Yahoo! announced that it is pulling development and support for 10 of its less-popular mobile apps. While some of the apps are popular on the web and others were created for mobile users, consumers are not using them as much as Yahoo! would like.

eMarketer, Inc. released a report that estimates U.S. mobile advertisers spent $1.45 billion in 2011, up 89% from $769.6 billion in 2010. This year, U.S. mobile ad spending will grow another 80%, reaching $2.61 billion, the company predicts, in an upward trend that will not slow down.

Mozy, an online data storage service from Decho Corp., added a new file-syncing feature, Stash, to its offering. Stash, currently in beta, allows users to back up and access files across their devices, from smartphones to tablets to computers.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project found that the number of U.S. residents who reported owning a tablet or an e-reader nearly doubled between mid-December and early January, both jumping from 10% to 19%, attributable to the available of lower-priced options.

OverDrive, Inc. has released 2011 statistics on library ebooks, audiobooks, and digital media from its Virtual Branch websites. The websites garnered 1.6 billion page views, up 130% from 2010. Similarly, the company reports nearly 100 million visitor sessions, a 107% increase over 2010.

This spring, some research had me making a series of calls to a range of people in the book publishing business, including authors, agents, publishers, and consultants. The topic-in broad terms-was about the shift to digital. How did these publishing leaders see the shift occurring today? How was it going so far, and-more importantly-what might the publishing landscape look like in 3 or 5 years?

If you pre-ordered a Kindle Fire, you better be sure to check your mailbox today. This morning Amazon announced that the new members of its Kindle family will ship to buyers early. The Kindle Touch and Kindle Touch 3G will head out to early buyers beginning tomorrow, November 15, several days earlier than the previously announced November 21 shipping date. Perhaps more notably, the Kindle Fire will head out a day early. This comes on the heels of last week's "leaked" announcement that Barnes & Noble would be introducing the Nook Tablet and making it available in stores on November 17.

According to comScore, the U.S. mobile social media audience grew by 37% over the past year, a significant increase by anyone's standards. It seems only logical that smartphone users access social media more regularly--after all, they aren't paying those high fees for data plans just to read the occasional email. But what does it really mean?

Who is the mobile magazine reader? Texterity -- a Southborough, MA-based company that provides digital and mobile publishing solutions -- sought to answer that question in its annual readership survey. The 2011 Mobile App Readership Survey (with results certified by BPA Worldwide) was designed to specifically study magazine app users while on their mobile devices.

On May 17, in Boston, Mass.-the same city that gave us the first telephone call and first email-information professionals gathered at SIIA NetGain 2011, to discuss how organizations can integrate major information trends into business models to promote growth and expand customer reach. With "road trip to innovation" as its catchphrase, and with sessions that tackled topics such as the use of social media in marketing, SIIA NetGain presented attendees with a variety of strategies to help them not only survive in today's competitive market, but to succeed in the future.

In publishing, small is the new big. An increasing number of publishers are releasing e-singles -- short works published digitally on a variety of platforms -- to generate ancillary revenue, build brand equity, and reach new audiences. Among those joining the e-singles market are Hearst, Rodale, Princeton University Press, and as recently as last week, Penguin.

Social media, tablets, and eReaders have not only changed the publishing model, they have given authors and publishers a whole new avenue to engage readers beyond books. Now, with the launch of interactive websites that accompany these books, such as J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter experience, Pottermore, and the continued growth and acceptance of mobile apps, the list of digital possibilities is getting longer.

This past April, 1 month after her highly publicized resignation as CEO of NPR (National Public Radio), Vivian Schiller delivered a warning to her former public radio colleagues, saying, "There is massive change on the horizon." She cautioned that "if you don't aggressively reach out to new audiences on new platforms, someone else will," and she urged public radio to embrace technology by letting go "of the nostalgia for how that content is delivered and how that community is forged. Give the audience what they need and how they need it, and you will be fine." Whether there's any truth behind Schiller's prediction that "new digital-only startups will enter the marketplace in audio" and public radio will find itself "longing for the days when the competition was the radio station that overlapped on your broadcast signal" remains to be seen, but as audiences find new digitally friendly ways to consume content across all public media sectors, her prophecy may soon become reality.

There is little room for debate: The introduction of the iPad has changed the computing environment irrevocably. It's a device that is rapidly breaking down the barriers between the traditional desktops, laptops, and mobile devices and significantly impacting how-and where-consumers access information. As a consequence, another trend is also emerging: the move from the wide-open web to semi-closed platforms that use the internet for transport but not the browser for display.

Meet the five new fundamentals of the information experience. Whether it's on a desktop monitor or a tiny mobile screen, ‘information experience' is the moment when the user experience and information-intensive applications meet. Over the past few years, as the volume of structured and unstructured data within organizations has exploded and the channels on which that information is consumed has diversified, content consumers have been revising their expectations for what qualifies as an acceptable information experience.

There seems little doubt that the advent of tablets, the ultimate media consumption device, had a positive impact on the news business. But until the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, in collaboration with The Economist Group, released a study in October, the exact impact was mere speculation.

Book publishers are an endangered species. That's right. The producers of textbooks, romance novels, and cookbooks aren't long for this world. Their likely extinction is both predictable and preventable. Even if they put up a good fight, it's unlikely they'll survive in their current form for one reason: They are slow to evolve.Case in point: Two years ago, while book publishers were busy conducting business as usual, an outsider invaded the industry and reshaped it in the publishers' image. The invading force was Apple, a fierce predator with a history of conducting well-orchestrated, highly publicized takeovers. And take over it did.

No longer is it just editors and agents on the subways and buses with their submission pile on Sony e-readers; it's actual, real, live, nonindustry people who just love to read. Harris Interactive, Inc. polled more than 2,000 people in July of this year and found that roughly 15% of those polled already owned an e-reader, and 15% of those who did not own an e-reader were likely to buy one in the next 6 months.

Despite the tiny screens, more consumers than ever before are using their smartphones to do more than ever before. Market research firm IDC reports that sales of smartphones in the final quarter of 2010 outstripped those of PCs for the first time—ever! Moreover, a milestone report from Google, in collaboration with the Mobile Marketing Association, confirms that we increasingly rely on our mobile devices to research products, make purchases, conduct transactions, and connect with social networks.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, and it seems many shoppers decided to forego the stampedes and fistfights associated with Black Friday and shop from their office chairs on Monday instead. IBM is reporting that it may well have been the strongest Cyber Monday yet with online sales up over last year by 33%, and order value up 2.6%. Another big change: more and more people are doing their shopping via a mobile device such as a smart phone or tablet. Almost 11% of traffic to online retailers was from mobile users. Sales via mobile devices were up as well, from 2.3% last year to 6.6% this year.