Coming at a critical time for the company, Yahoo has secured the rights to "Electric City" -- a futuristic animated series “staring” Tom Hanks. Created by Hanks and his Playtone production company, the series includes 20 episodes -- each three- or four-minutes long -- which Yahoo describes as an “action-packed sci-fi adventure.” The deal marks Yahoo’s first foray into scripted original programming, according to The Associated Press. “Yahoo has been beefing up its online video with reality series and wrap-up news shows, many of which rank among the most-viewed series online.” Making the partnership more unique, "Electric City" will be …

Half of all mobile traffic is generated by 1% of the world’s population, while 90% of wireless bandwidth is consumed by 10% of the population. The findings, from mobile operator advisor Arieso, also show the gap between heavy users and the rest of the world’s population to be widening. In 2009, the top 3% of heavy users generated 40% of network traffic, while, according to Arieso, these users now account for 70% of the traffic. Michael Flanagan, the chief technology officer at Arieso, tells The New York Times that the study did not produce a more precise profile of extreme …

A punch line until now, could Windows Phone finally earn some respect in 2012? Not only that, but the platform is set to become the third-most-popular smartphone platform this year, according to Credit Suisse analyst Kulbinder Garcha. The prediction came in the context of Garcha raising his rating on Nokia from Underperform to Outperform, and based partially on a survey of 27 executives at global carriers, which found them "widely supportive" of Windows Phone 7 and Nokia in general. "We found that 85% of carrier respondents believe that there is a need for a third ecosystem, with 77% noting that …

Despite his utter lack of media and “turnaround” experience, Fast Company has confidence in Scott Thompson to put Yahoo on the right track. Partly, however, its faith is based on the belief -- far-fetched, some would say -- that Yahoo is already headed in the right direction. According to Fast Company, Yahoo recently fixed major backend issues, which kept the company from seamlessly innovating across its entire network of sites. “With the cleanup behind them, now when the company wants to institute something new, it can roll it out with the metaphorical flick of a switch.” Still, even if Yahoo …

Replacing credit cards with a smartphone for making payments is small potatoes, according to InfoWorld columnist Galen Gruman. The real mother lode is in putting your entire wallet -- driver's license to insurance and government IDs -- onto the phone. 

With its “social” spin on customer relationship management (CRM), Nimble has secured $1 million in funding from notable investors such as Mark Cuban, Jason Calacanis, Don Dodge, and Dharmesh Shah. “Nimble CEO Jon Ferrara views Nimble as a combination Hootsuite, Yammer and Salesforce,” TechCrunch explains. Translation? According to Ferrara, Nimble bakes in a sales team’s social behavior, which he argues other CRM tools (like Salesforce) fail to do. Nimble users can exploit Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google to their advantage. “Not only does the platform bring in contacts, but it also adjusts and lets you know when one of your contacts is …

Echoing other Web pundits, Business Insider predicts that 2012 will be the year of the social curator. “Curation is what magazine editors do best -- but the move to online content has changed things a little … Now, users can do their own curation,” it writes. “As a result, the start-ups that are popular (Pinterest, Quora, and Fab) all have one thing in common: their users can curate content on the Internet.” Pinterest, in particular, has seen its traffic skyrocket by 40x in the last six months. Elad Gil, director of corporate strategy at Twitter, sees the growth as a …

Proving that age is but a number, The Wall Street Journal delves into the budding friendship between Mark Zuckerberg and Washington Post’s 66-year-old CEO Donald Graham. “The two men -- separated by 39 years -- have formed an unlikely relationship bridging two vastly different media worlds,” WSJ writes. “Introduced through a college friend of Mr. Zuckerberg in 2005, each now serves as a mentor to the other.” As a result, “Mr. Zuckerberg's views on social media and news-sharing have begun to have broad influence inside the Post Co.”  In turn, Zuckerberg has reportedly sought out Graham for insight, even spending …

Google's Android Market now has 400,000 available programs, according to analytics firm Distimo. Among all those apps, two-thirds are free, which is up from 60% in April 2011. That said, “It's important to point out that Distimo is not the official word on available Android apps--Google is,” CNet reminds us. Still, if Distimo's estimate is on target, it would put the Android Market within reach of Apple's App Store, which currently leads the market with over 500,000 available applications, according to CNet. “Whether or not Google's marketplace will be able to catch up to the App Store, however, remains to …

Despite being “verified” -- with Twitter’s blue check mark -- it was just revealed that an account ostensibly belonging to Rupert Murdoch’s wife Wendi Deng was a fake. Should anyone care? Perhaps, writes GigaOm, because it “reinforces how little we know about Twitter’s verification process, something that is becoming more and more important as the service grows.” A self-described practical joker, the account’s creator told members of the press that he was as surprised as anyone when the account showed up with a blue check-mark, and that he hadn’t been contacted by anyone at Twitter about who he was or …