GigaOm says recommended "places" are the next big thing for location-based services. "Now that Facebook is doing its best to make location-based services and the idea of a 'check-in' mainstream with Facebook Places, the real game in location is shifting elsewhere: such as trying to make sense of all of the location data that users are providing through various services," writes the blog. "One obvious goal is to offer users recommendations for places based on their behavior or the activity of their social network." Among other upstarts, GigaOm suggests keeping an eye on The Hotlist, a seed-funded startup …

Which Americans are the most voracious text-messagers? According to Nielsen, Hispanics send and receive around 767 SMS messages a month, while African-Americans send and receive around 780 -- significantly more than Asians/Pacific Islanders (384 texts a month) and "Whites" (566 texts a month). Similar to texting, African-Americans use the most voice minutes -- on average more than 1,300 a month. Hispanics, meanwhile, are the next most talkative group, chatting an average of 826 minutes a month. Even Asians/Pacific Islanders, with 692 average monthly minutes, talk more than Whites, who use roughly 647 voice minutes a month. Also of note, …

Big changes are afoot at News Corp.'s troubled digital unit. It was revealed Monday that Adam Bain, who ran the company's Fox Audience Network, was leaving for Twitter, where he'll be spearheading its burgeoning ad revenue efforts. In turn, News Corp. announced (arguably counterintuitive) plans to integrate FAN's team and technology with MySpace. "Bain's organization has been a bright spot in an otherwise dismal group of digital products at News Corp.," writes TechCrunch. "The company's self service ads are generating hundreds of millions of dollars annually, we've heard." "It is clear the company is scrambling to shift strategy," writes …

Just asking for a fight, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley is telling members of the press that Facebook's new Place check-in tool is "boring" and "unexciting." In an interview with The Telegraph, Crowley says: "I have now had a chance to play around with Facebook Places and it's not that great or interesting. It's a pretty boring service, with barely any incentives for users to keep coming back and telling their friends where they are." To boot, "The only interesting thing about Places is that it has a potential audience of over 500 million people around the world... but that …

Popular music recommendation engine Pandora on Tuesday debuted station-creation based on musical genres, instead of just bands or songs, reports ReadWriteWeb. "With the new feature, you don't need to think of the type of music you want to hear, pick the band you think best represents that music, and then hope that Pandora feels the same way. Instead, Pandora will let you choose from more than 100 channels and 'micro-genre stations,' which the company say are already a big hit." According to Pandora, channels like "Today's Country" and "Today's Hip Hop and Pop Hits" are already on the top …

Long before the dawn of the iPad, tablet talk usually centered around the same questions: Who would use such a device, and for what purposes? But, no more. Apple's "tablet-style device seems to be sidestepping the resistance that the iPhone and other consumer-oriented devices have faced in the corporate environment," reports The Wall Street Journal. "Indeed, many businesses have raced to snap up iPads." Apple, which said it sold more than three million iPads through the end of June, attributes at least some of the device's success to businesses, according to The Journal. In July, Apple Chief Operating Officer …

TechCrunch's Paul Carr just did what every media and marketing professional has dreamed of doing at least once over the past year: He (partially) disconnected. "A little over a week ago, I closed down all of my social media accounts, with the exception of Twitter, which I locked." According to Carr, "In an age when everyone and their dog is sharing every aspect of their life, being a digital recluse is the new 'Internet famous.'" But that's not the only, or even most profound, reason. Agreeing with a recent revelation by Leo Laporte, Carr notes: "People on Twitter are …

Despite the best efforts of top tech companies from Apple to Google, cable companies are only increasing their control over American living rooms. Indeed, a New York Times/CBS News poll this month found that 88% of respondents paid for traditional TV service, while, just 15% of those subscribers had even considered replacing it with Internet video services like Hulu and YouTube. "In the battle for the living room, 2010 seems to be the year that the incumbent is strengthening its foothold," writes The New York Times. "The proliferation of Internet video has led to much talk of 'cord-cutting' …

Like many professionals, Hilary Mason knows the feeling of drowning in email. Desperate for a life-preserver, the lead scientist at URL shortening company Bitly built a system to automatically prioritize her Gmail inbox. Her E-Mail Classifier, so called, constantly reorganizes her messages "like a magician shuffling a deck of cards," writes The New York Times' Bits blog. "I think e-mail should be sorted by importance, not by time," Mason tells Bits blogger Nick Bilton. According to Mason, "The sender and subject line are actually the most important parts of an e-mail because people tend to put more important information …

Cloud operating system provider Nimbula has raised $15 million in funding from Accel Partners, reports GigaOm. Founded by the same team that developed Amazon EC2, Nimbula delivers a cloud OS that combines the scalability and operational efficiency that "we've grown accustomed to with the public cloud, but with the control that enterprises require for within their own data centers," writes the blog. "While many commentators are scornful about private clouds, claiming that the concept doesn't meet their test for 'the true cloud,' more moderate commentators, myself included, would contend that so long as it's scalable and abstracts management away …