Itamar Kestenbaum

In their announcement of their SXSW plans, Hootsuite announced their integration of location-based juggernaut Foursquare, as well as faux-social-network-turned-music-self-promotion-clusterf*** Myspace!

This, no doubt, is not a coincidental timing considering the huge amount of checkins expected at SXSW this year. The location-based service also gives special badges for specific events.

Skype will be releasing Android and Blackberry apps in March of this year!

Skype, along with Verizon Wireless, will be releasing the apps to many of Verizon’s devices including the BlackBerry Storm 9530, Storm2 9550, Curve 8330, Curve 8530, 8830 World Edition and Tour 9630 smartphones, as well as DROID by Motorola, DROID ERIS by HTC and Motorola DEVOUR.

According to TechCrunch, Facebook’s Chamath Palihapitiya of Facebook just finished a short speech about Facebook’s mobile strategy. Nothing mindblowing – but he did leave us with Facebook Zero – a text-only site for mobile carriers.

Kai Oistamo of Nokia and Renee James of Intel took the stage yesterday to announce the new MeeGo open-source software platform. Today, they released the video from that announcement. Below are both videos (part 1 and part 2) for your viewing pleasures! This is going to be pretty freaking awesome:

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AppBoy.com has launched it’s Social Network aimed to connect end users and developers.

The goal of the Social Network is something that’s been long in the coming. It allows end users with ideas about Apps to suggest their ideas for a chance to win $250 if their idea is voted for and carried out.

Intel and Nokia have created a new mobile OS called Meego. Meego will be an open-source mobile operating system. The versatile OS will, according to the Nokia blog, work across a huge range of devices – mobile computers, netbooks, tablets, mediaphones, connected TVs and in-vehicle infotainment systems. The open-source platform will be hosted by the Linux Foundation, and they expect it will be adopted by many device manufacturers. The OS itself is supposed to hit devices sometime later this year.

Yesterday, it was announced that Aardvark was being bought out by Google for $50 million. Today, both companies sent out their official blog posts and mass emailings, and immediately afterwards – TechCrunch broke the news that Aardvark was already live in Google Labs! And here it is:

Yesterday I wrote a long intricate rant against Google Buzz.  It’s not because I hate Google – it’s actually quite the opposite. I was mad at Google for Google Buzz because I love Google. And I think they can do so much better. Well – since most of the 9 million posts (in 2 days!) on Buzz have been complaints about it’s features, they caught on pretty fast and are doing a wicked-good job of cleaning up the mess they made!

Facebook chat was at first a dream, and a few years ago it became a reality – and a big one! It made Facebook more real time than it had ever been before.

Bit.ly have released Bit.ly Pro to the public last night. The addition to the already-free bit.ly will be a tool to allow individuals and enterprises to use their URL shortening technology to create their own custom URL shorteners. A few days ago, Bit.ly sent an email out to their waiting lists requesting that they make initial preparations. First, users must get their short URL, and second – they need to set up the CNAME to point to the right address.