Google Maps is now being bolstered by the list of suggestions that typically pop up whenever users enter text into Google's search bar. "As usual with Google these days, the search and the suggested search terms are tailored to your location," notes ReadWriteWeb. "The example given in Google's blog post is 'Mandela,' which in San Francisco comes up with a number of geographically relevant results and in London comes up with a completely different set of results." The feature, which has been in testing in Germany, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, has been added to 10 more domains in 8 …

So much for free premium content. Beginning what some analysts see as the beginning of a slippery slide away from wholly ad-supported models, Hulu reportedly plans to begin testing a subscription service as early as late May. In what is often referred to as a "metered" model, the new Hulu will give away the five most recent episodes of shows like Fox's "Glee" and "ABC's "Lost," but broader viewing will require users to fork over $9.95 a month. "Hulu, which ranks second only to Google's YouTube in terms of monthly video streams in the U.S.," said it turned an …

Media Beat takes a gander at the Cooliris Wall -- the app maker's new service for publishers. "Through the Wall, they can present images, videos, and more in a format that visitors can scroll through quickly and smoothly," the blog writes. "While the time users spend on such features can be presented to advertisers through a metric called 'engagement,' for many Web publishers the real measure of audience is pageviews ... Now Cooliris can improve those too." Additionally, Cooliris says comScore helped it develop a new way to measure usership. Under the new model, clicks on individual pieces of content …

Salesforce.com has entered into a definitive agreement to buy cloud-based crowd-sourced data services provider Jigsaw for about $142 million. The enterprise cloud computing company touts Jigsaw's Wikipedia-style crowd-sourcing model, which it says delivers the world's most complete, accurate and up-to-date business contact data. "When we first reviewed the company back in 2006, Michael Arrington deemed it a really, really bad idea because Jigsaw would pay people simply to upload other people's contact information (a privacy nightmare)," TechCrunch notes. Since then, Jigsaw changed its model to allow people to see if their personal information has been uploaded, and added a process …

Eyeing ecommerce growth, Visa has agreed to buy online payment processing company CyberSource Corp. for about $2 billion. "Visa said the deal would increase the amount of online payments it processes and the resulting business for its client banks, which issue Visa credit and debit cards," Reuters reports. PayPal parent eBay, meanwhile, had better take notice. "We're paying attention to PayPal, as well as other companies that are getting into the e-commerce space, and we are obviously concerned that that would have an effect on our market share ... This is somewhat in reaction to it," Visa chairman and chief …

At the end of the fourth quarter of 2009, Skype had 560 million registered users, according to the company's chief technology strategist, Jonathan Rosenberg. Skype added 39 million registered users in the fourth quarter, while the number of Skype-to-Skype call minutes totaled 36.1 billion in the final three months of the year. What's more, Skype users made more the 250 billion minutes worth of Skype-to-Skype calls from the time the service was launched through the end of 2009. Furthermore, 36% of Skype-to-Skype calls as of the end of the fourth quarter included video, according to Rosenberg. According to TeleGeography Research, …

Rejecting the perceived omnipotence of crowds -- and their preferred platforms like Google and Wikipedia -- Oxford University Press has launched a collection of professionally-produced, peer-reviewed bibliographies in different subject areas. Ars Technica calls the new Oxford Bibliographies Online service "the Anti-Google," and "sort of a giant, interactive syllabus put together by OUP and teams of scholars in different disciplines." Users can explore specific bibliographic entries, which contain descriptive text and a list of references that link to either Google Books -- or to subscribing libraries' own catalog entries -- by either browsing or searching. Along with concerns over factual …

Google's acquired another startup named Agnilux, but no one's quite sure why or what the firm actually does. "We have not yet been able to confirm pricing terms," writes PE Hub, which broke the story, "although assume it must have been a big deal to convince the Agnilux founders to shun the strategic investment -- or traditional venture capital -- routes so soon after founding." Meanwhile, Bloomberg is reporting that Google is in talks to acquire ITA Software Inc., a maker of travel programs used by companies including Orbitz Worldwide Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Citing people familiar …

For all its moral and social failings, realists credit porn with driving the broad adoption of new technology, including the Internet itself. Having none of it, Apple CEO Steve Jobs isn't budging on his staunch opposition to X-Rated media on the iPhone, the iPad, or any device under his control. "We do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone," Jobs writes in a letter obtained by TechCrunch. "Folks who want porn can buy and [sic] Android phone." And, while TechCrunch admits to not authenticating the letter, it notes that Jobs has drawn connections between porn …

According to Google, one in five searches are related to location. Adjusting to this behavior, the search giant has launched several new services under the umbrella name Google Places. According to ReadWriteWeb, "Google Places is primarily a merging of its Local Business Center with its Place Pages, of which there are more than 50 million." Along with tailoring users' searches by their respective location, Google will also be offering businesses the ability to define their service areas. "That, coupled with real-time updates, should allow for some interesting uses of Google with not only delivery services, but completely mobile vendors and …