VentureBeat

Here’s the latest action:

The AP tries to set a new standard, doesn’t follow it — The Associated Press wants bloggers to pay it for quoting excerpts of its stories, and is threatening to sue if they don’t. Of course, that position is kind of hard to take when you yourself don’t abide by such standards, as the AP didn’t when it lifted a quote from TechCrunch on the matter for one of its stories. Arrington rightly noted how ridiculous this was and contacted his lawyers about retreiving the $12.50 the AP would owe him under its ridiculous system. The hypocrisy runs deep.

Tesla looking for another $100 million — The electric car maker’s plan is to push production up to 150 cars a month by the end of the year, according to VentureWire. To do this it needs more cash. It will likely get it. Enough said.

One former Yahoo finds a home — While his former colleagues at Yahoo continue to jump ship, Jeremy Zawodny has found a home: Craigslist. No word on his official title, but he will start in July.

An EA bigwig leaves to start his own company — Neil Young, a veteran of the gaming powerhouse Electronic Arts will leave to start an unspecified “new project,” according to Newsweek’s Level Up blog. During his 11 years at EA, Young worked on projects such as the alternate reality game Majestic, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Sims 2, Medal of Honor Airborne and Boom Blox (which is perhaps my new favorite game).

FCC gives Sprint more time to give up part of its airwaves — The regulators agreed to push out a deadline for Sprint to vacate a part of the wireless spectrum it controls that the government now wants to use for public safety networks. Sprint will now have until July 1, 2009.

NVIDIA chip to match AMD’s manufacturing process — The Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ is made on a 55-nanometer process, according to CNET. This is the same process that most of AMD’s graphic chips now use, an upgrade from the 65nm process.

The Japanese love/hate the iPhone — A recent survey indicated that 91 percent of Japanese buyers would not purchase an iPhone. A headline like that makes it sound awful, until you consider, as Silicon Alley Insider does, that even 9 percent of Japan’s market would mean 9.3 million potential new iPhone customers, which is huge when Apple had been shooting for just 10 million worldwide by the end of 2008.

The Huffington Post goes local — The fast-growing web site, The Huffington Post, run by pundit Arianna Huffington, is planning a massive expansion across the U.S. The first of these local versions of the site will be run out of Chicago. Huffington is said to be looking for a third round of funding to support such an expansion.

Fake Beijing earthquake news spreads malware — Botnet operators in China are using fake reports of a 9.0 earthquake to spread malware, according to The Register. Classy.

Netflix shuts down profiles feature — Users will no longer be able to have seperate queues for movies as a result. The system was simply too complicated to maintain, Netflix contends.

With the inclusion of GPS in the new iPhone 3G, Apple is kicking off a wave of excitement about location-based services (LBS) — and the device isn’t even out yet. One aspect that may not be as sexy as tracking your movements in real-time, but could be more useful, is local news. Verve Wireless seems poised to take full advantage of this.

“Mobile is really about local,” Verve Wireless chief executive Art Howe told me. Mind you, this was before all the hoopla started about LBS leading up to Apple’s WWDC event, where the iPhone 3G was unveiled last week. Howe and company president Tom Kenney have been thinking about location as it relates to mobile devices long before that.

For proof, look no further than the beautifully designed and executed iPhone-optimized site Verve Wireless built for the AP Mobile News Network. (The site was the runner-up for the Best iPhone Web Application at WWDC.) While top stories are obviously emphasized, there is a clear emphasis on local news as well. Of course, the “local” news on the current site is pulled in through what soon may be the Dewey Decimal System of mobile location tracking, zip codes.

When the iPhone 3G adds the GPS element, you can be sure Verve Wireless will be utilizing location awareness on not only the AP Mobile News Network, but with other local media companies that use Verve’s platform as well.

It’s also important to note that while the iPhone 3G is garnering a lot of attention at the moment, it is hardly the only location-sensing phone. Verve’s platform and vision of the future applies regardless of the phone. (Though it was clear in talking with both Howe and Kenney that they are particularly excited about the iPhone and the possibilities it has opened up for the mobile web.)

