Aoopz

Clear, the heavily-anticipated touch-based to-do list app, is launching in the iTunes App Store tonight. And by heavily anticipated, I mean this app was getting tech blog coverage based on demos, previews and teaser videos. Why the big draw for what's typically been a rather ho-hum app category, the lowly to-do list? Clear is pure eye candy, for starters. But it's also representative of a major leap forward in smartphone app design, as it's been built from the ground up for the touch interface. The app is based solely on the use of now-common gestures: swipes, pulls and pinches. There are no buttons with Clear, and yet, it's surprisingly simple to use. In fact, that's the point. - Aoopz

What a week! In the past seven days I've watched the fact that an iOS app was uploading your Address Book tear our industry a new one. Path's "Find your Friends" feature has now ripped apart friendships, driven apart investors and founders and made Robin Wauters leave TechCrunch (okay, just kidding on that one). - Aoopz

Guess who knows what's best for the future of Facebook? It's certainly not public investors looking to cash in on "social" 8 years after Facebook started. That's why those same investors should actually be happy about a warning from Institutional Shareholder Services noting that Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg will own roughly 57% of the company after the IPO. He's a lot more likely to steer the company to long-term mega-profitability than they are. - Aoopz

In 2010, former Dotomi and Jumptap employees Eric Brown and Elizabeth Zalman founded Media Armor under the belief that mobile advertising was not yet living up to the hype. Advertisers were coming to expect as much ROI from their mobile campaigns as from their online initiatives. Their experience in digital advertising and targeting showed there to be a dearth of tools that enable brands and advertisers to measure the effectiveness of mobile advertising efforts. - Aoopz

When Siri was announced strictly for the iPhone 4S, the mod community likely took that as a challenge. Before long, the service had been hacked and shortly thereafter ported to a number of potentially compatible devices. The problem, of course, is that Apple gets to decide what devices are compatible, not the users. So they've taken steps to undo the work that hackers and jailbreakers have done to bring Siri to older iOS devices. Today brings a new volley, though it's only a matter of time before it too is circumvented. - Aoopz

Most of us know the guitarist and singer-songwriter Bob Weir as a founding member of the Grateful Dead. But Weir is also the founder of Tamalpais Research Institute (TRI), a state-of-the-art performance studio which offers musicians the opportunity to distribute their work in high-end digital form. - Aoopz

Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage today at the Goldman Sachs Technology & Internet Conference in San Francisco to talk about Apple's unbelievable first quarter, as well as the company's outlook going forward. It's been hard to avoid the headlines: Apple is red hot right now, as MG recently pointed out that Apple's $13.1 billion profits in Q1 was equal to the company's revenues in Q4 2010. One year and one quarter later, and Apple is growing like it's on steroids. Throw in the fact that Apple now has $97.6 billion in cash and equivalents, and the overall picture is fairly jaw-dropping. Or, perhaps what's even more anxiety-producing, at least for Apple's competitors, is that Tim sat their in conversation and literally sounded shocked by his own words -- specifically over how much opportunity he sees for Apple in developing markets. The mobile device market is expected to grow to 1 billion units by 2015, with 25 percent of that share coming from China and Brazil alone. Cook stressed that... - Aoopz

Following this month's debut of Lilyhammer, Netflix's first scripted series, word is that the company is now preparing to launch a second original show. The company has ordered 13 episodes of Orange is the New Black, a comedy from Jenji Kohan, the creator of Showtimes's Weeds. The show is based on the memoir of a communications exec who served time for drug charges in a women's prison. - Aoopz

Zynga's first earnings release today makes the social game developer's business look notably stronger than it did when the company went public in December. Traffic, its paying user base, and its projected bookings are all headed into positive territory, whereas these numbers had been flat or falling towards the end of last year. - Aoopz

As we mentioned in our coverage of Zynga's fourth quarter earnings, mobile has been one of the fast-growing parts of Zynga's business. On the company's earnings call, CEO and founder Marc Pincus revealed that mobile users have grown five-fold to 15 million daily active users in 2011. That's up from 13 million in December. That's an addition of 2 million users in the past month, and an addition of over 5 million users over the course of the quarter. In the third quarter, Zynga had 9.9 million daily active users for its mobile games. - Aoopz

Earlier today, Barry Diller introduced Aereo, a company backed by IAC, at a press conference in New York City. Aereo streams broadcast TV to your browser and provides a DVR in the cloud by miniaturizing TV antennas and packing them in equipment that sits on the network. In the video above, which we took at the event, you can see Diller's opening remarks and part of CEO Chaitanya Kanojia's presentation. At the end, I grabbed Diller on camera to ask him how does this expand beyond just broadcast channels to cable and beyond. - Aoopz

