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Read the rest of Zune Phone to be Announced at MWC 2010? [Microsoft Could Launch Windows Mobile 7-based Zune Phone in the Near Future]

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This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Moveidiot.com

Quick Pitch: Free, web-based service that takes the hassle out of moving by allowing users to manage entire moves online.

Genius Idea: Moveidiot.com aims to make moving less painful by letting you track your packages, organize your packing lists and coordinate tasks all from its web-based service.

Moving sucks. It is often expensive, stress-inducing and takes tons of time. Managing the little details of a move, like indexing what’s in certain boxes or keeping track of different appointments, only adds to the stress of packing and physically moving to a new place. That’s what Moveidiot.com wants to help dissipate.

At Moveidiot.com, you can manage the various organizational aspects of your move in one place. If you’re shipping stuff across the country, you can track packages from USPS, UPS and FedEx. You can also create moving labels to put on boxes and lists of what’s inside each box and where it needs to go.

Probably the most enticing feature about Moveidiot.com is the Moving Checklist, which is a to-do list that will alert you of stuff you need to do. You can also manage your moving budget, which is handy if you’re trying to decide between hiring movers or renting a truck yourself.

Moveidiot.com is entirely web-based, so you can use it from any Mac or PC, or access your stuff from your mobile phone. If you’re planning a move and need some organizational help, this free service might be worth a look.

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

Tags: movieidiot.com, moving, web apps

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We knew this move was coming, but it doesn’t make it any less monumental for the rapidly rising location-based industry. Foursquare is no longer restricted to specific cities. Now, you can check in anywhere.

According to a report by CNET, the social location service now offers you the ability to check in anywhere from your mobile phone. This is in contrast to the previous system, where you chose your specific city if it wasn’t auto-detected. Smaller towns and cities in this system were left out, making it difficult for Foursquare to spread beyond urban sprawls.

The new upgrade hasn’t been rolled out to everyone yet — technically, it’s a soft launch. Soon though, everyone should be able to type in their city and state/country to check into their favorite Starbucks. The move should help it keep the upper hand against its upstart competitor Gowalla, which announced a partnership and contest with Incase earlier today.

Will you use Foursquare more now that you can check in anywhere? Let us know in the comments.

[img credit: Foursquare/CNET]

Tags: foursquare, gowalla, trending

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Google made huge waves in the mobile industry when it acquired mobile ad network AdMob for $750 million. Now Apple, which is increasingly in direct competition with Google, has countered its new rival.

According to All Things Digital, Apple has entered into an agreement to acquire Quattro Wireless, a mobile ad platform similar to AdMob but smaller in scale. The announcement may come as soon as tomorrow.

We can’t say we’re surprised by the move: our sources have told us that Apple was in the running for AdMob, but Google snatched it away with a higher bid. Apple couldn’t allow its rival to the sole possessor of mobile ad technology, and thus acquiring a smaller but growing mobile advertising network was the next logical move. We’ll bring you more details as we learn more.

Tags: acquisition, apple, business, Mobile 2.0, Quattro Wireless, social media, trending

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We’ve just learned that Comcast’s “TV Everywhere” project will launch nationally today, allowing subscribers to the company’s cable service to watch programming online, legally and at no additional charge. First announced back in June, the service will feature 27 channels, including HBO, Cinemax, Starz and TNT.

AllThingsD reports that the service will be accessible via Comcast.net or Fancast, and requires users to download both a MOVE player and an Adobe AIR application. The service has also apparently been branded “xfinity TV.”

As we’ve noted before, the move is a necessary one for the cable companies, who are facing increasing competition from a number of attractive online alternatives. What we think would make more sense, though, is offering a variety of access options, including a way for non-cable subscribers to use the service.

We’ll have some more hands-on details when one of our Comcast subscribing bloggers has a chance to check it out.

Tags: comcast

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Originally posted at Relevant Results

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Originally posted at Beyond Binary

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Finally we hear that Nokia is making a new move in its never-ending quest to conquer the U.S. market. We’ve seen too many Android and BlackBerry phones lately so a change is more than required. I’d very much like to see Nokia launch a successful Symbian phone although I don’t think current Symbian versions can really compete against other mobile platforms.
(more…)

See: Nokia to Make Symbian Smartphone for AT&T? [Nokia & Qualcomm to Develop New Symbian Phone]

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We’re not saying that Elman’s move signals the end of Facebook, of course.  It’s just that he was an important fellow at the company.  Elman served as the Facebook Platform’s program manager and led the launch of Facebook Connect, so he may deserve a lot of credit for establishing Facebook’s relationships with other sites.

That also means that Elman has a lot of experience with apps, and they’ve obviously become key to Twitter.

As for the years before Elman worked for Facebook, he spent time at Zazzle (two years and eight months), LinkedIn (one year and seven months), and RealNetworks (six years and one month), which is an impressive enough bunch of companies.  Elman attended Stanford University, too.

Anyway, a hat tip goes to Louis Gray, and Jeremiah Owyang commented on his article, "What a smart move for Twitter.  Josh is a standup guy, knows his stuff, and will do a great job at Twitter."

Related Articles:

> Misleading Ad: Twitter is Hiring

> Twitter Adds New Exec Talent

> Twitter Obtains Lead Lawyer From Google

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Amazon’s Kindle software isn’t going to be limited to the e-reading device: following Amazon’s announcement at the Windows 7 launch that it has released a version of the Kindle Reader software for PCs (”Kindle for PC“), the company has also revealed that it’s building a Mac version of the software. Neither version requires that you own a Kindle in order to download books.

An Amazon spokesperson in contact with Fast Company told the magazine: “Yes, we are working on a Kindle app for Mac.”

The move is a smart one: having the Kindle software available on all PCs and Macs radically extends the range of devices that can connect to the Kindle Store. But whether this is a move towards being more open is debatable: for now, anyone switching from a Kindle to another e-reader cannot move their books over.

Tags: kindle mac

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From an IT manager’s perspective, REST might just be another way of moving information, but without all the tools associated with SOAP. In this final article in the REST for Java developers series, Brian Sletten takes on that myth, and several others about REST, by looking at its role in emerging architectures such as the Semantic Web. The move to REST, he says, is not a move away from SOAP, but an embracing of the Web in its entirety, both inside and outside of the enterprise.