Tabbedout, maker of a platform that lets users pay restaurant or bar tabs via smartphone, just raised $3.7 million in additional funding from New Enterprise Associates. The start-up, which has so-far raised, $6.5 million, partners with restaurants and other establishments to allow users to pay for their bills via the designated app. "Between PayPal, Square and NFC technologies, mobile payments are heating up," TechCrunch writes. "There's no doubt that your mobile phone will soon serve as your wallet." Unlike other mobile payment platforms, Tabbedout lets users store credit-card information directly on their phones -- encrypted and under pass-phrase …

Ready to go public, LinkedIn on Monday said it would offer 7.84 million shares in its IPO, which could value the company at over $3 billion at the high end of its offering price range. As Reuters reports, "LinkedIn is generating significant interest as one of the first social networking companies to start the process of being publicly traded, ahead of the much-anticipated Facebook IPO." In January, LinkedIn filed with U.S. regulators for an IPO to raise up to $175 million. All told, the company expects to receive net proceeds of about $146.6 million from the shares it is …

Beginning with The New Yorker, Condé Nast has agreed to start selling magazine titles using Apple's new iTunes subscription service. Coming just a week after Hearst said it planned to do the same, Apple has clearly turned the corner with its subscription service. "Apple is winning over the big publishers," writes MediaMemo. An updated version of The New Yorker's iPad app lets users subscribe to the weekly magazine for $5.99 a month, or the equivalent of a $1.50 an issue. "That's a steep discount from the app's old model, which only sold individual issues for $4.99 a pop," MediaMemo …

Likely changing the shape of live event marketing, Groupon and Live Nation have a formed a joint venture to create an online ticketing deals channel. Named GrouponLive, the site will serve as a local resource for Live Nation events, ranging from concerts, sports, theater, arts and other live events, as well as clients of its ticketing business Ticketmaster, the companies said in a statement. Visitors of the forthcoming marketplace will have access to limited-time discounts on a various Live Nation events. "It isn't clear exactly when GrouponLive will go fully live (pun intended), although the companies said they're …

Aided by the iPad boom and deep consumer loyalty, Apple has overtaken Google to become the world's most valuable brand. That's according to a new report from WPP's Millward Brown unit, which found that Apple's brand value climbed 84% in the past year to $153.3 billion, while Google's brand lost 2% to $111.5 billion -- ending four years atop the rankings. "It's clear that every single Apple employee, from Steve Jobs and Tim Cook to the summer interns, see protecting and nurturing that brand as a top priority," Millward Brown CEO Eileen Campbell wrote in the report. "Tablet computing also …

In the first calendar quarter, Apple outpaced the smartphone industry's average growth of 79.7%, according to new data from IDC. As a result, as Apple Insider notes, Apple was able to edge out RIM as the second-largest producer of smartphones behind Nokia. During the quarter, according to IDC, Apple sold 18.7 million iPhones, giving it an 18.7% share of the market -- or almost exactly 100 million devices. "That put Apple within 6 million units of first place Nokia, which grew only 12.6 percent over the year ago quarter, dropping its leading share of the smartphone market from …

Self-publishing content company Helium has raised another $10 million debt financing, MassHighTech.com, citing documents filed with the SEC this week. Founded in 2006, some say Helium falls into the "content farm" category, as it compensates writers for producing "how to" guides on various subjects. According to MHT, one backer of the company is Signature Capital LLC, an 11-year-old investment firm with operations in Florida and Portland, Maine. In the filing, board members listed as related persons include Ann Bushell and John Paloian from RR Donnelly; Joseph Farrelly of Interpublic Group; Anne Kennedy of Beyond Ink; David Weild IV …

What is Google's social strategy? "To help users connect with each other," Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of location and local services, told John Battelle during a conference Q&A this week. While not exactly revelatory, "Perhaps the most interesting thing about Mayer's response was her statement that Google is still 'just getting started,'" notes VentureBeat. The search giant, for instance, has already rolled out social products like Google +1, which lets users recommend search results to their friends. "So we can probably expect a number of new social products in the near future," VentureBeat adds. Also of note, while …

In its own words, AOL is close to launching a "shiny new video chat product dubbed AV," reports, citing an internal company memo. "And it actually looks pretty good," according to the blog, which is actually owned by AOL. "It's video chat, but super-simple." As you see for yourself here, consumers don't need an account to use the service, nor anything else except Flash installed on their computer. Aside from video chatting -- with up to four people at once -- users can text chat, which the service overlays in a nice way, writes TechCrunch. The news came …

As many suspected, Demand Media has seen its search status diminished by Google's crackdown on so-called "content farms." Indeed, on an earnings call Thursday, the company said referral traffic to its flagship site eHow has declined 20% -- along with a 12% drop in total page-views -- since Google's effort began. "Google's new plan to sweep the Internet clean of bad content has given eHow ... a significant beating," writes VatorNews.com. Still, scoring what Fast Company calls "a win in the battle against Google's anti-spam search algorithms," Demand announced quarterly revenue of $79.5 million -- up …