Publicis' Starcom MediaVest Group this morning announced an expansion of its contract with TV set-top audience data aggregator Rentrak, and said it has committed to using Rentrak's local TV measurement service as part of its local TV planning and buying process for 20 major and mid-sized markets. As part of the new agreement, SMG renewed its commitment to using Rentrak's national TV measurement service, as well. The deal was negotiated by SMG's media-buying arm, SMGX.

Reuters just reported that an as-yet-unreleased version of Apple's iPad equipped with two cameras -- one on the front of the screen facing the user for two-way video conferencing -- was spotted during News Corp.'s launch demonstration of its new tablet edition newspaper, The Daily. The design makes sense given that the current version of Apple's iPhone also features two cameras for video conferencing. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Unreleased-Apple-iPad-spotted-rb-3074201658.html?x=0&.v=1

Well, the reviews are coming in, and initial reaction to Rupert Murdoch's digital daily tablet newspaper edition, the aptly named, The Daily, are good, but not great. Actually, Paul Burkey, director of new media analytics at McPheters & Co., just said it was, "Impressive, but hardly breakthrough" in the following blog post: http://mcpheters.com/2011/02/02/the-daily-impressive-but-hardly-innovative/

Susan Converse has joined the Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB) as vice president-finance and administration. She assumes most of the duties of Hope Etheridge, TVB's Chief Operating Officer, who is leaving the trade organization to join Doctors Without Borders. Converse joins the TVB from The Riverside Church of New York, where she was director of administration.

Havas' Arnold Worldwide unit has hired Jose Luis Martinez as vice president-creative director. Martinez, who reports to Arnold Chief Creative Officer Pete Favat, is a digital wunderkind who was an associate creative director specializing in digital at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners.

News Corp. Wednesday unveiled its much-anticipated daily newspaper for the iPad, "The Daily," promising up to 100 pages of content each day of text, 360-degree photography, HD-quality video and graphics at a subscription cost of 99 cents a week or $39.99 a year. At a launch event in New York, News Corp. chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch said Daily readers would "enjoy the engaging design of a professionally edited magazine, the immediacy of the Web, the original reporting and distinctive voice of a newspaper, as well as stunning photography," for the equivalent of 14 cents a day. He …

So, what does The Time's tech taste arbiter David Pogue make of question and answer site Quora? "There's an unbelievable richness of answers," he writes. "But if you're getting the impression that Quora is, so far, for geeks, you're right." Also, along with questions as to why Quora asks new users to recommend the service to friends, Pogue couldn't find any explanation of what Quora is or how it's different from Aardvark or Digg or Answerbag.com or Yahoo Answers. "There's a 'How do I get started using Quora?' question that you can click, but the answers are baffling from …

TechCrunch is giving the world its first look at The New York Times' forthcoming iPad app News.me. Being developed in collaboration with betaworks, the app doesn't look anything like News Corp's iPad "newspaper" The Daily. "News.me is a social news reading app that presents the news that the people you follow on Twitter are reading, and filters it based on how many times those stories are shared and clicked on overall," writes TechCrunch reporter Erick Schonfeld, who said he's been testing an early version of the app. News.me apparently pulls in data from Twitter as well as bit.ly, the …

Who says Google doesn't get social? Reviews from its new Hotpot place recommendation service will now be incorporated directly in search results. "So say you're looking for a restaurant in Barcelona," explains Google product manager Lior Ron. "If a friend has rated a particular restaurant, you might see their rating and what they had to say about it -- as well as their name and photo -- directly beneath that restaurant's listing." If uses want to see only the recommendations from friends, they can select the Places filter from the left sidebar and then select "Just friends." According to

On the heels of, er, Clickstreamgate, Microsoft is accusing Google of foul play by only natively supporting its WebM video format in its Chrome browser, rather than the H.264 format preferred by Microsoft and Apple. "In response, Microsoft said it will build a Chrome plug in that will restore support for H.264, an older and more commonly used video format," reports AllThingsD's Mobilized blog. "Our point of view is totally clear," Internet Explorer head Dean Hachamovitch writes in a Wednesday blog post. "Our support for H.264 results from our views about a robust web and video ecosystem that provides …