Is an iPhone price war about to break out in the UK? After Vodafone and Orange bagged the iPhone – when O2’s two year monopoly expired in September – we learn today that Tesco, the UK supermarket leviathan, is to sell the iPhone on Tesco Mobile, its MVNO joint venture partnership with O2.

This news just sent the iPhone directly into the mainstream. UK iPhone app developers are looking at an even bigger gold rush than before.

Both iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS handsets will be sold in Tesco Phone Shops and online through Tesco Direct in the UK, possibly before the Christmas holidays.

Tesco Mobile normally focuses on the low end of the market with voice and text, and we’re told the prices will be “competitive”. As an MVNO, Tesco has a fairly free hand regarding the the markets it goes after. O2 says it has sold over one million iPhones since September 2007, clearly to early adopters.

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Loopt — perhaps the largest location-based social network, a network that uses your location to recommend places to go and inform you of friends around you — announced the acquisition of GraffitiGEO this week. Several industry observers and researchers are raving about the potential of location-based social networks for businesses and advertising. “Context awareness is critical when you want to buy something, and advertisers get higher targeting based on our patterns and social contexts,” said Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Nadav Aharony in a recent BusinessWeek article.

For once the Bay Area Rapid Transit service has more to brag about than its endless supply of used under-the-seat bubble gum and noxious mystery smells. According to its site, Bay Area Rapid Transit will be the first transit agency to partner with location-based game sensation Foursquare.

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ReadWriteWeb first covered the point-based check-in service in March, and since then Foursquare has spread like wildfire across the US and to the UK. As of next month, users from Dublin to Milbrae will have a chance to win the coveted title of Mayor of one of the most utilized transit services in the Bay Area. From November onward, the transit authority will award $25 promotional tickets to random users who check-in at one of 34 BART stations. During the three month pilot program, the agency will also look for new ways to reward Foursquare mayors and incorporate local discounts from mybart.org venue partners.

Said BART website manager Timothy Moore,”We hope this partnership will encourage users to check out different stations and neighborhoods, and will show people who aren’t already BART riders some of the great things to do that are easy to get to on transit.”

Despite the fact that a number of BART-related Foursquare tips are going to document urine stains and public drunkenness, the reality is that absolutely anything beats driving the US-101 during rush hour traffic. BART check-ins are likely to encourage tired drivers to get out of their car and into a greener and less frustrating alternative. Those interested in official BART tips can visit the transit authority’s profile page at foursquare.com/user/SFBART.

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CNN.com, one of the top 25 websites in the US, just announced a radical redesign of its service at a press event in New York City. The new CNN.com homepage will be split up into three parts. On the left, CNN will now highlight breaking news stories, the middle section will feature older stories and a ‘highlights’ section, and the right sidebar will be customizable with personalized weather and sports scores. Right beneath the fold, the new CNN will feature a list of ‘editor’s choice’ stories – similar to the NYTimes’s ‘Inside NYTimes.com’ section. The new site will go live next Monday.

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According to CNN’s General Manager of CNN.com Kenneth Estenson, CNN.com currently gets about 1.7 billion page views and 100 million video views every month. In total the CNN homepage has been called up over 120 billion times since its first iteration in 1996.

CNN clearly put a lot of thought into this redesign. As William Hsu, CNN’s VP for News Advertising Sales for Asia Pacific told Exchange4media.com earlier this week, the CNN team “did a lot of research, biometric research, in Europe” (update: a CNN spokesperson just told us that this study was done independent of the site redesign). According to Hsu, these studies showed that very few users ever went beyond the current homepage. Because of this, the new homepage will show far more content but will also make it easier for readers to navigate the site.

More Emphasis on Video – Including Videos from TED

At today’s press event, CNN also stressed that the new site will integrate more of its TV product. Instead of keeping video and text separate, the new CNN.com will bring the two together. 50% of CNN’s users already watch both the video and read the story, so bringing the two closer together is a smart move for CNN. CNN also announced a partnership with TED, which will bring TED videos to a completely new audience.

NewsPulse

The new homepage will also have a new feature called ‘NewsPulse.’ This will allow users to reorganize news stories by correspondent, subject, or keyword. Today’s press event was low on specifics, but this looks like a good way to personalize CNN’s homepage and to find interesting content on the site.

Similarity to CNN Go

CNN also recently launched CNN Go, which focuses on news for the Asian market and also has a more magazine-like layout.

