Based on a broad survey of U.S. consumers, Verizon, Sony, Motorola, and Nintendo won out as the highest-rated tech brand, reports PCMag.com. More interesting, however, were the companies that didn't show in the 2011 Harris Poll EquiTrend study. "Perhaps surprisingly, Motorola ran away with the mobile phone brand of the year rankings, with Apple lagging far behind," PCMag notes. "Apple failed to top the rankings of personal computer suppliers, either." Not surprisingly, consumers picked Verizon over AT&T as the strongest mobile carrier brand. For the study, the firm polled over 25,000 U.S. consumers to assemble the results, which …

Female-focused content site Sugar Inc. has raised another $15 million in late-stage venture funding led by new investor Institutional Venture Partners, along with existing investor Sequoia Capital. As BoomTown reports, Sugar has now raised a total of $46 million, and plans to "use the funds for brand extensions, acquisitions, and international growth." In 2009, Sugar broke off ties with NBC Universal by buying back its shares and got a Series C funding of $16 million from Sequoia. Since then, several Web giants, including Yahoo, have been interested in acquiring it, but its husband-and-wife co-founders Brian and Lisa Sugar …

Web traffic to Foursquare has declined for five consecutive months, amounting to a 50% reduction in traffic over that period, reports ReadWriteWeb, citing data from Compete.com. "And while traffic isn't the best indicator of usage, Web visits should be just as likely now as five months ago, and it's certainly not a positive sign of rapid growth in usage," ReadWriteWeb notes. That said, Foursquare just announced 6 million users, which is no doubt impressive. In July 2010, Foursquare had just 2 million users performing 1 million check-ins per day. By the end of the year, that number had …

Not just another iPad app, some top tech watchers say Showyou has the promise to redefine consumers' TV viewing behavior. Developed by San Francisco-based Remixation, the free app lets people create and watch personalized streams of online video. "Instead of relying on the talents of TV studios and network programming executives, it draws from user-generated content sites (YouTube, Vimeo and TED at the moment) and social networks (Facebook, Twitter and Vodpod)," The Los Angeles Times explains. As CNet explains, Showyou is "taking a stab at success where many others have failed: a fresh, visually-impressive way …

Popular software blog Download Squad became the latest casualty in AOL's post-HuffPo content "consolidation," ZDNet reports. In an email issued late Monday, Download Squad's staff was effectively told to gather their personal belongings. "From that moment, no further blog posts were made on Download Squad," ZDNet writes. Editor Sebastian Anthony then tweeted, "In a world where software is moving towards ubiquity, AOL-HuffPo has seen fit to shut down the best software blog on the Web. Insane." Regarding layoffs, AOL head Tim Armstrong assured last month: "There will be job changes ... There's no way around it, but we'll …

Stateside, Bing-powered search captured 30.01% of the market in March -- up from 28.8% in February -- according to Hitwise. During the same period, Google's search share dropped from 66.69% to 64.42%. The news has industry watches thinking big, and predicting an-until-recently-unthinkable upset. Under the headline, "Could Bing Overtake Google in 2012?" Mashable writes: "If the trend line continues, there will be a real contest between Bing and Google next year -- and Bing may just come out on top." "Bing is doing what no one used to think was possible: knocking search market share points off of …

Video asset management software provider KIT Digital this week announced the acquisition of Ioko, a software and technology services provider for multiscreen video delivery. KIT has agreed to pay $91.4 million in cash and stock. As TechCrunch explains, Ioko provides an end-to-end managed cloud-based platform for multiscreen video delivery over connected IP devices to telecommunications cable, media and entertainment companies around the world, with a particular focus on North American, Northern European and Australasian markets. Ioko currently generates approximately $54 million in annual revenues related to IP video asset management, through a combination of recurring managed service fees, …

How is NYTimes.com fairing since the debut of its paywall? According to Experian Hitwise says, visits to the site were off between 5%-to-15% during the 12 days after the paywall's launch. As paidContent notes, visits were actually down only slightly on Friday and actually up on Saturday, "possibly because of interest in the budget showdown." Traffic depreciated most severely - 15% -- on the last day of March, when the greatest number of visitors to the site would have reached their monthly article limit, according to Experian Hitwise. Under the New York Times' new paywall plan, visitors can …

Who says advertising has no place in the future of paid content? Amazon just unveiled a $114 Kindle, which requires owners to view ads in exchange for the new low price. The Kindle With Special Offers, so-called, costs $25 less than the current lowest-priced model, according to Amazon. "Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos is counting on the Kindle, unveiled in 2007 for $399, to capitalize on digital-book demand," writes Bloomberg. "With the new approach, he gains a bigger price advantage over rivals and opens an additional source of ad revenue." General Motors' Buick, Procter & Gamble's Olay skin …

This weekend, Apple Insider took a minute to pick on Gartner and its newly revised mobile market predictions. "Gartner recently issued a new prediction of the direction of the smartphone industry, but its last one from 2009 doesn't suggest the company has very accurate foresight," Apple Insider writes. Last week, Gartner said it believed that Google's Android platform would be used by 49% of all smartphones by 2012 and that by 2015, Microsoft's Windows Phone would overtake Apple's iOS iPhone for second place. One caveat: "Just a year and a half ago, the same firm made similar bold …