Elsewhere in Wal-Mart world, Mercury News looks into the company's "start-up" ambitions. "Yes, Wal-Mart -- the behemoth of Bentonville, Ark., the fount of falling prices, the beyond-gigantic retailer -- has established an outpost [in Silicon Valley] in its search for start-up mojo," writes Mercury News. @WalmartLabs, so-called, came to fruition a few months back when the retailer acquired an upstart named Kosmix for a reported $300 million. Kosmix apparently develops data-mining tools to analyze what consumers -- and young ones especially -- talk about on social media platforms. Wal-Mart desperately needs such insights as "its e-commerce prowess is …

Giving credit where credit is due, The Wall Street Journal commends Wal-Mart for its successful digital movie download strategy. Last year, the mega-retailer bought streaming service Vudu -- for a reportedly $100 million -- which lets customers rent or buy digital versions of movies. Since then, Vudu has become the third-most-popular such service, according to researcher HIS. Remarkably, "the jump put Vudu ahead of similar offerings from Amazon.com Inc. and Sony Corp.," WSJ notes. That said, Vudu's 5.3% share of the market still stands in the shadow of iTunes' 65.8% share, and while Microsoft's 16.2%. What's more, "Analysts …

Publicis' VivaKi unit is re-accelerating its role in nurturing new media start-ups, naming Alyson Hyder as vice president of VivaKi Ventures, a role that has been vacant since Tim Hanlon left a year ago. Hyder, who joins from was vice president-digital media and marketing at Publicis' Razorfish unit, assumes VivaKi's ventures role from Sean Kegelman, who continues to lead partnerships for the VivaKi Nerve Center, and to whom Hyder reports. In an interview with Online Media Daily on Friday, Kegelman said Hyder would broaden the perspective of VivaKi's work with new media and data start-ups to strike early stage deals …

Joshua Schachter, the creator of bookmarking service Delicious, has reportedly launched his latest service, Jig. "At first glance the site seems a bit like Twitter, but it has a different focus," explains entrepreneur and "technology futurist" Nova Spivack. "Instead of posting about what you are doing, you post about what you need." Other people and then expected to reply with suggestions, ideas, answers, help -- "or presumably commercial products and services that can meet your need," Spivack surmises. Yet, "this is not a new idea," according to Spivack. "It's been done before, at least in print, quite successfully, in …

Taking Google TV on the road, the search giant is expected to bring its "Internet TV" service to the UK. The new service will let users switch between television and the Web at the same set, as well as watch material from catch-up services, such as BBC iPlayer and ITV Player on their main TV screen, The Telegraph reports. "Accessed through a special set-top box, the service is due to launch in the UK within six months, following its launch earlier in the US," it writes. Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt is scheduled to outline the plans when …

Social media magazine Flipboard reportedly plans to add television shows and films to its existing cache of online articles. As such, "Internet video is getting even more crowded," Reuters concludes. Flipboard, which boasts high-profile backers like Ashton Kutcher, apparently hopes to cut deals with studios to carry movies and episodes of TV shows -- "getting into territory staked out by Netflix, Hulu and Facebook," Reuters writes. Flipboard CEO Mike McCue tells Reuters that he plans to tackle the video project at the end of the year, although he declined to say which studio partners he has approached. McCue also …

Still getting settled in domestically, digital music service provider Spotify just partnered with music search and discovery company SoundHound. Per the deal, SoundHound users in Europe will instantly have access to Spotify's catalogue of over 15 million tracks, TechCrunch reports. "From the sound of it, the partnership doesn't enable users outside of Europe to cross that particular bridge just yet," but we all know how much Spotify likes crossing international boarders. For now, SoundHound's European users on iOS and Android devices who also subscribe to Spotify Premium will have the option to 'Play Now in Spotify' after identifying …

Where Hulu will wind up remains a mystery, but at least we know where it won't. SK Telecom, South Korea's top mobile carrier, said Thursday that it had no plans to bid for the online video site. "We are aware that Hulu is up for sale, but we do not plan to participate in the auction," a SK Telecom spokeswoman tells Reuters. "The operator was believed to have entered the auction for Hulu, according to one of the people close to the sale process," Reuters reports. Meanwhile. Yahoo, Google, DirecTV and Amazon are among the parties still preparing …

MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson says the success of Google+ is certain. And why is that? Because, "Unlike, every other competitor in the social networking space, G+ has a unique advantage: Google.com, YouTube.com, Blogger.com, and Gmail.com," Anderson writes in a guest post for The Next Web. "These four domains are some of the most trafficked in the world." Inevitably, writes Anderson, at the top of these four sites, "there is, or will be, a little black bar and a little red notification indicator." Put another way, Google's massive online footprint gives it "the power of accretion," he explains. …

Over the next few months, Facebook is expected to debut a series of photo filters to its mobile application. Calling the move a direct attack on Instagram, the popular photo-sharing application, The New York Times writes: "Get ready for the photo-filter wars to begin." Unnamed Facebook engineers say the effort follows an unsuccessful attempt to buy Instagram outright. Facebook is thus launching almost a dozen photo filters, "including some that are similar to Instagram like old-style camera lenses and grainy film." Facebook is also expected to float new styles of filters with what NYT says are "hopes of …