What About the Competition?

We have also heard that MSNBC will soon launch a redesign of its own. While we aren’t aware of any specifics yet, the new MSNBC will focus on adding value to news wire stories by bringing together more material from NBC’s affiliates and a larger focus on interactive elements designed specifically for MSNBC.

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While Crowdflower has forged some amazing partnerships in the past, including a deal with Samasource to launch a training program for Kenyan refugees, the company’s latest partnership has a somewhat questionable benefit statement. Crowdflower and Gambit are offering sponsored promotions for gamers to earn virtual currency via cloud-based labor. While the program sounds like a great idea, the pitch we received specified that promotions would help “monetize younger users”. It will be interesting to see how parents react to these promotions.

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In order to protect their kids, many parents seek out age-appropriate web content like ReadWriteWeb’s list of kid-friendly resources. Others opt for tools like CYBERsitter that offer parental controls over web filtering software. While most of these tools protect against worst-case-scenarios, few protect against invasive advertising or remote labor offers.

Just this week a MediaPost article discussed how the Iconix Brand Group agreed to pay $250,000 after advertising to children without parental consent. While you wouldn’t normally associate brands like Candies shoes or Bongo denim with kids, Iconix collected birth date and user information from under 13-year-olds associated with these companies. Targeting newsletters and advertising to these users was enough to raise questions with the Federal Trade Commission. It will be interesting to see how Gambit and Crowdflower will balance the issue of parental consent amongst this younger labor force. Can we classify this as child labor if only virtual goods are involved?

Some of the tasks listed for casual gamers include tagging images and video clips, classifying text and finding business contact information. While others might argue that the web-task barter system is akin to earning one’s allowance, the fact that children could be scraping the web to help businesses advertise to us seems somewhat exploitative. While it’s too early to say how this program will pan out, there’s no doubt that Crowdflower and Gambit will have to walk a fine line to keep this program ethical.

Photo Credit: Jim Sneedon

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In the world of Software-as-a-Service, you can start to see how platforms will evolve into service networks – where enterprise users may subscribe and get access to applications that they pay for on a per use basis.

Today, Box.net announced a partnership with Salesforce.com CRM that shows this developing model.

Sponsor

Box.net will now be available in Salesforce.com CRM through tabs that will give the user access to their files stored within the Box.net environment. The tabs provide access to the user’s Box.net files instead of the corporate site or the user’s desktop.

Documents, presentations or rich media files may be emailed to contacts through Outlook or Google Apps. Box.net integrates with eFax. Contracts may also be sent digitally using EchoSign, a digital signature company.

Box.net shows how a service using the cloud can be disruptive to the big players in the market.

It’s without question that Box.net is gunning for Sharepoint and the enterprise market. Founder Aaron Levy did an interview with Robert Scoble this week. Levy wore a no Sharepoint shirt. That says it all.

Box.net Says They Have Better Than Sharepoint 2010 Today – Watch the best video clips here

The Box.net announcement is illustrative of an overall trend for service providers to provide their applications on existing SaaS platforms.

Freshbooks, for instance, is a platform for small businesses to manage their finances. Services such as MailChimp, RightSignature and Batchbook offer their applications to Freshbooks users.

It’s clear this kind of integration is gaining traction with enterprise users. Companies have seen the value of cloud services like Salesforce.com. The next step is for the enterprise to leverage applications that rest on top of SaaS applications such as Box.net.

Box.net is offering unlimited storage for companies that sign up for the service. Cost is $25 per user per month for an Enterprise account.

Discuss

In the world of Software-as-a-Service, you can start to see how platforms will evolve into service networks – where enterprise users may subscribe and get access to applications that they pay for on a per use basis.

Today, Box.netannounced a partnership with Salesforce.com CRM that shows this developing model.

Sponsor

Box.net will now be available in Salesforce.com CRM through tabs that will give the user access to their files stored within the Box.net environment. The tabs provide access to the user’s Box.net files instead of the corporate site or the user’s desktop.

Documents, presentations or rich media files may be emailed to contacts through Outlook or Google Apps. Box.net integrates with eFax. Contracts may also be sent digitally using EchoSign, a digital signature company.

Box.net shows how a service using the cloud can be disruptive to the big players in the market.

