Search retargeting firm Magnetic appointed Hugh McGoran as chief revenue officer to expand operations and focus efforts on strategic agency and direct client partnerships. McGoran, who has nearly twenty years of advertising, sales and business experience, comes to Magnetic from comScore where he served as senior vice president of agency sales. Earlier in his career, McGoran worked for Peer39, Tacoda (acquired by AOL in 2007), and Knight Ridder Digital. Magnetic recently announced a $10 million Series B funding in June, and acquired ad technology platform Adnamic in July.

Google is experimenting with a smartphone icon in search results that link to mobile-friendly content, according to Bryson Meunier. He compares it to the "Old Possum/Skip Redirect update Google announced in December." This time it shows a smartphone icon, rather than URLs. He spotted the test during the weekend and grabbed a screenshot.

Rachel King reports that Judge William Alsup issued an order Tuesday from the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, demanding that both parties reveal whether either company kept journalists and/or commentators on the payroll during a legal battle pertaining to patents. Both parties must respond in writing by Aug. 17.

Twitter and Square Founder Jack Dorsey tweeted that Starbucks signed up to use Square, a piece of hardware smaller than the size of a iPod Mini that turns an iPhone or Android-running smartphone into a credit card reader for merchants. Dorsey explains that Starbucks will build the Square Directory into its apps and in-store Digital Network. Now consumers at the nearly 7,000 Starbucks stores will soon have an option to pay through Square. All Square needs now is a geolocation directory that consumers can search to find nearby merchants that take the payment system.

Apple has said it plans to remove the YouTube app from the iPhone and the iPad, the latest sign the two just can't get along. Some believe Google made the decision to not renew the license agreement, rather than Apple. And then there's the default search engine on iOS devices. Some speculate that Google pays Apple more than $1 billion annually to remain the main search engine.

Google Ventures has invested in Global Standard for eSignature, joining in the company’s most recent financing round that brings the total Series D funding to $55.7 million. Google joins investment lead Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, along with Accel Partners, Comcast Ventures, SAP Ventures, and a large global institutional investor in this round.

Apple and Google bid between $150 million and $250 million for a series of patents owned by Eastman Kodak. The company plans to auction off the 1,100 digital patents on Wednesday. Jeff Gamet tells us the patent portfolio could become a valuable asset in the company’s legal battles over "mobile device design infringement claims." Kodak will announce the new patents owner Aug. 13.

As searches migrate more toward mobile devices, Microsoft and Bing could pay a heavy price for delaying the entrance into the space. Quentin Hardy explains Bing appears to attack mobile similar to the way it "came at Google, by spending money on data and computing." Microsoft argues that deals with Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, which bring more data, can support location-based services.

Noran El-Shinnawy gives marketers tips on how to conduct a site audit in five minutes. She guides us through defining account history, sharing impressions, quality scores, click-through rates and ad testing and landing page optimization, and also points to the influence each part has on the overall campaign and why it's important to care about that specific feature. 

Nuance Communications has introduced the virtual assistant Nina that adds speech-based services to iOS and Android enterprise applications. About a dozen companies have integrated the technology into enterprise apps, which they mostly use for online customer service. Nuance provides speech recognition for Siri, but the company plans to leave consumer products to Apple. The techology offers developers a software developer kit (SDK) and a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) to integrate verbal conversational capabilities into apps.