a small slice of Facebook, became the first instant-messaging provider to allow its users to chat with friends on Facebook … Read more

Reddit has joined an exclusive club on the Internet.

The Conde Nast-owned social news site announced yesterday that, for the first time, its monthly traffic exceeded 1 billion page views in January, according to statistics from Google Analytics that Reddit offered in a blog post. It is now among the 100 sites on the Web with that much traffic, according to Reddit.

"This is an accomplishment that all redditors should take pride in, because people wouldn't keep arriving in droves--and coming back--if not for the community that you've created here," Reddit spokesman Mike Schiraldi said yesterday … Read more

Flickr accidentally deleted a member's account--comments, favorites, and thousands of photos--but now has given the photographer a 25-year Pro-level subscription and all his photos back.

And more importantly for others who fear the same might happen to them, Flickr is working to update its system to prevent such a mistake from happening again and to make such draconian moves easier to reverse.

Mirco Wilhelm described his dismay yesterday to find that 5 years of activity and about 4,000 photos were wiped out when his account vanished. Perplexed, he realized it might be connected to an abuse report he … Read more

Google users who've tapped into the company's Hotpot service can now find recommendations on hotels, restaurants, and other spots as part of their regular search results.

Launched in November, Hotpot gives you the ability to check out reviews of different establishments and rate and review your own favorite (or not so favorite) spots. So if you're looking for a local hotel, restaurant, supermarket, shopping mall, or store, your fellow Hotpot users can tell you which ones are worth checking out. And if you want to share your opinions of that terrific Mexican restaurant down the road, you … Read more

iPhone users can now rely on Google for a helping hand the next time they go shopping.

The search giant yesterday launched a version of its free Google Shopper app for the iPhone. The app, which has been available for Android users the past year, is essentially a mobile search engine for products, letting you compare prices and read reviews before you open your wallet.

The app offers several ways to search for products. You can type the name of the item in the search field. You can snap a photo of a book, CD, DVD, or video game or … Read more

Apple is now trying to enforce an ignored but apparently existing rule that specifically targets publishers of e-book apps offered in its App Store.

In a nutshell, if the publisher gives customers the ability to buy books outside of the app, such as through its Web site, then it must also offer the ability to buy books within the app itself using Apple's in-app purchase system. Otherwise, that app would be rejected.

Of course, if the books are purchased within the app, Apple gets its standard 30 percent cut.

"We have not changed our developer terms or guidelines. … Read more

European consumers may finally be able to pay for items via their smartphones next year, through a system under development by LG Electronics.

LG's system would use a combination of near-field communication (NFC) and cloud computing to allow certain retailers in Europe to accept payments from customers using NFC-equipped smartphones. Scheduled to launch sometime in 2012, the system would also find its way into interactive TVs and security products sold by LG, Reuters reported this week.

"The point-of-sale technology, which will be targeted at small and medium-sized businesses..., is currently in beta testing," Jin-Yong Kim, vice president … Read more

All signs point to Amazon.com launching a streaming service to compete with Netflix. However, its arrival may already be delayed.

Citing unnamed sources, The Los Angeles Times reported that Amazon initially wanted to launch its streaming service in early February. However, due to issues with getting the service up and running and the difficulty it is having acquiring content, the publication's sources say Amazon has pushed the launch back to as early as late February.

Reports of Amazon launching a streaming service have been surfacing for quite some time. Back in August, the company was said to be in negotiations with film and television studios … Read more