Gowalla announced that it has some new trip tools and options today. 

"The Trips feature is one of our favorites on Gowalla, and it's also a favorite of users, universities, businesses, non-profit organizations, you name it," the company says. "Something we've been meaning to knock out for a while and have finally gotten around to is making Trip creation an easier and smoother process, and we're rolling it out today."

There is a new "Create a Trip" box in the right sidebar at Gowalla.com/trips, which takes you to a new trip creation page.

 Users can name a trip, add a category and description, and add  "spots" by clicking an "add a spot" button and searching for the name of the spot. 

There is also a new feature that lets you bookmark a trip that you want to complete. "Now you don't have to be someone's friend on Gowalla to complete their Trips (great for conferences, campus trips, etc.)." 

Users can promote their trips on Twitter and other networks without having to add everyone as a friend. They can click on a trip age to add a trip to their phone, and they can create private trips that only friends can see.

Amazon has acquired music startup Amie Street, which the company actually helped fund. Unfortunately for Amie Street users, the service will be shut down.

Amie Street has an interesting business model, which lets musicians upload music, which starts out free to users. The more downloads the songs get, the more the price goes up (up to a $1). Interesting as it may be, it apparently didn't work. 

According to Michael Arrington, the Amie Street team will focus on Amazon's Songza, a custom playlist-based music service.  He says, "While the users and the brand are being acquired, Amazon will most likely ditch the business model, say the founders (stressing that they don’t know for sure)."


Peter Kafka shares a letter from Amie Street to its users, informing them of the Amazon takeover. The letter says that the site will redirect to Amazon starting September 22. Users do get a $5 promotional code to use in Amazon's MP3 store, so that's a bonus. 

The financial terms of the acquisition have not been revealed, but the price isn't expected to be incredibly high.

New Experian Hitwise stats regarding the search market in August have arrived, and truth be told, they're not that exciting; very little changed compared to July.  However, August did act as a sort of baseline for the Bing-Yahoo combo.

Experian Hitwise noted in an official statement, "The percentage of U.S. searches for the one-week ending Aug. 28, 2010 for the Bing combined powered search accounted for 24.56 percent, as Yahoo! Search and Bing received 14.32 percent and 10.24 percent, respectively."

That's perhaps not a terrible starting point.  After all, Ask, AOL, and lots of other companies can only dream of performing one out of every 20 searches, never mind one out of four.

The bad news for Yahoo and Bing is that they still didn't gain ground on Google in August.  Google's market share rose from 71.43 percent to 71.59 percent on a month-over-month basis, while Yahoo's market share fell (from 14.43 percent to 14.28 percent) and Bing made only the tiniest bit of progress.

Plus, Experian Hitwise observed that "Google delivered the most visits" to its Automotive, Health, Shopping, and Travel categories.

The big search announcement Google's supposed to make later today may not play in Yahoo and Bing's favor, either.

According to the EFF, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled that federal law allows judges the discretion to require that the government obtain a probable cause search warrant before accessing cell phone location data. 

Reuters reports that the U.S. Justice Department is looking into Google's acquisition of ITA software. Google made it pretty clear from the beginning that it expected heavy scrutiny. 

PayPal expects to be a significant part of paying for video content streamed to televisions. In a post on the company blog today, PayPal VP of Global Product Strategy, Sam Shrauger, says, "We're sure that PayPal will play an important role in removing the friction and letting consumers enjoy their TV and movies, where and when they want."

Google has been displaying a unique logo today, which breaks apart and moves when you point your mouse to it. You can't click on it for an explanation, but some have speculated its related to Google's birthday. The company tweeted this today:

CNET points to an announcement from Microsoft "top game employee" Andre Vrignaud that he will be heading to Amazon. Don Reisinger says this feeds speculation that Amazon is planning a gaming push. 

Mapquest has added some new functionality to its iPhone app, which lets the user rotate the phone and the map along with it. "In our continued quest to be your mapping service of choice on iPhone, your wish is our command.  In other words, with this update, when you start navigation the top of your map will no longer always be North," explains Mapquest's Michael Iams. "So, if you’re headed SW, the top of the map will be SW (see image on left) allowing your position icon (waving man, dog cow, car, hand dog, etc) to now travel along the road in the same way you do."

TechCrunch reports that Digg VP of Engineering John Quinn has been let go after three years due to Digg's implementation of Database Cassandra, which has apparently contributed to the new version of the site going down repeatedly.  

Update 2: Oracle has responded with the following statement:

“Oracle has long viewed HP as an important partner,” said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. “By filing this vindictive lawsuit against Oracle and Mark Hurd, the HP board is acting with utter disregard for that partnership, our joint customers, and their own shareholders and employees.   The HP Board is making it virtually impossible for Oracle and HP to continue to cooperate and work together in the IT marketplace."

Update: HP is now suing Hurd. The company released this statement:

“Mark Hurd agreed to and signed agreements designed to protect HP's trade secrets and confidential information.  HP intends to enforce those agreements.”

More on HP's corporate blog.

Original Article: Oracle announced that Mark Hurd is now the Co-President of the company, and has been named to the Board of Directors. Yes, that Mark Hurd. 

"I believe Oracle's strategy of combining software with hardware will enable Oracle to beat IBM in both enterprise servers and storage," said Hurd. "Exadata is just the beginning. We have some exciting new systems we are going to announce later this month at Oracle OpenWorld. I'm excited to be a part of the most innovative technology team in the IT industry."