Foursquare cofounder Dennis Crowley envisions a future where mobile devices learn from human behavior and provides suggestions for events that occur in our lives -- not much different from what Google, Bing and Yahoo execs predict. People will spend less time on decisions and more time on experience, per ReadWrite. Beyond mapping location data, Foursquare also maps interests. The company's technology learns human habits such as what restaurants someone likes, when they visit them, and what's ordered, as long as it's from the phone.

British anti-terror expert Dr Sally Leivesley told the Express the missing Malaysia airliner could have been the world's first cyber hijack from a mobile device. Airline passengers typically grumble at the inability to use mobile devices that search for and transmit cellular signals during takeoff in the flight, but officials have real security concerns for why these handheld devices should remain in the off mode. The former Home Office scientific adviser said the hackers could change the plane's speed, altitude and direction by sending radio signals to its flight management system.

In a rare in-depth interview as part of U.K. publication The Sunday Times' Makers series, Apple SVP of Design Jony Ive speaks about working at Apple, the state of design and his thoughts on rival products. He started working for the company in 1992, and now leads a team of about 15 designers who have worked together for about 20 years. In the interview, Ive describes what it's like to create intimate devices.

Wildfire will roll into Google's services, per Wildfire's team. It's another example of how social signals continue to support search engine marketing. Google acquired the company, which isn't taking on any new customers, in 2012. It focused on helping businesses improve their digital marketing across all channels, including social marketing. Now the focus turns toward integrating Wildfire's technology with Google's ad technology platform and building new features.

Google said it has begun to routinely encrypt Web searches in China as part of a global privacy effort to stop surveillance by government intelligence agencies, police, and hackers who can view emails, search queries and video chats with available tools when the content goes unprotected. The move was prompted by the latest development, Edward Snowden's release of the National Security Agency documents detailing the extent of government surveillance of the Internet.

Think of an explainer video similar to a how-to video -- only in the explainer video someone describes or explains a company, service, project or strategy. Megan Marrs explains the types of explainer videos that marketers might want to create for their sites as shareable content, and points to five videos that she believes did a good job of creating.

Remember the Palm Pilot? The lead engineer Karl Townsend joins Google as part of the company's latest acquisition. The news fuels speculation that Google will launch it's own game console or set-top box. Reports suggest the purchase gives Google the assets to create its own set-top box, similar to the Apple TV or the Android-based games console Ouya.

NPR points to a hiccup in Google's flu tracker. The news agency cites Northeastern University professor David Lazer, who points to huge amounts of missed data. He wrote a critique of Google Flu Trends in the latest issue of Science that suggests the data collected from around the country and forwarded to the CDC is much better than analyzing the search, even with a delay in having access to the data.

As was widely anticipated, Yahoo is adding Yelp’s local business reviews to its search results. “Regardless of which device you’re using, Yelp will now serve up listings, user reviews and star ratings whenever you search for a company or venue located in the U.S.,” The Next Web reports. “Google has offered a similar experience for some time through its ‘Places for Business’ platform.” 

In what analysts are calling a failed experiment, Google has stopped featuring banner ads at the top of brand search results. “The test marked a first for Google, not only in the introduction of banners in the search results, but in presenting ads that were explicitly branding- rather than performance-oriented,” Marketing Land notes. “It's possible the click-through rates on the banners were lower than desired.”