Local question and answer start-up Hipster has raised $1 million in seed funding from some prominent investors, including Mitch Kapor, Dave McClure/500 Startups, and Google Ventures, TechCrunch reports. "Many of you best know Hipster as the start-up that launched a thousand blog posts, having insane hype and a couple of acquisition offers before its SXSW launch," TechCrunch writes. Unfortunately, "While Hipster's initial launch page had over 10,000 signups in its first few days of existence, the start-up's actual user numbers for SXSW were at just over 4,000 for the entire three day period." To carve out a place …

Hoping to draw in more viewers, Blip.tv relaunched its Web site on Tuesday as a curator of content -- or what The New York Times calls "professional video shows created exclusively for the Web." The new site is designed to highlight the top 5% of content on Blip.tv's content. Rather than relying on some fancy algorithm or user voting system, Blip.tv producers have started picking videos with what they feel is the best-quality content, and then highlighting them on the site. "The goal of the redesign was to figure a way to help people discover new and original …

LinkedIn just increased the price range for its initial public offering, lifting the social network's potential valuation to as much as $4.25 billion. The company now plans to offer 7.84 million shares at $42 to $45 each, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday. As Bloomberg notes, the shares had been offered for $32 to $35 apiece. "At the top end of the new range, LinkedIn would raise $405.7 million if underwriters exercise an over-allotment option to buy 1.18 million additional shares," Bloomberg calculates. Of great significance to the broader industry, LinkedIn …

In yet another instance of devices betraying users' personal privacy, university researchers have found that most phones running Google's Android operating system are vulnerable to attacks, which let adversaries steal "digital credentials" used to access calendars, contacts, and other sensitive data stored on the search giant's servers. ,br> The findings from Germany's University of Ulm build on previous findings from Rice University professor Dan Wallach, who in February uncovered similar Android privacy shortcomings. "Based on Google's own statistics ... more than 99 percent of Android-based handsets are vulnerable to the attacks, which are similar in difficulty and effect to …

Sure to make Google's blood boil, Bing has deepened it relationship Facebook to more thoroughly integrate the social network's data into search results. While this isn't the first time that Microsoft and Facebook have worked together to make search more social, Computerworld explains: "Before, Bing let users know if their Facebook friends had ‘liked' any of the search results they were seeing ... Now Microsoft is giving a greater preference to ‘liked' search results in Bing's results ranking." Also, Microsoft's search engine will calculate how many people in general "like" certain search results, so rankings won't be entirely …

Paving the way for mobile developers, cloud platform Stackmob has raised $7.5 million in a Series A round, GigaOm reports. "The new money, led by Trinity Ventures, will help the company expand and push toward a public launch later this year," it writes. San Francisco-based Stackmob offers mobile developers a back-end cloud platform with which they can more easily build, deploy and manage applications. Translation: "Especially with many start-ups scrambling to add talent, StackMob allows them to avoid having to hire as big a team," according to GigaOm. "We see ourselves as the experienced back end for the …

Rather than proceeding with its planned IPO, Viadeo has decided to focus on emerging markets for the time being. What, you ask, is Viadeo? According to Reuters, only the world's second-biggest social network for professionals behind LinkedIn -- which is, in fact, presently preparing to go public. "The France-based start-up had been mulling an IPO in Europe, the United States or Hong Kong in a bid to surf on a wave of investor interest in technology start-ups that has sent valuations sky-rocketing in recent months," Reuters writes of Viadeo. Yet, despite receiving a lots of interest from the …

Making microblogging history, Lady Gaga has become the first celebrity to rack up more than 10 million followers on Twitter. Ever the lady, "The U.S. singer thanked fans for supporting her," BBC News Reports. "10 Million Monsters!" Gaga gushed in a tweet. "I'm speechless, we did it! It's an illness how I love you. Leaving London smiling." The pop star became the first person to pass 9 million followers on Twitter in March, overtaking Britney Spears last August. Spears, meanwhile, was only on top for three months after claiming the No. 1 spot from actor and social media …

Going against the wishes of Silicon Valley, California is considering forcing socials networks (i.e., Facebook) to change their privacy protection policies. Under the proposal, social-networking sites would have to let users establish their privacy settings when they first register to join the site, rather than after they join, The San Francisco Chronicle reports. "Sites would also have to set defaults to private so that users would choose which information is public," it writes. Currently, Facebook's default settings make certain information available to everyone online after a user registers, unless the user changes those privacy settings. What's more, top …

Marking its first content deal with a digital subscription service, Miramax has agreed to distribute "several hundred" movies through Netflix. And not a moment too soon! All too often, Gizmodo writes, "Netflix Watch Instantly seems like an endless stream of Daddy Daycare sequels, as more and more studios strip away the good stuff." "This agreement is an important first step in our digital strategy," Miramax CEO Mike Lang said in a statement. "Lang didn't go any further on Miramax's digital plans," CNet reports. "However, back in March, when rumors of the studio inking a deal …