It's not all smooth sailing for Apple and its new mobile advertising initiative. As some ad execs tell The Wall Street Journal, "Some ad campaigns [are] experiencing delays as agencies attempt to learn the new system amid Apple's tight control over the creative process." Also, since Apple debuted its iAd mobile advertising service last month, the company has been slow to roll it out. "Of the 17 launch partners Apple named for iAd, only Unilever PLC and Nissan Co. had iAd campaigns for much of July," according to The Journal. "Of the remaining 17, Citigroup, Walt Disney …

It's been a not-so-long-time coming for Hulu -- the famously funded, jointly owned premium video platform. Sources tell The New York Times that the company is eying an IPO at a valuation of more than $2 billion. "In recent weeks, Hulu executives have begun talking to investment banks about pursuing an initial public offering as soon as this fall," sources tell The Times. "Such a move would be one of the most prominent media offerings this year." As The Times reports, however, the success of the IPO is hardly a sure thing. "With …

Challenging Google's ascendant mobile strategy, Oracle on Thursday filed a patent and copyright-infringement lawsuit against the search giant. Oracle claims that Android infringes on its patented Java technology. "In its complaint ... Oracle said Google's Android operating system software consists of Java applications and other technology," reports The Associated Press. "As such, it infringes on one or more parts of seven different patents -- something Google should know, Oracle argues, because it has hired former Sun Java engineers in recent years." Oracle also said Google's Android mobile OS infringes on Oracle's copyrights in …

Planning to finally buy that Kindle e-reader, this weekend? 'Wait!' says Slate. While the new Wi-Fi version sells for just $139, Slate's Farhad Manjoo speculates that its price will soon drop to $100. "I rarely make predictions about the tech business, but here goes: Before the holidays, [Kindle maker] Amazon will cut the price of the Wi-Fi Kindle to $99, and the 3G version will go for $150 or less. Amazon will do so, I think, not only to sell a lot of Kindles but also to cement its online store as the iTunes for books -- the dominant …

Web-centric media companies have long viewed micropayments as the business model of the future. Bringing that dream to life, PayPal plans to roll out a payment product by the end of the year that helps businesses collect "micropayments" online, reports the Associated Press. Presently, if consumers want to buy, say, a virtual good in an online game, they need to first purchase a chunk of credit, which they can then spend over time. The problem is the costs associated with credit card transactions, which quickly eat away at the profit a merchant can make. PayPal thinks it …

Which countries have the most users on Facebook? Following the United States (with 130 million), top honors go to the UK (28 million), (Indonesia 26 million), Italy (26 million), France (26 million), India (26 million), Germany (18 million), Mexico (16 million), Turkey (16 million), and Canada (15 million). That's according to site monitor Pingdom, which based its findings on per-country traffic estimates to Facebook.com, and data from Google Ad Planner. Google Ad Planner estimates worldwide monthly visitors to Facebook.com to 550 million. This is slightly higher than the 500 million active users Facebook says it has, but …

Why is Starbucks giving away free Wi-Fi? To promote its Digital Network, or course. "The Starbucks Digital Network (SDN) will be available to customers at company-operated stores beginning this fall," reports Mashable, which got the dish firsthand from Starbucks's VP of Digital Ventures Adam Brotman. "With SDN, Starbucks hopes to engineer an in-store, third-place experience like no other by offering exclusive and premium content from hand-picked content providers, including Apple, The New York Times and leading health publisher Rodale." The coffee company already knows that computer users spend about one hour per visit on Wi-Fi while mobile …

As if Facebook wasn't live enough, the top social net is expected today to debut Facebook Live -- a live video streaming channel. Along with special celebrity-oriented videos, the live video channel will be used for official Facebook announcements, press events, live chats with Facebook engineers and live streaming of its developer conference, f8, ReadWriteWeb reports. Could this mark the start of a more aggressive video strategy for Facebook? Only time will tell. In the meantime, the channel will incorporate Facebook's real-time Live Feed technology to facilitate interactions between the viewing audience and the speaker. It will …

The forthcoming version of Digg is largely a reaction to newer services that have sprung up to challenge the link-sharing site. That's according to comments made by Digg founder and CEO Kevin Rose during a conversation with BoomTown on Wednesday. "A lot of the changes in V4, Rose acknowledges, have to do with catching up to what other services are offering and are aimed at making Digg ... more easily social and innovative," writes BoomTown's Kara Swisher. The "New Digg" is expected to be more personal, giving users a "My News" look at Digg first, rather than simply delivering …

As was expected, Twitter officially debuted its own "Tweet" button on Thursday. "This marked one in a series of moves to assume control of features that could help further propel the popularity of the service," reports The Los Angeles Times. TweetMeme built the popular "Retweet" button which Web sites install to encourage visitors to share links with one click. The button had generated 750 million impressions a day, according to TweetMeme founder Nick Halstead. Also as expected, Twitter is licensing some of the technology that TweetMeme developed, while TweetMeme will shift to a new product called Datasift. Mashable, which …