Sure to make any marketer drool, designer Nicholas Felton just debuted a mobile app that turns one’s life into a million little data points. Reporter, so-called, works by subjecting users to little quizzes throughout the day. “The act of ‘reporting’ (in Felton’s terminology) is kind of like journaling -- a practice that’s therapeutic, but provides the most real value in hindsight and in aggregate,” The Verge writes. The data that Reporter collects is not meant to be shared with anyone, let alone marketers. 

Are the tablet’s best days behind it? Despite strong sales numbers, Andreessen Horowitz partner Zal Bilimoria suggests that the mobile devices have no future. Why? Along with the fact that most tablets aren’t connected to the Web, “it comes down to size,” Bilimoria writes in Re/Code. “Tablets are trying (and failing) to be portable enough to go everywhere, yet large enough to be multipurpose.” 

Google’s Product Listing Ads (PLAs)—enhanced search ads that include features such as price and image—saw steep growth in Q4 2013. According to data released in January 2014 by The Search Agency, total spending on such ads rose 71% quarter over quarter and 164.8% year over year in the last quarter of 2013, pushing its overall portion of Google’s spend share to 0.28%. The most impressive growth was seen in mobile, which continued to grab click share from desktop. Smartphone clicks in Q4 2013 increased 1,589% over Q4 2012, and those on tablets rose 335.7%. Overall, mobile grew its …

Apple has published a job listing on its site looking for physiologists and engineers to run tests related to health and fitness data. Employees will be asked to “design and run user studies related to cardiovascular fitness & energy expenditure, including calories burned, metabolic rate, aerobic fitness level measurement/tracking and other key physiological measurements…” It's all part of Apple's plan for a new app for iOS8 called Healthbook.

Foursquare received $15 million in funding as a result of a partnership with Microsoft. The deal means Foursquare contributes to the Bing platform’s location and context layers on both Windows 8 and Windows Phone. Microsoft will be getting data, using Foursquare’s integration with the Bing platform to provide proactive notifications, integration with Bing Maps and more reach for Microsoft’s devices and services on Windows Phone.

Being able to easily link to content inside mobile apps could make them easier to use and also boost the mobile ad industry. Now, ad technology startups, alongside giants like Google and Facebook, are reinveting the hyperlink. They're rolling out technology that makes it easy to put links into a mobile app, Web page, or email that with a tap take a person to a specific section of another app installed on the device. For example, URX has developed technology that indexes all the deep-linkable locations in a particular app, then selects the best to offer in an ad to …

Walt Disney Co is going to lay off several hundred people in its interactive unit, which has about 3,000 staffers, reported The Wall Street Journal. That division houses gaming products and Disney.com. The layoffs are expected to begin after Disney releases its quarterly earnings on Wednesday. Playdom, a social-gaming business Disney acquired in 2010, is one division expected to see cutbacks.

The Tribune Company completed its purchase of Gracenote from Sony. Gracenote, which adds streaming music services, mobile devices and automotive infotainment, will combine with Tribune Media Services, a unit of the media giant that sells entertainment metadata, such as television listings and movie times. The goal is to offer services on smart TVs. 

An ambitious effort by Samsung to roll out smartphones powered by a new operating system is on shaky ground. The smartphone maker is investing in an operating system called Tizen to challenge the mobile software duopoly of Apple. The problem: some of the world's major wireless carriers are beginning to pull their support of phones slated to run the platform.

The first update to Windows 8.1 is out, with some minor updates, including a new title bar for Microsoft’s Windows 8-style apps. Wireless data got somewhat cheaper over the weekend: AT&T  announced a family data sharing plan deal, including 10 GB of data for four smartphones for $160. That’s $100 less than a similar plan from Verizon Wireless.