A life spent caught up in the drudgery of retail is usually pretty free of frills, but Verizon Wireless employees may soon be getting a shot at some swanky hardware if some newly-leaked images hold true. According to Android And Me, Verizon has reached out to their employees with an offer they may not be able to refuse: limited edition Droid RAZRs and Droid RAZR MAXXs. - Aoopz

But, more importantly, it's Valentine's Day, and in the spirit of love, affection, and all things heart-shaped, Desmos (at abettercalculator.com) is offering a special V Day gift for all those geeky lovers out there. Today, Desmos users can choose a romantically-themed graph, add their own caption, and then email or tweet it to their special, graph-loving someone. - Aoopz

Lab42, a startup that helps agencies and other businesses conduct market research, says it has raised "just under" $1 million in funding. President Gauri Sharma pitches Lab42's services (which involve targeted surveys conducted over social networks) as new way to conduct research. One big difference: It's faster and cheaper than hiring most market research firms, while also being more reliable than just throwing a survey online. Advertising and marketing agencies make up the company's primary customer base, and clients include Redbox, David & Goliath, Y&R, and Ogilvy. - Aoopz

CEO Tim Cook described Apple's conquest of emerging markets today at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference. He said "In 2007, and we didn't launch the iPhone outside the U.S. until 2008, Apple's revenue combined from greater China and several other parts of asia, India, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America was $1.4 billion. Revenue for that group of countries last year was $22 billion. We're only on the surface." - Aoopz

Social gaming giant Zynga just released its fourth quarter earnings, the company's first earnings release as a public company. Analysts expected earnings of $0.03 per share on revenue of $302 million. Zynga beat the street, with revenue coming in at $311.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2011, an increase of 59% compared to the fourth quarter of 2010. In terms of Diluted EPS, Zynga took s a loss ($1.22) for the fourth quarter of 2011 compared to $0.05 for the fourth quarter of 2010. Non-GAAP EPS was $0.05 for the fourth quarter of 2011 compared to $0.09 for the fourth quarter of 2010. CEO and Founder Mark Pincus said in a release, “2011 was another milestone year for Zynga’s mission of connecting the world through games. We are seeing social games and more broadly play become one of the most popular pastimes on web and mobile. Zynga set new records in the year in terms of audience size, revenues and bookings. We saw great momentum in mobile and advertising and ended the year with a... - Aoopz

An entrepreneur receives lots of contradictory advice from really smart, experienced people. For example, you’ve probably been told to be both persistent and flexible; to have a clear vision you pursue relentlessly, and yet also to change your vision as the market changes. Simple, right? This same tension pervades career advice. Some will tell you to think about where you want to be in ten years, work backwards, and construct a long-term career plan for realizing your ambitions. Others tell you that firm plans are like a straitjacket; they will blind you to unexpected breakout opportunities. It’s better, they say, to stay nimble and opportunistic. - Aoopz

I've played through my share of tower defense games in my day -- and have gotten hopelessly addicted to a few of them -- but none really approach Andy Wallace's Doodle Defense when it comes to execution. You see, instead of dragging and dropping pre-made parts onto a field, players must defend against invaders by drawing their own towers and obstacles on a whiteboard. - Aoopz

India's Information Technology Minister, Kapil Sibal, has gone on the record to say that "once and for all, without any obfuscation, no government in India will ever censor social media." This must come as a surprise to the companies and individuals that have been blocked, sued, or antagonized by the government in months past. Many social media websites, as well as larger indexing services like Google and Yahoo, have been asked to take down material or were the target of suits accusing them of hosting material the government deemed appropriate. As late as December, Sibal himself said he hoped that such material "never gets uploaded." So he will have to excuse the internet community if it does not take his assurances seriously. - Aoopz

Here's why social media marketing is broken: my company wants to launch a contest on our Facebook app and website and post about to all our fans and followers, post when we hit 1000 entries, and post again when the contest ends after 5000 entries. Sequencing like this was difficult because marketing team would have to monitor for those milestones to be reached, then manually rotate our apps and publish updates. Social marketing platform Shoutlet today launches a way to turn the cacophony of disparate campaigns into a concerted push. It's called Social Switchboard, it uses trigger-based campaign publishing, and your marketing department wants it. - Aoopz

Apple's iTV is reportedly in the labs of Canadian cable service providers Rogers Communications and Bell Canada right now. This is exciting news (it is real!), but it’s a bummer for those of us who were hoping that Apple was planning on disrupting the cable television business. If Apple is letting the cable companies play with its new toy, then they're probably in the market for content partners. And as long as those content partners are cable companies, we can stop holding our breath for The Perfect TV Experience. - Aoopz