It’s without question that Box.net is gunning for Sharepoint and the enterprise market. Founder Aaron Levy did an interview with Robert Scoble this week. Levy wore a no Sharepoint shirt. That says it all.

Box.net Says They Have Better Than Sharepoint 2010 Today – Watch the best video clips here

The Box.net announcement is illustrative of an overall trend for service providers to provide their applications on existing SaaS platforms.

Freshbooks, for instance, is a platform for small businesses to manage their finances. Services such as MailChimp, RightSignature and Batchbook offer their applications to Freshbooks users.

It’s clear this kind of integration is gaining traction with enterprise users. Companies have seen the value of cloud services like Salesforce.com. The next step is for the enterprise to leverage applications that rest on top of SaaS applications such as Box.net.

Box.net is offering unlimited storage for companies that sign up for the service. Cost is $25 per user per month for an Enterprise account.

Discuss

Meez has built a virtual playground for 13 million teens in the past couple of years. Now that playground is going to get a lot bigger and more crowded as Meez integrates its Meez Nation virtual world into MySpace.

Meez users will be able to log into their virtual world directly from within the MySpace social network, almost as if the virtual world is a widget on a MySpace page that lets you dive into another world. The partnership promises to help MySpace with user engagement, one of the closely watched metrics for how well a site hangs on to its users. Meez says it ranks No. 5 in engagement for online destination sites in the U.S. In June, Meez managed to hit No. 1 in engagement, at 36.4 minutes per user, according to market researcher MediaMetrix.

With Meez, users can create cartoon-like avatars, or virtual characters, and chat with their friends. They can express themselves by decorating rooms and buying virtual clothes. They can also wander around in the Meez Nation virtual world, which launched 14 months ago. That world has a variety of neighborhoods, public hangouts, and personal “Roomz.” The most popular thing that users do is dance to music in these rooms, said John Cahill, chief executive of the San Francisco-based company, in an interview. Business is good because of the growing popularity of virtual goods, Cahill said.

Since MySpace is loaded with web-savvy teens who love to share videos and music, the social network is likely to be a good match for Meez in co-marketing efforts, said Cahill. Meez users are watching a million videos per day, and they’re playing over 100,000 games. Each time they log in, they spend about an hour on the site. About 90 percent of users are in the U.S.

Traffic has hit three million unique visitors a month. The company makes money through ads, virtual goods, and paid subscriptions. One of the most popular things to do is send branded virtual gifts to friends. Advertisers include Nike, RocaWear, Clone Wars, NBA, NHL, and others.

Cahill said MySpace is the first of a number of sites that will integrate the Meez Nation virtual world into a branded site. Meez has been profitable since the second quarter on an operations basis, and it turned cash flow positive in July. The company made its Meez avatars available on mobile phones on the KDDI and Verizon Wireless networks.

Meez is backed by Anthem Venture Partners, Battery Ventures, Draper & Associates and Transcosmos. The company has 30 employees and has raised $10.75 million in three rounds. Rivals include Gaia Online and IMVU. Cahill said the company isn’t raising money.

Last year, there was a lot of coverage of Google striking a deal with satellite imagery company GeoEye to be able to use the high resolution images from its new GeoEye-1 satellite for their Google Earth and Maps products. The exclusive deal saw Google shift away from its partnership with rival DigitalGlobe, which provides many of Google’s rivals with imagery. Now, it looks like Google is back on board with a new DigitalGlobe satellite.

In a post today on its Lat Long Blog, Google reveals that DigitalGlobe has just launched their next-generation satellite dubbed WorldView-2 (no idea if this is to one-up GeoEye-1), and that the company will be getting new imagery from it. In the post, Google notes that it works “directly with several commercial satellite imaging providers.” Presumably, that means the deal with GeoEye is still in place, and now Google has found itself on yet another state-of-the-art satellite that peers down on all of us, gathering data.

Now, the government has regulations on just how closely Google and these companies can look (mostly because the government itself wants to be the only ones that can see really, really close up on us). But still, this is starting to get mildly creepy. I’d love to know how many satellites they are using up there to get their imagery.

It was recently revealed that Google was breaking away from TeleAtlas as the provider of its mapping data in the U.S. (though it is supposedly still using it for some other parts of the world). One reason they can do that is because they now have so much data from this satellite imagery (as well as their Street View imagery).

Is it tin hat time yet?

Watch the WorldView-2 launch below.

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