It is only March and there have already been a number of announcements this month about big players getting in on the deal-of-the-day phenomenon.

Facebook announced it will test a new service for its advertisers to reach its 550 million users.
Bing said it is getting into the aggregation of daily deals with a service called Live Deals.

Google Offers is coming soon, and now AT&T will be getting into the game on two fronts…

Read More At:  What carriers can learn from Groupon and LivingSocial.

Google has released tools that “make it easy for anyone to create programs for Android phones”.

Interesting new tools from Google allows Lego like code to create applications.

Much like Lego, App Inventor lets people drag “blocks” of code around to create applications.

Google said it had been working on the system for a year and were pitched at those with little knowledge of programming.

The tools have been tested over the last 12 months by school children and college students, it said.

The graphical blocks represent the different functions and capabilities of a smartphone.

For instance, one tester of the App Inventor used the GPS locator, timer, and database querying blocks to produce an app that told his friends where he …read more

Information Week reports….

Intel has been actively gearing up for the past year to provide both silicon and software to Internet-enabled TV ventures.

Intel and Google appear close to announcing a deal with Sony for Internet-enabled TVs at a Google developer conference later this week in San Francisco.

The deal would help Sony to differentiate itself in a challenging and highly competitive marketplace for television sets. Last week, Sony reported pricing pressure on its Bravia LCD televisions, contributing to a half-billion-dollar loss in Sony’s consumer products and devices division.

Intel has been actively gearing up for the past year to provide both silicon and software to Internet-enabled TV ventures, according to Eric Kim, SVP and GM, …read more

As reported by Market Watch…

U.S. Internet advertising revenues rose 7.5% in the first quarter compared to the same period last year, reaching $5.9 billion and marking the highest first-quarter level ever, according to a report published Thursday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Still, online ad revenue in the quarter marked a slight decline from the $6.3 billion posted in the fourth quarter of last year, the highest quarterly total ever. Google Inc. (GOOG 481.47, -0.68, -0.14%) , Yahoo Inc. (YHOO 13.98, -0.01, -0.07%)  and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT 24.66, -0.16, -0.65%)  all issued quarterly reports recently that included some upbeat indications for the health of …read more

Viable alternatives to Internet Explorer attributed to the decay of IE’s market share…

BBC News…

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) web browser, now accounts for less than 60% of the market, down from 95% at its peak in 2003, according to new figures.

Latest statistics, from measurement firm Net Applications, show that IE has 59.9% of the market, with Firefox gaining on it, with 24.5%.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10095730.stm

CNET News…

Microsoft’s browser market share continued to fall in April, with Internet Explorer now in use for fewer than three in five Web connections.

IE’s share of the market in April was 59.95, down from 60.65 percent in March, according to Net Applications. Google’s Chrome grabbed the lion’s share of that, …read more