Three months after going public, Zynga is having its first quarterly earnings call this afternoon, and expectations are high. Public investors had given the social gaming developer a cool reception the first couple months it was on the market, with shares staying below its relatively conservative $10 opening price. That has changed in the last several weeks. It started gaining ground around the time that online gambling began to look like a new revenue stream for the company. - Aoopz

Design-focused startup Fab.com is launching a new type of shopping experience today with the debut of what it's calling "Weekly Speciality Shops." These new stores will be targeted across five of Fab.com's well-performing verticals: Kids, Pets, Foodie, Vintage Modern and Fashion. These are not Fab.com's top verticals, however, but are those that appeal to particular segments of shoppers. As the name implies, the new shops will have sales that occur weekly and last for seven days, as opposed to Fab's standard 3-day flash sales. - Aoopz

Despite its long and boring name, Cisco's "Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update" is one of the more fascinating data-filled reports you'll read this year. The report examines the dramatic growth we're seeing in the mobile Internet space, including the massive demands for mobile data, the growth of mobile video, and the rise of the smartphone as new gateway to the web itself. - Aoopz

The iPad 3 is coming next month. Or so says the endless rumors. These rumors also state the next iPad will have higher resolution screen and high-speed data connection. But I couldn't care less. The iPad 3, if that's really its name, sounds like a stop-gap upgrade to me. You see, I'm perfectly happy with my iPad 2. Save the addition of an SD card slot, there isn't a single feature I can imagine that will make me trade up to Apple's new hotness. I guess the iPad 3 sounds great, but it also sounds boring. That's not saying Apple won't sell a zillion iPad 3s. It will. But it's going to take more than a spec bump for me (and likely many others) to upgrade from the iPad 2. - Aoopz

Silicon Valley thrives on change. At TechCrunch, we chronicle change, honor it, and, lately, we've been living it. As we rebuild TechCrunch, it's the talent of our writers that sets us apart. We are adding two new names to the editorial staff: Ingrid Lunden starts today as a TechCrunch writer and Colleen Taylor will soon join us as our TechCrunch TV reporter. Lunden is an American writer living in London. She was most recently at PaidContent, which was just bought by GigaOm. In fact, the GigaOm deal went down the same day Lunden signed on with us. I can tell you that made for interesting negotiations. - Aoopz

I'm Ingrid, and from Tuesday I'll be writing for TechCrunch out of London. I'm actually from Monterey, California, but today I live nowhere near that part of the world. I think this can only be a good thing for a Silicon Valley blog: it gives me a head start on covering news, a different perspective, and a chance to concentrate more on what's happening elsewhere -- specifically here in Europe but further afield, too, in a way that speaks to readers everywhere. - Aoopz

Startup XA.net has been offering its technology to Facebook advertisers for several years, but this week, with the launch of optimalKeyWord, it's trying to reach new customers who need help finding the right keywords for their campaigns. CEO Rob Leathern demonstrated the service for me last week. He said XA's current clients are big social network advertisers, normally spending at least $10,000 on Facebook ads each month. With optimalKeyword, Leathern said he can help smaller advertisers address a common problem. - Aoopz

AT&T Senior Executive VP John Donovan took to the company's Innovation Space blog to talk wireless data, and the statistics he brings to the table are nothing if not impressive. Among other tidbits, Donovan revealed that the carrier's wireless data traffic has at least doubled every year since 2007. "Over the past five years, AT&T’s wireless data traffic has grown 20,000%," he said. He pegs this "wireless data tsunami" on the growing popularity of smartphones, and AT&T's recent numbers back him up. The nation's second largest wireless carrier picked up a total of 8.9 million new subscribers in 2011, and broke their own quarterly records by selling 9.4 million smartphones during the year's fourth quarter. But with wireless data use on the uptick, AT&T is going to have to get creative when it comes to managing their data networks. - Aoopz

You'll recall the battles between the RIAA and the technology industry over music licensing. Well something similar as been going on regarding how newspaper content is licensed to commercial clippings agencies, and it's blowing up on both sides of the Atlantic. The Associated Press today filed suit against Meltwater News for copyright infringement and misappropriation of its breaking news content. The complaint, filed in a New York federal court, alleges that Meltwater U.S. Holding Inc. and its Meltwater News Service, a news clipping service, have been illegally selling unlicensed AP content that competes directly with AP and its customers. Meanwhile in the UK, there's been a ruling today which has relevance for how links to newspapers are shared online. - Aoopz