The platform was built over the past two years. The idea was that publishers, mobile carriers and consumers had a hard time communicating with one another. There were simply too many intermediaries in the process. Verve’s goal is to be the one-stop shop for all the tools needed for publishers to reach the consumers — with an emphasis on local publishers reaching local readers.

Verve is not interested in promoting its own brand like you may see on the local versions of Google News and Yahoo News. For Verve it’s simply about getting others content out there. Again, cut out the middle man. The several thousand unique properties that Verve has agreements with seem to back up this idea. 2008 will be all about executing on those agreements to realize Verve’s potential.

Location is also important in the business of advertising. If local merchants are able to serve up ads based on your location, these ads could naturally be more relevant to you. Verve Wireless is betting on this as a key component of its platform.

Verve has deals with media partners including The New York Times Company, Freedom Communications and Media General. It also has agreements with major mobile carriers AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint.

The Encinitas, Calif-based startup raised a $2.5 million angel round last July. It is currently closing in a new round of funding.

[Check out MobileBeat2008, VentureBeat's mobile conference on July 24. Vote for your favorite mobile application or service company]

Here’s the latest action:

Another Google exec heads to Facebook – Elliot Schrage, Google’s vice president of global communications and public affairs will become the vice president of communications and public policy at Facebook, BoomTown’s Kara Swisher has learned. “This is a really important role for us and one that we’ve been trying to find the right person for a while. Elliot’s role will be critical to helping us scale based on our culture that values transparency, openness, and honest internal communications,” Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a memo to employees.

Schrage becomes the latest in a string of Googlers who have left for Facebook. As one commenter joked on FriendFeed earlier: “Facebook now imports Google execs…” Valleywag caught wind of Schrage’s interview at Facebook first.

Mosso to add more storage to the cloud — The cloud computing division of hosting provider RackSpace will be launching a new online storage service called CloudFS later this year, according to CNET. Developers will have access to almost limitless amounts of storage at the cost of 15 cents per gigabyte. This will compete against similar services from Amazon and eventually Google.

AP launches news site geared towards iPhone — The Associated Press and the 100+ newspapers it services will allow owners of the device to type in their zip code and get personalized news. Apple gave the service pointers about how to best build such a site. So you know the integration is good.

Sun gives developers OpenSolaris, wants apps in return — Sun Microsystems gave away OpenSolaris, the open source version of its operating system, at the CommunityOne developers conference on Monday. Sun hopes open source will help it regain relevance in the within the community, according to CNET. The main rival here it thought to be Linux.

Nine Inch Nails keep the free music coming — The rock band has a new album, The Slip, which is it giving away entirely for free on its website. There is no catch, it’s simply a gift for the fans, frontman Trent Reznor explains. Users can choose between a variety of formats and quality. This follows the band giving away the first part of its Ghosts I-IV album and other bands such as Radiohead and Coldplay giving their music away for free over the Internet. The album can also be streamed right from the social music site iLike.

LiveProcess Corp. takes a $3.62 million series A — The Verona, N.J.-based company is a provider of an online application to manage a hospital’s disaster preparedness plans and response. No institutional investors were disclosed, according to PEHub. The company says it’s the only disaster preparedness software endorsed by the American Hospital Association.

EA fires back at Activision — The world’s two leading video game publishers continue to go at it. Activision’s chief executive said that EA “did a very good job of taking the soul out of a lot of the studios it acquired.” EA’s response in an interview with Newsweek’s LevelUp blog: “The truth is, everyone laughed.”

TomCruise.com launches — And thank God. The actor is celebrating the 25th anniversary of his first starring role in Risky Business. Luckily the site has nothing to do with Scientology and everything to do with movies (though there is an interview with Oprah where he discusses the controversial religion). This site can be my wingman anytime.